Isaiah 7:10-16
Romans 1:1-7
Matthew 1:18-25

The scriptures we just heard from Isaiah and Matthew are about waiting for a baby to be born, so that makes them perfect for today’s reading. It has always been hard to wait for Jesus to be born and Christmas to arrive. It was hard as a kid, because we wanted to be out of school and at our grandparents house so we could open our gifts. It is hard as a monk because we want all the extra work to be over so we can go to bed.

But Christmas takes time to get here because babies take time to be born. Life takes time – an entire lifetime. And we don’t know how things will turn out, either for babies being born or for our own life. We just have to wait, and unless we want the waiting to be torture, we have to trust – as Isaiah tells Ahaz and the angel tells Joseph. Everything is in God’s hands, so even though we might not like some of the short-term things that happen, we can be sure that in the big picture, everything will be ok. No need to worry about anything, ever.

Jesus will come – again and again, to ourselves and everyone else – and Christmas will break into our worlds, ready or not. And like the presents under the tree, sometimes we are in for big surprises when Jesus comes to us. Surprises are always full of tension and can make us happy as well as fearful. We never know what kind of surprise it will be when Jesus breaks into our lives, but since it comes from the all-good giver of gifts, we can always be thankful and know that in the long run, each surprise is in our best interest – so no need to worry about anything, ever. We just have to wait, trust, and work.   AMEN

Zephaniah 1:7,12-18
I Thessalonians 5:1-11
Matthew 25:14-30

Our scriptures this morning all touch on the topic of judgement day, or the day of reckoning, or the day of the Lord – whatever we want to call it. The basic idea is that we do things, and those things have consequences, and we will one day meet with those consequences. However, we don’t need to think of that happening in the future, because really, every day is judgement day (and therefore every day is the day of salvation, as well as the day of condemnation).

Everything we do effects everyone in the world, including ourselves. Our reading from Zephaniah talks about the bad effects of bad actions, while our reading from Paul adds mention of the good effects of good actions. Both writers do talk about a coming day of consequences, and how God’s justice and mercy play a roll in judgement day, and I do think they are right – God’s justice will heal all wounds, and God’s mercy will heal all wounds. However, we can cooperate with God’s grace and make the world a better place even before judgement day rolls around. We can do more good things and fewer bad things and so produce more good consequences and fewer bad consequences. We can make every day judgement day as we confess our harmfullness and take the harm back upon us, as well as humbly submitting our good actions to God and enjoying the benefits of those actions along with everyone else.

Every day can be the day of salvation, as well as the day of condemnation. Every day our actions effect everyone. And even though we are effected by the actions of everyone else (good and bad), we can do nothing about the actions of anyone other than ourselves. We can choose to do good rather than selfish actions, and we can choose to follow disciplines to foster those good actions (as well as to help us be more receptive to the grace God is always giving us to help us). We can choose how we react to the actions of others and the consequences they bring upon us, but we can do nothing to change anyone else, and so we can stop wasting time and effort to do so and spend that time and energy working on ourselves, allowing the grace of God to heal us of our selfishness and harmful actions.

As our gospel story tells us, we do not have to think we have a lot of resources to do good things. W e have all been given exactly what we need to do what we need to do to make the world a better place for us and for everyone else. We can’t do it all by ourselves, but working together, we can. That is why it is so important that, no matter if we think we have been given only one talent, or two, or five, we never stop doing good because we think we are unimportant or do not have what it takes to do any good for anyone. Even the smallest helpful actions, if done well and with good intent, produce good consequences, which help others do good actions, which have more good consequences, which help ethers do good actions, which have more good consequences. Like a snowball, it gets bigger and bigger, and yet it starts with our seemingly inconsequential loving action. Of course, the flip side of that is the fact that even our smallest selfish actions grow in effect until more people are harmed that we ever intended. Another word for that is “sin”, the wages of which is death.

