⁸And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.  ⁹And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

¹⁰And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.  ¹¹For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

¹²And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.  ¹³And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

¹⁴Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

¹⁵And it came to pass, as the angels were gone away from them into heaven, the shepherds said one to another, Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known unto us.  ¹⁶And they came with haste, and found Mary, and Joseph, and the babe lying in a manger.

¹⁷And when they had seen it, they made known abroad the saying which was told them concerning this child.  ¹⁸And all they that heard it wondered at those things which were told them by the shepherds.

¹⁹But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart.  ²⁰And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them. Luke 2:8-20  King James Version (KJV)

After 2000 years of Christmas sermons, in hundreds of languages, in different countries throughout the world, and by way of innumerable faith traditions, is there anything new or original left to be said about Christmas, and what it means, that hasn’t been said before?   Perhaps not.  However, like re-reading that favorite book for the 17^th time, or watching that favorite movie or television show for the 358^th time, even when you know exactly what comes next, what the very next word is going to be, often we find a new meaning or a new slant on something that is as tried and true as Christmas itself.

 And so it is with me this year.  The Gospel reading for today  recalls the story of the angels bringing the news of Christ’s birth to the shepherds.  Now, we all know that story.  We’ve heard it many times over, and those of us who cherish “A Charlie Brown Christmas” will always, in some ways, hear Linus quoting from Luke, no matter who is reading that passage of the Bible to us.   We know the story.  We SEE the story in every Nativity scene we pass by.  There is almost always a shepherd near the manger carrying a lamb on his shoulders and another lamb or sheep to be seen somewhere hanging around.    It’s always seemed to me that the sheep and the shepherds were just THERE, minor players in a Christmas play, the “extras” assigned to the kids who didn’t quite measure up to the roles of Mary or Joseph;  they enter stage left, ooh and aah over the baby, and exit stage right, singing “Go tell it on the mountain”, singularly unimportant and taking secondary roles to the more illustrious wise men (who in reality weren’t there at all) and most definitely playing supporting roles to the Holy Family, or just standing around as so much scenery, contributing to the mood and filling up the bare spots in the Nativity scene.  I overheard a conversation recently that made me really think about the shepherds.  While visiting some friends, their cat jumped into the midst of the family crèche and knocked over the obligatory shepherd.  It was chipped.  The younger daughter of the family was somewhat distressed, and to make the little girl feel better, the mother said to her, “Don’t worry about it, Honey.  It’s just the shepherd.  He’s not all that important.”    I didn’t think much about it at the time, but when reading the Scripture appointed for today, it struck me.  Not all that important?  But weren’t they?  Who WERE these shepherds?  Why were they there in the first place?  Why did THEY get the news of Christ’s birth in such a spectacular way?  Who were they that they should be eyewitnesses of God’s glory and receive history’s greatest birth announcement?

In Christ’s day, shepherds stood on the bottom rung of the Palestinian social ladder. They shared the same unenviable status as tax collectors and dung sweepers. Only Luke mentions them.  When the twelve tribes of Israel migrated to Egypt, they encountered a lifestyle foreign to them. The Egyptians were agriculturalists. As farmers, they despised shepherding because sheep and goats meant death to crops. Battles between farmers and shepherds are as old as they are fierce. The first murder in history erupted from a farmer’s resentment of a shepherd.  Smug religious leaders maintained a strict caste system at the expense of shepherds and other common folk. Shepherds were officially labeled “sinners”—a technical term for a class of despised people.

Into this social context of religious snobbery and class prejudice, God’s Son stepped forth. How surprising and significant that God the Father handpicked lowly, unpretentious shepherds to be the first to hear the joyous news: “It’s a boy, and He’s the Messiah!”  What an affront to the religious leaders who were so conspicuously absent from the divine mailing list.  Even from birth, Christ moved among the lowly.  It was the sinners, not the self-righteous, He came to save.  So is it  really all that surprising that the first announcement of Christ’s birth was to the lowly shepherds on Bethlehem’s hillsides?

