The Fourth Sunday of Easter (Good Shepherd Sunday); April 29, 2012

Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18 Preached by Rev. Jsaon M. Haddox Happy Good Shepherd Sunday to you all! The fourth Sunday in Easter season is always dedicated to the theme of The Good Shepherd, and so we wish a blessed festival to our neighbors up Walton Way, and all the other churches that keep this day as their feast of title. For many of us, Psalm 23 is one of the first portions of scripture we ever learned. How many representations in painting and sculpture and other art forms have we seen, of the Good Shepherd? There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of songs paraphrasing or referencing the 23rd Psalm. At one time I could count on congregations (even non-liturgical ones) at funerals being able to say it from memory. My first thought upon reading the lessons for today: Is it even possible to preach a new word on this psalm? I began to reread it… The image of the shepherd in ancient Israel was an ambiguous one. The shepherds of Israel were seen as scruffy, scrappy, marginal folk. They were not particularly well-regarded by the better classes of society; the position of shepherd was not especially prestigious. On the other hand, little David, the greatest king Israel ever had, had been hustled in from tending the sheep to be anointed as God’s chosen. And it is to David that we attribute many of the Psalms. If Psalm 23 isn’t the psalm of a shepherd king, I can’t think what would be. From God’s providence in the wilderness, to protection in the darkness and danger, to a celebration with anointing and feasting in the house of the Lord…it’s all there! When Jesus says of himself this morning, “I am the good shepherd…” he is using and embellishing that well-known image from the Psalm. This statement of Jesus, and where it occurs in the story, is not nearly as benign as it sounds at first hearing. The 10th chapter of John bridges two critical stories: first, the story of the man born blind whose sight Jesus restored, and secondly the raising of Lazarus from the dead. The stakes are as high as they can be; Jesus and his followers are on one side of the line in the sand and “the Jews” are on the other. We hear pointed criticism about the hired hand who does not own the sheep (the Greek reads something more like “…whose own the sheep are not,” suggesting not merely the ownership of the sheep as objects, but that there is an intimacy between the shepherd and the sheep.) In contrast to the hired hand is the image of the shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand leaves everyone and everything else, hightailing it for the nearest tree, and we hear again: “I am the shepherd, the good one…I know my own, and they know me. I lay down my life for them. There are others who do not belong to this fold, I must bring them also and they too will listen to me. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. There are others, Jesus says, who are not right here in front of you at the moment but who are also mine as well. They matter just as much as you do. He tells his hearers—then and now—that the circle of God’s love is much larger than anything we can see or even imagine. I lay down my life, Jesus says, and I take it up again. No one takes it from me; I lay it down of my own accord, and I take it up again. We cannot hear this language from Jesus of “laying down his life” and “taking it up again” without our ears perking up. Oh there he goes again—talking about the resurrection! “I have received this command (Greek: entolen, instruction, order, decree) from my Father.” The Father language immediately gets him in trouble again, here and a few verses later. “You are blaspheming…you are making yourself God.” (10:33) At that moment Jesus addresses his critics to say “Do you not believe me? Then believe the works that I do…I do these things because the Father is in me and I am in the Father.” A few chapters later, he tells the disciples the same thing, in the Upper Room. Remember that in John’s gospel, the Last Supper is not an ordinary meal with the eating of bread and the drinking of wine. Instead Jesus models for the disciples the work of washing feet, and serving and caring for one another in some remarkably intimate, vulnerable ways. After which, Jesus repeats himself to the disciples: “Even after I’ve been with you all this time, if you still don’t believe me, believe the works themselves…those who believe in me will do all this and more!” (14:12) And they do. Jesus is the shepherd, the good one…who is in intimate relationship with those he has called to himself; who does cause them to graze in green pastures and drink from clear still waters; but who also sets a table of delicious food and drink for them. (Sheep do not eat from tables. They would be more likely to eat the tablecloth itself.) He pours oil on their heads to anoint them as his own; and prepares them to do the works he has done, not to be sheep, but to be good shepherds as well. We live in a time when the words and outward trappings of faith are often—not always, but often—used to divide, and belittle, and condemn. The gospel of Christ has sometimes—not always, but sometimes—been taken hostage by those who would use it to protect their own agendas and feather their own nests, who seem to have no knowledge or desire of knowledge of what that Gospel might actually mean. The first letter of John seems to speak to a similar time and situation. False teachers were claiming that perhaps Jesus didn’t really become human, but just appeared that way (the word for that particular heresy is Docetism, from the Greek word dokeo, meaning “to seem or appear”)—and the letter is written to insist on the essential reality of the Incarnation. That YES, Jesus was God and human, both at once; and YES he died and was raised from the dead; and YES that means that what happens here in our lives is of extraordinary importance to God. It will not do to wait around for the life of the world to come; the life of God’s abiding presence and transformation begins now. Has already begun, in fact. The image of Christ laying down his life “for us” and the consequent call to lay down our lives for one another echoes the gospel. It is a call to social action—“How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and refuses to help a brother or sister in need?” Ask that question of the authorities and powers in Washington or Atlanta or downtown Augusta; ask that question of ourselves, who do have more than enough to eat, and so many clothes and shoes in our closets that they are overflowing… And yet it is more than that—Let us love in truth and action, as well as in word and speech. We are called to act in deeds of love and mercy, yes; we are also called to speak, to tell of the love of God we ourselves have seen and known. As Episcopalians we are terrified of this—WHY? I know we don’t want to be rude or pushy or preachy, but really…if someone asked you “Why are you a Christian?” what would you say? The famous preacher and bishop Philips Brooks was asked that very question. He thought for a moment and said “I think am a Christian because of my aunt, who lives in Teaneck, New Jersey.” She had convinced him, by word and example, that being a Christian was something worthy and good. For the most part, Christian faith is caught, not taught. It is infectious, spread by personal contact through lives filled with the light of Christ, doing the deeds of Christ, speaking the good news of Christ. All of the above. As the old hymn lyric has it: “Let those refuse to sing who never knew our God/but children of the heavenly King may speak their joys abroad.” All of these are ways in which we show who we are, and whose we are already--“God abides in us, right now, right here, through the Holy Spirit.” We live into this reality as we trust in Jesus to be who he says he is for us, and as we live and speak and act in love toward each other. We are called, today and every day, to do the deeds of the Good Shepherd. We are called, for the sake of those around us, to let go of those things we think we MUST have in order to manage or control our lives—knowing that in Christ’s resurrection, all our own losses and deaths and burials are also transformed and raised to new life in Christ Jesus, our good shepherd. Alleluia! Christ is risen! Amen.

