Sermon Archive of The Most Rev -...

Sermon Archive of The Most Rev. Mark HaverlandMetropolitan, Anglican Catholic Church(listed in chronological order)

H0-15 Epiphany VI, February 13, 2000. H3-05 Christmas Eve. December 24, 2003H3-23 Lent I. March 9, 2003.H3-39 Easter II. May 4, 2003.H3-53 Trinity II, St. Peter's Day. June 29, 2003.H3-59 Trinity XI. August 31, 2003. H3-61 St. Bartholomew's Day. August 24, 2003.H3-65 Trinity XVII. October 12, 2003.H4-21 Quinquagesima. February 15, 2004.H4-64 Trinity XVI. September 26, 2004.H5-28 Palm Sunday. March 20, 2005. H7-49 Trinity I. June 10, 2007.H8-61 St. Bartholomew's Day. August 24, 2008.H11-71 Trinity XXI/Christ the King. November 13, 2011. H12-66 Trinity XVIII. October 7, 2012.H15-33 Good Friday. April 3, 2015.H15-40 Easter III. April 26, 2015.H15-50 Trinity II. June 14, 2015.H16-65 Trinity XVII. September 18, 2016.H17-01 Advent I, December 3, 2017. H17-50 Trinity II. June 25, 2017.H17-55 Trinity VII. July 30, 2017.H17-62 Trinity XIV. September 17, 2017.H17-63 Trinity XV. September 24, 2017.H17-64 Trinity XVI. October 1, 2017.H17-68 Trinity XX/Christ the King. October 29, 2017. H17-70 Trinity XXII. November 12, 2017.

H0-15Epiphany VI. February 13, 2000. St. Stephen’s, Athens

The Epistle: I St. John 3: 1 - 8. The Gospel St. Matthew 24: 23 - 31.

St. Matthew xxiv, verse 27 - For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The Fathers of the Church interpret the 24th chapter of St. Matthew, from which our gospel lesson today is taken, on two levels. First, many of the things we find written there were fulfilled literally and historically in first century Palestine. In the year 66 during a Jewish revolution against Roman rule over Palestine, the Romans laid siege to the city of Jerusalem. The siege lasted four years and produced incredible sufferings. It ended in A.D. 70 when Roman armies took the city and exterminated or deported most of its population. The city was virtually destroyed. Only a scattered population remained until Jerusalem was refounded as a Gentile city called Aelia Capitolina in 135 by Hadrian after a later Jewish revolt. At that time pagan temples were erected to replace the Jewish temple. Some of the things in this chapter are treated by the Church Fathers as prophecies of the historical events relating to this period of the Jewish wars. For instance, St. John Chrysostom writes, ‘In the preceding verses [our Lord] had spoken in a veiled manner of the end of Jerusalem; here He goes on to speak of it openly, to lead them to believe in the coming destruction....’ (On Matt. Homily 76)

However, this lesson also looks forward to events that have not yet come to pass even from our perspective and in our own day. So, again, St. John Chrysostom writes,'Having finished with what concerned Jerusalem, the Lord passes on to what concerns His own Coming and speaks of the signs that will accompany it, and this not only for their guidance, but for ours also, and for all who come after us.' (On Matt. Homily 77)

And what is it that we learn from what our Lord says here about his own Second Coming?

First, we learn that no teaching about the Second Coming, no supposed sign or wonder, no prophecy or opinion whatsoever, should in any way alter the faith and morals taught to us by the Church. ‘Believe it not....Behold, I have told you before,’ our Lord says. The faith of the Church was once delivered to the saints and is now maintained in the Creeds and in the teachings of the Councils and Fathers and in the consensus of Christians throughout all history. If the world is ending, or if the world is not ending, in no way alters what we believe and how we should live. Our faith should be serene and unshaken by such concerns. The first fact about the Second Coming that our Lord speaks of in this lesson is that it will be used as an occasion to bring in false and misleading teaching, to bring in heresy. And we all know that even in our own day false teaching on this subject causes foolish and gullible people to quit their jobs and to go sit on a hill top and to worry needlessly. Believe it not, says our Lord. Be skeptical and cautious in such matters. Do not let what others say disturb you.

Secondly, we also learn from this lesson that the Second Coming will be absolutely clear and unmistakable. If we wonder about it, then it hasn’t occurred: ‘For as the lightening cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.’ Chrysostom again, commenting on this passage, writes, '[A]s lightening needs no one to announce or to herald it, but is seen in an instant... even to those who sit in their houses, so shall the Coming of the Son of man be visible everywhere at once, because of the splendor of His glory.' (PL 23, col. 179)

And, again, St. Hilary writes, ‘He shall neither be hidden in any place nor accessible only to a few, but...He shall be present everywhere and to the sight of all men.’ So, save your money; don’t buy the book. Our Lord’s

Second Coming requires no explanation or announcement. If someone needs a sermon or a radio broadcast or a book to explain why the Second Coming is imminent, again, believe him not. It requires no announcement. It will be utterly public knowledge.

Thirdly and finally, we learn from all that Scripture tells us about the Second Coming, that its timing is not only unknowable until it occurs, but also in truth is irrelevant. Our Lord’s constant refrain is to watch, to be careful, to be like servants waiting for their master’s return, like guests waiting for the wedding party to arrive. Christians are called to watchful expectation. We should live every day as if it were our last day. We should prepare for every holy communion as it were to be our viaticum, our death-bed communion. If we knew the exact timing of the Second Coming, that should affect our lives not one slightest iota. The duties that I have today would not be altered. The Creed that I believe would not be changed. The faith, hope, and love to which we are called would not become something else. We should always live carefully and watchfully, prepared equally for my going that we call death and for Christ’s coming which we call the Parousia or the Second Coming. I do not know when I will die. I do not know when Christ will come. It is neither necessary nor desirable that I know these things. I need only know that they will occur and that I therefore should always be preparing myself for the inevitable day. This is, again, what Scripture and the Fathers teach us. St. Augustine writes,'...[T]he...approach of the Lord...comes daily nearer; but of how near it was said, It is not for you to know the times or the seasons (Acts i.7). Consider when it was the Apostle said, For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is passed and the day is at hand (Rom. xiii. 11,12); and see how many years have since passed: yet what he said was not false. How much more must we say the Lord’s coming is nigh; we who have come so much closer to the end?' (Epistle 199.22)

Every day it is nearer, as our death is every day nearer. But it is not for us to know the times or the seasons for either. Believe them not who claim to know such things.

Our Lord will come again and our lives will be judged. That is really all we need to know and believe about the Second Coming. Its timing does not alter our faith or duty. The matter will be perfectly clear when it occurs. And in the mean time our task is to prepare always to meet our Judge when he calls for us. This is what the gospel says. This is what the Fathers teach. For as the lightning cometh out of the east, and shineth even unto the west; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.


H3-05Christmas Eve. December 24, 2003. Saint Stephen's, Athens, Georgia

Saint Luke ii, verse 7 - And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.


The word 'firstborn' in my text is a technical Biblical term, . The term does not necessarily mean that there are subsequent sons or children, though in large ancient Jewish households there normally would have been others after the first. Rather the 'firstborn' son primarily means the son who by right carries on the name of his father and who inherits a double portion of the father's estate, whatever other children or heirs there may be. The main meaning of 'firstborn' is not biological but legal and moral. In Exodus God calls the Israelites as a nation his 'firstborn', saying to Moses, '...thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, my firstborn.' (iv.22) All the peoples of the world were created by God and are his sons and daughters, but Israel is his firstborn, the child who inherits most and is favored, and through whom all other the other nations of the world are to be blessed. Even if the mother of the firstborn son displeases the father, the father is not to disinherit the

firstborn: fathers shall 'acknowledge the...firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath' (Deuteronomy xxi.17). So even if Israel strays and becomes a prodigal, foolish son, as Israel did in fact stray, still he is acknowledged by God the Father and endowed with a double portion.

Before Christ was acknowledged as the Lord of Christians, he was a son of Israel, and therefore to understand Christmas we must understand what our gospel today means in Jewish terms. Note please that in my text Jesus is called Mary's firstborn son. Jewish descent is reckoned through the mother, so our Lord is a son of Israel because of our Lady his mother. But further, as Mary's 'firstborn son' our Lord inherits a double portion of Mary's estate. The angel of the Lord brought tidings unto her and said, 'Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art thou among women.' (i.28) Though Mary tells us that she is of 'low estate' (Luke i.48), yet precisely because God favors her humble obedience she is the most blessed of women. A double portion of her estate, of the estate of the most blessed of women, is surely a more than human blessing. Mary is a descendant of King David, so her son's portion by right is the throne of David, and such a portion the angel promised: '[T]he Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David' (i.32). But a double portion means that the throne of Christ is more than the earthly throne of David. He is to inherit more than the kingdom of David. He is to have also a heavenly throne, an eternal kingdom. This conclusion, which we know to be correct, is implied in the fact that Christ is Mary's firstborn son in the light of the Old Testament commandment that the firstborn son is to inherit a double portion.

The paradox of Christmas is that the Child born this day had to come down from heaven for us men and for our salvation because of our first mother's sin, because we all are plagued by a double portion of sin and folly and death. The great victory becomes possible because of the original calamity. The leaven of malice spoils our race and all that we touch. But as we sing at the Easter Vigil, O felix culpa, oh blessed iniquity, that our sin should bring forth such a Saviour. God who wonderfully created our nature, yet more wonderfully renews it. God dignifies humanity by becoming one of us, by incarnation into our humanity, by assumption of humanity in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though Eve's sin made us the children of sin, the obedience of Mary, the new Eve, restores the balance, and her Son's birth reverses Satan's power and Satan's sway.

Our salvation began with Mary's fiat, 'Be it unto me according to thy word.' This same salvation came to light with our Lord's birth on Christmas. Then this salvation came to fruition upon the Cross, when our Lord entrusted his unnamed beloved disciple, who stands for us all, into the status of his adopted brother when he said to his mother, 'Woman, behold thy son!' and to the disciple, 'Behold thy mother!' (St. John xix.26f.) Our Lord has a double portion of his mother's estate as descendant of David and handmaid of the Lord, and he has a double portion of his heavenly Father's blessings for mankind. By adopting his disciples as his brothers and sisters, all that is his by nature and birth he gives to us. By taking our nature upon him at Christmas and by dying and rising for us at Easter he opens for us the heavenly.

All of this is ours, not because we are good or wise or noble, but because God loves us. We are the child who is given a Christmas gift long before he can earn or deserve anything - the child who is loved just because he is loved. God's love requires no more reason than a mother's love for her baby. It just is.

Earth is united to heaven by a double arch. The first arch we remember today on Christmas, a feast of the Incarnation by which God came down from heaven. The second arch we celebrate in this liturgy, when the people of God gather before God's altar and rise up to heaven by the sacrament of our Incarnate Lord's Body and Blood. God came down to us. God lifts us up to himself. That is the meaning of Christmas and that is the fruit of the Christ-Mass.

And so on this night of splendor and joy, when the light of God's love shone upon the world and our Saviour first revealed his sacred face, I wish you all happiness. Though there was no room for our Lord in the inn, make room for him now in your hearts by faith in your Christmas communion. There let him reign and be joyful that you too are the child of God and inheritor of the Kingdom of heaven.


H3-23Lent I. March 9, 2003. St. Stephen's, Athens; St. Nicholas's, Cleveland, Ga.

Saint Matthew iv, verse 11 - Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.


The story of Christ's fasting in the wilderness before the outset of his public ministry is told to us by the first three gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Saint Matthew's version, which we read today, changes Saint Mark's in several ways, two which I would like to point out here. First, Matthew explicitly tells us that our Lord 'fasted', whereas Mark merely tells us that he was tempted in the wilderness. Secondly, Matthew alone tells us that Jesus was in the wilderness 'forty days and forty nights'. Both the fact of his fast and the reference to forty days and forty nights connect this fact to two basic stories from the Old Testament. In Exodus xxxiv.28 we are told that Moses was on Mount Sinai 'with the LORD forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread, nor drink water.' There we see the fast, forty days and forty nights, and a location in the wilderness. Likewise in I Kings xix.8 we find that at a critical moment in Israel's history the great prophet Elijah began a fast of 'forty days and forty nights' and went then unto 'the mount of God' where he met God in a still small voice and was given instructions for his own future and that of his nation. Again there we see the wilderness, fasting, and forty days and forty nights.

Matthew, you see, is taking the basic story from Saint Mark and is shaping it to show us how our Lord is beginning again the story of Israel. The same idea will appear again often in the gospels, as when at his Transfiguration our Lord is seen upon the mountain top speaking with Moses and Elijah, the representatives of the Law and the Prophets. Matthew shows that our Lord came to renew the basic themes of Israel's history so as to complete and perfect that which in the first version so often ended in failure and defeat.

But before we personally come to the great victory, which we hear in the story of Easter, we first must wander through the fast of the forty days of Lent, as Israel wandered in the temptations of the wilderness for forty years and as Moses and Elijah and Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights. We continue to live the story of the Bible, now through the Church's year and sacraments and disciplines. It is therefore most appropriate that today, on the first Sunday in Lent, we read the story of our Lord's fasting and temptation in the wilderness at the beginning of our Lenten fast.

Three temptations in Matthew's account hearken back to the original Exodus. The first temptation relates most directly to the situation of Christ's fast: we are told, 'he was hungry' (iv:2). Satan asks Christ to make bread from stones, and so implies that our Lord should distrust the God who provided his people manna in the wilderness and who brought forth for them water from a stone. This temptation plays on the frequent occasions in the Exodus when Israel sinned in a desire for food and in a lack of trust that God would provide it. In response to the renewal of this old temptation, our Lord asserts that to obedience to God and God's word is more important than even physical necessities, and he does so by quoting Moses himself: '[M]an does not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.' (Deut. vii.3) Furthermore Christ is not a showman who works wonders for his own benefit. He works miracles for the sake of others, not for himself. Today he will not make himself food. Later he will not come down from the cross (xxvii.40). Please notice that our Lord does not say that bread does not matter. In fact 'not...by bread alone' implies that bread is indeed needed. The temptation lies not in the desire to eat but rather in our tendency to distrust the Father who has promised his love and who long ago sent bread from heaven for his people. Distrust of God is sin.

The second temptation, to jump off the temple, is a temptation to violate the laws of nature established by God, merely so as to test, tempt, and prove God by forcing his hand. Satan tempts by using the words of Scripture in Psalm xci (in LXX). Jesus responds with Deuteronomy vi.16: 'Thou shalt not tempt the Lord they God.' If the first temptation was an attempt to confuse priorities by putting food before trust in God, this is an attempt to do things in our time rather than in God's time. Jesus eventually will allow himself to be sacrificed and to die at the

hands of others. And eventually angels will minister to him both at the end of his fast (11) and after his resurrection (xxviii.2-7). But events must unfold in God's time, not because we choose to force them in our time. God's answer to prayer is often, 'Wait!' And we so often are as impatient as we are distrustful.

The third temptation is an invitation to idolatry in imitation of Israel's worship of the golden calf during the Exodus. In return for worship, Satan offers worldly domination: 'the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them' (v. 8). Some take this offer to mean that worldly power is Satan's to bestow as he pleases. But Satan is the father of lies, so it is in fact not clear that the world is as entirely in his gift as he implies. In any case, Christ rejects the temptation to idolatry with more words from the Exodus: 'Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve.' (Deut. vi.13) By asserting the sole divinity of God, our Lord banishes Satan. If God is truly our God, then all other things will fall into their proper place, including the satisfaction of hunger and the ministering angels (verse 11) which Satan deceptively offered in the wrong way and at the wrong time. If we seek first the reign of God, then all those other things will be added unto us. If we seek not the reign of God in our hearts, then everything else will go wrong. Badly wrong.

We tend to view Lent as an interruption in our lives, and in a sense it is since Easter is the most fundamental fact for Christians. Joy and victory in the end will be everything. But the end is not yet, and Lent is the way to Easter, and the shortcuts we would like to try only lead further into the wilderness. It is by slow and steady pilgrimage through Lent and life that we come to our proper end. It is by dealing well with the temptations of the devil that God becomes our answer and our crown. At the end of his fast the devil left our Lord and angels came and ministered to him. The ministering angels with their comforts are waiting for us as well. Let us keep a good and devout Lent with our eyes fixed on the joys of Easter and heaven.


H3-39Easter II. May 4, 2003. Saint Stephen's, Athens; Saint Nicholas's, Cleveland.

Saint John x, verse 11 - I am the good shepherd.


The scholar who probably more than anyone shaped one of the unfortunate modern language liturgies was a man named Massey Shepherd. Shepherd argued, among other things, against the use in prayers of metaphors involving light and darkness. His thought was that in a day of electric light bulbs, spiritual metaphors of light and darkness were no longer meaningful to modern people. Nobody fears the dark when he can flip a switch to create light. I guess Shepherd never was a child afraid of the dark, never stubbed his toe in the dark, never encountered a dark alley, and never drove out of a long, long tunnel into bright sunshine.

Light and dark, of course, are realities that modern Americans still easily understand, though a few days in rural Haiti or camping certainly help to reinforced their meaning. Still there is a point to the idea that Biblical images and metaphors, which are often rooted in ancient, rural, and tribal societies sometimes require explanation and translation for people in a modern, urbanized, and individualistic society. Many Americans, perhaps most, have never seen or eaten a goat, and millions have probably never touched a sheep, much less lived in close proximity to them. When the images and metaphors are Biblical, however, it is our duty to consider them carefully and learn their meanings rather than to ditch them as hard to understand. And so it is with the Good Shepherd. Most of all we learn the meaning of Biblical images and figures by learning from elsewhere in the Bible.