Consider the events leading up to Christ’s birth.   Mary was barely 15.  Christ was born to an unwed mother, Mary, a servant girl; Mary the young woman who delivered while only betrothed to Joseph.  He was born in a stable, a cave!   A holy God being born to a couple no different than immigrants, far from home and in a strange city, in a place where animals were kept.  A couple who couldn’t even find a place to stay, turned out of every inn!  It’s all too bizarre.

Yet this is the God we experience.  This is our claim;  This is the meaning of his very name: Immanuel, meaning “God with us” — with us not just in nice times, but most especially in the times of our lives when we are in the caves, and stables of our lives, when we are turned out of the places we’d like to be, when we are at the lowest of low points, when we are out in the dark, and in the cold like the shepherds.

Our God, the God who comes to us in the person of Jesus Christ, is the God of the oppressed, the repressed, the depressed; the God of the sad, the grieving, the sorrowful; the God of the lonely, the lowly, the poor, the God of the Shepherds; the God of the despised, the destitute, the dejected. Our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God who stood with the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, who led them out of Egypt to a promised land of freedom.  Our God is the God of widows and orphans and stranded travelers. Our God is the God who doesn’t stay neat and tidy and spotless, but comes and stands beside us in our times of deepest need, who comes among us as the child in the dirty manger and the God of the shepherds on the hillside.  The God we’re speaking of dares to join the unsuccessful, the failures, the dispossessed, and the downtrodden;  the God of the Shepherds.

Wherever there is suffering, our God is there. He stands with Zacchaeus, the despised tax collector, and with Bartimaeus, the blind beggar. He is with us when we face cancer, chemotherapy, and radiation treatments. He is with us when we face amputations, operations, loneliness, the loss of a loved one, or even death itself.  The God of the manger and the Shepherd is Immanuel, God with us. At our deepest times of loss and need, in the dirtiest and most embarrassing parts of our lives, God is with us, His rod and His staff, they comfort us.  It is God who glues us back together when we become, like that figure in my friends’ Nativity scene, chipped, flawed, and much less than perfect.

And it is up to us, to demonstrate the love of God, the God of the lowly, the downtrodden, to the world.  We, like the shepherds in the Christmas story, are to be the ones who are to proclaim the good news “which shall be to all people” to all the people of the world.   It is our responsibility as Christians to be the instruments through which God can work in this world.  As was  most famously stated more than four centuries ago by Saint Theresa of Avila:

Christ has no body but yours,
no hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are his body.
Christ has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours.

 My very favorite Christmas carol, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” includes the lines, “What, then, shall I bring him, empty as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb. If I were a wise man I would do my part.  What can I give Him?  I can give Him my heart.”

Won’t you, this Christmas, give Him your heart?  Won’t you, like the shepherds in the children’s plays of the Christmas story, be one to “go tell it on the mountain, over the fields and everywhere” that Jesus Christ is born?  Amen.

 

 

 

The Fourth Sunday of Advent

December 23,2012

The peace and joy of our Lord Jesus Christ, be with you all!

We can sense the excitement in the air!  Christmas is but a couple of days away!  The joyous birthday celebration of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

But what of that very first Christmas?  It really wasn’t even Christmas then.  Bethlehem.  A small town located in the hills of  Judea, a not ten miles from Jerusalem.  Rich in the history of the Jewish people.  Rachel is buried here, and it was here that Ruth and Boaz met and were married- ultimately becoming the great grandparents of David, second king of the Jews.

