The Paradigm of Change

Fr. Robert R.M. Bagwell+

Proper 16 + C + 2016

The Paradigm of Change  

All Saints’ Hampton, SC

21 August AD 2016

Isaiah 58:9b-14

Psalm 103:1-8

Hebrews 12:18-29                                                                                                                

Luke 13:10-17

As you know, I work with the elderly in hospice as well as younger people.  Whether this story is true or apocryphal, I do not know, but it is a bit funny.  Three sisters of age 92, 94 and 96 live in a house together.  One night the 96 year old draws a bath, puts her foot in and pauses.  She yells down the stairs, "Was I getting in or out of the bath?"  The 94 year old yells back, "I don't know, I'll come up and see."  She starts up the stairs and pauses, then she yells, "Was I going up the stairs or coming down?"  The 92 year old was sitting at the kitchen table having tea listening to her sisters.  She shakes her head and says, "I sure hope I never get that forgetful." She knocks on wood for good measure.  She then yells, "I'll come up and help both of you as soon as I see who's at the door."  And we have been told there is nothing new under the sun ….

The prophet Isaiah reveals the mind of God toward his people in a verse so significant that I have a calligraphy graphic of it over my desk at work.  Let me share these words from the prophet this morning: See, I am doing a new thing!     Now it springs up; do you not perceive it? I am making a way in the wilderness and streams in the wasteland. (Isaiah 43:19)    See, I am doing a new thing!   Does this text surprise us?  There are many verses in scripture that speak of the unchangeable nature of Our Father in heaven: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.(Heb 13) “I the Lord do not change. So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed. (Malachi 3:6) The counsel of the LORD stands forever, The plans of His heart from generation to generation.(Psalm 33:11) and many, many more.  There is a certain comfort in the unchangeableness of God.  We tend not to like change.  We prefer the familiar, the reliable, that with a proven record or at least what we are used to.  It’s like the joke: How many Episcopalians does it take to change a light bulb? The answer:  change?  CHANGE? Who said anything about  CHANGE?  Yet, in order even for things to stay the same: thing have to change!  

Our Bible is full of promises that all require an element of change.   The Jews of Jesus day, at least the hierarchy, were repulsed by the very idea.  Hence we have the reading from the gospel of Luke this morning.   

There is good change and not so good change.  God’s unchanging character is from the fact that He is perfect.  In Romans chapter one Paul writes: For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made. 

We however have lost the perfect nature that God established in our parents at the beginning and from that brokenness we inherited in the fall of the human race. Since that moment, God has been planning: salvation, restoration and wholeness for those who would be his people.

If we watch the news, if we are even simply aware of all that goes on around us in our culture, our town, our neighbors and even in ourselves, we realize that as Scott Peck once wrote:  Life is difficult. Worry not!  God has a plan.

We read from the book of Hebrews of that first change with the children of Israel as they fled from Egypt seeking the Promised Land.  We like they are also seeking OUR PROMISED LAND!  The moment that changes the paradigm for them here is Sinai:  At Sinai they covenant with God.  The law is given. God has been affirmed as their God and they have been claimed as God’s people.  Change!  Something new has been born!  You may remember however that that change was a bit of a painful process.  God calls Moses to the Mountain, the people are forbidden to so much as touch the mountain until Moses had come down.  When he finally did, he and his companions hear the sound of celebration in the camp. 

Moses comes down and finds a huge party with celebrating and dancing and a large golden statue of  a calf.  The people may have left Egypt, but they also brought Egypt with them.  Change is bound to have some bumps in the road. Moses is enraged and casts the newly hewn tablets, written with the finger of God to the ground and God judges the people with a plague until judgment has been accomplished  

That is enough of the history, but then we come to the book of Hebrews.  The writer says that God has done a new thing in Christ.  What the old covenant could not accomplish through human will power, God has accomplished in the atoning death of His Son.

We see the beginnings of that in the gospel.  Jesus was teaching in the Synagogue on the Sabbath day (Saturday) and he sees a woman who is apparently listening to him stooped over by an affliction to her back.  She does not reach out to him, but he already knows her heart and his leaves his teaching for a moment for a touch of the hand of God.  There is no fanfare, simply the touch of the Master in a very non theatric healing. 

