First Blessings

ADOTS Morning Prayer: Friday, 18 December 2020

O radix Jesse

O Root of Jesse,

which standest for an ensign of the people,

at whom kings shall shut their mouths,

to whom the Gentiles shall seek:

Come and deliver us,

and tarry not (The New English Hymnal, The Canterbury Press Norwich, 2002).

This is one of the O Antiphons that precedes and follows the Magnificat at Evening Prayer from 16 December to 23 December; it is the antiphon for this day.  You can find a complete list of the O Antiphons on page 712 in the BCP 2019.  

From at least the eighth century onward the faithful have chanted these antiphons — prophetic titles for Jesus — as a musical introduction to and summary of the Song of Mary, or, to mix metaphors, as a lens through which to read and understand the Magnificat as the fulfillment of Old Testament prophesies and as a preview of the coming kingdom.  These antiphons have the Advent flavor of past, present, and future:  already, not yet, coming in fullness.

Today’s antiphon — O radix Jesse, O root of Jesse — draws our attention to that great Advent prophet Isaiah son of Amoz, especially to chapter eleven of his written prophecy.

The chapter begins with a promise:

Isaiah 11:1 (ESV): 11 There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, 

and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. 

Because we are wont to read all Scripture through the lens of Christ, and because Jesus was, in human lineage, a son of David, son of Jesse, we might tend to identify this shoot from the stump of Jesse, this branch from his roots that shall bear fruit, as Jesus of Nazareth.  And that is, perhaps, the case.  But, I find that I’m drawn to Jerome’s interpretation instead:

But we understand the branch from the root of Jesse to be the holy Virgin Mary, who had no shoot connatural to herself. About her we read above: “Behold, a virgin will conceive and bear a son.” And the flower is the Lord our Savior, who said in the Song of Songs, “I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valleys” (Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah).

The Blessed Virgin Mary, the shoot, the branch, and Jesus the fruit of that branch:  it is a lovely image binding together Old and New Testaments with Mary being the bridge between the two and Jesus being the fulfillment of all that came before.

But, there is darkness in this image, too.  The branch comes not from the trunk of a great tree as we might expect, but from the stump, from the roots.  Jesse and his house, David and his dynasty have been brought low, the great tree felled until all that remains is a stump.  As Isaiah speaks these words, Ephraim, the ten northern tribes have fallen to Assyria and are no more.  The destruction of Judah and Jerusalem lies in the future, but is seen even now prophetically as a certainty.  A stump is all that remains:  a stump and a promise.

The promise is of restoration, not just of Ephraim and Judah — that is far to small a thing! — but a restoration of all creation:  a Kingdom of Righteousness to which all men, all nations, shall come, and a Righteous King and Judge, before whom all other kings will bow.

Isaiah 11:2–5 (ESV): 2  And the Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, 

the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, 

the Spirit of counsel and might, 

the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. 

 3  And his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. 

  He shall not judge by what his eyes see, 

or decide disputes by what his ears hear, 

 4  but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, 

and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; 

  and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, 

and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. 

 5  Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, 

and faithfulness the belt of his loins. 

Can’t you just see Jesus here?  The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, Isaiah says, and Matthew writes:

Matthew 3:16–17 (ESV): 16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” 

With righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth, Isaiah says, and Jesus says:

3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

5 Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth (Matthew 5:3, 5, ESV).

This is the coming Righteous King and Judge.  And his kingdom?  Creation restored to newness of life, a return to the Garden with Jerusalem at its center:

Isaiah 11:6–9 (ESV): 6  The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 

and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, 

  and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together; 

and a little child shall lead them. 

 7  The cow and the bear shall graze; 

their young shall lie down together; 

and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. 

 8  The nursing child shall play over the hole of the cobra, 

and the weaned child shall put his hand on the adder’s den. 

 9  They shall not hurt or destroy 

in all my holy mountain; 

  for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord 

as the waters cover the sea. 

Wolf and lamb, leopard and goat, calf and lion — all the ancient enmities gone, all fear gone, all danger gone, Isaiah sees.  And who reigns as King over this renewed creation?  

6 …a little child shall lead them (Isaiah 11:6).

And St. Luke responds:

Luke 2:8–14 (ESV): 8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying, 

 14  “Glory to God in the highest, 

and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!” 

Son of David, Savior, Christ the Lord — a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.  Glory to God in the highest, is right.  It is about all there is to say.  From the moment of this baby’s birth, the earth was indeed full of the knowledge of the LORD as the waters cover the sea, for in this child, the whole fullness of God dwells bodily (cf Col 2:9).  He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation (Col 1:15).

Isaiah continues, and gives shape to the O Antiphon, O root of Jesse:

Isaiah 11:10 (ESV): 10 In that day the root of Jesse, who shall stand as a signal for the peoples—of him shall the nations inquire, and his resting place shall be glorious. 

And Matthew picks up the story:

Matthew 2:1–2 (ESV): 1 Now after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king, behold, wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

The nations, in the person of these Gentile magi, have come to inquire after the king.  And when they find him, they make glorious his resting place with their gifts and their worship:

Matthew 2:9–11 (ESV):  10 When they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. 11 And going into the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and they fell down and worshiped him. Then, opening their treasures, they offered him gifts, gold and frankincense and myrrh.

This is the first fruits of the great in-gathering when all kings and all people of all nations see the signal raised, the banner of the great King, and all God’s people come streaming to the new Jerusalem as Isaiah foresees:

Isaiah 11:11–12 (ESV): 11 In that day the Lord will extend his hand yet a second time to recover the remnant that remains of his people, from Assyria, from Egypt, from Pathros, from Cush, from Elam, from Shinar, from Hamath, and from the coastlands of the sea. 

 12  He will raise a signal for the nations 

and will assemble the banished of Israel, 

  and gather the dispersed of Judah 

from the four corners of the earth. 

And here, Isaiah’s vision fails him a bit.  As grand as it is — the return of all Israel’s exiles — it is not grand enough.  That vision awaits St. John on Patmos:

Revelation 7:9–10 (ESV): 9 After this I looked, and behold, a great multitude that no one could number, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands, 10 and crying out with a loud voice, “Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

These are the faithful martyrs of the nations standing under the signal, under the ensign of Christ the Lamb, the king of all creation.

And so, with this great vision filling our view, with this drama told by Isaiah, Matthew, Luke, Paul, John and so many others ringing in our ears, we sing this day the great O Antiphon, O radix Jesse:

O Root of Jesse,

which standest for an ensign of the people,

at whom kings shall shut their mouths,

to whom the Gentiles shall seek:

Come and deliver us,

and tarry not.

Amen.

O Lord, open my lips,

     and my mouth shall proclaim your praise.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Though it has been eclipsed recently in the public consciousness by news of the pandemic and the election, earlier this year our country was struggling mightily to come to grips with the ambiguous character and legacy of our history, of our founding fathers and of generations of civic leaders who followed them:  Christopher Columbus, “discoverer” of a new land which was not new at all, but which lay open for conquest at the cost of the indigenous peoples;  George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, champions and defenders of freedom, who yet owned slaves;  Andrew Jackson, President of the common man, who yet signed the Indian Removal Act which led to the deaths or relocations of unnumbered native Americans.  The list could go on, and does — sometimes reasonably, sometimes as an exercise in over-reaction and self-flagellation.  Statues are toppled and monuments are defaced and peoples are divided.  It is a struggle.

When I was a child, things were much simpler:  not better, just simpler.  Heroes were heroes — period.  In fourteen hundred ninety-two, Columbus sailed the ocean blue to give us this great new land; a courageous and noble explorer he was.  George Washington was the founder of our nation and its first president, an honorable man worthy of respect and admiration.  Thomas Jefferson was the primary author of the Declaration of Independence, the founder of the University of Virginia, a true polymath, a man deserving of honor.  These were the stories from the history texts — and the common imagination — of my youth.  They were — and even this expression is fraught now — they were whitewashed, sanitized of their inherent moral ambiguity and conflict.  I do not stand in judgment of any of these men, though critique of the educational historians who distorted their stories is perhaps appropriate.  We are, all of us, mixed bags of good and evil, virtue and vice.  Why should we expect our great historical figures to be different?

Unlike the history books of my childhood, the Bible — particularly the historical narratives of the Pentateuch, Joshua, Judges, 1 and 2 Samuel, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chronicles — the Bible presents the leaders of Israel warts and all.  The biblical authors weigh these men in the balances of covenant faithfulness, and some come up wanting in spite of their otherwise positive contributions.  Saul beat back the Philistines and began to establish Israel as a sovereign nation, yet he was a disappointment, a failed, self-absorbed king; God repented that he had ever made Saul king and ripped the kingdom from his grasp.  Solomon started well, but didn’t run the race faithfully to the end; he became old and fat and complacent and was lured away from single-hearted devotion to embrace foreign wives and their idols.  His son, Rehoboam, was just an immature jerk from the start, and he alienated — lost — ten of the twelve tribes:  civil war in the time of the fourth king of Israel.  The united monarchy lasted no more than one hundred twenty years.  Jeroboam, Rehoboam’s rival, was given control of those ten northern tribes; he was the worst of the lot, with no redeeming graces.  He immediately drew Samaria into apostasy and things went downhill from there.  These are the stories of Israel’s “founding fathers” as the Bible presents them, without whitewash.

If you were paying close attention, you probably noticed that I skipped David in this lineage of Israel’s kings.  Well, how does he stack up?  David is the archetypal king of Israel, the exemplar against which all other kings are measured.  Put David on one pan of the balance scale and any other king of Israel or Judah on the other, and the scale comes crashing down in David’s favor.  And yet:  and yet if we refuse to whitewash the record, we must also note that David had his failures, and that they were not minor.  He was a headstrong and sometimes violent man whose pride and temper got away with him; if not for the intervention of Abigail, for instance, David would have murdered Nabal and all Nabal’s men just for boorishness — not really a capital offense.  Then there is the whole sordid affair with Bathsheba and her husband Uriah, one of the truly good men in all scripture.  And what did it get him?  Betrayal by his king and death by treachery, all to hide David’s adultery with Bathsheba.  And the end of David’s life was not without blemish.  Against his counselors’ advice, against God’s instruction, he numbered his troops, somehow forgetting that God was his refuge and strength.  Even on his death bed, David gave his heir and king apparent a hit list, acting more like a Mafia don than a righteous king of Israel.  That is David — the man after God’s own heart — warts and all; and it is all in the biblical record.  

