SERMONS "But how are they to call on one in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to preach him? - Romans 10:14 Christ Church takes the ministry of proclamation of God's word seriously. In addition to our two clergy and seminarian, we have a cadre of lay preachers and dramatists. At 5 o'clock the proclamation of the Word of God is rarely in the form of a traditional sermon, but it is the proclamation of the Good News nonetheless. Posted here are some recent sermons delivered at Christ Church. Our Rector, Peter Stebinger, does not preach from a manuscript - we're still figuring out how to get his words represented here! Sermon: Matthew 11:2-11, Isaiah 35:1-10 Preached at Christ Church, Bethany The Rev. Kate Heichler Advent 3, Year A, Sunday, December 12, 2004 Sermon begins with a drama showing the scene between John the Baptist in prison and his disciple who comes back to report on Jesus' activities and his answer to John's question. So, who did you feel most like, watching that? Have you ever felt like John? Had times in your life when you felt trapped, in the dark, doubting everything you knew was true? Maybe about a loved one; maybe about your ability to do your job; maybe about Jesus. I know a lot of people, good church-going people who are pretty sure about God, but not at all sure about Jesus - that he was anything more than a good guy who healed people 2000 years ago. They take His message about living a Kingdom life of trust and holiness, but don't into the relationship with that makes it possible, not drawing on the power Jesus left us in the Holy Spirit to live that life. They end up depleted, despairing, doubting - or they bury those doubts and disconnect. Do you feel that at all in this season, when the disconnect between the demands of our "to-do" lists and the alleged reason we're "doing" it all - LOVE, JESUS - can get really, really wide? What do we do in these times of trial, that we all pray to be delivered from? I think we can do just what John did - ask Jesus: Are you for real? Are you who we thought you were? Do you really have this power to forgive sins and transform hearts and heal bodies and redeem the whole entire world? Now, John wasn't able to ask Jesus face to face anymore than we are. He had to rely on a friend to do it. So do we sometimes. That is why Christians are called into community - because we need each other for encouragement. We can't sustain faith by ourselves. Because sometimes we can see God at work in each other more clearly than we can see God at work in our own lives. I have a friend whose depression and despair drove him into the hospital this week. I visited him one day, and found out that visiting hours had been greatly reduced. One friend had tried to visit and had been turned away. But there was another person he really needed to see, someone who has known the dark places and come out the other side - and it just so happened that at the exact moment this person came in the hospital, I was walking down the hall to get my friend a bagel - and as clergy, I was able to get him in, even though visiting hours didn't start for two more hours. I am convinced that God totally arranged that - because my friend needed hear this man's visit, to hear his story, about how he had been dramatically healed and restored to light. His visit encouraged my friend to hope again, just as I believe happened for John. Strengthen the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. Or can you relate better to the disciple who brought good news to John? Have you been the one to bring encouragement to someone who can only see the dark? People in that state can be exasperating - but when they can't see, we have to be their eyes, to point out everywhere there is light, everywhere that we see God at work. Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk...and the poor have good news brought to them. I got to be a bringer of good news yesterday, when I went back to Niantic for a Kairos reunion at the prison. Some of the women were so moved that we came back - it refreshed for them what they had experienced of God's love on Kairos; it renewed their hope. But what amazed me most was how much they were being encouragers for one another. Many of them encounter difficult, hostile situations with other inmates or corrections officers every day - but with support from one another they're finding they can be angry without acting on it; they pray instead. They're being able to follow the rules and live in peace, because it feels better - and it makes their time much easier. One woman runs a prayer meeting on her tier every single night. Sometimes it's just her and a few others; some nights all 24 on the tier come. She said they used to just come the night before they had a court date - but she told them that God was for all the time, not just for when they needed a favor, and many come regularly now. Talk about transforming an environment! What signs of God's life have you seen this week? This year? This lifetime? Who are you supposed to tell, to encourage their hope? To nurture their faith? Strengthen your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is near. That is our Advent message - that is our all-the-time message. That is what John came to share - and when he needed to hear it, his brother was there to share it back to him. We are not in this alone, my friends, and God never intended us to be. So if you know a go-it-alone Christian out there - maybe even your spouse - you go and remind them about the power of God unleashed in the world: Sometimes the blind do see, the lame do walk; the deaf do hear - Often the sick are healed; I've even heard stories in some communities about people who have died being revived through prayer in our day and age. All the time lives are being turned around from hopelessness to possibility, from despair to joy. - And yes, the poor have good news brought to them - If we bring it. Go and tell, my friends. Go and tell. © Katherine Anne Heichler, 2004 ********************************* Sermon - Luke 23:35-43 Preached at Christ Church, Bethany Kate Heichler Christ the King, Year C; Sunday, November 21, 2004 Periodically we offer a Quiet Day (one-day retreat) or weekend Retreat for rest, reflection and recharging our spiritual batteries. These are wonderful opportunities for drawing closer to God, and to the community at Christ Church. Lord, make