sermon

Surrendering to the Good Shepherd

April 30, 2015 by Leave a Comment

From the Rev. Joe Hensley, rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | Fourth Sunday of Easter Year B, April 26, 2015

"Shepherd," by Reza Vaziri — “Shepherd,” by Reza Vaziri

“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” There are few other words in scripture that are more comforting. I have said them at the bedside of sick and dying persons. I have said them at funerals. They bring that reassurance that ultimately, God is the only One who turns our scarcity into plenty. The Divine and Holy One is the only one who can reassure us in the shadow of death, feed us in the presence of our enemies, and bless us with abundant and steadfast love. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.

Shepherds have been around for nearly as long as humans have walked the earth. The relationship between shepherd and flock was sacred in ancient times. The shepherd cared for the animals which in turn provided labor and sustenance for the people. Survival depended on having good shepherds. To be a good shepherd took skills, sharp senses, and wisdom. Ancient peoples began using the term, shepherd, to describe their rulers. A good ruler like a good shepherd would care for the people. They would lead, protect, and provide.

We know, though, that not all shepherds are good. Not all monarchs are good. Jesus, in today’s Gospel describes himself as the Good Shepherd in contrast to the hired hand who runs away in the face of danger. What Jesus is saying, and what Psalm 23 is also saying, I think, is that there is really only one true and loving shepherd for humanity.

Sometimes, we have trouble believing that God is our shepherd. We can feel like God has left us defenseless. We worry that we won’t have enough. We fear that life is falling apart. Remember that the psalm which comes right before Psalm 23 is Psalm 22. Psalm 22 begins with the words, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?!” In Psalm 22, packs of wild animals surround the speaker. Enemies are on every side. The speaker cries out, wondering where God is: “Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is none to help.” When have we felt in trouble? When have we felt like no one had our back? For many of us, myself included, it is tempting in such times to turn away from God. We look for guidance and sustenance in the arms of inadequate shepherds, hired hands. The hired hand might do the job for a while, but runs away at the first sign of trouble. What “hired hand” do you turn to when you turn away from God? For some of us, we turn to money and the temporary security it offers. Some of us turn to unhealthy relationships or destructive behaviors. Some of us turn to overindulgence. Some of us turn to experts who tell us exactly what to do to find happiness. We fool ourselves by thinking that more knowledge will save us. None of these things give us the pastoral care that God provides. They help us deceive ourselves into thinking we can handle the situation on our own.

Truly, we can probably handle a lot of things on our own. There comes a point, though, where we say to ourselves, “I am ready to give up some control and stop trying so hard.” I’m ready to take my place among the sheep and stop pretending to be the shepherd. Some of us surrender to God easily. Some of us won’t give up until we hit rock bottom. Some of us surrender one day and put our defenses back up the next. I do not understand why we have trouble surrendering to God, why we have trouble believing “The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.” What I do believe is that when we can give up, even temporarily, God cares for us much better than we can ever care for ourselves. Following God, we are much more free than we are following our own guidance.

So how do we surrender? How do we convince our hearts to believe that “The Lord is my shepherd?” We could spend several sermons on these questions. Certainly part of surrender is found in obeying the command to love one another that we heard in the letter of John today. Another part of surrender is definitely listening in quiet prayer for the voice of the shepherd that Jesus mentioned. I want to focus on something a little more uncomfortable, perhaps. It involves the collection plate. In the Episcopal Church, we tend to start with the material and move to the spiritual. We start with the wet water of baptism. The edible bread and wine of holy communion. We touch, taste, hear, smell, and see things in the act of worship. At first we may not have much understanding of what is going on before us, but with time and practice, we develop a sense of the Spirit at work. Every Sunday we put out an empty plate or pass it around. We don’t say much about it, but many of us put money in that plate or send a check to the church. Yes, that money does sustain the ministry of the church and helps others in need, but that is only a part of the purpose of the empty plate. Yes, we offer our gifts in thanksgiving to the one who gives us everything. But thanksgiving, too, is not the whole picture. We offer each other this empty plate as an invitation to surrender. Sacrifice some money as a material gesture of our desire to trust in God. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. Money is not my shepherd. The things money can buy are not my shepherd. My true needs are not supplied by money. So I put some money in the plate. At first we may not be sure what this material gesture means. Over time, with practice, for many of us giving away money to God has become a sign that we want to be free. We want to stop following the hired hands who would feed us to the wolves. We want to be free to give, free to love, free to trust that God really is our shepherd.

