Category: Sermons

Sermon
By Rev. Robert Shearer
Christmas I • December 27, 2020
Isaiah 61:10-62:3 • Psalm 147 • Galatians 3:23-25, 4:4-7 • John 1:1-18

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

“In the beginning was the Word.” So begins the Gospel of John—very similar to the beginning of the Hebrew Scriptures. It is a reflection of the beginning of the Book of Genesis which says, “In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth, the earth was a formless void and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters.”

So both opening verses are about creation, the beginning of all things, the Big Bang, if you will. But how does the act of creation work? What is the mechanism, so to speak, by which something gets created?

In both Genesis and John, it is speaking that generates creation. It is through speaking, through the Word, that something comes into being. It is a word—the Word—that creates.

You can see this in real life. For the most part, we are in the middle of things. As a small child, around the ages of one or two, we begin to notice that we are a somebody, someone different from Mommy and Daddy. And we notice that all that surrounds us was there before we were. In a world of “beginning, middle, and end,” we show up in the middle of things.

Later, we notice that things really do end. A birthday party that was such fun ends, and we are aware of loss—losing the fun, and the birthday, and the party. We were in the middle, and then it was over and we were at the end.

How about the beginning? Well, someone spoke. They said, “We should have a birthday party. Let’s do it!” Someone speaks the Word. Before any real thing exists, the thought, the idea, the possibility has to be born. And that requires the Word. It is speaking that generates being, and out of the being that has been generated, action turns the possibility into reality.

Certainly this is true of this parish church of ours. 150 years ago, this church did not exist. The town was just a country retreat for people living in New York. Eventually a minister from the City who summered here thought to himself, “We should have services in Fort Lee.” So he invited a few people into his living room on a Sunday morning, and the church became a reality. But first, it started with his word, with the possibility spoken to others—just an idea at first, but then made concrete by inviting people to his living room services.

John continues, “… and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He is indicating that words become independent of their speaker. Our word issues forth from our mouths, and once spoken, they seem to have an independent life, separate from the speaker. We all know the experience of having said something unfortunate—once spoken, we cannot call the words back. And we know the independent power of speaking something that empowers or comforts another—it seems to accomplish its work all by itself, once we speak it.

So it is with God. The Word, John says, was “with God,” that is, separate and independent of God. And yet that word was God’s expression and in a real sense “the Word was God.”

All this is interesting—our words create possibilities and God’s Word does the same. Both for God and for us, we are able to create through language, by speaking a possibility, by bringing something into being that was not there before we spoke.

What is amazing to me is what John says next: “…the Word became flesh and lived among us.” This Word that God spoke in creating everything that exists, this Word came into flesh and blood, Jesus. And he lived in our midst—the Greek word at its root means “he set up his tent among us.”

So what? This is always a great question. So what difference does this make? So what does it mean for you and me?

Since we have been adopted into God’s household and made heirs of him; since we have put on Christ and become his successors in doing powerful things; since we no longer have to labor as victims of our circumstances—since all this, we are powerful beyond any of our expectations.

Thanks be to God who has made us his children and endowed us with the power of the Word.

Amen.

Sermon
By Rev. Robert Shearer
Christmas Eve • December 24, 2020
Isaiah 9:2-7 • Psalm 96 • Titus 2:11-14 • Luke 2:1-20

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

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light,” says Isaiah this morning, and he goes on, “those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined.”

It seems that an instance of this phenomenon of light shining in the midst of darkness has come upon us during our Covid-19 pandemic. In the middle of the pandemic, with the winter surge killing thousands upon thousands, sequestered in our homes and restricted from much movement, it has been looking pretty dark indeed.

And then comes the news of a vaccine—two or more, in fact—and the possibility of ending the pandemic in six months or so. It is as though a light has been shined upon us. So we lighten-up, get a bit less serious, a little better able to cope with our increasingly complex and worrisome world.

This is the heart of the Christmas message—that when it is darkest, a light can shine. A metaphorical light, of course, which applies to all sorts of conditions of humankind.

In the darkness—in he depths of alcoholism or a failed marriage; the death of a person most loved or a bankrupt business; a burned-down home or betrayal by a friend—into the darkness a light will come.