Christmas Day, Year B, 2011

Who is being born here? The child of an everyday couple from Nazareth... or God, come to live the life of a human being on earth? And if it's God, what did it feel like, putting on our flesh? Writer and journalist Martin Wroe asks some of the questions that go to the heart of Christmas.
________________________________________

what colour are you God
what's your body like
any disabilities, distinguishing characteristics
would we spot you in a crowd
would we stare at you for some deformity
how many senses have you got
five, six, eighteen, ninety four
and what's your sense of touch like
is your handshake firm as a vice or slippery as an eel
what do you smell of
anything in particular - the universe, for example
planets, oceans, space, skies
do you smell of petrol like everything else
we believe your Spirit is always willing
but is your flesh ever weak
and if the Word was made flesh
are you flesh of our flesh
bone of our bones
is that you there, meek and mild
all meanly wrapped in swaddling clothes
is that you Baby J Word of the Father
now in flesh appearing
is that you screaming as you arrived
like the rest of us
screaming at the shock of the new
the shock of the cold and the old and the broken
is that you Baby J
slipping clumsily out from between a Virgin's legs
covered in blood and gunge and straw
when moments before you had been covered in glory
is that you tied to the mother of God by a fleshy cord
sucking on a woman's breast for your very life
what a come down
still at least you had an audience
cows was it, a goat or two
did they look on in awe and wonder
were the cattle lowing a bit
or were they a right nuisance
but little Lord Jesus no crying he makes
well, that's not true is it
the thing about flesh is it makes you cry
for better or worse, you've got to cry
who is he in yonder stall
at whose feet the shepherd's fall
did they fall ? did they recognise you up close ?
did they know that was you, God, in the flesh
or were they just intrigued by the heavenly host
and the funny star
and did the flesh inconvenience and annoy
and anger you like it does the
rest of us, your fleshy creatures
did your nose run green
your skin flake or bruise red
did you itch
your breath catch from asthma
in that smelly barn
your chest tighten in fear
and later on what did you do about your desires
you know, the fleshly ones
and, just out of interest, where on earth
did you go for your private movements
and are there miraculously fertile plants there today
trees with roots for miles and branches into the heavens
never barren, endlessly ripe...
or are those places where the divine squatted in squalor
feeling quite a lot lower than the angels
- wiping his bum with leaves -
are they like every other place, where folks did their business
with no particular supernatural horticultural memento
and when you were tired, when it all was going wrong
when your friends misunderstood, lost interest, wandered off
did you think
what did I get into this body business for
swapping omnipresence for being somewhere in particular
did you feel trapped in that body
or didn't you know what it had been like before you became body
when you were in-carnate
could you know what it was like out-carnate
flesh can't be in more than one place at a time
flesh is limited
flesh is awkward
you must have wondered at the restrictions of the corporeal
did you ever notice , could you tell the difference?
and did the flesh also exhilarate you, excite you
did you run and laugh and kiss
did you sweat and wrestle and argue
and if you longed to be more...were you grateful to have lived
on earth
a human
in flesh
to have become one of us
he was little, weak and helpless
tears and smiles like us he knew
and he feeleth for our sadness
and he shareth in our gladness
how's the old body now
do you wear a halo
or a crown
is it of gold
or is it of thorns
are there marks on your palms
blood on the side of your shirt still ?
Jesus of the body, of the flesh, Jesus of the Spirit
welcome to the body God
thank you for being it
putting flesh on the bones of our skeletal lives
fleshing out the way life might be lived
thank you Spirit of Jesus for becoming body among us
thank you that veiled in flesh the Godhead we see
flesh is all we have
but, now you now - as well as any of us -
flesh is not all we are
________________________________________