I know there are lots of invitations to give money in the church. Since I got here in January, we have invited you to give to the operating budget, to Shrine Mont’s Shout to the Mountain campaign, to outreach, flowers, and trust funds for Easter, to United Thank Offering, and the Community Give effort for The Table. It may sound like a lot. Let me emphasize that this is not a test. You will notice that the plate does not sound an alarm if you give nothing. Nor does a choir of angels sing if you put in a million dollars. Your gift does not necessarily indicate great faith. The open plate simply extends an invitation to surrender who we are and what we have to God so that we can stop following false shepherds. Money is just one thing that goes in the plate. We can surrender our time to God. We can give energy and effort to God. We can offer whatever it is that we value instead of God. Money is often helpful, because it’s very tangible and we give it a lot of power in our minds.

Yes, money does help us keep the lights on and the bills paid. It helps us feed the hungry and be available to care for others. But the church too surrenders to God. We give away a lot for free and proclaim that God’s grace is without charge and plentiful. Over and over God shows us that we can do more than we ever thought possible. So again, this is not a test. The plate is not a fundraising tool. It is not a veiled attempt to get you to give more. The plate openly proclaims that when we surrender to God and Christ the Good Shepherd, God shows us our true life and revives our souls. The Lord is our shepherd, we shall not want. You, O God, spread a table before us, you have anointed us to follow you and announce your abundant love to the world. You will pursue us to the ends of the earth with goodness and loving kindness all the days of our life. May we surrender to you, O great, holy, and mysterious One and dwell in your house, our true home.

Peace be with you

April 22, 2015 by Leave a Comment

From the Rev. Joe Hensley, rector, St. George’s Episcopal Church
Fredericksburg, VA | Third Sunday of Easter Year B, April 19, 2015

Peace be with you. These are the risen Jesus’ first words to his disciples as he appears to them late on that Easter Day. These are the words we share with one another each week in our worship service before we share the Holy Eucharist together. These words are really a resurrection greeting. They are an invitation to wholeness, fulfillment, and new life. Peace be with you.

So often when we think of peace, we think of the absence of conflict. We think of peacefulness, serenity, calm. So when we say, “The Peace of the Lord be always with you,” we might be thinking: “Jesus was such a peaceful person…may you also be peaceful like Jesus.” When we share the peace, though, we are sharing so much more than just a feeling of calm. The word that Jesus and the Hebrews used for peace, “Shalom,” carries with it a sense of being whole and complete. Peace means the fulfillment of all that God has called us to be. We are not merely without conflict. We are at peace, because all the pieces are in place. We are no longer at war with ourselves and each other, because we have all we need.

It was customary in Jesus’ time to greet someone with the words, “Peace be with you.” The words did not necessarily carry a lot of symbolism. It could have been that Jesus was just greeting his disciples in the customary way. But I choose to believe that he also really meant what he said. He really wanted them to know true fulfillment. Jesus wants us to know true fulfillment also, wholeness and completeness that can endure suffering and even death and still live and breathe, touch and taste, just like the risen Christ.

I am reminded of an old story which takes place hundreds if not thousands of years ago. In these ancient times, if you were traveling alone, you had to be on your guard. Deserted trails and roads were rarely protected. If you met someone along the way, they might be a bandit or a thief. One day, a man was traveling in a wild and lonesome place where the path was quite narrow because of the rocks on either side. He sees another man coming along the path towards him. He does not recognize the man as anyone he knows he can trust. He will not be able to step aside to let the other man pass. So they meet, unable to easily pass one another in this narrow spot, and are looking at each other, trying to decide what to do. Then the first man does something completely unexpected and unconventional. He extends his empty right hand to the other man. Now to extend your empty dominant hand, the hand you would normally use to pull out your sword or knife…to put that hand, empty, out in front of you…was a risky thing to do. It meant being vulnerable. The second man was so taken aback by this gesture that he wasn’t sure how to respond at first. He had never seen anyone do this. Was it some kind of trick? He looks the first man in the eye and thinks maybe he will try it too. He extends his empty right hand. The two hands get closer and closer until they touch and the two men squeeze hands. It was the very first handshake.

Of course, we don’t know for certain when or where the first handshake occurred. But somewhere, sometime, there must have been someone who was willing to take that risk to extend the empty hand as a gesture of peace. The open hand was a sign that you could trust.

The risen Jesus extends his empty and wounded hands to his disciples with the words “Peace be with you.” His resurrected body is a sign to us that God is ready to make peace with us. Jesus is God’s handshake to us. God wants us to trust and believe in the gifts of repentance and forgiveness. God is ready to help us change our lives and release us from all our spiritual debts. Even though we continue to put our hands on our swords. Even though we continue to look with suspicion at the good things of this world. Even though we doubt that we are loveable or that we can love…God extends the vulnerable, empty hand of the Easter Jesus to us and says “Peace be with you.”