This is a promise, not just a hope or a “maybe.” It is a solid and unambiguous promise by God and his prophets.

“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us … he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace … and there shall be endless peace … The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.”

On this night, a couple of thousand years ago, in a tiny backwater country in the Roman Empire, in a stable with livestock crowding around, an infant child was born.

 who was to become the light of the world.

Amen.

Sermon
By Rev. Robert Shearer
Advent IV • December 20, 2020
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 • Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26 • Romans 16:25-27 • Luke 1:26-38

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Where does God live? If we were to look around for God where
would we find him (or “her,” or “it”—pick your favorite
pronoun). We would like to know God, to encounter God, to
enter his presence. But where?
We can see in the Bible that the established place of God’s
presence has moved around. In Genesis, God creates the world
from some place outside the world—in heaven, presumably. From
Adam and Eve onward, until Moses, God is a presence, but not
one located in any particular place.
With Moses, we find God in a burning bush, a shrub that burns
but is not consumed, and it is a holy place. For where God is to be
found, that place must be holy.
When Moses leads the Chosen People—slaves in Egypt—out of
their bondage, God orders that a tabernacle be made for his
presence to inhabit. The travelling Israelites lived in tents, so the
Tabernacle was also a tent that could be dismantled and moved.
The tent stayed with the people of Israel until the kingdom was
established under David. As we heard in this morning’s First
Lesson, God says to David in a dream, “I have not lived in a house
since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this
day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle.”
David desired to build a house for God, a temple. But in this
dream, God tells him that a son of his will build a temple, and that
he will have to be satisfied with having a great name for himself
and an established throne that will far outlive him.

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David’s son, Solomon, did indeed build the first Temple, and the
presence of God lived there, his throne on earth in the Holy of
Holies, the innermost room of the temple.
The Temple in Jerusalem remained God’s location into Jesus’ time,
but then a change began to occur. The Temple had been destroyed
and rebuilt two times, and about 40 years after Jesus death the
Romans destroyed the Third Temple and its place on Temple
Mount has remained vacant ever since.
The prophets had said that when Messiah comes, his name will be
Emmanuel. As you probably know, Emmanuel means “God with
us.” The first disciples discerned God’s presence in a human being,
in Jesus, so the location of God’s home shifted from a physical
place of “brick and mortar” to a human being.
Luke, in today’s Gospel reading, tells the story of how this
happened, this coming of God into human form, through Mary,
Jesus’ mother. It is an elaborate story, but the central point is
simple—God became incarnate in a human being.
And then, another shift took place as Jesus’ teachings took hold in
the Christian community of the First Century. St Paul says, “…do
you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within
you, whom you have from God?”
Each of us is the Temple now, and to look for God in a place is to
miss the point. For God lives in us, and we, each of us, are
Emmanuel.
But what about our churches, sanctuaries, cathedrals, and shrines?
Are they not God’s houses? What about our lovely Good

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Shepherd, which most of us are attached to and come to for the
experience of God’s presence?
I think such buildings do provide the opportunity to connect with
the Divine Presence. While the Temple is no longer one made of
stone and wood, but rather we are temples of flesh and blood,
most of us find the sanctuary a physical place where the encounter
with God takes place.
So. the residence of God has moved from outside creation to a
burning bush, and then to a Tabernacle tent, and then to the
Jerusalem Temple, and then to the person of Jesus, and finally to
the body of each of us, and the community of the faithful who
gather in the promise that Christ would be with us—whenever two
or three are gathered together.
God has, over the vast experience of generations of his people,
moved from the remoteness of being outside the Universe to the
most intimate places of human existence—into the lives of each of
us.
Thanks be to God for giving us his Spirit so that we can be Christs
for our generation.
Amen.

