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Welcome to Paradise

11/27/2013

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* Scroll to the end for a downloadable version of this sermon

A sermon preached in Christ Episcopal Church, Sheridan, MT, by the Rev. Bruce McNab.

Christ the King Sunday. Proper 29, Year C. November 24, 2013. (Text: Luke 23:33-43)

What image pops into your mind when you hear the word, paradise?  Do you see a pristine white beach, palm trees, and blue skies—something from a “Sandals” resort advertisement on TV?  Or, maybe, your mental picture of paradise is more like Vegas—a fine hotel with Broadway-class entertainment, casino gambling, and great restaurants.  When I was down in Texas a month ago some people down there told me they think southwestern Montana is a kind of paradise!  Hard-working Americans tend to imagine “paradise” as a get-away-from-it-all vacation destination.  I guess that’s because most Americans who have jobs work too hard at them and think too much about them.   —But paradise is not a vacation spot, tropical or otherwise.  And, as nice as the Ruby Valley is, it isn’t paradise.

When our Lord was nailed to a cross with a criminal crucified on either side of him, the three of them were in the most awful predicament any human mind could devise: hanging in pain from wooden crosses, dying slowly from asphyxiation and dehydration while a crowd of mostly sadistic spectators stood around and watched.  —It was the worst fate imaginable.

We have no idea how much the two other men knew about Jesus before they met him in the courtyard of Pilate’s praetorium as the execution parade was lining up.  If they could read, they could see the sign hanging around his neck and draw their own conclusion from that. Romans made signboards and put them on each person being marched out to die, signs naming the condemned person’s crime, which eventually would be nailed above the victim’s head.  Jesus’ read: “This is the King of the Jews.” The other two had signs with just one word: one we might best translate as “bandit.”  (The King James translation is “thief,” but bandit is better.  They were highwaymen, armed robbers.)  The two bandits were probably surprised by the crowd that lined the road as the three were led out to die, men and especially women grieving over the fate of the “King of the Jews.” —But not weeping for them.  No one had sympathy for them.  They were violent criminals who were getting exactly what they deserved.  Evildoers.

  As Luke tells the story—and as Luke alone tells it—one of the bandits listens to the taunts of the mockers and other unsympathetic characters gathered to watch Jesus die and decides to echo their jeers.  As best he can, he turns toward the Man in the Middle and says, “Hey, you ‘Messiah’. 

If you’re the King, why don’t you do something?  Save yourself…and us!” 

His fellow bandit hears him, leans out from his own cross and shouts back, calling across to him, with Jesus between them, “Man, why don’t you just shut up? Don’t you fear God? We’re all under the same sentence, but you and I deserve it.  We are bandits.  But this man, this “King,” hasn’t done anything wrong.”  Then he speaks more quietly to the Man in the Middle, even calling him by name: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

There’s a reason Luke records this brief dialogue in his gospel.  The dying bandit defends the honor of the harmless, obviously doomed prophet hanging on the cross beside him, and says, “Jesus, don’t forget me when you’re finally sitting on your throne.”  I think Luke tells us this because he understands the bandit on the cross as manifesting the faith of a true disciple—a converted mind, an astonishing faith, a mind-boggling faith, the kind of faith that can only be a gift. 

Much earlier in his gospel, Luke has quoted Jesus as saying, “Whoever does not bear his own cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.”  This man condemned for the crime of highway robbery has quite literally “borne his own cross” and followed Jesus to Golgotha.  Now his cross is planted beside that of Jesus.  They are crucified together.  He sees Jesus in agony, just as he is in agony.  He sees Jesus dying, just as he is dying. 

Logically, sensibly, the bandit should have assumed that if this Galilean carpenter-turned-prophet was ever going to have a kingdom and a throne, that possibility is now gone. The three of them there on Golgotha have fallen victim to the men who exercise the power of life and death in this remote outpost of Caesar’s empire.  And in just hours they will be dead.  Time has run out for them.  —Or so it should seem.