In 1993 I visited the beautiful Byzantine church of Saint Saviour in Chora in Istanbul. The mosaics of this ancient building are mostly intact, and one ceiling painting is an electrifying mosaic of the Resurrection. The scene is a common icon in Orthodox art. Our Lord is striding forward dynamically in a brilliant, white robe. He holds in each hand a passive wrist of Adam and Eve, whom he is drawing forth from their tombs. Under the scene lies Satan, bound and chained, with the metal work of hell's gates scattered all around. Standing by Eve's tomb is a young man in white holding a shepherd's crook.

At first you might think that the young man is a depiction of our Lord himself in another guise, as the Good Shepherd. And in part he is. But then you realize that he also is Abel, Eve's son, who, as we learn in Genesis iv.2, was 'a keeper of sheep'. That is the King James' Version translation. The Hebrew says literally, 'Abel was a feeder of sheep.' The son stands by his mother's tomb with the sign of his profession in his hand.

Consider what the icon teaches us. First, Abel is by a tomb because death has some power over Abel. The original sin of our first parents, his parents, brought death upon us all. We all shall have a tomb or its equivalent because of original and personal sin. In the case of Abel we read explicitly of his death in Genesis iv. He is, you will recall, the victim of the first murder, by Cain, his brother, and God says of that murder to Cain, 'the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground.' (Genesis iv.10) Eve's sin led to death for her son, for sin grew into more sin, and that sin and death called from the earth to God for action.

But, secondly, Abel is standing by the tomb. We all come to a tomb, but the tomb does not hold us. Abel shall rise, as his parents rise. Death is not the final thing. There are four last things - death, judgement, heaven, and hell - and death is only the first and the least of the four. The resurrection of the body and the life of the world to come are far greater than death. That Abel stands teaches us that life is more ultimate than death.

Thirdly, Abel, who is presented as a shepherd, is in fact a foreshadowing of our Lord who says, 'I am the good shepherd.' Abel is, in the literal Hebrew, 'a feeder of sheep', and our Lord says of himself as the good shepherd that he shall lead his sheep 'in and out [to] find pasture' - that is, to feed (St. John x.9). Likewise as Abel was the victim of a murder at the hands of his brother, so our Lord was murdered by his brethren. As Abel's sacrifice was

acceptable to God, so our Lord's sacrifice was pleasing to his Father. In the icon our Risen Lord and his prototype, Abel, are both dressed in white and both stand, for both are good shepherds, though the figure of our Lord is larger and most central, since he is the fulfilment of the mere foreshadowing which was Abel.

Finally however, in one matter our Lord and Abel differ. The blood of innocent Abel cried unto God from the ground calling for vengeance upon his guilty brother. But not so with the blood of our Lord. In this respect he is closer to the Old Testament figure of Joseph than of Abel. For innocent Joseph's suffering led him to say the following to his brothers:‘[Y]e thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. Now therefore fear ye not: I will nourish you [ahhh - there is the good shepherd feeding again - and remember that Joseph's brethren are employed in Egypt as shepherds; I will nourish you...], and your little ones. And he comforted them, and spake kindly unto them.’ (l.20f.)

Where Abel's blood cried forth for vengeance against his brother, not so with Joseph, whose sufferings were meant by God for good for his brothers. So too with our Lord, of whom, Hebrews says, that his 'blood of sprinkling...speaketh better things than that of Abel.' (xii.24) That is, our Lord's blood was shed, not to increase our guilt, but rather in atonement for our sins and as a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for every wrong ever done by anyone in any place.

Abel was a feeder of sheep. Joseph nourished his shepherd brethren and comforted them and spake kindly unto them. Our Lord, more excellently still, gives us angel's Food, the Bread of heaven, his own and very Body and Blood, to nourish us. His Blood shed forth upon the cross calls not for vengeance upon us, but rather comforts and speaks kindly to us.

Our Lord is the Good Shepherd, the new and greater Abel, the true and blessed Joseph. On Easter he burst forth from the spicéd tomb to draw forth from all tombs in all ages the sons of Adam and the daughters of Eve and to lead us up the heavenly way. Let us now be fed and nourished by him and this great Sacrament revere.


H3-53Trinity II, St. Peter's Day. June 29, 2003; by ++Mark D. Haverland, Ph. D.

St. Matthew xvi, verse 16 - Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.


Consider for a moment what I just said. I don't mean my text. I mean the way I begin every sermon: 'In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.' As with most formulas, this one quickly becomes routine and taken for granted. But if we step back and ponder it for a moment, what an immense claim it makes. The preacher claims to speak in the name of God, in the name of the Blessed and Glorious Trinity. For the preacher these should even be frightening words: I am presuming to speak in God's name; some people may even listen as if I were speaking in God's name. I had better be careful. Even careless or slapdash, much less erroneous or self-centered, words in this context are a kind of blasphemy. What is spoken in the name of God should be full of truth and care.

That which is done in the name of someone is done with the authority and power of that person. In melodramas the good guy says, 'Stop in the name of the law!' That is, the good guy claims to act with the authority and power of the law supporting him. In many places in our country criminal prosecutions begin in the name of the people of whatever the jurisdiction. In England virtually every official act is performed in the name of the Queen, the symbol of the nation's authority, power, and will. It is true that these formulas, invoking the name of the people or the queen or the law also quickly become routine and ignored; however, behind them lie both a claim and a reality of power. Try telling the road workers that you don't accept the name of the people of Georgia and don't want that road built. Good luck. Try telling the Crown prosecutor in England that you are a republican who doesn't recognize the authority of kings or queens. Good luck.

If this is true on the earthly level, much more on the divine. The name of God is a powerful thing. The heart of the Old Testament begins when God tells his name to Moses in Exodus iii. Sermons begin in the name of God. Today a child here was made a 'member of Christ and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven' in baptism precisely while being given a name. And Owen was so named and baptized in the greater Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Similarly in my text today we see that Simon Bar-jona, a Jewish fisherman, was also given a new name, by which all ages will honor him, because he first gave an itinerant rabbi his proper and true name: 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.' Later St. Paul writes the Ephesians, '...I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named...' (iii.14f.). God's family is the Church, and every Christian, whether in the Church Triumphant, Expectant, or still Militant in this world, enters the Church by being named of God in baptism.

Again, sometimes the naming becomes routine, a mere formula that appears to have been emptied of power, words that are said because that is the thing to do. Baptism can become a rite which families have performed thoughtlessly or as a mere social occasion - a chance for a party or presents or for honoring someone as a godparent. But remember that baptism is not merely the granting of a human name. Baptism is an invocation of the all-mighty and all-prevailing name of God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Baptism, even when thoughtlessly sought, really and truly remits and dissolves the guilt and penalty of original sin and of all prior actual sin. Likewise, baptism objectively incorporates the baptized into the Church, and thereby baptism opens to us the door for further grace. By baptism the gates of heaven open wide for those who will manfully fight the Christian warfare until their lives' end. Our Lord really changed Saint Peter when he gave him a new name, and Peter was forever different. Peter did not necessarily know or desire the changes in question. In fact later our Lord says to Peter,

Verily, verily I say unto thee, When thou wast young, thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and

carry thee whither thou wouldest not.” (S. John xxi.18)- a prophecy that for all the world sounds like a description of life in a nursing home. But what our Lord here really means is that once Peter recognized Christ's true identity and called him by his true and proper name, Peter gave himself up into the will of God. From henceforth Peter would live and die, not as Peter would have it, but rather as God would have him do.

When God's name is invoked, you and I lose control, thank God. The words even of a bad sermon in God's name may be used by God in ways the preacher cannot imagine. The giving of Christ his name by Peter led to a new identity beyond his wildest imaginings. That poor fisherman could not have begun to dream of ten thousand churches called by his new name throughout the world, including the great cathedral on one of Rome's seven hills. When Owen was named today something happened the end of which only God knows. God will carry him wither Owen knows not and whither you and I know not. But that which we have done in God's name will not be without fruit in this world and the next. Thank God.

And so to sum all up, I say, God bless Owen Cotterell, and God bless us all.


H3-59Trinity XI. August 31, 2003. St. Stephen's, Athens; St. Nicholas's, Cleveland

Saint Luke xviii, verse 9 - And he spake this parable unto certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and despised others.


Our gospel lesson today, the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, is one of several famous parables which are found only in Saint Luke's gospel. This parable is spoken by our Lord by way of criticizing certain people. It is a parable spoken against: against, first, 'certain which trusted in themselves that they were righteous'; and against, secondly, certain which 'despised others'. Our Lord uses the parable to teach against an incorrect attitude about ourselves and an equally incorrect and related attitude about others. The criticism is focused on a Pharisee in the parable, but of course it is meant to teach you and me about ourselves.

So, first, there is the problem of those 'which trusted in themselves that they were righteous'. If religion and faith were exactly the same thing, then the Pharisee would be faithful, would be righteous, and would not be criticized, because he is exceedingly religious. The Pharisee is at the temple to pray, no doubt at 9 a.m. or 3 p.m., the appointed hours for daily temple prayers. The Pharisee avoids gross immorality and violations of the Ten Commandments: he is not a thief or a extortioner or an adulterer. In fact the Pharisee is a exemplary churchman. He fasts twice a week, again no doubt at the appointed Jewish times on Mondays and Thursdays. He is a tither. The Pharisee is an upright, careful, religious man. I've always said, give me a church full of Pharisees, and I'll give you a church free of debt and growing by leaps and bounds.

But religiousness and faith are not identical. We hope that they overlap considerably, but it certainly is possible to be very religious and yet completely alienated from God. The Pharisee's first problem is a false self-confidence, a mistaken self-reliance, that distances him from real faith. He trusts in himself that he is righteous. The verb translated here as 'trust' here means rely on, have confidence, be certain, be sure. The Pharisees is deeply confident of his own goodness. He is relying on himself. He is, religiously-speaking, a self-made man, and so God cannot break in to his heart.

In contrast listen to Saint Paul in the first chapter of II Corinthians: We were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life: but we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God... (i.8f.). Here Paul uses the same word as in my text, 'trust'. Paul is glad for his afflictions, because they bring home the fact that he and we, unlike the Pharisee of the parable, 'should not trust in ourselves, but in God'. Again, in the Psalms we read, 'O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man' (Ps. cxlvi.3). 'Any child of man' includes myself. I cannot rely on or have confidence in my own spiritual strength. The Pharisee think he can. But he does not keep God's law perfectly and without fault. Therefore he is a lawbreaker and a sinner. Therefore he cannot rest upon his own righteousness, because he is not perfectly righteous. If the Pharisees may not have committed some sins that the publican has committed, yet he certainly has trusted in a child of man, in himself, against God's command and warning. He is leaning on a weak reed, himself, and that in itself is a sin.

So there is the Pharisee's first fault: he goes about to establish his own righteousness, and so is blinded to his real spiritual neediness. He needs a Saviour, but he does not know it.

The Pharisee's second fault is that he 'despised others'. The one thing that really seems to make our Lord angry is hardheartedness that despises or hurts other people. Our Lord is tender towards sinners and forgiving of their sins. Our Lord is hard on those who are not forgiving. In our day this attitude of our Lord's is easily mistaken for indifference towards sin. Our Lord is not indifferent towards sin. Our Lord does not tell the woman taken in adultery to have a nice day. He tells her to go and sin no more. Nevertheless, it is those who would stone the

woman who appear to be the real villains of that story. Our Lord does not approve the Prodigal Son: on the contrary he speaks of the prodigal's wastefulness and folly. Nevertheless it is the hardhearted older brother who is most in danger in that parable. The publican here may well be guilty of extorting excess taxes from poor people or other sins. Publicans weren't very nice. Our Lord does not approve the publican's sins. But it is the Pharisee's blindness to his own sin that enables him to despise others, and that is a more dangerous sin than any of the publican's. If we know ourselves then we should look upon the sins of others, not with approval, but with compassion; not with indifference, but with a consciousness of our own sins. A refusal to feel such compassion is, again, one of the few things that seems really to anger Jesus.

We are, as Archbishop John-Charles says, seldom so shocked as by those sins to which we ourselves are never tempted. The Pharisee is shocked by the publican. But the Pharisee is blind to his own pride, self-satisfaction, and willingness to do without God's grace and mercy. That and his despite towards others are his great sins.

The publican's prayer should be our model: he 'would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner.' Again, Saint John tells us, 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' (I John i.8) Sometimes Christians become discouraged because they see no spiritual progress in themselves. They say, I seem to be doing the same old things. I don't see any spiritual progress in my life. To that a sensitive spiritual director might well respond that we grow spiritually we become more and more sensitive to our sins. The Christian most conscious of his sins is not the worst Christian but the best. A growing consciousness of spiritual failures may indicate spiritual growth as much as or more than it indicates spiritual stagnation. The spiritual life should be more a matter of internalizing the publican's prayer, 'God be merciful to me a sinner,' than a matter of achieving the Pharisee's catalogue of good deeds and self-satisfactions.

So, beware of spiritual self-justification. Beware of despising others. Do not trust in yourself that you are righteous. And above all pray always this prayer: 'God be merciful to me a sinner.' For the humility of the publican is worth more than the good deeds of the Pharisee. A broken and contrite heart our God will not despise.


H3-61St. Bartholomew's Day. August 24, 2003

Sermon for Saint Bartholomew by ++ M. D. Haverland, PhD, August 24, 2003.

August 24 2003 St. Bartholomew's Day 2003Author: The Rt. Rev. Mark Haverland

S. Bartholomew. August 24, 2003. Saint Luke's, Augusta.

Saint Luke xxii, verse 26 -- But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.


We know little about Saint Bartholomew, whose feast we celebrate today on August 24th. He is mentioned in the lists of the twelve apostles in the first three gospels and in Acts, but not in Saint John's gospel. However, his name, Bar-Tolmai, is a patronymic or surname, meaning son of Tolmai', so he probably also had a given or first name. For this reason he often is identified with Nathanael in Saint John's gospel. In that case his name would be Nathanael Bartholomew: Nathanael, son of Tolmai'. Much later legend tell us that Bartholomew eventually went to India, where he took a Hebrew copy of Saint Matthew's gospel. Again, later legend tells us that he was eventually martyred by being flayed alive in Albanopolis in Armenia. But in fact, as I have said, we know little about Bartholomew. So our lessons today are not devoted to Bartholomew personally or directly, but rather they address the general topics of the apostolic office and of Christian leadership. My text, from the gospel for this feast, speaks to these matters.

The lesson itself from Saint Luke consists of a saying by Jesus that he speaks during the Last Supper: The hour was come, he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him' (xxii.14). We have our ideal pictures of this scene, fixed in our minds - though with some historical inaccuracy - by later artists. But our scene of calm and harmony in fact is broken by the controversy that opens our lesson: And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest.' (24) Unfortunately the Last Supper was not the first occasion when such a dispute broke out. You may turn in your Prayer Books a few pages before today's gospel to the feast of Saint James on July 25th, and there you will read that the mother of Zebedee's children with her sons' came to Jesus to ask him that her sons may sit the one on thy right hand, and the other on the left, in thy kingdom' (St. Matthew xx.21). James and John want to be accounted the greatest'. You see self-seeking and jockeying for position, far from being an unusual interruption in the Church of God, in fact were present even in our Lord's own lifetime. Contentious vestrymen and bishops are, if you will, continuing in the apostolic tradition in this respect as well, we hope, as in other more admirable ways. Why should this surprise us? We are all far gone from original righteousness and inclined to sin. Sin and pride and self-seeking are always with us.

What matters more than the fact of sin, even of sin in the Church, even of sin among the apostles, is the response our Lord makes to its manifestation. God matters more than we, and what God does about sin matters more than does sin itself. Our Lord already has taught on the subject of apostolic self-seeking in Saint Luke's gospel. Back in chapter ix, when the apostles were reasoning among them, which of them should be greatest' (ix.46), our Lord took a child, and set him by him, and said unto them' that he that is least among you all, the same shall be great.' (ix.47f.) The apostles have already forgotten this teaching by the Last Supper. Most preaching, you see, is a matter of repeating what we've already heard and of encouraging us to believe what we already know. And most preaching is quickly forgotten or ignored.

But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that doth serve. This is the teaching of our Saviour. Christian leadership means service. No one in Christendom has

prouder titles than the Bishop of Rome. The last of his long string of proud and mighty titles is servus servorum Dei: Servant of the servants of God'. No one, least of all the Pope, supposes that the popes have always lived up to that title of service and humility, but at least the ideal is stated. While the tendency of our old Adam is to promote and to assert self, this sinful tendency is contrary to divine command: he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.'

This saying is made in the midst of a supper. [H]e sat down, and the twelve apostles with him.' There likely were servants present, so when our Lord asks, [W]hether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth', the question was immediately illustrated for those who first heard it. Likewise the promise that our Lord attaches to his obedient followers involves the table: That ye may eat and drink at my table in my kingdom' (xxii.30). We come to sit at God's table in his kingdom by serving others in this world.

This lesson about service and humility is directly counter to the world's teaching. We live in a day of assertiveness training, which is to say, of deliberate rudeness. We are taught by all the world around us that life is about finding myself. But that is not Christ's teaching. He tells us that life is not about finding myself, but about losing myself in service and humility: Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it.' (Luke xvii.33) We live in an age when married couples have the insane notion that marriage is about making myself happy, when of course marriage is about serving: serving one's spouse and then together serving one's children and friends and society. And so with all relationships. The stronger a spouse or person is, the greater the duty to serve: he that is greatest among you, let him be...as he that doth serve.' It is only when the corn of wheat falls to the ground and dies that it can spring forth into abundant growth.