By Deacon Virginia Jenkins-Whatley

Sermon December 13, 2020

In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy
Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.
In the Webster’s dictionary, “patience” is described
as able to accept or tolerate delays, problems or
suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious.
“Be patient, your time will come.”
COVID is one of the most deadliest if not the
deadliest disease that has struck our country and
the world. We have been confined to our homes
and life as we have lived it has changed
tremendously. Despite the immediate change in
life, family, work and play we have been forced to
learn about patience.
Today is the third Sunday of the Advent season. We
have learned these past two Sundays about being
prepared, holding vigil, waiting and watching for the
coming of our Lord Jesus. He is to come at first for
his birth and then again for his second coming. We

may be surprised how taking a moment, waiting,
and being patient may help in our preparation.
The thought of Jesus’ coming at Christmas brings
joy and excitement with thoughts of family and
celebration . And we cannot wait! The thought of
Jesus’ coming to judge us, on the other hand, can
bring a fair amount of anxiety. For that we could
wait many life times.
Preparation for Christmas offers honest delight.
However due to COVID changes, we rely on
memories from before. Hope for the good times to
come again. Preparation for the second coming
offers a whole different preparation. It is about
living our lives as faithful covenant people,
following God’s commandments, loving one
another, praying and being penitent. Sometimes
patience and waiting seem to have no place in
either.
In the gospel reading this morning we learn who
knows. There was a man sent from God whose

name was John. He came as a witness to testify to
the light, so that all might believe through him. He
himself was not the light, but he came to testify to
the light.
Our excitement for this season of Advent is
building, but we are not being asked to return to an
old life, we are being called to an alternative life, a
new one, to a new place, a place of hope and
expectation. “Something’s coming,”
Last Sunday, John was identified for us in Mark’s
gospel as a baptizer. This Sunday, in John’s gospel,
his role has changed. Here John is to be a witness to
Jesus. Through John’s witness, the world will come
to know the presence of God in Jesus. Through
John’s witness, the world will come to know the
presence of the light to the world. The light in the
ancient world was a symbol for recognizing God and
life everlasting. In the New Testament, the light is
Christ, the light of the world who calls us out of
darkness into his marvelous light.

The good news this Christmas season is this
marvelous light has already entered into many of
us. Here, in our heart and soul, we have received
the light of Christ. Our entry point to this truth is
our baptism.
Baptizing babies, all dressed in white, doesn’t
appear to be so life changing on the surface.
Without it, however, we are lost to a world of
darkness. John warns us, “I am the voice of one
crying out in the wilderness, make straight the way
of the Lord.” Here is a clear and powerful critic of
our lost world of darkness and sin. John’s voice is
crying out to tell where he is and where we are also.
It is from our wilderness of sin that we are to make
straight the way of the Lord. Our baptism becomes
our entry way to making our life straight, making an
alternative lifestyle.
Our conversion to this new life will only be
successful through the steady, patient, intentional,
prayerful, and worship filled new life that we

Christians testify will draw us closer to Jesus and
indeed make us safe and joyous. That alternative
life is one grounded by scripture and enacted
through the tradition of the church. We have both
at hand here with us this morning.
The preparation we face today is one of living and
practicing this new life by remembering the
baptismal light that is alive in our very soul, then
living as if this truth makes a difference. Every step
we take in our preparation for the coming of the
Lord is a step toward a life dedicated to our new life
as an apostle, as a disciple, as one who loves Jesus
more than life itself. Every step we take in our
preparation, in our ministry, as beloved followers of
Jesus Christ, is a step to improve our baptism by
living with increasing hope, faith, purpose and
commitment to honor our calling as children of
God.
God’s Spirit will work where it will and accomplish
its purposes. But often what stands in our way is

our own impatience and our belief that the Spirit in
us cannot be stirred and that we cannot be opened
to new possibilities. When we hide our disbeliefs
and deny our impatience, we find ourselves
committed to the wilderness without the grace to
rethink our position.
It is vital and necessary that we have this Advent
season. It is our time to prepare ourselves for a life
with Christ. Isaiah 61:9 states that, “We are truly
the people whom the Lord has blessed. We are
blessed by God’s presence, by God’s intervention in
our lives, by God’s grace and love given to a people
who often fail to recognize it.”
John tells us that the One for whom we wait often
stands unrecognized. He often appears in
unexpected places and acts in surprising,
mysterious unexpected ways. What then are the
things that prevent us from recognizing this
miracle? If it is our hectic, busy lifestyles perhaps
then we may need to slow down. Being patient

should be enough to make us open our eyes to see
the miracle before us.
Indeed, something great is coming, something
beyond our wildest expectation is coming. These
days, we pray that it doesn’t get any worse.
The message of John is “maybe today!” And this is a
message worth waiting patiently for; this is a
message worth our preparation. Someone great is
coming, his name is Jesus.

