October 10, 2004 – Nineteenth Sunday After Pentecost – Father Barry Woods

FIRST READING: Jeremiah 29: 1, 4-7

PSALM: 66: 1-8

SECOND READING: 2 Timothy 2: 8-15

GOSPEL: Luke 17: 11-19

"Get up; go on your way; your faith has made you well".

Almost 35 years ago now, I graduated from the one true Episcopal Seminary in Virginia – truly catholic, truly evangelical, truly reformed. The rector will disagree, but do not listen to him. He is wrong.

35 years ago, almost, I graduated from that place and was hired – we called it "called" – I was called to be the fourth member of the clergy staff at All Saints Beverly Hills. As the new kid on the block and as the junior member of the staff, I was only asked to preach very seldom, about every six weeks, if I was lucky. And so, because I was preaching so seldom, and because I still had good study habits from Seminary, and because I still had some pretty good language skills, my preparation for those infrequent sermons included reading the texts in their original Hebrew and Greek versions. I was pretty good at it. I could read, at that time, most of the Greek New Testament almost as quickly as I could read it in English, and my Hebrew skills were also pretty top-notch; and so I could read at least some of the Old Testament fairly rapidly also. But the point was that I had the time to prepare sermons using and going back to the original texts. Then, I left All Saints Beverly Hills and a four-member clergy team and became the lone rector of a parish in Santa Maria, California; and, all of a sudden, instead of once every six weeks, I was preaching three times a week. There was no time for all of that preparation, and, gradually, my preparation dwindled and dwindled and dwindled until, finally, I dealt only with the English texts. Because of all that time that has passed, my language skills have become poor, at best. When you don’t use a gift, you lose it. Right? But, yesterday, I decided, what the heck! So I got out my Greek New Testament, and I dealt with the Gospel lesson for this morning and spent some time just going through the Greek text. And so, because I did that, this morning, you are all going to get a Greek lesson. I will give you a moment to get out your Greek New Testaments and your notebooks and your pencils. . . . .

I found myself focusing on two words in that Gospel lesson. The first word I focused on was the one that is translated, "Go on your way". The Greek word is "poreuou". Do you want me to spell it for you? It is Pi, Omicron, Ro, Epsilon, Upsilon, Omicron, Upsilon. (The gal who does the transcribing of these sermons is going to be very upset with me!) "Poreuou".; In my research into what this word means, I found that it is most often used to mean not "go on your way," but "go forward." "Go forward." The second word that I focused on was the word that is translated "made well," and that Greek word is "sessoken," and it comes from another Greek word called "Sozo." That verb, most often or almost always, does not mean "made well," but it means "made safe." And so, this morning, I offer to you, not a better translation than the one we have before us this morning, but a different one. My version of what Jesus said to that tenth leper long ago is this, "Get up; go forward; your faith has made you safe."

There are a lot of words in the English language that have tremendous power, at least for me, to stir emotions and feelings and old associations – words like love and home and liberty and peace – words with tremendous power, and one word in the English language that, for me and maybe for you, has tremendous power to stir emotions and feelings is the English word, "safe." When you think about it, most of what we do every day can be said to be trying to make ourselves safe – safe from cold, safe from heat, a safe place to sleep, a life that is safe from deprivations of all kinds, a nation that is safe, a world that is safe – so much of what we do and lavish our attention, our time, our energy, and our goods on is to make us safe. But, despite all of that – despite all that we give to trying to make ourselves and our loved ones and our world safe – despite all that we do, we are not safe. A senior executive in a company can decide to save a few bucks, and a person loses their job; and all that they thought was safe is no longer safe. One of our children can, by accident, choose the wrong friends, and, all of a sudden, they are no longer safe from the ravages of addiction, violence, and all the other things that make life unsafe. And, no matter how we struggle – and this is not a political statement – no matter how we struggle to make this country safe, we are not safe; and, all over the world, for the retched masses of Latin America and Africa, for whom safe is only a dream. So, despite all that we do and all the attention we give to being safe, we are not safe. And I don’t say this to alarm anybody or scare anybody; it is just true. Things that we depend upon to keep us safe wind up not being dependable, and things beyond our control turn safe into not-safe.