It is not easy to be always mindful of what we are doing and why we are doing it, but it is necessary. It takes work to choose the path of helpfulness rather than the initially seemingly easy path of selfishness, but the work pays off, because in the long run, the selfish path brings only heartache, while the helpful path brings joy. So, we must live our lives and do our work with constancy – always doing the helpful thing no matter if it seems we never see the benefits, and no matter how tiring it becomes. The constancy itself will produce joy that helps us further on the path of good actions. And the most important thing to remember is the fact that it is by the grace of God that we choose to do the right thing in the first place. God’s grace is always there for us, but it is up to us to accept it and put it into action. Today is judgement day. Today is the day of condemnation, as well as the day of salvation. Every hour, every moment we have the choice of what to do. Every hour, every moment we can make life better for all, or worse for all. May we choose wisely.   AMEN

Isaiah 45:1-7
I Thessalonians 1:1-10
Matthew 22:15-22

Our scriptures today are about God using what we would consider unlikely agents to do his will: two pagan emperors and a young, struggling church congregation.

The first emperor we read about this morning from the prophet Isaiah is Cyrus the Great – head of the Persian Empire as it conquered many other nations of Asia and the middle east, creating what was one of the largest empires in history. One of the rival empires that Cyrus subdued was Babylon, and because of that, the Jews who were in captivity in Babylon were allowed to go home to Judea and eventually rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. By causing those things, Cyrus was seen as a servant of God, and in our reading this morning is even called the Lord’s anointed one, which in other languages is “messiah” or “christ”. Not only is Cyrus one of the first persons to be given the title of messiah and christ, one of his other titles was “king of kings” or in Persian “shah en shah”. So here we have someone walking around being called king of kings, messiah, and christ, centuries before the one usually associated with these titles, doing things shunned by the one usually associated with these titles. The Iranian tribes whom Cyrus was leading had gone through a religious revolution from the worship of many gods to the worship of one God – Ahura Mazda (Good Lord). Unfortunately, the worship of this good lord preached by Zarathushtra soon devolved into a belief in two opposing gods – a good one and an evil one. Apparently, neither of these two gods were the same one whom we recognize today as the creator, redeemer, and sustainer of the universe. As Isaiah records God saying to Cyrus: “I call you by your name…though you do not know me. I arm you, though you do not know me, so that they may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west, that there is no one besides me; I am the Lord, and there is no other.” So here we have Cyrus the Great Shah of Iran, being used to build an empire that will be an instrument for spreading the knowledge of God, all the while never recognizing or realizing the fact.

Then we skip five hundred years to the second emperor we read about this morning in the gospel story – Caesar (probably Tiberius Caesar). The caesars were also given a title normally associated with Jesus, namely that of “savior”. Unlike Cyrus’s titles, this one was not given to the Roman Emperors by scriptural authority, but rather by some of their own people, who sometimes worshiped them as gods. The Roman Empire did do many good things for most of the people it controlled, and some of the emperors were good rulers as well as good people, but many of the emperors took the worship offered to them as savior of the world a little too seriously, and scripture has little good to say about them. In the gospel story today, the question about paying taxes to the empire is answered by Jesus in a saying that is used a lot now as a defense of the separation of church and state: “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperors and to God the things that are God’s”. Some people go further and interpret the saying to mean that if they give the taxman his due and give God Sunday morning, then everything else is all theirs to do with as they wish.

But what we need to remember is that even though it was the emperor’s image stamped on the coin, the truth is that since we are all made in God’s image (including the emperor), it was really God’s image on the coin. So when Jesus told them to render unto Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God, he was really telling them that everything belongs to God, so everything – even the most crooked governments – belong to God, and so can be used by God to carry out his purposes (so God can use the Caesars just like he used Cyrus). It also means that since we are all made in the image of God – God’s image is stamped on us like the emperor’s image was stamped on the coin – then every part of our lives belongs to God, not just Sunday mornings. Every business deal, every family function, every interaction with other people or with nature: all belong to God, and therefor we should be careful how we treat the people and the world around us. We should treat them as the holy and beautiful things that they are, and we should treat them all, and ourselves, as God’s property.