By Rev. Robert Shearer
Sermon
Advent II • December 1, 2020
Isaiah 40:1-11 • Psalm 85:1-2. 8-13 • 2 Peter 3:8-15a • Mark 1:1-8

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
The Gospel according to Mark was the first Gospel to be written,
moving from the oral tradition—stories told within the Christian
community about Jesus and his teachings—to the black-and-white
page. Interestingly, it was not written on scrolls, but in a new form
with a new technology: the “codex,” or ordinary book that we are
used to nowadays.
Mark apparently was not one of the Twelve Apostles, but a
younger disciple associated perhaps with Paul and certainly with
Peter. Some scholars speculate that Mark’s Gospel was narrated to
him by Peter himself before his martyrdom in Rome. Maybe so. In
any case, Mark’s Gospel was the basis for two other Gospels,
Matthew and Luke and was written roughly thirty years after Jesus’
death and resurrection in about the year 62 CE. There is general
agreement that it was written in the city of Rome and reflects the
stories and memories current in that community.
Mark is not, strictly speaking, a biography of Jesus. Indeed, a First
Century church official commented, “Mark indeed, who became
the interpreter of Peter, wrote accurately, as far as he remembered
them, the things said or done by the Lord, but not however in
order.”
Instead of being an orderly historical biography, Mark’s Gospel is
intended to support Christians in their chosen life together. It is
intended to show the church—Gentiles, or non-Jews,
mostly—how the power of the Good News that Jesus proclaimed

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can help them in their daily life. As he says in his first sentence, it
is a telling of “the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”
Mark’s Gospel is written in simple “street” language, not the
elegant, educated Greek of Luke and John. His approach is
straightforward and direct. Mark probably was not a Jew, insofar as
he misunderstands some Jewish customs that no Jew would
mistake. He is a Gentile Christian writing for other Gentile
Christians, encouraging his fellow Christians who are just emerging
from Nero’s persecutions but whose lives are uncertain.
Even though not a Jew, Mark and his early Christian community
knew the Hebrew scriptures, and he saw the prophecy in Isaiah
being fulfilled. John the baptizer was the “one crying in the
wilderness: ‘Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight,’”
Straightening things out was a matter of confessing one’s sins and
repenting, of turning around.
Alcoholics Anonymous holds eight meetings each week at Good
Shepherd. The essence of their method for achieving a spiritual
awakening is in the Twelve Steps, twelve simple practices that lead
to wholeness. The Fourth and Fifth Steps are to “Make a searching
and fearless inventory of ourselves” and then to “Admit to God,
ourselves, and another person the exact nature of our wrongs.”
I asked a friend about his “spiritual awakening.” He is a long-time
member of AA, and he said his spiritual awakening began with this
searching moral inventory—a catalog of all the wrongs he had
done to others. He avoided this as long as he could, and then was
appalled at the number and severity of the wrongs he had done to
others. As with John the baptizer, his transformation began with
confessing his sins. He woke up. And then his life began to
straighten out.

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When our lives are straightened out, then Messiah can enter in
with power—a power much greater than any of us has on our
own.
In this Advent season of preparation for the coming of Messiah,
we have the opportunity to look again at our lives, to take a
“searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves,” to heed
John’s call to confess our sins. What is at stake is the presence of
the Lord, the entrance of Messiah into the lives of the people
around us.
Amen.

By Rev. Robert Shearer
Sermon
Advent I • November 29, 2020
Isaiah 64:1-9 • Psalm 80:1-7, 16-18 • 1 Corinthians 1:3-9 • Mark 13:24-37