The theatrics come from an official of the synagogue.  He accuses Jesus of violating the Law of the Sabbath; this was human work according to this man.  Jesus turns the word work around.  He points out the human hypocrisy in that if one of the animals that the people owned was in need on the Sabbath, would they not reach out and take care of it?   Jesus points out the necessity in this case is not to do no work on the Sabbath, rather, it is to do the work of God. It is necessary that God work to heal one of the descendants of Abraham on the Sabbath. 

It is God’s work the synagogue leader was rebuking, not the labors of a man!  He was actually revealing the Lord God on the Lord’s Day.  He was counter punching what the official thought he should do much as God did when he spoke through the prophet Hosea saying: I will not carry out my fierce anger, nor will I devastate Ephraim again. For I am God, and not a man— the Holy One among you. (Hosea 11:9)  When we priests and prelates over the years have tried correcting a good deed, we might remember this.  God deals with each of us according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus through His Spirit.

The official was going to set Jesus straight, so to speak, but the Word of God set him straight. Jesus was illustrating the actions of the covenant that God was about to establish through Jesus.  We read these stories and know then how we are so to follow the Son of God in word and deed. The God who shows up in this text does not even throw the synagogue official out of the kingdom. Jesus instead gives a profound of object lesson. He does not lead us out of our fellowship, but more deeply into it.  Jesus widens the circle of God’s healing love by affirming the God of the Sabbath rather than making the Sabbath itself the point of it all. If we honor the God of the law by loving obedience, is it not more glorious?

It is this of which Hebrews speaks.  We have come through Jesus to a place of joy and acceptance.  Not to a mountain that we must not touch but to Mt Zion, the City of the Living God.  Not to the King whose subjects we are, but to the sovereign who is Our Father: the heavenly Jerusalem. 

This is a place that is not under the Law which demands compliance and condemns, but the all things new creation under sovereign grace!  Sometimes this simply scares us!  We sometimes fear the freedom of grace.  It’s not how our world works!    This new relationship and new way of being in relation to God should not give us reason to cease in our profound respect and honor for God our Father, but should help us to live into the eternal now which is ours in Christ Jesus.

Where does our strength and power come from in the Church of Jesus Christ?  It is Jesus by the Holy Spirit who dwells in us. While we live out this life of heaven inside and the earth without, let our work grow out of love and not fear, out of a desire to model Jesus, not a fear of not measuring up.

The act of grace is superior to the law. Grace is a new paradigm, a new way of thinking, a new pattern of living. It is all of grace.  God plus you always makes a majority. So when we are victorious or when we fail, let us trust ever more deeply in the sovereign and unconditional love of the one who has won our souls by His cross and resurrection. We are united as one under grace; let us honor that unity that gives glory to our God.

We prayed in the collect:

G

rant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name;...as we live out our new citizenship, let our joy be full and our confidence be in the knowledge of whom we represent and who we are. We are changed, being changed and are sent forth as change agents in the Name of Our loving Christ.  Episcopalians, let us learn to love CHANGE!

IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER AND OF THE SON

AND OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

AMEN

Abba Father

Proper XII+C 29, July 2016

The Reverend Robert R.M. Bagwell+

Genesis 18:20-32 Psalm 138

Colossians 2:6-5, (16-19) Luke 11:1-13

How do we think of God? Do we think of God? In the Older Testament, God is referred to in a rather formal way. In fact, in the whole of the Older Testament, the word Father is used for God only ten times! Even so it is not in the way of a personal relating or biological father but rather as Creator. In stark contrast, Jesus uses “Father” to describe God hundreds of times and the rest of the newer Testament dozens of times.

With Jesus as mentor, the disciples noted how Jesus prayed and something about it amazed them enough to ask Lord, teach us to pray, as John taught his disciples. What followed were words that would shatter the Jewish concepts of God, the Jewish approach to God and the Jewish understanding of God forever. Who was God to the Jew of Jesus’ day and generations before him?. He was to the Jew the Holy, Strong and Immortal One whose Name “I AM THAT I AM” or today as many have taught us the sacred Tetragramaton, Y-H-W-H or Yahweh was only whispered by the High Priest in the Holy of Holies once per year.

