Evangelism Committee Meeting – 02/16/12

Present were: Fr. John Kline, Kay Wynn, Vibert LaMaison, Charly Clark, Adrienne Leonard, Marnie Tao and Jon Browne.

Fr. Kline had Mathew 26: 16-21 read. This passage includes the Great Commission, an important responsibility of all Christians. He then opened the meeting with prayer.

Fr. Kline and Kay Wynn reported on the Evangelism Conference held at Incarnation on December 3, 2011. The speaker was Rebecca Manley Pippert, a highly regarded speaker and author. Key points noted include:

• Evangelism is a primary duty of each Christian.
• Our weakness (re: Evangelism) is God’s strength. God uses the weak to accomplish his purpose.
• Jesus had a “go to them,” rather than a “come to me” approach. He was welcoming, yet got under people’s skin in a good way.
• We should build relationships with non-Christians, not to treat them as “projects,” but rather to plant seeds of faith in a loving way. God harvests the seeds we plant
• We should look for areas of agreement and focus on these. We should not be in a hurry.
• We should learn to disagree without being disagreeable.
• We must care about the non-Christian. Listening is critical.
• Encourage the good you see in them.
• Discern needs they are really feeling
• We don’t need more self-confidence, we need more God confidence.
• We don’t convert, God does.
• Fear of rejection is universal. The right fear to have is fear of God.
• We should expose he Gospel rather than impose it.

Most of the material presented is in the speaker’s book : Out of the Salt Shaker and into the World. We were all encouraged to read this book.

Marnie Tao suggested that we consider role playing to sharpen our evangelism skills. Adrienne Leonard suggested we consider putting on a course on Evangelism for members of the Parish. Both suggestions will be further considered at the next meeting, which will be Thursday, March 15.

Super Bowl Party 2012

A fine time was had by the almost 70 parishioners and guests who showed up for the Brotherhood of St. Andrew Super Bowl party. Mountains of pizzas, chicken wings, beer and assorted goodies were devoured as well as lots of socializing displayed.

Many thanks to the Brothers of Holy Trinity Garland who showed up with wives to participate in our annual event.

Annual Parish Meeting – 2011

Our Annual Parish Meeting was held today. Reports from the Vestry, and Ministries and Fr. Garrin were presented.

New Vestry Members were elected to serve 3 years starting 2012. They are:

Rosalia Gonzalez
Marilyn Brown
Allyson Federico
Ben Moore

Outgoing members of the current Vestry are:

Marge Batzler
Tony Federico
Mary Ann Doty
Tom MacDuff

Delegates to the Diocese Convention were also elected:

Tony Federico
Robby Gerber
Mary Ann Doty
William Macario

Brotherhood of St. Andrew Chapter Rededication – 2011

The Brotherhood of St. Andrew Holy Nativity Chapter performed it’s annual rededication ceremony at the end of our Holy Eucharist service.

Second Sunday of Advent (4th of December)

Consider the life cycle of a blade of grass. It does not even exist by itself.  It is just a part of a complex network of runners that criss-cross your lawn. And by itself, it is not crucial in any way to the lawn’s well-being. It’s nice enough. If all the blades of grass disappeared, then the lawn would be in trouble.  And it contributes with photosynthesis to the life of the lawn.  But it will soon grow longer than you like, perhaps in a week. If it’s my lawn we’re talking about then it’s at least two weeks.  But then it will be cut off, and dry up, and die. Even if I let it grow to maturity and go to seed, it will only last for a little while.  And then it will wither and fade.

And God, through the prophet Isaiah, says that this is like you and me. “All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field.” It is not, as the materialists would have you believe, that there is no part of you that survives physical death. Nor is it true, as the Gnostics have it, that our bodies are trapped in prisons of evil flesh and must escape them.  But Isaiah and, later, the apostles use the word “flesh” to refer to all that part of us which is bound to this fallen world, part of its fallen pattern, and therefore not eternal.

St. Peter points out that all this world is under a death sentence. In the end, “the heavens [that is, the sky] will pass away with a rushing roar, and the [very] elements will be dissolved with fire”.  Nothing will be left that is part of the warp and weft of this world, and that day will “come like a thief”, without warning. It will sneak up on you, so you must be prepared.

If that day were tomorrow, many of us would not be prepared. Many of us take God and church and Jesus for granted. St. Peter says, “Since all these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of persons ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of God”. But he also says that God himself is being patient with us, “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.”