The Prayer Book puts this difficult lesson perfectly, as it so often does. In the Collect for Peace at Morning Prayer we address God whose service is perfect freedom'. Those few words run counter to everything everything that our society tells us. To the world these words are a direct contradiction: to serve is freedom. The world says that to serve is slavery. Yet God's service is perfect freedom. Self-will does not liberate us; it enslaves us. Self-assertion does not gain us a throne in God's kingdom; it casts us into outer darkness. Service does not limit me; it ennobles and frees me. Inordinate love of self does not increase me, but loses me the greatest of God's gifts. The only things we have in the end are the things we give away. The only life we gain is the life we pour out for others.

And that we might see the truth of God's teaching, God lived it out for us as one of us. It is our Lord's own service to us his ministry of teaching and healing, his life of compassion, his patient passion, his humble death upon a cross, his forgiveness even of his executioners it is this service that brings his victory, his mighty Resurrection and glorious Ascension, and his everlasting Session at the right hand of the Father. He that is greatest among us was indeed He who served, who served us to the end, and who serves us still at his table. And to that Table now we come. We fail in service, we falter in love, our wills push and assert and jostle. Yet still we come and kneel and take and eat. Let us pray today, as we perform this Divine Service, at which our Lord is both Priest and Victim, Lord and Servant, that he may teach us to love and to serve as he would have us to do, that we may come to his everlasting kingdom.


H3-65Trinity XVII. October 12, 2003. St. Stephen's, Athens; St. Nicholas's, Cleveland, GA

Ephesians iv, verse 3 - ...endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.


Prayer may be briefly defined as conversation or talking with God. Prayer is a human activity, and the most perfect prayer therefore is that of the only perfect man, our Saviour Jesus Christ. The deepest kind of conversation has as its purpose to unite the people who are talking together so that they come to understand one another and to share in personal comm-union, union of heart and mind. What prayer seeks, Holy Communion provides and fulfils - namely personal union between God and us. Communion means 'union with'. This unity itself is achieved most perfectly in every devout reception of the Body and Blood of Christ in Holy Communion. In Holy Communion Christians, from the individual believer to the two billions of believers around the world, may all unite with our Lord's own self, so that he may dwell in them - in us - and we in him. In Holy Communion our Lord in his human and divine natures is available to you and me most perfectly and fully. Holy Communion is the fulfilment of prayer because it gives what prayer seeks: the establishment of unity between God and man. Holy Communion is the highest kind of prayer, the prayer that most fully enables us to understand and participate in God's mind and will.

Of course we know that there are many other kinds of prayer. Since Holy Communion is the highest kind of prayer and its fulfilment, all other kinds of prayer are best understood in relation to it. Think of all the kinds of prayer as concentric circles, all of which are centered on our Lord's Presence in Holy Communion. The various kinds of prayer are waves rippling out from the altar rail and the simple, single act of Holy Communion. Or to use another image, Holy Communion is the jewel, but the jewel is held and shown to us in a rich setting which is the full range of kinds of prayer.

Why do we need other kinds of prayer, if Holy Communion by itself is the perfection of prayer? Perhaps the act of Holy Communion is too mysterious, too full and rich, for us to comprehend it fully by itself. Perhaps the gem is too blinding in itself. Perhaps our eyes and attention wander to much for us to see the gem itself very clearly when it stands alone. In any case we need to see the gem held in place in its proper setting. And that proper setting is the full range of prayer.

Closest to the jewel is sacramental prayer, the prayer of the Eucharist, the Divine Liturgy, the Service of the Lord's Supper, the Mass, whatever you prefer to call it. Holy Communion proper, the act of receiving our Lord's sacramental Body and Blood, takes place within the context of the full service. This full liturgy is the bracket that holds the gem of our Lord's Body and Blood. We receive Holy Communion of course, but not without hearing God's Word, confessing our sins, making our supplications and intercessions, and offering our thanksgiving and praises. Few of us are fit to receive Holy Communion except in the prayerful and contemplative and quiet setting provided by the fulness of the whole Eucharistic liturgy.

Around this bracket is the rest of the formal prayer life of the Church. In our own tradition the most important parts of that prayer life apart from the Eucharist are the Daily Offices of Morning and Evening Prayer. In these Daily Offices we read through the Psalms monthly and the better part of the Bible annually, and we do so in the context of worship. The Daily Offices give to our daily lives a structure, rhythm, and habit of prayer. Such daily turning to God in prayer and daily listening to God in Scripture builds up around the Eucharistic a prayerful setting. Morning and Evening Prayer attune us to sacred things so that we may worthily and fitly approach our Lord's holy mysteries. That is why in this parish one of the Offices is always said half an hour before the Eucharist of the day.

But the Daily Offices and sacramental worship both are formal, structured prayer. Our prayer lives also need a

personal dimension. The next circle, moving out from Holy Communion, the Eucharist, and the formal prayer life of the Church, is the personal prayer life of Christians. Such personal, private prayer helps make our Church prayers real and alive for us. The formal thanksgivings of the Church are wonderful. But we all have many blessings for which we should personally give thanks. The General Confessions of the Church are powerful, but sometimes are all too General. We also need private examination of conscience, personal consideration of our personal sins, and particular confession of those particular sins whether to God direct or to God with the advice, counsel, and absolution of a priest. The prayers for All Sorts and Conditions of Men and for the Whole State of Christ's Church help us to structure our prayers of supplication and intercession by reminding us of the great categories of human need. But we also need to pray more particularly for our own private needs, for our own friends and family, for our parish and fellow parishioners, for current community and national needs, and for all that our Lord summarizes as our daily bread. In all of these kinds of personal prayer our private prayers flow into the public, formal prayer of the Church and support and extend the Church's prayer. If the formal prayers of the Church are the great waves flowing out from the Real Presence of Christ in Holy Communion, then private prayers are the rivulets and channels that convey the water into every nook and cranny of daily life.

Finally and most generally, there is the kind of prayer that Saint Paul commands when he tells the Thessalonians to 'pray without ceasing' (I Thes. v.17). The whole of our prayer life, whether formal or private, should flow from a general attitude of attention to God, and general turning of our hearts and wills to God. We may not think consciously of God every moment, but our whole life should be directed towards obeying his will, serving his children, and enjoying his blessings. This general turn of our hearts, this general attitude towards life, attunes us to God so that all the other kinds of prayer will naturally well up in us. Prayer becomes second nature to us when we live in the unity of God's Spirit and the bond of peace. The bond of peace is a heart so directed towards God that it is united to all others who are similarly directed. When the spirit that dwell in us is God's Spirit, then the mutual indwelling of God in us and we in God and of we in one another is so strong that Holy Communion then becomes an inward reality. Then our prayer is perfect and heaven has already begun to flourish with us and the bond of peace is complete.


H4-21Quinquagesima. February 15, 2004. Saint Stephen's, Athens, GA

I Corinthians xiii, verse 8 - Charity never faileth....


Our theme today is love, which is one of the most abused words in our language. Our epistle is about love; about love, we might say, in theory. It defines and describes love. Our gospel then is about love in action. In the gospel our Lord foretells his greatest work of love and the victory that it will achieve: 'the Son of man shall be...put...to death: and the third day he shall rise again.' Then our Lord shows that this love is effective in our world by healing the blind man, 'Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee. And immediately he received his sight...'.

I say that the word 'love' is abused, and so it is. Ten or 15 years ago a person who had committed a rather horrible and harmful adultery said to me, 'I believe in love.' To which I did not have the wit, or perhaps the courage, or perhaps either the wit or the courage, to reply, 'But does Love believe in you?' Since for Christians Love is a Who more than an it, that reply of hindsight would have been pertinent. It still is. Whatever we think we mean by love, and whatever we think of what we do in the name of love, there is a Lover who judges us and without whose good will our supposed loves are no such thing.

What do we mean by love? Part of the difficulty is that while Greek has three or four words for 'love', we have one main modern English word which does duty for many different emotions and affections and things. That is one good reason for avoiding the modern Biblical translations which use 'love' throughout I Corinthians xiii where the King James Version uses 'charity'. 'Charity' is better because it is a rare word in this sense, and so it forces us to think. Usually when we hear 'love' we think we know what is being spoken of. We have immediate and assumed ideas. But the strange, old-fashioned word, 'charity', forces us to wonder; and wisdom begins with wonder.

So let me begin by distinguishing desire and charity. The distinction is important, at least if we would understand what Saint Paul means by 'charity'. The two ideas are not necessarily separate, but they may nonetheless be distinguished. Desire means to will something good for myself. I desire to eat the candy bar, to see Paris, to meet the Pope, to hear Mozart, and to avoid cholera. Love in the sense of charity means to will good for someone else. Love wills that little children be happy, that my father live long, that my parishioners succeed in their jobs and their marriages, and that the parish flourish. Love might forego the candy bar or accept cholera for the sake of someone else. Desire turns inward. Charity moves outward.

Now when things are in their proper order, love and desire go together. Love fulfils proper desire. A husband properly should desire his wife, because she makes him happy; and he should love her in the sense of wishing for her all the good in the world, even if that good comes at great cost to himself. In Saint Paul's use 'charity' includes a kind of proper desire, which desires something or someone because what I desire is in truth good. We love God and we desire God, because God is good and because God fulfils us and alone can finally give us lasting happiness. God made the world, and he made it so that he is both the highest good and the greatest pleasure. Or as I often say, God made us with a God-shaped hole in our hearts, which only he can fill. Or again, as Saint Augustine says, our hearts are restless until they rest in God.

So let's go back to believing in love. If we understand love in Paul's sense, then while adultery may be full of desire, it is void of love. For how can we plausibly claim to desire good for someone whose soul we are lacerating with sin and disordered desire? We can't always help what we desire. But love - willing good for the other - means controlling what we do for her sake or for his sake. Adultery, and in lesser degrees the lesser sexual sins, are offences against chastity. But more seriously they are offences against charity, against love. They harm

the object of desire, as well as the one who desires.

But 'charity never faileth'. Charity does not harm the beloved, but is seeks good for all. If the epistle defines love, I began by saying that the gospel shows us love in action. God not only tells us what love is, he also shows us. He shows us above all by the Lord's Passion and Cross, which this week become the central object of our meditation as Lent begins. We turn with our Lord to 'go up to Jerusalem' where 'all things that [were] written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished'. There we will see God pouring out his love for love of us, to save us. Love seeks the good of the other. The Passion and Cross show us such other-love to the uttermost. They show God giving himself utterly and totally for us men and for our salvation. They show God saving us, not by an act of omnipotent will, but by entering completely into our situation and there suffering painfully unto death. That is charity complete, charity going as far as it possibly can.

Such 'charity never faileth'. The love we see in Passiontide and on Good Friday is successful love. It is love that did not fail and will never fail. When our earthly lives are over, when our world is dead and our sun is cold, the burning love of God and his creatures for one another will continue in unending splendor and satisfaction. Then all of the disordered desires of our inconstant lives here and now will be burned away, and all of the true loves of this world will appear as facets of the central Love which brought our world into being and which then renewed it by the Incarnation.

'Charity never faileth'. We hear these word today on the edge of Lent's beginning. At the other end of Lent, on Easter, we shall see this truth burst forth from the tomb, vindicated and sure. In between let us turn to the Cross in prayer and fasting and almsgiving. Let us keep a good and holy Lent, and so come to the joyful Eastertide of Charity.


H4-64Trinity XVI. September 26, 2004. Saint Stephen's, Athens, GA

Ephesians iii, verse 14 - ...the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named....


Our gospel lesson is the story of the raising of the dead son of a widow from the city of Nain. This story sits in the middle of a religious stream which flows from the Old Testament, through the New, and into the broad life of the Church. It flows from the stories of Elijah and Elisha, both of whom similarly resuscitate the dead and only son of a woman. Of course the story anticipates the resurrection of Jesus himself, who likewise died and rose and was the only son of a widow woman. And then later still this story was taken up by the Church and assigned as the gospel lesson for the feast of the Conversion of Saint Augustine of Hippo - another son of a widow. Augustine, dead in sin, was raised by Christ to new life and restored to his rejoicing mother.

The use of this story for the feast of Saint Augustine reminds us that we Christians need to read ourselves into many of the parables and stories of the gospels. The stories are about you and me. This story is about death and resurrection, and these are events that concern us all closely. We are growing into the gospel stories, and we are growing into the death and life, the dying and resurrection, that the gospels tell us about.

With that fact in mind, consider the phrase from our epistle today which I have chosen as my text. I say 'phrase' because the bulk of the lesson is one of those seemingly endless run-on sentences to which Saint Paul is addicted. In English the sentence contains more than 100 words. Greek is a little more concise, but I still count 86 Greek words. Anyway, in the phrase I have chosen Saint Paul speaks of 'the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named'.

Now what is this 'family' of which Paul speaks: 'the whole family in heaven and earth'? We might think that the term means something like 'creation', or 'all that is in heaven and earth'. One commentator that I've read, though, suggests that this interpretation would be wrong. This Bible, he says, has no doctrine of the Fatherhood of God except in that through Christ we can become God's adopted sons and daughters. That assertion set me looking, and sure enough in the Old Testament I was not able to find a reference to God as 'the Father' or 'our Father'. If I missed one or more such reference, then at least they must be very rare. It is only in the New Testament, after Jesus teaches us to pray to 'our Father', that we find frequent references to God as Father. So the idea that all creation is God's 'family', that 'the whole family in heaven and earth' is all people or all creatures, is not very likely.

Now you look at this epistle closely you will notice that it is Trinitarian. It refers to all the Persons of the Trinity. It speaks of 'the Father' and of 'our Lord Jesus Christ' and of 'his Spirit' who strengthens us. That is, we are speaking here of God as he revealed himself to us in Christ and as he is understood and confessed by Christ's people. In other words, the 'family' here is the Church, the body of Christ which confesses the Father of Christ, and confesses Jesus who reveals the Father, and confesses the Holy Spirit who strengthens us and makes Christ to dwell in our hearts and allows us to dwell in him.

This interpretation is strengthened by the word 'family'. The 'Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named', means that the family consists of those who bear the Father's name. This idea is clearer in the Greek, because the word 'family' is formed from the word for 'Father'. The 'Father' is the 'Patér'; the 'family' is the 'patriá' (as also in Latin). The 'family' is the 'thing of the Father', just as in most of our families we all bear the name of our forefathers.

You and I live after the coming of Christ. We live in the Christian dispensation. We simply take for granted that God is our Father, because we simply take for granted that God has sent his only-begotten Son to us, and through that Son has offered us a place in his household as his adopted sons and daughters of grace. But what we take for granted is in fact an achievement, something that is not assumed by most of the world or by most religions. God is not simply the absolute and utterly transcendent God of the Quran. Rather he is Abba, Father. We are not simply his servants and his slaves, but his children and the brothers and sisters of his Incarnate Son. We do not live in terror of the spiritual world, as do many pre-Christian pagans, but know that that world is governed by our Father's providence. We do not live in nihilistic despair, as do many poor neo-pagans who imagine themselves to be post-Christian, but rather we know that the world is full of hope and is suffused with the glory and beauty of God. We have a family, the Church, and a Father in heaven.

Our task as Christians is to grow into this status which has already been anticipated by our baptism. And there is the connection between the gospel and epistle. As the raising of the son of the widow of Nain is a story that anticipates our own share in Christ's resurrection, so by grace God calls us to grow in every respect into the image and likeness of Christ. We take up our cross and follow him, by way of joining in the family and growing more Christ-like. We perform acts of self-giving love and service, because that's how family members behave and that is how our Lord and brother behaved. We die to self, and one day will die to this life indeed, because that is a family inheritance and burden, which even Christ our brother accepted as part of our family's life. And finally, one day, we will rise to life eternal, because our head has lead the way there. And so we bow our knees to 'the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named', and rejoice that we too bear the privileged name: sons and daughters of God and children of the Holy Catholic Church.


H5-28Palm Sunday. March 20, 2005. Saint Stephen's, Athens.

Saint John ii, verse 25 -- for he knew what was in man.


The liturgy today is quite long and to a great degree Palm Sunday preaches itself. Lex ordandi statuit legem credendi: Lord's triumphal entry into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday, also tells us why the how we pray determines what we believe. But I do have at least a brief sermon for you today.

Saint John, just after he tells of our crowd were so enthusiastic:

The people therefore that was with him when he called Lazarus out of his grave, and raised him from the dead, bare record. For this cause the people also met him, for that they heard that he had done this miracle. (xii.17f.)

In other words, the crowd is interested in bread and circuses, as crowds always are. They have come to cheer the wonderworking, life-resuscitating man their friends have told them about. No doubt they also wish to see a similar miracle for themselves. Much earlier in his gospel John gave us a glimpse of a parallel situation:

[W]hen [Jesus] was in Jerusalem at the Passover, in the feast day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man. (ii.23-5)

There is an ominous note, most suitable for this day when have heard the Passion read. 'He knew what was in man.' He knew indeed. And we should know too, we who have just heard what man is capable of doing to a benefactor and healer, a teacher and guide, to say nothing of a Lord and Saviour. Christ is a man without illusions, who needed not that any should tell him of man's nature. He knew and knows.

But we have illusions, so we need to hear, we need that someone should testify of man, what is in man. And so we listen to the Passion story again this year, to sweep away our illusions. This story is and needs to be part of our annual round. We begin this great and Holy Week with the story of the mighty acts of God by which we are saved. And the mighty acts of God, if we look at them without illusions, are responses to, and in despite of, comprehensive human failure. Consider that our Lord had twelve apostles. One was a traitor. One explicitly and thrice denied his master. All ran away, and only one returned to stand to the end with the women at the foot of the cross. One out of twelve is a pretty poor percentage, which allows us to testify this of man: he is weak or worse.