Jesus gave the Apostles and all who should follow him what has been called the model prayer. Jesus said: When you pray you are to say Our Father. The Hebrew and Aramaic word for Father is Abba. Child psychologists tell us the first word a child usually says is Dada.

A child in Jesus= day would have said Abba, like Papa or Daddy Its use denotes extreme familiarity trust dependence our dependence on God. That was a rude and presumptuous way to approach God. It was unheard of among the Jews at Jesus' time. Their prayers began, "Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, king of the universe, Maker of heaven and earth," and this iterant Rabbi comes along calling him “Daddy”.

Some of our liturgical prayers begin this way too. And there's nothing wrong with lofty language when in the presence of the all-holy God. But that makes Jesus' first word that much more surprising. Abba, (Father). For the first time in human history, God, the Holy, All Powerful and Immortal One, had a human face. He was no more to be known as a God to appease, a God who looked down disapprovingly on his creatures, a God to fear, He was now to be Papa.

We take this for granted. Hasn't God always been thought of as Father= to all the religions of the world? The answer is an unequivocal NO! To refer to God or Allah as father for the Moslem is blasphemy. God is nothing like humanity, not related to us or like us for Islam. Our relationship with God is Father. Not that God is like an earthly father but rather, God is the model for the fathers in our lives. Historically a father is the head of a family, provider, protector, giver and guide. He is the one to whom his children may run for comfort and freedom from fear.

Why, because he=s our father! Jesus said,Except you come as little children you will not enter the kingdom, (the assembly, the reign) of God. Every time you pray - and it is your blood of Jesus bought privilege to pray as one of his baptized - you are appearing before the throne of the almighty, all-holy, all-knowing God of the universe, and calling Him "Father" because we are now his family. The Apostle John, in exile and writing from the Island of Patmos wrote these words: ”See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.” I John 3:1 IHS opened up undreamed of doors of possibilities of prayer with God. To say that the Jewish people had a difficult time in accepting this concept would be the understatement of the decade. Like the followers of Islam, they called Jesus a blasphemer and the penalty for blasphemy? You guessed it, DEATH!

Following this, Jesus said in his model for prayer this element of honoring God.: Hallowed be your name. What is something hallowed something holy? It is something set apart consecrated as we in Christ are this morning. God is set apart by His Holiness and We are set apart by God=s Holiness by the Spirit of God that dwells in our hearts. In the Baptismal Rite in the anointing with oil we say: Cyou are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ=s own forever. Our life journeys are initiated into and imitate the journey of Christ. So it is with Confirmation and Ordination. We show humility in this expression hallowed and respect for God=s name. There is very little respect for God=s name in our day.

Many in our day only speak of God at the beginning of a profane expression. Along those lines, I once saw a little placard that said Jesus Christ is Lord of humanity, not a name for profanity. Jesus then continues this teaching by saying: Your Kingdom come. This means our willing submission to God or our coming under the mission of God and His will for our earthy walk and eventual heavenly journey. Remember Paul said: we are ambassadors for Christ! (2 Cor. 5)

Jesus now tackles our heart problems: forgive us our sins our debt to GodCThis reminds us of our indebtedness to Him. Sin incurs a debt that must be paid. But as the hymn says: Jesus paid it all, all to Him I owe. Lead us not into temptation. Do not put us to the test. Save us from the time of trial. Have mercy on our human condition, our weakness. Jesus gives us elements of prayer. It is not intended to be the end of prayerConly the beginning. As we spend time in conversing with God we become like Him.

What manner of prayer should we have? The book of Hebrew tells us: Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” The King James version says: Boldness ! the Yiddish word we might use is Chutzpah! Remember the words I say every Sunday? And now as our Savior Christ has taught us, we are (what=s the word?) BOLD to say.