Even Isaiah’s non-complementary description of us is set in the context of encouragement.  “Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.” “Behold, the Lord God comes with might ….  He will feed his flock like a shepherd”. There is no power in flesh, whether it appears mighty or weak. There is nothing that can stand against God. And by the same token, there is nothing that we ourselves can do to extract ourselves from this world of death. But God himself has promised to take care of all that. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned”.

And so we are told, “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.” Mark the Evangelist quotes this passage over 700 years later to describe the mission and service of John the Baptist. And what is the one thing that John requires of people?  What, evidently, is the one barrier that we puny insignificant blades of grass can throw up in the path of the Almighty God? The only thing we can do is refuse to repent. The thing that John preaches to prepare the way of the Lord and make his paths straight is “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.”

“You need to be washed clean,” says John to the people of Judea and Jerusalem. “You may be the people of God, but you are not acting like it. You are filthy, like the pagans, and need to be washed like they do.  And I will only wash you if you are penitent. But listen, I may seem intense, living out here in the desert and eating insects and all, but there’s someone else coming after me. I’m not even worthy to touch his feet. I’m just washing you in water to symbolize your repentance. But he will immerse you and bathe you in the power of God himself.”

And here we sit, almost 2000 years later, knowing that all of this is true. Jesus paid the ultimate price for each one of us, and he has bathed us in the power of the Holy Spirit at our baptism. And yet, he still waits patiently, hoping that all may reach repentance. We can do nothing to him in his sovereignty, but he loves us so much that he chooses to wait, rather than simply uprooting us from his lawn.

In this season of Advent, as we approach our celebration of Christmas, the coming of Christ, we pay attention to the cry in the wilderness. Just as the people of John’s day needed to “prepare the way of the Lord”, so do we. Just as they needed to make a straight path for God to work in their hearts and lives, so do we. And the only thing that can mean is repenting for our sins. Taking stock of our lives, paying attention to our patterns and habits, searching ourselves to see if there is anything there that we know is of the flesh, destined for dissolution in fire.

For the most part, you know what these things are. But, for a reminder, there are several representative lists in scripture. There are the Ten Commandments in Exodus chapter 20.  Read through those and see if you don’t find yourself described. Then there is the list in Galatians chapter five: The works of the flesh are “fornication, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, anger, selfishness, dissension, party spirit, envy, drunkenness, carousing, and the like.”  That has something for just about everyone. How about the 21^st chapter of Revelation: “But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the polluted, as for murderers, fornicators, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their lot shall be in the lake that burns with fire and sulphur, which is the second death.” And remember that if you hate any of your Christian brothers in your heart, you are already a murderer.  That’s what Jesus says. By my reckoning, we are all murderers and fornicators in Jesus eyes, until we repent and turn to him for salvation.

Do you live the description of Christian love that St. Paul gives us in 1 Corinthians 13 in your relationships? Are you patient and kind? Or are you jealous, boastful, arrogant, and rude? Do you insist on your own way? Are you irritable or resentful? Do you rejoice when wrong is done to others, or do you rejoice in what is right? Do you bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things with those you claim to love?

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then you haven’t read your Bible. Shame on you. Go read those passages this week. I’m happy to provide them to you again. Or maybe you don’t need to read them, because you already know the sins that you need to turn away from, and you are simply in rebellion, refusing to repent. If that’s the case, look out. The prophet Samuel tells us that the sin of rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft.

But it is never too late. God is not a cosmic spoil-sport waiting for you to repent so that he can gleefully punish you. God loves you so much that he longs for you to repent, and return to him, and receive his blessing. Do it today. Do it now. Allow the fire of the Holy Spirit to burn away the sinful flesh now, rather than later. We don’t just wait for the end, but “for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore, beloved, … be zealous to be found by him without spot or blemish, and at peace.”

First Sunday of Advent

Happy New Year!

The ancient church set this time of year as the beginning of the liturgical cycle, the beginning of each new year. And here at the beginning, we get the most important devotional practice. If we get nothing from the rest of the year, we must get this Advent practice down. And so we read the words of Jesus: “Take heed, watch; for you do not know when the time will come.” What time, you ask? The time of the Lord’s second coming. “And then they will see the Son of man coming in clouds with great power and glory. And then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds.”