If his closest followers failed the Lord, then the crowd, whose enthusiastic acclamations began our liturgical day today, were no better. When the wonderworker failed to amuse and amaze the crowd, they lost interest, and then were easily manipulated into their horrible cry: 'Crucify him! Crucify him!' Likewise Herod, who had desired of a long season to see Jesus, quickly lost interest when the Lord failed to work some wonder for Herod's entertainment. The high priests, who should have recognized the Lord whom they worshipped, didn't, and they led the effort to destroy him. And the Romans, who famously gave us law, permitted the best-known trial in history to end with a bad verdict, an unjust sentence, a judicial murder, and a judge who managed to be ineffectual, cynical, and self-defeating all at once. What the story reveals to be in man is a truly astounding capacity for failure and evil. Mankind is weak. And insofar as mankind is strong, we are strong to do evil.

The good news of the gospel is that, as Saint Paul has it, where sin abounded, grace abounds more. The deeper and greater man's failure, the more absolute and free and gratuitous is the love of God revealed to us in the human death of Jesus. The greater the sin and wickedness revealed to be in man, the more astonishing and noble and

good is the love of God which not only forgives us what is in us, but which even takes that evil and turns it into the very means of our redemption. We sought to do him harm, but he forgives and then through our evil deed and his gracious gift he transforms us into his children and friends. The cross is converted from an instrument of his death into the means of our salvation. What is in us by ourselves is death. What is in us through Christ's work is life.

God knows what is in man. God knows what is in you and me. The good news is that God loves us anyway. Come taste and see that this is so.


H7-49Trinity I. June 10, 2007

Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon on the First Sunday in Trinity at Saint Francis’, Gainesville, Georgia. U.S.A.

Saint John xvi, verse 22 -...your heart shall rejoice: and your joy no man taketh from you. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen. The theme of my text, of our epistle, and of our gospel today is the same: love. My text from Saint John’s first epistle reminds me of the story told about the end of Saint John’s life. He lived to be a century old, and at the end of his life his sermons tended to reduce to one sentence: ‘Little children, love one another.’ His people one day complained about this apparently simplistic repetition. To which complaint John replied that if they really would love another, it was enough. But as I am neither a century old nor Saint John you probably will expect a bit more from me. So let’s say that John tells us in this lesson that love has its root in God. We are only able to show love because we have received love – which is a truth we know even from our human experience. Children who are loved properly grow up able to love others. Those who did not receive love have trouble showing love, forming human attachments, or even imagining pain or suffering in others. But God has loved us, and learning that fact enables us to show love in return. And Saint John tells us that showing love requires practical goodness towards those with whom we come into contact day by day. If we don’t show kindness, generosity, and patience towards those immediately around us, how can we love God whom we don’t even see? The gospel parable of Lazarus and the rich man has many meanings, but one of them is just the same. The rich man fails in love, practical, real, worldly love, towards someone just outside his door. That failure in practical love renders him unfit for heaven. ‘Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God....’ And if we are loveless, then where is God in our lives? Now I hope you will bear with me for a moment while I put this theme of practical love into context. The Church calendar has a distinct pattern at this time of year which I think helps us understand today’s theme. Last Sunday was the feast of the Holy Trinity. The three weeks before all pointed in that direction, because the three Sundays before Trinity are each devoted to one Person of the Trinity. Four Sundays ago on the Fifth Sunday after Easter, called Rogation Sunday, the theme of the gospel was prayer to God the Father: ‘Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.’ It is to God the Father that we address most of our prayers. A week later came Ascension Day and Ascension Sunday, which celebrate God the Son, who ‘came forth from the Father’ to show the Father to us and then returned to the Father to make intercession for us. There is God the Son. Two weeks ago was Pentecost, the great feast of God the Holy Ghost, who

comes into the world from the bosom of the Father, through the Son, to continue God’s presence with us after the Ascension. Rogation Sunday shows us the Father; Ascensiontide shows us the Son; Pentecost shows us the Holy Spirit. This pattern embedded in the Church calendar was revealed to us by Christ himself. Christ showed his disciples how to pray to his Father and then he died and rose again in obedient love for his Father. He ascended to his Father in heaven, after which the promised gift of the Holy Spirit poured forth from the Father and the Son upon the apostles. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are shown to us in Scripture. After the individual Persons are revealed to us, each as Lord and God, whether in the gospel or in the Sundays of the Church year, then we come to Trinity Sunday, last week. The three previous weeks point us towards the crown and culmination of the universe and of revelation. Trinity Sunday is the conclusion of the first half of the Church year, as the mighty acts of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent, Easter, Ascentiontide, and Whitsunday are fulfilled in the feast of the Triunal God. But then you and I have to go on in this world, for we are not yet in heaven or in the immediate Presence of God the Holy Trinity. So immediately after Trinity Sunday the Church gives us two observances which usher in the second half of the Church year. The first is Corpus Christi, the feast of the Blessed Sacrament of the Altar, which falls on the Thursday after Trinity and then is commemorated today. As you and I go about our lives in this world, our chief support and comfort is the Body of Christ, the ‘medicine of immortality’, by which God dwells in us, and we in him. As the long green season of Trinitytide begins, we are sustained by Holy Communion. Corpus Christi, then, is the feast that begins our shift into the second half of the Church year. Then we come to today and its theme of practical love. God’s grace always comes first. You and I must begin, continue, and end by reliance on God’s grace, poured forth into our hearts from the Father by the merits of Christ through the work of the Holy Spirit bestowed normally by the sacraments. But the Christian life, so rooted in grace and gift, nonetheless also requires our action and cooperation and effort. God does not invite us to be passive blobs, who sit around and wait for him to bless us with gift upon gift. No. God requires us to use his gifts, to cooperate with his love and the grace of the Sacrament, and to turn from his altar towards the world with his gifts in our hands. God calls us to show forth his love in the world. God requires us to serve as his hands and feet to bind up the wounds of those with whom we come into contact, to feed hungry Lazarus, to teach those who do not know him, and to show them by our practical service and love what the love of God is like. While we often fail – while we may feel that we fail more often than we succeed – still God requires us to use what he gives us and to do our best to serve those around us as our appropriate response of gratitude to him for his astonishing blessings. So there is my basic idea about today in context. Our theme is practical Christian love. Practical love from us comes at the end of the process. We begin with the Father and prayer, the Son and his merits, the Holy Spirit and his gifts. These together show us the Holy Trinity. We are fed with the life of God and the Body of Christ in the Sacrament of the Altar. And today we are shown the proper response we should make in the light of this unfolding revelation of God and the gifts from God that come to us. The appropriate response is love towards one another. When human love is divorced from God’s revelation and when it is not fed and nourished with the sacraments and graces of God, it becomes twisted. Human love that does not begin with God quickly becomes sentimentality or obsession. Good works apart from God twist quickly into wickedness. The pattern of our calendar is the safe path. We begin with God, with understanding and loving him as best we can in the unfolding Trinitarian revelation of Scripture and tradition. Then we are fed and nourished by the sacramental system and the teaching of the Church. It is only after we receive that we are properly equipped to begin to serve poor Lazarus and one another. Again, we will often fail. God does not require perfection, as God does not promise unbroken success or worldly happiness. God asks us to try, to try to love one another, to show each other and ourselves that the love of God truly dwells in our hearts. That kind of love is, as Saint John

says, ‘of God’, and to God it will brings us back. In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

H8-61St. Bartholomew Day. 24 August 2008

Lessons: Page 249, BCPSaint Luke xxii, verse 27 - But I am among you as he that serveth.

(adapted by W. Bullock)

The apostles seem to me to fall into two groups. On the one hand we have those apostles who stand out in the New Testament as individuals. In some cases, mainly Saint Peter, we have enough stories and sayings and writings to allow us a good idea of his personality. Peter is impulsive and enthusiastic; he has a wife and mother-in-law; he is a fisherman; he has a big heart and is capable of being very foolish; and in the end he is humble enough to repent his sins and to let his sincere love for Christ win out over his weakness. So too we know about `Doubting Thomas' and have some ideas about the character of Andrew, James, and John. Those are the apostles we might call the individuals, the apostles with distinct, known characters. On the other hand, there are those apostles who do not stand out as individuals, but on the contrary are simply known as part of the group. About these apostles we do not have many revealing stories or long epistles or works attributed to their own pens or inspiration. Perhaps it ill-becomes your bishop to visit the parish of Saint Bartholomew's on Saint Bartholomew's day and tell you that this patron saint is not terribly memorable as an individual, but such really is the case. That does not mean Saint Bartholomew is unimportant or that there is nothing for me to say today. But it does suggest that the main significance of this saint does not lie in his individual personality but in something else. That said, there is one possible exception. The name `Bartholomew' is a Hebrew patronymic: Bartholomew is `Bar-Tolmai' or, literally, `the son of Tolmai'. This is probably something like a modern surname, Smith or Jones. Therefore, many people think that just as Saint Peter was originally `Simon Bar-Jonah', Simon the son of Jonah, so Bartholomew was someone with another, given name. Now the name Bartholomew occurs in the first three gospels and in Acts but not in Saint John's gospel. In Saint John, however, we have an apostle named Nathaniel, who in turn does not appear in the first three gospels or in Acts. Therefore it is quite possible that Bartholomew was `Nathaniel Bartholomew', Nathaniel the son of Tolmai. If this traditional identification of Nathaniel and Bartholomew is correct, then we do have one story about Saint Bartholomew in which he does stand out as an individual. That story comes in the first chapter of the Gospel of Saint John, where Philip tells Nathaniel that they have found the Messiah, Jesus from Nazareth. Nathaniel replies, "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" (i.46) This rather skeptical comment is followed by a scene in which Jesus astounds Nathaniel by referring to some very private thing which was sufficient to persuade Nathaniel of Christ's identity. That scene from the aforementioned first chapter of Saint John is very interesting and might make a good sermon topic. However, that is not the story specified in the Prayer Book for today. The gospel for today, rather, is taken from the Last Supper and it only refers to Bartholomew as one of the group. This gospel and my text from it are about apostles and apostleship, not about Bartholomew individually considered. And that itself is significant. The apostles, like the clergy in the later Church, are not primarily significant as individuals. It is wonderful if you like your priest and your bishop. However, the real significance of your priest does not primarily concern him as an individual. Priests and deacons and bishops are primarily persons bearing an office, and their individual and personal qualities are quite secondary to that office. We may use the ministry of the parish priest or the diocesan bishop even if personally we don't care for him very much. The unworthiness of the minister hindereth not the effect of the sacrament. What matters is not the man but the office and the sacraments. So too the apostles in the first instance are not significant as individuals. As individuals they were weak and

foolish. James and John want to get the best seats in heaven. Thomas doubts the Resurrection. Peter wants to walk on water, then gets frightened and sinks. And they all deny Christ and run away, with only Saint John left to stand at the foot of the cross with the faithful women. The apostles are pretty comprehensively failures. But the apostles nonetheless companied with the Son of God and witnessed his Resurrection, and that is the first and most important office of an apostle. An apostle is a witness of the Resurrection. Even Saint Paul, as one born out of time, counted himself an apostle only because he had a personal and direct experience of the Risen Christ on the road to Damascus. It was that encounter which made Paul a witness of the Resurrection and, therefore, an apostle. Likewise Saint Matthias, who was chosen to replace Judas, was chosen from among those who were present for the full length of Christ's ministry and who witnessed the Risen Lord. This first aspect of apostleship as witnesses is possessed by the apostles as a group, as a college. In this regard what matters most about Saint Bartholomew is that he stands firm with the others, confirming and affirming what they all saw: That Christ taught; Christ died; Christ rose; Christ ascended. This is the apostolic teaching. This is the core of the Apostles' Creed and faith. So, first Saint Bartholomew stands as one with the College of the Apostles as a witness to Christ. Secondly - and this is emphasized in today's gospel - he serves as a model for all Christian leaders, as do all of the apostles. As witnesses of the Resurrection, the apostolic office ended with the death of Saint John around the year 100. After the last apostle died, their witness continued in written form, in the New Testament accounts of Christ. But in other ways the apostolic ministry continued. It continued in the ministry of bishops, passing on the hierarchical structure of the Church from generation to generation through the sacrament of Ordination. And it continued in the kind of leadership described in today's lesson. The apostles were promised grand things - thrones in the Kingdom of God. But these glorious rewards only come to the apostles because they suffered with their Lord: "I am among you as he that serveth." The crown comes by way of the cross. Glory comes through suffering. Leadership is not leadership for self-promotion or glorification, but is leadership for service to others. Later legends tells us that all of the apostles scattered to the four corners of the earth and that all of them except Saint John died as martyrs. There is in fact little historical evidence for these travels, since the stories concerning them are relatively late. However, the stories are nonetheless fitting in that they illustrate the sense of the Church that apostleship brings imitation of Christ, service through suffering, and martyrdom. The servant is not above his master. As the Master, Christ, died for love of his flock, so the apostles were called to service even unto death. While we know little about Bartholomew as a person; while we cannot even be absolutely certain of his identification with Nathaniel: Nonetheless, we follow his witness to Christ, we believe his witness of the Resurrection, and we follow him in the Christian belief that the heart of the Christian life is service in love for others. This is the message of Saint Bartholomew, and this is why he reigns even now with Christ in heaven where he pours forth his prayers for us who honor him today on earth.

H11-71Trinity XXI. November 13, 2011

Saint John iv, verse 46 - There was a certain nobleman, whose son was sick at Capernaum....


Our gospel lesson today is the story of the second miracle worked by Jesus in Saint John's Gospel. The first miracle in John, you will remember, was wrought by the Lord in Cana of Galilee when he changed water into wine at a wedding banquet. This second miracle is worked in the same place as that first miracle, as the sentence immediately before our lesson tells us: 'So Jesus came again into Cana of Galilee, where he made water wine.' (46a) Saint John also looks back to the previous miracle at the very end of today's story, when be tells us, 'This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when he was come out of Judea into Galilee.' (54) The miracle stories in John are a carefully chosen selection. There are only seven of them, and John deliberately arranges them for his own spiritual purposes.

Now the main purpose of our Lord's miracles is always to show forth God's glory and thereby to bring men and women into a living relationship with him of faith and love. We see this purpose at work in the first miracle at Cana. We are told at the conclusion of that event that '[t]his beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.' (ii. 11). The 'miracles' or, as the Greek says literally, 'signs' have as their purpose to 'manifest forth [the] glory' or splendor of the Lord. The goal of this manifestation is to bring men and women to belief, to cause them to become 'disciples' or followers or, if you will, students of Christ. The miracle at the wedding feast had this proper effect in the disciples.

What about the second miracle? The story begins with a man approaching the Lord on behalf of his son. The son was sick; the son, in fact, 'was at the point of death' (47). The father is called in our translation 'a nobleman'. In the Greek he is literally 'a king's man', basilikos. On the historical or literal level the man was probably an official under king Herod Antipas, the Herod who killed John the Baptist and later met with the Lord on the day of his trail by Pilate. But the official is not named. All we know about him really is that he is a concerned father, that he is 'a king's man', and that he responds in a particular way to the miracle or sign that he receives.

So in this case let us go further than the not very important literal fact that the man is a royal official and consider the symbolic level. The father is a 'nobleman', 'a king's man', not so much because of his job as because of his character and his response to the Lord. John shows miracles involving a variety of people: a bride and groom, beggars, his own close friend, Lazarus, and here a loving father. The identity of the person really matters very little. The response of the person matters completely. God does not care very much who you are. He does not care about your race or your sex or your age or your health or your appearance or your education or your job or your wealth or your weight or your handwriting or your genealogy. Rather God cares about you and your response to him and his representatives on earth, who are the people around you.

The man in the story is literally a basilikos, a king's man. But Saint Paul reminds the Christians of Corinth that there were among them 'not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble' (I Corinthians i.26). Today's nobleman is truly noble because of his response to the Lord. He was a servant of an earthly king, but it is much more important that he becomes a servant of the heavenly Lord, the King of glory, whose divine splendor shines forth through the miracles and teachings of his earthly life.

The nobleman is noble, first, because he loves his son; loves him so much that he will not be rebuffed, will not stop imploring the Lord on his son's behalf: 'Sir, come down ere my child die.' (49) But of course there is nothing very unusual or particularly noble about loving one's children. Even the Gentiles do so, as the Lord observes elsewhere.

Still, upon this initial, first, natural love, the nobleman builds, secondly, a more than natural faith and trust in the Lord. The man shows not the slightest doubt or hesitation about the Lord's ability to help: 'When he heard that Jesus was come out of Judea into Galilee, he went unto him, and besought him that he would come down, and heal his son...' (47). Do we ever pray with such absolute, simple faith? I don't think I do. But this man adds the nobility of total faith in God to his natural, paternal love.

Thirdly, when the Lord pronounces the son healed, although the man is far from his son and their home, yet he believes the Lord's word implicitly and has a trust in its reliability that appears to be simple and immediate: 'And the man believed the word that Jesus had spoken unto him, and he went his way.' (50) Most of us would want to call home and check. Not this noble man. He simply believes and goes. As he goes, of course, he receives word that all is as the Lord said. But that word simply confirms what the nobleman already believes.