But, it’s not here in our reading this morning, not in Sirach 47, which reads as a paean of praise to David:  chosen of God, faithful and brave shepherd, giant killer, mighty man of war, sweet psalmist of Israel, worshipper extraordinaire, head of an everlasting dynasty.  What about the reality of David’s sin?  Where is that?  There is one brief mention of it:  just one, but it’s all and everything we need to know.

11 The Lord took away his sin (Sirach 47:11a).

The truest telling of David’s life lies not in recounting David’s sin, but in extolling the Lord’s forgiveness.  We see in David something we never saw in Saul or Solomon or Jeroboam or Rehoboam, and it made all the difference:

1 Have mercy upon me, O God, in your great goodness;*

according to the multitude of your mercies wipe away my offences.

2 Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness*

and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I acknowledge my faults,*

and my sin is ever before me.

4 Against you only have I sinned, and done this evil in your sight,*

so that you are justified in your sentence, and blameless in your judgment.

9 Turn your face from my sins,*

and blot out all my misdeeds.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,*

and renew a right spirit within me.

11 Cast me not away from your presence,*

and take not your holy Spirit from me.

12 O give me the comfort of your help again,*

and sustain me with your willing Spirit (Ps 51, selected verses, BCP 2019).

David knew the destructive power of sin.  He was not spared its consequences; it ripped his family and the kingdom apart.  But David also knew the redemptive power of repentance:  of contrition (godly sorrow), confession, amendment of life, all of which we see in this outpouring of his heart to God in Psalm 51.  Most importantly, David knew the character of God:

17 The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit;

a broken and contrite heart, O God, you shall not despise (Ps 51).

So it is that God himself “whitewashed” David’s story:

7 You shall purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

you shall wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow (Ps 51).

It is disingenuous for historians to whitewash the lives of their subjects.  It is disastrous for sinners to whitewash their own lives.  But it is the very essence of the Gospel for God to whitewash the life of a sinner who falls before him with a troubled spirit, with a broken and contrite heart.  Sirach’s telling of David’s story is a foreshadowing of the Gospel.

There is an old hymn from my childhood — and by it you will know immediately that I’m no cradle Anglican — an old hymn that sings of this holy whitewashing:

For nothing good have I

Whereby thy grace to claim;

I’ll wash my garments white

In the blood of Calv’ry’s Lamb.

Jesus paid it all,

All to him I owe;

Sin had left a crimson stain,

He wash’d it white as snow (Jesus Paid It All, E. M. Hall and J. T. Grape).

That was as true for David as it is for you and me.  All the good that he had done – and he had done much good — gave him no claim on God’s grace.  All the evil that he had done — and he had done great evil — had left a crimson stain, a bloody stain on his life.  But, he embraced the Gospel insofar as he knew it:  Have mercy upon me, O God, in your great goodness; according to the multitude of your mercies, wipe away my offences.  And though David did not know it, though he could not know it, he was calling out for mercy to his descendant — the son of David, the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord.  All forgiveness is from Jesus Christ, from his sacrificial death; there simply is no forgiveness apart from him.  David was forgiven through Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God slain from the foundations of the world.  That is why it is possible to recognize the Gospel in the Old Testament — even in the Apocrypha when it appears.  Sirach’s record of Israel’s kings is the Gospel hiding in plain sight, if we have eyes to see; hence, the Collect for the Second Sunday in Advent:

Blessed Lord, who caused all Holy Scripture to be written for our learning:  Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that by patience and the comfort of your holy Word we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

Advent is a penitential season, a time for examen, a time for confession, a time for us — as David did — to seek the mercy of the Lord, and not mercy only, but amendment of life.  May it be said about us, as Sirach says about David:  The Lord took away his sin.  Amen.                                                          

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

One of the symptoms of Covid-19 — for some, at least — is loss of the senses of taste and smell.  One of the symptoms of being caught up in this age of plague — for most everyone, including myself — is loss of the sense of time.  I wake in the morning with no awareness of which day of the week it is, much less which day of the month.  I have to look at my watch or at a calendar to orient myself in time.  I’m not certain why this “symptom” is so widespread.  Perhaps it is the near universal disruption of normal routines.  Perhaps it is that every newscast, every newspaper has had essentially the same news day after day for nine months, like a pregnancy that never develops and never ends.  What we need is a “birth,” an occasion to mark time, to let us know when, in the scheme of things, we are.

Frankly, that’s one reason I’m so glad to see Advent come, that and the simple fact that our purple paraments and vestments are so lovely, much more attractive than the green ones which have adorned the first months of worship in time of pandemic.  Yes, it’s time for a change of color and story and spirit.  It is time, and past time, to re-orient ourselves in the liturgical seasons, to reclaim a sense of time.  Goodbye ordinary time — or whatever your parish calls it — and hello Advent.

But, honestly speaking, Advent is a confusing season for such temporal re-orientation.  Perhaps confusing isn’t quite the right word; it’s more complex than confusing, because Advent orients us in three different times simultaneously.  It calls us to stand in the Present and look to the Past — the incarnation of Jesus of Nazareth — while also looking to the Future when Jesus the Christ, Jesus the Righteous, will come again to judge the living and the dead.  Past, present, and future collide in Advent.  Or, perhaps we can say that past, present, and future are held in tension in Advent.  And we are called to live in that tension.

The collect of the day, the Collect for the First Sunday in Advent and the week following, captures this tension of Advents past, present, and future perfectly:

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal; through him who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

You see it, right, the trinity of times?

Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life:  PRESENT MOMENT

…in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility:  PAST (INCARNATION)

…that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead:  FUTURE (JUDGMENT)

Advent calls us to live in this moment with an eye toward both the past and the future:  with grateful hearts for the past incarnation of our Lord, and with watchful spirits for his future return as judge.  Advent calls us, in this moment, because of both past and future, to “cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light.”  Advent calls us to live in the reality of the incarnation as we move toward the promised appearance of the Judge, so that, in that day, we may rise to the life immortal.

And this brings us to the question famously posed by Francis Schaefer:  How then should we live — in Advent, certainly, but also in every season?

Sirach 21:1–2 (RSVCE): 1 Have you sinned, my son? Do so no more, 
but pray about your former sins.
2 Flee from sin as from a snake;
for if you approach sin, it will bite you.
It’s teeth are lion’s teeth,
and destroys the souls of men.

So answers Jesus, the Son of Sirach, in our first reading.  His wisdom is a call to penance.  To live in Advent is to embrace penance, hence the special emphasis in some parishes on this sacrament in this season.  Penance includes examen, an introspection that searches the deep and often hidden places of our hearts for traces of sin.  This is not self-introspection only; rather, it is the searching light of God’s Spirit:

23 Search me, O God, and know my heart;*

try me and examine my thoughts.

24 Look well if there be any way of wickedness in me,*

and lead me in the way everlasting (Ps 139: 23-24, BCP 2019).

Who dares issue such an invitation, knowing full well that:

the heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil (St. Macarius).

It is only in light of the incarnation that we dare issue such an invitation; for, in the incarnation Jesus assumed our humanity — for love of us — and knows full well our human weakness:

Hebrews 4:14–16 (ESV): 14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. 16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. 

It is only with confidence in the incarnation that we may issue the invitation:  Search me, O God, and know my heart.

But penance is about more than just introspection; it includes repentance and confession, as well.  Pray about your former sins, Sirach instructs us.  And what would such prayer be if not repentance and confession?  Confess your sins to God — and perhaps to a faithful priest — with “humble and obedient hearts that we may obtain forgiveness by his infinite goodness and mercy” (BCP 2019, pp. 11-12), knowing this:

1 John 1:8–9 (ESV): 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 

And this, too, depends on the incarnation, on the death of Jesus in the flesh:

1 Peter 3:18 (ESV): 18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.

Jesus died for us in the flesh.  And what does incarnation mean but in the flesh?  Our forgiveness depends fully on the incarnation of Jesus.

Introspection, repentance, confession:  there is more yet.  Penance — true penance — requires amendment of life, a commitment to change, God being our helper.  Again from Sirach:

Sirach 21:1–2 (RSVCE): 1 Have you sinned, my son? Do so no more, 

but pray about your former sins. 

2 Flee from sin as from a snake; 

for if you approach sin, it will bite you. 

Its teeth are lion’s teeth, 

and destroy the souls of men (emphasis added). 

This heartens back to God’s admonition to Cain, even as Cain plotted the murder of his brother:

Genesis 4:5–7 (ESV):  6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your face fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is crouching at the door. Its desire is contrary to you, but you must rule over it.” 

Sin is a power that seeks to conquer and destroy the children of God.  Do not continue in it.  Flee from it.  Rule over it, by the grace and power of God.

And again, the incarnation is instrumental.  The simple fact is this:  without the incarnation, I am a slave to sin; I am dead in sin; I am wholly unable to help myself.  It is only the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ — the incarnation writ large and full — that frees me from the power of sin, offers me new life, and empowers me to resist sin.

And so it is that Sirach offers us a good Advent word:

Sirach 21:1–2 (RSVCE): 1 Have you sinned, my son? Do so no more, 
but pray about your former sins.
2 Flee from sin as from a snake;
for if you approach sin, it will bite you.
It’s teeth are lion’s teeth,
and destroys the souls of men.

I am glad for the re-orientation in time that Advent gives us, even if it is a bit complex. From beginning to end, Advent depends upon the incarnation as it looks forward to the judgment:  past, present, and future, all held in tension.  May yours be a holy and blessed Advent.  Amen.

Friday, 27 November 2020

(Sirach 7)

For we brought nothing into the world,

and it is certain we carry nothing out.

The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away;

blessed be the name of the LORD (BCP 2019, p. 250).

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

I may have mentioned before that I love books.  So does my wife, which is one of the reasons I love her so much.  Our marriage of forty-three years is secured not only by the vows we made before God, but by the horrible thought of having to fight for custody of communal books:  better to stay together for the sake of the library.