Martin Wroe is a freelance writer, mainly working for Sunday newspapers in the UK. He is an organiser of the Greenbelt Arts Festival. Something similar to the above is published in When You Haven't Got a Prayer (Lion, 1997), a collection of reflective spiritual writings. In another age he would have liked to have been a heretic but not burnt.
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Christmas Eve, Year B, 2011, 7:00PM

Luke 2:1-20
Preached by Rev. Jason Haddox

One of the great yearly events of my childhood in Texas was the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. In my day, the entire Astrodome complex would be given over to the occasion—the rodeo events and the concert were in the stadium itself, much of the parking lot was devoted to carnival rides and games, and the attendant sales of crafts and food and overpriced trinkets were located in the display halls around the campus.

It was a revered annual event in the Houston area. On opening day, all the schools in the region would host “Go Texan Day” and the kids would be encouraged to come to school in boots and jeans and coyboy hats. (For some of us, this was not much of a change from every other day, but it was a quasi-religious observance nonetheless.)

Everyone who could go to the festival, did. You’d drive onto the lot and park in outer Slobovia, then walk the rest of the way into the fairgrounds. Every age, and color of skin, and largeness of hair (this was Texas after all) could be found there…from “who’s who” to “Who is THAT?”

As you entered the carnival area, the noise got louder, and the press of people around you got tighter. The lights on the rides and booths were closer and bigger and more overwhelming. And then, gradually at first and then suddenly in a full-frontal assault, you would SMELL it. The smell of people, and carnival food, and above all the animals.

This was the Livestock Show and Rodeo, after all. The animals were officially the point of the whole thing. The barns and pens occupied the central hall of the complex, and you knew well before you got there that you were going in the right direction. As clean and well-scrubbed and carefully groomed as both beasts and buildings were, the smell was still the smell of a barnyard. Feed and sweat and animal waste, all at once. You couldn’t NOT smell it; I carried the memory of it in my nostrils for days afterward.

I’m waiting for someone to write a Christmas carol about the smell of the stable in Bethlehem. I promise you, it did not smell like lilies and roses. It did not smell like incense. It did not smell like gingerbread and roast turkey and dressing and pine boughs in a wreath on the door. It did not smell like “Christmas.”

It smelled like a barn. It smelled like sweat and animals and excrement, in the middle of a carnival festival gathering with too many people and not enough room, and no one much paying attention at all. And that is where it happened. Right there, in the middle of the mess and chaos.

Into the sweat and excrement and crowdedness of a carnival, with only outsiders and animals to witness, God came to us. Into the crowds and smells and noise, God came to us. Into our lives of messiness and chaos, in our own flesh and blood and bone, God came to us.

