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

If in life you are ever feeling totally swamped or overwhelmed, the average condition of most New Yorkers, might I encourage you to pray “An Order For Compline” found beginning on page 127 of the Book of Common Prayer. One of the Psalms appointed for that office is Psalm 4, traditionally known as the Evening Psalm. I was praying the office with two members of the vestry and we are all amazed at how the song of King David just washed over us and became a real source of comfort.  

In this particular Psalm, David is dealing particularly with slander and injustices he is enduring as King of Israel. Now maybe you are not facing the pressures of being the King of Israel and dealing with a son who is trying to usurp your throne, however you are dealing with pressures that come from living in this city and you are feeling overwhelmed, Psalm 4 is for you.

As we see David make his plea to God, we see him transformed in the prayer from an anxious mess, because of his accusers, into an anxious mess who, for a moment, has a quite trust in God. As David states:

“In peace I will both lie down and sleep; for you alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.“

So often, we are trying to buck against the trend that we are not in control and, in the process, we make ourselves even more anxious.

Psalm 4 reminds us that, in the midst of life, which is so often out of our control, prayer is really, really good.

Prayer refocuses on what is actually real: we need saving and we have a God who has saved us. Prayer in this way becomes almost a form of therapy. It does the Psalmist and all of us good. As James Boice commenting on this Psalm wrote, “There are days in the lives of all human beings which require a psalm like this at their end.”  

So pray and enjoy your forgiveness. We’ll see you this Sunday.

Pax,

Jacob

There’s no direct evidence that Jesus was into funk, soul, rock, and psychedelic music.

But his words in this Sunday’s gospel surely set the stage for the musical genius of Sly and the Family Stone. In 1968, Sly sang, “Are you ready?”

“Don’t hate the black

Don’t hate the white

If you get bit

Just hate the bite

Make sure your heart is beating right

Get ready!”

Other musical greats have sung the message of this Sunday’s gospel as well:

“Get ready, ‘cause here I come” - The Temptations, 1966

“Ready or not, here I come” - Delfonics, 1969

“Are you ready for love” - Elton John, 1979

And how do you get ready?

Well, there’s also no direct evidence that Jesus was a Boy Scout. But he would have approved of the Boy Scouts founder, Robert Baden-Powell, articulating the essential foundation for being a Boy Scout - “Be prepared” - as a response to the issue of how you get ready.

How do you get ready?

In this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus says - by being prepared. And my goodness, examples of the wisdom of this advice are all over the place right now.

• Folks in the Bahamas got ready for Hurricane Dorian this past week by preparing with plywood window covers, extra water and batteries, and access to emergency shelters.

• Thousands of runners are getting ready for the NYC Marathon in November by preparing with daily workouts. (When I got ready for the NYC Marathon many, many years ago, I prepared by cutting back from two packs a day to one…)

• The staff members of Calvary-St. George’s are getting ready for the fall season by preparing all sorts of amazing programs.

• I have a friend who is getting ready for his death by preparing his will. (He also prepares by calling me once a week to change the names of the participants in his funeral…)

• I have another friend who was not ready for getting a diagnosis of early-onset Alzheimer’s this past week - pretty hard to prepare for that.

In this Sunday’s gospel, Jesus tells us to get ready for the work of following him. And the truth of the matter is that not one of us can fully handle the preparation needed for that work.

• People still died in the Bahamas.

• Runners still get cramps and drop out of marathons.

• Our programs this fall will not make headlines in the Times.

• My friend will never get his funeral program just right.

• My other friend’s husband shares with me how unprepared he is for his wife’s Alzheimer’s.

Here’s the invitation:

Bring your failed preparations with you to church this Sunday. Because here’s the news: Jesus has already gotten ready for us by bearing the consequences of our failed preparations on his own shoulders on the cross.

And here are two teasers for this Sunday’s sermon:

1. If you smoke a cigar, you are especially welcome.

2. Refrain from saying the phrase, “Count the cost” - for the rest of your life.

See you Sunday!

- Jim

Growing up in an Evangelical Episcopal home and church, I was spared from much of the American religious kitsch, which is wreaking havoc upon the spiritual lives of so many people who have abandoned the faith and identify now as “dones.”

However, when I was in college, for the first time I was exposed to this kitsch’s crown jewel, a book by Joshua Harris entitled I Kissed Dating Goodbye. On most college campuses in the 90s (heck all college campuses, since people have been going to college), everything was about sex, sex, sex, and nobody actually had a clue as to the emotional and spiritual power of sex, sex, sex. To sort of quote the shoe brand Nike, “they were just doing it.” While thrilling for a moment, a lot of this sex was leaving young people sad, confused, and unable to sustain the emotional wherewithal required for a long-term relationship. One important lesson our culture has learned from the #metoo movement is: no matter what you may think, sex is a really big deal!

Harris’ book had several important insights, one being that life and healthy relationships were about more than just sex. Harris emphasized the importance of friendship and romance in people’s relationships. In his book, Harris called for what at the time—and especially today—seemed extremely countercultural: abstinence, chastity, and ultimately the avoidance of dating before marriage altogether, hence the title of his book. Harris persuaded young people of the importance of not only not having sex before marriage, but more importantly, protecting one’s emotional self from the dangers of simply moving from one partner to the next.