“Thus says the Lord, you Bethlehem… from you shall come forth for me one who is to be ruler of all Israel.” [Micah 5:2] “He will stand and shepherd his flock in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord, his God. And they will live securely, for then his greatness will reach to the ends of the earth.  And he will be our peace…” [Micah 5:4-5]

When it was announced that a census was to be taken by Quirinius (Roman Governor of Syria), Joseph “… went up from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to Bethlehem the town of David, because he belonged to the house and line of David. He went there to register with Mary, to whom he was pledged to be married and was expecting a child. While they were there, the time came for her baby to be born, and she gave birth to her firstborn, a son. She wrapped him in cloths and placed him in the manger, because there was no guest room available for them.”  [Luke 2:4-7]

“And there were shepherds living out in the fields nearby, keeping watch over their flocks at night. An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. But the angel said to them: ‘Do not be afraid. I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all people. For unto you this day in the town of David, a Savior has been born- he is Christ, the Lord. This will be a sign unto you, you will find him wrapped in clothes and lying in a manger.” [Luke 2:8-12]

We can imagine this chaotic scene.  The small town of Bethlehem crowded and brimming with people, many of them extended families as the census required them to travel to their ancestral villages.  Sharing homes and rooms. Bustling with activity and of course, noise.  Hardly conducive to the stress and strain of childbirth.  But with this information, we tend to overlook an important point.  Our savior was not abandoned, nor born in conditions to harsh.

We learn from scripture, that shepherds were nearby in the fields tending to their sheep at night.  Normally, winters in this part of the world are deary, cold and rainy.  This seems not to have been the case.  Had it been, shepherds normally would have moved their sheep inside barns.  We may believe that this winter’s night was somewhat mild.

Scripture all tells us that there was no “guest room” for Mary to deliver her child.  It is a likely assumption, as they traveled to Bethlehem to register in their ancestral home, that Joseph and Mary had family there.  Being pregnant, we could assume she would not have been turned away.  But with each house filled to the rafters with noisy relatives, where to birth a baby in peace?  In a manger, of course!

A manger, a small attachment to the main house were animals were quartered.  It is dry, warm and cozy.  Close enough for family, but removed enough for quiet.  There Mary and Joseph, could rest from their tiresome journey and insure the baby Jesus was comfortable too.

We needn’t paint a picture of harsh uninviting conditions.  Yes, babies were born in more comfortable conditions such as a house or bed, but this was a frenzied night.  We must remember too, God had provided a magnificent star and a chorus of angels to serenade his birth- could we truly believe God would allow Jesus in a mess?

I cannot think of a more beautiful and tranquil way in which to enter the world at the time. A dry warm manger, laying peaceful under the watchful eyes of mother- and a donkey and a cow or two. A cow has such beautiful eyes. Jesus must have smiled and perhaps even giggled.

Bethlehem- noisy, crowded, bustling.  The manger- dry, warm, safe.

“O holy Child of Bethlehem, acsend to us we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in-  be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angel, the great glad tidings tell. O come to us, abide with us- our dear Lord Emmanuel!” [O Little of Bethlehem, fourth stanza by Fr. Phillip Brooks. (c) 1865.]

Luke 1:26-38

²⁶In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,  ²⁷to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.   ²⁸And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”  ²⁹But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.  ³⁰The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.  ³¹And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.   ³²He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David.   ³³He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”   ³⁴Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”   ³⁵The angel said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be holy; he will be called Son of God.   ³⁶And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.   ³⁷For nothing will be impossible with God.”  ³⁸Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

As we read in Luke 1:38, Mary says “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”  WOW!  Now that has to be the most courageous act of faith I’ve ever read!  I pray for the strength to act like Our Savior’s Mother, the strength to relinquish the wants of MY WILL and honestly and earnestly pray for “THY WILL BE DONE” – less and less of me, more and more of Our Father’s Will.  To always do what is right and good and just and holy in His sight.  But is it that easy?

Here, the Blessed Virgin is truly our example of unwavering faith which she shows by pressing through any fears, worries or anxieties she may have had.  By giving her ‘YES’ to Our Father, by submitting to “let it be with me according to your word” – she shows us that no matter what we may be faced with or feeling,  it is possible to have total faith in God to get us through even the most inexplicable situations.  Just think of some of the trials awaiting Mary simply for submitting to God’s Will.  It could cost her life, being pregnant and unmarried was punishable by death from stoning!  She could have lost her fiancé, Joseph.  She had no idea how he would react to this news!  Can you imagine the looks from her own friends and family she might have received – not to mention the others in her town, from her synagogue, at the market?  I have to believe that at some point these concerns and countless others had to have crossed the Blessed Mother’s mind.  Still, she obeyed. She submitted.  Even if she was terrified, she chose to carry the Son of God, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  In Mary lies a profound secret of great faith that none of us should miss.  DO IT AFRAID.

