Homily Highlights for March 6 the Fourth Sunday in Lent

St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church

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Homily Highlights for March 6 – The Fourth Sunday in Lent

LOST AND FOUND

“If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: Everything old has passed away; see everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation”

(2 Cor. 5:18-19)

THE DINNER PARTY

Our Gospel today begins with a dinner party. All the worst people in town were invited. Jesus was there and the Pharisees noticed and said, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Jesus is glad they noticed and tells three stories together about the lost (Luke 15): the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.

CASTING THE STORY OF THE PRODIGAL SON

Who do most identify with in this famous parable of the lost or prodigal son? Perhaps we have in some way touched the experience of all three at some time in our lives.

The Prodigal Son is lost, living badly, estranged from God, alienated from his family. He is sinking deeper into a life of self-destruction when we are told that “he came to himself.” And started on the road home not knowing what would happen, for the way of repentance and reconciliation can be risky.

The question is raised for every lost son or daughter: Can you take that first step toward home?

The Father is hurt, worried and anxiously waiting. Perhaps, not an uncommon experience for many parents. The Father has a choice. He can lock the door, but God speaks to the heart—He is my son.

The question is raised for everyone: Is there someone out on that road waiting for you? Are you going out to meet him?

The Jealous Brother speaks in the voice of everyone who cries that “Life is not fair.” Can a world so full of tragedy and grace come from the hand of an orderly God? Can we imagine ourselves as much in need of grace as those we believe are not living as well as we are? There is a party in which Jesus and the forgiving Father are at the table welcoming sinners who can be made new. Are you going in to the celebration?

HOW DOES THE STORY END?

There are many possibilities of how this story could end. My faith tells me that if the angry brother takes even one step to enter the celebration, he will find also that his father is running out to meet him.

For “If any one is in Christ, there is a new creation: Everything old has passed away; see everything has become new! All this is from God, Who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.”

Father Hagerman

Homily Highlights for February 28 – The Third Sunday in Lent

COME TO THE WATERS

“You are my God, I seek you. My soul thirsts for you. So I will bless you as long as I live. I will lift up my hands and call on your name.” Psalm 63:1, 4

“Everyone who thirsts come to the waters.”

Isaiah 55:1

CAN I GET YOU SOMETHING TO DRINK?

I have visited with many people in their homes during many years of parish ministry, and have always appreciated the welcome and hospitality. It often takes the simple form of “Can I get you something to drink?” In the Southern tier of New York State, I was part of a 3 church ministry team in a parish of several counties. There would sometimes be a long drive through winter weather and I was glad when someone welcomed me with a hot cup of coffee. On summer days in New England, I drank a lot of iced tea. In the midst of the important events in many lives - the new babies to baptize, the loss of loved ones, the anticipation of planning a wedding - the simple act of sharing even a glass of water was a way to relax and invite the presence of God into a family’s life.

GOD’S ANSWER TO OUR THIRST

To the prayer expressed in the psalm of a soul thirsting for God, God’s answer is clear and simple: “Everyone who thirsts come to the waters”. The invitation is to a life of deeper meaning and belonging, the daily bread and drink of the soul belonging to the family of God through the waters of Baptism. Growing into a meaningful relationship with Jesus from which Jesus tells us, comes the living waters of life in the Spirit of God which enriches everything in our lives. (John 4:10-14) Life in God’s Spirit, to use an image from today’s Gospel, makes our lives fruitful in God’s vineyard (God’s Kingdom).

THE INVITATION OF LENT

The Season of Lent is, above all, an INVITATION to a deeper relationship with God.

Come to the waters.

Let the words of today’s psalm sing out with renewed meaning. “I will bless you as long as I live,” for I have discovered a new sense of thankfulness for your blessings in my life.

Come to the waters.

“I will lift up my hands and call on your name,” for my joys are deeper, my problems less perplexing and my sorrows seasoned with the hope of rising again because I have you to call on in every season.

Come to the waters.

Father Hagerman

Homily Highlights for February 21 – The Second Sunday in Lent

WHOM CAN WE TRUST?

“The Lord is the strength of my life of whom shall I be afraid?” (Psalm 27:1)

TRUSTING GOD

In a world filled with damaged relationships, personal disappointments, public scandals, disrespect, misleading rhetoric as the common currency of political communication, and increased terrorist threats, trust is difficult to extend. The question “whom shall I fear?” in the psalm today might bring a long list of possibilities in response. The need to trust God is compelling but not easy.

