RCL Year B - Proper 6 - June 17, 2012

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
Trinity Episcopal Church
Towson, Maryland

RCL Year B - Proper 6 - June 17, 2012

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-10, (11-13), 14-17
Mark 4:26-34

I want to talk a bit this morning about perceptions.  Things are often not what we perceive them to be.  It is easy to fall into the trap of making assumptions about something or someone based on what we think it should be or even how we think someone should act – all based upon our own preconceived notions or expectations.  The assumptions we make often get in the way of the truth, or obscure our understanding of what the situation is, or who the person even really is.

Dealing with bad perceptions is revealed in this morning’s readings.

Saul is on his way out.  God has rejected him as king over Israel.  Samuel is sent to Bethlehem to the house of Jesse.  God tells Samuel that he is to anoint one of Jesse’s sons as the new king over Israel.  God doesn’t disclose which son, but assures Samuel that God will name the one he is to anoint when the time is right.

Samuel arrives at Jesse’s home and invites Jesse and his sons to go with him and offer sacrifice.  Jesse gets his sons together and lines them up.  As the oldest, Eliab, passes before Samuel, Samuel sees the height of his stature and perceives that surely this is the one that he is to anoint.

God says, no – do not to look on the height of his stature, because God does not see as people see.  Jesse makes the next son, Abinadab, pass by Samuel – he wasn’t the one either.  Next was Shammah…  no, not him either.

Jesse had seven of his sons pass by Samuel and none were the ones that God had in mind.  Samuel asks Jesse if that was all of his sons.  Jesse replies that he has one more, the youngest, David, who was out keeping the sheep.  Samuel requests that he be brought in immediately.  When David enters, the scriptures describe the boy as ruddy (healthy looking) & handsome with beautiful eyes.  God tells Samuel that he is the one.  Samuel anoints David and the spirit of the Lord came mightily upon David from that day forward.

Evidently, Samuel, and even David’s own father, Jesse, didn’t perceive that the youngest son could be chosen by God to be King over Israel.  But that’s exactly what God did.  Things are often not what we perceive them to be…

In the Gospel lesson, Jesus tells a parable to describe the Kingdom of God.  In this parable, Jesus describes the Kingdom of God as a mustard seed.  A mustard seed is one of the smallest seeds known.  Yet, Jesus uses it to explain something as grand and majestic as the Kingdom of God.  But we must remember, things are often not what we perceive them to be…  And as we learned in the Old Testament lesson, God does not see as people see.

Jesus goes on to explain that when sown in the ground, this smallest of seeds becomes the mightiest of shrubs.  This isn’t something that we would normally expect.  It doesn’t make sense to us, because we make assumptions…

We assume that because it’s such a small seed, that the plant it yields won’t amount to very much.  But that is exactly what the Kingdom is like…  The Kingdom of God is different than our own perceptions.  It’s doesn’t fit our human descriptions because it isn’t what we would expect it to be.

It is easy to quickly jump to conclusions based on limited information, or even have a bad idea about something because we have misinformation.  It is at those times, we should be still.  Be still and listen to that still small voice of God that teaches us to look beyond our own perceptions and attempt to see things as God does.  Maybe open our minds a bit and try see things in a different way.  Look at the unexpected chosen small things that will go on to do miraculous things for the Kingdom of God.

The Kingdom that is like a mustard seed.  So unexpectedly small, that we couldn’t imagine that it would grow into a great strong shrub.  Because God always takes the unexpected and unimaginable, and does far more than we could ever fathom.

RCL Year B - Easter 6 - May 13, 2012

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III

Trinity Episcopal Church

Towson, MD

RCL Year B - Easter 6 - May 13, 2012

Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

Jesus says, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.”   We could say that is an extremely strong statement for Jesus after he has time and time again assured us of his unconditional love.  Why does this sound like He is “all of a sudden” changing his mind and giving us a condition to His love?

Does this mean that every time we sin, every time we don’t love one another… we don’t love Jesus?  Many of us would say yes.  But I don’t think that Jesus is imposing a condition on His love…  I feel that he is calling our love into Action…  Although we love Jesus, every time we commit sin, we are showing that we love something more than we love Jesus.

