This is my beloved Son, homily by Jan Robitscher

“This is my beloved Son, the beloved...;
Listen to him!”
(Matt 17: 5)

Last Epiphany , Yr. II
Exodus 24: 12-18
Matthew 17:1-9

Jan Robitscher
St. Mark’s Church
Berkeley, CA
February 14, 2010

In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

If I were to ask you what day it is, you might well answer “Sunday. Perhaps, if you were well versed in the Prayer Book, you would might say, “The Last Sunday after the Epiphany” or maybe even, “The Feast of Cyril and Methodius”, two Orthodox saints. But I’ll bet most of you would say, “It’s Valentine’s Day”, of course! And no matter which answer you gave, you would be right. But what do any or all of these answers have to do with our lessons or this service? Hear again this portion:

While [Peter] was still speaking, suddenly
a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from
the cloud a voice said, “This is my Son, the
beloved; with whom I am well pleased; listen
to him!”

The card shops have told us for a month that today is Valentine’s Day. And all the cards say, in so many words, “I love you”. What about love? How is love reflected in these lessons and on this day?

The Roman Church did celebrate the Feast of St. Valentine until their most recent reform of the liturgical calendar. Sometimes the life of a saint turns out to be mostly legends, but in this case, legends have obscured what was a real life.

Valentine, a Roman priest, together with ST. Marius
and his family, assisted the martyrs who suffered
during the reign of Emperor Claudius II in the 3rd.
century. Being apprehended, Valentine sent to the
Prefect in Rome, who ordered that he be [put to death].
He was martyred about the year 270.
(from Lives of the Saints)


So red would be the color for St. Valentine; the red of Martyrs’ blood. For the love Valentine expressed was far deeper than anything we see on Valentine’s Day cards. It was a love sprung from his own confession of Jesus as the Christ, “God’s Son, the beloved...” which enabled Valentine to assist others who would be martyred for just such a confession until he was martyred, too.

It did not take long for the Church to discover, however, that there were others who led equally heroic lives in the confession of Jesus’ name but who did not become martyrs. These they called confessors. Into this category we can place Sts. Cyril and Methodius, who are now celebrated on this day (when not a Sunday) by Episcopalians, Roman Catholics and the Orthodox Churches. The lives of these ninth century missionaries (who were, incidentally, brothers) were given over to the work of bringing the Gospel message to the Slavonic peoples. This included inventing a written alphabet, preaching and eventually
being made bishops so they could assist in ordaining new clergy. Their work was not without resistance, though, and Methodius endured a brief time in prison on false charges of heresy. Their lives represent another dimension of love; love of God, love of the message of the Good News in Jesus Christ.

And so we come to the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, and are impelled toward another Lenten Season. We bid farewell to Alleluia and Gloria and, llike Peter, James and John, fall silent before the glorious vision of God. It is a time to take the words spoken from the cloud to heart:

“This is my Son, the beloved; with whom I am well pleased;
listen to him!”

In Lent, we are asked to listen to God, even as these saints did; to allow God to show us, in Jesus, how to show our love for one another. We are asked to walk with Jesus in a love that takes us all the way through his passion and death to the celebration of his
resurrection on Easter Day. This kind of listening and loving will change us; not just for 40 days, but for life.

It has been said that every Sunday is a little Easter. Perhaps it would be better to say that every Easter is a big Sunday. Week by week on Sunday morning, and month by month at this service of Evensong, we celebrate the love God has for us in the dying and rising of Jesus--and we seek to return that love to God and to one another, however small and faltering our efforts. Today--once the Feast of St. Valentine, sometimes the Feast of Sts. Cyril and Methodius and now the Last Sunday after the Epiphany--today is Sunday, the Lord’s Day. To this we can only echo the words of the Psalmist:

>“This is the day that the Lord has made;*
let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
(Psalm 118:24)

And they shall name him Emmanuel, homily by Jan Robitscher

“And they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.”
(Matt. 1:23)

