THE REVEREND E. WAYNE ROLLINS

​A few years ago I had a conversation with a Lutheran synod official. We talked
about an upcoming transition, and I told him a bit about my own theological
perspective. “Most days, I’m a universalist,” I said, then added, “Then I meet someone
who makes me want to hope there really is a hell.”

He replied that he felt the same, usually after spending a day talking with clergy.
By the term “universalist,” I mean that I believe (most days) that the saving work
of Jesus includes everyone, for all time. That belief is stronger than one in current
fashion, especially in the region where I was serving when I had that conversation.

The congregation I served hosted a monthly food pantry, where folks would
register so that a truck loaded with food could bring enough to meet the need. Usually,
we had a lot left over, and sometimes needed to find nearby sources to help distribute
the food.

One of those was a large semi-mega church about thirty miles away. A member
of the leadership team drove a van to our location, and we loaded most of the leftovers
into it. As he was leaving, he told me he wanted to use the food to “get people in the
door so we can get them saved.”

As he drove off, I thought “we don’t need to get them saved. We need to find
ways to convince them they already are.”

There are certain teachings about faith that we’re told we have to believe in order
to be part of that particular group. Among them is fundamentalism, which I was raised
in. We were told we had to believe in the virgin birth, a literal seven human days to
create everything in Genesis 1. We had to insist that we use only the King James
translation of scripture, and that every single word of it was absolutely true.

Just before ordination, a member of my home parish came to me on behalf of a
visitor. The visitor liked the outreach and general political stance of the parish, but said
she had difficulty believing the truth about some things. “Like what?” I asked. The list
included things like the virgin birth, the divinity of Jesus, and the resurrection. The
question got around to whether or not we had to really believe all those things we say
after we say the words, “I believe.”

I replied that she didn’t have to believe any of them, but she had to pretty much
do so to be a faithful Episcopalian. So they decided to get a second opinion, not relying
on the one from the church organist. Off to the Rector they went, hoping for a different
answer. They didn’t get one.

I believe the institutional church got itself into a bit of difficulty when it started
requiring a belief in certain aspects of teaching, or in the total and unquestioned
accuracy of church teachings. Such a stance led to a bit of embarrassment in our own
time when the institutional church had to admit it was wrong, and that the earth is
basically round and orbits the sun. Despite that, there remain some “flat earthers”
among us, even with real proof that we inhabit a globe and not an ancient overgrown
frisbee.

The variation in belief systems and in their requirements serves a purpose.
Mostly, that purpose is to distract us from the more important aspects of our faith.

Recently, a person with a strange relationship to our federal government was quoted as
saying something like “Christianity has a concept of loving your neighbor.” If anyone’s
interested, it’s not just a concept. It’s a commandment, and, unfortunately, not one
many in the area I mentioned in the beginning want carved in stone and placed at the
county courthouse.

Jesus takes us even further than that. Love your enemy. Pray for those who
persecute you. I reminded a group of high schoolers about this during a diocesan
retreat weekend. Someone had mentioned being bullied in school. Others talked about
peer pressure and sibling rivalry. I asked, “Have any of you prayed for Osama bin
Ladin?” Dead silence. “Pray that God will touch his heart, maybe change his mind so
that the hatred he has toward us will soften, maybe disappear.” Of course, the effects of
those prayers became moot a couple of years later.

Our prayers for those who work against us work much in the same way as
forgiveness, another thing Jesus told us to use freely and regularly. And we do pray for
that whenever we meet. “Forgive us our trespasses/sins/debts as we forgive those who
trespass or sin against us, or who are indebted to us.” Forgive us as we forgive them.
Do I need to quote Scooby Doo again?

At some point, most of us have done exercises to increase strength and agility.
Those exercises usually require providing resistance against which we push and flex.
We gain strength in the opposition. But praying for enemies, forgiving those who hurt
us, those things don’t seem like strength building, at least in the physical sense.
But the spiritual sense is that they do exactly that. Prayer and forgiveness help
us move beyond the present moment so that we might live faithfully into God’s future.