The question this morning then, I guess, is how can we be safe in a world that is not safe? I wish I had some kind of magic formulas to make your life and my life and the life of this country and the life of this world safe. I wish I knew – God I wish I knew. I wish somebody knew. But I only know one thing. I only know that the only safe thing that I can think of is my relationship with my God through His Son, my Savior and Lord, Jesus Christ, and, so, the only thing I know to do to try to be safe in an unsafe world is to live the life of faith – faith in the God who loved me; faith in His Son, who restored me to a close and loving relationship with that God; faith in the Holy Spirit, who continues to bring the Presence of God and His Son into my life every day; faith in the promise that, someday, Jesus will come again, and the world will indeed be safe.

That is all I know how to do to try to be safe in a world that is not safe, and that might not sound like very much this morning. But, you know what? For 2,000 years, millions of Christians have been living in an unsafe world. They have been beaten down by all of the uncertainties and all of the things that can threaten our safety and that can turn safe into unsafe. For 2,000 years, they have been living in that world, and they have been living the life of faith. They have been getting up and going forward, and their faith has made them safe.

Now, this morning – it is almost always the case in a congregation this size that someone has come through that door this morning feeling not-safe. Maybe it is the loss of some job or some physical possession – something they thought would keep them safe. Maybe it is the loss of a loved one – some relationship that they thought was safe. Maybe it is some devastating illness that makes them no longer safe. I don’t know if that is true this morning, but, usually, it is. Someone comes through that door feeling not-safe, and they come here, and they look for something safe. And, once again, I do not have magic answers and formulas for you, that person, if you are here. I have no words, no nothing to tell you to make your life safe, or the lives of your loved ones safe, or the life of this nation safe, or the life of this world safe. I have no answers about how to make all that safe, but I still say to you this morning – you have come to the right place, because, in this place, you are surrounded by hundreds of people striving to live the life of faith, striving, however, difficult it may be, to get up, and to go forward, because their faith has made them safe.

I wish we all had more to offer each other this morning to make this world and our lives and the lives of our loved ones safe, but, unfortunately, we cannot change very much of the world, and we cannot turn some switch and make what is unsafe, safe. All we can do is to hear and follow the words of our Lord that He gave to that tenth leper long ago:

Get up; go forward; your faith has made you safe.

10-17-04 - TWENTIETH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST – FATHER BARRY WOODS

FIRST READING: Jeremiah 31: 27-34

PSALM: 119: 97-104

SECOND READING: 2 Timothy 3:14 – 4:5

GOSPEL: Luke 18: 1-8

There is a lot of different stuff going on in the Propers this morning. We have the collect for the day, where we pray that God will keep us steadfast in our faith as we face the world. In the first lesson this morning, we have that glorious passage from Jeremiah, where he looks forward to a time of a new covenant, a deeply internal one, written on our hearts, and not on pages of parchment or tablets of stone. We have the Psalm this morning, which is a hymn of praise to the Law. We have the second reading, which is Paul’s instructions to Timothy about the use and the great value of the sacred Scriptures. And, finally, in the Gospel, we have Jesus’ parable of the unjust judge, which encourages us to be always, constantly and diligently, in prayer. We have these four things going and an incredible plethora of richness for a preacher to choose from, and you will be very sad to hear this morning that I have chosen to spend a few moments talking with you about the Bible.

Perhaps some of you remember it. If you are a life-long Episcopalian, once you were confirmed, you graduated from Sunday School and no longer had to deal with the Bible. And, for some of you, you probably may not even recall where it is in your home, and you may not even have one anymore. It is something about our denomination – it is just this huge blind spot for us, and I do not know what to do about it, but I can start this morning by reminding all of us of a few things about the Bible.

These reminders this morning are what I consider to be fairly mainstream Anglican teaching about the Scriptures. Now, I may be wrong. I don’t propose to speak for mainstream Anglicanism, but I believe that what I want to remind us of this morning is mainstream Anglican teaching about the Scriptures.

The first thing that we can remember this morning is that the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are a history. They are a history of the revelation of God. It is an historical account. From beginning to end, the Bible is an historical account of God revealing Himself to a small group of people in a very limited geographical area of the country, at specific times, over about a thousand years. That is what the Scriptures are. They are an historical record of the revelation of God, and, as history, it is subject to many different interpretations. All written history is subject to interpretation. I don’t know how many of you are baseball fans or Yankee fans. If you are a Yankee fan, just don’t let me know about it, O.K.? If you are a Boston fan, well then you can just cry with me this morning. I don’t know if you follow what happened, but, last night, the Yankees really thumped Boston, 19 to 8. It sounds like a football game! 19 to 8! And so, this morning, there are written accounts of that history, and can you imagine the difference between the Boston papers and the New York papers as they recount that event? I mean, if you read those two accounts, you might think it was two different events, as the interpretations would be so different of that one event. And that is the way our Scriptures are. They are an historical record, but they are written from a perspective; and that perspective is that God was acting in those events, over that period of time, to love and rescue His people. That is the assumption that lies behind all of that history.