You see, during Advent, we don’t just wait for the coming of a baby at Christmas. We also watch for the second coming of the man who once was that baby.  We know that Christmas is in exactly four weeks. But we do not know when the final day of judgment will come.  We must not simply wait. We must take heed and watch. Watching is what we do when we are waiting for something to happen any moment. Watching is waiting eagerly and expectantly.  Watching is making sure that everything is in order in our hearts. The fact is that this watching is not merely for the end of time. We must also watch for the action of God to prepare us for that day.

We find ourselves in something of the same position as the prophet Isaiah, the same position as St. Paul.  Isaiah looks back to the stories of God’s presence in the Torah, when the mountains shook at the presence of the Lord. He knows that God’s coming is something that is frightening in its power. God’s presence is like fire, and if we come into it, we must be prepared to burn and boil away. And yet Isaiah says, “O that thou wouldst rend the heavens and come down”! He watches.

The prophet sees all around him that the Holy People of God are not holy. “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a polluted garment.”  Even the good that we do is not good the way God is good.  Our sin is like an infection that corrupts and destroys the whole body. We are like leaves that have ceased to receive life from the tree. And so we will dry up and wither, and we will be at the mercy of our sins, which will blow us away like the winter wind.

Isaiah also sees that there is no one left who even wants to overcome all of this. The only one who has the power to help in this situation is God. But “there is no one that calls upon thy name, that bestirs himself to take hold of thee”. Our forefather Jacob grasped and wrestled with God, because he knew that without God’s blessing, he was lost. But there is no one left in Israel who will do that. And in his frustration, Isaiah realizes that even that is because God has willed it for some mysterious reason. “For thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast delivered us into the hand of our iniquities.”

And so Isaiah cries out to God on behalf of his people. He longs for God’s frightening and refining presence, because he knows that ultimately, God’s presence, no matter how difficult it is to face, is vastly superior to God’s absence, where we are left to our own puny devices in the winter gales of our sin. God is one “who works for those who wait for him.” “Yet, O Lord, thou art our Father; we are the clay, and thou art our potter; we are all the work of thy hand.” And so, longingly, we wait for you to turn back the fire of your presence upon us. Make us endure you, so that we may “remember thee in thy ways”, and joyfully work righteousness, and be saved.

St. Paul is in a similar situation. He writes his first letter to the Corinthians precisely because he has heard report of unholy activity in the Corinthian church. And yet, he begins by characterizing them as “those [made holy] in Christ Jesus, called to be [holy ones] together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ”. And here we are again. Just like the ancient Israelites, we are made holy, and we are called to become holy.

But St. Paul puts it right back in the same context that Isaiah put it. He writes to them “as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ”. They and we still wait for Jesus to reveal himself in power, just as Isaiah waited. And we watch, because we know that he will do what he promised to do. We know that, in Christ, God has already given us grace. And we know that he is already working in us. That is why St. Paul gives thanks. “God is faithful,” he says, “by whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.” And God in Christ “will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.” And so we wait; not only for some far off day, when the sun and moon are extinguished, and the stars fall, and the heavens are shaken; but we also watch for God’s burning presence to reveal itself in us, as Christ sustains us, and purifies us, and makes us finally guiltless.

We watch for the man who, beyond hope, won for us the victory over death and sin. We watch for the Son of Man, who is the eternal second person of the Holy Trinity. We watch for him who is the awesome and awful presence of God. We watch for the frightening, burning presence of God right among the tinder and kindling of our own miserable souls. And the most terrifying thing of all should be to think that he might come and find me asleep rather than watching for him. That he might find me ignoring his presence in my life and unprepared to meet him at all.  That he might find me a withered leaf on the tree, ripe for the winter winds.

We watch, because it is him and him alone that can bring true life into our lives. Only he can burn out of us what is unholy. Only he can turn our abject misery into joy.

Proper 26 (30th of October)

It seems that God’s people never really learn.  The prophet Micah lived before the fall of Jerusalem and Judah, even before the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel.  And yet he complains of the very same thing that Jesus complains of over 700 years later.  Jesus puts it this way:  “They do all their deeds to be seen by men”.

In Micah’s day, the prophet claims, other prophets prophesy good things for the people who pay them.  Whereas they prophesy bad outcomes for people who refuse to pay them.  The leaders pervert justice by taking bribes.  They pervert the word of God just to make money.  And yet they expect God to save them, because they are the chosen people.

In the same way, the scribes and Pharisees of Jesus’ day make a show of their outward piety.  They talk a good game about the Law of Moses.  The visible signs of their faith are quite prominent.  They want people to think of them as good Jewish men.  They like to be honored in public.  And so they do their religion in public.  But what they do in private does not match all of this.  There is no change of heart going on.  Only the outward practice of religion.