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen. A person who is listening to another person propound upon
weighty matters, might ask, “Who has influenced this person’s
thinking? What are the sources, what is the background that
influenced this person’s approach to the world?”
For myself, if we are talking about my home, it is my mother who
has set the tone and background structure for me. If we are talking
about being a pastor, it was my first mentor, Reverend Donald
Smith who taught me most of what I know about being a pastor.
If we are talking about liturgy, it would be Canon Edward West of
St John’s Cathedral in New York and Fr Rick Fabian of St
Gregory’s in San Francisco.
But how about Jesus? What were his influences? The first person
was probably his mother Mary—she was an outlier, an unmarried
young woman who was pregnant and who showed Jesus how to be
a non-conformist, an outlier. Then Isaiah, the greatest of the
prophets in the Hebrew Bible, seems to have been Jesus’ major
traditional influence. And then John the Baptist, who was Jesus’
mentor and teacher, and whose rallying cry Jesus
adopted—“Repent! The kingdom of God is at hand.” At least, this
is what I see when I read the stories of Jesus in the Gospels.
Isaiah’s lesson this morning speaks of the intense personal
relationship between the prophet and his Maker. It is an appeal for
God to come down in all his terrifying power, surrounded by
earthquakes and fire—a God who is both loving and also terrible
in his anger at human sin—a God who hides himself and lets us

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suffer the consequences of our bad behavior. “Yet, O Lord, you
are our Father,” Isaiah says, “we are the clay, and you are our
potter, we are all the work of your hand. Do not be exceedingly
angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now
consider, we are all your people.”
This sounds very much like Jesus’ intense relation to his Father in
heaven. There is nothing casual or off-hand about the God whom
Jesus considered his Father. This God is both strict, demanding
that we love one another in word and deed, but also always
forgiving when we fail. The standard that God puts before us is
impossibly high, and yet he is gentle and forgiving when we fail as
we learn how to get through life under his rule. After all, as Isaiah
appeals to the Father, “… we are the work of your hand … we are
all your people.”
Advent, as you know, is the time of anticipation, a time of waiting
for what is to come, a time of “what-is-not-yet,” a time of “what
is-yet-to-come.” So, of course, Advent is the four weeks in
advance of the yearly remembrance of Christmas, the birth of
Jesus. But more importantly, it is a call to be awake to what is
possible, what could be, but what is yet to come.
This is a pretty good attitude to take toward all of our lives, all the
time. To live in anticipation of what is to come, whether terrifying
or comforting, is to be truly alive. With this Corvid-19 crisis, for
example, you and I can stay in fear and anxiety, dreading the
present condition in which we find ourselves. Or we can just take
measures to avoid risks and then anticipate what is to come—the
days when masks are no more, the days when we have the
opportunity to get a vaccination shot, the days when we can hug
each other and eat together.

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Even better, we can be open to the remarkable opportunities that
present themselves every day, chances to be of service if we are
awake to what we are presented with. And what Jesus says to us is
“Stay awake!” Keep your eyes open, he says, the eyes of your
mind, so that you see God as he appears in the form of a little
child, or an old lady, or a grocery clerk.
“Stay awake!” You cannot know when God will appear, or how he
will show himself. After all, the promise is that God will not stay
hidden forever. So, Jesus says, “Stay awake!”
Amen.

Sermon by Rev. Shearer
Christ the King • November 22, 2020
Ezekiel 34:11-16, 20-24 • Psalm 100 • Ephesians 1:15-23 • Matthew 25:31-46

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
“As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their
scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep.” God speaks this to
Ezekiel, the Prophet, and Ezekiel passes the Word on to us. This is
the work of a prophet—not so much to tell the future as to listen
for God to speak, and then to tell us what God has said.
So we are like sheep scattered on the hillside! This is not very
complementary description of us humans. But Ezekiel knew sheep
and he watched human behavior, and the similarity was
compelling.
I once had a parishioner who had a flock of sheep. She said they
were scatter-brained critters, subject to easy panic attacks, who
when frightened would run off in all directions. When they ran,
they might easily run off a cliff, or run so long that they contracted
pneumonia. They couldn’t even find water or pasture by
themselves, needing a shepherd and perhaps a sheepdog to lead
them to it.
Doesn’t this sound like a divided and confused America? We are
easily subject to panic and to division; we easily believe the
misinformation spread upon the Internet; we have trouble
following the leader, yet we yearn for a savior. We don’t do a very
good job of extending America’s extraordinary prosperity to all our
citizens, much less the rest of God’s world. We are like sheep
scattered on a hillside.