Praying for those who oppose or hurt us changes our perspective, even as it might have
no immediate discernable effect on the other person. Forgiving them is perhaps our
only way of getting rid of anger and resentment, even as we move forward through the
consequences of having been in that moment together. The relationship changes, which
it must do. Prayer and forgiveness are the tools that prevent us from becoming just like
that which we dislike, which is how hatred and abuse gain strength—they take our own
strength and add it to theirs.

And, to use the example in today’s first lesson, God may use the challenges and
difficulties of the present moment for a far greater purpose. Does that mean we just sit
back and let them defeat us? To quote Paul, “By no means!” Actually, that’s probably
how our translators make Paul’s response sound nice and polite.

​Use your imagination. Pray for your enemies. Forgive those who hurt you. Move back into right
relationship with those words you say after “I believe.” Be the alternative to the hatred
and vitriol of the present time by standing in truth to what we have been given by the
hand of God, and find the way through the trials, the struggles, even the death-dealing
ways of the self-serving. Remember not just the words of Jesus, but also the way he
paved through all of that, emerging into new life after the corrupt marriage of religion
and politics had done their worst.

Because when all is said and done, God’s promise is far greater than the offerings
of those who seek their own power. You see, God keeps showing up and saying those
very first words. Let there be light.

THE REVEREND E. WAYNE ROLLINS

Okay. Time for a show of hands. How many of you came here this morning
expecting the first words of scripture you hear to be a curse?

Of all the prophets, major and minor, Jeremiah seems to win the prize of being
the least happy of the whole lot. He has no choice, it seems, but to do and say what
God tells him. But God doesn’t say “don’t worry, be happy” while he does it. At least,
the “be happy” part is missing from the memo.

To get a sense of the context of today’s first lesson, I read again the chapters that
precede it. You might want to try it. Start with Jeremiah 1 and read through chapter 17.
If you’re battling insomnia, at least then you would know why you lie awake at night.
Israel is in trouble as a consequence of their straying away from God’s calling.
Jeremiah is in trouble, too, because he speaks truth in the face of some of the aforesaid
“don’t worry, be happy” false prophets. It’s a familiar theme, and Jeremiah is not alone.
Legend has it that the first prophet named Isaiah was martyred by being sawn in half.
And, no, that is not where we get Second and Third Isaiahs.

Jesus knows all this, and we hear him commenting on that in today’s Gospel.
Luke’s “Sermon on the Plain” is a counterpart to Matthew’s “Sermon on the Mount.”
Many of the same themes apply, but Luke is more personal in his telling. Jesus speaks
to his disciples, whom Luke has just named, and he wants to let them know what it
means to be a disciple of the Son of Man.

Take a moment now and consider something, be it a relationship or a personal
attribute, that you consider a blessing. Then, consider again how many in our culture
identify blessings. My mother had a trivet hanging above the kitchen sink that said
something to the effect of “look at all around you and see how God has been good to
us.” I’m not sure if she dared look at that when the stove went out on Thanksgiving,
but at some time that cliché may have had a ring of truth about it.

I don’t know if Mom thought about that trivet and all the stuff accumulated in
their house, or if there was a broader understanding of blessing. We never talked about
it. But that question is one we need to consider on a regular basis as we consider how
(or if) the blessings we claim are truly blessings. In other words, are they of God or not?

When God called Abram to leave his homeland in a part of Mesopotamia, now in
southern Iraq bordering the Persian Gulf, God promised Abram that he would become
a great nation, with descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky. The only thing
Abram had to do at that moment was to trust that promise, and set out to a place God
would show him once he got there.

God promised a blessing. But it’s more than that. The blessing is in its own way
to become a blessing to everyone and everything. Blessed to be a blessing, you might
say. But it’s more than a feeling, more than an emotional high. It’s a calling that gives
meaning to our lives.

