The Price of Liberty                                                                         Sunday, July 6, 2008

Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who signed the Declaration of Independence ?   I read something on the internet last week about those brave individuals who signed that document on July 4, 1776.  And what I found was information that was never given to me in my high school history class.

 Five of those signers were captured by the British as traitors, and tortured  until they died.

Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned to the ground.

Two lost their sons serving in the Revolutionary Army;  another had two sons captured by the British.

Nine of those 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.

They signed and they pledged their lives, their fortunes, and  their sacred honor on that document.

What kind of men were they?

Twenty-four were lawyers and judges.

Eleven were merchants.

Nine were farmers and large plantation owners, men of means, well educated.

But they all signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well that the penalty would be death if they were captured.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader, saw all of his ships swept from the seas, one by one, by the British Navy. He sold his home and properties to pay his debts, and he died in rags.

Thomas McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to move his family almost constantly.  He served in the Congress without pay, and his family was kept in hiding.  His possessions were taken from him, and absolute poverty was his ultimate reward.

British soldiers looted the properties of Dillery,Hall, Clymer,Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.

At the battle of Yorktown , Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that the British General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his headquarters.  He quietly urged  General George Washington to open fire.  His home was destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt.

Francis Lewis had his home and properties destroyed.  The British jailedhis wife, and she died in jail within a few months.

John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was dying.  Their13 children fled for their lives.  His fields and his gristmill were laid to waste.  For more than a year he lived in forests and caves, finally returning home to find his wife dead and all his children vanished.

Some of us take these liberties so much for granted, but we shouldn't.  Whenever you see a copy of the Declaration of Independence from now on, be aware that it is as much a record of 56 brave lives –the majority of which were ruined, as it is a record of the birth of this amazingly wonderful country.

So, take a few minutes with me during this 4th of July holiday and silently thank our founding patriots.  It's not much to ask for the price they paid on our behalf.

And always remember:  Freedom is never free.

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Sermon delivered by The Rev. Jeffrey S. Dugan in St. James Episcopal Church,
Farmington, Connecticut on Sunday, July 6, 2008

            I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.    (Romans 7:21)

            I hope I’m not betraying my age too badly when I say that some of us will remember when Flip Wilson used to play the part of that funny character, “Geraldine,” on “Laugh-In.”  Geraldine would always get into some kind of trouble and then, trying to explain the reason for “her” actions or words, would finally resort to saying, “The Devil made me do it.”  We used to laugh and laugh at those skits, but how often do we make the same excuse?  It may take different forms, but we do it a lot.  It’s an easier way of explaining why we behaved the way we did in any dilemma than to say, “I did what I did, or said what I said because I allowed myself to behave that way.”

            Flip Wilson’s Geraldine had an easier way to deal with moments one would rather forget.  It is more comforting to blame our actions, whatever they are, on someone or something other than ourselves even if we have to put the blame on the devil.  Our actions or speech or thoughts cause us disappointment.  We ask ourselves, “What in the world got into me?  Why did I say that?  Why did I do that?”  In these early days of the season after Pentecost, when we are thinking about what made Jesus gentle and lowly and how we should behave toward one another,  we waste little time thinking about why we do what we do, to him and to one another, when we are careless about the things we say and do.

            When we were growing up, at one time or another when we had been unruly, we undoubtedly heard a parent or an older brother or sister ask, “What made you do that?  What’s gotten into you?”  The truth of the matter is that nothing had gotten into us;  it was already there!  This tendency to behave in ways that are sometimes disappointing is something we all have to deal with at one time or another;  it is universal.  Haven’t you had the experience of meeting someone at lunch or at home or at work who appears ill at ease?  Your concern prompts you to ask what is the trouble, and your friend replies, “I hate myself!  I just did something I wish I hadn’t done.  I can’t imagine for the life of me why I allowed myself to do it!”  And the chances are pretty good that your friend doesn’t know that he or she is echoing the very words of St. Paul in his letter to the Romans.

            But in fact that is precisely what Paul speaks about in his letter to the community of Christians in Rome.  He says that there is a good side and a not-so-good side to each and every human being that has ever walked this earth, and that when the not-so-good side rules  -even momentarily-  it leads to frustration, and sometimes even despair.

            The passage from Paul’s letter that we heard this morning is part of a larger section that begins a few verses earlier.  It reads, “We are aware that the law is Spiritual, but I am a creature of flesh and blood under the power of sin.  I cannot understand what I do.  What I want to do, that I do not do;  but what I hate, that I do . . .  It is no longer I who do the things I do not want to do, but the sin which resides within me,” meaning human nature.  We hear this spiritual giant Paul speaking to us entirely from his humanness, with recognizable frustration, and to his outcry of frustration we say, “Amen,” because we have all been there ourselves.

            There are times when we surprise ourselves doing something we know we shouldn’t.  And when those moments come, we wonder how it is that a child of God can behave toward another child of God the way we have behaved!  In other words, we are clearly aware of a better path to choose in most situations, yet we find that we have chosen the lesser path.  Our human nature, as Paul delineates it, has come to the surface and influenced our choices.  We usually feel badly about it and we find ourselves asking yet one more time, “What in the world is wrong with me?  What made me do that?  What got into me?”

            From time to time, it is useful to bring to mind that old cliché:  The road to hell is paved with good intentions.  There are times when we have revealed ourselves to be superhighway engineers!  We have failed ourselves, we have failed someone else, and we have been a disappointment to ourselves and others.  Very little time passes before we find that it hurts, and that it bothers us greatly that  -ultimately-  we have failed God.  We let ourselves down, we let others down, and in so doing we reveal ourselves to not be the true disciples of Christ that we want so much to be.  It is right there that we find solid kinship with one of our most revered saints, Paul of Tarsus.

            But our guilt over the matter that has caused us so much pain and so many bad memories  -that has to be dealt with, too.  God does not want guilt to become our lifelong companion.

            So what do you do when you have said or done something you wish you had not said or done?  Do you think of yourself as an incorrigible failure and wallow in guilt and self-doubt, or do you see it as only a temporary setback of sorts, and then get on with the business of trying even harder to make something good come forth from those good intentions?  Remember, even when you resolve to do something about those “good intentions,”  the times will still come when your good intentions will lead you down the wrong road.

            But even then do not fall into despair;  you and I are in good company!  The extraordinary apostle Paul was apparently often where we find ourselves;  so was the Roman poet Ovid, who said, “I see better things, and I approve of them;  but I follow the worse.”  Most people with any common sense know that they are far from perfect.

            And so the question becomes:  Is there any way that we can effectively deal with this human dilemma?  Is there any way, in Paul’s words, that we can be delivered, liberated, from this terrible bondage to sin?  On this weekend in which we celebrate our independence as a nation of free and equal people, I want to hold up before you just a couple of options, so that perhaps your celebration this weekend can be of both your political and spiritual freedoms.

             One way is that simple method we have of dealing with any frustration or provocation;  the arrogances and the aggravations, the seeming stupidity of people who are insensitive to our sensibilities.  You’ve done it yourself, or you have observed other people doing it in various ways:  they bite their tongue, or they put their hands over their mouth, or fold them quietly and mumble one to ten.  Or they grit their teeth, or take a few deep breaths, or they just suddenly leave the room or leave the house or leave the office.  Aus den felden gehen  is the psychological term:  to leave the field of action.  Sometimes we just close our eyes and sigh, and even then we often don’t quite manage to keep the lid on.  We lose our cool and blow off the steam, and in the heat of the moment we still find ourselves behaving in an unseemly fashion.  We somehow cannot seem to let the heat of the moment pass us by.

            Yet there is another way: “a more excellent way,” as St. Paul would say.  We find it in a thought of the late Richard L. Evans, in his book Unto the Hills:  “What visions of the past recall to memory is beyond the power of men to alter or efface.  Time gone is time gone.  Life lived is life lived.  Now the task at hand is so to spend our hours today that tomorrow may welcome its memories.”  That last sentence, especially, bears repeating: “Now the task at hand is so to spend our hours today that tomorrow may welcome its memories.”

            What that means is that when we find ourselves in situations in which we cannot stay our tongue or our actions long enough to think about the memory we are creating for tomorrow, pray.   Pray, “Dear God, give me the strength to wait just a minute longer;  give me the strength to hold my peace;  give me the strength to speak and act  -not now-  but when this moment and its heat are not so near.”