Friday, Week of Advent 3, Feria
Jeremiah 23:5-8
Ps. 72:11-18
Romans 8:18-27
Matthew 1: 18-25

Jan Robitscher
All Saints Chapel
CDSP
December 19, 2009

In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

This is the truth sent from above,
The truth of God, the God of love,
Therefore don’t turn me from your door,
But hearken all, both rich and poor.1

So here we are. It is a time of beginnings and endings. Yesterday was the beginning of the Great O Antiphons, those beautiful names for Emmanuel (God-with-us) which we sing as the hymn “O Come O Come Emmanuel”. It is a time of beginnings: of the Church Year, the first half of which takes us through the story of our salvation from Advent to Pentecost; of the anticipation of our celebrations of Jesus’ birth. And it is a time of endings: the end of the semester, the end of the frenetic shopping marathon, almost the end of the year 2009, the end of the third week of Advent, and our, perhaps fearful, ponderings of the End when Christ will come again. Advent means “to come to”--God to us--and us to God. We feel caught between the times in what one commentator has called “the anxiety of Advent”.

Our lessons speak of beginnings, endings and the anxiety of Advent. It is the end of the long search for a savior--someone to redeem us from sin and death--though it would be some
time before the whole story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection would play out. But we often miss the very beginning of the story, and here our lectionary could be of more help. Unless you are fortunate to attend a service of Lessons and Carols (come to St. Mark’s this Sunday at 4:30 p.m.) or the Great Vigil of Easter, the whole sweeping story of salvation history is never presented. But wait! Though sacred Scripture is the primary--but not the only place-- to find this story. Almost every Christmas carol we know (and some Easter carols besides) begin at the very beginning, with the creation and the Fall and go on to tell the story of the coming of Jesus to redeem us, and look to his coming again. How I would love to sing them all! But I will let the English carol “The Truth From Above” suffice for now. The next verses tell the beginning of the story:

The first thing which I do relate
Is that God did man create;
The next thing which to you I’ll tell,
Woman was made with man to dwell.

Then after this was God’s own choice
To place them both in Paradise,
There to remain from evil free
Except if they ate from such a tree.

We live in a world suffering from the effects of the Fall. Torn by wars abroad and violence at home, where there is sickness, evil and death, poverty and pollution all around us. Our world is literally melting away before our eyes, and every day people suffer and die for lack of daily necessities and health care. In many ways, we are like those who, for thousands of years, hoped for a savior. Indeed, St. Paul cries out that:

the whole creation has been groaning
in labor pains until now; and not only
the creation, but we ourselves...groan
inwardly while we wait for adoption,
the redemption of our bodies... (Romans 8: 22)

OK, we have permission to groan, at least inwardly! But our groaning is not without hope. In fact, we (and the whole creation) are groaning for what we already have! St. Paul goes on “For in hope we were saved”. Back to our carol:

And they did eat, which was a sin,
And thus their ruin did begin;
Ruined themselves, both you and me
And all of our posterity.

The anxiety of Advent becomes much more specific in St. Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, which emphasizes Joseph’s experience. Here we see Joseph’s questions about the past and
anxiety about the future: what to do about Mary, already pregnant and not yet married. Fortunately, Joseph’s response to his anxiety is not to despair, but to be attentive to his dreams and willing to change his course of action by following the angel’s instructions. Hear another verse from our carol:

Thus we were heirs to endless woes,
Til God the Lord did interpose;
And so a promise soon did run
That he would redeem us by his Son.

So what do we do about the anxiety of Advent? How do we live in the already and the not yet? In this last week, do we try to escape the anxiety of Advent in frantic shopping? Do we just give in and hole up in despair? Or can we put aside the rush and the temptation to despair and, in the present moments of the next week, walk the prayerful path that will lead us to the manger? We can do this by doing as Joseph did: commending the events of the past that had brought him to this holy birth to God, and commending the future to God by accepting that the Child to be born would somehow play the ultimate part in God’s plan for the salvation of the whole world. And we can do as St. Paul tells us: to join the whole creation’s groan for redemption of our bodies, for the coming of God’s reign.