It is very easy for someone outside of our situations, various as they are, to tell us, when we are faced with real fears, worries and anxieties, to ‘give it to God’ or to ‘cast our cares on the Lord – and leave them there’ or to ‘fear not.’  But for the one actively facing those frightful feelings it often does not seem so simple.  It is in these trials, that I meet Mary.  Though the scriptures don’t tell us WHAT the Virgin Mother was feeling when she submitted to God and showed amazing faith, we can well imagine that she must have panicked at some point, or several points!  But she said yes anyway.  She did it afraid.  Often times, we must do the same thing.  We must endure our trial, shaking in our boots, but pressing inward and onward.  Moving through our various situations scared, but faithfully, still pushing ahead.

May we be so bold in our faith in Our Lord, that our souls will also proclaim the greatness of Our God.  When we accept God's word and when we obey his commands, we will realize great joy and an overwhelming peace becomes available to us – even if what we are faced with seems like it is just too much for us to handle.  Our faith allows us to see that we are not alone, that we can get through all of the curve balls lugged at us, even if we’re terrified.  It is written that God will never leave us nor forsake us, that He is with us always.  Not occasionally, not ‘just through the easy and lovely and happy times.’  Always.  And when we flex our muscles of faith, we’re giving our own fiat, our own ‘YES!’, which allows God to expand in us and use us - and give us the joy, peace, hope and love we need for ourselves and that we need to be a light to the world – to everyone we encounter.

The hope of the world rested on Mary’s ‘YES’ – and she obeyed and Jesus was born.  In a similar way as Christians, the hope of our world rests today on us – will we be like her – will we give our ‘YES’ to God’s will in our lives, no matter how afraid we may be?  Will we give birth to God in our thoughts, words and deeds?  Will we obey the Lord and walk in His ways, no matter how frightening the circumstances are or could become?  Or shall we choose our will to be done because it is easier and requires no courageous faith?  The angel Gabriel tells us in verse 37 “For nothing is impossible with God.”  So when we do not answer with a resounding ‘YES’ to allow God’s birth in our lives, we limit what we can ever have or ever do or ever become.  We must meet the Lords knock on the doors of our hearts with a resounding invitation in – then the Holy Spirit can begin the produce the fruit of Christ-like living in our lives – to the point that  the love, joy, peace, patience and prosperity flow out of us an onto each person that crosses our paths.  But we must un-wrap these gifts of the Spirit so we may, first, use them in our lives and then pass them on and share them with our brothers and sisters.  They cannot flow from us if they are not in us.  And it all starts with our yes to God.

 

 

What you are is God’s gift to you.

What you become is your gift to God.

During this time of the year, many of our thoughts turn to gifts: giving and receiving, what we want to give, what we want to receive, what will please those we love, the shopping, the ordering, the wrapping, the general hustle and bustle of the Christmas season centering around gifts ad infinitum, donating to the people with the red kettles and bells so the less fortunate can have gifts…..

And then there’s the practice of ‘re-gifting,’  passing along that unwanted or unusable gift that we were given, to someone else, so that they will have SOMETHING, and so that they too, can possibly pass that pink and orange and green plaid scarf along, re-gifting it themselves to someone else who won’t use it either….and sometimes by some freak chance that unwanted item comes back to us several years later….and not much too worse for the wear….  And is re-gifting, as amusing (and cheap) as it may seem, necessarily a bad thing?

