RCL Year C - (Epiphany 1C - the Baptism of Our Lord) - January 10, 2010

The Rev’d Kenneth H. Saunders III

Christ Church

Cleveland, NC

RCL Year C – (Epiphany 1C - the Baptism of Our Lord) – January 10, 2010

Isaiah 43:1-7
Psalm 29
Acts 8:14-17
Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

Have you ever stopped to think about - Who are you? Think about who you REALLY are? Is who you are - what you do? or is even who you are – who you’re related to?

You’ve got to love the south… in the south, who you are it is definitely who you are related to… I can hear it now, you walk up to somebody on the street to introduce yourself and the next phrase out of their mouth is Who’s your Mamma? or Who’s your Daddy? Who are you related to? Who are your kin folk? and you ain’t from around here, are ya?

When we stop to think about who we are, we get caught up in a sort of identity crisis… Where when who we are (or who we are related to) and what we do, start to mesh together and become part of our personae.

It’s hard for some folks to figure out who they really are. They live years living into a farce a fake, plastic personae of who others think they aught to be… It’s difficult and sad when society has such the grip on us that it dictates who we are… to the point that we are expected to dress a certain way or have a certain amount of money to be worth anything…

I pose the question this week… what does Christmas / Epiphany / and the Baptism of the Lord all have in common?? The one thing that they have in common is identity! The identity of who Christ is…

And the thought about identity it even stretched into our Advent series, when we asked the question about the identity of the One that cometh… when we asked, “who are we waiting for???” I said Wednesday night at our Epiphany service that Epiphany is a season of light and identity… not just Christ’s identity, but also of our own identity… and the readings for today, that surround the baptism of Christ shed a lot of light on who Christ is and who we are as his followers.

The Old Testament prophet Isaiah says that God calls the people of Israel out of exile in Babylon… God calls them by name and leads them through the waters and fire… God saves them ALL from harm, God redeems and restores them (saves them) and re-gathers them into community…

Just as the people of Israel are gathered and redeemed so God gathers and redeems us… And in the Gospel lesson, the ones going out to John the Baptist and listening to John preach repentance were filled with expectation… and were questioning the identity…Of the One who Cometh.

The were asking, If you’re not the one, then who are we waiting for?… and John tells them the One that will baptize you with the holy spirit and with fire… The cleansing power of the Holy Spirit will come and burn the chaff (the sin) that the wind blows away.

John tells them that the One coming will separate the pure grain (our true self) from the chaff the inedible, unusable, scaly parts of the grain - the waste (or the sin in our lives). And as wind and fire of the Holy Spirit blows and burns in our lives, the sin is consumed and forever removed. And with it, there is a transformation that takes place in us, (a metanoia) a desire to turn to God and repent and change…

And in Acts, the outcasts in Samaria have undergone this change and been baptized, so the Apostles Peter and John went to them to give validity to their experience (an apostolic witness to their faith) and laid hands on them and strengthened them with the only spirit.

After Jesus was baptized by John in the river Jordan he was praying and the heavens opened and the holy spirit descended on him in the bodily form of a dove. Then a great voice came down from heaven “You are my son, the beloved; with you I am well pleased”… And it was witnessed by everyone there…

Baptism is an initiation into the Christian faith… that sacrament through which God adopts us as His Children… it makes us members and gives us full inclusion in Christ’s Body the Church by water and the Holy Spirit. And our baptism is witnessed by the whole community and the whole community makes vows to help us live into the commitments of our Baptism…

In a few minutes, we will once again stand and re-new those promises those vows that commit our lives to Christ… And we know, that regardless of the age we were when we were baptized, that God’s grace came raining down on us to adopt us as children of God and make recipients of the Holy Spirit… and we also had a Christian community backing us up…

See, the Christian life doesn’t occur in a vacuum it is not just “God and me” or a “Jesus and me”… It is experienced in a Community gathered, a community of Christ adopted by God and empowered by the Holy Spirit. Through our participation, we become the beloved - those favored by God and given the task of doing God’s work in the world.

We know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God… God came to this world as one of us to redeem us, to restore us to God’s favor, so that we might become his Children and therefore heirs of the Kingdom of God, - to forever be in the presence of the One who created us.