So, the Scriptures are an historical record of the revelation of God. They are a history of the revelation of God, but they are not revelation; and this is a key part of Anglican teaching and thought about the Scriptures. The Scriptures are the record of the revelation, but they are not the revelation themselves – we do not worship the Scriptures – and that is a very important part of our belief as Anglicans. Some denominations do, and I am not here to take them to task for it; but we do not worship the Scriptures, we worship the revelation that they record.

And then we come to the third thing to remind ourselves about this morning, with respect to the Scriptures, and that is that they are inspired by God. Now, let me tell you what I think most Anglicans believe when we say the Scriptures are inspired by God. I believe that what we believe is that, one day, God decided that He needed a book of words that would be His Word to the world; but, when He looked around to try and find somebody to write down these words, all He could find were human beings. And so, He inspired them, and He got what He wanted. He inspired the biblical writers to put down these words, and God got exactly what He wanted – plus some stuff. He got the definitive record of God’s dealing with the human race through the nation of Israel and through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. He got the definitive words about all of that, but then He got some other stuff, also. I ask you to look at First Corinthians. If you want to see an example of what I am talking about, look at First Corinthians, where, for twelve chapters, Paul spells out – in the most powerful words I can think of – he spells out the absolute centrality of the Cross of Christ in God’s scheme for human salvation. And the words are absolutely perfect and powerful and wonderful, but, sprinkled in those twelve chapters are some real confusion over speaking in tongues and some absolute nonsense about the role of women in the Church, and then he goes on for a few verses trying to remember whom he baptized and whom he did not. And so, when I say that the Scriptures are inspired by God, it is true. We have the definitive language for our faith, but we have some other stuff, also. The job of the people of God is to use Holy-Spirit-filled reason to decide which Scriptures are true for all times, in all places, for all people, and which are not. That is one of the jobs of the people of God. Now, we don’t do it politically, with political pressure (ideally), and we don’t do it without prayer. It is not just reason. It is Holy-Spirit-enlightened reason, but, through the operation of the Holy Spirit, continuing on in the lives of His people, you and I have to decide, through the Holy Spirit and through prayer, which Scriptures are true forever, in all places, at all times, for all people, and which are not. That is one of the jobs of the people of God.

So, that is the end of my little talk about the Bible, and, now, so what? We all know that, right now, today, the Episcopal Church and the worldwide Anglican communion are in a bit of a brouhaha, and the brouhaha has to do, in its essence, with the nature of human sexuality. There is going to be a whole lot of talk about it, starting tomorrow, as the rector warned us, and there has been a lot of talk about it in the past, and there will be in the future, a lot of argument and brouhaha over the nature of human sexuality. In all of that argument, every one will be talking about the Scriptures, and you and I – if we are going to get through this time, and if we are going to help our friends get through it, and if we are going to answer the questions that will come to us from our non-Anglican friends – you and I had better be very comfortable with the idea that no one, or hardly anyone, in this argument, is arguing about what Scripture says. There is widespread agreement in all of the factions of what Scripture says. Where we start to disagree, and where we need prayer and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and where we need to wait for the Holy Spirit to reveal to us the truth, is not in what the Scriptures say, but in whether or not those passages of Scripture are true for all times, and in all places, and for all people, or whether they are not – whether they were so historically conditioned by their time that they lack validity for our time. That is where the argument will center, or where it should center, and I am not here to tell you where to come down on that argument. I am not here to take the sexuality Scriptures, one by one, and go through them and tell you what I think. I am not even sure what I think most of the time! I am going to wait for the Church to decide, and, while we wait, we must understand the true nature of this debate. It is not about the authority of Scripture, and it is not about what Scripture says. It is about whether these Scriptures are true for all times, in all places, and for all people, or whether they are not.

There are so many things going on in all of the Propers this morning that it is very, very fitting that the final Proper, the Gospel for this morning, talks about prayer. Prayer is the only way we will resolve and get through all of this, as we pray that the Holy Spirit will enlighten us about the Scriptures. So, if you don’t already keep the Episcopal Church and the Anglican communion in your prayers, you better start; because the days and months ahead are going to be tough, and we need to pray, each and every one of us, that the Holy Spirit will lead us – as it always has – into all truth.