I would close with the last two verses of our English carol:

And at this season of the year
Our blest Redeemer did appear;
He here did live and here did preach.
And many thousands he did teach.

Thus he in love to us behaved,
To show us how we must be saved.
And if you want to know the way,
Be pleased to hear what he did say.

“...for indeed our God is a consuming fire.”
(Hebrews 12:29)

Year C Proper 16
Isaiah 28: 14-22
Psalm 46
Hebrews 12: 18-19; 22-29
Luke 13:22-30
Trinity Parish
Seattle, WA
August 26, 2007
Jan Robitscher

With flame of incandescent terror
Of which the tongues declare
The one discharge from sin and error.
The only hope, or else despair
Lies in the choice of pyre of pyre—
To be redeemed from fire by fire.
(The Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot)
In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.

One of the most interesting and challenging aspects of living in a seminary community (actually I live in two: Church Divinity School and the School for Deacons) is hearing sermons on a daily basis. Over twenty years I have heard many and preached a few. For most, the theme was some nonjudgmental aspect of the love of God, and in a very few the theme was our love of God. They all meant well, I am sure, but somehow God always came off as being too tame. But on a cold January afternoon I sat in Westminster Abbey at Evensong and heard Canon-in-Residence Collin Semper preach on this very text from the Letter to the Hebrews:

For God is a consuming fire.

No, it was not in any way a “fire and Brimstone” sermon. In fact, Canon Semper’s voice was both quiet and emphatic and his sermon touched me to the core.1 And in case you are wondering--no, you won’t hear a “Fire and Brimstone” sermon from me, either--well, at least not ultimately.

For God is a consuming fire.

Why did you come here? Because you wanted to, or because you felt you had to? Did you come because you love God or because you need to experience the love of God? Did you come because you love the beautiful language of Rite I or the Renaissance music we are doing and hearing today? I do. Did you come because you are searching? Perhaps because you are worried about the present divisions in the Church or in the world (I am) or about the future? Did you come in brokenness and wanting healing? Canon Semper made the surprising statement: that it is “precisely why we have come to church--because our God is a consuming fire.”

Yes, we come searching, broken and--if we come in the right way, wanting to present ourselves as we are and as best we can to God. But then we are startled by the ‘Consuming Fire”! We encounter the presence of God in a prayer, a hymn, a reading or even a sermon and hear our name in it! And that’s only the beginning...

For God is a consuming fire.

From Genesis to Revelation, the Scripture has used Fire as denoting the presence of God. Whether that Presence is benign or not depends upon the circumstances, and upon whether those involved intended a closer relationship to God or were fleeing in fear. Consider these examples:

Moses noticed the bush with flame coming from it and
turned toward it and encountered the living God. “Come no
closer!” said God. “Remove your shoes from your feet, for the
place on which you are standing is holy ground.” Moses hid
his face, for he was afraid to look at God. (Exodus 3: 4-6)

From this benign yet terrifying meeting came the story of the Exodus--the very story we hear at the Great Vigil of Easter huddled around the Paschal Candle, lighting the room with our little candles... Or consider these:

In Leviticus, God accepts burnt-offerings and sacrifices, and what is left is to be “consumed by fire”. (Lev. 19:6)

In Advent we hear that God will come

“like a refiner’s fire... and he will purify the descendants
of Levi...until they present offerings to the Lord in
Righteousness.” (Malachi 3: 2ff)

Just last week we heard the words of an impatient Jesus:

I have come to bring fire to the earth, and how I
wish it were already kindled!” (Luke 12:49)

We celebrate Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit appeared over the heads of the Apostles as “tongues of fire” (Acts 2:3)

And in the book of Revelation we hear about the seven flaming torches which surround the throne of God... Rev. (Ch. 4) and of how all evil will one day be thrown into the lake of fire (Rev. 21: 8) and there will be new heavens and a new earth--the heavenly Jerusalem, where “the glory of God is its light, and the lamp is the Lamb--the final redeeming of fire. (Rev. 21:23)