Why all this focus on gift-giving and gift-receiving at this time of year?  The union of Christmas and gift giving was a gradual one; actually, the full story of the bright packages beneath the tree, like most of our Christmas customs, begins in the days before the birth of Christ.  In ancient Rome, gifts were exchanged during the New Year’s celebrations. At first these gifts were simple, such as a few twigs from a sacred grove and small items of food. Many gifts were in the form of vegetables in honor of the fertility goddess Strenia. During the Northern European Yule, (yep, the yuletide season is a pagan thing) fertility was celebrated with gifts made of wheat products, such as bread and alcohol.

Like many of the old and pagan customs, exchanging gifts was difficult to get rid of even as Christianity spread and gained official status. Early church leaders tried to outlaw the custom, but the people cherished it too much to let it go.  St. John Chrysostom urged no compromise with heathen abominations, but he, too, failed in this tenacity of hanging on to the tradition of gift giving.  Since there was no general agreement about the exact date of the birth of Jesus, it must have seemed helpful to have it supersede the Saturnalia, so the rebirth of the sun became instead the birth of the Son of God, and the church leaders looked for a Christian justification for the practice of all this gift giving. This justification was found in the Magi’s act of bearing gifts to the infant Jesus, and in the concept that Christ was a gift from God to the world, bringing in turn the gift of redemption and everlasting life.

What you are is God’s gift to you.

What you become is your gift to God.

Wikipedia defines a gift as the transfer of something without the expectation of receiving something in return. Although gift-giving might involve an expectation of reciprocity, a gift is meant to be free. By extension the term “gift” can refer to anything that makes the other happier or less sad, especially as a favor, including forgiveness and kindness.

God’s gifts to us are free and clear.  He has given us the gift of His Son, Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.      He has given us the gift of eternal life:  “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” Romans 6:23 (NIV);  The gift of salvation:  “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” Ephesians 2:8 (NIV);  And the gifts that are unique to each of us:   “We each of us have our own individual gifts:  But each of you has your own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that.” 1Corinthians 7:7 (NIV)

Besides the obvious gift of His Son, and the forgiveness that we receive through Him whom we receive by faith, what other gifts has God given specifically to you?  What talents have you received?  What blessings have been given to you?

We learn about the 7 Gifts of the Spirit in Isaiah 11:2-3:  “² The Spirit of the LORD will rest on him— the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the LORD— ³ and he will delight in the fear of the LORD. He will not judge by what he sees with his eyes, or decide by what he hears with his ears;” (NIV)

And more importantly, what are you doing with those gifts?  What are you giving back to God?  What are you “becoming” as you use your gifts and talents?  Which of the gifts that you have been given are you “regifting?”  In other words, when we’ve received a gift from God, do we share that gift with others?  Do we “regift?”  We are told in 1 Peter 4:10, “Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms.” (NIV)  Jesus himself addresses this very thing in the parable of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30.  By using our gifts, they multiply and we bring others to know God, and by recognizing what we have been given and using them for God’s glory, we are giving back to God.

What is the most precious thing we can give to God?  The most precious gift we can give is what God wants the most. God wants us to make the fervent attempt to repent, get right with Him, and not lead a double life, trying to follow two contradictory paths, but living our lives according to His will.  God simply wants us to give ourselves to Him.  This is the best gift we can give!   Our gift to Him is how we respond to the gifts He has given us which are the gifts of life and of grace. We can best do this when we are headed in His direction, following His precepts with a grateful, willing heart and mindset, and by striving to be the best that we can be by becoming what it is that He wants us to be.

Barbara Streisand sings in “The Best Gift:”

The best gift
That I ever got
Didn’t really weigh a lot
It didn’t have a ribbon ’round
And it sometimes made a terrible sound
The best of all it seems to me
It wasn’t ‘neath the Christmas tree
And yet, I guess I’d have to say
That it made all the other presents twice as gay
The best gift that I’ve ever known
I’d always wanted most to own
Yet in my dreams of sugar and spice
I never thought it could be so nice
The best gift that I ever get
Was sometimes dry and sometimes wet
Was usually pink but oftentimes red
As it lay so innocently in it’s bed
The best gift of the year to me
The one I hold most dear to me
A gift that simply drove me wild
Was a tiny new born child…