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But the promise is what is important. “I will set over them one
shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them and be their
shepherd.” David, by the time of Ezekiel, was a synonym for king,
similar to Caesar becoming a synonym for emperor—a personal
name becoming a general word for a leader. This is a promise of a
David, of a Messiah, a Christ, one who will reign over the people
with justice and who would bring prosperity and peace.
In today’s Gospel Lesson, Jesus says, “When the Son of Man
comes in his glory….” Son of Man? Who is this? Jesus never calls
himself the Messiah, the new David. Rather he calls himself son of
man which, in his native tongue, Aramaic, is the equivalent of
human being. It could equally be daughter of woman. He did not object
when Peter called him Messiah, but he did not call himself by that
title.
It seems to me that I’ve given you too many titles and names to
cope with—too complex for any use. I apologize for confusing
things. It really is much simpler than I have made it.
The savior of the world has many names and titles in the Bible, but
they all point to one person. David the king, Messiah the savior,
Christ the anointed one—they all refer to the same person, and
that person is the one that Jesus called the Son of Man, the human
being.
I think Jesus meant something special by this term, son of man.
He meant the whole and complete human being, the authentic
human who is without fault or blemish. He meant the righteous
human who completely and fully loves and cares for his fellow
humans.
Who can measure up to this standard? Jesus, of course, who was
without sin. But who else in the fraught history of human beings,

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who else? Not one that I could name, and certainly no one of my
acquaintance—including the man sitting in my chair.
Unless—unless by some miracle we could be made whole. Unless
we could be forgiven our faults and errors, our headstrong self-
centeredness. Unless we could be restored to our authentic
character as the children of God.
So it is a miracle that, whatever our fallen condition, we have been
made new beings, cleansed of the past and restored to full
membership in God’s family. Not once for all time, but again and
again as we stumble and are forgiven, as we fail and are restored.
And we then are allowed to reign with Jesus as fellow Messiahs,
brother and sister human beings who, when “I was hungry and
you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you
gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in
prison and you visited me.”
My brothers and sisters, I appeal to you to acknowledge your
brokenness and confess your sins. I invite you to accept the
forgiveness of God and your fellow human beings. And then you
can take your place with Christ the King as one who serves, saving
the world, one person at a time.
Amen.

Sermon
24 Pentecost • November 15, 2020
Judges 4:1-7 • Psalm 123 • Thessalonians 5:1-11 • Matthew 25:14-30

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
The stories and parables of Jesus in the Gospels only have value if
we can relate to them personally. This means some deep diving
into ourselves, looking for what the message for us might be. As
always, the stories of Jesus are illustrations of the nature of the
kingdom of God. Not Paradise or life-after-death, but God’s
kingdom in the here and now. The stories of Jesus are about how
we can approach living our own lives, in our own circumstances,
with our own gifts and with our own challenges.
Today’s story of the Talents begins with a recognition that we are
not all equal when it comes to what we have been given. We
certainly are all equal under the law in America. We certainly are all
equally loved by our Father in heaven. But that’s about as far as
equality goes.
Each of us has been born into different stations in life, different
qualities of upbringing, different kinds of families, different
interests, different abilities. And each of us has a
lifetime—however long or short that may be—in which to make
use of what have been given.
Remember that Jesus is not a moralist, telling us how to be good.
No, Jesus is a truth-teller. He is one who announces that we can
enter into the joy of the kingdom. Jesus “tells it like it is,” showing
us how life really works, and how we can enter into joy in the
midst of this difficult and fraught world in which God has placed
us.