And perhaps that is the real point. Miracles don't really add anything. They simply confirm what we already have been told and show what is already there to be seen. In a sense, as Father Cotterell often used to say, no miracle will suffice for those who do not believe, while no miracle is necessary for those who do believe. Still, the miracle shows forth or manifests what is often hidden from our poor eyes. The nobleman here is so noble because his faith is so much more than ours usually is. In fact his natural love, his perfect trust, and his subsequent confidence in the Lord are models of the noble Christian virtues: love, faith, and hope. The man has a love for his child that leads him closer to God; he hopes in God's power to heal and to save; and he has faith that Christ will perform the words which he has spoken. If not many Christians are wise, rich, and noble according to the flesh, nevertheless according to the spirit we all are called to a similar faith and hope and love which will make us noble and wise and rich indeed.

And so the proper conclusion of the story is not the child's healing, but rather the fact that the sign brings to birth new disciples of the Lord: 'So the father knew...and himself believed, and his whole house' (53). The next miracle of the Lord in Saint John will be less clear in its effect. Signs are for us, not for God, and sometimes we fail to read them as we should or to respond as we ought. But here we see a noble man read God's signs well. He sees the hand of God at work, he believes, and so he is healed as truly as his son. The son's physical healing is merely a foretaste and sign of the healing unto life eternal which the whole household receives. So let us all believe and be faithful King's men.


H12-66Trinity XVIII. October 7, 2012.

Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon Anglican Church of Our Saviour, Florence SC.

I Corinthians i, verse 5...that in everything ye are enriched by him....


One way to look at our collect, epistle, and gospel today is to see in them a collection of religious possibilities, which we may arrange in an ascending order that moves upwards towards God himself. Some of these possibilities are better than others.

On the lowest level is the worldliness represented by what our collect calls 'the world, the flesh, and the devil'. These are the things that we renounced for ourselves or through our godparents at our baptism: 'Dost thou renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same,

and the sinful desires of the flesh, so that thou wilt not follow, nor be led by them?' Answer. 'I renounce them all; and, by God's help, will endeavour not to follow, nor be led by them.' (BCP p. 277) Our Lord refers to these same things, which keep us from God, in the parable of the Sower, when he speaks of the seed of God's word being 'choked with cares and riches and pleasures of this life' (St. Luke viii. 14). The world is human existence organized apart from God. Everything in the world, when it is turned away from God, becomes an impediment and obstacle to us. Good things, the 'riches and pleasures of this life', then will separate us from God. So too will bad things, the 'cares of this life'. The worst spiritual state is this kind of worldliness, that takes no thought for God and that proceeds on its way as if God does not exist.

A little better, perhaps, is the religion of the Sadducees, whom, we are told at the beginning of our gospel, 'Jesus.. .put. . .to silence' (Matthew xxii.34). The Sadducees believed in God and in his outward worship in the temple. However, because the Sadducees did not believe in immortal life and in an ultimate resurrection and judgement, their religion was desiccated and fruitless. They were rather like the modern High Church liberals represented by such as Richard Holloway. The outward forms are maintained, but they are effectively cut off from having any significance for life. In the end, why bother with religion, whether or not God exists, if all life ends in death? Our Lord had no patience for such inconsistency, and he put it to silence.

Moving upwards we come next to the Pharisees, with whom our Lord debates in the body of today's gospel. The Pharisees believed in the resurrection of the dead, in the life of the world to come, in judgement and heaven and hell. They emphasized belief and daily life over the external worship of the temple. In all of this they rejected both the religious indifference of woridlings and also the high and dry religion of the Sadducees. They longed for a living faith. And in all of this the Pharisees also agreed with Christ and his followers. The problem with the Pharisees rests in their rejection of Christ himself. 'What think ye of Christ?' our Lord asks them. And ultimately the question our Lord's whole life poses to the Pharisees is: 'What think ye of ME?' Because the Pharisees rejected our Lord's claim to be the divine Son of God, they turned their back on the source of the living faith for which they longed. The Sadducees had and wanted a dead faith. The Pharisees in contrast wanted a living faith; but the Pharisees would not accept the offer of such living faith when that offer came to them personally in Jesus Christ.

So the next step upwards is Christianity, which not only sincerely seeks God, but which also actually receives him, through what our epistle calls 'the grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ'. Judaism recognized the human need, but could not fill it. In Christ God gives to the world a grace, a gift, which is the only satisfaction of the deepest human needs and longings. God made us with a God-shaped hole in our hearts. Until God fills our hearts with himself, they are empty and unsatisfied and incomplete. The world does not make people happy and does not satisfy the desires of their hearts for long. Nor will religion fulfil those desires if it is a religion of cold outward practice, such as that of the Sadducees, or if it is a Pharisaical religion of observances cut off from the personal offer of grace in Jesus Christ, who is 'the way, the truth, and the life' (John xiv.6).

The final step upwards, then, is Christian perfection. Paul speaks to the Corinthians of this perfection when he refers to them being 'confirmed...unto the end', 'blameless in the day of our Lord', 'in every thing...enriched by him'. Likewise in our epistle we pray for grace to withstand 'the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil' so that 'with pure hearts and minds' we may follow Christ. You see, every level of the religious ascent, from the crassest forms of worldliness, through the cool religion of the Sadducees, to the moralism of the Pharisees — each of these levels remains a constant possibility for each of us. We are Christians, but we also are worldlings and Sadducees and Pharisees and imperfect Christians. The goal of our Christian life must be to purify our hearts and to clarify our minds so that they will follow Christ more perfectly. Our goal should be to be 'in every thing enriched by' God, so that what God began in you at baptism may be 'confirmed in you'.

'Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God', says the Beatitude (Matthew v.8). The vision of God, to see God, is the goal and purpose of human existence. This vision, this seeing of God, comes from a pure heart. That is, it comes from simplicity of intention, from singleness of devotion, from a concentration of attention and will upon God as our true happiness. If the world is defined as human existence organized apart from God, then purity

of heart is human existence organized with God at our center. The confirmed Christian, enriched by God's grace, may live the same life as the worldling. He may be faced with the same cares and riches and pleasures and disasters and challenges and needs and sicknesses and tasks and advantages. There may be few observable differences between two men's outward lives. But 'where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.' (Matthew vi.21) If God is our treasure, the thing we value most, then our heart is purified and concentrated upon him, so that everything is changed. The cares of life become a burden to hand over to God. The riches and pleasures of life become gifts with which to serve God or gifts from God that produce thanksgiving in us. The disasters and challenges and needs and sicknesses of life become tasks through which we serve God. The advantages of life become tools for doing his will.

Nothing may change, yet everything is changed when our faith is enriched and confirmed by God's grace. The 'first and great commandment' is to love God singly and purely: 'with all thy heart, and all thy soul, and with all thy mind'. Such love fulfils all the laws and makes us 'blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ', and this love is not our achievement but a 'grace of God which is given you by Jesus Christ'. Let us pray earnestly for this gift, so that the gift of Christ that was begun in us by baptism may be 'confirmed...unto [its] end'. The end to which we move is that we may see God and follow him 'with pure hearts and minds'.


H15-33Good Friday. April 3, 2015

Published in The Trinitarian May-June 2015; Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon on Good Friday at St. Stephen's Pro-Cathedral, Athens, Georgia, U.S.A.

“First and Ending, Then a Beginning”

Hebrews 10, verse 9: He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.


In the epistle for Good Friday the author contrasts the two Testaments of the Bible and, in particular, he contrasts the sacrifices of the Law, or Torah, with the sacrifice of Christ. Good Friday is, of course, the story of Christ's sacrifice, his death as a self-sacrifice and offering to his Father. We may look at this matter from many angles. But today let us consider for a time the theme suggested by the epistle. Since sacrifice involves death, the complete dedication and giving of something, let us compare death in the first book of the Law with the death of Christ. In Greek the name of the first book of the Bible, Genesis, means "beginning" or "birth." Genesis contains, of course the story of the creation, beginning with God's creative act in the first verses. Genesis is the story of life, the story of fruitfulness, multiplication, abundance, flourishing, and beginnings. The story, however, is complicated by us, by men and women. Very near the beginning of human existence comes also the beginning of human sin, which Genesis shows us is destructive and deadly. In chapter 3, a little disobedience, a little twisting of words, and a bit of self-deception, blossoms into a murder in chapter 4. The vast genealogies and huge life spans in chapter 5 give way to the flood in Noah's day in chapters 6 and 7. The book of beginnings and of birth and of life is also the book of murder and endings and death.

This double nature explains, I think, the very odd final verse of Genesis: "So Joseph died, being an hundred and ten years old: and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin.in Egypt" (50:26). The book of beginnings ends with a burial. The book of creation and life ends with a dead body in a coffin. And, we might add, the book that gives us the Jewish perspective on the world, ends with an Egyptian embalming. That is the end of the beginning. The world apart from Christ ends in death. The world apart from Christ ends with the Egyptian

cult of the dead, in which embalming and mummification and fabulous tombs and elaborate rituals seek to deny the fundamental reality of human life apart from God: which is death. Life is being unto death. Genesis ends with a burial. The end of the beginning is death.

The Good Friday story also has a death. Today also, if we extended the story a little beyond where the Good Friday Passion ends, we have an entombment. Compared to the Egyptians, the Jewish idea of care for the dead is extremely simple: burial within a day of death with a simple shroud after washing. If Genesis ends with Joseph in a coffin, the Passion ends with Jesus in a tomb belonging to another Joseph - Joseph of Arimathea. In both cases we have a death. Death is the universal fate of mankind, the payment due for sin: an unavoidable payment whether from our perspective it comes due early or late. So even for God-mademan there is death, in order to fulfil his life and to reveal the completeness of his humanity. Christ redeems nothing that he has not taken on himself, so his death and entombment show that he also has redeemed us from the penalty for sin and its fatal consequence. All is assumed by Christ, so all is redeemed by Christ.

Today we have a death, as Genesis ended with a death. But the deaths are different. If Joseph's placement in an Egyptian coffin was the end of the beginning, then Christ's death is the beginning of the end. If Joseph's death shows that creation moves to the grave, then Christ's death reverses the process of Genesis. Under Christ the process moves the other way, from the grave to new creation, from death to restored life.

Even in Genesis we have glimpses of Christ's work. In today's first lesson at Morning Prayer we see Isaac, given over for death by sacrifice, but then restored to life by God's unlooked-for action. Likewise, the Joseph of Genesis is lost to his father, is assumed dead, but then is restored to his father. And Joseph's restoration is not) ust a wonderful reunion of a father and son, but is God's way to deliver his whole hosen people from death by famine. Joseph, restored from presumed death, brings food and life to his whole family. The "law having a shadow of good things to come" (Hebrews 10.1) points us beyond the shadows of Isaac and Joseph to Christ and his life-giving cross.

Today we see not the shadow of good things to come, but rather "the very image of the things." We move from Genesis to the gospel, from the shadows to the Life-giving Sun. We step from the cave of death back into the living world. It is true that today for a moment the sun of the world is in eclipse. Today, as well we should, we dwell for a moment on the bitter reality and pain of Christ's cross. Our purchase back from Satan is costly. Our sins must be paid for, and the cross of this day is the price paid by God himself for us. But beyond the bitterness and pain of this day, lies joy. Beyond Good Friday is Easter. Beyond the dark tomb and the shadows and the eclipse of this day, come the shining angels of Easter, the dazzling garments of the Risen Lord, the light of the dawn of the day that will never end: There is darkness on Good Friday, but it will quickly pass, for in this darkness God is working out his will and our salvation. Our Lord dies in public, but rises otherwise.

All night had shout of men and cry Of woeful women filled his way; Until that noon of sombre sky On Friday, clamour and display Smote him; no solitude had he, No silence, since Gethsemane.

Public was Death; but Power, but Might,But Life again, but Victory,Were hushed within the dead of night,The shuttered dark, the secrecy, And all alone, alone, alone,He rose again behind the stone.

"Easter," by Alice Meynell


H15-40Easter III. April 26, 2015

Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon on the Third Sunday after Easter at Anglican Church of Our Saviour, Florence, South Carolina U.S.A.

Saint John xvi, verse 22 -...your heart shall rejoice: and your joy no man taketh from you.


The Church calendar has been called the greatest teaching tool ever invented. That is of course not a claim that is patient of proof, but it certainly is a claim for which there are many reasons and much evidence. I think that the instructiveness of the Church year and its patterns is particularly evident at this time of year. I would today like not so much to focus on the gospel for Easter III as to consider the day in the context of the Church calendar. I think this matter of context will help us understand the day better, and then fit it into the Sundays soon to follow.

The gospel is the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. That salvation has at its center the events that we recall and reenact on Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and Easter. Palm Sunday and Holy Week bring us the story of the Passion and crucifixion. Easter brings us the story of the Resurrection. These great days in turn lie in the middle of a series of six Sundays to which our tradition gives specific names: Mothering Sunday, Passion Sunday, Palm Sunday, Easter Day, Low Sunday, and Good Shepherd Sunday. These named days stretch from mid- Lent to Good Shepherd Sunday last week which is well into Eastertide. In my sermon last Sunday I suggested to another congregation that Good Shepherd Sunday is in a sense a natural and appropriate culmination of this period of the Church year. The goal of the Christian life is, in a sense, to become part of the flock of Christ, to come under the care of the Good Shepherd. It seems to me that Palm Sunday proves that Christ is good - that at the heart of our Lord's work is love. As we gaze at the cross, which Palm Sunday and Holy Week hold up steadfastly before our eyes, we see love at work. Palm Sunday shows us that the heaven is not cold or the world indifferent. On the contrary, at the center of the universe is a heart that burns with love for us and that proved that love upon a cross. Christ is good - so Palm Sunday shows us.

But goodness alone may be impotent and helpless. Easter is needed in addition to Palm Sunday because Easter vindicates Christ's goodness and shows that his love for us is triumphant and mighty over death and sin. Easter shows us that Christ has the power of a Shepherd to protect and guard his flock and to bring us safely home. So together Palm Sunday and Easter show us that Christ is indeed the Good Shepherd, in whom love and power, goodness and strength, are united. The austerities of Lent and the glories of Easter, then, together point us towards Good Shepherd Sunday.

Now if these six central Sundays of the Church year all move towards last week and the revelation of Christ as the Good Shepherd, then today we begin another series of six weeks, which point us to another central dogma of the Christian faith: the Trinity. If you read the gospels for today and the next four Sundays, you will find that they gradually turn our attention from Easter Day towards the Ascension, Pentecost, and Trinity Sunday. In today's gospel our Lord begins to prepare his disciples for his departure from the world: 'A little while and ye shall not see me.. .because I go to the Father.' This refers, of course, to his Ascension. Next Sunday we begin to look even beyond the Ascension to the descent of the Holy Spirit and the work of the Church: 'when.. .the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you into all truth.' Christ is our Good Shepherd and he died and rose from

the dead. But the end and purpose and goal of Christ's work is to bring us to heaven and into the life of God himself. And in pursuit of this ultimate goal the Church year moves us forward in these next six weeks through prophecies of the Ascension and the Coming of the Holy Ghost and anticipations of the revelation of God as Trinity.

Consider if you will again the movement of these Sundays. On Easter V, Rogation Sunday, the major theme is prayer. Indeed 'Rogation' comes from the Latin verb rogare, to ask or pray. The theme of the gospel that day is prayer to God the Father: 'Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you.' So there is God the Father. Then come Ascension Day and Ascension Sunday, which celebrate God the Son, who 'came forth from the Father' and then returned to the Father. There is God the Son. Then comes Pentecost, the great feast of God the Holy Ghost, who comes into the world from the bosom of the Father, through the Son, to continue God's presence with us after the Ascension. Rogation Sunday shows us the Father; Ascensiontide shows us the Son; Pentecost shows us the Holy Spirit. And then we conclude this series with its last Sunday, the feast of the Most Holy and Undivided Trinity, which is the great pinnacle and crown of revelation, the end towards which the whole Church year moves and the hinge on which its seasons swing.

I hope you are beginning to see that the majestic progress of the Church year, its lessons, and its seasons reveal to us the love and the power of Christ, and through that revelation move us towards the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. There is an inner coherence and purpose to this movement. For many years I found the Third and Fourth Sundays in Eastertide — this week and next – very difficult to understand. The gospels for these two Sundays seemed to me to anticipate Pentecost so much that I found it difficult to distinguish them. But I think now that I see a wisdom in the gradual movement or turn from the Resurrection towards the Spirit and the Trinity. The movement is stately and deliberate as is the vast movement of the Spirit in human history itself. Gradually the truth unfolds, as God's purposes in our world also unfold, often slowly, imperceptibly, and in ways both so vast and so subtle that we cannot easily explain or detect them. But God is at work indeed. The Spirit descends, shaping and moving our hearts and our wills and our world. The Lord is assimilating us into his flock under the care of the Good Shepherd, under the will of the Father, under the enlivening influence of the Spirit: all so that we may come to the final purpose of human life - which is to glorify and enjoy the Holy Trinity forever.

And so indeed, as my text says, our hearts shall rejoice, our hearts do rejoice: for God is giving to u:s a joy which no man can take from us. God is watching over us, ruling our world, and leading us into his own eternal life.


H15-50Trinity II. June 14, 2015.

Archbishop Haverland forwarded the following sermon to Anglican Church of Our Saviour, Florence, South Carolina U.S.A.

St. Luke chapter xiv, verse 16 - A certain man made a great supper, and bade many....


Today’s gospel lesson is the parable of the Great Supper. In this parable a man prepares a great dinner party. He first invites the most obvious guests, who, however, all make excuses not to come. If we understand the social customs of the day, the guests appear in a particularly rude light. The guests were invited early on. Later, just before the time of the dinner, the host sends a servant to escort those invited to the dinner. The

servant probably carries a torch to light the way. It is only at this point, at the last moment, when the escort has already come to accompany them to the dinner, that the guests make their excuses.