I haven’t purchased or read it yet, but one of my favorite book titles of the last couple of years comes from Margareta Magnusson:  The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.  This is the way Amazon describes the book:

In Sweden there is a kind of decluttering called döstädning, dö meaning “death” and städning meaning “cleaning.” This surprising and invigorating process of clearing out unnecessary belongings can be undertaken at any age or life stage but should be done sooner than later, before others have to do it for you. In The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning, artist Margareta Magnusson, with Scandinavian humor and wisdom, instructs readers to embrace minimalism. Her radical and joyous method for putting things in order helps families broach sensitive conversations, and makes the process uplifting rather than overwhelming.

The basic idea behind the book is simple enough:  no one wants to dispose of your stuff when you die.  So, you do your family a great service by “death cleaning” while you are still alive:  by giving away what you no longer need or use, by accumulating less, by eliminating the stuff that clutters your life and the space in which you live it.  I really need this book.  I need to read it and then give it away, so that it doesn’t become an ironic example.

I look around the room from which I’m speaking to you, my study at Apostles.  As relatively minimal as it is, it is still chocked with stuff that means a great deal to me and which will become nothing but a burden to those who will come after me.  On the wall behind my desk are my framed, ordination certificates.  Where will these end up when I’m gone?  Who could possibly want them?  There is a marble topped table behind me which serves as an altar.  It was first used in the Oak Ridge National Labs, then donated to the Oak Ridge School System, then re-purposed as a demonstration table by my wife who taught there.  It was to be thrown away when she retired, so she was allowed to take it.  It is now an altar and it means a great deal to me.  When I’m gone, it will be a burden to the one who inherits this study:  a back breakingly heavy burden to the one who has to move it.  There are icons and pictures and books and coffee cups — lots of coffee cups.  If I embraced death cleaning in my study, what would be left?  Who would want my stuff when I’m gone?

Our morning reading from Sirach brings all this to mind.  This book, The Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach, is one of the apocryphal books that we read, not to establish doctrine, but “for example of life and instruction of manners” (Article VI).  It is also called Ecclesiasticus which I’ve heard translated as the Church Book, so named because the early church put so much stock in its wisdom.  If you haven’t read it, or haven’t read it in awhile, I commend it to you.

So, what in Sirach reminded me of The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning?  

In all you do, remember the end of your life, and you will never sin (Sirach 7:36).

This is a Swedish death cleaning of the whole of your life, not for the sake of those who come after you and must deal with the stuff you’ve left behind — though that’s important, too — but for your own sake, for the sake of your soul.  It is a guard against spiritual clutter.

In all you do, remember the end of your life, and you will never sin (Sirach 7:36).

Döstädning, the Swedes call it:  death cleaning.  Memento mori the early Latin-speaking Christians called it:  remembrance of death.  Regardless of the language you choose, the same pastoral theology lies at the heart of the Ash Wednesday liturgy.  You know the words and the action I mean:

Then ashes are imposed with the following words

Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return (BCP 2019, p. 545).

The idea has even entered the popular, self-help culture.  Stephen Covey, author of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, identified it as the second of his seven habits:  Begin with the end in mind.  Now, granted, he did not have death as the end in mind, but it is the natural extension of his principle, his idea writ large and ultimate.  

In all you do, remember the end of your life, and you will never sin (Sirach 7:36).

This takes on special significance for those who follow Christ, because we know the end of our life is not really the end of our life.

2 Corinthians 5:10 (ESV): 10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. 

So, from a Christian perspective, we might amend Sirach a bit:

In all you do, remember the end of your life — that you must appear before the judgment seat of Christ — and you will never sin.

So, let me get practical — pastoral — for a moment.  How can we use this notion of death cleaning or remembrance of death as we work out our salvation with fear and trembling?

Have you ever struggled with a decision?  Have you ever faced a choice and felt the need for some key to discernment, a key that seemed just beyond reach?  Try this:

In all you do, remember the end of your life — that you must appear before the judgment seat of Christ — and you will never sin.

Ask yourself this question:  Which decision, which choice would I want to present and defend to Christ when I appear before his great judgment seat?  Because your life will end and you will appear before Christ and you will give account on that day for what you’ve done, even for the idle words you have spoken.  And so will I; so will we all.

In all you do, remember the end of your life — that you must appear before the judgment seat of Christ — and you will never sin.

Here’s another good exercise, another good question to ask in the vein of döstädning and memento mori:  What kind of person do I want to be when I die and stand before the judgment seat of Christ?  Keep asking follow up questions.  What must I do, or refrain from doing now, in the present moment, to become that kind of person?  What should fill my mind?  What should occupy my hands, my work?  What relationships should I pursue and what relationships should I relinquish?

In all you do, remember the end of your life — that you must appear before the judgment seat of Christ — and you will never sin.

And in keeping with the notion of death cleaning, of giving away in the present what you can’t hold onto after death, try this question:

What of my time, talent, and treasure am I hoarding now that I should be giving away?

That one pinches a bit, doesn’t it?  Henry David Thoreau insisted that we cannot kill time without wounding eternity.  I might add that we cannot hoard time for our own without robbing eternity.  And how often do we deny a talent — a God-given gift — not out of genuine humility but simply because we don’t want to be bothered to share it, to do the hard and time-consuming work of exercising the gift that God has given us for the benefit of his Kingdom.  And treasure:  hoarding treasure?  Me?  The second coat in my closet cries out against me when my brother or sister who has none shivers in the cold.  And to think that, at my death, someone will have to figure out what to do with that coat, when I could spare them that trouble right now.

Please understand, beloved, that I am not trying to make you feel guilty:  far from it!  These words of Sirach and these words are mine are not intended to look backward in judgment, but to point the way forward in hope.

In all you do, remember the end of your life, and you will never sin (Sirach 7:36).

This isn’t guilt inducing, but life giving.  That’s what we long for, isn’t it?  To remember the end of our life now so that we will not sin in the time of our mortal life, so that we will be pleasing to our Lord when we stand before his judgment seat, so that we will hear his glorious words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.  Enter into the joy of your Lord.”

This kind of death cleaning is really life cleaning.

In all you do, remember the end of your life, and you will never sin (Sirach 7:36).

Amen.

(Deut 8 / Psalm 65 / James 1:17-27 / Matthew 6:25-33)

Collect

Most merciful Father, we humbly thank you for all your gifts so freely bestowed upon us:  for life and health and safety, for strength to work and leisure to rest, for all that is beautiful in creation and in human life; but above all we thank you for our spiritual mercies in Christ Jesus our Lord; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, for ever and ever.  Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Here’s a question for you:  Is it possible to preach a Thanksgiving sermon in the midst of a pandemic?  That’s the question I’ve been grappling with as this day has approached.  It must be; priests and pastors around the world are doing it today.  So, the real issue apparently is not whether it’s possible to preach a Thanksgiving sermon, but rather what kind of Thanksgiving sermon it’s proper to preach in this plague year of 2020.

I looked backwards to the Thanksgiving sermons I preached in 2018 and 2019.  They are quite serviceable, true to Scripture, at least adequate if not inspiring.  But, I couldn’t recycle either one of them and preach it today, not that I would.  The “tone” would be off and I would appear a bit tone deaf myself — perhaps like Polyanna — or, worse still, insensitive to the real pain — physical, mental, and spiritual — this pandemic has caused and is causing.  The sermons are true, but they are not timely for our present circumstance.

I started one sermon and wrote for two, two and a half hours, knowing full well that it would not be the one I preached.  I wrote it to exorcise certain thoughts and words from my heart and mind — to exorcise my words so I might have some hope of hearing God’s words.  Then I worked an hour or so on a second attempt.  No good:  it preached “around” the given texts and not from them — a bit cowardly.  It’s a strange business, this writing of sermons, even in the best of times.  And these aren’t the best of times.

Well, if it must be done, best to grasp the nettle and get on with it.  Listen again to Jesus’ words from our Gospel lesson; his words are the nettle we must grasp:

Matthew 6:25–34 (ESV): 25 “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? 26 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? 27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life? 28 And why are you anxious about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin, 29 yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. 30 But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O you of little faith? 31 Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. 33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. 

34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. 

Do not be anxious about your life.  How does that sound to you right now?  We are as awash in anxiety as a fish is in water.  We can’t escape it.  It’s in every masked face we see, and in the eyes above the mask.  It’s in the distance between people and in the isolation that imprisons us in our homes.  It’s in the absence of family gatherings today or in the empty chairs around the table.  It’s in every media outlet we read or watch or hear; it overwhelms social media.  It’s in the graphs of Covid cases, Covid hospitalizations, and Covid deaths.  It’s the unspoken context of every conversation, the largest data point in every decision made.  “Do not be anxious about your life,” Jesus says, and we puzzle now, perhaps more than ever, over that seemingly impossible command — not a friendly suggestion, not merely an encouraging word, but a command:  Do not be anxious about your life.

I wish I could honestly tell you that I have banished anxiety from my life, but I can’t because I haven’t.  But, I’m working on it as a spiritual discipline, because I want to be faithful to our Lord and because I want my relationship with the Father to be like His relationship with the Father, the essence of which is love and trust:  God’s love for us, and our trust in Him.  God loves his creation, right down to the birds of the air and the lilies of the field.  They are care free in the care of God.  God has not forgotten them, has not abandoned them for even a moment; He feeds them freely and clothes them with splendor.  Given that, Jesus asks this rhetorical question:  “Are you not of more value than they?”  And, if you are of more value that they — as of course you are — then how much more God will do for you than merely feed you or clothe you.  So, why are you anxious?  Why are we anxious?

Perhaps we don’t like the way God cares for us.  Even the Israelites grew tired of manna and quail:

Numbers 21:4–5 (ESV): 4 From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. 5 And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.”

Are we perhaps anxious because we want something more or different than God provides — something beyond manna each morning, something beyond our daily bread?  Are we perhaps anxious because we want something more or different than the kingdom of God, when God has nothing more or different — and certainly nothing more glorious — to offer us than himself and his kingdom?  May I adapt the words of James, the brother of our Lord?