God gathers us as a community, and gives us identity… our only true identity as God’s Children… Then God empowers us by the Holy Spirit to act… to act and build up the Kingdom of God.

(Please Stand)

Therefore, brothers and sisters, I call upon you now, to renew the solemn promises and vows of Holy Baptism, by which we once renounced Satan and all his works, and promised to serve God faithfully in his Holy Catholic Church.

RCL Year C (the Feast of Epiphany) - January 6, 2010

The Rev’d Kenneth H. Saunders III

Christ Church

Cleveland, NC

RCL Year C (the Feast of Epiphany) – January 6, 2010

Isaiah 60:1-6
Ephesians 3:1-12
Matthew 2:1-12
Psalm 72:1-7,10-14

Today has many names…

The western Church calls it Epiphany (the Greek word that means an intuitive leap of understanding), The eastern Church calls it Theophany (or the appearance of God in visible form) or it could simply be called the Manifestation of Our Lord Jesus Christ to the Gentiles.

Regardless of what we call it… it means one thing to us… We know who God is a little better, because God revealed God’s self to us in the person of Jesus Christ… An he did it for ALL People!

This is a feast day that has been celebrated as a major feast in Christendom since before the year 354. At one time it was bigger than Christmas – because it included the birth of Jesus and the visit of the magi in one fail swoop.

It is a season of Light, filled with images of identity and journey, of understanding and a coming to know…

The story of the Magi (or Kings) that bring gifts to the Christ Child are familiar… They are as familiar as their lore – the lore that has become ingrained into the stories of the Christian faith…

The mysterious astrologers (the magi) or Persian priest, definitely non-Jewish (or Gentiles) from another place and another culture… They somehow see the need to honor and worship the new born “king of the Jews”

We don’t know how many there were, the scripture just calls them magi (have you ever wondered where the word magic comes from). Early traditions of the church asserted that there must have been three, because that’s how many gifts that were given… And the church even named them - Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar

The gifts are important, because they weren’t just any gifts that someone would give a newborn… These gifts tell stories within the story… about the identity of this miraculously born Jesus.

They become revelations of who the new born is and is to become…

Gold – a symbol of kingship and dominion on Earth… and Jesus will be referred to as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Frankincense – a fragrant incense burned in the temple of God every day by the priest… and Jesus will be referred to as the Great High Priest

Myrrh – the combination of spices used to anoint the dead and Jesus will suffer and die a human death for us on the cross.

God chose to reveal to astronomers the Good news of a miraculous birth that took place in a manger in Bethlehem of Judea. And these astronomers followed a great star over a mighty distance to worship a child revealed to them as “the King of the Jews.”

The scripture tells us that when the star stopped over the place where the child was that the magi were filled with joy and coming into the house they knelt down and paid him homage - they worshipped him…

This is the first revelation to the Non-Jews (or Gentile people) that God came into the world for the WHOLE WORLD not just the Jews…

Jesus walked on this earth and lived and died as one of us for everybody… so that everyone might come within reach of God. The God that created us, redeems us (or re-creates us), and continues to sustain our lives... the God that loves us so much that he became one of us…

The question to us is… how will we respond to that… Will we continue to be complacent and uninvolved, and live life for ourselves?

Or will we decide to follow the light of Christ? Do we make the difficult journey with the magi and cross the hard obstacles along the way? Will we follow the light of Christ that will eventually lead us to the cross?

The light of God has come into the world… so that we might see and experience God face to face…

After worshipping Jesus at the manger, the Magi carried the light of Christ out into the world with them, as they returned to their homes. So we, too, are called to rise from our worship here… leave the manger and move into the world, bearing the light of Christ – To take it to the places we live work, the places we work, the places we study, and the places we play.

And we are to remember that we are always called to welcome ALL who come to share in that light – The light of Christ!