So along with considering the meaning of blessing, today’s Gospel also asks us to
consider our definition of life. How we measure our blessings reveals how we consider
the meaning of our lives. If our blessings are defined as things we say we own, such as
a house, a car, or other belongings, we have to admit that at times these blessings seem
more like curses. The roof starts leaking, a tire goes flat, the engine won’t start. The
stove won’t heat, but the refrigerator seems to have taken over that job.

Put that reversal in today’s context. “Blessed are you who are poor.” “Blessed
are you who are hungry.” “Blessed are you when others hate you.” You might avoid
some of that by reading ahead. You will become rich. You will be fed. They did that to
the prophets, too, even as they quote the same prophets to speak against you. While
Luke’s Gospel helps us remember that God shows favor to the poor, sometimes I think
Luke also tries to tell us that God takes a particular delight in irony.

Consider what you think of as your greatest strength. Now consider how that
same strength could possibly be a detriment to your life. The same holds true for a
weakness, even a fear. Understanding our weakness, our fears, and naming them, can
help us use those same things as ways of engaging in ministry to others, helping us do
the work that goes all the way back to Abram. Our weakness can be the very thing that
becomes a blessing, reaching out to be a blessing to others who still have difficulty
naming their weaknesses or facing their fears.

And so, I pose this to you today. Consider the weakness, the possible curse
we’ve felt after economic difficulty, a pandemic, and cultural turning away from
anything mystical or transcendent, and how we talk about life in those conditions.
Now, find ways to reach out to those who seem trapped by the same conditions, which
are mostly out of any of our abilities to control them.

Don’t try to fix them, or anyone. Instead, see in them a way to do ministry by
reaching out for understanding between those whose ability to understand seems to be
overwhelmed by their reality. Form relationships, and let them grow. Let those curses
become blessings, and the fruit of those blessings be both soul nourishing and seed-
producing for future growth. You might find greater blessings than you ever
considered, and that those blessings you once held dear are not nearly as meaningful as
you once thought.

Our need for, our desire for blessing leaves a door open for anything to step in
and claim that identity. What we might think of as blessing might actually reveal itself
to be a curse. It works both ways. What might now seem like a curse can turn into a
blessing beyond our wildest dreams.

There’s one way to tell which is which. Take some time to discern the presence
of God in it all. If God is there, we are blessed. But if we embrace what is not of God,
we curse ourselves, and possibly identify a false god whom we really worship. God, as
the prophets keep reminding us, has an eternity to let us stew in that until we discover
where our true blessings can be found.

I realize that I may have just given a justification for the Roman doctrine of
purgatory. But I don’t think God is hanging in the wings, waiting until we die, to put
us in time out until we learn how to behave. The incarnation of Christ is our example of
how our ideas of heaven, and hell, are realized in our own time and place.So, we
might consider which of those are the blessings we desire. Which one we truly receive
is the one we give to others. Because the one we truly worship is named not just by
what we have received, but mainly by what we give to those around us.

THE REVEREND E. WAYNE ROLLINS

In the words of Ricky Ricardo, I think I have some 'splainin' to do. We're used to
referring to parts of the church year as seasons. In the good old days, the suffix "tide"
was used--Eastertide, Whitsuntide. A few years ago, some of us began referring to the
time we live in as "covidtide." There were way too many Sundays in that season.

But the tides they are a-changin'. I see some of our markers of church life as
events, not seasons. Pentecost is an event, and our official titles for the following weeks
use the phrase "after Pentecost." If we counted all those weeks as "Pentecost season" we
would say they are of Pentecost instead of after.

The same is true today. Epiphany is an event celebrated in the life of the church.
It marks the end of the shortest season of the year--Christmastide--with the story of the
visit of the magi to the manger in Bethlehem. The Sundays after that date, January 6,
are called "after Epiphany." I don't refer to these days as the Epiphany season, for one
main reason. It tends to keep our focus on the cute baby, which detracts from Jesus'
early ministry. According to the church calendar, he ages some 28 to 30 years in just
one week, and that was before microwaves.