You desire and do not have, so you are anxious.  You covet and cannot obtain, so you worry.  You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your comfort and security (James 4:2-3, adapted).

God has given us himself this day, and has given us the day itself.  Do we want more?  Do we need more?  Are we anxious for more?

Are we perhaps anxious because we don’t know what tomorrow holds or because we are fearful that God might run out of provisions or might forget us?  Jesus’ words about that can sound a bit depressing on the surface, but there is great comfort there when read in light of the whole Sermon on the Mount.

34 “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble. 

It sounds as if Jesus is saying, “You don’t have time to worry about tomorrow.  You’ll be too busy dealing with today’s troubles.”  I don’t think that quite captures his meaning.  Sure, we may have trouble today.  We do; we are in the midst of a plague.  But, we also have grace for today, grace that abounds freely from God, grace sufficient for this day’s trouble.  It’s not mainly about trouble; it’s mainly about grace.  And the same will be true tomorrow, when tomorrow comes.  What I do not have, what God does not necessarily give me, is tomorrow’s grace today.  Just as the Israelites had to gather manna each morning — daily bread provided by God — so I have to wait on God to provide each day’s grace, day by day, not in advance.  But, I know this:  just as God was faithful to provide manna in the wilderness day by day for forty years, so he has always been faithful to provide grace in my wilderness day by day for sixty-three years.  He has not failed me yet and I have no reason to believe he will fail me tomorrow.  I am as certain of tomorrow’s grace as if I already had it.  So we need not be anxious about tomorrow just because we don’t know what it holds or even if we are fairly certain that it holds trouble.  God will give us tomorrow’s grace tomorrow, and that is enough.  It has always been more than enough.

Perhaps we are anxious for our very lives or for the lives of those we love?  Rising infection and hospitalization rates throughout most of the country would seem to be cause for anxiety.  Hospital ICUs nearing maximum capacity and exceeding that in some places would seem to be cause for anxiety.  Over a quarter of a million deaths would seem to be cause for anxiety.  Now, I don’t want to minimize the devastating toll of this pandemic on human life, and I don’t want to be flippant about any of this.  But, here’s the truth.  I am going to die, and so are you, if the Lord tarries.  It seems this pandemic has caused many people to confront — to personally confront, to really confront — that difficult truth for perhaps the first time.  And that is a great, though perhaps hidden, grace.  To them, perhaps even to us, Jesus’ words initially may provide only cold comfort, if any comfort at all:

27 And which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?

Is this just some kind of Jewish fatalism?  If it’s your time, it’s your time; no need to worry about it.  I don’t think so, because that’s not the Gospel.  Jesus tells us not to be anxious for our lives because they are in God’s hands.  Jesus tells us not to be anxious for our lives because, soon for him and long ago for us, death was defeated and no longer exercises any real power over us.  One day death will beckon us into its dark prison, and we will enter that cold door.  But, it will open not onto the grave but into paradise and the presence of God.  Our death is not a problem to be solved; that problem was solved on Calvary and in the Garden when Jesus died our death and rose again for our eternal life.  So, we need not be anxious for our lives.  I will die.  I may die in this pandemic, though I will take every reasonable and faithful precaution to prevent that.  But, when I die, by the grace of God, even at the grave I will make my song, Alleluia, Alleluia!

So, here’s a question for you:  Is it possible to preach a Thanksgiving sermon in the midst of a pandemic?  I think so, and it starts with these words:  Do not be anxious.  Not about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, what you will put on.  God knows, God cares, God’s grace abounds.  And that is reason enough, and more than enough, for Thanksgiving today, tomorrow, and every day unto the ages of ages.  Amen.

O God the Father, Creator of heaven and earth,

     Have mercy upon us.

O God the Son, Redeemer of the world,

     Have mercy upon us.

O God the Holy Spirit, Sanctifier of the faithful,

     Have mercy upon us.

O holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity, one God,

     Have mercy upon us.

I can cook a meal — when I have to — and you could eat it — if you had to.  But no one will ever confuse me with a chef.  A cook can slavishly follow a recipe and produce edible fare; that’s me.  But a chef?  A chef can open the pantry, look inside to see what’s available, and produce a gourmet meal from seemingly random ingredients, with no recipe needed.  There’s training involved there, but there is gift, too, I think.

I like to watch chefs at work; my whole family does.  We enjoy several cooking shows; the Great British Baking Show and Chopped are favorites.  Chopped is a competition in three rounds.  In the first round, four chefs are given the same mystery basket of four ingredients and given thirty minutes to prepare an appetizer which must include all the ingredients.  Easy enough, right?  Well, not so much if you receive a basket containing blood orange syrup, the African spice blend ras el hanout (whatever that is), hot cross buns, and lamb testicles.  And yes, that was an actual basket on the show; I couldn’t make that up!  There are two more thirty minute rounds — entree and dessert — each with equally difficult baskets.

At the end of thirty minutes each chef presents his or her dish to a panel of three judges, themselves respected, celebrity chefs.  I love the comments of the panel; some have even become running jokes in my family.  One, in particular goes something like this.

Well, all of the components of the dish are there.  But they seem to stand alone; there’s nothing there to pull them together into one, cohesive dish.  It lacks a unifying element.  You know what it’s missing?  Something unctuous like a fried egg on top.  The yoke running throughout the dish would just elevate everything.

It sounds a little pretentious, doesn’t it?  But you know what it means.  You’ve had a good meal, a good meal that could have been great but for one missing thing:  a little salt, more cheese, a touch of vinaigrette — something to pull it all together.

And this brings us to Apollos.  Listen to the way Luke describes him:

Acts 18:24–25 (ESV): 24 Now a Jew named Apollos, a native of Alexandria, came to Ephesus. He was an eloquent man, competent in the Scriptures. 25 He had been instructed in the way of the Lord. And being fervent in spirit, he spoke and taught accurately the things concerning Jesus….

I’m sure you can say all that about your clergy:  eloquent, well versed in Scripture, knowledgeable in the way of the Lord, fervent in spirit, able to teach accurately.  Would that Apostles’ parishioners could say even part of that about me!

And yet, while all the components of a good “dish” are there, they seem to stand alone.  They lack a unifying element to pull them all together into one, perfect whole:  something unctuous — and yes, the pun is intended — something unctuous on top to run throughout the dish, to bind everything together, to elevate everything.

We are given a pointer in the text about the missing “ingredient:”  he [Apollos] knew only the baptism of John.  Luke probably assumes we have read his first volume, the Gospel, and that we know what this is pointing toward.  But, perhaps a reminder is in order:

Luke 3:15–16 (ESV): 15 As the people were in expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Christ, 16 John answered them all, saying, “I baptize you with water, but he who is mightier than I is coming, the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to untie. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

John baptized in water for — as an act of — repentance, in preparation for the baptism yet to come:  the baptism in the name of Jesus, for forgiveness of sins, for new birth, and for the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  As eloquent, well versed, knowledgeable, and fervent as he was, Apollos lacked this one crucial, unifying element:  baptism in the name of Jesus, which I think we can assume to mean baptism as Jesus commanded his disciples — in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  It is the next story which tells us why such baptism was, and still is, absolutely crucial.

Paul comes to Ephesus and there meets some twelve disciples — true believers.  But, again, there is something missing, and Paul asks them about it:

Acts 19:2–6 (ESV): 2 And he said to them, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” And they said, “No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit.” 3 And he said, “Into what then were you baptized?” They said, “Into John’s baptism.” 4 And Paul said, “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus.” 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. 6 And when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them, and they began speaking in tongues and prophesying. 

You see what’s missing here, right?  The Holy Spirit.  There are disciples, there are teachers who are eloquent and versed, knowledgeable and fervent and yet…and yet there is something missing:  the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit.  Oh, I’d like to be thought of as Apollos was described:  eloquent, well versed, knowledgeable, fervent.  I’d like to be recognized as a disciple as these twelve were.  But above all that, I’d like to be known as one filled with the Holy Spirit, as one baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

Presumably, Priscilla and Aquila baptized Apollos as well as expounding to him the way of God more accurately; we are not given that detail, but the story of the twelve renders that deduction almost inescapable.  We don’t know how Apollos responded to his baptism though I think his response likely followed the pattern of the twelve:  the Holy Spirit came on them; and they spoke with tongues and prophesied.  In the first century, in that moment, that is how the Holy Spirit often manifested his presence.  Please understand, I am not saying that one must speak in tongues as evidence of the indwelling Holy Spirit; far from it!  Some of my brothers and sisters have this gift and many others do not.  Speaking in tongues is merely one gift of the Holy Spirit, and a lesser one at that.  Here’s the evidence Paul gives of the indwelling presence and power of the Holy Spirit:

Galatians 5:22–26 (ESV): 22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. 24 And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. 

25 If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit. 26 Let us not become conceited, provoking one another, envying one another. 

This is the fried egg on top of eloquence, knowledge, fervor, discipleship.  This is what binds them all together into a unified whole.  This — the Holy Spirit and the fruit he bears in the lives of the faithful — is the crucial, unctuous ingredient that elevates the dish.

The ACNA often describes itself as consisting of three streams:  Evangelical, Anglo-Catholic, and Charismatic.  This approach is heralded and derided in about equal measures, from what I can see.  When I explain this to newcomers to our parish, I like to describe these streams as differing emphases.  Evangelical Anglicans emphasis the Word; Anglo-Catholics, the Sacraments; and Charismatics, the Spirit.  Word, Sacrament, Spirit.  We don’t say, “Pick any two.”  None of the three is optional.  No stream is sufficient alone, apart from the great river.  Each is but a tributary of the whole.  Apollos was Evangelical, clearly gifted in and devoted to the Word.  But that was not enough.  He lacked the Spirit which came through the Sacrament of baptism.  When these three streams finally converged into one raging river in him, he became a powerful force for the Gospel.  It is no different today:  Word, Sacrament, Spirit — that’s a dish worthy of the Master Chef, the only dish worthy of the Master Chef.

So, how is it with you?  Is your faith wholly devoted to the Word, but perhaps lacking a bit in appreciation of the Sacraments and the sacramental way of living?  Is your faith centered around the Eucharist, but perhaps not fully attentive to the movement of the Spirit in your own life?  Is your faith on fire with the Spirit, but perhaps lacking a bit of grounding in the Scriptures?  Christ came that you might have life, and might have it abundantly.  Such abundance requires Word, Sacrament, and Spirit — these three, all three.