Prayer is the chutzpah of a friend pounding on your door at midnight, waking up the kids, to borrow three loaves of bread because he has an unexpected visitor from out of town and his cupboard is bare. That's chutzpah!.and Jesus said in the gospel, "I tell you, though he will not get up and give him the bread because he is his friend, yet because of the man's boldness (his chutzpah), he will get up and give him as much as he needs." It implies reliance upon the dependability of the relationship shamelessness! But if God is your papa, why be shy? We pray in hopefulness not resolution or fear. Often when we say Anot my will but yours be done.

We are trying to give God an out. It showing a lack of trust a lack of nerve. And what happens when God answers prayer? Too often even Christians say, A what a coincidence!

A coincidence is a miracle in which God chooses to remain anonymous. When we stop praying coincidences stop happening. And what does our Episcopal/Anglican tradition teach us? The Prayerbook has four sections called daily Morning Prayer or “daily Evening Prayer!

It was that we might have daily communion with God in prayer. Prayer was as natural to Jesus as eating and drinking are to us. He prayed perfectly, without needing to be taught or encouraged, but for us, prayer is something that must be learned. The disciples got it right. Lord, teach us to pray. We need to pray, to learn the rhythmic discipline of prayer - in the morning when we wake up, during the day before and after we eat, at night before we fall asleep. Each of us needs to learn to pray and to practice the daily life of prayer. Then we will find how unnatural an activity prayer truly is. How our sinful nature finds every excuse not to pray. How the devil cleverly arranges for us to be distracted from prayer. How the world makes prayer into something other than the conversation between beloved children and their dear Father in heaven. But prayer, practiced, learned as a discipline will reap benefits in your life, in your relationship with God, in the lives of those whom you care for and pray for, more benefits that you could ever imagine!

Prayer is a discipline which becomes a habit. It needs spontaneity, It needs authenticity not pretense. It must become an ordinary part of life. Brother Lawrence was a kitchen monk who wrote prayers about ordinary tasks. The book is called, Practicing the Presence of God. While doing such tasks he prayed. Prayer is the umbilical cord between humanity and God. It should be natural for us, but it requires work. I’m still working on it! It requires Practicing the Presence of God.

I read a story about a pastor who went to Korea and was very impressed with the attitude toward prayer of the Korean Christians. Many of them arose very early in the morning and went to the Church where they would pray for an hour before going to work. He came home excited to attempt this himself. The first morning he set his alarm early, went to the Church office while it was still dark and quiet and sitting at his desk he began to pray. He prayed for the sick, those in the hospital, those anxious and afraid, he prayed for those who would be working that day, all those who would be at home, at school and on the road traveling, the Church at home and abroad, the nation, its leaders, the nations of the world and their leaders. He prayed for everything deserving of prayer and not deserving of prayer. When he finished he looked at his watch and only ten minutes had passed. We may laugh but many if not most of us are strangers to prayer. We and God are barely on speaking terms. It is no wonder a disciple of IHS asked Him to teach them to pray.

You and I are to come boldly to God in confidence as our Father who we love and who loves us. It is the norm for us. A prayer less Christian is barely Christian. Today let us take these words of Christ to heart. Let us let Christ, teach us to pray

Becoming a Miracle

Proper X+C                          10  July AD 2016                     The Reverend Robert R.M. Bagwell+

Deuteronomy 30:9-14                                                                                                   Psalm 25:1-9
Colossians 1:1-14                                Becoming a Miracle                                       Luke 10:25-37

We just prayed these words: “O Lord, mercifully receive the prayers of your people who call upon you, and grant that they may know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; through Jesus Christ our Lord”.  Is that not a Christian dilemma?  How do we live out our lives as followers of Jesus?

This is not a question that the average High School counselor asks, but this is not an occupational question but a vocational question. To what are you and me called?  Today the operative question is “who is my neighbor”?  Christians are in a strange position versus the non-Christian.  Jesus gives us commandments over things that the world thinks are optional. We are to be miracles in the world. What we call “miracles” the Bible calls “signs.”  We know that we may  be the only Jesus than anyone in the world sees, so let us keep that in mind as we live each day.

This story begins with a scribe or as the story puts it, a lawyer.  For us today, the Bible is not the Law, but a story of God’s work in the world.  For the pious Jew, keeping the law was everything.