Our Easter gift to ourselves and one another is to put aside our fears and reach out that empty hand to God and to a neighbor. There will be moments when we encounter another, and we will be tempted to reach for our defenses. What are our defenses? What words, thoughts, actions do we use to protect ourselves from others? What is our go to response when we meet a stranger along the way? The stranger in ourselves, the stranger on the street, the stranger who may be Christ in disguise? I admit, I am an idealist, but I also know that sometimes we have to defend ourselves. The world can truly be a dangerous place. The murder of a University of Mary Washington student this past week is a horrible reminder. Today is the twentieth anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. This week, our Diocese has called upon us to remember the 100th anniversary of the genocide of Armenians in what is now Turkey. Over 1 million Armenians were systematically killed by the Ottoman Empire. But even in a world where such awful things can and do occur, the risen Christ comes and says “peace is possible.” The resurrection witness of Christ is to suggest that we can have the grace to open our hand, open our heart, take a risk to know another, to know ourselves, to know God and God’s peace.

It is no accident that many of us pray with open hands. The Roman Catholic priest, Henri Nouwen, once wrote a book about prayer with that very title. He talks about opening the hand that we often form into a fist. When our hands are tightly clenched around the things we cling to, we cannot be whole. We cannot know peace. We know the peace of God when we come with those open hands, ready to accept the gift only God can give.

Peace be with you, my brothers and sisters. May the peace of Christ, the wounded and vulnerable Christ, be with you. May his shalom, his wholeness and completeness show us where we are clinging too tightly, holding on to our defenses, where we are unwilling to open ourselves. May the peace of the risen Christ help us know that peace which we can share with the world, an open-handed, open-hearted, repenting and forgiving peace that passes all understanding. Alleluia.

Hosannah!

March 29, 2015 by Leave a Comment

palmcross-web Palm Sunday Homily from the Rev. Joe Hensley, Mar 29, 2015

Hosannah! Hosannah in the highest! Today, Palm Sunday, we hear these words with new ears. We sing or say them every week when we celebrate the Eucharist together. Today we remember that the crowds who welcomed Jesus into Jerusalem shouted those words from Psalm 118 as he rode on the donkey colt. They shouted Hosannah as they covered the road with leafy branches. That word, “hosanna,” literally means “please save.” Today, as we begin our Holy Week pilgrimage, we put into our hearts this same same word: “Hosannah! Save us, please.”

The origins of the Hosannahs and the leafy branches of willow or palm come from the Jewish festival of Sukkot, the festival of booths, which is a fall, harvest-time celebration. Bible scholars have long puzzled over why the crowds who are making their way to Jerusalem with Jesus for the springtime Passover festival would invoke the words and signs of Sukkot. One possibility is that the hosanna prayers were offered while praying for rain, for literal salvation from drought. “Please save,” becomes a plea for life-giving water. By reenacting the Sukkot liturgy as Jesus enters Jerusalem, perhaps the crowds are emphasizing their hope that he is a “rain maker.” These are a people who have long-suffered under the yoke of oppression by their own leaders as well as the Roman Empire. Hosannah becomes a political and spiritual cry: “Here comes the one who will rain down justice upon the heads of our oppressors.”

Jesus does not deliver the rain like the crowds expect. He does not ride into town on a war horse but upon a humble donkey. He does not occupy the temple but instead hides on the outskirts of town. He does not announce victory but instead teaches in parables. By the time Jesus is arrested, perhaps the crowds have become impatient. Maybe this teacher is not the savior they had hoped for. Their hopeful “hosannas” give way to frustrated cries of “crucify him!”

Holy Week is our journey from “hosanna” to “crucify him.” The pilgrimage will take us from the hope for salvation to the realization that the one who offers it to us has been slain. This raises some questions for us. Have we been among those who have denied knowing Jesus, like Peter? He we been among those who have stood by helpless or silent while other suffered, while the light of the world was cloaked in darkness? Have we been among those who played a role in the unfair suffering of others? The answer is ‘yes.’ We know our guilt. The purpose of this Holy Week pageant, though, is not to feel guilty. The reason why we dwell on this tragic story and come back to church this week night after night is not to wallow in our sin and shame. We take these steps together so that we can come face to face with the brokenness of the world, the brokenness of our own souls, and realize that we have a companion in Jesus. Jesus walks with us and will not turn away from our worst. Jesus accepts our hopes and our failures, our hosannas and our cries for blood. He accepts them and he redeems them. He is the true rain maker, the one who waters our dry and cracked souls with mercy and forgiveness. In Gethsemane garden, at Calvary’s cross, even from the stony tomb, he rains down grace in the face of violence. He rains down right in a world of wrong. He rains down love in the midst of hate. This Holy Week we are invited to walk with Jesus on the road of suffering and surrender so that we might better know the gifts he showers upon us. Hosannah, Jesus, Hosannah. Save us, please. Save us and help us, we humbly pray. Amen.