May I close with a prayer from the BCP 2019?  For your reference, it is collect 91, page 673.  While it is written in the first person, I pray it on behalf of us all.

O Holy Spirit, beloved of my soul, I adore you.  Enlighten me, guide me, strengthen me, console me.  Tell me what I should do; give me your orders.  I promise to submit myself to all that you desire of me and to accept all that you permit to happen to me.  Let me only know your will.  Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

There is a genre of fiction literature called Alternate History.  Have you heard of it?  Its authors speculate on how the world would be different if some pivotal moment in history had not happened or had happened differently.  Suppose the Nina, Pinta, and Santa Maria had gone down in a storm with all hands lost just before Columbus “discovered” America.  What then?  What if Ulysses Grant had gotten drunk the night before a decisive Civil War battle and had been too hung over to lead his troops?  Suppose Abraham Lincoln had lost his bid for re-election?  What if the assassination plot against John Kennedy had been foiled before the fatal shot was fired?  You see how this works.  It’s all speculative, all imagination.

Well, I’m going to ask you to think about such an alternate reality for a bit, and I promise there is method to my madness.  Imagine that both Canada and Mexico are superpowers and that what remains of the United States is militarily weak, economically impoverished, and isolated from any allies.  Canada has already invaded from the north and has taken the northern tier of states:  New England, the rust belt, the mid-west, Washington D. C. — all gone, all territories of Canada.  And now, Canada has its eye on the southern and southwestern states that remain, states that have formed a new government — the Southern States of America — with Atlanta as its capital.  Imagine you are the president of the Southern States and you know that Canadian troops are on the move, coming for you next.  What do you do?

There are not many good options.  You could sue for terms of surrender, I suppose, and hope that Canada might leave you a bit of autonomy.  But, those Canadians have a reputation for being brutal — eh? — so you dare not entrust your hopes, or your territory, to them.  So, you seize on a desperate plan.  You appeal to Mexico, the only other superpower that might hold Canada at bay.  You promise Mexico tribute, say access to the grain fields of Kansas and Iowa and perhaps the oil fields of Texas, if they will ally with you against Canada.  After all, you do have some history with Mexico, even though most of it is bad.  Can they be trusted?  Are they powerful enough to rout Canada’s military?  Are there any other options?

Now, back to the real world and real history.  Replace Canada with Assyria, the northern states with Israel/Samaria, the Southern States with Judah, and Mexico with Egypt and you have the setting for Isaiah 31.  A much weakened Judah is sandwiched between the two regional superpowers:  Assyria to the north and east, and Egypt to the south and west.  Assyria has already conquered the ten northern tribes, destroyed Samaria, and taken its people into exile.  Now, Assyria has its eye on Judah and Jerusalem.  Nothing stands in its way, at least humanly speaking.  What is Hezekiah, king over Judah, to do?

Well, you guessed it, or you already knew the history.  Hezekiah turned to Egypt for help.  He bought their military strength with silver and gold and with allegiance to Pharaoh.  And what did God think of that, God who was always the protector of his righteous people?

Isaiah 31:1–3 (ESV): Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help 

and rely on horses, 

  who trust in chariots because they are many 

and in horsemen because they are very strong, 

  but do not look to the Holy One of Israel 

or consult the Lord! 

 2  And yet he is wise and brings disaster; 

he does not call back his words, 

  but will arise against the house of the evildoers 

and against the helpers of those who work iniquity. 

 3  The Egyptians are man, and not God, 

and their horses are flesh, and not spirit. 

  When the Lord stretches out his hand, 

the helper will stumble, and he who is helped will fall, 

and they will all perish together. 

And so, Assyria marched against Judah, not at all intimidated by any threat from Egypt.

2 Kings 18:13–21 (ESV): 13 In the fourteenth year of King Hezekiah, Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the fortified cities of Judah and took them. 14 And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria at Lachish, saying, “I have done wrong; withdraw from me. Whatever you impose on me I will bear.” And the king of Assyria required of Hezekiah king of Judah three hundred talents of silver and thirty talents of gold. 15 And Hezekiah gave him all the silver that was found in the house of the Lord and in the treasuries of the king’s house. 16 At that time Hezekiah stripped the gold from the doors of the temple of the Lord and from the doorposts that Hezekiah king of Judah had overlaid and gave it to the king of Assyria. 17 And the king of Assyria sent the Tartan, the Rab-saris, and the Rabshakeh with a great army from Lachish to King Hezekiah at Jerusalem. And they went up and came to Jerusalem. When they arrived, they came and stood by the conduit of the upper pool, which is on the highway to the Washer’s Field. 18 And when they called for the king, there came out to them Eliakim the son of Hilkiah, who was over the household, and Shebnah the secretary, and Joah the son of Asaph, the recorder. 

19 And the Rabshakeh said to them, “Say to Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the great king, the king of Assyria: On what do you rest this trust of yours? 20 Do you think that mere words are strategy and power for war? In whom do you now trust, that you have rebelled against me? 21 Behold, you are trusting now in Egypt, that broken reed of a staff, which will pierce the hand of any man who leans on it. Such is Pharaoh king of Egypt to all who trust in him. 

So much for Egypt; Assyria holds them in scorn.  But now — get this! — Assyria goes too far.  Listen to the rest of the Rabshakeh’s speech.

2 Kings 18:28–35 (ESV): 28 Then the Rabshakeh stood and called out in a loud voice in the language of Judah: “Hear the word of the great king, the king of Assyria! 29 Thus says the king: ‘Do not let Hezekiah deceive you, for he will not be able to deliver you out of my hand. 30 Do not let Hezekiah make you trust in the Lord by saying, The Lord will surely deliver us, and this city will not be given into the hand of the king of Assyria.’ 31 Do not listen to Hezekiah, for thus says the king of Assyria: ‘Make your peace with me and come out to me. Then each one of you will eat of his own vine, and each one of his own fig tree, and each one of you will drink the water of his own cistern, 32 until I come and take you away to a land like your own land, a land of grain and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land of olive trees and honey, that you may live, and not die. And do not listen to Hezekiah when he misleads you by saying, “The Lord will deliver us.” 33 Has any of the gods of the nations ever delivered his land out of the hand of the king of Assyria? 34 Where are the gods of Hamath and Arpad? Where are the gods of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivvah? Have they delivered Samaria out of my hand? 35 Who among all the gods of the lands have delivered their lands out of my hand, that the Lord should deliver Jerusalem out of my hand?’ ” 

It is one thing to hold Egypt in derision; it is quite another to scorn the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  When these words were reported to King Hezekiah, he tore his clothes, covered himself with sackcloth, and went into the house of the LORD.  He repented of his foolishness in trusting Egypt, he prayed, and God heard his prayer.  God sent Isaiah to the king’s counselors:

2 Kings 19:6–8 (ESV): 6 Isaiah said to them, “Say to your master, ‘Thus says the Lord: Do not be afraid because of the words that you have heard, with which the servants of the king of Assyria have reviled me. 7 Behold, I will put a spirit in him, so that he shall hear a rumor and return to his own land, and I will make him fall by the sword in his own land.’ ” 

And so it happened.  God — not Egypt — rescued Jerusalem from the hand of the great king, the king of Assyria:

2 Kings 19:35–37 (ESV): 35 And that night the angel of the Lord went out and struck down 185,000 in the camp of the Assyrians. And when people arose early in the morning, behold, these were all dead bodies. 36 Then Sennacherib king of Assyria departed and went home and lived at Nineveh. 37 And as he was worshiping in the house of Nisroch his god, Adrammelech and Sharezer, his sons, struck him down with the sword and escaped into the land of Ararat. And Esarhaddon his son reigned in his place. 

Is all this just history, recorded in Scripture simply because it happened?  Or is there in this history a word for us?

I am drawn to this prophetic proclamation in our reading from Isaiah 31, and I offer it as God’s word to us today, a word ancient but ever new:

Isaiah 31:1(ESV): 1 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help 

and rely on horses, 

  who trust in chariots because they are many 

and in horsemen because they are very strong, 

  but do not look to the Holy One of Israel 

or consult the Lord! 

We have Egypts aplenty in our world today, and we are wont to turn to them for deliverance — to rely on their horses and chariots and horsemen — instead of looking to the Holy One of Israel, instead of consulting the Lord.  Just a few examples.

Let me be absolutely clear about this:  I don’t care how you voted in the presidential election; I really don’t care.  That is between you and God and is none of my business.  But my spirit was deeply troubled when I watched the victory speeches by Kamala Harris and Joe Biden — not troubled so much by what they said as by what I saw in the crowd:  hands raised, faces uplifted toward the victorious politicians, tears streaming, shouts of joy and victory.  That was church, and that was a worship service.  It was a people going down to Egypt for help.  And it would have been no different at a Trump-Pence victory rally.  For many today, on both ends of the political spectrum, politics is their Egypt, and a candidate is their Pharaoh.

Isaiah 31:1(ESV): 1 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help 

and rely on horses, 

  who trust in chariots because they are many 

and in horsemen because they are very strong, 

  but do not look to the Holy One of Israel 

or consult the Lord! 

Brothers and sisters, it must not be so among us.  We must not look to Egypt for our salvation and forsake the Lord our God.

For many today, science is their Egypt.  In the last half-century I do not recall a time when science has been so hailed as our hope for salvation.  “Follow the science,” we are told, and we are expected to forget that science and technology created many of the very problems we now look to science and technology to save us from.  I’m no Luddite or skeptic:  science is a tool — and a good one when used properly and in its place.  But the tool of science can be used to fashion an idol in its own image.  It threatens to displace our faith in the Holy One of Israel when it is heralded as our salvation. It becomes Egypt:

Isaiah 31:1(ESV): 1 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help 

and rely on horses, 

  who trust in chariots because they are many 

and in horsemen because they are very strong, 

  but do not look to the Holy One of Israel 

or consult the Lord! 