            And be aware that there will come those times when, like Paul, you will know that you have done what you wish you had not done.  But remember, too, that just as your parents allowed you to make mistakes, and just as you allow your own children to make mistakes, God allows his children to make mistakes, too.  He made us, he loves us, and he knows when our intentions have been good.  He knows, too, because his Son took on this body of death, this very same weak, fallible, mortal human nature, so that we might be delivered from our bondage once and for all.

            Richard Baxter, a seventeenth century English priest put it this way:  “God takes men’s hearty desires and will, instead of the deed, where they have not the power to fulfill it;  but he never took the bare deed instead of the will.”

            Human beings can be changed!  In all of the animal kingdom, human beings possess the unique gift of being able to observe our own behavior, and then being able to modify our behavior if we feel it is appropriate.  We can change our behavior!  We just have to work at it, and work at it some more, aided and supported by the Spirit of Christ working within us.  It’s worth the effort, because it will make for us  -and most certainly for those around us-  some good memories that tomorrow will welcome . . . and cherish!

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Sermon delivered by The Rev. Jeffrey S. Dugan in St. James Episcopal Church,
Farmington, Connecticut on Sunday, June 29, 2008.

            There is a story about the famous Methodist missionary evangelist E. Stanley Jones  –a story the truth of which I do not question for one moment-  it seems an alcoholic who had promised Jones he would never drink again.  One Saturday night he cried out at a prayer meeting,  "I must have a drink or I will die!"  To which Jones reportedly said, "Go home and die."  No one ever knew what agony of soul and body he went through, but he came back the next morning  -Sunday morning-  and said:  "I died last night."  Whatever he had gone through, he was a free man, and he reportedly never drank again.  Now, that is what I would call pastoral care extreme;  can you imagine what someone would do if I said the same thing to them in similar circumstances?  “Go home and die . . .”  Jones was ministering in the good old days, when no one questioned the behavior of doctors or ministers.  They could say what they wanted to, and people would comply;  “Go home and die.”  Pretty severe pastoring . . . but it worked.

            And that is exactly what St. Paul is writing about in our Epistle reading for this morning.  The Epistle to the Romans contains some pretty deep theological reasoning, but in another text Paul says the same thing autobiographically.  He backs his thinking with his own life.  This is what he writes in Galatians:  "I am crucified with Christ:  nevertheless, I live;  yet it is not I who lives, but Christ who lives within me:  and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me."  (Gal. 2:20)

            "I have been crucified with Christ . . . "  That is strong language for our tender modern ears, but it thrusts right to the heart of the Christian faith.

            You see, we human beings have been in a rebellion against God ever since Adam and Eve.  It is not easy to talk to young children about the meaning of the word "sin."  They just haven't lived long enough.  But there is one question they quickly understand: "What is the middle letter of the word "sin?"  It is I, of course.  The Gospel says to each one of us:  "Surrender your self.  Lay down your ego."

            We are told that Satan was perceptive enough to know that we suffered from "I" trouble right from the very beginning.  He said to Eve:  "Did God say,  'You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?'"  The woman did remember what God had said:  "You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die."  But then the serpent said to the woman,  "You shall not die;  for God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God . . ." So Eve moved the will of God out of the center of her life and substituted her own desire.  Adam would have done the same thing if he were the one the serpent had snared.  And that was just the beginning.  Rebellion reached its climax with the Tower of Babel.  Remembering that God had almost annihilated the human race with the great flood, the inhabitants said,  "Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth."  (Gen. 11:4)  Note all the personal pronouns the author throws in:  "us- we- ourselves"  -five times in one verse.  God is nowhere in it.  But their alliance could not hold, for suddenly they weren't speaking the same language anymore.  That one ancient tower is a mirror image of our rebellious world.  The divisions are everywhere:  East-West;  black-white;  rich-poor;  male-female;  Jew-Moslem.  We are still not communicating.

            And our Gospel says,  "Lay it all down."  Paul had to learn that.  We read the words of a younger Paul in his letter to the Philippians.  Hear the arrogance of this man:  "If any other man thinks he has reason for confidence in the flesh, I have more . . . "  He had everything, humanly speaking.  But he found that he had to give it up.  "Whatever gain I had, I counted it as loss for the sake of Christ."  (Ph. 3:4-7)

            Jesus said it to the Twelve as he sent them out on their first preaching mission:  "He who finds his life will lose it, and he who loses his life for my sake will find it."  (Mt. 10:39)  The heart of Christ's whole ministry can be found in the words,  "Not my will but thine be done."  No to self, and Yes to God.

            W.W. Borden, of the famous Borden milk family, was wealthy, cultured, established -but he was also a deeply dedicated Christian man.  He set all of his inherited wealth and status aside to follow Christ, and he went to Egypt as a missionary.  He evidently died quite tragically at an early age, but he left behind as a part of his spiritual legacy these priceless words:  "In every heart there is a throne and a cross.  If self is on the throne, Christ is on the cross.  If Christ is on the throne, self must be on the cross."

            "Lay it all down."  At the heart of St. Paul's Christian experience were these words:  "I have been crucified with Christ . . . "

            Does that sound too forbidding?  Not if you follow on with Paul.  Listen to his next statement:  "Nevertheless, I live . . . "  In his own life, Paul saw that beyond the cross is the Resurrection, the newness of life.

            And that is one of the greatest understatements of all time.  For very few people have ever lived as fully, as vibrantly, as daringly, and as productively as Paul did.  He gave up a great deal for his Christ, but he gained infinitely more.  So we think that we will be giving up something if and when we yield ourselves to Christ.  But compare our lives with his life  -our cautious, protective ways with his ways  -he thrust himself forth into the known world on a mission that was truly impossible:  spreading the Christian faith throughout the pagan Roman Empire.  And he was successful.  More specifically, Paul would say that Christ was successful through him.

            I have quoted Paul Tournier to you before;  I like his writing.  In his book, The Seasons of Life,  he says that Christianity is not a moralistic system -not a series of dos and don'ts.  That is the religious philosophy embodied by the Pharisees throughout the New Testament.  And St. Paul is one of Tournier's illustrations:  "Show me someone  -anyone-  who better affirmed himself than did the apostle Paul.  The self-denial required by the Gospel is not at all a withdrawal into a truncated life of perpetual childhood.  Self-denial is the renunciation of a self-directed life for the purpose of attaining a greater fullness under the direction of God."

            One of the clearest examples of the point Tournier is trying to make  -in my opinion-  is that of David Livingstone, of "Livingstone, I presume" fame.  Toward the end of Livingstone's long life of missionary service in Africa, he returned to his native Scotland, where he was honored by the University of Edinburgh.  He was somewhat drawn and emaciated, and one of his arms hung loosely at his side, an arm that had been torn apart by a lion when he attempted to rescue one of his native assistants.  The president of the University introduced him by waxing eloquent about the sacrifices the Scotsman had made for the cause of Christ.  When Livingstone finally rose to speak, he began by saying simply:  "Gentlemen, in all my life I have never made a single sacrifice."  In the service of Christ he found life  -rich and abundant life.

            And that is the great secret of Christian witness.  We know that we are on target if people, seeing us or hearing us, know that we have put Jesus at the center of our lives.  Too many of us are trying to go it alone, and we aren't making much headway because on our own we cannot make it. Paul said:  "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me."

            Once we have caught even a fleeting glimpse of this Christ we hear so much about- once we really see him, we can never be content with ourselves anymore.  No matter what level of achievement we may think we have attained, it always falls short of the goal.  But that need not lead to discouragement.  By the grace of Christ, we press on.  Paul had a humble knowledge of failure, that he might then have a glorious vision of success.  He wrote, "I do not consider that I made it on my own;  but one thing I do:  forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus."  (Ph. 3:13-14)

            And Paul adds one final thing:  "The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me."  Paul's witness has been growing steadily and here it breaks through the limits of human reason into the higher realm of faith.  He has not taken hold of God;  God has reached down and taken hold of Paul.  With simple certainty Paul could say:  "He loves me and gave himself for me.