The scholar of the Law of God was “testing” Jesus, more likely trying to trip Jesus up and show everyone Jesus was not as smart as the man thought Jesus thought he was.

He asks Jesus how to get to heaven.  Jesus, especially when challenged, often answers a question with a question. “You tell Me,” he says. He answers with what we know as the great commandment.  To love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.  AWho is my neighbor?@  Ever ask that question?  ConsciouslyCI mean.  SubconsciouslyCwe ask it oftenCperhaps even constantly.

When God gave the Israelites the command to love your neighbor in Leviticus 19:18, the Israelites felt confident that they knew who that wasCfellow IsraelitesCof course.  They were tribes; all somehow related through their ancestorsCthe 12 sons of Jacob.

Who do we think our neighbor is?  I=ve lived in so-called Aneighborhoods@ where I knew absolutely no one.  No one spoke to one another.  Neighbor apparently referred to a geographic distanceCbut is this impersonal arrangement what a neighbor is?  How do you define it?

This gentleman seems to be in his own high regard and is approaching Jesus to apparently show Jesus he's not as 'smart' as the lawyer thinks that Jesus thinks he is!   Strangely enough, Jesus lets the man answer his own question by responding to a question WITH a question. Don't you hate that!  A pastor once asked a rabbi, "Why in the Hebrew tradition does the teacher always answer a question with a question?" He answered. "I don't know. Do we always do that?"

But as all things with our Lord, he knows how to take the opportunity of a teachable moment. He tells the story of the Good Samaritan as we have come to know it as we have grown up in the Church.  What we may not have realized is some of the subtleties of this story.  There was a bit of selectivity in the Jewish observance venue of Jesus' day that Jesus had no problem pointing out by again letting the listener answer his own question.

But here comes that selectivity.  They only read in practice, the earlier part of that chapter and left out the uncomfortable part that came a few verses later: “When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them.  The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God."  (Lev 19:33 & 34)  

Not content to leave well enough alone apparently, the doctor of the law says: "but who is my neighbor?"  Jesus begins what we call the parable, (or literally story beside a story) of the "Good Samaritan".  

A man was going down the 17 mile stretch from Jerusalem to Jericho. In that short distanceCthrough a very barren and arid terrainCthe ground drops 3000 feet.  It is an ideal place for robbers to hide and ambush travelers. As fate would have it, robbers attacked him and stole his clothing and beat himCleaving him to die.  Now is when this gets interesting.

A priest happens byCthen a LeviteCa liturgist, a professional charged with the maintenance of the Temple worship.  They both go way over to the other side of the road. What is wrong with this picture? This is somewhat a scandalCsurely these religious men should have done something!  I know…excuse! Even today we can always come up with one of those for something we don't particularly want to do!  “I don’t want to get involved.” Perhaps they were afraid that the robbers were still near. Perhaps they thought the man was already dead and to touch him would make them ritually uncleanCso they would be unable to serve in the Temple.

A Samaritan comes by.  They must have thought: "a who?" "What?"  Now this must have been quite a jolt.  Jesus always seems to have a Ajolt@ in his stories; a cosmic reversal; an unexpected twist!  It must have taken Atemerity@ for Jesus to put a Samaritan in the story!  The Jews felt about the Samaritans like the Jews feel even today about Nazis and other "groups" pitted against other "groups" seem to feel about each other: avoidance, distaste, dislike or even unbridled hatred! 

The Samaritans were a half breed peopleCJews left in the land during the Babylonian captivity, after the destruction of Jerusalem and the First Temple.  They had intermarried with the Assyrians from years earlier.  They had opposed the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple and said they were the only legitimate heirs to Jewish worship.  They had their own Temple on Mount Gerizim. Jews considered them as detestable heretics, apostates who denied the faith.

The Samaritan heretic, the one generally treated despicably by the Jew, takes care of the Jewish manCdisinfects his wounds and takes him to an inn and leaves about two month=s rent with a promise of more if it is needed.  And Jesus asks Awho was neighbor to the man?@   The lawyer  replies, and you can almost see him gritting his teeth trying to get the words out: Athe man who showed mercy.@  You can almost hear the people thinking: "is it getting warm out here?"  Is Jesus hitting a bit close to home for both us and them?