New sociological and philosophical understandings, new cultural movements appear to many as Egypt:  critical race theory, expanded definitions of gender, Black Lives Matter — the organization, not the principle — and White Supremacy.  All of these are embraced by certain adherents as the salvation for our world:  these and not the Gospel, these and not the Holy One of Israel.

Isaiah 31:1(ESV): 1 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help 

and rely on horses, 

  who trust in chariots because they are many 

and in horsemen because they are very strong, 

  but do not look to the Holy One of Israel 

or consult the Lord! 

Now, let’s make this more personal.  Each of us probably has an Egypt — or several Egypts — we tend to turn to in times of trouble.  It might be the Egypt our own competence, trusting in the power of our own might to deliver us.  It might be the Egypt of our wealth — such as it is — in which we put our hope for security instead of looking to God for our daily bread.  It might be the Egypt of pleasure, or perhaps of distraction, by which we anesthetize ourselves to the true danger we are in.  How easy it is to entertain or distract ourselves to death.  You have your Egypt and I have mine.  But the word of the Lord rings out to us as it did to Hezekiah:

Isaiah 31:1(ESV): 1 Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help 

and rely on horses, 

  who trust in chariots because they are many 

and in horsemen because they are very strong, 

  but do not look to the Holy One of Israel 

or consult the Lord! 

We cannot go back to Egypt because we have renounced it in our baptismal vows:

Do you renounce the devil and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

Do you renounce the empty promises and deadly deceits of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?

Do you renounce the sinful desires of the flesh that draw you from the love of God?

To each of these questions we responded:  I renounce them.  We have declared before God and the Church that we will not look to Egypt, that we will never return there.  And we must not.  Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

When our daughter was still quite young, my wife and I realized that she had the ability to outsmart us and that the price of effective parenting was eternal vigilance.  So, we made a pact:  whenever our daughter asked one of us for something that was the least bit questionable, the one she asked would reply, “What did your mother say?” or “What did your father say?”  That was a simple recognition that kids will play parents off one against the other if the parents aren’t careful.  If the first parent doesn’t give the desired answer, go ask the other.  There is even a more egregious childhood tactic than this:  “Well, dad, or mom, said I could!”  If you are a parent, you know these games.

So, my wife and I agreed to make parenting decisions together.  And, that worked for many years:  two parents “against” one child — decent odds.  Little did I know that my wife and daughter would turn that two against one strategy against me and together decide to bring home a cat they knew I didn’t want.  I know I should, but I haven’t quite forgiven my wife for that act of betrayal.

How do you, and your family, make decisions?  I’m not talking about trivial decisions or decisions that affect only one party.  I’m talking about substantive decisions that have far reaching consequences:  whether to move across the country for a job opportunity, whether to homeschool a child or to enroll him in public or private school, whether to move an aging parent in with you or to provide more skilled care in a residential facility — that sort of thing.  There are some families, I suspect, where the father is the “head of the house” in the sense of unilaterally making all such decisions.  I don’t know how that works because I’ve never been part of such a family.  My wife is smarter than I am in many ways and certainly more gifted is some areas than I am.  We discuss all matters together, but I don’t hesitate to defer to her when she has the expertise that I lack.  And, she does the same with me.  There are other families who are tended by a single parent, eighty percent of them by a single mother (2015 statistic).  What a burden of decision-making that places on the shoulders of one person.  I don’t know how those parents do it.  Going back to the garden, God knew that Adam needed a helpmate.  No parent — male or female — was intended to go it alone.

Think of the first century Church as a family, a growing family at that.  At first, it was close knit, one hundred twenty or so who had been with Jesus throughout his ministry.  When Jesus was among them, he made the decisions:  easy enough.  When he ascended into heaven, Peter assumed leadership as Jesus had indicated he should and as the Holy Spirit led.  His leadership doesn’t seem to have been unilateral or dictatorial; it just seems that the others naturally deferred to him.  They knew him, and they knew of the special relationship he had had with Jesus.

But then the Church grew, unexpectedly — three thousand souls in one day.  And it dispersed with the beginning of the persecution in Jerusalem.  New leaders arose in local congregations and in larger regions.  Charismatic evangelists — not least Paul — took the Gospel into new regions, established new churches among new people groups — Gentiles — and fostered new customs and even a new and broader understanding of the Gospel than that found among the original disciples in Jerusalem.  Was this getting out of hand?  Who was in charge here?  Who was making the decisions on behalf of the Church, or was it churches now instead of Church, with each group making its own decisions?

These are the questions that our text from Acts 15 addresses.  A group of Christians from Judea — read this probably as zealous Jewish Christians from Jerusalem — have heard that Paul is extending the Gospel to the Gentiles without requiring circumcision, Sabbath keeping, dietary restrictions and the like.  Paul seems to be promoting a Gentile Christianity alongside or even apart from a Jewish Christianity.  On whose authority?  Who gave Paul the right to make such decisions?  And so they confront Paul on his home turf in Syrian Antioch, and no small dispute erupted.  And right there a momentous decision was made on behalf of the Church:  a decision this important must be made not by one individual, but by a council of the Church, which, in this case, meant the apostles and elders in Jerusalem.

These apostles and elders gathered together to consider the matter.  They debated among themselves.  They listened to Peter recount the troika of visions that led him to the home of Cornelius where he witnessed the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the Gentiles gathered there.  Then the whole assembly fell silent and listened to Barnabas and Paul recount the signs and wonders God had done through them on behalf of the Gentiles.  All the while a clear consensus was growing.  The Holy Spirit was speaking to the assembled Church.  When James, the bishop of the Jerusalem church, spoke, he spoke not the mind of one person or even of one faction, but of the assembled Church.  And then when he, or the group, drafted a letter with the results of the council’s deliberations, it contained these two phrases which established precedent — and super-precedent — for the Church moving forward:  “it seemed good to us, having come to one accord” (Acts 15:25a) and “it has seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us” (Acts 15:28a).  Not “me” but “us.”  Not “by our own authority” but by the Holy Spirit.

And that is how the Church makes decisions:  conciliarism — not one man, not one faction, but authorized representatives of the whole body gathered together to consider a matter, to listen to one another, and to submit to the Holy Spirit.  That is how major issues were decided in and by the Church during its first millennium.  Conciliarism gave us the canon of Scripture, the Nicene Creed, and the great ecumenical councils.  Ours is a conciliar faith.  To depart from a conciliar understanding of the faith is to walk the way of heresy and to travel beyond the borders of the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church.  Heresy almost always starts with, “Well, I know that’s what the Church says, but I believe…” and ends with a denial of the authority of Scripture and the authority of the consensus of the Church.  Who cares if you have concluded the virgin birth is a sacred myth; the Church has spoken to affirm it.    What does it matter — except for your eternal salvation — that you have concluded that it is simply not possible to believe in the bodily resurrection of Christ; the Church is certain of it.  So you no longer believe that no man comes to the Father but through Christ the Son; the Church still believes and insists on it.  Why ask me what I believe about a certain issue when the Church has decided centuries ago.  Ask me what the Church believes; that’s what matters!

This is why it is essential that we read Scripture with the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church.  That is why it is essential that pray with the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church.  That is why it is essential that we worship, that we preach the word, that we administer the Sacraments with the one, holy catholic, and Apostolic Church.

Now, that raises questions — or should raise questions — in the mind of every good Anglican.  Did we not abandon the conciliar Church when we rejected Rome and the Pope?  The short answer — the long answer would take, well, a long time — the short answer is no.  We rejected Roman practices and doctrines that were not established through conciliarism.  We rejected unilateralism in the Church of Rome, in the Western Church.  We insisted on a final appeal not to one faction of the Church, but to the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church itself.  The Anglican rejection of the authority of Rome was the Anglican affirmation of the authority of the conciliar Church, the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church.

In our Province — the ACNA — and in our Diocese — ADOTS — we are clear about this.  Among others, The Fundamental Declarations of our Province (BCP 2019, pp. 766-767) identify these elements as “characteristic of the Anglican Way, and essential for membership:”

1. We confess the canonical books of the Old and New Testaments to be the inspired Word of God, containing all things necessary for salvation, and to be the final authority and unchangeable standard for Christian faith and life.

4. We confess as proved by most certain warrants of Holy Scripture the historic faith of the undivided church as declared in the three Catholic Creeds:  the Apostles’, the Nicene, and the Athanasian.

5. Concerning the seven Councils of the undivided Church, we affirm the teaching of the first four Councils and the Christological clarifications of the fifth, sixth, and seventh Councils, in so far as they are agreeable to the Holy Scriptures.

All of these are statements of conciliarity, an embrace of the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church over one man or one faction.  It all started in Jerusalem with a group of Church representative meeting together to decide what in the world to do about those pesky Gentiles.  It all started in Jerusalem where the groundwork was laid for holy decision-making in the Church.  It is this process, superintended by the Holy Spirit, that even allows us to speak meaningfully of the one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the Holy Spirit, be honor and glory now and unto the ages of ages.  Amen.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

The young man, a recent graduate of a noted theological college, was introduced to an Orthodox bishop as a theologian.  “A theologian?” the bishop asked.  He continued, “In the entire history of the Church only three men have been honored as theologians:  John the Apostle and elder who received the Revelation of Jesus Christ; Gregory of Nazianzus; and Symeon the New Theologian (d. 1022).  How blessed I am to meet the fourth in my lifetime!”

I feel for that young man.  Of course, he was a theologian in the common way we in the West use the term:  someone who has completed an academic program in theology and who makes a living thinking and writing and teaching about God — an academic theologian.  But the Orthodox Church views matters differently, as the bishop in the story made pointedly clear.  A theologian is one who has seen God — who has experienced the beatific vision — and has been enlightened by being in the presence of God.  Evagrius of Pontus, a fourth century monk, ascetic, and teacher whose life intersected those of such Christian luminaries as Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nazianzus, Macarius of Egypt, and John Cassian said it this way:  A theologian is one who truly prays, and one who truly prays is a theologian.  Prayer, in this sense, meant true, unmediated communion with God.

I am no theologian in either meaning of word.  I have neither completed a thorough, academic theological program of study, nor have I seen a vision of God, save in the face of Jesus Christ.  That means I cannot speak to the matter at hand this morning as a theologian.  But I must speak to it as a priest and pastor.  Even more importantly, I must speak to it as one who prays, as one who lives and breathes the great mystery of prayer with all others who pray as well.