And saints down through the centuries have encountered God the consuming fire in the experience of contemplative prayer. A Renaissance saint, Teresa of Avila, wrote this:

“The fire of divine love is more quickly enkindled
when we blow a little with our intellects. Since
we are close to the fire, a little spark will ignite
and set everything ablaze. Because there is
no impediment from outside, the soul is alone
with its God; it is well prepared for this enkindling.
[I would like you to understand clearly this manner
of prayer, which, as I have said, is called recollection.]
(The Interior Castle, Chapter 28)

Now if we admit that we come to Church as we are to encounter the living God, we must move on to a harder question: Why do we stay? In the face of the issues of human sexuality dividing our church, some have decided to leave and for the rest of us it could seem a tempting escape. But that issue is, for some, a cover for other issues. Some, on the conservative end, are still arguing still over the ordination of women and the Prayer Book. Others, on the liberal end, argue over inclusive language or the necessity of baptism or the irrelevance of the parts of the Bible they don’t like--perhaps including today’s lesson from Hebrews! We may have no choice, given the possibility (though not likely) that the Episcopal Church in the United States might be thrown out of the Anglican Communion. In the end, these issues--all of them--pale before God the consuming fire. But let us not panic! How can we find the courage to to stay?

Consider the reasons why folks leave. Either the Church is:

1) too conservative (THEM)
2) too liberal (US) OR
3) our spiritual life has gone flat (ALL OF US)

Which brings us back again to our reading from Hebrews. This letter was written very early--before the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D.--to encourage Jewish Christians not to abandon their new-found faith in Jesus. In addition to arguments from the Hebrew Scriptures they knew, St. Paul (or more probably a student of St. Paul) warns them that they do not come to worship “something that can be touched”, but to nothing less than the “heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering...and to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant. ( Hebrews 12: 23-24) The warning continues: See that you do not refuse the one who is speaking to you...

For God is a consuming fire.

The real question is not the whether the Church is too conservative, too liberal, or just not meeting our needs. It is whether we are ready and willing to recognize the presence of God in recollection, as St. Teresa says, and in community. We are in the Church because it is the Body of Christ, and the Word of God is a consuming fire because if we hear it, it either challenges or frightens us. If we don’t hear it, something is blocking it and we need to allow the Holy Spirit’s fire to burn away those things which are blocking it. We must do this because if we flee from it, then the Word of God will indeed consume us in a more destructive way.

But this is not the end of the story. On the other side of for God is a consuming fire, the author of Hebrews goes on to say this:

Let mutual love continue. Do not neglect to show hospitality
to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels
without knowing it. Remember those who are in prison...Let
marriage be held in honor... Keep your lives free from the
love of money and be content with what you have... Remember
your leaders... [And finally]-- Jesus Christ is the same
yesterday, today and forever.

The surprise is that the author of Hebrews says that the fruits of an encounter with God the consuming fire--for those who intend a closer relationship with God--are not fear and death and destruction, but love, hospitality, intercessory prayer, community life (summarized by, but not limited to marriage)--all the things we do when we come together for worship that prepare us for the moment of Communion--when, as St. Augustine says, in receiving the very life of Jesus, we become who we truly are: the Body of Christ. Here, in the consuming of bread and wine-become-Jesus, is the place where we most closely encounter God the consuming fire.

Where is the Good News in all this? If we come to God honestly, not afraid to bring whatever we have: our searching, our longing, our brokenness, our love--then we can have the courage (by God’s grace) to remain in the presence of God the consuming fire and be transformed by it into the Body of Christ. Therefore, says the Letter to the Hebrews:


... since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot
be shaken, let us give thanks,by which we offer to God
an acceptable worship with reverence and awe;

for indeed our God is a consuming fire.
(Hebrews 12:29)

Let us pray:
Come, Holy Spirit,
fill the hearts of your faithful people
and kindle in us the fire of your love;
Send forth your breath and we shall be created
and you shall renew the face of the earth. Amen.