Rector's Sermon - Sunday, February 29, 2004

First Reading	Psalm	Epistle	Gospel
Deuteronomy 26:1-11	91:1-2, 9-14	Romans 10:8b-13	Luke 4:1-13

    Joan Chittister, the Benedictine nun whose extensive writings some of you are familiar with, once wrote:

"How does a person seek union with God?", a seeker asked. "The harder you seek," the teacher said, "the more distance you create between God and you." "So what does one do about the distance?" "Understand that it isn't there," the teacher said. "Does that mean that God and I are one?" the seeker said. "Not one. Not two." "How is that possible?" the seeker asked. "The sun and its light, the ocean and the wave, the singer and the song. Not one. Not two."

    These words leapt into my mind and wouldn't leave, when I read today's lesson from Paul's letter to the Romans: beginning "The Word is near you, on your lips, and in your heart..." The Gospel lessons leading up to today have deliberately compared Jesus with Moses. Moses was the one who had brought the Covenant to the tribes of Israel. It was through Moses that God proclaimed to these former, insignificant group of slaves that God noticed and cared about them, and God was now offering them a great mission, with a purpose that would grow to universal proportions. God would be with them in their many struggles and would not desert them. At Mount Sinai, God announced through Moses, the closing of the distance between the divine and humanity.

    Jesus in his preaching around the Lake of Galilee amplifies this message; preaching and healing those in the culturally diverse villages around the Lake of Galilee and then going into the region of Samaria, the land of outcasts. On the hillsides, on the level plains, on the back roads, Jesus would proclaim, “God has come close to you. God's favor is available to you, whoever you are.”

    Paul, considered the great missionary to the Gentiles, followed in Moses' footsteps and in Jesus' example, by closing the distance between God and humanity. Paul was trained as a rabbi, under the tutelage of Gameil, one of the most famous rabbis of the time. Paul was likely about ten years younger than Jesus and was of far different background and outlook than any of the disciples from Galilee.

    After his conversion to Christianity about one year or so after Jesus’ resurrection and following a period of reflection, Paul set out on an extensive itinerary of journeys. It has been estimated that at that time about a sixth of the population of the Roman Empire was either Jews or gentiles who were connected to a local synagogue. There was usually a synagogue in every town of any size all around the coast of the Mediterranean. Paul did what many rabbis did, visiting and speaking to various groups of the synagogues. Judaism was remarkably varied, and in its early years, Christianity started off as being considered as one of the variations of Judaism of the early first century.

    Paul is the Christian missionary who took the universal vision of the prophet Isaiah and the inclusiveness of the Gospel, and attempted to apply it in the everyday life of the church. We read in Acts of Paul’s preaching in Athens, the intellectual center of the empire. We are all God’s children, Paul affirms, and God’s Spirit has been working among you for quite some time. You even have a niche for an unknown God, and that unknown God is the God of all, the true God, and the God of Jesus Christ. Paul was an unabashed universalist, who respected the best of local customs. Instead of degrading them, or forcing specific cultural customs down their throats, he incorporated indigenous history and philosophy into the Good News. Naturally, the bold liberalism of Paul made a lot of folks back in Jerusalem very nervous, and afraid Paul was watering down Christian belief, but it was Paul’s vision, which prevailed in the early church, even though the church has often wavered from it since.

    Paul applied the vision of equality and worth of humanity not only to non-Jews, but also to men and women, rich and poor, slave and free, and even married and unmarried. Paul likely sent shock waves through some when he asserted that in God’s eyes, the widowed and unmarried had as much worth as married people, and there was no need for them to feel they had to be married. Some today think Paul pushes celibacy too hard, but Paul needs to be read in the context of his society. Yet even before the four Gospels were published, Paul was preaching the universal vision of Christ, that in God’s family there cannot be male and female, Jew and Greek, slave and free, rural and city folk; all are one in Christ.

    Paul was both brilliant and temperamental; an educated Jewish rabbi and a Christian; a Roman citizen and a universal citizen; one who made great pains to be understood in the culture in which he found himself. He was always controversial, criticized in his own time for being way to liberal, criticized now in our day for being way too conservative. In some of his personal opinions, he said some things, which sound pretty reactionary to our ears, although most of his opinions were simply reflective of the prevailing customs, which virtually all in the early church would not have thought of questioning.

    Like all pioneers and visionaries, Paul was revising and dealing with particular situations as they occurred. He, more than any other early church leader, succeeded in defining what is essential for Christianity and how Christianity could relate to the larger gentile world. His legacy was of critical importance a few decades later as circumstances that no one could have accurately anticipated, pushed the center of the church out of Jerusalem into Rome.

    In closing I’d like to give a brief glimpse of the of the rich legacy Paul has given us, by reading a few short excepts from various letters:

“The harvest of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, fidelity, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law dealing with such things as these.”

“Love is always patient and kind; it is never jealous; love is never boastful or conceited; it is never rude or selfish; it is not resentful. It is always ready to trust, to hope, and to endure what comes.”

“We neither live nor die to ourselves. If we live, we live unto the Lord, and if we die we die unto the Lord. Whether we live or die therefore, we belong to the Lord. .... I am convinced that there is nothing in death or in life, in the realm of spirits or superhuman powers, in the world as it is or the world as it shall be, in the forces of the universe, in heights or depths-nothing in all creation that can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“For anyone who is in Christ, there is a new creation; the old creation has gone, and now the new one is here. It is all God’s work. In other words, God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding humanity’s trespasses over them, and God has entrusted to us the ministry of reconciliation.”

“Now you together are the body of Christ and each of you is a different part of it... For Christ is like a single body with its many limbs and organs, which many as they are, together make up one body. For indeed we were all brought into one body by baptism, in the one spirit, whether we are Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free, and that one Holy Spirit was poured out for all of us to drink.”

“All baptized in Christ, have all clothed themselves in Christ, and there are no more distinctions between Jew and Greek, slave and free, male and female, but you are all one in Christ Jesus. Merely by belonging to Christ, you are the posterity of Abraham, and heirs of promise.”

“Christ Jesus is our peace. Gentiles and Jews, Christ has made the two one, and in his own body of flesh and blood has broken down the barrier of alienation, which stood dividing them. So Christ came and proclaimed the good news: peace to those who were far off and those who were near by; for through him we both alike are linked to God. You are no longer aliens and strangers, but fellow citizens and members of the family of God.”

    Again, some words of Paul who even in letters nearly two thousand years old, helps close the distance between God and our hearts and brings the Gospel very near. What better way to begin our spiritual journey of Lent.

    And I offer this to you in the name of the Living God, Amen.