            Sometime compare Paul's simple, steady faith with all of the pretensions of our modern life.  Isaiah conveys a message that seems to refer to the last days, but it is sobering to realize that it is fulfilled in every generation: " . . . the haughtiness of man shall be humbled, and the pride of men shall be brought low;  and the Lord alone shall be exalted in that day."  St. Paul has moved far beyond that ancient vision;  he has done business with the Lord now,  not in some future time.  There is no suggestion that it will be easy, or that our heavy burdens will be removed.  But there is more  -there is the promise of a Presence from which nothing can separate us, and of a strength which knows no failing.  " . . . I live;  yet it is not I, but Christ who lives within me . . ."  For Paul and David Livingstone, and many, many others through the past twenty centuries, being able to make such a statement is more than enough. 

            A question I leave you to ponder this summer:  Is it enough for us, or do we constantly find ourselves striving for less?

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Sermon delivered by The Rev. Jeffrey S. Dugan in St. James Episcopal Church,
Farmington, Connecticut on Sunday, June 15, 2008 

            Vision 2012, that dedicated group of nine individuals charged with helping this community form a vision of the place to which God is calling us five years from now, has been wrestling with the mystery of “discernment,” the process by which they are supposed to access that vision.  And I have been asked to clarify the meaning of discernment –for them, and for all of us who will participate in and be affected by this committee’s work.

            Well, the logical place to begin this quest for clarification is the dictionary.  If we look up the word ”discernment” in Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary, the definition it will give us is “The act or process of discerning.”  That is not of much help at all, except we learn that discernment is an “act or process.”  And Webster’s goes on to give us a synonym:  “perspicacity.”  Now there’s a word you don’t see very often.  Perspicacity?  What in the world is perspicacity?  If you look up the definition of perspicacity, what do you think the dictionary is going to tell you?  “Discernment.”  But then it goes on a little further;  it says, “Acuteness of perception or understanding.”  Now there, at least, is something we can work with:  perception . . . understanding.

            Back in 1992, when we were restoring the chancel of this church back to its original design, the Mason clan found some old documentation from the time the building was constructed, some of which dealt with the great fresco of the calling of James and John, painted by Robert Brandegee.  In those notes, Brandegee is quoted as saying that his fresco will depict a moment early in the morning, “at the half-light of dawn, just as one is beginning to be able to discern color.”  Discernment is about perception and understanding.  And spiritual discernment, the type that Vision 2012 is trying to put into practice, has to do with the will of God and the Call of God.

            The Bible can be seen as a manual of discernment, if you will –a record of how people throughout the ages have tried to faithfully perceive God’s voice and discern God’s call.  In this morning’s Old Testament lesson, we have one of many stories of the Old Testament figure who was probably more successful at the art of discerning God’s will than any other –Moses.  He did not seem to wrestle with how to perceive God’s will;  he spoke directly to God and was spoken to by God on a regular basis.  I fully expect the Vision 2012 Committee to be operating at that level of direct communication with God before the end of this year.  (just kidding)  Other examples of successful discernment in the Bible are Abraham, leaving his home and uprooting his family at the age of 75 to follow God’s call into the unknown without even knowing his destination; Samuel, who as a young boy learns to discern the “still, small voice of God” with the help of his mentor Eli; and, of course, Jesus himself, whose greatest struggle with discernment occurred in the Garden of Gethsemene on the night he was arrested.  There, in the still of the night, he prayed to God “that this cup might pass by me.”  But then, in the most important element of true spiritual discernment, Jesus says, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Mt. 26:39)

            Discernment is the very essence of Christian action –the ideal paradigm for how Christian persons should engage in activity.  And it’s important to make a distinction here –there is a very important difference between “Christian action” and “social activism.”  Social activists begin with a goal in mind, and it may be a very worthy goal –something that will benefit society greatly.  Let’s say we want to end homelessness in Connecticut by the year 2012.  All of our action will be focused on attaining that goal;  our single-minded purpose will be to do whatever it takes to achieve success.  And if we fail to realize our objective, we will consider it a personal failure –we will feel like failures;  we will not have measured up to the standard we set for ourselves.  Are you beginning to hear the theme of social action?  It’s all about us.  We determine the desired result, and if that result is not achieved, it is our fault, and we are obvious failures.

            When we engage in Christian action, the dynamic is completely different, even though the subject of our attention may be exactly the same.  The primary dynamic of Christian action is discernment.  Like Abraham being called out from his home at the age of 75 without knowing where he is going –with no clear objective other than following God’s call- Christian action involves letting God set the goal and the path to that goal, with no clear criteria for personal failure or success.  And there are no clear criteria for personal failure or success because it’s not about us;  it’s all about God.  To many, therefore, the process of discernment seems irresponsible.  By just about any earthly standard of strategic planning or goal setting in which we set the goal, and then apply ourselves to using our intelligence and skill sets to achieve that goal, the discernment process is irresponsible.  But it is also the only way for us to function as instruments of God’s grace within this world. 

            My biggest frustration in crafting this sermon was to keep it within a certain time limit.  So I have to move on.  I’ve talked about what discernment is, and now I want to move on to how it is done.  And the simplest answer is that discernment is accomplished in prayer and meditation, and always in community 

            I think the prayer and meditation part of that equation is easy enough to understand;  if the process of discernment involves connecting in some way with the mind of God, then prayer and meditation are an essential component of that process, because they are the avenues by which we connect with God.  But why is it that true discernment can only be successfully done in community –in a group?

            Before Jesus left this earth, he gave his disciples instructions on how to continue his ministry and teaching in his absence.  At one point he said, “ . . . where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them."  (Mt. 18:20)  It’s either a very cryptic statement, or one that is quite practical and straightforward.  My opinion is that the latter of the two possibilities is true.  And the reason it is true and necessary has everything to do with sin.

            And now you will begin to understand why it is such a challenge to deal with all of this in one sermon.

            Human beings sin.  That reality is often referred to as “the sinful human condition.”  But it is vitally important to understand that “the sinful human condition” has nothing to do with the term “original sin.”  The doctrine of original sin –that every person is born into the world inherently evil and sinful from birth- was a rather late addition to Christian theology by St. Augustine in the fourth century.  It has no Biblical basis, it had no “roots” prior to St. Augustine in either Christian or Jewish thought, and yet it took hold within the Church and soon became a normal and standard part of Catholic teaching.

            The original and undistorted understanding of human sinfulness within Christianity was that despite God’s loving creation of us as unique, beautiful creatures made in God’s own image, and despite our own intention to do right, we are prone to sin.  And the word for sin used in the New Testament by St. Paul and others is the Greek word “hamartia.”  The interesting thing is that hamartia is not a theological word at all;  it is a very simple, straightforward word that comes directly from the athletic world of archery.  That’s right –archery.  It simply means, “To miss the mark.”  To miss the target.  The archer is a competent archer, who intends to hit the target.  He or she aims the arrow with the best of intentions, draws back the bow, lets the arrow fly, and in spite of competency and good intention, the arrow misses the mark.  That is how the New Testament writers described the nature of sin.

            Hamartia is a visual term –one misses the mark despite sighting the arrow directly at the target.  The target is missed due to a distortion of the archer’s sight, not a defect of intention.  Likewise, human beings sin due to our distorted view of the world around us.  Because of that, for the early Church Fathers  –the first theologians in the 3^rd and 4^th centuries-  the most important goal of spiritual development for a Christian person was what they called theoria physika, which means “straight vision,” or “true sight.”  If we could see the reality of the world around us as it is –as God sees it and knows it to be true- then we would not “miss the mark;”  we would not sin.

            So what is the fix?  How do we correct our vision?  How do we see through the distortion caused by evil in the world, so that we attain theoria physika –a straight view, a true vision of the world as it is, so that when we aim, we hit the mark;  so that our behavior is life-giving and healing and accomplishes God’s will in bringing about a little more of God’s kingdom on this earth?

            We have now come to the most compelling, powerful and essential secret of discernment itself.  And the best way I have ever found to explain it is to use an example from astronomy.  As strange as that may sound, just go with me a little further and I think you’ll understand.  It’s a good opportunity to exercise your perspicacity.