these words Your Word, that our hearts may become Your heart. Amen. Did you ever want to be a princess when you grew up? That question was mostly addressed to the women in the congregation, but guys - if you wanted to be a princess when you were little, that's just fine. Maybe you wanted to be a king - or a knight. Knights are cooler than kings. I briefly thought that Prince Andrew was pretty hot and I could marry him - boy, am I glad my life took a different path! Our fairy tales taught us all about kings and queens and princesses and knights. The last Sunday in Pentecost is a day when we celebrate Christ as King. I don't know why - it's not an official holy day, like All Saints or Easter. It does give us an excuse to sing a lot of really great hymns But maybe it has a deeper purpose: maybe it's important that we celebrate Christ triumphant before we reset the church clock next week, and start the story again about Jesus - his entry into our world a vulnerable baby, his life of wandering, moving always in the shadow of His coming cross. Maybe we need to celebrate the truth about Jesus, the light of Christ triumphant, before we enter Advent, that season of darkening days, where the promise of Christ's coming is just a thin band of light on the horizon. This year the post-Daylight Savings Time shift has been jarring for me. It's too dark. I drive somewhere at 5 o'clock in the afternoon, and it is as dark as midnight. It's very disorienting, even surreal - something's wrong. It's afternoon, but someone has turned all the lights off. Darkness has won. Maybe that's what it was like for Jesus to be incarnate - to live in this darkened world, when all he had known was light, when He was light, our saving Daylight. But He took on darkness, for us. On this day we remember who Christ truly is, who it was that consented to become an embryo and then an infant, born to a young mother in tenuous circumstances. Only once in Jesus' ministry was his true identity revealed, and then only for a moment - that moment when he was transfigured on the mountain, like the costume disguising him was lifted for a second - and how did Peter, James and John see him then? As pure light, whiter than any bleach. He is the Light of the world, He said. But He knew that light would blind us. And so He consented to clothe Himself in our flesh, in our human condition, to be limited by our boundedness in time and space. Not just to put on our humanity like a covering - but to fully live in it, not just appearing like a man, becoming one. He didn't just look like a helpless infant - he was one. He didn't just look like a criminal nailed to a cross - he died like one. The King of Kings and Lord of Lords became defenseless, for us. When we look at our gospel reading today, that's what we see - a defenseless man dying on a cross. What kind of a king is this? Certainly not the kind our fairy tales have taught us to expect. Wasn't the kind of king the crowd at the crucifixion recognized either - Three times in this passage people say, "If you are a king, save yourself." The Jewish leaders say it - "If you are the Messiah, save yourself. We know how a Messiah is supposed to act - if you don't do it, that proves you're a fraud." The Roman soldiers say it - "If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself. We know how a king is supposed to act - maybe you deserve what you're getting." One of the thieves being crucified with him says it - "If you are the Messiah save yourself and us." He can't look beyond the short-term fix, even at the hour of his death. The sign over Jesus' head says it, "The King of the Jews." Pilate insisted on writing that - even though Jesus told him his kingdom was not of this world. This king looked like no king the world recognizes. I've said before, and I'll say it again - the Good News of Christianity is always upside down from what we expect. It's all about reversals. The way the world thinks things should be is almost always opposite from what Christ said the Kingdom of God was. We think of kings and queens as wealthy, living sumptuously; Jesus lived without income, a traveling preacher and healer. We think of kings and queens as wielding power, sometimes absolute power. Jesus looked like the ultimate loser, unable to move a hand, a muscle. Worse, he looked like a fraud, yet another flash in the pan who suckered thousands. Imagine what his disciples, watching from a safe distance, were feeling. The world could not have looked darker than it did at that moment. And yet one person there could see who Jesus was: the other thief. All through Jesus' ministry the religious people cannot see past their expectations to discern who Jesus really is - but the demons recognize him, the tax collectors and prostitutes know who he is, and here the thief dying with him sees what even his disciples haven't been able to fully grasp: "This is THE king. This guy is going somewhere I want to be, and the only way I'll get there is by his invitation." Had he heard Jesus preach sometime? Had he heard Jesus talk about the Kingdom of heaven - for he says to Jesus: "Remember me when you come into your Kingdom." And Jesus - through his unbearable pain and slow suffocation - answers him: "Today you will be with me in paradise." He wields power over eternal life, right there on the cross. He IS who he IS, even there on the cross. Nothing could diminish the God-ness in Jesus - nothing and nobody could extinguish that light, even on the cross. The people demanding a sign wanted him to save himself - but Christ did not "save himself," because His mission was to save the rest of us, that thief included. Some people say the Christian message is a fairy tale - but the fairy tale, my friends, is the notion that power and strength reside in these human figures we look up to. There was more power in Christ on that cross than any of us will ever feel. Even pinned like a bug, tortured and bleeding, he had the power to confer eternal life, and he did. Not only for the thief whom he welcomed into paradise - but for us too. Our King hung there in the rags of sinners so that we might be given the robe of royalty. Martin Luther called it the "Great Exchange," that Christ exchanged the robes of a king for our filthy beggars rags. And do you know what we get in the exchange? My friends, we get his royal robes. We are robed in the garment of His kingship. And just like Jesus