The final verse of the psalm is honest even while it offers encouragement.

“Wait for the Lord; be strong, and let your heart take courage, wait for the Lord.”

This psalm is a prayer for patience, for trust, for the ability to wait for the Lord. To wait even when the answer to prayer is not clear or quick. To wait and to seek:

“Come,” my heart says, “seek his face!”

“Your face Lord do I seek.” (v. 11)

SEEKING GOD IN A SPIRITUALITY OF COMPASSION

Jesus calls us to seek his face in the needs of others. “When I was hungry, you gave me food.” (Matthew 25)

In today’s Gospel, even as he is being hunted by Herod, the focus of Jesus is on his works of healing in body and spirit. Jesus models and teaches a spirituality of compassion. Fear for himself is eclipsed as his heart reaches out to the struggling children of Jerusalem: “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.” There is a confidence in God in the face of the threat of death and rejection by his people, “On the third day I finish my work.” The day of resurrection.

WHEN JESUS TAKES US BY THE HAND

It is wise advice when we are told that in times of trouble, when our problems might seem overwhelming, to seek a way to help someone else. Try to be part of the answer to someone else’s prayer for help. Do not be surprised if when we pray for Jesus to take us by the hand for comfort and strength that he leads us to the place where his own ministry continues. In the final step of the 12 step recovery programs—there is a call to use the lessons of the 12 step journey to bring the message to others; pain transformed to mission. A new comfort and strength that grows from purpose. This is the work of a God I can trust.

Father Hagerman

Homily Highlights for February 14 – The First Sunday in Lent

JESUS FULFILLS THE LAW WITH LOVE

“Love your neighbor as yourself, for love is the fulfilling of the law.” (Romans 13:9, 10)

“You shall love the Lord your God with all your soul, with all your mind and with all your strength.”

(Matthew 22:37)

THE DEVIL IN THE CANDY STORE

A story is told by a professor of religion about a mother talking to her young son concerning a lesson he had just heard in Church School about being tempted by the devil. The mother asked her son, “If we were at a store, and Dad and I were in one aisle and you were in another aisle, and there was candy, and the devil said, ‘You should take some!’ What would you say back to the devil?” She notes that her son’s face lit up with a genuinely sweet grin as he replied, “Oh, I would say, ‘Thank you!’”

Discerning the devil in the candy store is not always easy for adults let alone for children, so it comes in handy to have a clear and simple commandment from God that says, “You shall not steal.” Jesus, who does some serious confronting of temptation in today’s Gospel, appreciates the value of God’s law that he would have learned himself as a child in the synagogue and from his parents. He often commends and praises the observance of the commandments in his Gospel encounters, but he is always moving us deeper, deeper into the love that is the fulfilling of the law.

LOVE’S LESSONS ARE FOR ALL AGES

We properly start teaching our children very young not to take what does not belong to them but we also follow the lead of Jesus in leading them into the deeper kingdom of love: “Share with others, help those in need.” A child who can bring a can of soup to the food bank collection can start learning a walk with Christ that moves from proper restraint to active compassion. It is the walk of a lifetime.

WALKING IN GOD’S KINGDOM OF LOVE

The season of Lent is about strengthening our walk in God’s Kingdom of Love. There are spiritual disciplines of restraint and spiritual disciplines in which we strengthen our life of prayer, study of God’s Word, and service in Christ’s name and power. The Gospel today reminds us of the temptations that come between us and God. Jesus overcomes them and invites us into the power of his grace by which we too can overcome. We are to know that we don’t live by bread alone even while we are called to feed the hungry, We are called not to put God to the test even while we trust in God’s providence and presence in our lives in prosperity and adversity. Jesus rejects the power of “the kingdoms of the world” as offered by the devil saying “Worship the Lord your God and serve only him.” This is a chilling temptation, for the world of power is for adults the candy store where the devil’s temptations are not easily discerned. Christ’s guidance is simple and sure; it is in serving God that the Wisdom to serve the people rightly is found. Whether we carry the authority of a parent or a public official, we need God’s guidance, for without it an idol will move into the spiritual vacuum. “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” In this we will serve others well and follow the law of love which is the heart of all God’s commandments.

