06.18.2017     Preaching Text: “So Sarah laughed to herself…” (Genesis 18:12a)

Among the many odd Old Testament stories, of which there are indeed a few, this just may be the oddest. Here aged Sarah and Abraham are told by God that they will conceive a child.

To make sense of this we need to realize that much of what is found in the Old Testament is not history, strictly speaking, at least not the kind of history we moderns generally expect.

In our world, history is thought to be a kind of science. It attempts to get the “facts’ straight, although such a thing is always approximate at best.

In pre-literate times, however, “history” was most often passed down orally from generation to generation. As Israel developed a clear sense of identity after settling into the land, these stories about their ancestors continued on.

But it was Israel’s theologians who later took the wealth of Israel’s “oral tradition” and put it down on paper (or the nearest equivalent). Their interest, however, was not to slavishly recount these stories and events as “facts,” but to place them within a certain context.

And that context had to do with Jahweh and how Jahweh had been involved specifically in the lives and events of Israel’s past. Their interest was in theology, in other words, not “straight reporting.”

To our ears this may sound a bit spurious. After all, they seem to have taken an awful lot of liberties with the facts. Consider, as a classic case in point, today’s story about Abraham and Sarah bearing a child.

But, again, as I say, the intent of the biblical writers was not straight history. Instead they sought to present the one thing that set Israel’s faith apart from all others, the one thing that has proven to be Israel’s greatest singular achievement.

And that was Israel’s groundbreaking belief that God was intimately involved in human history. Everything that occurs in life, therefore, is necessarily related to God’s actions. Nothing is purely random. Spiritual meaning and purpose are to be found all around us, even in the midst of life’s seemingly arbitrary and chance encounters.

The task of Israel’s theologians, therefore, was to identify in specific terms what God had been doing throughout their history, the very history transmitted in and through received oral tradition.

For us, there’s great benefit in this. For as we know, we live our lives forward, without the benefit of hindsight, which means that life confronts us with any number of seemingly random, chaotic, and inscrutable events.

Being familiar with the Old Testament’s theological treatment of its own history thus enables us to look for God with a keener eye in those places we might not otherwise think to look.

Of course, accurately perceiving the spiritual meaning of every single event in life is not always possible, even in hindsight. Thus, if you look carefully at certain events as told by Israel’s Old Testament theologians, you’ll sometimes see rather obvious contradictions.

For instance, there are two interpretations of the relative merits of Israel’s first king, Saul. At one point we’re told his kingship is the greatest thing since sliced bread, a blessing bestowed on Israel by a beneficent God.

Turning the page we then discover a completely different narrative that actually excoriates Israel for having a king. The idea here was that God only allowed Israel to have this king because its people so wanted one, so they could be just like the nations around them.

This discrepancy suggests that Israel’s theologians disagreed on the matter, especially after it became obvious that many of Israel’s kings proved to be weak and ineffectual.

More broadly, the rabbinic tradition is rife with debate and disagreement. Its merit, however, is that in the midst of this impassioned debate, God’s will is sometimes revealed. It seeks to answer the question: where is God in all this?

What is found in the Old Testament is an earnest and informed attempt to understand, theologically, God’s role within human history, a task we should be about as well. For if we can train ourselves to think the way Israel’s theologians did, we often discover traces of God’s handiwork even in the midst of life’s greatest uncertainties and conundrums.

Moreover, in reading the Old Testament, certain broad themes can be detected. And one of them is found in our “odd” story this morning from Genesis.

To wit: God, beginning with the call of Abraham, makes a promise to save the whole world, us included, by reconciling it back unto its Creator, after, that is, the tragic events precipitated by the Fall.

This is to be accomplished through the hereditary line of Abraham. God assures him that through his progeny a great nation will arise, its sole purpose to announce and lead the world back to its God. And from this, as it developed in tradition, a messiah would arise to conclude the matter.

This is why, parenthetically, we find so many seemingly mindless genealogies throughout scripture. The point is that God’s Promise is specific, and will be effected by and through the genealogical line running from Abraham to David and ultimately, for Christians, to Jesus.

As such, throughout the entire biblical witness one basic question continually arises: will God’s Promise prove to be true? Time and again people and events conspire to put the Promise in jeopardy. From a human perspective at least, things at times look utterly impossible. What, after all, could be more humanly impossible than Abraham and Sarah giving birth to a newborn child? It’s so preposterous, in fact, the very idea makes Sarah laugh.