In Jesus, born of Mary this night in Bethlehem, God comes to us, as us, with us. In the mess, in the chaos, in the stuff of our lives that is not at all “Silent night, holy night”, that does not smell or feel or look at all like Christmas, God comes and meets us and loves us there, right there in the midst of it all.

We have a God who knows us inside and out. For in creating us in God’s own image and likeness, God has known us from the beginning—the beginning of time and our own beginnings, each one of us. In coming to us, as one of us, God experienced the fullness of human reality—birth, finitude, sorrow and grief, joy and celebration, and even death. It is no accident that in our Nativity window here at St. Augustine’s, the image of the manger cradle is symbolized by a cross. Both cradle and cross are part of the story—we cannot have one without the other.

Christ comes as someone we can know and see, and yet we know and see only in part. Part of himself remains a mystery—unseen, concealed and yet thorougly completely present and included. So our lives are mystery—somewhat seen and known and understood, but seen and known and understood only in part, even to ourselves.

But in that hiddenness and mystery; in the chaos and messiness; in the smell and sweat and struggle, God comes. Even now, even tonight, in the places where only animals and outsiders might even be around to notice: God comes to us. Visits us. Loves us, as one of us.

Merry Christmas, friends.
Amen.

Last Sunday of Advent, December 18, 2011, Year B

Luke 1:26-38
Preached by Rev. Jason Haddox


One of my favorite movies around this time of the year is the 1947 film “The Bishop’s Wife” starring Cary Grant. Grant portrays an angel named Dudley, who comes in answer to a prayer by the Bishop, played by David Niven. Throughout the film, Dudley has moments where he scares the daylights out of people by suddenly appearing behind them, and as they turn they jump in surprise. And his response is always the same: “It’s all right, don’t be afraid.”

“Do not be afraid.” Or in the old translations, “Fear not.” This commandment (for commandment it is) appears more frequently than any other in the Bible. I suppose the people of God needed to hear it more frequently than anything else. For it is fear—not doubt—that is the enemy and antithesis of faith. Fear can stop us in our tracks faster than any other adversity or challenge, it can (and does) paralyze and destroy peoples and communities and nations. And so, over and over through the scriptures, and especially when the angels come to call, we hear the words: Fear not: Do not be afraid. Fear Naught: Do not be afraid of anything. For God is with you.

“How can this be?” Mary asks Gabriel. She wasn’t expecting anything of the kind. It was, as far as she could tell, an ordinary day like any other. Nothing special or unusual marked it as being the day when her life would change for ever.

And yet it did change. For Mary of Nazareth, and for all of us gathered here this morning, half a world and two thousand years away, life changed that day. Mary’s word of “Yes” is the Yes that transforms the universe and everything in it.

She had no warning, no time to prepare a response, no time to really even think about the consequences that would follow. And the truth is, she could have said “No, thank you.” That’s one of the marvelous things in this story. In spite of the dangers she knew she faced (social ostracism, the possible breaking of her engagement to Joseph, the physical dangers of childbirth itself) and the dangers and risks she could not even imagine at the time, she said yes.

“Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me as you have said.”

It is no accident, I think, that in our stained glass windows here at St. Augustine’s, the prophet window with Isaiah encountering an angelic messenger and commissioning is immediately adjacent to the Nativity Window, wherein Mary also encounters an angle and is commissioned to tell what she has heard and seen. “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my savior…”

In our keeping of Long Advent here at St. A’s this year, we’ve had seven weeks—almost twice as much time as everyone else!—to think about, and pray about, and study and ponder over what it is we are getting ready FOR, which is just beyond our sight, just over the horizon. It’s not just about the baby in the manger; it’s definitely not about the overconsumption that is driving us to be mauled at the mall.

Rather, it’s about God coming to us. Now. Today, and tomorrow, and all the time. On the utterly ordinary, commonplace days when we least expect, when we are not nearly as ready as we think we ought to be or might be if we had had more notice.

And yet, God comes. Expected or unexpected, Ready or not, God comes.

So ready or not, may our answer be the words of Mary: ”Here I am—as you will.”

Amen.