Mother Teresa said this — among many other things — about prayer:

“I used to pray that God would feed the hungry, or do this or that, but now I pray that he will guide me to do whatever I’m supposed to do, what I can do.  I used to pray for answers, but now I’m praying for strength.  I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.”

C. S. Lewis wrote:

“I pray because I can’t help myself.  I pray because I’m helpless.  I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping.  It doesn’t change God.  It changes me.”

I want to be fair to these, my betters, my forebears in the faith.  Prayer certainly does change us; it does form the one praying.  In this they were correct.  But, is it true to say that this is all prayer does?  Is it true to say prayer doesn’t change things, doesn’t change God, but only changes me?

Ask these questions to academic theologians and you’ll get a lot of big words thrown in your direction, immutability among them.  In its strongest form, divine immutability insists that God does not, and indeed, cannot, change.  This is from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

God doesn’t change by coming to be or ceasing to be; by gaining or losing qualities; by any quantitative growth or diminishment; by learning or forgetting anything; by starting or stopping willing what he wills; or in any other way that requires going from being one way to being another (https://iep.utm.edu/div-immu/, accessed 10/27/2020).

It is certainly true that God’s nature, God’s character is immutable; God does not change in his essence, in his very being.  God says, through the prophet Malachi:

“For I the LORD do not change; therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed” (Mal 3:6).

And James writes:

Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change (James 1:17).

So, with the theologians and the Fathers of the Church, let me affirm God’s immutability:  the changelessness of his being and character.  And yet.  And yet, within this immutability lies the mystery of prayer, of human intercession, of the human-Divine dialogue.  God does not change in his being.  But what about his immediate plans?  What about his interaction with his creation, with his people?  What does the whole counsel of Scripture say about this?

When God made clear to Abraham his intent to destroy Sodom and the cities of the plain and then Abraham interceded, bargaining on the basis of God’s character — his justice and mercy — to spare the cities if fifty, no forty-five, no forty, no thirty, no twenty, no ten righteous people were there, was this a real, efficacious intercession or not?  Had God planned all along to spare the cities for the sake of ten righteous souls?  Was God just playing along with Abraham, giving him a false sense of influence?  Or, did God in his immutability and his sovereignty, actually respond to Abraham and change the threshold for judgment and destruction?

When the people of Israel sinned a great sin with the golden calf at Sinai, the LORD said to Moses:

Exodus 32:9–10 (ESV): “I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. 10 Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you.” 

Is this for show, just God being dramatic?  Did God intend to destroy the people or not?

Well, here’s the answer that Scripture supplies:

Exodus 32:11–14 (ESV): 11 But Moses implored the Lord his God and said, “O Lord, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? 12 Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out, to kill them in the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth’? Turn from your burning anger and relent from this disaster against your people. 13 Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, your servants, to whom you swore by your own self, and said to them, ‘I will multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven, and all this land that I have promised I will give to your offspring, and they shall inherit it forever.’ ” 14 And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people. 

The Lord relented — changed his planned course of action — based on the intercession — the prayer, if you will — of Moses.

Then there is the haunting text in Ezekiel, God speaking plaintively.  After reciting a litany of Israel’s sins, God says:

Ezekiel 22:30–31 (ESV): 30 And I sought for a man among them who should build up the wall and stand in the breach before me for the land, that I should not destroy it, but I found none. 31 Therefore I have poured out my indignation upon them. I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath. I have returned their way upon their heads, declares the Lord God.” 

For the lack of a righteous intercessor — a man that God sought after — Israel was consumed by the fire of God’s wrath.  The image here is striking:  God longing to change his mind, seeking to change his plan, in response to the prayer of a righteous man, but finding no such man.

Examples abound, but these few should suffice.

“I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things” (Mother Teresa).

It [prayer] doesn’t change God.  It changes me” (C. S. Lewis).

With apologies to Mother Teresa and C. S. Lewis, that is not the witness of Scripture.  I’ve read their lives and their words, and I don’t think either Mother Teresa or Lewis really believed that prayer only changes the one praying either.  Scripture is clear:  within his divine immutability, as an expression of his divine sovereignty there lies this great mystery of prayer — that God allows his plans to be influenced, his mind to be changed, by human prayer and action.  There are subtleties and complexities to prayer that I will never understand — I’m no theologian, remember? — but that our prayers and our actions can and do change things and even alter the stated plans of God, I have no doubt because Scripture is clear on the matter.

Why am I even talking about this?  Because the Daily Office reading from 2 Kings 20 talks about it.  Through the prophet Isaiah, the LORD announces the impending death of King Hezekiah:

2 Kings 20:1 (ESV): In those days Hezekiah became sick and was at the point of death. And Isaiah the prophet the son of Amoz came to him and said to him, “Thus says the Lord, ‘Set your house in order, for you shall die; you shall not recover.’ ” 

There is no wiggle room in this declaration, no conditions given for recovery, no “unless you do this you will die.”  It is a straightforward declaration from the LORD — “you shall die; you shall not recover” — a declaration we do best to take on face value.

But.  But Hezekiah prayed and the LORD changed his mind:

2 Kings 20:1–6 (ESV):  2 Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord, saying, 3 “Now, O Lord, please remember how I have walked before you in faithfulness and with a whole heart, and have done what is good in your sight.” And Hezekiah wept bitterly. 4 And before Isaiah had gone out of the middle court, the word of the Lord came to him: 5 “Turn back, and say to Hezekiah the leader of my people, Thus says the Lord, the God of David your father: I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears. Behold, I will heal you. On the third day you shall go up to the house of the Lord, 6 and I will add fifteen years to your life. I will deliver you and this city out of the hand of the king of Assyria, and I will defend this city for my own sake and for my servant David’s sake.” 

God changed his mind:  I don’t know of any other reasonable way to read this.  God announced Hezekiah’s certain death.  Hezekiah prayed.  The LORD heard the king’s prayer and saw his tears, and the LORD changed the course of Hezekiah’s life:  not death, but healing and fifteen additional years.

I know this notion is controversial in many quarters; some are uncomfortable with a God who can change — not change his nature which is immutable, not change his character which is immutable, but change his plans, his direction.  And yet, what meaning has intercession, what value has petition if such human influence on the divine will is not possible?  What an exalted view of God springs from this!  Our immutable God who is humble and loving and sovereign enough to draw mere creatures into the divine life and make them his fellow workers.  Our God who asks, “What do you think?” and listens and takes account of what we say.  And what an exalted view of prayer springs from this!  Prayer is never Plan B, used only after we have exhausted our own resources.  Prayer is always Plan A because it draws on the unlimited resources of God, because it changes things, because it redeems otherwise lost causes and lost people, because God is searching for people who will stand in the breach and dare to change his plans.

It is no wonder that Jesus told the parable of the persistent widow (cf Lk 18) to the effect that [his disciples] ought always to pray and not lose heart.  It is no wonder that Paul told the Thessalonian Christians to pray without ceasing.  It is no wonder that James rehearsed the example of Elijah:

James 5:16–18 (ESV): 16b The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working. 17 Elijah was a man with a nature like ours, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. 18 Then he prayed again, and heaven gave rain, and the earth bore its fruit. 

Yes, prayer changes the one praying.  But prayer also changes the world.  And — Dare I say, because Scripture does? — prayer sometimes changes the mind and plan of our immutable God.  Great is this mystery of prayer.  Amen.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Following are words of some Church Fathers on the power of prayer to change the plans of God.

2 Kings 20:1–6 (ACCS 1 Ki-Es): In His Infinite Mercy, God Remains Free to Revise His Judgments. John Cassian: Now let us rise to still higher instances. When king Hezekiah was lying on his bed and afflicted with grievous sickness, the prophet Isaiah addressed him in the person of God, and said: “Thus says the Lord: set your house in order for will die and not live. And Hezekiah,” it says, “turned his face to the wall and prayed to the Lord and said: I beseech you, O Lord, remember how I have walked before you in truth and with a perfect heart, and how I have done what was right in your sight. And Hezekiah wept much.” After which it was again said to Isaiah: “Go, return, and speak to Hezekiah king of Judah, saying: Thus says the Lord God of David your father: I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears. Behold, I will add to your life fifteen years, and I will deliver you out of the hand of the king of the Assyrians, and I will defend this city for your sake and for my servant David’s sake.” What can be clearer than this proof that out of consideration for mercy and goodness the Lord would rather break his word and instead of the appointed sentence of death extend the life of him who prayed for fifteen years, rather than be found inexorable because of an unchangeable decree? Conference 17.25.

2 Kings 20:1–6 (ACCS 1 Ki-Es): Hezekiah Is Saved by the Power of His Repentance. Cyril of Jerusalem: Would you know the power of repentance? Would you understand this strong weapon of salvation and the might of confession? By confession Hezekiah routed 185,000 of the enemy. That was important, but it was little compared with what shall be told. The same king’s repentance won the repeal of the sentence God had passed on him. For when he was sick, Isaiah said to him, “Give charge concerning your house, for you shall die and not live.” What expectation was left? What hope of recovery was there, when the prophet said, “For you shall die”? But Hezekiah did not cease from penitence, for he remembered what was written: “In the hour that you turn and lament, you shall be saved.” He turned his face to the wall, and from his bed of pain his mind soared up to heaven—for no wall is so thick as to stifle reverent prayer—“Lord,” he said, “remember me. You are not subject to circumstance, but are yourself the legislator of life. For not on birth and conjunction of stars, as some vainly say, does our life depend. No, you are the arbiter, according to your will, of life and the duration of life.” He whom the prophet’s sentence had forbidden to hope was granted fifteen further years of life, the sun turning back its course in witness thereof. Now while the sun retraced its course for Hezekiah, for Christ it was eclipsed, the distinction marking the difference between the two, I mean Hezekiah and Jesus. Now if even Hezekiah could revoke God’s decree, shall not Jesus grant the remission of sins? Turn and lament, shut your door, and beg for pardon, that God may remove from the scorching flames. For confession has the power to quench even fire; it can tame even lions. Catechetical Lectures 2.15.