But the point of the story, again, is not to provide the reader with straight history, but with theology. Theologically, spiritually, the point of the story is to prove how God’s Promise can never be broken, and that our salvation, therefore, is ever assured.

This matters. For in our lives we surely shall know those times when God seems all but absent, when such a Promise appears, from a human perspective, utterly laughable.

Yet the Genesis story assures. God’s Promise is real, and that in and through that Promise God shall never abandon us. Amen.

06.04.2017         Preaching Text: “All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit…” (Acts 2:4a)

What are you especially good at? What skill set or talents do you possess? Have you made something of them? Are you accomplished at a trade, financial matters, or book learning? Does this give you a sense of satisfaction?

I certainly hope so. You’ve likely put a lot of time and commitment into developing these skills. Enjoying a sense of accomplishment is hardly a bad thing, is it?

But does your own particular skill set also make you feel a certain sense of pride? After all, you excel at it in ways others don’t. Does this ever make you feel in any way superior? Maybe just a little?

It’s a tough question. Yet isn’t it the case that we can be tempted, wittingly or unwittingly, to feel just a wee bit better than others because we can do certain things others can’t? Now be honest!

There’s another aspect of this as well. Because we excel in a given area we may be tempted to assume we excel in all areas. The danger here is that we end up “not knowing what we don’t know.”

This is particularly true of intellectuals, I’ve found. If I outperform others in the “important” matters of the mind, it’s a relatively quick step to think my lofty powers encompass the full range of human experience.

The simple fact, however, is that each of us is quite limited in what we know and can do. We can excel in one area of life and be wholly deficient in another.

Every time I attend a Trustee meeting, for instance, I end up feeling utterly useless, inadequate. The knowledge and skill required to properly steward our buildings and grounds escapes me almost entirely.

Which is to say that the only thing I learned from my father about home repair was how to pick up the phone and dial a professional. Of course I do have other skills, ones no better than any other, only different.

Which brings us to Paul’s discussion of the spiritual gifts found in the church, the Body of Christ. There we find people who are gifted in some ways and not in others. But together, the body is strong, as it taps the shared wealth of talents and skills of each individual member. In the areas where I’m weak, there are others who are strong, and vice versa.

Paul felt the need to point this out because the church in Corinth was beset by internal factions. The “elite” group, otherwise known as the “spiritualists,” thought their superior intellect and spiritual gymnastics (such as speaking in tongues) rendered them a cut above the others.

They even celebrated the Lord’s Supper apart from the rest of the church. Paul is having none of this. In characteristic fashion he tells these elitists that he himself could outperform them any day of the week. They’re not to think of themselves so highly, in other words. More to the point, he shows how being skilled in some things never makes any one Christian superior to another. We’re all in this together.

But there’s something else at stake here, something critical. The gifts we possess are not for us alone. This is perhaps the greatest mistake we can make, especially if we have skills and talents our culture recognizes and celebrates.

For even the “greatest” gift is given for a specific purpose. And it’s not, as I say, for our personal benefit. Simply put, we are given these gifts in order that we might share God with others.

The subtext of Acts, therefore, is that the giving of the Holy Spirit serves one basic function: to extend the word of God to the entire world. That’s pretty much it. Believe it or not.

In the Bible, both the Jews and the early church are shown to believe that God one day would intercede in the affairs of our world to defeat evil and restore life to its original state of perfection.

For the Jews, this would be initiated by the expectant Messiah on the “Day of the Lord” which would immediately usher forth God’s eternal “Golden Age.”

The early church believed this as well, but interpreted Christ’s earthy ministry and subsequent Resurrection as but the beginning of this highly anticipated restoration project. Rather than happening all at once, as was the Jewish understanding, it would happen in phases.

First the Messiah would come. Then, after the Resurrection, his remaining followers would be tasked with getting the word out about what was afoot. And what was afoot was the impending return of the Messiah (in their lifetimes they believed) where evil would be defeated once and for all and God’s Golden Age would be established fully.

This produced a compelling sense of urgency within the early church. After all, they didn’t have a lot of time. The world needed to prepare for this glorious, albeit cataclysmic event. Thus the missionary impulse.

But how to achieve this? The answer, as we see in Acts, is by means of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit alone would provide the wherewithal to accomplish this formidable task. It was the Holy Spirit who would give the church the gifts and tools necessary to bring Christ’s message of reconciliation to the world.