As we celebrate the birth of THE tiny newborn Child, God’s greatest and best Gift to us, let us strive to make ourselves the best gift we can give to others, and to God.  Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

As I read the bible passages for today, I am reminded of my recent Profession and Ordination to the Diaconate in the Reformed Catholic Church.  Ephesians 4:1-16 states:
“ I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love,  making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,  one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ’s gift. Therefore it is said, “When he ascended on high he made captivity itself a captive; he gave gifts to his people.”  (When it says, “He ascended,” what does it mean, but that he had also descended into the lower parts of the earth.  He who descended is the same one who ascended far above all the heavens, so that he might fill all things.)
The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. We must no longer be children, tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming.  But speaking the truth in love, we must grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, from whom the whole body, joined and knit together by every ligament with which it is equipped, as each part is working properly, promotes the body’s growth in building itself up in love.”

As I took my vows to become  Deacon Reverend Sister,  I flashed back to a past which was dominated by a sense of loss, or misdirection. Like most youth, I searched for meaning in my life, experimenting with various doctrines and beliefs. But yet, each left me feeling empty and alone. The love I sought, from others, and things, was always an illusive dream. It was only after I stopped running, and listened to a voice, well rather a shout, that I realized what I wanted, was in front of me all along.  Like a rebellious teenager, I denied my fallibilities, thinking I knew all the answers.  I knew nothing, and no doctrine, or other religion, were what I really needed.  By listening to God’s still voice, I went from a child “tossed to and fro and blown about by every wind of doctrine, by people’s trickery, by their craftiness in deceitful scheming” to a daughter of Christ, and now a Deacon.  He knew all along what I was meant to be, it just took me a while to listen to my loving Father.

As this passage states, there really is only “one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism,  one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” He is a God of love, and seeks to use us, His children, to build up that which unites us all in faith and grace. Here we are reminded that we all are called to serve God, to receive His gifts of grace and peace, and to join together to “for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God”   This was made very clear to me a couple weeks ago , when I was blessed to join my fellow clergy in the Dedication of our national church, and the appointment of a newMetropolitan Archbishop to serve as its leader.  As we all joined our hearts, minds, and prayers to “build up the body of Christ”, the church, we each had a role to play. Whether evangelist, prophets, apostle, pastor, deacon, teacher, or parishioner, uniting in faith as we are tasked to do, allowed us to bring in to being what was surely only a dream not too long ago. With Christ providing us strength, we were “joined and knit together by every ligament”, working properly to promote the body’s (the National Church) growth in building itself up in love.

Our next reading, from Psalm 51:1-12, stands as a reminder that though born as a sinner, now by God’s grace and love, am I able to serve Him in my new role as Deacon in the church. It states:
“Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love; according to your abundant mercy blot out my transgressions.  Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me.  Against you, you alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are justified in your sentence and blameless when you pass judgment.  Indeed, I was born guilty, a sinner when my mother conceived me. You desire truth in the inward being; therefore teach me wisdom in my secret heart.  Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.  Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones that you have crushed rejoice.  Hide your face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.  Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your holy spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and sustain in me a willing spirit.”

By beseeching God to “Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.”, we are acknowledging that no one is perfect, that despite what we have done in the past, God does forgive us. He will clean us, wash us, and make us, as if “whiter than snow”. That by simply asking, He stands ready to teach us what we must learn to follow and praise Him, and then to carry this knowledge, this “wisdom in our secret heart”, with us out in to the world, to teach others. As clergy, this is key to following God’s commandments, to use the Holy Spirit, our willing spirit, to take the “joy of God’s salvation”, spreading His message in our ministry. Sometimes even us as clergy forget we were once sinners, born guilty of our transgressions, and through faith, made clean of heart. And like children at times, we make mistakes, we sin, we misstep, lose our way, but this passage reminds us that God forgave us once, cleaned us of our iniquity. And yes, He will do it again, because like a loving father, he wants the best for his children. All we have to do is ask, and it shall be granted.