And that’s what is common to the two complaints.  Both in Micah and in the Gospel people have everything entirely backwards.  They behave as if God is somehow in their pocket, as if they own him.  God belongs to them, and therefore they deserve a blessing from him.  And therefore they put on a show of faith in order to turn it to their own advantage.

Now both of these passages are directed toward leaders.  Micah addresses the rulers, heads, priests, and prophets.  Jesus speaks of the teachers who “sit on Moses’ seat”.  So it might be tempting to dismiss all of this doom and gloom about hypocrisy.  After all, it only applies to those appointed to an exalted rank.  It doesn’t apply to all of us down here, does it?

Well, I have some news for you all.  What do you think is the rank of those who are sons and heirs of God?  What do you think the rank is of those who receive the word of God, those who are part of the body of Christ, those who take the very life of God into themselves?  The truth is that we are all princes of the realm.  We hold the very highest office possible in creation.  And the differences between us are comparatively trivial.  Of course that is great and glorious news!  But it also means that, in Christ, none of us can escape the indictment handed down to the leaders of God’s people.  Yes, hypocrisy is terribly ugly when we find it in our leaders.  But it is just as ugly when we find it in ourselves.  It’s just less public, and we don’t like to deal with it.

The awesome, glorious, and terrifying reality is that we don’t own God, he owns us.  We cannot use God to further our own agendas, whether we are an archbishop, a CEO, or a bricklayer.  Rather than expecting God to change the world to suit our requirements, we should expect God to change us to suit his own requirements.  Ultimately, he is the only one who has the right to require anything, and by being baptized and confirmed we put ourselves in his hands to do with as he pleases.

St. Paul commends the Thessalonians for accepting the good news about Jesus as “the word of God, which is at work in you believers.”  It is not their surroundings that are changing, but themselves.  The word is “working” in them.  And so we should expect this same work in ourselves.  Rather than doing things to be seen by men, we should be allowing God to change our hearts to be more like Jesus.  Wherever we see that work being done, we know that the word of God has penetrated the body of Christ.  Wherever we don’t see it being done, we can suspect we have a dead limb still clinging to the vine.

Proper 25 (23rd of October)

Our Gospel reading today is the last of a series of three challenges.  You remember from last week the question about taxes.  Several factions of the Jews are trying to trip Jesus up and get him in trouble.  The reason they’re trying to do that is that they want to get rid of him.  He’s ridiculing them in these stories that he tells, like the one about the tenants in the vineyard.  He is a challenge to the status quo.  And they like the status quo.  It’s not that any one faction is in total control.  The Sadducees control the temple, the Herodians control the delicate secular political situation with Rome, and the Pharisees control the religious teaching.  Each faction has issues with the others, but they have reached some sort of equilibrium with which everybody is more or less comfortable.  And they don’t like this upstart Jesus coming in and spoiling their system.

But they can’t just go and throw him in jail, because the people think he’s a prophet, and they might start a riot.  So the Pharisees and the Herodians go together to ask him about taxes.  He slips through their trap with “Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”

Then the Sadducees give it a try.  They think they can trip him up with a question about marriage in the resurrection.  So they ask him that question about the woman who was married to seven brothers.  He tells them that they do not know the scriptures or the power of God and proceeds to silence them by demonstrating his superior knowledge of both.

After seeing that the Sadducees are stumped, the Pharisees give it one more try.  They push one of the lawyers out front to ask Jesus a test question:  “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?”  He answers in that passage that we quote in the preparation for every Mass, the Summary of the Law.  “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.”  And “you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

He goes on to confound the Pharisees yet again with his question about Psalm 110.  The messiah is understood to be a descendant of King David.  But David himself calls him “my Lord”, which presumably he wouldn’t if he were his descendant.  Of course, we understand that Jesus was a descendant of David in his human incarnation, but the Lord from all eternity.  But the Pharisees couldn’t account for that.  The Pharisees are silenced once again, and no one tries to trip him up with questions anymore.

But there is this moment, with the summary of the law, when there seems to be agreement even between Jesus and his challengers.  In Mark’s version of this story, the lawyer who poses the question even commends Jesus for his answer.  The answer is a combination of a verse from the middle of Deuteronomy with a verse from the middle of Leviticus.  Jesus didn’t come up with it on his own.  It seems it was a standard answer for those who cared about such things.