To think the Spirit’s gifts are for our benefit alone, therefore, is a grave misreading. While there is indeed great personal satisfaction in doing God’s will, such consideration is secondary. The reason we’re gifted is to gift others.

Thus when we use our gifts for purposes other than God’s will, we deny the reason God gave them to us in the first place. And the church loses its way.

In our adult book study this past week, we read Tony Robinson’s chapter stressing the necessity of using our gifts and talents for spiritual purposes.

Too often, he argues, the church has assumed secular logic to be the same as that informed by the Holy Spirit. The classic example is picking business people exclusively to serve on our finance boards.

Obviously, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing, except when secular business practices substitute for a spiritually informed use of our resources, as if there’s no difference between the two.

Once it was conceivable, Robinson says, to be a church leader, financial or otherwise, without participating in the worship life of the church. But today, he contends, leadership must be “connected to one’s faith and experience of God,” i.e. informed by the Holy Spirit.

To repeat, the purpose of the church is not to perpetuate itself as an institution, but to be about the work of the Kingdom. And this requires spiritually alert people who are intimately involved in the church’s inner workings, i.e. its spiritual life. Simply having skills, or interests, is not enough.

In the end, the point of origin for all the church does is the Holy Spirit. Minus this, we merely mimic being a church. Without the Holy Spirit, God’s will for us, the church, and the world, is all but lost. Amen.

 

05.28.2017       Preaching Text: “This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:11b)

I have a million theories, in case you hadn’t noticed. And one of them reads as follows: “Life is like doing the dishes. The worst part is thinking about doing them.”

I came up with this little gem in college while sharing a Cambridge apartment with several other students. There the dishes would pile up and up. My roommates and I would give quite a bit of thought to doing them. But there they would sit, undisturbed, for days on end, mounting ever monstrously.

Eventually, of course, somebody would be shamed into attacking this towering mountain of dirt and grease, the mere sight of which was as unpleasant as it was daunting.

But the thought of doing them, I came to realize, always seemed worse somehow than actually doing them.

This applies, I think, to life in general. Consider waiting for a medical procedure. As we wait we naturally imagine all sorts of things (and more so, I’m told, if you’re a medical professional).

Yet when the time actually comes we somehow muster the ability to handle it. Why? Because God in that very moment grants us grace to get through it.

I discovered this years ago while working as a hospital chaplain. Starting out I was terrified since I’d never been in a hospital and had no clue as to what I would encounter there, much less what I was supposed to say or do. Surely the patients would see that I was a novice and a fraud and would be justifiably disappointed in me. How could I presume to help them?

My experience, however, was just the opposite. Sensing my discomfort, at least for the first few weeks, they actually ministered to me! Somehow, in their vulnerability, God was present to them in ways unknown to me. That’s how they were able to put me at ease, I concluded.

In the same vein, I’ve often thought it more difficult for family members and friends to go through the illness of a loved one than the patient herself. We’re left, that is, feeling both anxious and helpless.

Countless times I’ve witnessed an inexplicable calm in those I visit in the hospital, etc. Surely it must be one of life’s great paradoxes. Then again, when we’re at the point of greatest need, we also tend to be far more receptive to God’s urgings.

In today’s reading from Acts, we are given Luke’s account of Jesus’ Ascension. Here the risen Christ, after having appeared to the disciples (and others) during the forty days following the Resurrection, is lifted up into heaven, from whence he came.

Thus begins a ten day period of waiting…waiting for the giving of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost (pente meaning fifty). The disciples are faced once again with the absence of their spiritual guide and leader.

Earlier, in the Upper Room, Jesus, as part of his “Last Will and Testament”, had told them he would be leaving them, but only temporarily. He goes on to explain why.

He must go, he says, “to prepare a place” for them in heaven. Eventually, he assures, he will come back to take them to this prepared place (heaven), so that where he is they/we may be also.

But before this happens, he will send an Advocate, the Holy Spirit, who will bind them to him spiritually/relationally while they await his return.

Perhaps the larger point, and subtext of all this, is that the worst possible thing any of us can experience in life is abandonment.

Years ago, while working as a student pastoral counselor, I met a woman who lived with constant loneliness, anxiety, and fear. She was prone to destructive behavior and didn’t know why.