“I thought about it,

but the problem was Mel was the best girlfriend I had ever had and I wasn’t about to screw that up.”

Many of my Christian friends gobbled up this book. I thought about it, but the problem was Mel was the best girlfriend I had ever had and I wasn’t about to screw that up. I also found out Harris got married shortly after the book was published so he was not even in the single realm for the long haul. Nevertheless, I was surprised to read in the news, two weeks ago, that Joshua Harris had renounced his Christian faith altogether. On Instagram, he wrote, “by all measurements that I have for defining a Christian, I am not a Christian.” My first response was: WTF! By all measurements that you have for defining a Christian... and pray tell, what would that be?  

I Kissed Dating Goodbye had and has many valid critics, which now include the author. However, the theological criticism of it is the mixing of purity culture with one’s justification before God. That Jesus especially loves virgins, and if you’re not a virgin anymore, I don’t know if you meet my measurements that I have for defining a Chrisitian. This is not Christianity, instead this is a recipe for despair or Pharisaism.

Defining Christianity by any other means than the perfect imputed righteousness of Jesus, given to us freely as a gift from God, in our baptisms, is not Christianity. 

This is Jesus’ entire point in our upcoming Gospel reading this Sunday. In Luke 12:49-56, Jesus delivers some unsettling words about not coming to bring peace, but a sword. He talks about dividing home and parents from children. However, when one reads this passage in context, it is clear that Jesus is speaking about achieving peace, specifically with God, the way the world offers it, through our own works. In this passage, Jesus is essentially saying: do not come and think that I have come to celebrate your achievements, your virginity, your morality or stances on justice issues. Rather, I have come to wash all of that away in the baptism of fire that falls upon me in order to make you the righteousness of God. Jesus goes on to talk about how we can interpret the signs of nature, yet we miss how to interpret the ultimate sign of his presence in his baptism, which is him upon the cross.

Let me tell you, friends, that sign, and that sign alone, is Good News for Joshua Harris and his Christian measurements. It is good news for those of you who’ve kissed dating goodbye, and those of you, who like me, just couldn’t do it. Jesus has not come to reward our efforts at being good, rather he has come to save us from our failures to do so!

I look forward to seeing you this Sunday as we celebrate the grace of God alone found in Jesus Christ alone, and the peace this brings in the midst of our world truly divided by their own self-justification projects. 

Pax,

The Reverend Jacob A. Smith

Dear Parish Family,

I am looking forward to being back in the pulpit this Sunday. What an insane last weekend! I must confess that I have become slightly immune to all the news about gun violence in this country. Sadly, when I come across these stories, I often find myself shaking my head and scrolling on to the next thing. However, one of my best friends in the whole world is the Reverend Ben Phillips, who is the amazing and able rector of St. George’s Episcopal Church in Dayton, OH. So this week’s shooting hit close to home. Ben and his family are fine but when I spoke with him, he said, “This has been a tough year for Dayton.” Prior to the shooting, Dayton had been hit by some of the most extreme weather patterns this country has ever seen, which included destructive tornadoes and floods. So to add a violent and senseless shooting, one must ask:

Who hasn’t posed this question to God? Suffering and grief are part of life and I have never found them comforting when someone pithily responds, “This is not God’s fault.” I would argue that suffering is profoundly at the center of the Christian faith, it is known as the cross. While I have no answer as to why God allows such things, I know that as we, with Jesus, enter into that profound question, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” we begin to see that God who is at the center of our suffering profoundly uses it for our good.  

First, God uses suffering to pull us up, out of our despair, and point us to God’s own words and promises that he has overcome the world and the devil.

For in that word and those promises, all speculation and hearsay come to an end. For those means reveal to us the cross, where we hear God definitively say that God loves and cares for us in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.   

Second, through those words and promises, God uses suffering to conform us into his image.

Remember, in this age, God hides his glory in the image of Jesus and as St. Paul reminded us last week, as Christians, our glory is also hidden and therefore like our Lord, often revealed in the midst of suffering. However, the promise is, since we are like Jesus, here we can rest in the fact that we will be resurrected and redeemed and gloriously like him in the age that is to come. 

Finally, God uses suffering so that we might know to place all of our trust in him.

When one reads the manifesto of the El Paso shooter and the Twitter feed of the Dayton shooter, and all the other manifestos and social media feeds, we understand that these were disturbed men who had trusted in themselves to change the world. The history of suffering in this world is often caused by well-meaning men and women taking things into their own hands and, “getting sh%# done!” So suffering reminds us that when we trust in ourselves and play God, even with the best of intentions, humans always totally screw things up. 

The fact is, contra to the American prophets of this media and celebrity age, we are not inclined to the good first, but to ourselves. So suffering thrusts us back to Jesus our savior and his promise from this Sunday’s Gospel:

“Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.”

This promise, in turn, creates hope that, in the midst of our suffering, if God who is only good has suffered and died for us, will He not certainly in His love do what is best for us in all things?

And with our trust in Christ and his cross alone, the answer is always YES! Most certainly yes! So let us pray for El Paso, let us pray for Dayton, let us pray for our hurting nation and trust that it is our Father’s good pleasure to give us his kingdom.  

Love,

The Reverend Jacob Smith