And yet, it sits there in the middle of this verbal sparring as a signpost.  This is the most important thing.  Jesus agrees with the Pharisees on that.  He hasn’t changed any of their teaching, really.  He has just insisted that they live it.  It’s the only serious question of the day, and he answers it seriously.  But it doesn’t really further anyone’s personal agenda.  And so it doesn’t get applause or attention.  It just stands as an indictment of Jesus’ challengers, because they are hypocrites.

The commandment to love God is the foundation of all other commandments.  Even the sacrificial system of the Old Testament is subject to this.  God does not want bribes.  He takes no pleasure in the sacrificial object.  He delights in the relationship he has with the person who honors him with sacrifice.  The law is intended as a way of knowing and relating to God.  The same is true of all moral issues.  How many of us, when faced with a moral test, think about it in terms of loving God?  But that’s what it is.  In every choice we make, every decision taken, we choose to love and honor God or we do not.

But it’s more than that, isn’t it.  The commandment is to love God completely.  With the whole heart, which is where your will resides.  That’s what we’ve just been talking about.  But also with the soul, the psyche, the self, the whole being.  We’re also to love God with our whole mind, our thoughts.  If we were to paraphrase this commandment, we might say, “Honor God in everything you choose, everything you are, and everything you think.”  That’s a pretty tall order.  But without a commitment to this, nothing else will do.  If we do nice stuff for people but don’t love God, it doesn’t help us.  We still have no relationship with our creator.

Jesus insists on the relationship between the two concepts.  Our love for God means we will love our neighbor.  Not the other way around.  Love of God is most important.  But there is no love of God that won’t involve loving others, because God is love.  Many have pointed out that “Love your neighbor as yourself” requires you to love yourself as well.  And that is absolutely true.  We have no business despising the gift that God has given us in our own selves.  But I doubt that’s really what most of us need to work on.

To respond gently when what we feel is anger, to forgive others before they even repent, to pray for our enemies and those who hate us, to give generously and joyously for the spread of the kingdom, to speak the truth when others don’t want to hear it, to keep the peace when others are being belligerent, to disturb the peace when others are being complacent, to do what is right regardless of our feelings or our reputations; these are the sorts of things that people do when they love God.  Because it is God whom they want more than anyone else to please.  And when we honor him with such sacrifices, he delights in the relationship he has with us.

Those who challenge Jesus with trick questions really didn’t want a relationship with God.  They wanted to keep things comfortable and human.  Jesus unsettled them, because he demanded that they actually face up to the great commandment.  He demanded that they live what they taught and actually pursue a loving relationship with the God they wanted to use as a prop in their political schemes.

And he demands the same of us.

Proper 24 (16th of October)

The prophet Isaiah is not known to have had a problem of needing people’s approval.  He was not a people-pleaser.  Individuals who do have such a problem are not generally called to the vocation of prophet.  And if they are, they have to get over the problem quickly.  The prophets certainly have positive messages to relate from time to time, but even those messages are usually delivered with implications that are far from comfortable for the people.  Such is the message we have read from Isaiah today.

Remember that Isaiah is prophesying in the southern kingdom of Judah, before it is conquered and before the people are all carted away to Babylon for about 70 years.  We’re about two centuries before Cyrus the Persian then conquers Babylon and allows the Judeans to go home.  Cyrus won’t be born probably for about another century and a half.  And here, through the prophet, God is sending him an open letter.

And in the very first line, in the very first clause, we have an affront to the devout Jew.  “Thus says the Lord to his anointed, … Cyrus”.  Now “the Lord’s anointed” means a prophet, a priest, a king of Israel, and that’s it.  “Messiah” also means “anointed one”.  And here Isaiah says that this pagan gentile, this king from the Goyim is the Lord’s anointed.  In fact, the Lord says that he has “grasped him by the right hand,” signifying a special choosing and intimate fellowship.

But wait.  Ought not God to call someone from his chosen people to accomplish his will?  This is the way we usually think, isn’t it?  Even we, who are the inheritors of such a long history of God’s sovereign activity, think that God works only through those people who already are submitted to him.  He works through us, not them.  And so God needs us and we’re OK.

But that’s not the message here.  Certainly, God desires desperately that we submit ourselves to him, that we be reconciled with him, for our own sake as well as for the sake of others.  But does he really need us in that way?  Evidently not.  For here is Cyrus the Persian, the Lord’s anointed.