I “diagnosed” the condition as “borderline personality disorder,” one of the most difficult and troubling conditions to “treat.” The essence of it is that at the very earliest and most formative stages of life the person never experiences unconditional love. These individuals often are left with the impression by the adults around them that unless they behave in a certain way, they will be rejected. This is absolutely devastating.

The woman told me that as a child her mother used to leave a packed suitcase outside her bedroom door in the hallway. The stated threat was that if she wasn’t a perfect little girl and didn’t please mommy, she’d be forced out of the house, suitcase in hand!

One of the characteristics of people burdened with this cruel condition is that they are often unable to form, much less sustain, interpersonal relationships. In fact, they tend to reject others before the other person has a chance to reject them first, all in an effort to avoid reliving the psychic pain of their childhood abandonment/trauma. As I say, this is uniquely tragic and heartrending.

The gospel, on the other hand, promises that God will never abandon or reject us. This morning’s readings remind us that even when God appears to be absent, the promise remains. We will never be abandoned, not now, not ever.

I’ve long believed that we can put up with absolutely anything in life as long as we know we’re not alone and that we are loved. To feel abandoned and unloved is the very worst thing a human being can experience.

Yet it was abandonment, we are told, that Jesus experienced on the cross. And not just from his earthly friends but presumably from God as well. This is the worst psychic pain. But then comes the Resurrection, life out of death, which serves as the ultimate assurance of God’s eternal presence and care.

In the end, there are really only two kinds of waiting. The first kind is born absent of hope, and includes the feeling of abandonment. The second is defined by an aspirational faith in God’s unfailing and goodly presence and promise.

The first kind of waiting produces fears and anxieties about the unknown that can cripple and destroy. But with the other kind of waiting, these same fears and anxieties often serve to break down our defenses, rendering us vulnerable. And in our vulnerability, we open up, becoming far more receptive to God’s Spirit, who is always there anyway and who is always attempting to break through our stubborn defenses.

During Lent I wrote a Beacon article which argued that adversity (in this case waiting) can cause us to give up, like the Israelites wandering in the wilderness wishing to return to the “fleshpots” of Egypt where they at least had food and shelter.

But adversity can also produce the opposite effect. It can lead us forward, in faith, toward the Promised Land we know awaits us, with each step taken in the “assurance of things not yet seen.”

Adversity born of waiting, in other words, can either draw us closer to God or take us further away, despite the fact that God is always near and never far from us. Amen.

The Dreaded ‘e’ word

05.21.2017         Preaching Text: “Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way.” (Acts 17:22)

During our adult book study the other night we got on the subject of children. We noted how much they bring to the table. And by that I mean to the church.

They bring their trust, faith, innocence, curiosity, openness, eagerness to learn, and ability to put a fresh spin on things we adults often take for granted. The phrase “out of the mouths of babes” comes to mind.

With that said, I’d like to ask you a question which, on the surface, may seem obvious but in reality is a tough and probing question, a question about which a child might be downright curious.

To wit: does it matter if you’re a Christian or not? After all, if recent polls are to be believed, a full 25% of Americans not only don’t consider themselves Christians but don’t even believe in God.

And if being a Christian does matter, in what way is this so? Can’t a person live a good life without going to church? I’ve certainly heard that innumerable times over the years. You probably have too.

Is Christianity a necessary part of life or is attending church something that is optional, something maybe good or nice, but not necessarily integral to one’s well-being?

I’ve discussed how Judaism and early Christianity understood the Sabbath to be highlight of the week, such that the first 3 days after the Sabbath were to be spent remembering and meditating on the Sabbath just past, while the 3 days prior to the next Sabbath were to be spent in anticipation and preparation.

In our busy Western workaday world, it’s as if Monday through Friday constitutes the main event, while the weekend is for resting up in preparation for the workweek to come.

As was said, the earlier concept was that the Sabbath is the center of one’s week, indeed one’s life, and that the rest of the week properly revolves around it.

In some ways, our modern take on things is that the Sabbath is optional, or, as one of my favorite professors in divinity school put it, “the icing on the cake” of our week (not the main event, in other words), or, as I’ve heard umpteen times, an opportunity to “recharge our batteries” in anticipation of the “real world” of Monday through Friday.

In the readings today from Acts and 1 Peter, however, the idea is that a Christ-centered life is not just a good thing to pursue but is at the core of who we are!

With this in mind, in the early 90s, the Massachusetts Conference embarked on a campaign. They blanketed the churches with material on this initiative. It was about evangelism. And as such, the campaign was entitled, in tongue-in-cheek fashion, “The ‘e’ Word.”

