the working of thy mercy

In the name of God, source of all being, eternal Word, and Holy Spirit. Amen.

O God for as much as without thee, we are not able to please thee; grant that the working of thy mercy may in all things direct and rule our hearts; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Grace is to direct us. Mercy begets mercy.

In the readings today the Word of God challenges our thinking.

Proverbs tells us of the Wisdom of God, showing us how the Mind of God, the Holy Spirit, calls us into obedience to its teachings. It shows us the fruits of the folly of the life ‘in the flesh’, of thinking with the worldly mind of man – and calls us to release ourselves into the knowledge of the loving God. This knowledge it calls the fear of the Lord.

The fear of the Lord, the keeping of God’s law, which is the law of love, revives the soul, gives wisdom to those innocent as doves, rejoices our hearts and enlightens our vision.

His judgment is not condemnation – it is redemption. Obedience to his way is the road to perfect freedom.

To be rooted in, to rest in, the knowledge and love of God, is to be bathed in the sunrays of the glory of God. Everything points to joy, for God is the source of joy, the root of being, the giver of life. Our guiding principle is love – the love shown to us in Jesus Christ.

James shows us how bad it can be, if we follow our own desires, our lower nature – our selfish selves. The tongue, that mighty little instrument, can tell out our joy, or tell us off. A world of iniquity in a mouthful, a stain that spreads across our whole bodies, a match that lights a flame, that gives us our own perfect self-made hell. This is what the tongue can do. The words come out of our mouths and take on a life of their own. Like a forest fire set by a prankster, they gather speed and demolish – and like the prankster eventually we are caught in our own folly.

Or we can use this gift properly, if we do not keep it for our own use: we can praise and encourage and welcome and rejoice in God.


There is a story of a man in Eastern Europe who lived in a little house in a poor village. He had a dream one night, that there was a treasure hidden under a bridge in a town far away. He got up and traveled day and night until he reached that faraway town and saw the bridge. He came up to it, but there was a guard patrolling the bridge. How would he get to the treasure? He hung around, hoping for his moment, when he could slip in, spot it, gather it up and get away. He hung around all day, until the guard collared him. Okay, buddy, what’s your game? The man confessed. I dreamed there is a treasure under this bridge. The guard laughed at him. A dream! I had a dream too, that there was a treasure buried in a little house in a poor village far away from here. The man hurried home and began to dig.

The grace of God that we seek is not far from us. It is quite near. The holy spirit of God is close at hand. His kingdom is nigh. The grace of God indeed dwells with us, in us, if we are open to its presence. If we are open to his grace, and open our lives and eyes and hearts to the word, we find his blessings are hidden within us. He is that close. God is with us. We have only to dig. We have only – only! – to set aside our own ideas and plans and desires and follow him. Go with him, on his way.

We have only to – live in Christ. And he will live in us.

But how are we to go with him on his way? This is the hard part of the good news.

If you would be a follower of the way of Christ, you must follow the way of the Cross: you must deny your self – your pleasures, your loneliness, your pain, your plans – and take up your cross, and follow him.

In other words to be with him you must follow him – and that means following him all the way through suffering, rejection, death, … and then! resurrection.

New life. Having gone through giving up yourself and gone through life with him beside you and you beside him at last you receive the golden prize of eternal life.

And yet that golden prize is yours now: because he is beside you, guiding you through the presence of the spirit, and to be with him is the obedience that is perfect freedom.

Pick up your cross and follow. To live in Christ we meet at the foot of the cross. And it is there at the foot of the cross, in the presence of him who died for us, that we lay down the burdens we bear with us, that we carry as our own personal baggage, and all that we as a people drag along as our corporate baggage train.

Our baggage – our attitudes, that reflect what we have already left in the past, our nostalgia; our ego-laid plans, our close-held desires for the future: our ambition; our behavior now, that reveals what we hold so dear that we cannot let go of it even to receive the blessing of God: our sins.

You remember the story of the monkey and the hazelnuts? Aesop told it. A monkey got his hand into a jar of filberts – hazelnuts – but he could not get it out. He had grabbed a hold of a big handful and now his fist was too fat to get through the mouth of the jar. He had to let them all go, to receive his own life, liberty, and freedom.