God will carve out a monumental path through the world for Cyrus.  It’s as if Cyrus just has to show up.  God will do the rest.  He will subdue nations and turn kings into quivering craven jellies.  He will open, or break down, doors and gates.  He will throw open hidden treasures and hoards.  All so that Cyrus will have to acknowledge that it is Yahweh, the God of Israel, who has done all these things.

Our God is not only the God of Israel.  He is the Lord of the whole creation. Though Cyrus does not know him, he is Lord over Cyrus.  He says, “I surname you [I give you your title], though you do not know me. … I gird you [I arm you], though you do not know me.”  He does not need the permission of Cyrus’ faith in order to make of him what he wishes.  Remember that when this prophecy was delivered, Cyrus wasn’t even going to exist yet for over a century.  He says, “I am Yahweh, and there is no other, besides me there is no God.”  There is nothing that can or will keep him from achieving his purposes.  And he will achieve them in his own way with his own methods, whether we like it or not.

And yet there is something that limits God.  And that something is God himself.  He never uses his complete freedom and sovereignty to annul the promises he has already made.  Thus, it is “for the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen” that God calls Cyrus.  He has promises of faithfulness to Abraham, to Jacob, and to David to fulfill, even if his people are not cooperating.

And there is another reason that God calls Cyrus.  Those of you who remember your Abrahamic covenant will see what it must be.  For God’s relationship with the patriarchs and with the nation of Israel was never ever without its missiological aspect.  God blessed Abraham so that by him “all the families of the earth shall bless themselves.”  So God called Cyrus, “that men may know, from the rising of the sun and from the west,” that Yahweh is the Lord, the only God.

This isn’t because God is jealous in the way we are jealous.  He isn’t throwing a temper tantrum at not getting what he deserves.  It is for our sake that he is making such a big deal about who he is.  Why do you think that the human race is in the mess it’s in?  Because we will not submit ourselves to the truth.  As one commentator I read puts it, “So long as we continue to make God in our image, so long as we continue to believe that we can insure our own security and comfort by manipulating the psycho-social-physical world without the surrender of our own autonomy, just so long we will continue in darkness, destruction, and despair.”

But the converse is true as well.  God may “form light and create darkness.”  He may “make weal and create woe.”  But he is always aiming at the former.  He may have to chasten or instruct us at times with things that to us are calamities.  He may have to allow evil things to occur for reasons we could not possibly understand.  But at the heart of reality is a vision for us, a vision so glorious and joyous, and yet so profound and unfrivolous, that we can hardly fathom it.

And here our lectionary has done us a disservice.  It has left out the vision.  It’s in the final verse, right after our reading ended.  “Shower, O heavens, from above, and let the skies rain down righteousness; let the earth open, that salvation may sprout forth, and let it cause righteousness to spring up also; I the Lord have created it.”  You see, all of God’s actions are driving toward this goal.  I almost said “ultimate goal”, but that would have been wrong.  This vision of righteousness pouring from the sky, and salvation and righteousness sprouting from the ground, this is who God is.  The heavens and the earth symbolize the whole creation.  This is his goal for every thing, even the least of things, not just for the end of things.  This is how God is treating each one of us and all of us together.  It is us who cannot see beyond the pain of growth as we spring from the soil of creation.

God is in control.  That means that he is ultimately responsible for the things that we don’t like, as well as the things we do.  It also means that he will almost certainly accomplish his goals in ways that we do not expect and of which we may not even approve.  He certainly takes a much longer view of his historical goals than I do.  But his goal for us is to live with him in that righteousness and deliverance he is pouring out on us and on every thing at every moment.

To Him be the glory for ever and ever.  Amen.

Brotherhood of St. Andrew Meeting – 11/19/11

After our traditional breakfast, our studies continued on Jim Cymbala’s “When God’s Spirit Moves”. We had a good discussion on “Water, Wind and Fire”.

New officers were elected for 2012. They are:

• Phil Masquelette – Director
• Jon Browne – Vice Director/Treasurer
• Robby Gerber – Secretary (Continuing)
• Delegate – Jeff Wright

Thanks to Tony Federico, Charlie Turner and Jon Browne for their service as officers to the Brotherhood Chapter of Holy Nativity for the past few years.

The Brotherhood is continuing to review our efforts in fund raising and decisions on our support projects for 2012.

Our next meeting is scheduled for December 10. The Dallas Assembly annual meeting is scheduled for December 3 at St. Luke’s.

While we have many men of the Parish participating, there are still too many not participating. We welcome all men of the Parish to come and experience the Brotherhood.