            Just as our spiritual vision of reality is distorted, so is our physical vision.  That is because, over very large distances, light is actually bent by the force of gravity.  The next time you are outside on a clear night looking at the stars, try to comprehend the fact that most of those stars are not where you see them.  The light from most of those stars has been bent as it has passed by centers of enormous gravitational pull, such as black holes and massive stars and superdense galaxies.  From a practical standpoint, that means that if you wanted to travel to a particular star or galaxy in your starship, aimed your ship precisely at the intended star as you see it in the sky, and headed in that exact direction at warp speed, you would miss the mark.  You would end up somewhere way wide of your target.  It would not be because you are a bad person, or had some evil intention.  It wouldn’t be due to any malfunction in your starship.  It would happen because you couldn’t see straight;  you didn’t have the right view of exactly where that star actually was before you headed out for it.

            Astronomers have developed an ingenious method for correcting for the distortion –for determining where those stars and galaxies actually sit.  It’s called parallax.  To get a parallax view of the sky requires the input from several different sightings –sightings taken from significantly different perspectives.  Before we had space probes going off to different parts of the solar system, the best way to do it was to take a photo of the star or galaxy in question, along with its neighbors, and then take the same photo precisely six months later, when the earth was at the extreme opposite end of its orbit around the sun -186 million miles away.  By comparing those two perspectives, scientists can calculate the extent of the distortion, identify the sources of the distortion, and then computers can correct for the distortion and reconstruct the “right” image of where those celestial bodies actually sit out there.  It’s simple physics, and it works.

            It works in the spiritual realm of reality, too.  Our vision of the world is distorted by the effect of evil.  And therefore reality is so often not what it appears to be, and therefore our assumptions about life and other people are not correct.  They are not correct emotionally, politically, spiritually, and so many other ways.  So when we base our behavior on our own distorted perceptions and act on those perceptions –with all the best intentions- we end up missing the mark;  we end up sinning, and by so doing we hurt ourselves and those around us.

            Discernment requires that parallax view;  viewing the world as God sees it  -achieving an undistorted vision, theoria physika, requires the input of several perspectives.  We all see the world from very different perspectives, because we all inhabit very different places, spiritually speaking.  And those differences become our collective power.  If we connect to God in prayer and meditation, and then if I offer my view of a certain situation, and you offer yours, and others offer their own;  and if none of us has a personal agenda, or a specific desired outcome for the exercise, then the blending of our various perspectives often results in a view of reality that none of us was expecting, but a reality, compiled in the mind of Christ, that allows us to discern God’s vision –God’s will.

            And that is the extremely difficult yet exciting task that the Vision 2012 Committee has undertaken, and in which you all have been invited to participate.  That Survey we’ve been reminding you of every week?  Parallax.  The more perspectives we get, the clearer our group discernment will be concerning the direction in which God may be calling us forth into mission and ministry.  Successful navigation of that path will depend on how many of us are willing to shed our personal agendas and assumptions and biases about the reality in which this parish sits, and focus instead on sharing our perspectives, knowing that not one of them is accurate on its own merit.  It’s a very humbling task, but one that puts us squarely in the sandals of folks like James and John, sons of Zebedee.  When they heard the voice of Jesus, they followed.  They didn’t know where they were going, but they knew they were following God.  And together with the other ten disciples, that’s all they needed to know.  The rest would take care of itself, and the eventual destination would be greater than any of them could have either asked or imagined.  And the same will be true for us, if together we follow the path of discernment.

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Sermon delivered by The Rev. Jeffrey S. Dugan in St. James Episcopal Church,
Farmington, Connecticut on Sunday, June 1, 2008.

             Jesus said, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  . . . Everyone then who hears these words of mine and does them will be like a wise man who built his house upon the rock;  and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on the rock.”

             The Rock.  “Rock of ages, cleft for me;  let me hide myself in thee.”  We hear that language so often in church.  It is wonderfully graphic symbolism, especially here in New England, where the bedrock is so close to the surface.  Unshakeable, unmovable –the bedrock is absolutely where you want to anchor a building to ensure its stability.  And so we transfer that symbolism to our life of faith, and of course we want to anchor our faith, our very souls, to the Rock –to the most basic, unshakeable, unmovable foundation stone our spirits can know.  But what is the Rock for us as Christians?  I think most of us generally think of God when we speak of the Rock, but that does not distinguish us from any other religion at all;  all religions acknowledge God as an ultimate reality and the underpinning of their faith.  So that is the difficult part; I think that many of us have very different impressions of why we are here, and about what it is that we are supposed to learn here  -and I mean the bottom line, expressed in its most basic, simple form.  What is it that forms the kernel of truth about life for a Christian person?   What exactly is that rock upon which we are called to build our faith?

             Well, now I know that I've got all of your minds going off in different directions.  So I have to pull them all back in again.  And I can be comfortable about giving you my opinion as long as I tell you in advance that it doesn't have to be your opinion;  it's just a common focus, and if it serves to highlight for you how differently you feel than I do, then I will consider this to have been a successful sermon.

             My first opinion is that it should not seem unusual that we are thinking about this subject at this particular time of year.  I looked back this week at the "signature" lessons for this season of Easter from which we have just emerged, and  the lessons for Easter Sunday itself, because in the earliest years of its existence, the Christian Church only had one feast, one high holy day, and that was Easter.  Every Sunday was simply a "little Easter."  So there must be something about Easter that contains the most essential element of Christian faith.

             On Easter Sunday, we heard once again the account of Jesus Christ who had just been crucified two days before.  He had been crucified, he had died, he was buried in the presence of many, many people, he was placed in a tomb that was sealed with a huge stone, and guarded by Roman soldiers and Temple officials, and that still that same Jesus left the tomb.  "He is not here," said the angels,  "Why do you seek the living among the dead?"  The fact is that the most essential message of Easter is the most essential message of the Christian faith, and no matter who preaches it, or speaks it, or believes it silently out of fear or out of questioning  -the essential message is nothing more than the words with which we opened our service every Sunday morning during the season of Easter:  "Christ is risen! The Lord is risen, indeed!"   There is no more central belief in the Christian world.  Those words, and the truth upon which they rest  -those words are the essential ingredients to the faith which is practiced here  -the irreducible minimum belief for anyone, anywhere, anytime, who professes and calls himself or herself a member of Christ  -anyone who is called a Christian, or aspires to become one. 

            The plain fact of our faith hinges on the truth of those few words, and our lives as Christians can be viewed as easy, if we rest solely on the laurels of listening, and on the peace of this morning, and the beauty of these flowers, and the majesty of our music and the power of our liturgy.  There is so much  joy in the things of our faith.

             I have a little voice, deep within me, though.  You may have one, too.  My little voice is the voice which keeps me on track  -keeps me alert to those times when I'm missing something important.  Overlooking someone, or ignoring something, or somehow fooling myself into an unwarranted sense of security.  My little voice speaks to me every Sunday during the entire year, and it tells me that some very important things went on to bring us to this point.  In order to rise  -in order to leave the tomb, Jesus first had to die, and be taken into the tomb.  There is no new life without death;  there is no life at all without death, and the little voices of our lives whisper us toward that realization.  As joyous as the Easter season is and must be for those who call themselves Christians, the price for resurrection  -the price of salvation and the price of new life- the price of all life on this planet is the death of something that was.  Each one of the flowers behind the altar has emerged from a seed which had to die and had to be buried before it could grant new life.  Each new day dawns out of the darkness  -out of the death- out of the loss of the day before;  out of the unstoppable passage of the earth through eternity.

             And each of us moves through each of our numbered days in the timelessness of God's days and years and generations, and it is easy  -it is often too easy for us to forget that the passage of the days -each of the days- records in each the deaths of countless things which were, and the new birth of countless things which now suddenly are.  We are witnesses to this eternal plan.  We are the beneficiaries of this plan.  We are the guardians of this plan.  We are the stewards of this planet.

             Christ has died.  Christ is risen.  Those things are certain for us, as is the certainty that Christ will come again.  The promise of eternity, and the premise of our faith is in those simple truths.  Christ has died, Christ is risen, and Christ will come again.  Those things are true, but they are only true as a part of the greater truth of creation.  And that truth is that we are the stewards of the created order, and that within that created order is the passage of time as we know it, and the eternal cycle of life  -a cycle which only gives birth as one of the direct and inevitable consequences of death.  It is the most significant of all paradoxes.  It is difficult enough to see and to know that truth as a function of our scientific processes.  It is nearly impossible to make it understandable as an element of faith.  But it is absolutely, irrevocably, eternally, and empirically true -in science and in faith- and it is in that truth, in that confidence, in that belief, in that hope and in that promise that we sit here every Sunday in this house of God.