The third specially chosen agents of God’s will that we heard about today are the Thessalonian Christians – our second reading was part of a letter from Paul addressed to them. It is not as odd to think of a church congregation carrying out God’s work as it is pagan emperors, but this church is not like the ones with which were are familiar now – with money and program committees. The church was new – only a few decades old at the most – not enough time to build up a bank account or an enrollment of rich members, and of course there were no denominational headquarters to give support. Instead, our reading mentions that they had only recently given up idolatry to become Christians, and they might have been the only church for miles around. If one reads the rest of the letter of Paul to them, as well as the other letter that follows, one hears about their struggles. They were being persecuted, although the letters do not say by whom. But even in the midst of persecution, their faith and joy was an example to others in the region, who were strengthened by the example. In almost every way, this young endangered church had less means to be an agent of God’s will than either Cyrus or Caesar, but the one thing they had was willingness, which is more valuable than the armies of Rome and Persia put together. The Thessalonian church wanted to do God’s will, and so was given the joy of doing it, while the emperors wanted to impose their wills on the world around them, and so were never really satisfied with what they accomplished.

So we don’t ever need to worry about being either unworthy or too weak to do God’s work – we just need to be willing. If we think we are unworthy, remember that if God can use emperors bent on having their way, then God can use us. If we think we are too weak, then remember that if God can use the young, inexperienced, endangered Thessalonian church, then God can use us. We must also be careful to never become proud or smug about being instruments of God’s will; we need to remember all the times throughout history when Christians have spread their own fear and hatred, rather than spreading God’s love and peace. Whenever that happens, God can raise up pagans to do his work, and will eventually even turn the hatred of us so-called Christians into something that can be used for good. We don’t always see how God does these things, but we don’t need to worry about it – God’s love will prevail, no matter how bad we mess things up. Saving the world is God’s job. All we need to do is be willing instruments and agents of God. It doesn’t matter how high or low is or rank, income, or education, or whether we are emperors or slaves – we all have the same status in the kingdom of God. We are Children of God and heirs to the throne of the only empire that will last. May we willingly spread the love, joy, and peace that are the foundations of that empire, and may we give all others and ourselves the respect that our common dignity as heirs to the throne deserves.   AMEN

Jonah 3:10-4:11
Philippians 1:21-30
Matthew 20:1-16

Jonah and Paul and the laborers we all heard about in our readings this morning all have work to do, but only Paul has the right attitude about it. In the first reading, Jonah is mad not only because he lost the shade bush he thinks he deserves from all his hard work, but also because his work helped bring about the salvation of Nineveh, and Jonah does not want Nineveh to be saved, because he thinks they don’t deserve it. The laborers in the gospel story are mad because others were paid as much as them, and the disgruntled laborers don’t think the others deserve it. In other words, Jonah and the laborers think they have earned good things because of their good actions, and the others have earned bad things because of their bad actions. They don’t care that the reason Nineveh has been wicked is because no one told them their deeds were bad until Jonah showed up; or that the other laborers have not worked as long because no one hired them until late in the day. All they want is to have their goodness affirmed and their backs patted while watching others suffer.

Paul takes a different attitude in our middle reading. He knows that if anyone deserves punishment, it is himself. He persecuted others whom he thought deserved punishment; he was like Jonah and the disgruntled laborers in that way. But Paul knows what it’s like to be confronted by one’s own evil deeds. He knows what it is like to be thankful for the chance to change and do good instead. Like the citizens of Nineveh, he was full of wickedness but did not know it until he was told about it, and like the idle laborers, he was hired late in life after spending too much time doing nothing of use. Like Jonah and the disgruntled laborers, he also knows he has rewards waiting for him for all the good he has done since his conversion, but he also knows the importance of continuing his work, rather than resting on his laurels. Unlike Jonah and the disgruntled laborers, he is glad to see others getting the same rewards he is to receive. He wants to give others a chance to change, just like Jesus gave to him, because he understands that his own life is only one thread in the story of God’s love and grace. Jonah and the laborers were thinking only of their own little piece of the pie – wanting their reward from God and content to let others go to hell. What they didn’t realize is that the greatest reward is the opportunity to help others escape their own pride and anger so that they can also find true joy in God.