If we loved Jesus more than anything else, then we would keep ourselves free from sin for Jesus.  Wouldn’t we?  If we love Jesus, we would strive to give ourselves totally to him.  When we sin we are giving ourselves over to something else…  something other than Jesus.  And when we love Jesus with all our heart, all our soul, all our mind and all our strength we will not want to put anything, no matter how small, between ourselves and Jesus.

Again the words of Jesus in our Gospel, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.”  Sometimes we hear people make statements, or we have even made statements ourselves like, “Jesus understands that I am human, He will forgive me.”  This is very true…  Jesus forgives, and none of us doubt his abundant grace and mercy and the redemption that we feel in our life.  But if we loved Jesus more than anything – we would put Jesus before whatever it is that is tempting us whatever is trying to separate us from God.

So, Jesus is teaching us that loving Him is not just some emotion…  Loving Jesus means changing lives.  And this doesn’t happen over-night.  It is a process of growth, formation, and transformation…  In the process, we are informed and reform our lives…  we work on our personalities and our characteristics, we overcome our sinful habits, and stretch ourselves to love as Jesus loved.

Loving Jesus means thinking about ourselves and others as Jesus thinks.  If we get our ideas about love and life from TV, movies, the internet and other sources that our materialistic western culture dishes out, we run the risk of not understanding the difference between our freedom from sin and the freedom to simply do what is right.  Our minds would be cluttered with false images of ourselves, of others and of the world….  If we cloud or minds with the self-reliance and self-salvation that some of these things teach we are NOT putting Jesus first.

But if we truly want to love Jesus, we will should strive to fill our minds with his thoughts and His way of looking at the world.  We can fill our minds with Jesus’ thoughts by studying scripture in our community of faith, reading for spiritual enrichment and by adopting a discipline of prayer in our daily life.

If we fill our minds with the clutter from some portions of our society, and let it direct our path...  What does that say about our love of Jesus?  It would be impossible…   impossible to keep the commandments of Jesus.  So, let us take a minute right here, right now in the middle of this service, in this place to fill our minds with the thoughts of Jesus, so that we may keep his commandments and abide in his love.

Again the words of Jesus are, “If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.”  Truly loving Jesus leads us to give up whatever in our lives draws us away from Jesus.  Truly loving Jesus leads us to making changes in the way we live and think and act.  Do we live as Jesus asks?  Do we love one another with the radical love of Jesus.  Do we live as Jesus asks as it was taught to us through the Apostles, and through the Church’s teaching?  If we do, then we know that we love Jesus Because Jesus says that then we will abide in his love.

But if we just say we love Jesus and continue to think or act in a way that is the opposite of the way Jesus teaches us, then we are not putting Jesus in first place, when we do this, we do not abide in Jesus’ love...  because we do not keep his commandments.  And, if we truly desire to love Jesus our love of Jesus will prompt us to probe and learn until we understand how to keep his commandments...  how to love one another...  how to be a true friend of Jesus.  So for some, loving Jesus may mean walking a humble way of trust until a clearer understanding comes.

When we keep the commandments not only do we abide in the love of Jesus but we also have Jesus’ love in us.  We in him…  He in us…  

At the end of our Gospel excerpt today we heard, Jesus says that the chosen…  Those that love one another and abide in his love…  will bear good fruit…  Good fruit that will last.  Good fruit that will sustain…  and good fruit that will provide…

So loving Jesus and keeping his commandments fills us with the love of Jesus and the love of the Father, and in our hearts we see Jesus.  When we love Jesus and keep his commandments, we have Jesus in our hearts.  And we are capable of doing things that are far beyond our wildest dreams… 

But as we all know, sin kills the life of God in us, and serious sin kills the life of God in us in a serious way.  It is like rotten fruit that spoils the whole bunch…  Sin within us is NOT good fruit that will last…  Whenever the life of God is lacking in us it is not God’s fault, it is ours.  It’s our hardness of heart and our inability to love one another, and a failure to abide in Jesus’ love.