             Christ lived before he died.  He lived and died before he rose on that first Easter Day.  Even the most beautiful Easter lily must die before the bulb can produce another one.  And I must die, before my life can be called eternal, and before I can know eternity.  The exquisite beginning of all new life is the death of the old.  This has nothing to do with age.  It has nothing to do with time.  It has nothing to do with linear chronology.  It is the stuff of eternity.  It is the fabric of life without end.  It is the truth of the resurrection.  It is the purpose of our lives, and of our beliefs and of our presence here, whenever it is that we come.

             We and our children are the guardians of the eternal promises of God.  We are those to whom the promises have been revealed.  We are those to whom God's son was born.  We are those for whom that child -Jesus the Christ- for whom that life was lived, for whom that death was given, and for whom the promise of the resurrection is visible, understandable, and believable as the central truth of our faith and of our lives.

             But . . . something troubles us about the facts of our faith.  We seem to resist both the perfect symmetry between life and death, and we seem to resist as well the concept of new birth.  There are places of faith where new birth, where the doctrine of being born again is the only way that resurrection can be expressed, and we are conditioned to resist that doctrine, and with it the perfection of our own faith.  We resist the doctrine that eternal life -new life in Christ- occurs only after the death of the old as we knew it.  Instead of seeing the perfection and the symmetry of God's plan, we are trapped by the words of other doctrines which seem different from ours, and we risk missing that single, central truth of our own faith, which is that death is a part of the perfection of life, and that death in any of its forms is the event which enables eternity to blossom out from within us.  Or, stated differently, that on the other side of any kind of death there is always newer, greater life.

             We gather here because of our faith in the truth of Easter, and because of our faith in our status and in our call as the created, redeemed and sanctified children of God, and as the brothers and sisters of the risen Christ.  So gathered were those who followed Jesus when he walked the earth.  We come together again and again in faith just as did the followers of that physical man, that itinerant preacher on whom so much rested.  They went then to the place he had last been seen- they went to the place where his dead body had been left.  They sought the living Christ within the place of the dead, and they heard from an angel the message of Easter:  "Why do you seek the living among the dead.  He is not here.  He is risen!"

             And we come here, again and again, to hear the same message.  This is not the place of the dead Christ.  Those events which we have solemnized here did not happen here, and that which you feared -the death of the Savior- is no more to be feared.  This is not the place of the person you knew, who died.  This is the place of the living Christ, and the home of the eternal promise.  The life of Jesus Christ, and the very words of that Christ were filled with images of death which led to new birth:  fig trees, vines, branches, chaff, weeds, and Jesus himself.  Yet we regret to hear, we move away from hearing that we are to die into eternal life.  We hear the words and the promise of Easter, and learn again, and again, and again of the gift of eternal life, and the little voices in our minds -the voices of our spirits- tell us we must believe what we hear.  And we come together because of our faith, and our greatest challenge  -the greatest challenge of our lives together  -our lives of faith-  is to come here only to experience the truth of the eternal promise, and to make sure that our children and adults alike are taught and nurtured into the eternal peace and joy that this promise brings with it, so that their lives might be built upon the rock of that peace and joy no matter what they choose to do in this earthly life.

             The death which Jesus suffered was the key to his life, not the end of it;  just as the deaths which occur here daily, hourly, at all times, are the keys to new life, to new birth, and to re-birth in the beauty of eternity.  Our lives here are no different.  The deaths we fear so greatly do not occur here.  They do not occur at all, as the end of anything.  The deaths we fear so greatly are the beginnings we long for in faith.  They do fulfill the promise of Easter.  We do fulfill the promise of Easter.  We are the people of Easter.  We are the stewards of creation.  We are those who are called to serve this Christ who died that we might live.  Our work is not here.  Our homes are not here.  Our faith is not here  -not here alone.  The people of God are not here   -not here alone.

             Those who come here leave to serve those who do not, and those who cannot;  and, yes, those who will not come.  We come here to hear the stories, and to relive the promise.  Those things are true.  But if we stop at that  -if we come here only to hear, and only to re-live, then we have come to seek the living among the dead.  Our lives and our faith require more than that.  The promise of Easter requires more than that.  These holy places, these holy gatherings are more than that.  We come here only to leave.  We come here only to be told once again that the one we seek is not here.  The one we seek is alive.  The one we seek is outside these walls.  The work of service to Christ is lived in the service of others –out there.  The Word is spoken here.  The stories are told here, and the promise is learned here, again.  But the births and deaths and the new lives in Christ  -the perfect symmetry of eternity-  is seen and grown and nurtured out in the world, this unique and miraculous world over which we are the stewards.  The perfect symmetry of eternity is the promise of Easter, the promise of eternal life.  The promise that death has no purpose whatsoever save for the creation of things that are new, and the promise that it is Jesus, the Christ, whose death makes all of that apparent and explicit.

             That, I believe, is the Christian message expressed in its most basic and simple terms  -the Rock of our salvation.  And that message is so uniquely life-giving in my experience, that the teaching of it to all children of God  -young and old-  is the primary vocation of my life.  Think about the impact that message of life has had on your life, and think about what impact it might have on young lives trying to grow up in an increasingly scary world.  You might be asked to share your faith with our own children, right here in Farmington –right here in our own Sunday School, or in our own Youth Group.  If so, I hope you will find that you agree with me that that educational endeavor is so important that it is worth the effort, worth the commitment, worth the sacrifice  -just like our Sunday School teachers thought years ago.  If we believe it is worth doing well, we might just find some of our children teaching Sunday School twenty or thirty years from now, just because they know how important it was in their young life that some adult loved them enough to sit with them each week and lovingly teach them the words of Life, and to help them begin to build the foundation of their faith upon the Rock of Life.

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 Sermon delivered by The Rev. Jeffrey S. Dugan in St. James Episcopal Church,
Farmington, Connecticut on Sunday, May 25, 2008.       

                        " . . . Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you                 
                             shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on.
                    . . . And which of you by being anxious can add one cubit to his span of life?"                                                                                                                        -Mt. 6:24-34

             As we read through the Gospels, one of the constant themes of Jesus' teaching is that we should not live with fear and anxiety.

             You know, I often wonder how Jesus Christ could have been serious about some of the things he taught.  "Let not your hearts be troubled . . . "  "Do not be anxious . . . "  Does that make sense to you?  I’m juggling enough college loans for my kids right now to buy a small house, it cost me seventy-five dollars to fill my gas tank yesterday, and the cost of even basic foodstuffs is rising steadily.  Our cities are smoldering with racial tension, our political candidates are bickering about each other’s ministers, my VISA bill came this week, and Jesus calmly stands there, from a comfortable distance of 2,000 years, and tells me not to be troubled?

            We all get anxious.  We all worry.  It's fashionable to worry.  Watch any of the soaps on daytime T.V.  -All My Children, General Hospital-  they worry about everything.   That's why people watch them-  to share the anxiety!

             What do you worry about?  Your health?  Your finances?  Your job?  Your children?  Your future?  Your past?  Such worries can gnaw away at our happiness and peace of mind.  There is a saying,  "Ants pick a carcass cleaner than a lion can."  Little worries can ruin our happiness more than a big tragedy.

             The only thing I remember about my dentist when I was a little boy, other than his extremely hairy hands, was a big sign on the wall of his waiting room that read,  "Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday."  And I'd sit there and think,  "You don't know how right you are."   But it wasn't just yesterday that I had started worrying about it.  It was two months before, when my mother had made the appointment.

             People tend to "put aside" particular teachings of Jesus due to "cultural differences"  -because Jesus was not living in or talking to a world of our sophistication and complexity and technological vastness.

             And I wonder . . .  would Jesus teach the same things if he lived in our time and culture.  Would he stand here before us today and say,  "Be not anxious about your

life . . ." ?