Of course, we are a lot like Jonah and the disgruntled workers, and we need to be more like Paul. We tend to take a superior attitude toward those whom we think are not as deserving of God’s mercy as we are. Sometimes we play the part of the beleaguered missionary to what we consider the heathen world around us (that is to say; anyone with different opinions or habits than ourselves), and we do it with a superior attitude, when we should instead simply live our lives humbly abiding in God’s mercy, bringing God’s love, peace, and joy to our small part of the world with no self interested motives or expectation of reward or acknowledgment.

And of course, we are a lot like the citizens of Nineveh before their conversion and the idle laborers before they were finally hired and Paul before his conversion. We do not deserve salvation; neither did Nineveh, but God chose to save them anyway. We do not deserve the same reward as those who have done good deeds all their lives; neither did the idle laborers, but the owner chose to give them the full pay anyway. Like Paul, Jesus comes to us to turn us away from our chosen road to the hell we have made for ourselves, rather than to push us further down that road. We don’t get what we have been trying to earn all our lives of pettiness and greed, and we should be grateful for that. Instead, we get what God wants to give us, and God gives us nothing less than God’s own self. That self is complete love, forgiveness, and acceptance. We have no excuse to be upset when anyone else receives the same gift. Instead, we have every reason to be thankful and joyful that God does not give people what they deserve. We work to earn hell, and yet we are offered heaven. All we have to do is accept it.

The choice of accepting heaven or making our own hell comes to us everyday and every moment. Jesus is always trying to get our attention as we travel to Damascus to persecute others. Shade bushes will come and go, but Nineveh will always be full of people desperate to hear of God’s love and mercy. We will be smug in our own self-righteousness, and then be surprised on payday when others get the same amount of love that we do. May we be thankful for the shade when it comes, and let it go when it leaves. May we be thankful for the gift of heaven and leave behind the earned income of hell. May we walk the road to heaven with Jesus, along with all the citizens of Nineveh, and be grateful for their company.   AMEN

Isaiah 51:1-6
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

Many people have said many things about Jesus, and usually what is said is true: reformer, critic of the status quo, revolutionary, philosopher, kind man, good example, devout and pious prophet. Jesus is all those things (and many more), but the more we get to know him, the harder he is to describe. Maybe the reason for that is because the reality of who Jesus is is so different from our normal experience of others that we just don’t have the words, concepts, or ideas to describe who he really is. In our gospel story this morning, Peter makes an attempt to define Jesus, and he could so only in thoughts with which he was familiar. A “messiah” or “christ” or “anointed one” would have been familiar to Peter as someone who was chosen by God for a special task or kinglike position. “Son of God” would have been a slightly more bizarre concept, but there are hints of the term in the Psalms as someone (once again a royal person) who will carry out justice in God’s name.

We are still trying to say who Jesus is. Maybe one way to express the reality of Jesus is to say that he is the bringer of God’s own life to us – real life – and that all the prophets and teachers in the world can tell us what they think about God, but only in Jesus do we actually experience God. Jesus is God as a human. That description might make some people uncomfortable. Unfortunately, almost every attempt at defining the ultimate reality of Jesus throughout history has made someone uncomfortable, and that leads to refutations and anathemas and councils and more anathemas and sometimes executions and wars. Maybe we should just stop putting so much effort into talking about Jesus, and start living in Jesus, as Paul urges us in our second reading this morning. Theology and Christology are not bad, they can be helpful and good, but they are not the complete story.