Because of this particularly rude behavior, the host now has a dinner ready and no guests. So he invites two further groups. First, he sends his servant to bring in a much less socially desirable set of guests. We might call these guests the urban poor: they come from ‘the street and lanes of the city’ and include ‘the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind’. But there still is room for more guests, so the servant is sent out again, this time to go further afield. He goes beyond the city gates to bring in guests from the ‘highways and hedges’ – that is, from the country lanes and the hedges that bordered the vineyards.

The basic meaning of this parable is clear in St. Luke’s gospel and is spelled out even more clearly in St. Matthew’s version. The Great Supper is the feast of salvation, the banquet of the Messiah, the victory celebration of God. The city is Israel. The first, obvious guests are the leaders of Israel: the priests and scribes, the rulers and merchants, the devout and prosperous people of the temple and synagogues. These are Christ’s critics and opponents. He almost always addresses such parables against such people. They are God’s chosen people and the ones first invited to the feast of salvation, yet they refuse to come. They have long been invited: the Law and the Prophets were addressed to them to prepare them for this feast. But when the escort comes to bring them at the chosen hour to the banquet, they make excuses. Their refusal is a profound failure.

The second group of guests also comes from within the walls of the city. These people, therefore, like the first group, are Jews. But they are the common people of Israel: the simple people, the poor, the unremarkable folk rather than the leaders. These people respond more positively to Christ. The third group comes from outside the walls of the city entirely, whose invitation to a party in town is utterly unlooked for. These people are the Gentiles, whose invitation and inclusion marks the missionary pattern of the early Church. The parable, then, points to the actual situation of Jesus and his first followers. Since Christ was rejected by the leaders of Israel, the earliest Christians were mostly Jews of the poorer sort. Then in the next stage the gospel was preached to Gentiles and to the wider world, beyond the city gates of Judaism.

Now it is almost irresistible for clergymen to turn this parable into a message about church-attendance. And I suppose this is a part of its meaning for us now, but more fundamentally it goes far beyond that matter. So, what does it mean? We should note that the excuses made by the first group of guests are all good. Two of the men have made major purchases that require their attention; one has married. These are not trivial matters, nor are they at all bad. The problem is not that the excuses concern bad things, but rather that they reveal bad priorities. The host of salvation’s supper is, of course, God. God should come first, and other things should be arranged so as to let God stay first. Naturally clergymen will relate this to church attendance. But I will not harangue you about that.

Alternative meanings, however, are even less comfortable. Let us say that the basic meaning of the parable is about our priorities in general, and not just when it comes to attending church or doing other things of a Sunday morning. Church attendance is something fairly simple and discrete, so that if the parable were just about that, our duty would be easily stated and easily fulfilled. But in fact the main meaning is far wider, our duty is much greater, and the demand made upon us by our Lord’s teaching is more encompassing.

The real question of the parable is this: Is God the first thing in my life, or do I put other good things ahead of him? The parable mentions a piece of land, yokes of oxen, and marriage as things that might skew our priorities. Consider the three. The piece of land represents property and possessions: the equivalents in our day might be land, money, investments, houses – the things into which we sink our wealth. The five yoke of oxen represent a way of making a living, namely by farming: the equivalent of this in our day is our job – the way we obtain our income and support ourselves. The new wife does not require modern translation: the

demands of marriage and family are not all that different today from what they have always been.

So in the parable we have four rival concerns. The first is the supper of salvation. The other three we might call our family life, our wealth and possessions, and our job. These are such important things; things that go to the heart of what and who most of us are. And these are good things, or at least can and should be good things. But it is precisely these good and important things that can turn us away from God and his salvation and his feast. It is so easy to turn good things into idols, which take God’s place in our hearts and in our scale of priorities. What we do with our time on Sunday morning is one aspect of this all, but only a small aspect. Far more important is what we do with the rest of our time; and what we do with our talents and our treasure.

Of course if we turn away from God, he will find other guests for his dinner. This parable, and almost all such parables in the gospels, are primarily spoken by Christ against his enemies, to point up their failure in responding to him. But if the most obvious people fail, God will invite the less obvious. If the good people turn away, God will call the bad people. If the cradle Christians are indifferent, then God will convert the atheists. We need to apply the criticism implicit in this parable to ourselves. How am I evading God’s call? What kind of excuses do I make for doing what I want, as opposed to what God demands? What do I put ahead of God in my life? How many ways can I invent to say “no” to God? Whom will God call to fulfil the tasks I have refused? These questions, and the parables that put them in such a pointed fashion, enraged the chief priests and Pharisees. They certainly are not comfortable questions to ask ourselves. But there they are.

The good news is that we are invited to the Great Supper of salvation. The great danger is that some who are invited shall not taste of his supper. God’s table is regularly set before us in the Sacrament of the Altar. To taste of this banquet is a start. To feed on Christ in our hearts and to obey him in our daily lives is the finish, to which, pray God, we may all attain.


H16-65Trinity XVII. September 18, 2016.

Archbishop Haverland forwarded the following sermon to Anglican Church of Our Saviour, Florence, South Carolina U.S.A.

St. Luke xiv, verse 1 – It came to pass, as Jesus went into the house of one of the chief of the Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him.


Today's gospel lesson occurs when our Lord goes into a house on the sabbath day 'to eat bread'. Normally in the gospels when our Lord is eating bread we have an anticipation of the Eucharist; and this connection is even greater when the meal, as in today's lesson, takes place on a sabbath. For the sabbath itself is foreshadowing of the Eucharist, and the Eucharist is the Christian sabbath meal. This lesson takes place in chapter 14 of St. Luke's gospel, which scholars call the Lukan Symposium, because its first 24 verses contain stories and parables involving banquets. The stories begin with today's lesson, in which our Lord is the guest at a dinner. The setting for the chapter is a dinner. At this dinner our Lord tells parables involving dinners and, as we are reminded that dinner is going on, talks about dinners. The symposium ends with a parable invitations to a great banquet, the messianic banquet, the banquet of heaven. But today we concentrate of the first of the dinners, the literal meal to which a Pharisee invites our Lord as a dinner guest on the sabbath.

When eating bread goes well in the Bible wonderful things tend to happen: multitudes are fed by manna, loaves and fishes are multiplied to feed five thousand, outcasts are made welcome. And indeed in today's story a miracle occurs: a man is healed at the sabbath meal. We begin with a meal and bread and a miracle. So far, so good, right? There should be rejoicing because of the healing. However, at this particular meal something goes terribly wrong. Instead of harmony and rejoicing in connection with the healing, we find controversy, discord, and condemnation. Instead of recognition of Christ flowing from his healing miracle, we find him challenged and rejected by 'the lawyers and the Pharisees'. In my text we are told that 'they watched him': and this is clearly a suspicious, hostile watching. It is the close observation of people looking for something to be offended by.

This pattern is familiar enough in the gospels. Our Lord was constantly embroiled in controversies with the Pharisees concerning the sabbath. They were defending religion as they knew it, as they believed it should be. Our Lord challenged their religious ideas as superficial traditions that undermined the moral and religious heart of the Old Testament. For our Lord, love and pity for the suffering overcome the law against working on the sabbath. Why should one human being suffer one day longer than is necessary? Certainly it is not God's will to be honored by a sabbath observance that would prevent the healing of a sick man.

In any case, this meal does not turn out well. The miracle is resented. Rejoicing turns to controversy. Fellow guests become antagonists. I've been at dinners like that. It is not pleasant.

We find this sort of thing periodically in the gospels. Our Lord makes an offer by word or deed. If the offer is rejected, then an opportunity is lost. In St. Mark x we have one of the saddest stories in the gospels. A young man comes to talk with Christ, and tells him that he has obeyed the commandments from his childhood. We are told,

Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, ...[S]ell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me. And he was sad at that saying, and went away grieved: for he had great possessions. (x.2 if.)

This young man is, apart from St. John, the only person whom I can recall in the gospels whom we are told directly that our Lord loved. Here he is offered a place as a disciple of Christ, perhaps even a place as one of the Apostles. But despite Christ's love, despite the high honor of the offer given to him, he passes it by. He is sad, but he says, 'No'. He 'went away grieved', but still he went away.

Today's lesson is similar. The banquet is ready, Christ is present, bread is broken on a sabbath day of God, a sick child of Abraham is healed. But instead of joy in the Bridegroom, joy in the banquet of the Messiah, joy in a healing — instead of these we see the root of bitterness. Anger and division and debate replace what should be joy. An opportunity is passed by. An offer is rejected. The lawyers and Pharisees maintain their understanding of the sabbath in the face of the Lord of the sabbath. The foretaste of the Messiah's banquet is set up against the Messiah himself. And so a chance is wasted. The King of glory passes on his way, but his fellow guests refuse to follow in his retinue.

From this unhappy lesson our Lord proceeds to a teaching on humility. In keeping with the chapter and its stories about meals, this teaching takes the form of a story about a banquet. A haughty guest who chooses the best seat for himself is put down by the host. The humble guest, who modestly goes to the most inconspicuous seat, is exalted by the host: 'Friend, go up higher.' 'For whosoever exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.'

The lawyers and Pharisees are so wrapped up in their ideas of what God wants, that they cannot see God himself when he comes to their table. They choose the best seats for themselves because for them the meal is about themselves, about their place in the seating plan. For them the meal is an opportunity to see and be seen, to be exalted and admired by their fellow guests. In contrast the humble man is concerned about the host. He does not imagine that anyone is there to see him. He does not think about his place at the table, because he knows that the meal is really about someone else, the host. The humble man gets things right.The poor sick man whom Christ heals of the dropsy surely understands who the true host is of the dinner. But the proud Pharisee host neither recognizes his Lord, nor accepts the miracle, nor rejoices in the blessing given to the sick man. Because humility does not mind what happens to itself, it has eyes to see the other: and if the other is Jesus Christ, that is a very important thing. But the proud man can only see himself and how everything relates to him: so the proud man does not recognize Christ in the person of his guest.

When Christ came to the proud Pharisees' dinner, we are told, 'they watched him'. They watched him, but they did not see him. They watched him in order that they might be offended, but they did not see who he really was. But the humble man, who hardly dares look at Christ or to think about God, he is much more open to God in truth.

We learn from this that humility is the best preparation for God. We should learn to put aside our preferences for the sake of God's will. We should learn to trust God and to accept his care, for that will bring us better things than we either desire or deserve. God's banquet is always before us. The question is always how we respond to the invitation: with humility and love or with pride and self-regard? The choice is ours, even at this very moment at this very banquet.


H17-01Advent I. December 3, 2017.

Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon on Good Friday at St. Stephen's Pro-Cathedral, Athens, Georgia, U.S.A.

St. Matthew xx, verses 32-3 – What will ye that I shall do unto you? They say unto him, Lord, that our eyes may be opened….


Our epistle today from Saint Paul, and the collect which we read throughout Advent, are filled with contrasts. They contrast ‘works of darkness’ with ‘the armour of light’; ‘this mortal life’ with ‘the life immortal’; ‘great humility’ with ‘glorious majesty’; ‘now’ with ‘the last day’; ‘time to wake’ with ‘sleep’; ‘walk honestly’ with ‘rioting and drunkenness’. If we take all of these contrasts together, the basic point is a call to wakefulness, alertness, and careful preparation.

Some of these pairs do not refer to good and evil, but simply to this world as opposed to the world to come. This mortal life, here and now, we have choices to make, and those choices refer to the other group of pairs: darkness or light; good or evil; honesty and humility and virtue or selfishness and sin and pride. The decisions are mostly minor and occur every day. Each little decision is a pebble, a little thing, but a little thing that when multiplied hundreds and thousands of times makes a building, a wall, a substantial structure. If we are not careful, the product of our lives might turn out to be a wall cutting us off from God, rather than a fitting habitation built on a solid foundation of faith.

So, again, the basic message is the need for careful preparation, now in the time of this mortal life, as we work with or against God to give our souls the shape they will have through all eternity. That is a good Advent theme: careful preparation.

That is the message. But of course most of us most of the time do not think very much about the ways in which our daily lives have eternal ramifications. For that reason I have taken for my text today the event that occurs immediately before the beginning of our gospel lesson. The lesson itself, of course, is the story of Palm Sunday and the triumphal entry of our Lord into Jerusalem. In Saint Matthew’s gospel, the last thing that our Lord does as he walks from Jericho to enter Jerusalem on Palm Sunday is to heal the blindness of two men. The men cry, ‘Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David.’ And we are told that ‘Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight’. The pattern is clear: human suffering or weakness or incapacity meets divine compassion and healing. What is not clear, of course, is what the healed person will do after his healing. Will he follow the Lord into the holy City and walk with him on the way of the cross? Or will he take his healing and run? Will or will not a momentary encounter with God produce lasting effects within the heart and soul of the newly healed?

In our lesson many people encounter Christ. ‘A very great multitude’, we are told, meet him and acclaim him with acts and words appropriate to the Messiah. But crowds are fickle. In the Wednesday Bible study we have just considered the weird episode in Acts 14, where Paul and Barnabas heal a crippled man in the city of Lystra. There the crowd decides the apostles must be gods come to earth. Paul is the talkative one, so they call him Hermes, the messenger of the gods. Barnabas evidently looked impressive, so they call him Zeus. Out comes the priest of Zeus, with oxen covered with garlands, to do sacrifice to the supposed gods. Of course Paul and Barnabas put a stop to that particular impulse of a crowd – an impulse that is stupid and superstitious. One verse later the crowd does a complete about-face and decides to try to stone Paul to death. One minute the crowd considers you a god, the next it’s throwing stones. Such are crowds.

But let’s return to Jerusalem and today’s crowd. Their acclamation is correct, but their hearts are not. Their words are right, but they know not what they mean or say. The better starting point is the blind men a couple of verses earlier: ‘Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David.’ What we are trying to do is to live carefully in the time of this mortal life so that we may enter into the holy City with Jesus. We seek so to live that we may enter in the gate which leads to the heavenly kingdom of God. We begin rather blind, rather careless. We are unable to find the gate, the narrow gate along the strait way into the City of God. The first thing, of course, is to know that we are blind, that we suffer from a disability and that we need our Lord’s help to open our eyes and to show us the gate. We need, in a word, mercy. Or, in another word, we need grace. We need God’s free gift.

We read this lesson today on the first day of the new Christian year, Advent I. We stand today at the gate into

the sanctities and cycles, the seasons and the feasts, which now begin to unfold once again before us in the ancient annual round. The City in question was originally Jerusalem. But Jerusalem is a figure for God’s kingdom. God’s kingdom now in the time of this mortal life is the Church and her worship and sacraments and fellowship of love. And in the life immortal, in the life of world to come, we will discover that the Church here and now is in fact an entry way which has already taken us inside the gates of God’s kingdom.

So come. Put aside carelessness and blindness and remember that Advent is a season of preparation and anticipation. Advent is a time to read again the ancient prophecies of a Saviour to come. Advent is a time to contemplate the end of the world, the end of time, and more particularly to contemplate the end of my own world and of my own little time here and now. My death and yours are most assuredly today one day closer than they were yesterday, and that is a fit subject for Advent consideration. Advent is a time to receive the sacraments with humble gratitude; to say our prayers, to make our confessions, to repent our sins, and to receive the Blessed Sacrament of the altar. Advent is not Christmas, but the path to Christmas, the way to prepare to receive the Christ-Child, whom we are most certainly unworthy to receive without Advent and without careful preparation of ourselves. Let us seek healing for our blindness, so that we may prepare ourselves wisely, and say, with the people of Jerusalem long ago, ‘Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.’


H17-50Trinity II. June 25, 2017.

Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon on the Second Sunday after Trinty at Anglican Church of Our Saviour, Florence, South Carolina U.S.A.

St. Luke chapter xiv, verse 16 - A certain man made a great supper, and bade many....


Good morning. This is my third Sunday in South Carolina this month. My fourth if you consider Augusta suburb of Aiken, as I am assured some people in Aiken do. In any case, it is always a pleasure to be with you here in Florence.

Today's gospel lesson is the parable of the Great Supper. In this parable a man prepares a great dinner party. He first invites the most obvious guests, who, however, all make excuses not to come. If we understand the social customs of the day, these guests appear in a particularly rude light. These guests were invited early on, days and weeks earlier. Later, just before the time of the dinner, the host sends a servant to escort the guests to his house. The servant probably carries a torch to light the way. It is only at this point, at the last moment, when the escort has already come to accompany them to the dinner, that the guests make their excuses.

It is because of this rudeness that the host becomes angry. He now has a dinner ready and no guests. So he invites two further groups. First, he sends his servant to bring in a much less socially desirable set of guests. We might call these guests the urban poor: they come from 'the street and lanes of the city' and include 'the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind'. But there still is room for more guests, so the servant is sent out again, this time to go further afield. He goes beyond the city gates to bring in guests from the 'highways and hedges' - that is, from the country lanes and the hedges that bordered the vineyards.

The basic meaning of this parable is clear in St. Luke's gospel and is spelled out even more clearly in St. Matthew's version. The Great Supper is the feast of salvation, the banquet of the Messiah, the victory celebration of God. The city is Israel. The first, obvious guests are the leaders of Israel: the priests and scribes,

the rulers and merchants, the devout people of the temple and synagogues. These people mostly prove to be Christ's opponents, and his parables often are directed against them. They are God's chosen people and the ones first invited to the feast of salvation, yet they refuse to come. They have long been invited: the Law and the Prophets were addressed to them to prepare them for the feast. But when God's servant comes to escort them at the chosen hour, they refuse. And this refusal is a profound failure.