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The first two successful slaves in the story took whatever they
were given and actively worked with it. They took risks with their
gifts, looking to make what they had been given even better. The
third slave, whom the master calls “wicked and lazy,” was afraid.
He was fearful of losing the one gift he had been given, fearful of
the anger of his master if he risked his gift and failed.
Fear of failure is a great lock on the gates to the kingdom of God.
Frequently in the Bible, whenever God shows up, or an angel
appears, the first words are “Fear not!” The wicked and lazy slave
was correct in knowing that he could fail. He was right in knowing
that failure carries punishments in the real world. His natural
reaction was fear; inherent in risk is the possibility of failure. But
his refusal to risk meant that his gifts were wasted. He buried
them.
So the clear message is that we would do well to take whatever we
have been given and take the risk of producing good out of them.
What have we been given at this point in our lives? Well, some of
us have been given great age. Some of us have been given
precarious health. all of us have been given a pandemic in which
out human herd is passing the virus around at a great rate, resulting
in increasing deaths—almost 250,000 at this point—and millions
upon millions of infected people. And we’ve been given a fragile
economy in which many of us are in trouble.
Of course, these are not our only gifts. Most of us here have a
great deal of wisdom, hard-earned over many years but
nonetheless a gift. Most of us have managed to be economically
stable. By the world’s standards, in which two dollars a day means
being out of poverty, most of us are in the one percent. And we
have been given skills, how-to knowledge of immense value.

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And we have been given other resources. We have Zoom these
days! We have email and messages and phones and TV. These are
profoundly valuable gifts for making a difference when in-person
contact is denied us.
The bottom line in Jesus story of the Talents is this: “To all those
who have, more will be given, and they will have an abundance;
but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be
taken away.” The challenge before us, you and I, is to not bury our
gifts for fear of losing what we have. The challenge before us is to
see what needs to be done for others, and to step out, knowing the
risks, and act on behalf of our Master, our Father in heaven.

Amen.

Sermon
20 Pentecost • October 18, 2020
Deuteronomy 34:1-12 • Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17 • 1 Thessalonians 21:1-8 • Matthew 22:34-46

In the Name of God: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
Matthew tells us about two distinct events in today’s Gospel
Lesson. The first is a test commonly asked of teachers in Jesus’
time. “Teacher,” they asked, “which commandment in the law is
the greatest?” This was a test for the rabbi’s knowledge of the
scripture, and there were a number of valid answers that rabbis
over the years had given.
The first half of Jesus’ answer is a quotation from the book of
Deuteronomy, chapter six, verses four through nine. The passage
begins with what is now known as the Shema, a prayer that is part
of every Jewish service: “Hear O Israel: The Lord is our God, the
Lord alone.” Then follows the passage that Jesus quotes: “You
shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your might.” These two verses were, and are,
known by every Jew, then as now, and are central to the faith,
theirs and ours.
What follows in Deuteronomy are instructions to keep this
command central: “Keep these words that God is commanding
you in your heart. Recite them to your children and talk about
them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie
down and when you rise. Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix
them as an emblem on your forehead, and write them on the
doorposts of your house and on your gates.”
You probably have seen a little box affixed to the door frame of
the houses of Jewish people. This is called a mezuzah, and it

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contains a scrap of paper on which this and a similar verse are
written. It is a visual reminder of this first and great
commandment. The house Jesus grew up in, and the houses he
visited certainly had such mezuzahs on their door posts. So it is no
surprise that Jesus replies to the question of which is the greatest
commandment with this quotation.
The second commandment is from the book of Leviticus, the
second half of chapter 19, verse 18: “… you shall love your
neighbor as yourself.” The full verse reads, “ You shall not take
vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you
shall love your neighbor as yourself.” So although the full verse
has to do with unforgiveness—holding a grudge and taking
vengeance—Jesus plucked the second half out of the verse and
made it a general principle.
Notice that the commandment refers to matters of the heart.
Grudges and unwillingness to forgive come from the heart, the
same place where love resides. Jesus is not alone is citing one or
both these passages from the Torah, the five books of origins and
laws in the Bible. Other rabbis of the time saw similar
interpretations. But Jesus sees them as central to his understanding
of the kingdom of God, to conforming oneself to the will of God
and to life in the kingdom.
The second part of Matthew’s lesson this morning is quite
different. Jesus sets up a controversy with the Pharisees that is not
very understandable to Twentieth-Century ears. So let’s walk
through it.
First, he asks the Pharisees who the Messiah is, “whose son is he.”
The answer was easy for them: a reading of the Prophets reveals
very clearly that the Messiah will be a descendant of David. The