RCL Year C (Christmas Eve) - December 24, 2009

The Rev'd Kenneth H. Saunders III

Christ Church - Cleveland, NC

RCL Year C (Christmas Eve) - December 24, 2009

Isaiah 9:2-7

Titus 2:11-14

Luke 2:1-20

Sometimes we think too much… I know that I do, especially when it comes to preaching on Christmas Eve. Most preachers that I know are terrified of it, I think it’s because there are so many more in the congregation than usual…

People that come on this holy night to experience the wonder, the awe and the mystery of the miraculous birth of Jesus in a stable in Bethlehem. Most congregations double in size on the holy feast days of Christmas and Easter… That in itself is a mystery…

So, I thought and prayed this year until my head hurt and then I thought and prayed some more... and in my study, I ran across some folks… folks that seem to have been short changed in the nativity story… folks that appear right in the middle of all the action in the gospel lesson that we just heard.

Shepherds!

You remember the shepherds… every young boy wants to be a shepherd in the Christmas pageant. It's the character in the reenactment that gets to wear their bath robe and put one of mamma’s checkered dish-towels on their head... You know... The Shepherds... the ones that watched over their flocks in the field by night…

The working class… grubby, and smelly, just trying to earn a living. If Mike Rowe were around then, he would have probably interviewed them for the show Dirty Jobs. They were classed with the other working stiffs… folks the tanners, sailors, butchers, camel jockeys, and other despised occupations…

But unlike these other occupations, Shepherds were different, since they were away from home at night they were unable to protect their families and therefore they were considered dishonorable. These folks were the lowest of the low, and yet God chose them first…

God chose the shepherds… and revealed to them the Good News of the miraculous birth. An Angel appeared – and stood before these shepherds and the glory of God surrounded them and they were scared - to - death…

And the Angel said, "don’t be afraid – I am bringing you Good News to share with everybody! ALL PEOPLE!!" And the angel told them where to find the child wrapped in bands of cloth and laying in a feeding trough. And then there was a bunch of Angles singing… "Glory to God in the Highest and on Earth Peace to everyone! with whom God is Well Pleased!"

And the shepherds decide to go and see this miraculous thing that God had made known to them. And they found it just as the Angel had told them, Mary & Joseph and a child laying in a manger (a feeding trough) wrapped in strips of cloth…

But the amazing part of this story is… it didn’t stop there.

These simple shepherds were so excited by what they saw, they went and told others about the child… and all who the shepherds told were amazed… The mystery and awe that surrounds us on this holy night is partly made possible by the shepherds… God chose to reveal God’s self to the lowest of the low – the dishonored in society and tell them of the miracle of the birth of Christ…

A miraculous birth to a peasant family that didn’t have a place to stay when they traveled… and didn’t even have a bed for their new born baby… God trusted that the shepherds would go and see what had taken place and share it with the world…

This is just the beginning of the story of Jesus who is the Christ… A man who we know will turn the world on its ear, disrupt society and make an impact like no other has ever made… In 1926, Dr. James Allen wrote a poem. The poem is called One Solitary Life some of you may have heard it before… I would like to share that poem with you to give us something to ponder in our hearts this evening…

One Solitary Life

He was born in an obscure village

The child of a peasant woman

He grew up in another obscure village

Where he worked in a carpenter shop

Until he was thirty

He never wrote a book

He never held an office

He never went to college

He never visited a big city

He never travelled more than two hundred miles

From the place where he was born

He did none of the things

Usually associated with greatness

He had no credentials but himself

He was only thirty three

His friends ran away

One of them denied him

He was turned over to his enemies

And went through the mockery of a trial

He was nailed to a cross between two thieves

While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing

The only property he had on earth

When he was dead

He was laid in a borrowed grave

Through the pity of a friend

Nineteen centuries have come and gone

And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race

And the leader of mankind's progress

All the armies that have ever marched

All the navies that have ever sailed

All the parliaments that have ever sat

All the kings that ever reigned put together

Have not affected the life of mankind on earth

As powerfully as that one solitary life

God humbled himself and was born as a human...

God came to live among us as one of us…

God didn’t come to us in glorious splendor, he came to us from a poor family that had no place to stay when they traveled, so they stayed in a barn.

He didn’t have royal robes and fine garments, he was bound with rags – strips of cloth or swaddling clothes. He didn’t live a life of luxury… he didn’t even have a bed. He was laid in a feeding trough…

But it IS from that feeding trough that he continues to feed the whole world!

Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace among all people with whom God is well pleased! Amen!

RCL Year C (Advent 2) - December 6, 2009

The Rev'd Kenneth H. Saunders III
Christ Church, Cleveland, NC

RCL Year C - Advent 2 - December 6, 2009

Baruch 5:1-9
Canticle 16
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6

(transcribed from audio - sermon preached without notes or manuscript)

This time of year reminds me of my mother. I know that she reads my sermons regularly, so God help me when she gets hold of this one. I am going to talk about her a little bit, but in a kind way… During the season of Advent, my mother is always… oh, let’s say fussy. To the point of the halls decked just perfectly. When I was growing up, there was almost a tree in every room, a rope of holly on the mantle of the fireplace, candles on the tables and a single white candle in each window, and of course fake snow… and I am not talking about the spray stuff, I am saying the bag o plastic shreds – where you put one handful on each branch of the tree… I even think she is looking for some this year, but hasn’t been able to find it. On top of the decorating, she always found time to bake. Fruit cakes, cookies, cakes, and even one year made candy. Her preparations were meticulous, and everything had to be just so.

We are called, like I said last week, to a “preparation” in Advent... careful, meticulous preparation. But John calls us today (John the Baptizer) to a different kind of preparation. A preparation for the coming of the messiah.

The words from the 40th Chapter of Isaiah, the prophet, are echoed by Luke the evangelist… Make straight paths… straighten out the crooked spaces, make the high places low and the low places high… but, do this in the wilderness.

Something very interesting that I think we need to pay attention to. The place between Egypt and the Promised Land always involves “wilderness.” The way to salvation, the salvation of our God in Jesus Christ always involves wilderness. The wilderness places that you have heard me speak of before. Those are the places of chaos. Places of the wild and crazy. The places where demons dwell. Places where food is not bought and can’t be found. The wilderness is the lowest point, where people had to go to fully rely and depend on God in order for God to bring them into the promised land. To bring them to salvation.

So, if you think of it like that, in order to find our way to Christ, who is our salvation… to find our way to the promised land, we have to go through the wilderness. It is a way that we go by preparing ourselves. Preparation through personal discovery. It means wrestling with things in our lives that we otherwise don’t want to mess with.

It makes me think, “where is the wilderness?” Our mere lives are the wilderness, and we are on a journey through the wilderness, where we are looking for direction, where we are looking for guidance, where we are looking to be fed and nurtured as we grow and go along the way.

We are looking for God to make those paths straight, and our narrow ways to be made smooth, because sometimes we come along boulders in the path, and regardless how much we try, we cannot remove those boulders by ourselves. We have to trust God and let God provide us with that smooth path. We have to come together as a community to bring forth the Kingdom of God, and move those rocks together. To make that path straight, and the wilderness that much more tolerable.

Regardless of how fussy we may get this time of year, John is there to tell us the way to the Kingdom of God. The way to Christ. In fact, that is one of the reasons that I picked the illustration that was used on the front of the bulletin, it is Leonardo Da vinci’s portrait of John the Baptist. If you notice the in the painting he is pointing up. In most of the artist renditions of John, John is pictured pointing up, pointing the way to salvation.

That is what John does for us. John through his, as you have heard me call it before, his unexpected, unlikely messages. He was one of those messengers that you wouldn’t expect anyone to listen to him. But he is so strange, he gets our attention. He points the way to salvation.

He is the son of the high priest, Zachariah, but he doesn’t conform to the norms of society for that sort of family. He dresses in camel hair and puts a leather belt around his waist and eats locust and wild honey, and tells the people to come and follow me, we are going out to the wilderness, we are going out to discover those places in our lives where we need that true change. In Greek it is called metanoia, a real change of heart, changing the way from a sinful life to a life of righteousness.

We are called out to the wilderness to discover those places in our lives where we need metanoia. Where we need to make a change and repent of that sin, and then we can prepare the way for Christ to come. Not only as a child in a manger… cause we love the baby stories – we love the heavenly host of angels and the manger and the animals – it’s very very nice, but that is not exactly what Advent is all about. Advent is sometimes about scary things, of an apocalyptic or eschatological nature, in preparation for Christ’s coming again in might and great glory.