             We have come together today to hear something of peace and joy, of love and understanding.  Will this morning's words truly heal and strengthen, or will they serve only as a small Band-Aid on a profoundly deep wound?  We come to be assured and comforted, that we might not be so anxious, that we might not worry quite so much, only to leave the church and find the stresses continuing, like the constant drip-drip-drip of a faucet that needs to be fixed.  The final blessing is pronounced, and we leave the church.  Approaching that car, we notice that somebody has left a scrape as they left their parking spot beside us.  Mom has been sitting in church trying to remember what it was she forgot, and suddenly remembers she forgot to turn on the oven;  the roast won't be done for another three hours.  Billy sarcastically announces that he should never have wasted the time to come to church with a term paper due tomorrow, and since Dad insisted upon his presence, would Dad then help him with the paper this afternoon;  and poor Susie, moping around all morning, is still despondent about breaking up with her boyfriend  -for the third time this month.  And we arrive home to find that the dog has done something really special on the brand new carpeting.  Whatever happened to the peace of God, which passes all understanding?  Not only does it pass our understanding, but usually our grasp as well.

            And it is not the frustrations within our personal lives alone;  the world seems to have gone crazy at times.  The advanced technology of cellphones, PDA’s and laptops, developed with the promise of making our lives easier and more efficient, have now effectively enslaved us on a treadmill that is spinning faster than ever before.  Violence continues in the middle east, in Iraq, Afghanistan and in our own cities.  Volatile power struggles slowly churn away in Myanmar and Tibet, and horrific atrocities against immigrants are on the rise once more in South Africa.  Were Jesus alive today, would he speak the same message,  "Be not anxious?"

            Not anxious about food, what you shall eat;  not anxious about the body, what you shall put on?  Just think of all the designer names hanging in our closets.  We are more than anxious about clothing.  And when the health food crowd, the gourmands, and the finicky eaters are added up, who's left who's not anxious about food, in one way or another?  We dress well, we eat well, we run 25 miles a week, we play tennis and golf.  And if the pants get too tight in spite of it all, there are a dozen places to go to shed those inches:  dieting centers, health spas, exercise clubs, hypnotists, plastic surgeons.

            But the question is:  Are we happier for all this?  Is life fuller?  Do we gaze upon these days as the most wonderful of all?  Is anything of substance happening between us and the ones we love?  Has the faith so eloquently expressed in our Book of Common Prayer found its way into our kitchens and closets and cocktail parties and tennis games?  Has there come to our moments and our days that true "peace which passes all understanding?"

            There is not much doubt in my mind that Christ would speak the same words again.  Quite possibly he would speak them sooner, since our age seems to be in greater need of hearing the words than any age that has ever been.

            We are surrounded by so much that promises the inner calm we all seek:  aspirin, valium, scotch, J. P. Morgan.  But it has not happened yet, has it?  At least, not to our satisfaction.  So we keep looking:  In the next new recipe from Bon Appetit, in the next fashion magazine, in a new career, in the next vacation, in the next check that comes in the mail, in the next stock split . . . in the next lifetime, maybe.

            His words would be the same; and yes, they would be spoken sooner.  And maybe he would even quote T.S. Eliot's famous lines,  "These were decent, godless people, their only monument the asphalt road and a thousand lost golfballs."

            Consider the lilies of the field;  look at the birds.  Your heavenly father cares for them all;  what are you worrying about?

            Worrying about?  The scraped car and the roast and the term paper and the broken romance . . .  and why can't I pay my VISA with my American Express?

            Then, it suddenly dawns on us what Jesus meant.  He was talking about worries.  Not merely clothing and food, but money and cancer and death and nuclear missiles and tragedy and lots of other things.  He was talking about the stuff that tears at our insides and shakes the foundations of our souls because it makes us feel so alone and defenseless and scared.  When he said it, he meant it, like Dr. Seuss' Horton the elephant.  If you've ever delved into the profound childrens' literature of Dr. Seuss, then you may have met Horton.  He was asked to sit upon a bird's nest for a few moments.  He agreed.  The bird flew south for the winter, while Horton sat and sat.  And to those who came to laugh at him, he replied,  "I meant what I said and I said what I meant!  An elephant's faithful one hundred percent!"

            Well, Jesus meant it also!  "Which of you, by being anxious, can add one cubit to your span of life?"  "The earth is the Lord's, and all that is in it."  We cannot stray beyond his care and love.  Read Psalm 139 sometime:  "If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, Even there your hand will lead me and your right hand hold me fast."  "Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid."  This is the theme that is sounded by Christ again and again- to the prodigal, to the woman in adultery, to the cheating tax collector, to Zacchaeus up a tree, to a woman with five husbands.  Always the same words or a variation of them:  "You won't find the thing you're looking for in the places that you are looking.  God loves you, and His peace is within you."

            That wonderful peace is the very thing that we have been seeking for so long.  We have just been looking in the wrong places.  We have been looking in the clothes closet and in the pantry, instead of looking to the lilies of the field and the birds of the air and into the inner recesses of our own souls.

            Strange, isn't it, the amount of time that most of us spent this morning pondering what we would wear to church.  I wear vestments over mine, and yet I stood gazing into my closet for the longest time.  Or maybe we have spent a couple of days wondering whether to make our tomato bisque or spinach quiche for a Memorial Day picnic tomorrow.  But did we spend the same amount of time thinking about the prayers and concerns we would bring before God in our worship and whether those would be as good as they could be?  Did we spend the same amount of time thinking of the neighbors and friends and strangers that would be sitting near us this morning, and what hidden, terrifying things might be going on in their lives, and how we might best offer ourselves to them in friendship and in service?  Did we spend the same amount of time wondering if God would look through our clothes and our careers this morning to see if our hearts were acceptable to him?

            Jesus never said,  "Be not anxious about anything."  He said, "save your energy for the things of this life that truly deserve your concern."

            How many times have we turned and said,  "In ten years, we're going to laugh about this."  If we're going to look back someday and laugh, then is it worth an ulcer now?

            That is why this part of Jesus' teaching is so hard to take seriously.  It calls us to take so many things that we have made so woefully important, and to put them in a large Hefty bag and leave them out with the garbage.  He calls us to care less about how things look, and to look at how things really are:  things in our hearts, things that pass between us.  And when we look that way, we will begin to see a Kingdom  -a Kingdom of peace and joy, dwelling in the midst of us, and all around us  -as close and as real as it was when Jesus first proclaimed its presence.  Don't be anxious about your life.  Rejoice and give thanks that God gave you this life, and will care for it always.

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Sermon delivered by The Rev. Jeffrey S. Dugan in St. James Episcopal Church,
Farmington, Connecticut on Sunday, May 18, 2008.

            What is God really like?  There has never been a more fundamental question.  It was very much in the minds of the priests and leaders of the Jewish people when they were in exile in Babylon.  All around them were the temples of a people who could answer the question simply by pointing to the colossal images of the gods in all their gilded splendor.  And where could the Jews point?  All they could do was recite the commandment forbidding any and all images of God.

            At one point in their religious journey a great breakthrough happened to the Jewish people  -an epiphany, a realization-  and it changed their and our theology and understanding of who we really are as God’s children.  The watershed concept was just this:  the Jews were forbidden to make images of God.  Why?  For the Jews, this was because God had already made the one and only possible image of himself.  What if living, breathing human beings  -men and women themselves-  were the truest representation of God on earth?  Dead images of wood and metal and stone could only be a travesty compared with the creatures who had within them the breath of God himself and could, like God, create and reason and love.  The Jewish priests who came to this glorious insight wrote the opening part of Genesis we read today, and they built the doctrine that human beings are in the image and likeness of God into the very foundations of their, and therefore our faith.

            Without this insight impressed deeply into their hearts and minds, the early followers of Jesus could never have broken through to the realization that Jesus was the very embodiment, the incarnation of God.  The conviction that human beings were themselves fashioned in God’s image opened up the possibility that the Creative Wisdom and Word of God could take the form of a particular human life.  And this was the conclusion forced on them by the impact of Jesus’ life and his resurrection.