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writers of two of the Gospels (Matthew and Luke) agreed, working
hard to make it clear that Jesus is a descendant of David. They
wanted to prove that Jesus is Messiah by right of inheritance.
Secondly, they all agreed that Messiah was the coming king who
would save Israel. So David’s descendant, his son (as it were), will
be the great messianic ruler. But how can the son be greater than
his father? No traditional Jew could allow such an interpretation.
Jesus left his listeners speechless, entangled in their own
interpretations of Scripture. But Jesus’ intent seems to be to throw
doubt on Messiah, that he needed to be the son of David. Nothing
more is indicated in this passage.
Here is what I think: First, Jesus understood well his mission to be
Messiah. Second, Jesus did not think his Messiahship had anything
to do with being a physical descendant of David; he got his
marching orders not from inheritance but from the Father’s call.
And thirdly, Jesus seems to be moving toward an understanding of
Messiah that is larger than any one person. His promise elsewhere
to his disciples was that we would do greater things than he was
capable of.
I think that Jesus expected his disciples, you and me, to take on his
mantle of Messiahship and to turn our attention away from
ourselves and toward saving the people around us. I think that
Jesus wants us to be other Christs, other Messiahs, and I think this
is what it means to follow Jesus.
Amen.

Sermon
18 Pentecost • October 4, 2020
Exodus 20:1-4, 7-9, 12-20 • Psalm 19, 37-45 • Philippians 3:4b-14 • Matthew 21:33-46

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

This parable, called the “Parable of the Wicked Farmers,” is very problematic for the scholars. For example, in this form as Matthew presents it, it is an “allegory,” not a parable. In an allegory, each character stands for some particular thing or person—the owner of the vineyard is God, the workers in the vineyard are the people of the Jewish nation, the representatives of the owner who were treated badly were the prophets, and the son and heir is Jesus himself.

But Jesus rarely, if ever, used allegories. They were a popular teaching tool in the First Century, but not one Jesus normally used. His parables made one central point, telling in a short phrase or even a story, one abstract message.

You probably are aware that Matthew had a copy of the Gospel of Mark in front of him when he wrote his own version of Jesus’ ministry. Luke also quotes Mark. So Mark is the earliest of the Gospels, and is the source for much that Matthew and Luke were able to relate. This story of the Wicked Farmers is now found in all three Gospels.

In Mark and Luke, as it turns out, this story is a parable, not an allegory. It has a single point, one that engages one’s curiosity as to what Jesus means to convey. In this morning’s telling from Matthew, however, it is turned into an allegory. So the chances are that Matthew is embroidering quite a bit.

A second problem is this: In this allegory Jesus identifies himself as the Son of God—something Jesus never did. The Early Church, including Matthew who gave us this version, did call Jesus the Son of God. But Jesus? Speaking about himself? Never. To make such a claim for oneself would qualify one for the looney-bin, or brand one as a charlatan; I am told that insane asylums contain many self-proclaimed Messiahs!

The point in the other version of Mark and Luke is this: The hardness of heart of the established leadership, by refusing to listen to the prophets (and Jesus certainly considered himself a prophet)—such hardness of heart condemns them to live outside the kingdom of God.

What is being rejected is not so much Jesus, but what Jesus came to proclaim. They were rejecting the Word of God and thereby were denying themselves the kingdom.

We are enabled to enter the Kingdom of God by our willingness to listen newly, by opening ourselves to uncomfortable truths, by forgiving others as God has forgiven us, by feeding and clothing the poor, and the like.

Should we reject Matthew’s version of the Parable of the Wicked Farmers? I think not, even though it probably does not reflect Jesus’ teaching accurately. What it does give us is an insight into the faith and teaching of the Early Church. Jesus’ disciples certainly did see him as the Son of God, worthy of worship and example to be followed.

We promised, when we were baptized, to “follow and obey” Jesus as our Lord. Following Jesus means different things to different people, for each of us hears that promise differently. What matters is the intention to follow and obey, and then to actively search out what is the appropriate way for us to fulfill the promise.

What is appropriate to a twenty-year-old will not be the same as a sixty-year-old. What following Jesus means for a working person will not be the same as what it means for a retired person. So it take continual discernment, continual listening to the Word, continual openness to hear what each of our missions in life might be at any particular stage in our lives.

In this, Jesus promises to be with us unto the end of the earth, certainly the end of our earthly life. For we have taken him on as our Lord, our Leader, and our Savior.

Amen.