Isaiah reminds us in our first reading this morning that God is the one who brings things to fruition, and God is the only stability in the universe. Its all about God. Maybe we can define Jesus only by living in such a way that we show our complete dependance on him rather than on ourselves as the source and sustainer of our lives. Jesus makes it clear in his response to Peter that Jesus builds his church – it is not our construct. Only the church that Jesus builds will stand against the gates of hell. Any facsimile that we try to produce will crumble in that situation. Our desires and wills must be transformed into the desire and will of Jesus in order for us to carry out his work of bringing God’s own life into the world around us. Any time we try to follow our own desire the result is only wheel-spinning.

But maybe we are back now to the beginning of the sermon; in order to know the will and desire of Jesus, we must know who Jesus is. Fortunately, we have the scriptures left to us from the people who saw him closest – we can read and ponder them and compare our findings with others. We also have God’s Holy Spirit in each of us – the Holy Spirit will pray through us and show us more about Jesus if we only give the Spirit room in our lives. We have others in the church around us whom we can observe from their attempts to live in the will of Jesus. We also have the table up here where we gather to be fed by Jesus from his own self. All of these things will teach us more about Jesus and transform our own lives into his, but we must take advantage of the opportunities we have been given – it is our choice. If we do so, then slowly but surely we will know more of and more about Jesus. We may never be able to put what we know into words, but maybe we can put it into actions, and that is what really matters. We don’t have to give up the attempt to theologize (our words can be of great help to others trying to know Jesus), but we do need to make sure that our actions reflect our words. They won’t always, but with God’s help, they will slowly start to match up more and more.
Who do we say that Jesus is? Will we ever fully know, and can we ever fully know? All we can do is our humble best, and allow others to do the same. No one will be completely correct, and we can all learn from each other.   AMEN

Isaiah 55:1-5
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21

Some people say that the real miracle in our gospel story this morning is not the fact that the food multiplied, but rather that the example of sharing the loaves and fishes prompted other people in the crowd to give up the food they had been hoarding and share it also, so that everyone was fed. Others will explain the miracle by saying that being with Jesus was so satisfying that even the tiny amount of food that was shared (five loaves and two fishes divided amongst thousands of people) was enough for all those people. Maybe those explanations are true. I tend to think that strange things happened when Jesus was around, so I have no problem with any explanation, even the traditional one of the loaves and fishes multiplying enough to feed all the people and still have leftovers. It is true in our own lives that whatever we have, if we are willing to give it to God, becomes enough for us and for the people around us. When we think we don’t have enough strength or courage or time to go on, we are absolutely right. So we can choose to give up, or we can choose to give what we have to God and allow God to satisfy our needs in ways that we could never have imagined. We can keep pretending to possess things to keep us secure, or we can realize that we are only temporarily given stewardship of things, and by acknowledging that all belongs to God, we can all share what we have so that no one is in want.

But it is obvious we don’t do that. We need to be like the crowd in the gospel story – we need to let Jesus satisfy us. Instead, we try being satisfied by everything else, and while everything that God created is good, it is not God. If we let God satisfy us, then everything else is gravy – wonderful when we have it, but quite alright if we don’t.
Isaiah talks about this same matter in our first reading this morning: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?” He is wondering why we waste time hoarding things while God is offering so much more for free. Once again, the things are not bad – it is how we substitute them for God that is the problem. Isaiah is trying to get us to listen to wisdom when he says: “Incline your ear and come to me, listen, so that you may live.”, and in so doing echoes what the monks know so well from the beginning of Benedict’s Rule: “Listen with the ear of your heart.”