The joke is that we mainline Protestants tend to be averse to the idea of evangelism. It conjures up all sorts of unpleasant images, images of self-righteous judgmental church people haranguing and condemning others.

Even at its best, evangelism strikes us New Englanders as impolite, disrespectful. After all, religion is a private matter and certainly not something to be discussed unbidden. It’s simply bad form to even faintly imply that we might know something someone else doesn’t.

But what then do we do with our readings from this morning? And what about the early church’s keen interest in converting people? Has this need all but passed? Is Christianity even necessary today?

In Acts, we encounter the newly converted Paul speaking to the educated citizens of Athens at the Areopagus. Today this might be akin to speaking in Harvard Square or in Sproul Plaza at Berkeley, though the Athenians of the day appear to have had a genuine regard for open and free discourse (unlike what we see on some of our college campuses today).

In any event, Paul, in visiting this cosmopolitan city, observes all sorts of pagan statues and shrines, and is clearly troubled by them. He debates with a few of the Epicurean and Stoic intellectuals of the city. Some are intrigued; others dismissive.

Eventually he is invited to speak on Areopagus, a hill site where people would gather for lively and learned debate. As it was, Athenians were known for their “open-minded” interest in new and differing views, and loved to hear about the latest trends and ideas.

There Paul employs his intellectual prowess and debating skills shrewdly. Rather than pointing a condemnatory finger at them, he artfully extols them, suggesting that they indeed appear to be quite the religious people. And then, likewise artfully, he offers to define the “unknown God” he knows they deep down truly desire. In other words, he advances the singular idea of Jesus Christ!

Back when I was in divinity school, I took a class on missiology (the study of mission work). I was told that proper missionary work today does not include discussing Christ, but focuses mostly on offering those in need medical care, food, shelter, and education. In theory, the subject of Christian faith might never come up!

This is, in large part, a reaction to the perceived cultural imperialism of the church’s mission work in the past. According to the theory, missionaries had been too heavy-handed and tended to present the gospel and Western culture as a seamless whole, to the point of being dismissive if not wholly ignorant of the indigenous culture.

On the plus side, this modern approach has the merit of making good on St. Francis wise counsel to his disciples as they prepared to evangelize in the public squares near Assisi. “Preach always,” he advised, “If necessary use words.”

The modern idea is that the church’s charitable works speak for themselves, and send a startling message – that Christianity is passionately interested in the welfare of others and that Christians pursue this desire to help selflessly. This is indeed a powerful message. And no doubt this would incline someone to want to know more about what motivates such Christians.

But, again, what about Paul? Should he have performed good works instead of preaching Christ? (Interestingly, the churches showing the greatest increases in membership worldwide are the Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, both of which unabashedly talk about Jesus!)

In our book discussion we also talked a bit about evangelism and its many challenges. Some of us agreed that perhaps the best way to evangelize is through personal testimony, such as is found in our Psalm reading this morning.

Personal testimony, after all, can be a very effective method of touching other people’s lives, in part because all we’re doing is offering our own experiences, without judgment. Besides, no one can tell you your experience of Christ is wrong. How would they know?

And yet I still feel the need to leave you with a few tough questions, questions a child might ask, questions I’d like you to think about during the coming week:

Is it appropriate for us to evangelize? And if so, how? Should the content of our Christian faith even matter in our efforts? Should we ever challenge the beliefs of others? Does Christianity offer anything other religions and other “lifestyles” don’t? And, perhaps most importantly, is it rude, impolite, or arrogant to ever suggest as much? Amen.

 

05.14.2017     Preaching Text: “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people…” (1Peter 2:9)

We have a problem. We human beings that is. The problem is that the truest thing in the world is not even in the world, exactly, though it was indeed created by this truest thing.

Which is to say that the truest thing, the most real thing, is God. And though God is evidenced in the world, God is not of the world. Worse still, God is all but invisible to the untutored human eye.

Thus what is seen by humans in everyday life can be a kind of puzzle or conundrum. What we “see,” in other words, often can be quite misleading.

Where did our world come from? What is its purpose? Why are we here? What are we supposed to do with this life?

These matters of purpose or, as they say in theological circles (just to confuse everybody), teleology, run to the core of our existence. What, in specific terms, is the meaning of life?

The MA Conference has begun an initiative asking churches to answer these sorts of questions. What is the purpose of your church, they want to know.