So we take this time of preparation, and if we loose some of the fussy-ness in our lives and go over to the other side and think more about what we can do to prepare ourselves, to prepare our souls and bodies to see the Christ who is coming, who is coming again. But we can’t do it by ourselves, we do that as a community of faith, because we are here in the wilderness of our lives on a journey. It is a journey through this life.

When we go forward from this place, we should think about how we can be that prophetic voice that cries out to others in this wilderness of our lives and lead other to that repentance (that metanoia) that change and conversion in their life.

That change and conversion that needs to take place. It needs to take place in their lives like it took place in our lives so that we can receive the Christ.

So as we go forward from this place, and think about how the preamble to today's lesson would be written in a more modern language… we could say, in the first year of the presidency of Barack Obama, when Beverly was Governor of North Carolina, and John was elected Mayor of Cleveland… a voice cried out in the wilderness of North Carolina, make straight the paths, make low the high places, remove all the obstacles that lay in between, and prepare the way of the Christ to come among us.

RCL Year C (Advent 1) - November 29, 2009

The Rev'd Kenneth H. Saunders III

Christ Church - Cleveland, NC

RCL Year C (Advent 1) - November 29, 2009

Jeremiah 33:14-16
Psalm 25:1-9
1 Thessalonians 3:9-13
Luke 21:25-36

(transcribed from audio - sermon preached without notes or manuscript)

You only have to walk down the street in Cleveland, down main street, to see what’s happening. Just last week, actually before thanksgiving, they put up the lights, and the garland, the bows… and you can walk into any retail store, even before Halloween and see trees, these evergreen things that we like to bring into our homes, and ornaments, and ribbons and bows and frilly things used to decorate our homes.

Now, I am not going to preach against all of that… but I am going to call you to an awareness of what the season is. The season is Advent! It is a time of preparation… preparation for the coming of the messiah, the coming of Jesus Christ who came and dwelt among us, but not necessarily for the coming of a baby that was born in a barn 2000 years ago, but also for the coming again in glory and majesty.

That’s what the readings were about. Jeremiah in a torn and horrid situation witnessing the burning of his own community was not torn to strife and despair, but drawn to hope in the restoration of Israel.

The church in Thessalonica, was taught by Paul not to run scared, not to fear what’s going to happen, but be united with Christ in His coming again.

And Jesus tells us in the Gospel that it’s time to start paying attention. It’s time to prepare ourselves. It’s time to prepare introspectively and collectively for when He will come again into the world.

This time of year, in our society, it seems that time of preparation is hijacked… That time of introspective thought and prayer and dedication and focus on the second coming of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And we ran straight from All Saints’ to Christmas.

We want Christmas to be here so bad. That we don’t want to stop and take some time to think about what we are waiting for, who we are waiting for… The commercial society has hijacked the feelings and magic of the coming of the messiah to sell goods and to boost the economy. They have hijacked it so much that we don’t spend time preparing ourselves with prayer, and fasting, and meditation about what is happening… what is happening now, and what happened then…

So Advent is a time of the already, and the not yet… We know that Jesus came… Came into the world, died on the cross, and saved us from our sins. The saving work has been done… that is the already. Jesus promised that he would come again into the world to draw the whole world unto himself. That’s the not yet. So we are in that liminal space between the already and the not yet. And we were warned to prepare ourselves…

The gospel reading say that we will see signs, but we are not to worry about those signs huddled in a corner, worried about what we have or don’t have – or done or not done – so many preachers hijack this scripture and try to sell from the pulpit some kind of celestial fire insurance, or a get out of Hell free card, instead of taking the time to nurture the people in the faith to teach them how to prepare with prayer and anticipation and expectation for the coming of the Christ.

That’s what Advent is about. It’s about the already and the not yet. It’s about the time that came, and the time to come. The time to come of the One who was and is and is to come. The Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.

Our Lord Jesus Christ is coming into the world, and we are called to prepare and look for signs and not run from those signs in fear, but hold our heads up high, for our redemption awaits us all.