Dear Friends,

What do you do when you’ve been exposed, when you’ve been caught in the act, when the people closest to you find out you’ve been a fraud? 

Maybe you lied to make yourself look a little better and it came back to bite you. Maybe you revealed a friend’s secret and they found out. Or maybe you weren’t there for someone when they needed you most, and you can’t bring yourself to face them. 

The first thing Jesus’ disciples did after abandoning him was hide. The text makes clear that they hid for fear of the authorities, but what’s left unsaid is that they were hiding for fear of their Lord. They’d heard the rumors. He might not actually be dead. 

What was the last act the greatest of the disciples had done for his friend? He’d denied him in his hour of greatest need. So if there were any truth to the chatter about Jesus' resuscitation, what would they say to their “best friend for life” if he were to confront them? Being dragged out into the streets by the religious authorities might just be better than facing the man they’d betrayed.

Without warning, Jesus appears! The man they’d abandoned right there in their midst. His words: “Peace be with you.”

The resurrected Jesus returns not in vengeance but with forgiveness, not with a sword but in peace.

Maybe, during this present crisis, you’ve felt abandoned and betrayed by those closest to you: “No call. No text. Where the hell is he?”

Or maybe, for you, it’s the other way around: “I really should have reached out. It’s too late now. I’ll never be able to face her.” 

My friends, the truth is that we’ve already been exposed, but the message of this text is that the resurrected Christ has come not to condemn but to save, not to shame but to extend his peace. 

May this same Lord, who is living and active through his Spirit, birth in us repentance, forgiveness, and that peace “which passes all understanding.”

Grace and Peace,

Ben

In the 18th century, two famous Enlightenment thinkers argued that the Christian revolution was a mistake.

The English historian Edward Gibbon held that the triumph of Christianity led to “an age of superstition and credulity,” while the French philosopher François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire) contended that “every sensible man, every honourable man, must hold the Christian sect in horror.” These men were not saying that the Christianity is outmoded, they were arguing that the faith is morally repugnant.

Until recently, contemporary British historian Tom Holland agreed with these sentiments. He was convinced that the Enlightenment project was founded on the recovery of long-forgotten, pre-Christian values. That is, until he did his own in-depth research on the great classical civilizations: The Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. Each, of course, has their glory, but he notes each were also callous and grotesque. Ethnicity was paramount; brutality rampant. What’s more, in these ancient pre-Christian civilizations, the poor had no intrinsic value.

These are the reasons why Tom Holland has admitted to being “wrong about Christianity.” According to him, there are two values contemporaries treasure that stem not from classical civilizations but from Christianity. The first is that the poor have a claim on the rich. The second is that there is “neither Jew nor Greek” (or, no ethnic group is superior to another).

Having studied ancient history before attending seminary, I have real admiration for the great ideals and accomplishments; the spirit and ingenuity of the classical world. But when reading about the treatment of the weak and the “other,” I could not help but be appalled. Jews and Christians were the first to give dignity to the poor; the followers of a crucified Lord the first to explicitly denounce the torture of a defeated outsider.

And while I’m thankful for Holland’s sympathetic voice--including that he’s made clear that the values Gibbon and Voltaire cherish are, in fact, owed to Christian revolution they denounce--there’s a Christian value I think he fails to notice. I’d write about it now, but that might mean you won’t come Sunday. Until then…

Grace and Peace,

Ben

Dear Calvary-St. George’s Friends and Family,

We are well into the New Year and I pray you are all doing well and maintaining your New Year’s Resolutions… or at least not beating yourself up over your failures to maintain them (or even the one). Recently, I was given the book, “The Small Changes That Change Everything” by Dr. B.J. Fogg. In the opening pages of the book, Dr. Fogg makes the point that information alone does not reliably change behavior. Instead, his research shows that there are actually only a few things that make lasting change in our lives, one of them being an Epiphany. 

However, Fogg writes:

“Creating a true epiphany for ourselves (or others) is difficult and probably impossible.  We should rule out that option unless we have magical powers (I don’t.)”

Photo credit: Sara Beth Turner

As a Church, we are now in the season of Epiphany. When we gather and remember that God has given an Epiphany to the whole world: that in his Son Jesus, God is our Lord, friend, and most importantly, savior. This Epiphany is Good News because the Epiphany is that God is for failures, for resolution breakers, and meets us right where we are.

The Epiphany is that Jesus is not your divine life coach who says: try a little harder next time or let me see if I can help. Instead, Jesus is our Redeemer who, with his broken body and shed blood, says, “Enjoy Your Forgiveness.”  

This Epiphany really does change lives.

Think about your own life… every time someone has stopped assessing you (although the assessment might be right) and just loved you, something does change within us.

This is the impossible made possible and I pray it makes a huge difference in your life.

Jesus has fulfilled the correct assessment of the law and your conscience, and it has not only made lasting difference in your life; it has made an eternal difference, resolutions kept or not.  