The simple answer, of course, is that the church is here to worship and serve God. Everybody knows that. Then again, what does that really mean in specific terms?

If you look at our bulletin you will find our church’s “mission statement.” It’s been there for years. In fact, I remember when it was created back in October of 2001.

We held a retreat in the Parish House, on a Friday night and then again on Saturday morning. A hired consultant gave us some ideas as to how we should think about our mission. Then we separated into groups with instructions to list the things the church should be about.

Afterward we came back together in a plenary session, wrote down the contents of every group’s list, and combined them to form our mission statement. As such, it says absolutely everything and absolutely nothing at all. You’d never be able to recite it. No one could. It includes just about everything but (or maybe even) the kitchen sink.

But getting back to the meaning of life and the true purpose of the church, our most basic task is to first recognize the difference between God’s heavenly realm and the finite world God created, things related yet distinct.

This is precisely where we tend to stumble. As I’m always harping on about, we mainline Protestants, and perhaps especially we Congregationalists, have a very hard time distinguishing between what Augustine once called the City of Man and the City of God.

We’re used to blending the two together to the point where they’re one and the same. The ordinary and pedestrian becomes synonymous with God.

On the odd chance you haven’t noticed, this is the crux of my whole concept of ministry. It’s why I’m here. For I firmly believe that the biggest challenge we face as the church is our inability to separate the wheat from the chaff, the church from the world, spiritually speaking.

We tend to think American culture is synonymous with, if not actually superior to, the gospel’s truths. This may even cause us to go along with contemporary culture for fear of being perceived as somehow “fundamentalist.”

If we take a principled stand based on biblical understandings, we risk being accused, at best, of living in an intellectual ghetto, confined to a primitive, archaic past.

As I wrote in my May Beacon article, there’s also a general tendency in Western culture today against holding strong values or norms of any sort. The reason? Strong beliefs create division and conflict.

As the argument goes, “If there are no strong truths, nobody will judge others or limit their freedom. If nothing is worth fighting for, nobody will fight.”

To avoid this unwelcome effect, we must pursue “disenchantment,” or the deliberate weakening or watering down of specific beliefs and truths.

The fear is that if we hold to any strong, particular beliefs, such as those found in biblical faith, we’ll be led back to the barbarism of the first half of the 20^th century, where extremist ideologies held deathly sway. To believe strongly in anything, then, will lead us back to Auschwitz.

Unfortunately, the church today is seen by many as a holdover from this failed past, a past the “enlightened” or the cognoscenti should properly move beyond. To stand for biblical truths, in other words, is, at best, to hamper societal progress, and with it, a better future.

Because we are far more captive to the surrounding culture than we’re likely to admit, we may find ourselves shamed into rejecting gospel truths in order to adapt to the non-prejudicial brave new world unfolding before us.

Of course, if you heard our scripture readings this morning, the very opposite idea is being advanced. There we are being urged to reject the world’s standards in order to pursue the life-giving generosities of God’s eternal truth.

1 Peter even goes so far as to refer to the church, itself informed by this godly truth, as “a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people…”

And to what purpose? “That you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.”

In today’s readings the basic argument is that the world, the culture, and not the church, is the one out of sync with its Creator. For the world does not, indeed cannot, grasp the reality of this invisible God or, by extension, God’s purposes. The true meaning of life is thus all but hidden from a world that simultaneously beckons us to join it.

Having been called out from the world, and given the Spirit’s wisdom and insight, indeed God’s very light and truth, the church is henceforth tasked with sharing these divine insights with an increasingly godless world.

Not surprisingly, speaking God’s truth can cause us to be ostracized and rejected, even persecuted, as in the extreme case of Stephen. Nonetheless, in spite of this, we are charged with sharing with the world the love of Christ so that it too might know what we, the church, have been privileged to discover.

The problem is that we often demur in seeing ourselves as a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, or as God’s own people. If anything, we are prone to think the opposite – that we’re behind the times and need to catch up, that we need to shed our old beliefs in order to adapt to the forward thinking of the world around us.

The opposite, of course, is true. The key to benefitting our world, paradoxically, is not to become more accommodationist, but to resist the impulse to dismiss the church and its timeless mission.

Thus we need to embrace, not reject, our calling as a royal priesthood, not as a way of ignoring the problems of our world, but in order to serve as effective agents in its altogether necessary spiritual transformation. Amen.