Listen to the truth that only God satisfies. We can never be full of God, and we will always want more, but it is a life-giving hunger, rather than a life-killing greed for things. Like the crowd in the gospel: we can share, we can be satisfied with little, we can allow God to multiply what we have – whatever the miracle really was doesn’t matter, because the crowd allowed Jesus to satisfy them in whatever way he knew best. May we allow God to satisfy us. May we incline the ear of our hearts and live.   AMEN

Matthew 11:25-30

Jesus just said his yoke is easy and his burden is light. I beg to differ. To truly follow Jesus means to love, and love is hard work. To love means to take ourselves out of the center of our universes and allow God to take God’s rightful place there. To love means to admit that it is never about us – it is always about God. To love means to allow other people to be who they are, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us feel. To love means to allow ourselves to be who we are, no matter how uncomfortable that makes us feel. The yoke of self-centeredness seems so much lighter, because it is easy to judge people and situations by our own checklist of appropriate actions and attitudes. Love does not have such clearcut guidelines, and so it seems more difficult.

But of course, our feelings deceive us. The weight of self-centeredness pulls us down until eventually we close in ourselves, creating a black hole where nothing can escape: a tiny, pitiful false universe called “the world of me”. We all know that, because we all carry the burden of pretending to be self-existent at some point each day. Jesus calls us out of that burden into the realization that only God is self-existent, and yet God freely and lovingly gives us existence so that we can enjoy the wonderful world around us. It is all about God, and when we live in that realization, our only job is to be ourselves and be thankful for all that we have been given. On the other hand, when we try to live in the falsehood of “it’s all about me”, we take on the burden of making sure everything and everyone fits into our categories of propriety, and that is a lot of hard work. Of course, all that work is for nothing, because anything we create, including our own petty worlds of fear, are destined to dissolve. But the true, wonderful world God creates is destined to grow ever more and become ever more real.

So, maybe Jesus is right. His yoke isn’t really all that easy, and his burden isn’t really all that light, but in the long run, it is much easier and lighter than the yokes and burdens we impose upon ourselves. Of course, in order to learn to live under the yoke of Jesus, we need the help of discipline so that we do not slip back into our own yokes. And of course, the word “yoke” come from the same root as discipline, anyway – hence the resemblance to the word “yoga”. Discipline is good – it is something a disciple does. Unfortunately, we often confuse discipline with punishment, but the two have nothing to do with each other. Disciplines are techniques for growth.

One path of discipline that has helped many disciples follow Jesus is the monastic way. Some have confused it with punishment, but if followed willingly and openly, it is a path of discipleship that can help us live more and more in the truth that it is not all about me. It can seem difficult and frightening at times, as can any way of following Jesus. But as Benedict says in the Prologue to his Rule: “Do not be daunted immediately by fear and run away from the road that leads to salvation. It is bound to be narrow at the outset. But as we progress in this way of life and in faith, we shall run in the path of God’s commandments, our hearts overflowing with the inexpressible delight of love.”

It is our choice: whose yoke do we want, and how will we learn to live with that yoke.   AMEN

Acts 17:22-31
I Peter 3:13-22
John14:15-21

As Paul tells the Athenians, we all worship an unknown God, and we are all ignorant in our knowledge and worship of God. That is not God’s fault, and it is not our fault. God is just too different from anything we can know for us to comprehend anything about him. So we must never be smug about our religious beliefs or practices. That doesn’t mean we should not be sincere about our religious beliefs and practices – it just means we should always realize that when we try to make the ineffable effable, we will and do fail.

However, we do have the best and ultimate revelation of God in Jesus. We also have the best and ultimate revelation of humanity in Jesus. (Fully God; Fully Human). So, we can be sure that as long as we are truly modeling Jesus, we are worshiping the true God. Of course, we know that the definition of modeling Jesus has had many variations throughout history, and even know everyone has their own idea about how to do that best. So we should do what we can do get to know the people who knew him best by reading the scriptures with an open mind, heart and life. We can also get to know him through praying with an open mind, heart, and life. We must do all that with the realization that even with a lifetime of scripture reading and prayer, we can never fullly know Jesus. However, we can be assured that God knows us fully, and that God will honor our search by opening up to us as we open up to God.