            The teaching that we human beings are made in God’s likeness means that we answer the question,  “What is God really like?”  by continually searching out what is special about human life.  The priestly writers whose meditations were put into the book of Genesis already give us a human clue in our quest for insight into God’s nature.  “Male and female he created them.”  To the priestly writers, this meant that the special characteristics of both sexes are equally valuable windows into the nature of God.  It also implies that the intimacy between men and women  -the passion and desire that brings them together and unites them-  tells us something about the passion and desire of God.  It hints at something which becomes crucial in Christian thinking, which is that God’s imprint on our very beings is to be found in our relationships, our capacity for mutual love, the way we can give ourselves to and for one another, the way we can form communities and families.

            Now, to say that human beings are in God’s likeness is very different from saying that God is a colossal version of a human being.  We are one species among millions on a speck of a planet in a little solar system on the fringe of the Milky Way galaxy.  And God is the infinite life and energy that sustains the entire universe.  So it’s probably a safe bet that God does not look like us.  But there are features of our life which correspond to God, fit God, mesh with God.  It is as if we described a key as being made in the image and likeness of the lock to which it belongs.  A key doesn’t resemble a lock in the slightest.  A lock doesn’t “look like” a key.  But the key is made for the lock.  It fits precisely.  And if you give a locksmith a key, he can build you a lock that the key will fit.

            So we discover  -at least in part-  what God is like by examining what we are like when it comes to our need and desire for relationships.  It is like examining the key to work out what the lock must be like on the inside.

            The first of our great needs and desires in relationship is our need for others to depend on and trust.  We come into the world helpless and dependent on our parents, and on everyone else who gives us care.  Most of us who have the good fortune to grow old will return to a state of dependence in which we must rely on others to care for us and protect us.  In the years in between, we all wrestle with the issue of finding an environment in which to live that is secure and nurturing, rather than insecure and hostile.  That is why we see so many tears on the faces of the Myanmar cyclone refugees, and the Chinese earthquake refugees;  those tears, the haggard looks of fear and despair are because they have lost all sense of security and wellness.  Life is truly miserable if you cannot find an environment that can be trusted as safe and hospitable.

            The second great need and desire is our quest to find partnership.  We want someone to want us.  We want to be chosen.  We want to choose others to be with, and we want them to welcome our choice of them.  For most of us, marriage is the way this desire is worked out.  For others, it is through friendship or community life.  It is discouraging not to be chosen by anyone for partnership -not to find someone who welcomes our companionship.

            Our third great need and desire as human beings is the need to enter into a loving relationship with our own selves.  We  -all of us-  have a deep and rich inner world of imagination and memory;  we have special feelings and thoughts and dreams that make us unique.  The great question is whether we will love and honor and respect our own selves, learning to respect and appreciate our own personalities, temperaments, bodies, hearts, pains and joys.  It is the sharpest misery to be ignorant of one’s own self  -to hate one’s self.

            So  -what does this picture of human life and our search for fulfillment in relationship tell us about what God is really like?  Trinity Sunday is the day in the Christian year in which the Church reminds us of the astonishing conclusion to which it has come regarding God’s nature.  Today we recall the very radical and revolutionary teaching of the Nicene Creed, about which I have spoken for the past two weeks.  And that revolutionary teaching is this:  that God is Trinity  -a threefold life-  not a colossal supreme being in splendid isolation.  God is all-embracing creative love  -the Father.  God is self-giving love  -the Son, incarnate in Jesus, who goes out to be united with suffering humanity in order to raise us up from ruin and reunite us with our Father.  And God is transforming love  -the Holy Spirit, who enters into the hearts of human beings to change them from within so they can see the reality of the world more clearly, love in freedom, live together as Christ’s Body, and enter eternal life.

            But this conclusion about God, arising from the deepest reflection on our experience of Jesus and the giving of the Spirit, exactly matches what we find from our examination of humanity’s deepest needs and desires.  God the all-embracing Father is the fulfillment of our longing for a life and a world we can trust absolutely.  God the Father is the life-giver on whom we can depend throughout all our lives, and the one to whom we can commit ourselves in death without fear, because He will never let us go.  God the Son is the companion we have dreamed of, the one who chose us even though he had to endure the cross and descent into hell to make us his own.  Jesus  -the Divine Word in human form, is the one we can love and give ourselves to without restraint.  Unconditional love incarnate, he has promised to always be with us, no matter what.  And God the Holy Spirit is the one who dwells deep within our hearts, making a deep love of ourselves both essential and possible, for we are temples of the Spirit  -every one of us-  worthy of honor and full of rich possibilities.

            Far from being an abstract dogma for intellectuals to worry about, the Church’s affirmation of the Trinity, the God who is a communion of mutual love  -Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is good news for every human being.  This affirmation proclaims that we have a God who meets our deepest needs for intimacy and love:  a God who creates us, gives us birth and sustains us;  a God who comes out to us to keep us company in everything that befalls us;  a God who enters into us to transform us through love from within.  Our very natures bear the stamp of the Trinity, for God has planted within us desires and hopes that can only be fulfilled by the overflowing and welcoming love of these three persons who are ultimately one person:  Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

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Sermon delivered by The Rev. Jeffrey S. Dugan in St. James Episcopal Church,
Farmington, Connecticut on Sunday, April 20, 2008

The vast majority of Christian communities recognize a distinction between what we call "laity" and "clergy," and all the major denominations have preserved the two categories to some degree.

            Over the years, however, the position of the minister has become more and more remote from that of the other members of a parish.  In worship, for instance, while the purpose of the Reformers was to restore the full participation of the laity, who had become little more than spectators at the mass, Protestant congregations by the end of the 19^th century had become little more than spectators themselves, passively listening to the words that flowed from chancel and pulpit without even a muttered, "Amen."

            Now –in the opening years of the 21st century- the whole situation has been changing.  As with most everything else in our religious traditions, the role of the clergy and that of the laity are being re-examined.  Roman Catholic and Protestant churches alike are now intent on emphasizing the corporate nature of the worship and witness of the Church.  There has been a great awakening to the New Testament truth that all members of the Church are called to the ministry of the Gospel, as well as a candid questioning of some of the traditional distinctions between clergy and laity.

            And, it must be added, all of this sounds very confusing to some people today.  For centuries we have lived with this simple distinction between clergy and laity, so what is all this talk about the ministry of the laity?  No matter what is said about the "priesthood of all believers,"  the average church member is going to continue making a distinction that could be crudely stated as:  the clergy are the professionals, and the members are the amateurs.

            By a professional we mean one who is called and trained to a specific function in society.  From its earliest days the Church recognized certain men and women as being called to specific tasks, and very soon set them apart so that they might give their entire time and energies to their ministry.  There is, therefore, a clear distinction between the clergy, who have undergone training for the tasks of preaching, teaching, celebrating the Sacraments, and pastoral work, and what we call the laity  -who have their priority over specific "churchly" duties.  So long as we are talking about the order and functions within the Christian community, it is not entirely out of place to think of the professional and the amateur, a distinction which holds in every other occupation we can think of.

            "But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a dedicated nation, and a people claimed by God for his own, to proclaim the triumphs of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light."  To whom were these words spoken?  To a convocation of the apostles?  To a council of theologians?  To a conference of clergy?  No  -we know very well to whom this apostle was writing.  He was sending a circular letter to a network of little Christian congregations spread across Asia Minor.

            Imagine for a moment one such church, meeting early on a Sunday morning in some private home, or cave, or cellar.  It would be a varied group but predominantly poor and uninfluential, and very conscious that they were a tiny minority in a hostile pagan environment.  And suddenly here were those words from the apostle Peter:  "You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a dedicated nation, a people claimed by God for his own . . . "  You he says -you are chosen of God, and reborn into the new community which is Christ's Church, and to you it is given to proclaim the triumphs of him who has called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

            What an assignment!  Just as the people of the Old Covenant were chosen, not to revel in the thought of being the favorites of God, but to be a "light to lighten the Gentiles,"  so this little group of disciples are summoned to this "royal priesthood,"  a "dedicated nation,"  to live out and make known the Good News of Jesus Christ.  And the word comes directly to us as a family of Christ here and now.  By gathering together this Sunday to celebrate the Good News, we are doing nothing less than proclaiming "the triumphs of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light."  And that proclamation is not limited to this pulpit.  Your very presence witnesses to your belief that God reigns, that Jesus Christ is still Savior and Lord in a society that in so many ways rejects his claims and lives by other standards completely, and that there is such a thing as a  "fellowship of the Spirit,"  whereby we are strengthened and supported as we strive to be true disciples.