We need to leave all this behind us at the foot of the cross. Then we are free to follow him, as individuals and as a people of God. When we stop taking it all for ourselves then we can make room for Jesus, to live in our hearts forever, and for us to live in his.

God lives in the world, dwells in the world. God is with us. God lives right in our own dwelling place. He lives in our hearts, if we let go of sin and let him in.

If we seek him he comes, filling our hearts with his love, so there is no room for false witness, slander, malice, gossip, envy, and jealousy – but there is room for gentleness, mercy, compassion, and wisdom.

Jettison the cargo of selfishness and there is room for the fruits of the Holy Spirit and the grace of God.

The way of the Lord, as we have seen in the first half of the gospel of Mark, as Jesus traveled through Galilee, begins as the way through the wilderness. Then, at this moment of Peter’s confession and the hard teachings with which Jesus responds to him, we learn that the way of the Lord is the way to Jerusalem, the way of the cross. Jesus travels from the edge of the Jewish world right to its center, from the far north – the villages of Caesarea Philippi – south to Jericho and up the long mountain road to the city of David.

He goes there not to triumph, not the way Peter planned it, but to bear first his cross – and then to carry through to the end.

Peter refused to hear it, to accept the fate Jesus foretold for himself. This is not the Messiah we expected! But Jesus is asking, who do you say that I am? Here is what it truly takes to be my disciple, to live. The way leads through the cross to resurrection.

The revolution, the coming of the Messiah, the in-breaking of the reign of God into our world, begins within our hearts, at the core of our being.

The long march, the long pilgrimage, to Jerusalem, begins at this moment. The Messiah is shown to be the Son of Man, the Human One of Daniel and the suffering servant of Isaiah, who is despised and rejected of men. Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.

Do not fear the powers of the world to harm you. You are by my side. I will be with you, always, to the end of this age.

In short, who is Jesus? He is the Messiah, the Son of Man.

But the way to glory is a hard road. The powers of this world get their hands on him.

He must suffer under Pontius Pilate, be rejected at the hands of the scornful priests and scribes of the Temple, be crucified by the Romans. He is dead and buried, and then, wrenched away comes the door of the tomb – and he is set free by the one who is really in charge here: God raises him from the dead.

Peter: NO!
Jesus: Get away from me with your sinful thoughts— it must be!
Divine things – redemption, glorification – are what count now.

To become his followers, Peter, you and I, followers of the way of Christ, is to follow the way of the Cross, all the way through Good Friday, the grim silence of holy Saturday, and then Easter morning.

Deny themselves, take up their cross, follow me – on the Via Dolorosa – to glory.

Either I preserve mine, my own life, my goals and plans and dreams for my personal happiness, what I grasp to myself, to make my own identity, and then find I have lost LIFE itself, or —

I give up MINE, my precious, my birthday gift to myself, my pride and folly, let go, be relieved of that burden, set it at Jesus’ feet, and join him on the way of the cross – and then receive LIFE.

Freedom and Liberty – choose LIFE.

What you grasp, what you hoard, will not save you. Remember whom you follow: the one who did not count equality with God as a thing to be grasped, a status to be cherished, but emptied himself and became one of us, and suffered death, even death on a cross, to lead us to true LIFE – life in the presence, life in the abundance, of God.

For what does it profit anyone to gain the whole world if you lose your life in the process? You cannot buy it back with anything. There is nothing you can redeem it with once you pawn your life.

There is a treasure – true life and true freedom – that you cannot have by grasping; it is the free gift of life in God, of mercy, joy and grace.

That treasure is abundant life, true life, the grace that just comes, comes from God – and it is closer than you think, as close as your own heart.

Lay not up for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust can consume it and thieves break in and steal it; lay up treasure in heaven, free gift let go from your hand and given to God, and you will receive again LIFE itself, life eternal, life in joy and glory.

When we realize our true identity in the source of all being, God the creator, when we open our ears to the joyful news of the eternal Word, and when we invite Jesus in, to live in our hearts forever, then we truly begin to live.

We breathe in, the Spirit — breath of God, and we breathe out, JOY.

All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.

Amen.

The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 13, 2009
Saint Alban's Episcopal Church, Edmonds, Washington.


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