Year A
Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 40:1-12
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Behold the Lamb of God\u2026 who takes away the sin of the world\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We find these words\u2026 or some variation of them\u2026 not just in today’s Gospel\u2026 but in the Gloria<\/em> that we just sang\u2026 in The Great Litany\u2026 in some versions of the Angus Dei<\/em> we sing during Communion\u2026 we proclaim\u2026 as John the Baptist did\u2026 that Jesus has taken away the sin of the world\u2026 but what does it mean\u2026 to take away the sin of the world\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n To help us answer that\u2026 we need to be able to see the water in which we swim\u2026 we need to see that we’ve inherited centuries of theology which can demean who we are as God’s creatures\u2026 we need to pray that God’s will be done\u2026 it’s true that in our separation from God\u2026 we will make some really big mistakes\u2026 but God\u2026 who already knows our needs before we ask\u2026 has already forgiven us\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And when\u2026 in our prayers\u2026 we ask God for mercy instead of compassion\u2026 we may put ourselves in the mindset of a courtroom\u2026 and throw ourselves at God’s mercy\u2026 hope to get a lighter sentence than we may deserve\u2026 hope that if we do sixty hours of community service\u2026 or serve on Vestry\u2026 our sins will be forgiven\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the prologue to John’s Gospel\u2026 the Word\u2026 the Logos<\/em>\u2026 is the original Way that God and creation are in communion\u2026 but this initial condition has been compromised by human sinfulness\u2026 one way to say it is that creation has become the world\u2026 that the world is creation in it’s alienated state\u2026 creation that does not acknowledge\u2026 or has forgotten how\u2026 to open up to its Divine Source\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n For the ancient Jews\u2026 temple sacrifice\u2026 the sacrifice of lambs\u2026 was a liturgical process designed to overcome sin and effect reconciliation\u2026 at-one-ment\u2026 with God… while I was growing up\u2026 we would go to synagogue on Yom Kippur\u2026 and ask God to forgive our sins of the past year\u2026 so we could start the new year on Rosh Hashanah off with a clean slate\u2026 but in John 2:13\u2026 Jesus frees the temple animals because they’re no longer needed\u2026 Temple sacrifice is no longer the way that we need to overcome sin\u2026 it’s in the person of Jesus that God and the world are permanently united\u2026 Jesus has come to heal the estrangement and reestablish communion with God\u2026 so Jesus reverses the direction of salvation\u2026 and in doing so\u2026 rejects works righteousness\u2026 the idea that we earn our salvation by the works that we do\u2026 but Jesus is not the lamb of sinful humans\u2026 Jesus is the Lamb of God\u2026 and so the chasm between God and the world is overcome by divine initiative\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fr. John Shea writes that in today’s context\u2026 sin doesn’t refer to the many individual transgressions of the human race\u2026 sin points instead to our corporate alienation from God\u2026 and this is the separation that Jesus bridges\u2026 he is the way to God\u2026 the door leading to life\u2026 and it’s not our initiative\u2026 but God’s\u2026 which takes away all estrangement and reestablishes the original created order\u2026 ] and when we receive communion at this Table\u2026 we’re not asking for the forgiveness of our sins\u2026 we’re celebrating and thanking God for having already restored creation through the death and resurrection of Christ\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And John testified\u2026 I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove\u2026 and it remained on him\u2026 most of us don’t testify too well\u2026 testimony is the domain of those who wear camel hair and leather belts\u2026 and those who eat locusts and wild honey\u2026 the word itself comes from the Middle English\u2026 which comes from the Latin\u2026 and means\u2026 a witness<\/em>\u2026 or to witness<\/em>\u2026 and what do witnesses do\u2026 they simply tell what they saw\u2026 as John did\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And what he saw was that the Holy Spirit\u2026 the same Spirit that in the beginning moved over the waters\u2026 that same Spirit descended from heaven\u2026 and didn’t just momentarily touch Jesus\u2026 but it remained<\/em> on him\u2026 and the One who sent John to baptize\u2026 told John\u2026 that the One on whom the Spirit remained\u2026 is the One who would baptize with the Holy Spirit\u2026 and if Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit\u2026 then that means that Jesus is the Son of God\u2026 and the next day\u2026 John told his two disciples\u2026 Look\u2026 here is the Lamb of God<\/em>\u2026 and they followed Jesus\u2026 who noticed them\u2026 and asked\u2026 What are you looking for<\/em>\u2026 and they asked\u2026 Where are you staying\u2026 <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n They want to know where he’s staying\u2026 where he abides\u2026 this is one way of asking\u2026 what are you really all about<\/em>\u2026 what is the structure of your selfhood<\/em>\u2026 and the timing of their question coincides with the timing of Temple worship\u2026 and instead of sacrificing at the Temple\u2026 it’s through relationship that Jesus overcomes their alienation and unites them with the Father\u2026 when he says\u2026 Come and see<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a little while\u2026 we’ll conduct our Annual Meeting\u2026 we’ll look back across the last year\u2026 and look forward towards the future\u2026 we’ll have some discussion\u2026 and ask some questions\u2026 though we may be unable to get every answer we’d like\u2026 when do we ever get all the answers we’d like\u2026 but Jesus says\u2026 Come and See<\/em>\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n In our opening prayer\u2026 