The lawyer had really been askingCWho is not my neighbor?  What are the limits to my responsibility? That is a question each person who believes in Christ must ask constantly.  It would be nice if we could choose to be neighbor to the people who we like and who could do us some good!  But that would make us no different from every other person born into the world without God=s love in them.  Jesus calls us to love people we don=t like and people it is of  no earthly advantage to know.  Indeed, it is the contrast between erosCthe love that demands its own interest and agape the love that is generous in its interest toward others.  But love, true love is not some weak sentiment. Song of Solomon (8:6) says Alove is as strong as death@ (NIV) It is able to conquer all other things.  Love is the Christian miracle.  It is our vocation. We are the lovers of God who are called to love the non-lovers into the kingdom of God.

Sometimes that is tough love.  Parents often have to administer tough love.  It is very hard on the parent, but is for the ultimate good of the child, although the child may kick and scream at the penalty of his or her actions and say horrid things to the one painfully loving them. Even harder with another adult!   A question we must ask ourselves isCAwith whom do we identify in the story?@  I mean REALLY?  I think we should be conscious that we are at least in one sense Samaritans.   We have by our lives denied the faith in thought, word and deed and yet...  In spite of our birth right to be sinners, Jesus has redeemed us and made us Agood sinners@...@good Samaritans@.  He has done a miracle in us, with us and through us. In our baptismal covenant we pledge our determination to love neighbor, and to strive for justice and peace among all people respecting the dignity of every human being  but honestlyCdo we not often walk on the other side afraid to dirty our hands?  Do we need to justify ourselves?  Who are the Samaritans in YOUR LIFE?  Whom do we feel Ajustified@ in despising, rejecting, pre-judging?  When do we side with the priest and the Levite? With anyone different from us?  Someone we feel treated us unjustly or a friend unjustly?  How can we be God’s miracles, when the miracle He wants to do with us is stopped by US?

 Everyone is neighbor for the Christian.  The question is will we be neighbor! Martin Luther King Jr said.: "The first question which the priest and Levite asked was "If I stop help this man, what will happen to me?" But…the Good Samaritan reversed the question: "If I do not stop to help this man, what will happen to him?"  The collect petitioned God that we might know and understand what things they ought to do, and also may have grace and power faithfully to accomplish them; …  Do we  really want that? If so, we are called to be a living miracle for others.

If God=s love flows through us, is in usCit must be acted out in the love of neighbor.   In I John 4:19-21 we readCAWe love because he first loved us.  If anyone says, AI love God,@ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen. And he has given us this command: Whoever loves God must also love his brother.@  O God, let that sign and miracle be realized in us, through Jesus, your Son, our maker, defender, redeemer and friend.  

AMEN

Being Who We Are

Fr. Robert R.M. Bagwell+

Pentecost 4 + Year C+ Proper 8         
Being Who We Are                 

26, June AD 2016                                                                          

St George Parish + Savannah

I Kings 19:15-16, 19-21
Psalm 16
Galatians 5:1, 13-25
Luke 9:51-62

The father says to the son: “So your intentions were good. That's what matters. The son responded:  “but isn't, like, the road to hell paved with good intentions?” His father responded
“Yeah, well, so's the road to heaven. And if you spend too much time thinking about where those good intentions are taking you, you know where you end up?” “New Jersey?” he responded.  
“I was thinking 'nowhere,” said the father, “but you get the point.”  (Neal Shusterman)

How intentional are we about following God’s will for our lives? Do we think about it?  There are so many things that pull us in all sorts of directions and dilute our focus in this very demanding contemporary culture. We read today that Jesus set his face to go to Jerusalem. This is a Greek rendering of a Hebrew expression denoting a fixedness of purpose.   Jesus is very intentional and we are called to the same intentionality as His followers and representatives in this world.  What is it to represent?  One thing about it is to re-present Christ.  At Antioch the Bible tells us that we were first called Christians.  What does that mean?  It means “little Christ.”  In the gospel today, we are told that the time was coming for Jesus to be taken up.  What does that mean? It is an equivalent expression to what was said on the mount of Transfiguration.  He is about to make an exodus of the captives to sin into the glorious freedom of salvation for the human race. He was about to leave his ministry of teaching healing to his mission of sacrifice and atonement for the world. Why did he do it?  It was Jesus for who his was the Christ of God.