As Paul quotes the poet: “in him we live and move and have our being”, so must we make sure that we are living, moving, and taking our existence from God, not in our own self-centered desires and whims. Jesus never turned anyone away, but he did warn them not to be smug about their religious beliefs and practices. It is all about Jesus, not about us. Others will seek and find him in ways different from us. That is ok. Our job is to do what we can do and trust God.   AMEN

Genesis 12:1-4a
Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
John 3:1-17

Our first two readings this morning are about Abram (or Abraham as he was later named). The story from Genesis recounts what is sometimes termed “the call of Abraham”, when God tells Abraham to move away from his own country and family into a new land where God promises to make him a great nation and a blessing to all the families on earth. If one reads the whole Bible, one learns that the movement away from Abraham’s native land into the promised land did not begin with Abraham, and the promised great nation did not come about until several centuries after his death. It was Abraham’s father Terah who moved them out of the city of Ur and halfway to Canaan. It was Moses who brought the great nation to the promised land and it was Joshua who finally led them into it. Abraham did a lot of great things and was obedient to God, but the work did not begin or end with him. He was only one in a long chain of people doing God’s work.

Paul talks about Abraham in our second reading this morning. He says that Abraham was righteous and did great things, but it was not the work that made Abraham righteous. Rather, it was Abraham’s faith that made him righteous. Abraham believed what God said and so he did the things he did. Paul hints that it should be the same with us: we should work because we have faith in God. We can’t do anything to gain God’s favor, because God already loves us. Nothing we do can get us on God’s side, because God is already on our side. Our work must spring from our belief that God loves us and our faith that God will take care of us. Any other basis for our life is false and bound to fail. When we trust in God’s love for us, we will work to make the world a better place for everyone, not just in order to make the world safer and more comfortable for us. We will understand and be ok with the fact that (just like Abraham) the work did not begin with us and won’t finish with us – we are merely links in a chain of people working to spread God’s peace and joy. In fact, our most fervent prayer should be that we never see the fruit of our work – not that our work should have no fruit, but that we should never see it, because if we see the fruit, we tend to work for results instead of out of faith, and we can even fall into pride because of our fruit. That is something important to monks, because from our vantage point, sometimes we can’t see the fruit of our prayer and life, and so we can become discouraged. We must continue in our discipline of prayer simply out of love, because the fruit of it is more than we can ever hope for our imagine. We do get a lot of letters from people thanking us for our prayer and life here, and it is always good to get those letters, but sometimes I wish we did not know of those people, because it can make us smug, rather than relying solely on God to carry us through or monastic vocations. Constancy and perseverance are keys to joy in monastic life, not knowledge of others’ appreciation of us.

Sometimes the chain of people doing God’s work seems to take a strange course, and sometimes the evidence of any good works being done is scant, and sometimes we worry about who will do the work after us, but there is always someone continuing to do the work of God – picking up where generations before left off and passing the chores on to generations yet to come. It is the same in our own lives; sometimes we can’t see how anything we are doing will amount to any good for anyone. Jesus says to not worry about that. John quotes him in our gospel story this morning as saying: “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Just like Abraham, we won’t always see the results of our work done in faith, but just like Abraham, the important thing is to have that faith so we can and will do those good works. We must be born from above, as Jesus says in the gospel. He doesn’t explain much about that, except saying that anyone who believes in him has eternal life.

This new life in Jesus comes from faith in God and trust that God sent his son into the world not to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. The new birth and new life that Jesus offers us brings us into the chain of faithful workers bringing God’s peace, joy, and health into the world. Like Abraham, we did not start the work, and we will not finish it. God is the beginning and ending of the chain. God lets us in on it because God loves us and wants to share eternal life. We just have to accept that love and life. Like Abraham, God will make us a mighty nation that brings a blessing on all families on earth. We might not ever see whom we are blessing, but that is ok, because we live by faith, not by sight, or feeling, or emotion. Righteousness and new birth are offered to us daily and hourly. May we believe, and so be reborn into the righteous nation of Abraham that brings blessings to all. May we then do good works and be a blessing to others out of gratitude for the new life, and may we be thankful for the blessings we receive from all the other members of the nation of righteousness. May we be faithful links in the chain.   AMEN