The second group of guests also comes from within the walls of the city. These people, therefore, like the first group, are Jews. But they are the common people of Israel: simple, unremarkable folk rather than the leaders. These people respond more positively to Christ. The third group comes from outside the walls of the city entirely, whose invitation to a town party is great surprise. These people are the Gentiles, whose invitation and inclusion mark the missionary pattern of the early Church. The parable, then, points to the actual situation of Jesus and his first followers. Since Christ was rejected by the leaders of Israel, the earliest Christians were mostly Jews of the poorer sort. Then in the next stage the gospel was preached to Gentiles in the world beyond the city gates of Judaism. St. Luke xiv from which this parable comes opens with our Lord invited to 'the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day'. It opens with Jesus as guest. But the parable ends with the divine host proclaiming the exclusion of others from the banquet. God is in charge. He is the real host. The question for people in Luke xiv, the question for the characters in the parable, and the question before us, is how we respond to God's invitations. And usually that question boils down to our priorities.

Is God the first thing in my life, or do I put other good things ahead of him? The parable mentions a piece of land, yokes of oxen, and marriage as things that might skew our priorities. Consider the three. The piece of land represents property and possessions: the equivalents in our day might be land, money, investments, houses — the things into which we sink our wealth. The five yoke of oxen represent farming, which is a way of making a living: the equivalent now is our job — the way we obtain our income and support ourselves. The new wife does not require modern translation: the demands of marriage and family are not all that different today from what they have always been.

So in the parable we have four concerns. The first is the supper of salvation. The other three we might call our family life, our wealth and possessions, and our job. These three are all important things; things that go to the heart of what and who most of us are. And these are all good things, or at least can and should be good things. But it is precisely these good and important things that can turn us away from God and his salvation and his feast. Good things can become idols, which take God's place in our hearts and in our scale of priorities. What we do with our time on Sunday morning is a small, though key, part of the matter. More important is what we do with the rest of our time; and what we do with our talents and our treasure.

Of course if we turn away from God, he will find other guests for his dinner. If the obvious people fail, God will invite the less obvious. If good people turn away, God will call the bad people. If cradle Christians are indifferent, then God will convert the Muslims and the atheists. We need to apply the criticism implicit in this parable to ourselves. How do I evade God's call? What kind of excuses do I make for doing what I want, as opposed to what God demands? What do I put ahead of God in my life? How many ways can I invent to say 'no' to God? These questions, and the parables that put them in such a pointed fashion, enraged the ancient leaders of Israel. They certainly are not comfortable questions to ask ourselves. But there they are.

The good news is that we are invited to the Great Supper of salvation. The great danger is that some who are invited shall not taste of his supper. God's table is now set before us in the Sacrament of the Altar. To taste of this banquet today is a start. To feed on Christ in our hearts and to obey him in our daily lives is the finish, to which, pray God, we may all attain.


H17-55Trinity VII. July 30, 2017. St. Stephen’s, Athens.(Father Athanaelos’s 18th anniversary of ordination)

St. Mark viii, verse 3 – …if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way….


Today as always we read the lessons the Church assigns to this particular Sunday, but in addition, of our own choice as it were, we are observing the rector’s anniversary of ordination to the priesthood. Several of us were there years ago in New Bern, North Carolina, and it was a happy day. If you are a visitor here today, you have stumbled upon a local celebration. Welcome and enjoy. You need not go away fasting to your own house in danger of fainting on the way: you may instead go to Dearing Street and have lunch with an exceptionally pleasant group of people. In any case, the coincidence of today’s gospel lesson and the observance of an ordination anniversary is fortunate. The two fit unusually well, as I was happy to discover when Father Athanaelos asked me to preach today. I do not have to stretch at all to connect the fixed lesson with the happenstance of the anniversary. Our gospel lesson is Saint Mark’s account of the multiplication of bread to feed four thousand disciples in the wilderness. If you think that should be five thousand, you’re half right: Mark and Matthew both tell us about our Lord feeding five thousand men on one occasion and four thousand on another. My text today sets the scene for this miraculous feeding. Our Lord has ‘compassion on the multitude’ that have listened to his teaching for three days (viii.2). He says, ‘[I]f I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way: for divers of them came from far.’ (3)

It is impossible for us to read this lesson without seeing in it a foreshadowing and anticipation of the Eucharist and Holy Communion. By God’s compassionate will Christ gives bread to his disciples to feed his people in the wilderness. The continuation of this work of feeding is, of course, the distinctive and chief act of priests. Priests do many things. Priests preach – but so do deacons and even so may learned and licensed lay people. Priests counsel – but so do psychiatrists and lawyers and wise friends and older relatives. Priests care for the sick, but so do doctors and nurses and the parents of sniffly children. Priests visit the shut-in, but so do social workers and friends and kind neighbors. Priests do many, many things, but the one thing they do that no one except a priest may or can do is celebrate the Eucharist to feed the people of God with the bread from heaven in the wilderness of this world. Or to put it in four words: only priests say Mass. And this we do to extend the compassion of Christ to all places and to all generations. Much of what priests do can be done by others. This thing only priests do.

Compassion is perhaps the greatest attribute of our Lord in the gospels. He sees two blind men by the way, who cry out, ‘Have mercy on us, O Lord, thou son of David….So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes’, and healed them (Matthew xx.30f., 34). A few chapters earlier in Mark, when he heals a man possessed by a demon he says, ‘Go home to thy friends, and tell them how great things the Lord hath done for thee, and hath had compassion on thee….’ (Mark v.19) When he heals a leper in the first chapter of Mark, he was ‘moved with compassion’ (i.41). Saint Luke tells us that the Good Samaritan and the father of the Prodigal Son, who are symbols for Christ, both ‘had compassion’ (x.33, xv.20). In Matthew when our Lord ‘saw the multitude, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.’ (ix.36) And compassion is the central reason for our Lord’s Incarnation: he came down from heaven for us men and for our salvation because of his compassion for us, ‘poor banished children of Eve, mourning and weeping in this vale of tears.’ (Salve, Regina)

In today’s lesson our Lord’s compassion is manifested by the gift of miraculous bread. When we read this lesson, we are reading about ourselves and what we are doing at this very moment. Our Lord feeds us with the bread of his Body, the Bread of his great compassion and love, and he does so lest we faint by the way, for divers of us come from far. We come from here and there, from scattered lives, from a multitude of sorrows

and difficulties, from a variety of sins and temptations, many of us only having found our way to this place by very roundabout paths. We are not very strong; we are sore pressed. We are quite capable of fainting by the way with all that life throws at us and all that we bring upon ourselves by our folly and by our neglect of the call of our compassionate Lord.

But all of that is comparatively unimportant. God knows you well: better than you know yourself. Unto him all hearts are open, all desires known, and from him no secrets are hid. He knows us as we kneel before his altar, the table of his Banquet. He knows the way we have come and the hunger we have. And he would not have us walk on our pilgrimage through this world ‘having nothing to eat’. Rather he says, ‘I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me,…and have nothing to eat’. We have nothing but what he gives us, so he must give us more or we will have nothing more and will starve.This Eucharistic feeding is the work of Christ, but it continues among us because of the ministry of our priests. Somebody else can do all the rest, but nobody else can do this. By what our priests do today at the altar, in obedience and remembrance – by this the Kingdom of God comes among us, even here and now in this world, even if obscurely and in a manner that the world does not see; even if half the time in a manner that we ourselves hardly see. By the word and hand of the priest eternity breaks into time, and Christ our God to earth descendeth from the realms of endless day. He whom heaven and earth cannot contain is by the priest circumscribed and accommodated to our world and is given to you and me in a little whiteness and in a little sweet wine.

All this mystery is God’s work for you, that you might not faint by the way, though you come from far and have far to go. In the words of Charles Wesley’s great Eucharistic hymn, ‘Victim Divine, thy grace we claim’:

We need not now go up to heavenTo bring the long-sought Saviour down;Thou art to all already given,Thou dost e’en now thy banquet crown:To every faithful soul appear,And show thy real Presence here.


H17-62Trinity XIV. September 17, 2017.

Saint Luke xvii, verse 18 – There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.


Our gospel lesson today is found only in Saint Luke’s gospel. It is typical of Saint Luke’s own particular perspective in its very positive and favorable portrayal of a Samaritan. The Samaritans were thought of by orthodox Jews as half-breeds. Samaritans were despised by the Jews of our Lord’s day, but are portrayed in a very good light by Luke. Saint Luke wrote his gospel for a Church of Gentile or pagan converts who did not know much about the Old Testament or Judaism and who certainly did not care to maintain Jewish prejudices. Luke more than the other gospel writers often picks out events to repeat from Christ’s life that show our Lord relating positively with non-Jews. Today’s lesson is a good example.

The basic theme of this lesson is, obviously, thankfulness. Ten lepers approach Jesus. Lepers were social outcasts, because people feared their disease and disfigurement. Misery loves company. The lepers’ common misfortune seems to have overcome other differences between them, so that in their little community a

Samaritan could associate with Jews. When our Lord heals the ten lepers, nine of them take their healing and run, without a backward glance or a word of thanks. Only the one Samaritan ‘returned to give glory to God’. None gave thanks ‘save this stranger’.

The two highest forms of vocal prayer are thanksgiving and adoration. Thanksgiving is a form of gratitude in which we praise and bless and thank God for some particular good that we enjoy or evil that we have avoided. I am thankful for my parents. I am thankful that God has delivered me from terrible accidents or disease. Thanksgiving praises God for something that relates to us. Adoration is higher still, because it praises and glorifies and worships God purely for himself. In the end adoration spills over into contemplation, because it seeks simply to gaze upon the splendor and beauty of God with a spiritual eye and to adore him for his great glory.

It is not necessary to separate thanksgiving and adoration. My many blessings lead me to thank God, and that in turn leads me to understand God better as he is in himself. Thinking about God in himself leads me inevitably to think about how God’s love and goodness and power led to my creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life, above all in my redemption by our Lord Jesus Christ. We need not separate adoration and thanksgiving, but today the gospel leads us to concentrate more on thanksgiving.

There are many kinds of thanksgiving. I can thank God for myself or for others. I can thank him for good received or evil avoided. I can thank God for the past or present or future. I can thank God for something specific or for his goodness in relation to us in general. Perhaps the most important thing to say in a sermon about thanksgiving is that we need to cultivate a general attitude of thankfulness and gratitude.

Let me give some examples. I mentioned once in a sermon something that happened on, if memory serves, my trip to Haiti three years ago. To get to the village of Tapio you have to take a bone-jarring jeep ride up a rocky, almost treeless, very hot, very steep mountain track. The ride takes about 45 minutes. [Note from 2017 – some things improve – the trip is much faster now with a better road up the hills.] Most people, of course, don’t have vehicles, so they ride donkeys or, usually, walk. The walk takes five or six hours. Whenever I am riding up or down that track, I fantasize about what would happen if the jeep broke down. I see children and old folks walking that mountain and know that I probably could do the same if I had to, but also, spoiled as I am, think that I would just about die. Well, on this particular occasion the flight I was on back to Miami was cancelled, and I had to take a later flight which caused me to miss my connection to Atlanta. I spent a couple hours in lines in the Miami airport, then took a taxi to a hotel where the airline put me up for the night and gave me a dinner. I fumed and felt extremely sorry for myself. Poor, poor, poor, poor me; poor, poor, pitiful me. At some point, perhaps over a cocktail in the hotel restaurant or in the really very pleasant hotel room, to my credit, I thought, ‘You selfish idiot. Every single soul in Tapio would probably gladly exchange his day for yours, and here you are feeling sorry for yourself.’ Just a little bit of thankfulness for my blessings transformed my attitude. I suspect it lowered my blood pressure, and I’m sure it turned nasty, selfish sinfulness into an attitude more pleasing to God.

Along the same lines, I like to remind the children of the parish of something I once told them after another trip to Haiti. At our orphanage in Port-au-Prince everything each child owns is either on that child’s back or stored under his or her bed, which bed is in a room that five or six children share. Those children have almost nothing, including parents or privacy, and yet they are luckier than many children in Haiti because the Church gives them shelter, food, education, the protection of loving adults, and the Christian religion. I would like our children to think about what they have. Most of them have rooms of their own, a telephone at their disposal, a television, plenty to eat, too many clothes to fit under their bed or perhaps even in their closet, families that love them, and so much more. I don’t particularly want our children to feel bad about their blessings. What I do want is for them to recognize their blessings, to be thankful to God and their parents, and to give a thought to the fact that the vast majority of children in this world would be dumbfounded at the thought that our children could for even one minute have anything to complain about. Think on these things next time Mom

tells you you’ve got to go to Church or Dad tells you to clean up your room.

What is true of us as individuals is true of us as a community and nation. We live surrounded by incredible blessings. Some of us here would have died years ago if we did not enjoy medical care undreamed of a few decades ago. We enjoy the protection of the laws in a relatively orderly and decent society. We have wealth and conveniences which make the poorest in our land in many ways far better off than the richest of most previous generations. We are blessed to be where we are and when we live. I have, again, no wish at all to make us feel guilty about this. We should not feel guilty, but blessed – incredibly, wonderfully blessed. We should return and give glory to God, again and again. We should share our blessings with those less fortunate, and we will be eager to do this if we truly understand that those blessings are gifts which God and many others have made possible.

We owe God thanks and thank-full-ness. Not only is thanksgiving our bounden duty as blessed and graced creatures, but it also is the secret that transforms unhappiness and selfishness into a life of grateful peace. A little with contentment is better than great riches, and a little leaven of thankfulness leavens the whole of life into peace and worship. And so, let us now proceed to the central and great act of our thanksgiving, as is most meet and right.


H17-63Trinity XV. September 24, 2017.

Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon at Saint Francis’, Gainesville, Georgia, U.S.A.

Saint Matthew vi, verse 24 – But seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.


Today we are given a commandment and a promise. The commandment is about priorities: ‘[S]eek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness’. The promise follows: if we put God first, then ‘all these things shall be added unto you.’ So, first the commandment, then the promise.

Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. The lesson is from the Sermon on the Mount, which we find in chapters 5, 6, and 7 of Saint Matthew’s gospel. My text is the end of chapter six, two-thirds of the way through the Sermon. Chapters 5 and 6, which come earlier, contain the law of Christ. Both the law of Moses and the law of Christ are given on mountains to govern God’s people. These are the rules of God’s kingdom and describe the righteousness to which he calls us, with the law of Christ fulfilling the older law.

The bad news, my friends, is that the new rules are not easy. In many ways the law of Christ makes God’s law harder, not easier; more demanding, not less. Where the law of Moses demanded an external set of behaviors, the law of Christ demands an inner attitude. The old law says, don’t eat pork or shell fish. The new law says, eat everything with a thankful heart and be mindful of those with nothing to eat. The old law says, don’t commit murder. The new law says, do not hate or be angry. The old law says, don’t commit adultery. The new law says, don’t indulge lust and sensuality. The old law says, here are 300 or 400 things you must do and must avoid. The new law says, everything you do must be in service to God.

Think of it this way. I might say to Johnny, ‘Don’t hit your sister.’ Or I might say to Johnny, ‘You must love your sister.’ Now not hitting Janey is a pretty clear and really not a terribly difficult thing. But loving Janey is a

commandment without limit that involves a whole attitude, an all-encompassing orientation of the heart. Or again, suppose I say to a child, ‘Clean up your room.’ That’s clear, simple, and should be easy. But what if I say to the child, ‘Always do the right thing’ or ‘Always be good’? That is much more demanding.

Our commandment today, then, is general and demanding: always seek God’s kingdom, the road to which is straight and narrow and difficult. This is not a commandment which tells us, say, what we ought to do on Sunday mornings: though if we aren’t making the effort on Sunday mornings we’re probably failing otherwise as well. The text is not, ‘On Sunday morning seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness for at least one hour.’ No; the command is not about one hour: it is about how we live all of our lives all the time. I do not mean it is about being perfect, which we are not and never will be. But it is about the constant choices put before us every hour. Do we put God first or somewhere well down in our priorities? Today’s command is to put God first always. Or perhaps we might say, in everything we always act for God and with God in mind. That is the command.

The promise in the second half of the text could be seen as a reward: ‘all these things shall be added unto you.’ The things in question are stated earlier in the chapter – clothes and money and food and all the things over which we spend much of our worry and time. The promise is that if we put God first, then the other things will fall into place.

Now I don’t think this means the prosperity gospel. I don’t think it means, the better Christian I am, the richer and more successful I will be. This is not magic. It is not, ‘If I do A,B, and C, then God will give me X, Y, and Z.’ I believe the point is that our worry does not help us, but hurts us, while putting God helps us and does not hurt us.

Let me give two examples. My late friend, Father Irvin, worried about money very much. He was worried he would not have enough in his old age and would run out. But he died in his mid-60s while still working. All his worry was pointless. It made him less happy when he was worrying and didn’t help at all in the end. It did not help him, but hurt him. Insofar as he worried he was distrusting God and did not put God first, and that hurt.

Then consider an example of putting God first despite the possible hurt that would do. After 1976 I knew many priests who believed just as I did – that the new prayer book was awful, the ordination of women was wrong, and that abortion was wicked. These were the three issues that led to the formation of our Church. Of these many priests, though, most did nothing. They were afraid. They were afraid of losing jobs and comfortable rectories and social status. They were afraid to do what they believed was right, because they gave other concerns priority.

While many, many priests and parishes failed, some did not. After the General Convention of 1976, a group of men from St. Mary’s Church in Denver took their rector, Father Mote, out to lunch. They asked him what he was going to do. He said he wasn’t sure. They said to him something like this: ‘Father, you’ve taught us the faith for many years. We believed you and we believed what you taught us. We know on the basis of what you have taught us that we cannot remain in a faithless Church. We are leaving. The only question is whether we will leave following you or will leave on our own.’ Father Mote had taught his people so well that they left him no choice but to do the right thing, to put first the kingdom of God as they understood it. So Father Mote did the right thing, and Saint Mary’s, Denver, was the first parish to leave, Father Mote was the first priest to leave, and so our modern Exodus began.