Today we hear call stories. There's that dramatic scene in Isaiah's time with the
house of God being filled with smoke and the prophet's vision of the immediate
presence of God. Isaiah gives us a relative date for his vision. It's the year one of
Judah's longest-serving kings died. Uzziah, also known as Azariah, reigned for 52
years. For much of that time, he was a righteous follower of his faith. But power and
status did their best (or worst), and he strayed away until, as a consequence, he was
afflicted with leprosy and died circa 742 BCE.

Isaiah's description gives us words we repeat whenever we celebrate Holy
Eucharist. "Holy, holy, holy . . ." we proclaim as we seek that same nearer presence
with God. Although, we probably would hope to not have the same instruments of
ordination as the prophet experiences in his vision. Jeremiah said the hand of God
touched his lips, signifying putting God's words in the prophet's mouth. Isaiah seems
to require a more thorough cleansing, so it's a hot coal on his lips. Personally, I was
humbled by a pair of hands on top of my head, along with many others reaching out to
touch my arms and shoulders.

I can imagine Isaiah thinking he should have gone fishing that day after he hears
what God tells him to say. The words are not easily spoken. But then, the prophetic
voice is one that speaks the truth about where present actions will lead, and most in
power or authority don’t usually like to hear that. I also think that if we read the
1prophets, we find many similarities to our own time and choices made by our own
leaders. In the words of that great theologian Scooby Doo, “ruh roh.”

Paul tells his unique call story to the Corinthians as part of his experience
meeting the risen Christ. Paul faces some opposition, since he wasn't one of the original
twelve, and even persecuted the early church. The Acts of the Apostles gives us some of
his history, telling us that Paul, then-named Saul, stood by as Stephen, the first martyr,
was stoned to death.

Of course, Jesus calls his own first disciples by meeting them where they are,
where they're doing what they normally do, and turning it into a dramatically changed
event. Luke tells this story differently than the other Gospels, although John tells a
similar story as a post-resurrection encounter. In both, it's Peter who recognizes who
has come to meet him after he sees the outcome of the visit.

Feeling all warm and fuzzy yet with these reminders of how God has come?
How about your own story? How, and when, and where, have you found yourselves
suddenly in the presence of God in such a way that it changed your life? While I'm
tempted to take a microphone down the aisle and randomly pick some to answer that
question, I realize that time is brief. So I'll pose another question for your consideration.
​
When have you been the presence of God, of the risen Christ, in such a way with
others that they come to see that God is present with all of us, and that revelation, that
epiphany, changes all of our lives? Again, no time for the Phil Donahue moment this
morning, but those are questions important to answering the question behind door
number three. So Monty Hall is here, too.

Who is God calling us to be, as individuals and as the parish known as
Immanuel Highlands, at this time in our life together?

As is the nature of epiphanies, of the manifestation of the presence of God, we
might be able to answer the first two questions, even if that answer is "um, not sure."
Number three will likely take some time, because the answer will become known as we
live as much in the nearer presence of God as we can do in human form.

Then, just when we think we've found an answer, we'll hear a "psst" or feel a tap
on the shoulder, to turn our attention to God found in a different place. Also, we'll have
to be aware that not everything or everyone demanding our attention is also focusing
on God's purpose. So we'll need to meet regularly in this boat at the corner of
Riverview and West 17th Streets, taking some time to mend and clean our nets together
so we can toss them out where the voice of the Spirit tells us to work.

We may find some form of cleansing, a purifying of our hearts and minds as we
go. We may go so far astray that it will take a sudden knocking down in order to help
us change directions. Then again, the experiences of Isaiah and Paul do not require
replication on our part. It's the end result that matters, even more than the number of
fish in the net.

The end result is the culmination of our journey together. May it be now, with
God, and as we say, ever shall be, together, whenever and wherever the eternal God is
made known.