Leviticus 19:1-2,9-18
I Corinthians 3:10-11.16-23
Matthew 5:38-48

People have always been trying to live up to the scripture that Jesus quotes at the end of our gospel story this morning – “Be perfect…”. The ways they have done that have changed with time and place. In our society, people don’t worry much about ritual purity, but we still try to be perfect either by doing things or by not doing things. A contemporary example of trying to be perfect by doing things would be ‘recycling, driving a Prius, and being welcoming and affirming of others with different lifestyles’. A contemporary example of trying to be perfect by not doing things would be ‘not drinking, not smoking, not fornicating’. Both of those ways can and do produce some very cruel and self-absorbed people. The reason that happens is because we so often forget the second part of that quotation about being perfect – “Be perfect…as your heavenly Father is perfect.” In other words, be fully you, as God is fully God. Since God is love, and we are made in God’s image, it follows that to be fully us means to also be love.

The problem is, we all know that none of us ever is fully love. That is because we are so full of ourselves. We are not created that way, but we all choose to be that way, and we do it from the first time we are able to choose anything. And so we have rules to live by that help us curb our self-absorption and steer us toward loving actions. That is what our Old Testament reading was all about this morning. We often think of the Old Testament as being full of arbitrary rules mandated by a capricious God, and some of it is, but many of those rules were simply attempts to get people to do the right things toward others. There is a lot of love in the Old Testament if we are patient enough to look for it. We need to not be smug about our own ideas of morality, because two thousand years from now they will seem as barbaric to people as a lot of the Bible seems to us now. Instead of smugness, we need to take great care to make sure that all of our rules are geared toward loving ourselves, our neighbors, and our God. If we define love as the action of helping all to grow into the unique, beautiful individuals we are all created to be, then we need to make sure all our rules help us with those actions, not hinder us by causing us to be judgmental toward those not following our rules or interpreting them differently.

Aristotle gives the good advice that to become a virtuous person, one must do virtuous things. That mangled semi-quotation is only partly right, because to become truly virtuous action must be a follow up to desire – we must first ask God to heal us of our self-absorption so that we can be the loving persons that God made us to be. Desire and action can also be called faith and works, and there has been a debate about which of the two is more important for as long as the church has existed. Of course faith is the more important, because it needs to come first, but works are just as important, because they need to follow. Only God makes us perfect and holy, but only we can act perfect and holy. God makes us who we are, but we have the responsibility to live who we are.

Our second reading this morning talks about this in terms of our status as living temples of God. Jesus is the only foundation for our lives as temples, but we must be careful what we build on top of it. Faith and works go together. Even people who say they have no faith in God and yet live loving lives really do have faith in God – they just think they don’t. On the other hand, people who say they have faith in God and yet live unloving lives really have faith in something other than God – usually rules or Bible knowledge or doctrinal minutia. That last sentence should not make us worry every time we fail at loving – it doesn’t mean we have lost our faith or we are hypocrites, it just means that we have a lot of growing to do. We are not perfect without God. We cannot act perfect without God. God makes us perfect, but it takes a long time for that perfection to become apparent. Constancy and perseverance are both major constituents of both faith and works. If we have Jesus as the foundation of our lives, then no matter how often we fail in love, we can always try again. We can recycle, drive Priuses, welcome and affirm others, not smoke, not drink, and not fornicate, and all of those things can be instruments of love toward ourselves, our neighbors, and our God, if we do them in the spirit of Jesus. As our heavenly Father is perfect, so will we be. We are already now in God’s eyes, and we will be ever more so in our own eyes and the eyes of those around us. We will be perfect, as our heavenly Father is perfect.   AMEN