Jesus has done nothing wrong, but still he will die—looking to all the world like a loser, not a king. 

However, in spite of all that logic or sense should dictate, the dying highwayman appeals to Jesus using words only a true disciple would speak: “Remember me…  Remember me…” 

This is important, so please don’t miss it.  A condemned and dying criminal sees what no other human eye can see at that moment when darkness begins to spread over Jerusalem and Judea.  He sees the future.  And he believes in that future.  He sees victory, not defeat; hope, not despair; and eternal life in place of death.  He trusts in that life he has seen embodied in the Man in the Middle, the King on the cross beside him.  So he says, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 

And his King turns and says to him, “Truly, I tell you, today you shall be with me in Paradise.”

Paradise is not a vacation spot.  It’s neither Tahiti nor Las Vegas.  It is something much, much better. 

Paradise is the garden of the newborn world.  It’s Eden before the Fall.  It’s the time and place of new beginning, restored innocence, and loving communion between God’s children and their Father. 

What does it mean for us who live in a republic called the United States of America twenty-one centuries after he was crucified, to say that Jesus Christ is our “King”? If the word “king” conjures up for us the image of some character from The History Channel like Charlemagne or Henry the Eighth, dressed in cloth of gold, with a purple cape around his shoulders and a jeweled crown on his head, holding an orb in one hand and a scepter in the other, with soldiers and flunkies on either side, that picture is useless, pointless and utterly misleading ­—even though we can travel the world and see thousands of pictures and mosaics and stained glass windows in churches that portray Jesus as exactly that sort of utterly worldly king. 

Such art, impressive as it might be, makes no gospel sense at all. Jesus is indeed a king, our King.  But the majesty of his kingship has nothing to do with pomp and circumstance, regal trappings, or what this fallen world calls “power” (though the Church still continues to confuse worldly prestige with spiritual power, just as it has for a very long time).

The truth is that you and I can only recognize Jesus as our Lord and submit to him as our King if we’re able, in the power of his Spirit, to put ourselves in the place of that bandit, condemned and dying on the cross next to Jesus, a real sinner in need of a real Savior.  We can only grasp the truth of his kingship and his grace if we can see him living with us and dying with us, sharing our suffering, experiencing our shame, tasting our sorrow, and—in spite of all that, and through all that—giving us hope.  Assuring us of the future.  And breathing into us a new life.

Because the King chose to die for us and with us, the gates of Paradise are open.  We can enter them

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How a Christian Copes with Suffering 

11/23/2013

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*Scroll to the end for a pdf version of this sermon

A sermon preached in Christ Church, Sheridan, MT, by the Rev. Bruce McNab.

25th Sunday after Pentecost.  Proper 27, Year C.  Nov. 10, 2013.  (Text: Job 19:23-27a)

 

Forty-one years ago tomorrow I was ordained as a priest in the Episcopal Church.  After two more years of graduate study, I began my ministry in a Colorado church and stayed in parish work ‘til Joan and I retired two years ago and moved to Montana.  You all know what the ordinary life of a parish priest is like. We preach, teach, administer the sacraments, baptize, marry, bury the dead, offer guidance to those who seek it, participate in outreach to our community, and tend to the day to day operations of a church.  (We also encourage volunteers and help raise a few bucks for the work of the church.)

One of the questions I’ve sometimes been asked is, “Which have you found more fulfilling, officiating at weddings or officiating at funerals?”  My answer is easy:  funerals. That might seem odd, but it’s logical.  Weddings are significant sacramental occasions, but they’re also usually a big party. For the most part, brides and grooms are absorbed in planning for the party aspect of the occasion.  They’re polite to the priest who’s trying to help them grasp what marriage is all about, but nine couples out of ten aren’t really listening closely.

However . . .  When we face dying and death, loss and grief, it’s very different.  We come up against the most painful aspects of life.  And that offers an opportunity to share the central truth of Christian faith with people when they’re most ready to listen.