didn't just put on humanity on the outside, like a cloak, but became human, so his royal life becomes real in us, his adopted sisters and brothers. We become royalty. Did you ever want to be a princess when you grew up? Well, guess what - you are. A princess in disguise. A prince undercover. We may not look any more like royals than Jesus did - but we are. He said so. When we are united with Christ in baptism, we are transformed, given a new identity - we take on his royal blood and become princes and princess ourselves, Christ's royal brothers and sisters. When they asked Jesus when the Kingdom of God was coming, listen to what he said: The Kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the Kingdom of God is among you." Sometimes that is translated, The Kingdom of God is within you. It's already here, and we are already living in it - even while we live in the world that is passing away. It's not a cataclysmic coming we are to look for - it's the quiet, everyday advent of God on earth that began with Jesus' birth, was accomplished at his death and confirmed at his resurrection. The Kingdom of God is among us, my friends - and we are already its royalty. The world today looks pretty much as hopeless as Jesus did pinned to that cross. Does it look like God has won the battle, when we see human-induced wars and famine terrorizing much of the globe - and greed and exploitation running rampant in the parts of the world that seem "safe?" When children in the richest country in the world die from lack of health care while couples in debt spend tens of thousands of dollars on weddings? And yet, as Christians, we believe something did happen on that cross. As Christians we learn to see power in what the world thinks is weakness, to see beauty in what the world deems hideous, to see value in what the world says is worthless. And so we have an important function in this world which looks lost, but which we believe God has saved: We are to be those royal ones in disguise, moving about the world, quietly bringing hope and resources where they are needed, shining light into places of darkness. Once upon a time there was a princess who worked in a hospital. Nobody knew she was a princess because she wore plain hospital clothes and worked very hard and never minded cleaning up the gross things. She always seemed to find the most difficult patients and gave them special attention because she knew how much the King loved them. She saw them as gifts that helped her to use the best parts of herself. She didn't see how obnoxious they were - she saw how scared or unloved or sad they were. She did the same thing with medical staff who were not always gentle - and she was someone people remembered when they thought about the hospital - she brought them light. And they never knew who she really was! Once upon a time there was a knight who had had big dreams to go to faraway lands and bring glory to his King - but then he fell in love with a princess and married her and now they had children and he had to work in an office day after day - and nobody there knew of his great exploits and talents. But one day he remembered that he was a knight in disguise, and that maybe this was where his King wanted him to shine - and so he became known as the person everyone talked to when they had a problem; and they liked to walk past his desk because he always had a joke or a compliment; and the people in the company who wanted to be unethical to get ahead knew that he was a man of integrity, and his very presence held the office to a higher standard. And he knew that one day he might have to choose between doing right and working there, but he trusted his King and continued to shine the light where it was needed. And once upon a time that princess he had married found herself at home with all those children, and this was not the princess life she had dreamed of when she'd had that fairy tale wedding she loved the children but they drove her up the wall a lot of the time, and she felt like she spent her whole life cleaning up spills and doing laundry and ending squabbles. And that knight she'd married looked very much like a tired man in a suit when he came home But she remembered that she was a sister of the King, and that these squabbling children were princes and princesses in training, and the way they were going to know how to be royalty was by watching her. So she asked the King to let her see them the way He saw them, to love them the way He loved them - and something relaxed in her, and she said, "Princesses have to do laundry too," and she remembered she was a princess when she drove carpool, and she smiled a lot, and other children loved to come to her home because it was a place of love and light. And once upon a time there was an older prince and princess who had stopped working and were what they called "retired." But mostly they felt tired and wondered where their energy had gone. And they didn't think they had anything to offer, and weren't sure who they were anymore, since they weren't working in a job that paid you money. And they did have some fun and take some nice trips… but what were they here for? And then the King reminded them that they were still his royal brother and sister and that there were plenty of dark places that needed to be lightened up, and plenty of people in despair who needed to be given hope - and they realized, that even at Stop & Shop they were a prince and princess, and thought it was kind of funny that nobody knew it, and they could just do nice things for people and no one would ever know that a prince had let them cut in line. So, what's your fairy tale? Where are you called to live as royalty in disguise? What school or shopping mall or playing field or faculty room or garden club or laboratory or garage or living room needs God's light through you? What if we started thinking of ourselves the way God sees us - As royal children? Brothers and sisters of Christ the King? Put here as agents of the king, to help to spread his kingdom of love? Listen again to what Paul wrote to the Colossians: May you be made strong with all the strength that comes from his glorious power, and may you be prepared to endure everything with patience, while joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. Your royal highnesses, the King has need of you. Be the light of the world. AMEN. © Katherine Anne Heichler, 2004