We say we “go to Church” but this building is simply where the REAL CHURCH gathers.  It is a place to go and be refilled for the labors God has assigned to us. If you will, we practice on each other here so that we may live more our mission outside of the sacred walls. That is really what Paul is addressing to the Church at Galatia: Christian living. Before I begin this, I want to say something.  You do know that when the preacher preaches, he is also preaching to himself, don’t you?  So let’s dive in.

Who are we as followers of Jesus?  What controls us?  Are we controlled by others?  Do we have “self-control”?  Many of life’s goods and evils come from the issue of control. As we approach the day we celebrate American “freedom,” it behooves us to ponder what it means for us as Christians. .  This morning we are going to talk about what God means by “control” and what the Devil means by “control.”  Many who live in the “flesh” or natural sinful nature are in bondage, not in Christ’s freedom.

What controls us? Control is important because within it is the concept of “submission.” No one likes to be controlled.  When we think of “control” we often think of “oppression”.  Oppression is why the first pilgrims came to this country.  Submission and oppression are not the same thing. 

Submission is a word of power because only the person being asked to submit can do so.  Oppression is one being forced against the will.   Submission is to come under THE MISSION of God in Christ.  It is to become world-makers, kingdom-builders for the sake of God in Christ.

It is the setting of our individual and collective faces, not toward Jerusalem as Jesus did, but towards the living out of our Christianity in the world. In baptism and salvation, that is who and me are in the Lord.

God does not oppress those he calls.  He is Lord but he is also: dear, dear Father. He respects human being’s rights so much that he will protect our right to go to hell if we want. God offers what he offers out of love.  It is not for God to fulfill his needs that God says, live by the Spirit but for our good. 

Most in this world, who desire to control others, do it for something that is not for the other person, or for some greater benefit to others, but is somehow for themselves. Some have been hurt in the past and believe that unless they control others, they will be hurt again. Some learned the behavior from others.  God did not put us here to “control” our spouses, our friends, our children.(which doesn’t mean not making your children mind). A good rule of thumb is not to try to “control” that for which we are not responsible or accountable. .  Then let us seek to exercise authority with love and self-less concern.  This is our commission from Jesus.

If in this world, someone is controlling us, and someone is currently trying to, as lovingly as we can, we should try to confront that person, firmly and not allowing ourselves to be controlled.  If we do not, we become as guilty as the one controlling us.  I think we know where control ends up: anger, resentment and ultimately bitterness.

Now, what is the remedy for our Christian walk? If we wish to have favor with God and enjoy the benefits of our salvation in Jesus Christ here on earth, we will seek to submit ourselves to being controlled by the Holy Spirit. Each week most of us pray or sing Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  Do we realize that this includes our becoming as Jesus Christ is? Do we offer ourselves to God as a living sacrifice and then when God comes to bring some pain, some change, something in our lives that will require of us a thimbleful of “submission” do we say, “NOooooo GOD !”  or do we set our faces to accomplishing the goal as Jesus did for us and winning the prize as children of our Father in heaven, as brothers and sisters of Jesus Christ. That is who we are!

Commitment to Jesus and the kingdom of God call for sacrifice and honestly, few even in the Church of Jesus Christ seem able to “cut it.”We don’t like sacrifice.  Sacrifice is painful: pain suffering, eventual death.  To willing embrace such a calling is beyond our comprehension. The only problem with a living sacrifice is that it can crawl off the altar, and isn’t that what we too often do? This brings us to the sacrifices we are called to make. When the pain of our human nature begins to free the rub, what do we do? They all involve our natural responses. But the sacrifice Christ calls for is for our human wills. The “be reasonable, do it my way” we practice at times has no place in that context, but that is not who we are in Jesus!  