When we have it right...  When we keep commandments and abide in Jesus’ love; miraculous things happen.  Miraculous things that show the love of Jesus in a real way.  Things that restore the world to God. 

This has been a difficult week for the Episcopal Church in Maryland.  This week we laid to rest those that were killed in the tragedy at St. Peter’s in Ellicott City.  In the midst of that tragedy there were 3 deaths, a priest, a parish administrator, and a homeless man.

It was so easy in the midst of the horrible violence to crawl into our fear and lash out and condemn, and accuse and cry out for justice.  The diocese of Maryland reached out in a real and concrete way  The Churches in Ellicott City and throughout the diocese offered a place to decompress, and focus.  It made me proud to be part of the diocese to reach out in love to our neighbors.  To model keeping the commandment of Jesus to love one another.

It made me proud to be part of the diocese that stretched beyond what was comfortable and offered forgiveness to the man that took those lives and then offered to give him a proper burial.  To offer the love of Jesus to the world – to each other is an amazing and transforming thing…

It models the love that we have experienced when we have been truly loved - Truly loved by God... 

How much does Jesus love us?  This much - He stretched out his arms of love on the hard wood of the cross and died for us, so that we might come within the reach of his saving embrace.  Let us never ever be afraid to turn to Jesus for mercy after we sin, he is always waiting to forgive us and restore us...  

Let us never ever be afraid to turn to Jesus for comfort after a tragedy.  He is waiting there to heal us and re-create us…  Let us resolve right here and right now to love Jesus by keeping his commandments….  so that the love of Jesus and the Father and the Spirit may be in our hearts always.

RCL Year B - Baptism of Our Lord - January 8, 2012

The Rev. Kenneth H. Saunders III
Trinity Church

Towson, MD

RCL Year B - Baptism of Our Lord - January 8, 2012

Genesis 1:1-5
Psalm 29
Acts 19:1-7
Mark 1:4-11

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

All y’all know that I am from the south. You’ve got to love the south… in the south, who you are is definitely who you are related to… I can hear it now… when you walk up to somebody on the street and introduce yourself…

The next phrase out of the other person’s mouth is Who’s your Mamma? or Who’s your Daddy? Who are you related to? Who are your kin folk? Who are your people? and – if you happen to be lost, 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 or 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…  

So I would like to pose the question to you this week… what does Christmas / the 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… 

The thought about Jesus’ identity could even be stretched back to Advent when we contemplated the identity of the one we were waiting for…

Epiphany is a season of light and identity… not just Christ’s identity, but also of our own identity… 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 book of Genesis is about God’s great beginning in the creation of the world – A world that was a void, without form, Where darkness covered the face of the deep. God spoke forth light in the first mighty act of creation To shine forth and illuminate the world…

And just as God brought forth the light in the beginning God again brings forth the light – and again and shares it with us…

And in the Gospel lesson, the ones going out to John the Baptist to hear him preach were filled with expectation of who he might be, and they were questioning the identity of the One who was supposed to come after him. They were asking, If you’re not the one, then who are we waiting for?… John tells them that the One who comes will baptize with the holy spirit and with fire… 

After Jesus was baptized by John in the river Jordan he was praying and the heavens opened up 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…

Jesus’ baptism sets the example for us…

Jesus’ baptism was the Genesis of his life and ministry. The beginning of his traveling, calling, teaching, and healing… Baptism for us is the Genesis of our Christian life and our ministry as followers of Jesus Christ. Is an initiation into the Christian faith… It is that initial sacrament through which God adopts us as Children of God… it initiates us and makes us full members and allows us to be fully included into 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 promises to help us live into our Baptism… In a few minutes, we will once again stand with Annie as she takes her baptismal vows and re-new our own vows… those promises 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 of God those favored by God and we are given the task of doing God’s work in the world.

We know most assuredly that Jesus Christ is God… And that 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.

Baptism clothes us with God’s grace and surrounds us with God’s light and protection. It gives us a “new life” in Christ… 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.