            Then, for six days, we are dispersed- we go out into the world.  But the Church does not vanish until the next Sunday comes around.  Each one of us goes back to our home, to our daily work, to our social life and recreational activities, to live out the Gospel.  It is by our behavior, our attitudes, our opinions, our relationships with other people, that we "proclaim the triumph of him who has called us out of darkness into his marvelous light."  All Christians, no matter how isolated we may feel, or how unimportant our witness, are in the sight of God part of this "chosen race," this "royal priesthood," this "dedicated nation," this "People claimed by God for himself."  If these seem pretentious titles to give to the members of St. James Parish sitting in these pews today, do you think they sounded any less pretentious to those tiny groups of poor, illiterate, frightened disciples huddled in corners of the great cities of the Roman Empire?  Peter is not conferring grandiose titles on those congregations to compensate them for their sense of weakness and insecurity.  He is, rather, reminding them that this is how the Good News is to be brought to a world that, then and now, is bruised and battered and broken by the bad news that floods all around us and to us day by day.  He is not only speaking of the "noblesse oblige"  -that we have to live up to the standards of the "royal priesthood," the "people claimed by God" by a life of humble service and compassion.  He speaks to us individually  -one by one-  out there, as well as all together here in worship, that we should be nothing less than the Body of Christ here on earth.

            Amateur Christians.  You know, that is what we all, in a very real sense,  -both clergy and laity-  are called to be.  Do you know what the word amateur means?  The word amateur means "lover."   Lover.  We often think of an amateur as one who tries something but isn't that good at it.  We think of a professional as one who is paid for what they do.  But the true meaning of the word amateur implies pursuing an art or an occupation out of the sheer passionate love for it.  Think about this for a little while, and you will come to the very heart of the Christian Gospel.  True Christianity is being an amateur -one who follows Christ out of love.  Too often we lapse into professional religion  -going through the motions, doing all the right religious things at all the precisely right times.  Time and time again the Church has lapsed into this same religious professionalism, and time and time again the Church has sprung to life again when the amateurs  -the lovers-  recover and proclaim the joy, the spontanaeity, the freedom and the compelling power of the Gospel.  God has proclaimed us his chosen people, and we are to have as a primary characteristic . . . our number one priority . . .  the giving and receiving of Love;  we are to be lovers, because we were made in the image of our Creator.

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Sermon delivered by The Rev. Jeffrey S. Dugan in St. James Episcopal Church,
Farmington, Connecticut on Sunday, April 27, 2008

            If any of Paul’s friends from before his conversion had heard his speech to the Athenians, they would have been very surprised.  Not only was this Pharisee preaching to the gentiles, but he quoted their own poets to support his proclamation of faith in God and in the Resurrection of Jesus.

            Paul had come a long way from the days when he was busy tracking down Christians to try them for blasphemy.  His dramatic encounter with the Lord on the road to Damascus had changed his life utterly, and he could speak from the heart when he said,  “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious . . .   What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.”

            Paul himself had always been in every way very religious, but the God he had sought for so long had turned out to be quite different from what he expected.  So different that the zealous Jew found himself preaching the Resurrection of Christ in the middle of the capital of gentile culture.

           Coming to know the unknown God can have pretty serious consequences.

            We have a lot of special blessings as Christians.  We are taught not only to worship our Creator, but also to love that God who loved us enough to send the incarnate Son of God to be among us.  The Son lived and died as one of us, but had the power to conquer both sin and death once for all.

            But how many of us really know this lover-God?  Do we really behave as though we and all around us are God’s children?  Would the world be in such a mess if we really acted like people who live and move and have our being in God?

            Put in that way, even the majority of Christians are worshipping an unknown God most of the time, and a lot of us live our lives outside of Sunday morning services as if God were an irrelevance, a luxury, an obsolete -but nice- idea.

            And that is not what the God we meet in today’s lessons asks of us at all.  We can’t claim ignorance of God as an excuse for living lives that ignore God.  We are commanded to repent -not just to feel sorry.  We are not called to feel sorry;  we’re called to turn our lives around.  It is not by the sonorous words or the frequency of our Sunday worship that we will be judged, but by our actions -out in the world.  And it is Christ Jesus who died for us and rose again from the dead who will be our judge.

            So how is it that we are expected to live?  The reading from the First Letter of Peter gives us a pretty clear picture, not only of how we are expected to live as individuals, but as a community as well.  To refrain from evil in word and action, to “seek peace and pursue it.”  If people do us harm or speak ill of us we are not to retaliate, but to bless them instead.  We are called to unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, tender hearts and humble minds.

            From whatever angle you look at that list, it comes out as a tall order, even if we didn’t live in a world in which we are constantly fed the message that “nice guys finish last.”  But it seems as though Peter has taken that into consideration as well:

            “Who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is right? . . . Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts reverence Christ as Lord.”

            What is basic to the kind of confidence that can move us to reshape our lives?  There is only one source for that kind of confidence:  the knowledge of God, and the knowledge of God’s Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.  It is from coming to know God in scripture and by talking with Him in prayer and feeling Him in our relationships with other people.

            Most especially and most poignantly in this Easter season, it is remembering that “Christ also died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit.”  Easter is the season of the Resurrection, the victory of Christ over death, without which our faith and his death are both meaningless.

            It is only by responding to God’s redeeming love, by working to redeem our own lives and those of others, that we can claim our part in God’s saving work.  For it is there for us, offered freely, regardless of our background or merit.  But we must join ourselves to God, come to know the God who has given our very life back to us, and learn to act in accordance with that new life of love.

            That is the point of Jesus using the long and graphic image of the vine and the vinedresser.  Jesus is the vine and God the vinedresser.  Just as dead branches that do not bear fruit are cut off and burned, so we will perish if we are not so linked with Christ that his risen life flows through us and is shown in our works.

            Just being formally linked to the vine is not enough -the life of the vine must flow through the branch.  “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”  What a clear echo of “in him we live and move and have our being!”

            Yet the author of the Epistle is right to warn us that life in Christ may not be free from suffering.  He tells us that people who do evil things may cause us suffering even though, if we are faithful, they cannot do us any ultimate harm.  But Jesus goes further and tells us that God prunes the branches of the vine for their own good, that they may bear much more fruit than they would if left untended

            To be faithful to our new life in Christ, then, not only exposes us to the possibility of ill-treatment from outsiders, but we must be tried and tested and pruned by God as well!

            Anybody who ever said living a resurrection life was easy had the wrong idea.  For resurrection and all its glory come only after death and its pain.

            Our whole lives, if we are to be true to the Christ who lived and died and rose for us, must be like his.  We must live through a series of small daily deaths that unpick one by one the ties that bind us to all that is not God.  Daily deaths that lead to daily small resurrections that one by one remove the veils between ourselves and God, until at our last death the final barrier falls and we see God face to face.

            Then, having lived every day in pursuit of peace, and dying to all that is the enemy of peace, we will be ready for the embrace of God, our Creator, our Lover and our Redeemer.

            And who is to say what that embrace will be like?  For as much as we strive to know and to love God on this side of death, there will always be an altar in our hearts inscribed “to an unknown God.”  Always -until the day when seeing God face to face we will know God even as we are known.

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Sermon delivered by The Rev. Jeffrey S. Dugan in St. James Episcopal Church,
Farmington, Connecticut on Sunday, April 13, 2008

            I want to ask an odd question this morning:  Have you ever thought of God as being fun?  Here in the very heart of colonial Puritan austerity, that’s probably not a question that has been asked very much in the past.  It is, generally speaking, a question seldom asked out loud  -anywhere-  or ever put into bold print, but certainly people must wonder about it sometimes.  Is there anything fun about coming to know God?  The question arises on its own out of Jesus’ astounding claim to be the most fun person anyone can possibly know, as clearly recorded in John’s gospel.  There, in chapter 10, verse 10, Jesus says in one translation,  “I have come that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance -to the fullest, till it overflows.”  If that is not a definition of fun, then what is?  For the most part, this passage is overlooked and seldom discussed, especially by theologians.  And that raises another question for me, and the question is just this:  Can people who live in such confusing and perilous times as these;  can t