Today, St. Paul calls out the “works of the flesh”. Skip the first four and the last three because those are what we usually think of. Of course most of us do not do these or are not tempted to do these, so that makes them much easier to use as battering rams to talk about all of those “other people” which of course, we always believe that we are not.

Notice the list:¨idolatry: that’s not worshipping a statue, it’s making anything of more importance than God!! Witchcraft? come on Paul.  What is he talking about?  Not the pointed hats and the brooms.  The Greek word is pharmakia, sounds a bit like pharmacy doesn’t it. Giving ourselves over to be controlled by something other than our minds and wills is what it is. about.  but “hatred” (of anything other than evil), discord (being a trouble maker, turning others against one another), jealousy (which usually manifests itself in talking badly about others whose position we fear or envy) fits of rage (I don’t suppose we know the power of a “rage-a-holic...however, people around you are controlled by the fear of when you might “go off” again), selfish ambition (controlling to get a position that is for some need we think we have) dissensions (dividing people into “us” and “them” and actively through gossip or  backbiting and undermining another) and finally factions (that means causing strife in the body of Christ or anywhere for that matter, sowing the Devil’s seeds in thought, word and deed.)  Many times it is because someone does something we do not like or hurts us we form a faction. 

Do we confront that person and say, “when you did this, I felt this way?”  NO!  That would require too much effort and potential pain (and I might add, MATURITY!)  No, rather we make up our mind that this person is like “this” or “that”.  We make a judgment, without all the facts mind you.  But we think that we can read their minds!  That is why God said: “judge not, lest ye be judged, for with the same judgment that you judge others you will be judged.”  Do we keep this to ourselves? Of course not, we’ve been wounded, so we go to this person or that person, saying something negative about this or that person or just saying what will leave a little doubt in the other person’s mind about that person’s character.  We had might as well put it on the evening news! . 

We NAIL JESUS CHRIST TO THE CROSS AGAIN AND AGAIN!  But Paul said today in the readings, “those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Notice what Paul says about these things: if you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.   So I say, live by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. (vss. 15 & 16)   “Biting and devouring each other” Paul?  Don’t you think that’s a bit over the top? How farfetched?  Don’t know for sure, but I did hear about the family who left church only to have the priest for lunch!

The Devil wants to control our mouths.  Unfortunately many of us “submit” to that control because it feeds out flesh.  It is so hard not to spread gossip.  Gossip of course need not be a false rumor, gossip can be the truth, but it involves something that we are not given the responsibility for by God or humanity. Do you like to talk about other people?  We need to watch out.  Some of us this morning need to cry out to God for forgiveness and help with our mouths including the preacher. If we move one verse up we read the words which should be the mark of our faith: The entire law is summed up in a single command: "Love your neighbor as yourself..”You see, that is who you are.  That is who I am in the Beloved, Jesus Christ.

Jesus said, “the truth shall set you free”, (Jn.8:32) but that of course is only true if you believe the truth and act upon it.  I made a serious mistake when I first became a priest.  I assumed that people gave a “DARN” about what the Bible said; that they wanted to follow Jesus Christ!  How many of us ask before we act, “would this please Christ?”  Satan tries to find a wound, usually an emotional wound, to enter a life, especially if that life has potential for God.  We must  take care how we respond.  Do not reward evil for evil but as St. Paul said, “overcome evil with good.”(Romans 12:21)  Satan doesn’t know what to do with that.  It is so against our flesh and his.  If you want to really “get” the Devil, when some sins against you, praise God and show love to the person who hurt you.  Join with the Spirit. Submit to the Spirit and find the light of God beginning to shine through you and all of your works and the joy of God’s salvation. St. Paul wrote: “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self‑control.” This is true freedom and that is who we are.

In the collect we prayed: Almighty God, you have built your Church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief cornerstone: Grant us so to be joined together in unity of spirit by their teaching, that we may be made a holy temple acceptable to you…our goal, the challenge of the Christian way of walking and living.  May Almighty God grant us the grace to accomplish his purposes in and through us that we may live as those who God has made us to be in His Son. .

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.  AMEN