Advent 6, Year B, 11 December 2011,

Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11; Psalm 126; 1 Thessalonians 5:16-24; John 1:6-,19-28
Preached by Rev. Lou Scales

When Linda and I first came to the Augusta area about 11 ½ years ago, we had the delightful experience of meeting new people, learning new places and settling in to the community. It was, and, to this day, continues to be, fun. One of the things that has been the most fun is seeing how people who have lived in one location for some time greet those who are new, to the community and to the area. After experiencing this phenomenon first hand for several weeks, we learned to our delight, that there was even a formula for determining some things about the people who greet you and try to make you feel at home. As you know, according to the telling, and, quite honestly, according to our experience, the formula, first annunciated by Chablis in Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, goes something like this:

If they ask you what your profession is, they’re from Atlanta.
If they ask you where you go to church, they’re from Macon.
If they ask you who your great-great grandfather and great-great grandmother were, they’re from Augusta.
If they ask you what you want to drink, they’re from Savannah.
When you’re new in the area, or doing something new in the area, people want to know something about you. Now, in most cases, there is any number of good-natured ways people use to get acquainted, to get to know you.
Now the contrast to this is probably best described using the lyrics of an old black gospel song from this part of the country, most often sung to the driving beat of a blues guitar:
There's a man going around taking names.
There's a man going around taking names.
He took my father's name, And he left my heart in pain.
There's a man going around taking names.
There's a man going around taking names.
He took my mother's name, And he left my heart in pain.
There's a man going around taking names.
There's a man going around taking names.
He took my sister's name, And he left my heart in pain.
There's a man going around taking names.
In the song, the "man going around taking names" is a metaphor, of course, for everything that menaces human relationships and life -- most prominently, the slave trader and, finally, death itself. It is a fascinating image for potential evil, this idea of "taking names." Even school children can identify with it. "Now, children," warns the teacher. "I'm going to the office for a few minutes, and I'm appointing Frances to be the monitor. Don't misbehave or she will write down your name, and you'll have to deal with me when I get back." ... There's somebody around here taking names.
When John the Baptist was at work in Bethany, beyond the Jordan River, a delegation of priests and Levites, religious officials of the highest order, sent by their ecclesiastical superiors, showed up from Jerusalem. They were not there on a package tour of the Holy Land, and this was anything but a pastoral visit; they were there taking names. You could tell that from the very first words to come from their mouths. "Who are you?" they said. No small talk. No exchange of quaint pleasantries. No pictures of the grandchildren passed around. Just, "Who are you?" ... There are some people going around taking names.
John’s answers obviously did not please them, primarily because John told the priests and Levites who he wasn’t. He wasn’t the Messiah, he wasn’t Elijah, and he wasn’t the prophet. And his only job was to point to the one who would come after him. John was a witness. His own description was a quote from the prophet Isaiah, “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord.’”
Has it occurred to you that John’s description of himself and his mission is a description that could well fit for you and me? Our Baptismal covenant asks if we will proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ. We are Christ’s heralds, Christ’s witnesses, by baptism, nourished in that task by the body and blood of our Lord. We are called daily to declare his coming, to declare his love and mercy extended to all. John’s mission has become our mission – to declare the coming of the Lord, to declare the love of Christ in all we do, in all we become.
Andrew Greeley tells this story:
Once upon a time there was a politician who was running in a very close election against a very clever campaigner. He had a good message and an exciting platform, but he was not well known. Thus he had to make a lot of speeches around the district, go to many meetings, attend tea parties, and receptions, and cocktail parties, and church gatherings, and touch every possible base in the district. It was still an uphill battle. A good friend of his was his advance man, the fellow who made the arrangements for all the events and speeches and logistics for the campaign. He was not a very good advance man; rather he was unreliable and pompous and, worst of all, disorganized. The other people in the campaign hated him, but the candidate stuck with his friend. As the election drew near the polls showed the candidate losing ground. The advance man knew they were going to lose, so he gave up altogether. The campaign self-destructed in the last week. Yet the candidate lost by only one half of one percent of the votes. All the media people said that if the campaign had been better organized, the voters would have got to know the candidate better and he would have won in a walk. We’re supposed to be advance persons for Jesus. Sometimes you wonder why he doesn’t fire us.
In this special season for the preparation we make to welcome our Lord, in the flesh, to dwell with us, it’s important to reflect on how it is we make our faith and our joy known about the One who comes. And when someone comes around taking names, I hope you will give your name loud and clear, telling the world, not only who you are, but WHOSE you are…



1. "There's a Man Going Around Taking Names," from Religious Music: Solo and Performance (Album number in The Library of Congress "Folk Music in America" series, 1978). Words in the public domain.


2. Andrew Greeley, Andrew Greeley.com, 1996.