Father Hagerman

Homily Highlights for January 31 – The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany

THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE

THE GREATEST OF THESE IS LOVE

We are accustomed to hearing our New Testament lesson from 1 Corinthians 13 read at weddings, and it is always a good choice for holding up the biblical model of love for newly married couples. Paul had such a strong view of the centrality of love that he places this message in the context of teaching the communities of faith how to be “The Body of Christ” in all their diversity of personalities and gifts (1 Corinthians 12). His message is that however gifted we may be, without love we are nothing and ultimately will not be able to accomplish anything for God.

LOVE IS A DECISION

To focus on the good of the other and the good of the whole community in a disciplined way in spite of what our feelings may be at any given moment is a decision and a way of life. Romance can be a good gift but it is not reliable for the long run because it is centered in our own ecstatic but changeable feelings and idealizing another person in a way that no one can live up to all the time. God’s love on the other hand is steady and faithful and loves us just as we are, strengthening our strengths and teaching us repentance, humility and wisdom through our weaknesses.

Mature love can find patience, kindness, perseverance, genuine celebration and creative channels of bringing the best out in each other. It takes a steady dependence on God, for love lives and grows in the power of God’s Spirit. True love is always seeking God’s will and so we offer at our Marriage Service a prayer that is at once a blessing and a perpetual challenge. “Grant that their wills may be so knit together in your will, and their spirits in your Spirit, that they may grow in love and peace with you and one another all the days of their life.” (BCP p. 429)

LOVE IS ETERNAL

What is our best and most enduring legacy in this life? What connects us to the eternal so that we can dare to dream of life with God forever? What is really living in this life in which we “see in a mirror dimly”? Our deepest hopes and dreams may be elusive but walking in God’s love together we can appreciate the journey and find that it is a gift. It is a journey from birth, made holy in Baptism, fed and nurtured by the bread of life, blessed in sharing in ministry, named as family in marriage, returned to its Creator in burial-eternal in God’s love. Divine love is the vision that faith perceives and the reason for hope to endure. And so “Faith, hope and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love.”

Father Hagerman

Homily Highlights for January 24 – The Third Sunday after Epiphany

ONE BODY, ONE SPIRIT

“For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body." 1 Corinthians 12:13

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me...to let the oppressed go free.” Luke 4:18

THE LIES OF “SURVIVOR”

In this tough world do we really think we survive by thinking of ourselves first and last: Hoarding resources against catastrophe, outwitting others to “vote them off the island”, using strength to oppress the weak, “winning” at any cost? The lessons of human history do not give favorable witness to these lies. The might of Rome was defeated by a cross and a Spirit that rose from that cross to tell us that different as we are, we must work together or die.

THE COOPERATIVE BODY

The Wisdom that God our Creator built into the design of our bodies is a truth that all organizations must learn to prosper, even those that would not acknowledge the author of that truth. “As it is there are many members, yet one body. The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no need of you...If one member suffers, all suffer together with it, if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” (1 Cor. 12:20-21, 26-27)

It is an ideal we know and experience to be true and we are blessed in those moments of Holy Communion, Holy Cooperation. Yet, we often fall short of that ideal and even contradict it in all institutions including the Church. In such times we are reminded of our deep need of a Savior.

THE CHRIST WHO FREES US

Jesus proclaims the keynote of his ministry in today’s Gospel: in God’s Spirit, bringing good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, freedom for the oppressed in the year of the Lord’s favor. From this Gospel we have learned many ministries of healing and compassion. But have we learned that we are the poor who need the good news, we are the captives who need release, we are the blind who need recovery of sight and we are the oppressed who need freedom in Christ. Freedom to serve, freedom from fear that there will not be enough if we share, freedom to cooperate knowing that the gifts of others enrich us and do not diminish us for we “are the body of Christ and individually members of it.”

The year of the Lord’s favor is the song of Amazing Grace that rings through every struggling year to bring imperfect people together as God’s beloved community, for the “joy of the Lord is our strength.”

Father Hagerman

Homily Highlights for January 17 – The Second Sunday after Epiphany

THE MIRACLES THAT SURROUND US

“Jesus did the first of his signs in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.’" John 2:11

THE WEDDING AT CANA

Our Gospel today calls to mind the Sacrament of Marriage in the Church. We begin a wedding service by proclaiming that “The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.” (BCP p. 423) The marriage and the celebration was blessed with new wine. Jesus teaches that there are seasons of celebration to be embraced in our lives but this new wine means much more. It is the first of his signs that reveal his glory for this is the meaning of the unfolding Epiphany Season: To reveal boldly.