Then God added all the other things to them in response to their fidelity. St. Mary’s, Denver, lost the struggle for their buildings and property in the U.S. Supreme Court, but money poured in and they bought back what they alone had ever paid for. They then funded a retirement plan for Bishop Mote far better than what he would have had if he had stayed put. The parish is still there. This story of faith rewarded could be multiplied, but I think you get my point.

There you have the second half of the text: and all these things shall be added unto you. If our priorities are right, if the kingdom of God and its righteousness is our first priority, then other things will fall into place. God says to the priest, Eli, ‘[T]hem that honour me I will honour…’ (I Samuel ii.30). If we honor God above all things, then he will bring us through whatever difficulties he allows us to undergo. If we fail to arrange our priorities in this way, then everything will tend to fall apart. It is never too late to pursue God’s kingdom and his righteousness. The promise of my text remains before us. If we put first things first, then all will be well, and all will be well, and God will ensure that all manner of things shall be well.


H17-64Trinity XVI. Octobeer 1, 2017.

Archbishop Haverland preached the following sermon at Saint Barnabas’, Atlanta., Georgia, U.S.A.

St. Luke vii, verse 12 – Now when he came nigh to the gate of the city, behold, there was a dead man carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow….


Good morning. I greet you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is my pleasure to be with you today. We are about to plunge into a week of business in Dunwoody, as the 2017 Joint Synods of four Continuing Anglican Churches prepare to convene. This is a notable, perhaps even historic occasion, and I am pleased that it begins for me with Mass here at Saint Barnabas’ and also with the celebration of Nigeria Day. I have spent much time in Africa over the years and well know that there are few parties as good as a good African party. Obviously I have timed my visit just right.

Our collect, epistle, and gospel today are all about God’s care for his Church. In the collect we beseech God to ‘cleanse and defend’ the Church. Notice that we ask God to cleanse us before we ask him to defend us. Until we are cleansed we do not deserve to be defended. Furthermore, until we are cleansed it might actually be harmful for us to be defended. It doesn’t do any good to build a wall if the enemy is inside the gate. Before we deserve anything God cleanses us by his free grace, given to us especially through our baptism. Only then, when we are cleansed and built into his Church, do we become proper objects of what the collect calls God’s ‘continual pity’. This continual concern for us means that God always wishes to cleanse and forgive us when we sin and constantly defends us from spiritual harm.

The epistle is also about God’s care for us. St. Paul asserts the reality of God’s care when he speaks of ‘the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge’. Paul reminds the Ephesians that God ‘…is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us….’ St. Paul does not try to prove this abundant care. He does not try to justify the ways of God to anyone who might deny the goodness of those ways. Paul assumes that the people to whom he writes already are convinced of that goodness in some measure. Rather what Paul here begins with is the fact of God’s fatherly care, and then prays that the Ephesians may more and more realize in the depths of their hearts what they have already know at least at little. To use the language of the collect, Paul speaks to people who have been cleansed (by baptism), and then seeks to ensure that they are continually defended and helped and preserved by God’s help and goodness. It doesn’t do much good to have a coat if you won’t wear it or if you won’t take some care to button it up when you do wear it or to sew on the buttons if they pull off or to patch up holes if they develop. All Christians have a coat, the robe of their baptism. Paul wants us to remember this fact and to keep our robes in good condition and to use them.

If the collect prays for the Church, and if in the epistle Paul exhorts the Church, we may likewise read the gospel as a story about this same Church. The story concerns a woman and her child, a widow and her only son who has died.

The raising of the son of the widow of Nain is plainly a foreshadowing of the Resurrection of our Lord. Both men are the only sons of widowed mothers. Both die and sadden many by their deaths. Both rise because of God’s compassion and are restored to their mothers. So on one level this story is about Christ and his mother, and it foreshadows the Resurrection.

On another level, however, the story is about us and the Church. The city, Nain, represents the world. The dead man is a symbol for humanity, dead in its sins. The mother is the Church, mourning and weeping for the

sins of the world in this valley of tears. She mourns and weeps because in this world the universal fate of man is death. That the man is the only son of his mother represents this universality of sin and death. The wages of sin is death, and the universality of sin means in consequence universal death. ‘As Eve when she her fontal sin reviewed / Wept for herself and all she should include,’ so in this story all weep for the dead man. Our compassionate Lord is the same in this story as in the larger world. In the story he comes upon the funeral procession and raises the dead. In the larger world for us men and for our salvation he came down from heaven, and was incarnate for us, and for us lived and taught and died. In the story the young man is raised from the dead, though later he shall die again. In the larger story Christ rises from the dead no more to die, and in the great and dreadful day of judgement he shall raise us up as well, also no more to die. And again in the larger story, we rise to new life already by baptism. As the dead man is restored to his mother after his resuscitation, so we, after being reborn in baptism, are restored to our mother, the Church, the bride of Christ, and in the bosom of her maternal care we are called to live.

This same gospel lesson is read also on May 4 th, the feast of St. Monica. Monica was the widowed mother of St. Augustine. Augustine as a young man fell into sin and a prodigal life, but he tells us in his Confessions that his mother never ceased praying for him. Could, he asks, the son of so many tears not be saved? Augustine eventually was saved, and turned from his sin, and was restored to his widowed mother as a converted Christian.

The Church has many dead children, you know. The Church, has many sons and daughters who are lapsed, who are in heresy and schism, or even who have never really encountered the gospel in a serious way at all despite their nominal upbringing. The Church does not need more dead children. The Church needs sons and daughters restored to life. The Church needs us converted and alive to Christ. She does not need us to be members because it is convenient for us to be members. She needs us to be her children because we are converted, because we accept the fullness of faith in Jesus Christ as our Saviour and accept his Church as the place where that salvation comes to earth by divine promise. The Church needs people like Monica, to pray quietly and continually for the conversion of the world. People, even Christians, say all the time that we live in a post-Christian society. That is wrong. We live in a pre-Christian society, and our job is to convert it into a Christian one. So too the Church needs Augustines, men and women of intelligence and conviction, who will convert to the faith themselves, and then boldly proclaim Christ to the unconverted.

One of our themes today in this parish is the Catholicity of the Church. Catholic, as you know, means universal. This parish is a living icon of the Church’s universality, because here there gather members from all over the world. This parish is geographically Catholic, if you will. Our gospel reminds us that the human situation everywhere and in every age is the same. Sin is universal. The fall of mankind is universal. Christ’s work of salvation is universally offered to us. His bride, the Church, has members and priests and parishes in every land, of every tongue and race and class. And our duty is also universal: to be converted ourselves in our hearts, and to work to convert every person within range of our prayers and concern and influence.

So in newness of life let us go where the saints have shown the way: where Monica and Augustine and all the saints have gone before, in newness of life, cleansed and defended by God, who is ‘able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think’. And may the love and power of God bring to his holy Church in every land much increase and many new sons and daughters until Christ is all in all.


H17-68Trinity XX/Christ the King. Octobeer 29, 2017.

Saint John 18, verse 36 – My kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews: but now is my kingdom not from hence.


Our gospel today is from Saint John’s story of the trial of Jesus. The trial of Jesus really is the trial of his accusers and of his judges. It is in truth the trial of the world by our Lord: the trial everyone but Christ by Christ, who is the judge of the quick and the dead. A few verses further on in the story after today’s lesson ends are told that Pontius Pilate ‘brought Jesus forth, and sat down in the judgement seat in a place that is called the Pavement but in the Hebrew Gabbatha’ (19:13). In the original Greek it is in fact unclear whether Pilate or Jesus sits down in the judgement seat. I think the ambiguity is intentional and not the result of bad Greek. Pilate seems to be the judge, but the apparent defendant sits in the true seat of judgement.

Because today is the feast of Christ the King, and because the kingdom of Christ is the subject of my text, I would like now to look at the ambiguity that hovers over the whole trial story in regard to this one matter of kingship. We might ask, Who is the real judge? who is really on trial? what is truth? who sits in judgement? who is the king? what is the kingdom? All of these questions are posed to us in John’s subtle telling of the story. But in my text three times our Lord speaks of ‘my kingdom’. So what is this kingdom and how does it relate to ‘the world’ from which our Lord distinguishes it?

In John’s gospel the subject of kingship comes up in the very first chapter, as our Lord is gathering his earliest disciples about himself. In 1:49 one of those disciples, Nathaniel, says to our Lord, ‘Rabbi, thou art the Son of God; thou art the King of Israel’. ‘Son of God’ and ‘King of Israel’ are two titles for the messiah, the Christ. Though such titles properly belong to our Lord, he is wary of the title king. In chapter 6, after feeding the five thousand, we are told that our Lord fled up a mountain when he ‘perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king’ (6:15). From this it seems that a mistake about kingship was so serious a danger that it made Jesus run away. Nothing could be more disastrous than a mistake on this point. The title of king is next used for our Lord on Palm Sunday, when the crowds in John’s story say, ‘Blessed is the king of Israel that cometh in the name of the Lord.’ (12:13) We know how quickly that loyal and royal acclamation lasted. Not long. A few days later it turned to, ‘Crucify him! Crucify him!’ and ‘We have no king but Caesar.’

I think if our Lord had stuck around in chapter 6 and been forced to accept the title of king, then Good Friday would only have come sooner than it did. Again, few problems could be so serious as misunderstanding the nature of the kingship of Christ.

So, what exactly is the mistaken idea, and what is the correct idea? John’s Palm Sunday story offers us a hint. To the royal cries of the crowd, John adds words from the prophet Zechariah (9:9, conflated with 3:16): ‘Fear not, daughter of Sion: behold, thy King cometh, sitting on an ass’s colt’ (John 12:15). These words speak of Israel’s king riding, not on a great royal charger, but on a little donkey, not on a mighty war horse, but on the humble transport of the lowly. Not, in modern term, in a tank or a limousine, but in an old Ford or on a battered bicycle. So begin with that: Christ’s kingdom comes in humility, unexpectedly. Christ is the king over life and death, as he proved by his miracles, but he is not a king of worldly power or military force or by the instruments of this world with its wisdom and wealth. The people were looking for a military leader and a political king, to deliver them from the Romans, but that is a kingdom of this world, not the kingdom of our Lord.

The real answer to the nature of the kingship of Christ is given, surprisingly, just before Palm Sunday by our Lord’s enemy, Caiaphas, the high priest. The Pharisees say, ‘What are we to do? …If we let [this man] alone,

…the Romans shall come and take away both our place and our nation.’ (11:47f.) Their fear is worldly and political, that the Romans will feel challenged by the instability of a wildly popular rabbi that people were calling a king. Caiaphas replies, ‘Ye know nothing at all, nor consider that it is expedient for us, that one man should die for the people, and that the whole nation perish not.’ (11:49f.) What Caiaphas meant is cynical: Let’s use this one man as a convenient scapegoat to deflect criticism from us, and let’s use the Romans to get rid of him.’ But Caiaphas speaks more truly than he knew. In the end our Lord will in fact die for the people, that the whole nation perish not. He will die to save others. His kingdom will be revealed by his self-sacrificing offering of himself upon the altar of the cross. And so it is upon the cross that his kingdom is most publicly proclaimed in John’s gospel, by the writing put up by Pilate above his head in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, King of Israel of the Jews’.

Until our Lord died, the nature of his kingdom could not be understood. What the cross reveals is that our Lord rules by serving, saves by losing his own life, reigns by submission, and rescues by being defeated. His kingdom is not at all what this world expects, but it becomes for us as Christians a model. Christians do not move the world by use of power and force, but by love and service. It is not for us to know if our nation or any other will perish or not. It is rather for us to imitate our Lord, for the servant is not above his master, but should be as his master.

Let me solemnly assure you, friends, that salvation is not to be found in any prince or president or party or platform. Politicians and platforms may be better or worse, and we must do our best to discern the best – or more likely, the least evil – choices among those set before us. But Christ’s kingdom is not of this world and his kingdom will not be fully present ever in this world. This world is just a door, which opens up beyond this life to God’s kingdom or to another, unhappy place. We only will come to God’s kingdom through the humility that rides on a little donkey, through the wisdom that causes us to run away when people want to force us to be what we are not, and through service to others in love. That is the kingdom of Christ, and it alone (of all the things we are offered in this world) will never end.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.

H17-70Trinity XXII. November 12, 2017.

Saint Matthew xviii, verse 35 – So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.


I was sent a very fine sermon once for the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi. It contained a passage I would like to quote: The world is like a shop into which someone has stolen and placed all the expensive price-tags on cheap items, and all the cheap price-tags on costly things.

The preacher commented on this by simply saying, ‘The world’s priorities are upside-down.’ And so they are. We usually accept the world’s false valuations. We are impressed with the price-tags.

The someone who has stolen into the shop to mislead us is the someone summarized in our baptismal renunciations as ‘the world, the flesh, and the devil’. The world is all human opinion and action and civilization apart from God. The world is the pursuit of fashion, position, rank, esteem, popularity, office, and competition. These things teach us to value what has little worth and to neglect what has great worth. The flesh is our appetites apart from God: our appetites for food and drink, for ease, for sexual pleasure, for physical comfort. These things are good in themselves, and our appetites for them are reasonable. It is good that our tummies grumble when they are really empty. But when these appetites are divorced from God, they

become disordered. We then grasp for what has little worth, and so risk missing the hidden treasure. The devil, of course, is the malevolent spiritual personality that has mixed up the price-tags and who parades the shoddy, expensive things before us as pearls of great price.

So again, the world’s priorities are upside-down. With that in mind, let us consider the particular priority that today’s gospel brings to our urgent attention. That priority is, in a word, forgiveness. More particularly, it is forgiveness shown as mercy. The duty to forgive is first stated in a positive way with a straightforward assertion: we should forgive our enemies, not just seven times, but seventy times seven – which is to say, infinitely. That is easily and quickly said, though of course not so easily done.

After this fairly straightforward, positive assertion, though, our Lord states the same lesson in a negative way. He tells a story, whose point is the horrible consequences for us if we fail to forgive. The positive duty to forgive includes very negative consequences for failures to forgive. The unmerciful servant in the parable is punished terribly for his hardness of heart towards his colleague. He is tossed into jail, and the key is thrown away: ‘So likewise shall my heavenly Father do also unto you, if ye from your hearts forgive not every one his brother their trespasses.’ The matter is serious.

The lesson begins with Saint Peter’s question, ‘Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?’ The question deals with forgiveness on what we might call the horizontal level, as a matter involving two people trying to cope with each other. Peter at least recognizes that he is injured by a ‘brother’ – by someone with whom he has a relationship that should involve some care and concern and mutual obligation. But Peter still is asking about a human duty to forgive other people in human dealings. Peter is looking at forgiveness as bound and limited by the human world.

Our Lord takes Peter’s question about forgiving a brother, and concludes by demanding forgiveness of enemies. Our Lord expands the duty, by extending the obligation to enemies as well as brothers by demanding forgiveness indefinitely. Here Christ refuses to accept a limit to forgiveness on the human level. But then he does something even more radical and challenging. He explains the duty to forgive each other by introducing another level entirely. He raises Peter’s sights. He says, in effect, that our dealings with each other are not just human affairs, whose horizon is in this world and whose parties are only human beings. Our dealings with each other have another dimension entirely, a vertical dimension. Our dealings with each other have another party to them, a King and Judge who stands above the human scene, who observes how we treat each other, and who then himself acts with authority and power. The King’s action is proportioned to our actions. His mercy reflects our mercy. His hardness reflects our hardness. His forgiveness is limited, though only by its proportion to our own forgiveness. Heaven’s actions hum with the harmonics of our actions. God gives to us what we give to others. We get what we give.

In the world’s shop forgiveness has some limited value. The price-tag set by the world and the flesh tells us that there is a prudent amount of forgiveness and patience. We might want to forgive seven times, for instance, because that forgiveness coming from us will increase admiration and esteem from others. We might even want to be moderately forgiving because that will increase our self-esteem. If desire for esteem is the world at work, then self-esteem is the devil at work. The world, the flesh, and the devil are not always a united army. The flesh’s desire for revenge may be countered by worldly concerns. But these prudent calculations and limits are Peter’s idea of forgiveness, not Christ’s. The upside-down pricing system gives forgiveness a little value. Christ gives it nearly infinite value.

Now there are real differences on the human level between servants. Some servants really do better than others. But our Lord cuts through such fine calculations – seven times? or seventy? or 490? – by introducing God’s claims and God’s values.

The parable tells us that whatever the world’s price-tag on forgiveness may be, its real value is so great that no other item in the store can equal it. Nothing – absolutely nothing – that has ever been done or said to you or me

is unforgivable. Some things may be pretty darned unforgettable, and so we have to struggle to pick our way through resentments, difficult memories, and reasonable caution concerning future dealings with difficult folk. But if we let ourselves dwell on the false price-tags and the tinsel they represent, then we will lose the hidden treasure, the true pearl, the life-giving fountain of forgiveness, the well of mercy that brings us mercy.

Jesus does not hesitate to tell us our duty with a very, very rough threat attached. He delivers the servant who had no compassion ‘to the tormentors till he should pay all that was due.’ And so likewise shall he do to us if we fail in mercy, compassion, and forgiveness. Our duty is clear. Forgive or be damned.


Date post:	25-Jul-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	vantu
View:	214 times
Download:	0 times

Sermon Archive of The Most Rev -...

Documents