Exodus 32:10 (ACCS Ex-De): God Invites Us to Prayer. Jerome: On another occasion God said to Moses, “Let me alone … that I may consume this people,” showing by the words “let me alone” that he can be withheld from doing what he threatens. The prayers of his servant hindered his power. Who, think you, is there now under heaven able to stay God’s wrath, to face the flame of his judgment and to say with the apostle, “I could wish that I myself were accursed for my brethren”? Letter 128.4.

Persistence in Prayer. Jerome: Moses resisted God and prevented him from destroying his people when God said to him: “Let me alone, that I may strike this people.” Just see the power of Moses! What does God say to him? Let me alone; you are compelling me, your prayers, as it were, restrain me; your prayers hold back my hand. I shoot an arrow; I hurl a javelin; and your prayers are the shield of the people. Let me alone that I might strike down this people. Along with this, consider the compassionate kindness of God. When he says, “Let me alone,” he shows that if Moses will continue to importune him, he will not strike. If you, too, will not let me alone, I shall not strike; let me alone, and I shall strike. In other words, what does he say? Do not cease your persistent entreaty, and I shall not strike. Homilies on the Psalms 26.

Commemoration of Elizabeth and Zechariah, Parents of John the Baptist

(1 Samuel 1:1-20 / Benedictus / Romans 4:13-25 / Luke 1:1-7)

Collect

O God, who alone knits all infants in the womb:  You chose improbable servants – old and childless – to conceive and parent the forerunner of Christ and, in so doing, demonstrated again Your strength in weakness.  Grant us, who are as unlikely and unworthy as Zechariah and Elizabeth, the opportunity to love and serve You according to Your good and gracious will; through Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever.  Amen.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

We have a surfeit of priests at Apostles:  not too many, of course, but certainly an embarrassment of clerical riches.  Jack, Thomas, Laird, David, Rob, me:  six priests for a parish the size of ours is unusual to the point of being unheard of; we are something of a clerical unicorn in our diocese.  

The division of labor among so many priests is an interesting dilemma.  Each priest wants to serve, but there are only so many liturgical opportunities available:  preaching, celebrating the Eucharist, baptizing, marrying, burying, and the like.  Each month, Fr. Jack prepares and distributes a liturgical leadership schedule showing the priestly assignments for that month.  I don’t know exactly how he makes these assignments, though certainly prayer is involved, as are other practical matters like travel or priestly obligations during the week.  When the schedule comes by email, I open it expectantly to see when and how I am blessed to serve that month.  I suspect all the other priests do likewise.

In the days of Herod, king of Judea the clerical situation in the second Temple was not so different.  Historians estimate that there were some eight thousand priests in Israel at the time, far too many for each to serve full time at the temple.  Instead, the priests were divided into divisions — twenty four in total — of roughly three hundred thirty priests per division.  Each division served a week at a time, twice each year:  fourteen days each year in which to exercise one’s priestly duties.

How were these duties assigned?  By casting lots:  rolling dice, drawing straws — I don’t know exactly what the process looked like, but there was an assumption underlying it; God, and not chance, was in control.  Casting lots was not a flippant way to decide important matters; it was a holy means of discernment given by God and superintended by him.

It is one of the two weeks for the division of Abijah to serve in the Temple.  There is an old priest in that division — probably several old priests, but one who captures our attention — Zechariah.  What do we know about him, beyond his advanced age?  He was married to an old woman, Elizabeth, who was also of the priestly line.

Luke 1:5–6 (ESV):  6 And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.

And they are disappointed.  They want a child but have none; and now, the time for that is well past.  For a Jew — for a priest, at that — to fail to fulfill God’s first commandment to man — be fruitful and multiply — was a tragedy bordering on a curse.

Well, Zechariah is on duty this week, as he had been twice a year for many years.  And, by lot, he is selected to enter the Holy Place at the time of prayer and offer incense before God on the altar.  This is a big deal.  Zechariah might well have gone his whole life and never had this honor before.  The process was highly organized and streamlined.  One priest had prepared the altar with coals.  Another had readied the incense.  All Zechariah has to do is enter the Holy Place, scoop some incense, place it on the coals and leave.  But things don’t go as smoothly as planned.

You know the story.  An angel — we soon find that it was Gabriel who stands in the very presence of God — appears to Zechariah, standing at the right side of the altar.  And the angel speaks to Zechariah, saying:

Luke 1:13–17 (ESV): “Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your prayer has been heard, and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John. 14 And you will have joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, 15 for he will be great before the Lord. And he must not drink wine or strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother’s womb. 16 And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, 17 and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” 

I read this and I smile.  I want to say to Zechariah, “You old dog, you!  You finally get to go into the Temple to offer incense and prayer on behalf of the people, and what do you do?  You remind God that you don’t yet have a child, and that you really want one.”  Or, maybe that’s not it at all.  Maybe Zechariah had given up praying for this years ago, so long ago that he had even forgotten the prayer.  Either way, right here Zechariah becomes the patron saint of skeptics everywhere.

Luke 1:18 (ESV): 18 And Zechariah said to the angel, “How shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is advanced in years.”

Gabriel sounds a bit peeved in his answer:  “Do you know who you’re talking to, old man, and who sent me to you?”  Well, that’s a paraphrase, but it’s pretty close.  And then Gabriel causes Zechariah to become mute, and apparently deaf, for the next nine months.  I like to think that this is not punishment, but confirmation:  an ongoing sign of God’s power in the midst of human frailty.  It’s all very strange and the people are very confused when Zechariah stumbles out of the Temple.  They reckon he has seen a vision, but he can’t verify that for them.  Good on the old priest, though.  Given all he’s been through, he still finishes out his week of service before he goes home to Elizabeth.

How does he tell her?  Does he write everything out or play charades?  And, not to be crude at all, but John was not divinely conceived.  His birth was a miracle, but not that kind of miracle.  The old man and the old woman are intimate in the way of husband and wife; they know one another in the biblical sense.  I wonder — not pruriently — but I wonder what that moment was like, a union filled with rekindled hope and wonder and possibility all of which had died years ago.  I’ll bet there was never another moment like that before or after for those two, and that moment also was a gift from God.

Luke 1:24–25 (ESV): 24 After these days his wife Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she kept herself hidden, saying, 25 “Thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me, to take away my reproach among people.” 

Here is the first glimpse into Elizabeth’s heart.  She has lived for years as a failure, as a wife unable to carry on her husband’s line, a tragedy in Israel.  And she has keenly felt the reproach of that failure.  But, no more.  The Lord has looked on her, has acted with favor toward her.

Here, Luke interrupts this story of Zechariah and Elizabeth to tell us of Mary, the mother of our Lord.  But, for us, that is for another day.  We pick up the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth four months later, just in time for the birth of a baby.

Luke 1:57–66 (ESV): 57 Now the time came for Elizabeth to give birth, and she bore a son. 58 And her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her. 59 And on the eighth day they came to circumcise the child. And they would have called him Zechariah after his father, 60 but his mother answered, “No; he shall be called John.” 61 And they said to her, “None of your relatives is called by this name.” 62 And they made signs to his father, inquiring what he wanted him to be called. 63 And he asked for a writing tablet and wrote, “His name is John.” And they all wondered. 64 And immediately his mouth was opened and his tongue loosed, and he spoke, blessing God. 65 And fear came on all their neighbors. And all these things were talked about through all the hill country of Judea, 66 and all who heard them laid them up in their hearts, saying, “What then will this child be?” For the hand of the Lord was with him. 

Joy, wonder, relief:  how can we describe the mix of emotions swirling in Zechariah and Elizabeth and among all their neighbors and relatives?  God has clearly done something here, something out of the ordinary, though none of them know exactly what yet.  It’s all a bit much, and the crowd seeks some solace in the ordinary, in the expected.  “Surely, you will name the baby Zechariah after his father?”  That’s customary.  But this old woman and new mother is adamant:  “No, he shall be called John.”  That’s what the angel had commanded, and she was not about to fight him over this.  When a final appeal for reason is made to Zechariah, he confirms it in writing, “His name is John.”  And then the dam breaks and Zechariah can hear and speak again and praise gushes forth like a pent up reservoir set free to flood the land once again:  “Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel,” he begins, and we have echoed the rest this day.

And, as we Anglicans are wont say:  here endeth the lesson; Zechariah and Elizabeth lived in obscurity, burst forth into the redemptive story of God for one shining moment, and then slipped back into obscurity.

What are we to take away from this story, though we really need nothing more than the sheer wonder of it?  I hope you will ponder it yourself, far beyond these few comments I’ll make.

I am drawn to this first description of Zechariah and Elizabeth:

Luke 1:6–7 (ESV): 6 And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. 7 But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years. 

We see glimpses of great sadness and disappointment in their story; their life hasn’t worked out as they had planned when they were young and just getting started on their life together:  big family, son to carry on Zechariah’s name and his priestly vocation, daughters to help Elizabeth around the house.  No, just a certain shame and reproach now, a barrenness not only for Elizabeth but for Zechariah, as well.  And yet…and yet “they were righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord.”  That is not easy to do when you are disappointed in the Lord.  Have you ever been there?  Holding on can be hard when things are not going to happen like you thought they would happen (adapted from Cave of Adullam, Sara Groves), when you don’t understand what God is up to or if he’s even there at all.  Zechariah and Elizabeth are patron saints for all of us who are, from time to time, tempted to give up.  And all of us are, from time to time, tempted to give up, I reckon.  They are there beckoning to us:  walk in the ways of righteousness — just one foot in front of the other, that’s right — holding on to the commandments and statues of the Lord.  They are reminders that God is faithful — always faithful — but not always as we expect and not always on our timeframe.  They are exemplars of patient faith and holiness:  we want a microwave faith — hot in an instant — but they remind us of a campfire faith — life wrapped in foil and tossed among the embers of the fire of God’s love, ready when it’s ready and not a moment before, all in God’s good time.

Perhaps I can draw this final lesson from the story of Zechariah and Elizabeth.  It is never too late to be blessed and used by God.  Even more, it’s never too late to realize that God has been blessing us and using us all along while we were perhaps waiting and hoping for something else.  Amen.