Enjoy your Forgiveness,

The Reverend Jacob Smith

Dear Friends,

Merry Christmas! Yes, Christmas! Although the world has moved on, the tinsel is down and radio stations playing 24-hour carols have gone back to easy listening, as Christians, we are still celebrating Christmas: the fact that God has taken on flesh and entered into real time and history. 

This Sunday, we will celebrate the 12th day of Christmas by remembering the visit of the Wise Men or Magi from the East.

Illustration by Nia Starr

The Magi, from where we derive the word “magician,” were powerful men (essentially a cross between a scientist and a diplomat) amongst the empires of the Medes, Persians and Babylonians. The prophet Daniel was a Magi, which might explain why these men might have had the notion that a king was born in Judah. Although today they line the pantheon of Secular Christmas characters along with “8lb, 6oz newborn Jesus,” Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer, Frosty the Snowman and a Menorah for good measure, very little is known about the Magi from the Bible.

They were actually popularized between the 3rd and 5th centuries by Gnostic Christians. The Gnostics were enchanted by secret magic and esoteric theories (sounds a lot like religion today). In some of their expanded, yet fabricated, accounts of the birth of Jesus, they added exotic stories about the Magi following a magical star across the desert sands on camels, finally arriving after a long and perilous journey to worship the infant Christ.

In the Medieval Times, although the Gnosticism had been disconnected from the Wise Men, the exotic stories were still deeply embedded. They were given names—Balthasar, Melchior and Caspar—and came from such lands as Iran, India and Ethiopia; places to a Flemish, German, or English peasant that would have seemed like the other end of the galaxy. Supposedly, today their remains are kept in a beautiful reliquary in the medieval cathedral in Cologne, Germany.

One of the truths that I love about the Wise Men visiting the newborn king of Israel is when the story is read through the Hebraic eyes of the first Christians. The last time any emissaries arrived from the East to visit a King of Israel or Judah, it was “destroy and conquer.” However, this time St. Matthew tells, there is a new king on the block. These Wise Men have come to worship and bring gifts. The Magi fulfill the prophet Isaiah’s prophecy that the nations shall come to worship the Messiah (Isaiah 42).

They also reveal the profound truth of the Gospel, that God is always revealing himself to his enemies, God is always revealing himself, to the least likely of people: not Pharisees and Scribes, but Gentile Magicians.

This becomes Good News for us as we wrap up Christmas and go into Epiphany and 2020. God is always drawing you to himself and revealing himself as your Lord and Savior in places you naturally wouldn’t assume.

We will see you this Sunday!

Pax,

The Reverend Jacob Smith

1. What do you think heaven is going to be like?

That’s a good question as we approach the final Sunday in the Church Year, a Sunday filled with themes of the end of time and the final judgment and Jesus coming back.

Do you remember Fred Astaire singing to Ginger Rogers while he’s dancing with her in the 1935 show,“Top Hat”? The song is “Dancing Cheek to Cheek”. And the opening words are: “Heaven, I’m in heaven…” Pretty cool description of heaven - being able to sing like Fred Astaire and getting to dance with Ginger Rogers.

As usual, C.S. Lewis is a great help in thinking about what heaven is going to be like. He writes in his classic book, “Mere Christianity”:

There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of “Heaven” ridiculous by saying they do not want “to spend eternity playing harps.” The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them. All the scriptural imagery (harps, crowns, gold, etc.) is, of course, a merely symbolical attempt to express the inexpressible… People who take these symbols literally might as well think that when Christ told us to be like doves, He meant that we were to lay eggs.

Here’s another question for the last Sunday in the Church Year:

2. Of all the people in the Bible, which one (not including Jesus) would you most want to hang out with when you get to heaven?

That question is a teaser for the sermon this Sunday. I’ll refer to a famous person in the history of the Christian Church, and I’ll tell you his surprising answer to that question.

Here’s one last question - and maybe it’s been lingering in the back of your mind as you’ve been reading this blog:

3. Do you think you’re going to heaven?

Now, the theological answer to that question is that the decisive factor in determining whether you’re going to heaven is not your behavior. If that were the case, heaven would be, well, empty. The theological answer is that when you are baptized, you are “sealed as Christ’s own forever.” The theological answer is that Jesus has taken the initiative to swing wide open the gates of heaven by his death on the cross, where he became “the propitiation for our sins”.

But here’s another way to answer that question. A CPA died and went to heaven. St. Peter welcomed him at the pearly gates and entered his name in the book of life. The CPA, being a CPA, examined the book with some care. Then he did a survey of the population in heaven and reported to St. Peter that there was a discrepancy. Apparently, the number of names in the book didn’t match up with the number of people in heaven.

St. Peter sent some angels to investigate. After a bit, they came back with a report. They said, “We’ve found the problem. Jesus is out back, lifting people in over the fence.”

See you on Sunday!

Jim