I’ve stood many times in a church or funeral chapel, surrounded by grieving people, and read to them the verses from the Book of Job that are our Old Testament reading this morning.  The Prayer Book translation is a little different from what you heard earlier.  It goes like this:

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.

After my awaking, he will raise me up; and in my body I shall see God.

I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him who is my friend and not a stranger.

Most of us aren’t very familiar with the Book of Job.  After all, it’s forty two chapters long.  But even people who don’t know much about Job know this much: the suffering of Job was epic.  “Job” isn’t history; it’s a story with a theological point.  In this story, Job is a good man, and not just good—he’s the most righteous man on earth.  He’s utterly faithful to God and “careful never to do anything evil.”  So God showers Job with praise and even brags about him to Satan, who’s sort of like the Prosecuting Attorney of the high court of heaven in this book.  God tells his official Prosecutor: “See?  There’s nobody on earth as faithful and good as my man Job.”

 

Job has a sheltered life because God protects him.  Everything he does prospers because of God’s favor.  Job’s wealth grows ‘til he is “the richest man in the East.”  But then Job’s nightmare begins, because Satan challenges the Lord to test whether Job’s loyalty to God will endure through the kind of suffering that comes when God’s special protection is withdrawn.  God lets Satan the Prosecutor have his way. He isn’t allowed to take Job’s life, but he can take away everything else. So Satan goes to work on Job . . .  


On a single day, rustlers come and steal Job’s 1,000 cattle and 500 donkeys and kill all but one of his cowboys.  The same day, lightning strikes his flock of 7,000 sheep and kills all of them along with all but one of his shepherds.  Raiders also take Job’s 3,000 camels and kill all his camel herders but one.  A storm blows down the house where Job’s ten children are having a party, and the children die when the house collapses. Finally, Job—who has never been sick in his life—breaks out in painful, oozing sores all over his body. 

With no worldly possessions left, at the end of the worst day of his life, Job sits all alone in ashes on top of a dung-hill.  In twenty-four hours he’s lost everything and everyone he loves except his wife, whose bitter advice is: “Why don’t you just curse God and die?” But Job won’t curse God.  Instead he says, “The Lord gives, and the Lord takes away.  Blessed be the name of the Lord.”  (We all know that one, don’t we?)  The narrator of the story says: “Even in all his suffering, Job said nothing against God.”

 

His best friends come to visit Job when they hear about his tragic situation. They join him, sitting with him on the dunghill in total silence for a week before any of them says as much as a word.  (That’s a bit of wisdom for you and me—especially me—to remember when we learn about the sorrows of a friend. Go and keep company with the friend, but don’t talk too much. Don’t ask a lot of questions, and don’t propose any “explanations” of the tragedy. Just be present.)  After seven days, Job’s friends finally start to talk. And they’re no comfort at all.  Their message is that somehow Job deserved all this.  He must have had it all coming, because such calamities only happen to sinners. (Nobody needs “friends” like those guys!)

Nevertheless, in spite of everything and regardless of the less-than-helpful advice of his so-called friends, Job won’t give up on God.  —But he’s angry.  Mighty angry!  . . . At God.  Job launches tirade after tirade against the Almighty.  —Nevertheless, in the midst of his rage and resentment, we hear Job’s affirmation of hope, “Oh, that with an iron pen and with lead my words were engraved on a rock forever! For I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. After my awaking, he will raise me up; and in my body I shall see God. I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him who is my friend and not a stranger.”   I know that my Redeemer lives!

Job’s companions lecture him on religion and morals, and their oratory is as dead as the ashes they’re sitting on.  But Job doesn’t join them in philosophizing.  Instead, he prays.  Job’s friends talk about God, but Job talks TO God!  Keep this point in mind: the profoundest philosophy pales next to the most primitive prayer.  Job is angry at God, but he prays through the rage.  He stays engaged with God.  And God stays engaged with Job—always there, always listening, always caring. The story of Job is that God is right there with us in our pain and bitterness.  God never turns away from us.    

The Book of Job doesn’t try to explain suffering. It doesn’t offer answers.  After we’ve read the whole book, suffering still remains a mystery.  But we see Job come to peace at last because God is always with him in his pain.  God never abandons him.  And in the end Job is satisfied, even though God gives him no answers to his tortured questions.  Job is satisfied because God gives him something better than answers: God gives Himself to Job. 

In the story of Job we encounter a truth later embodied in the person of Jesus, who enters our human condition with all its suffering—and redeems it.  Jesus sits right beside us when we’re at the lowest moments of life.  Are we broken?  Jesus is broken with us.  Are we rejected?  “He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.”  Jesus comes into our life and into our death.  He is still here.  Jesus is in us, and we’re in Him.  He is our Savior and Friend.     

The mystery of suffering touches every one of us.  Wealth can’t protect us.  (Look at Job!)   Virtue can’t protect us.  (Look at Job!)  Suffering doesn’t always come along as a logical punishment for our sins or a consequence of our foolishness.   Most suffering is irrational.  Undeserved.  Neither innocence nor holiness nor education can shield us from suffering.  Bad things do happen to good people.  “In this world,” as Jesus said, “you will have tribulation.  But be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.”  

Tomorrow I will have been a priest for forty-one years.  In that time I have learned this one thing for sure: we who trust in Jesus Christ have the best resource for coping with suffering, loss, death, and grief.  We can’t escape irrational suffering, but we can endure it and even rise above it.  We can rise above it because we know there’s more in store for us as children of God than the random, sometimes terrible, experiences of mortal life.  

Job said, “I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. After my awaking, he will raise me up; and in my body I shall see God. I myself shall see, and my eyes behold him who is my Friend and not a stranger.” We will all die, but because of Christ we will live again in a new creation.  In the end we shall see and know that God is for us, not against us.   The One who holds time and eternity in his hand is our Friend, and not a stranger.  


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Christ Church Annual Meeting 

11/21/2013

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Mark your calendars for our church's annual meeting. It will be held after church service on January 26th 2014. Also, there will be a pot luck lunch. This will be a great time to share in matters concerning our church's present and future.
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Legacy Project

11/17/2013

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Please join members of Christ Church and the community at 10 am on Tuesday 11/19/13 in the Church Parish Hall for historical information compiling/sharing for the Christ Church Legacy project. This is a project chronicling a more complete history of our church with photos, notes, documentation and any other historically relevant information regarding this. There will be pizza, pop, coffee and interesting conversation with an important purpose.
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November 2013 Newsletter 

11/5/2013

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 Father McNab gives us a new perspective on All Saints Day, our Sr. Warden talks about the importance of ministry and stewardship,Sandy and Deacon Janis share highlights from convention and there's more where that came from in this month's newsletter. Click the link below to view.
November Newsletter
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Temporary Facilities

11/5/2013

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Neal Elser is hard at work remodeling our restroom to meet ADA standards and to accommodate our congregation and visitors who might need more space.  This Sunday, November 10th, our restroom with be out-of-order.  But fear not!  Our resourceful Senior Warden, Frank Ford, has made arrangements with the kind folks at the Moriah Motel for the use of an ADA compliant restroom.  Room 112 will be available to us next Sunday.  Please check with a member of the vestry if you need assistance finding the room. 

See you Sund
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The Methodists are Coming!  The Methodists are Coming!

11/2/2013

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We're looking forward to sharing a worship service this Sunday, November 3rd with the congregation at Bethel United Methodist.  Don't forget -
  • The service will start at 9am
  • Daylight savings time ends Saturday night
We're planning on hosting another fantastic Episcopal coffee hour following the service and everyone is encouraged to bring a treat to share.  (We have a reputation to maintain!) 
See you in the morning! 
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    Our Sunday service begins at 10am.  Sunday Bible Study commences at 9am in the Parish Hall.

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    304 South Main Street
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