we acknowledged that God illumines us with Word and Sacrament\u2026 so that we can shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory\u2026 but another way of understanding it\u2026 is that we are being invited to\u2026 Come and See<\/em>\u2026 we are being invited into the prophetic work of those like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr\u2026 whose birthday we celebrate\u2026 and whose work helps us better see the water in which we swim\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fr. Rohr wrote that seeking God means that we’re ready to change\u2026 because true spiritual encounters change things like our relationship toward foreigners and the poor and the weak\u2026 our attitude towards money\u2026 our attitude toward war\u2026 our use of time\u2026 and our citizenship in God’s Kingdom transcends everything we call political\u2026 so be prepared to have a different life\u2026 he wrote\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Luke 8:39\u2026 after Jesus healed a man possessed by demons\u2026 Jesus said\u2026 Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you. So the man went away\u2026 proclaiming it throughout the city\u2026 <\/em>Jesus asked the man to testify\u2026 it may be challenging for us to testify\u2026 we may not see ourselves as able to do that\u2026 but we can certainly talk about what we’ve seen\u2026 and tell the stories about the many and varied ways this congregation lives into God’s invitation\u2026 but our stories will not be an endpoint\u2026 they will be part of Holy Trinity’s own story\u2026 one more step on our collective journeys\u2026 as we go and tell everyone how much God has done for us\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Year A Isaiah 49:1-7 Psalm 40:1-12 1 Corinthians 1:1-9 John 1:29-42 Behold the Lamb of God\u2026 who takes away the sin of the world\u2026 We find these words\u2026 or some variation of them\u2026 not just in today’s Gospel\u2026 but in the Gloria that we just sang\u2026 in The Great Litany\u2026 in some versions of the Angus Dei we sing during Communion\u2026 we proclaim\u2026 as John the Baptist did\u2026 that Jesus has taken away the sin of the world\u2026 but what does it mean\u2026 to take away the sin of the world\u2026 To help us answer that\u2026 we need to be able to see the water in which we swim\u2026 we need to see that we’ve inherited centuries of theology which can demean who we are as God’s creatures\u2026 we need to pray that God’s will be done\u2026 it’s true that in our separation from God\u2026 we will make some really big mistakes\u2026 but God\u2026 who already knows our needs before we ask\u2026 has already forgiven us\u2026 And when\u2026 in our prayers\u2026 we ask God for mercy instead of compassion\u2026 we may put ourselves in the mindset of a courtroom\u2026 and throw ourselves at God’s mercy\u2026 hope to get a lighter sentence than we may deserve\u2026 hope that if we do sixty hours of community service\u2026 or serve on Vestry\u2026 our sins will be forgiven\u2026 In the prologue to John’s Gospel\u2026 the Word\u2026 the Logos\u2026 is the original Way that God and creation are in communion\u2026 but this initial condition has been compromised by human sinfulness\u2026 one way to say it is that creation has become the world\u2026 that the world is creation in it’s alienated state\u2026 creation that does not acknowledge\u2026 or has forgotten how\u2026 to open up to its Divine Source\u2026 For the ancient Jews\u2026 temple sacrifice\u2026 the sacrifice of lambs\u2026 was a liturgical process designed to overcome sin and effect reconciliation\u2026 at-one-ment\u2026 with God… while I was growing up\u2026 we would go to synagogue on Yom Kippur\u2026 and ask God to forgive our sins of the past year\u2026 so we could start the new year on Rosh Hashanah off with a clean slate\u2026 but in John 2:13\u2026 Jesus frees the temple animals because they’re no longer needed\u2026 Temple sacrifice is no longer the way that we need to overcome sin\u2026 it’s in the person of Jesus that God and the world are permanently united\u2026 Jesus has come to heal the estrangement and reestablish communion with God\u2026 so Jesus reverses the direction of salvation\u2026 and in doing so\u2026 rejects works righteousness\u2026 the idea that we earn our salvation by the works that we do\u2026 but Jesus is not the lamb of sinful humans\u2026 Jesus is the Lamb of God\u2026 and so the chasm between God and the world is overcome by divine initiative\u2026 Fr. John Shea writes that in today’s context\u2026 sin doesn’t refer to the many individual transgressions of the human race\u2026 sin points instead to our corporate alienation from God\u2026 and this is the separation that Jesus bridges\u2026 he is the way to God\u2026 the door leading to life\u2026 and it’s not our initiative\u2026 but God’s\u2026 which takes away all estrangement and reestablishes the original created order\u2026 ] and when we receive communion at this Table\u2026 we’re not asking for the forgiveness of our sins\u2026 we’re celebrating and thanking God for having already restored creation through the death and resurrection of Christ\u2026 And John testified\u2026 I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove\u2026 and it remained on him\u2026 most of us don’t testify too well\u2026 testimony is the domain of those who wear camel hair and leather belts\u2026 and those who eat locusts and wild honey\u2026 the word itself comes from the Middle English\u2026 which comes from the Latin\u2026 and means\u2026 a witness\u2026 or to witness\u2026 and what do witnesses do\u2026 they simply tell what they saw\u2026 as John did\u2026 And what he saw was that the Holy Spirit\u2026 the same Spirit that in the beginning moved over the waters\u2026 that same Spirit descended from heaven\u2026 and didn’t just momentarily touch Jesus\u2026 but it remained on him\u2026 and the One who sent John to baptize\u2026 told John\u2026 that the One on whom the Spirit remained\u2026 is the One who would baptize with the Holy Spirit\u2026 and if Jesus baptizes with the Holy Spirit\u2026 then that means that Jesus is the Son of God\u2026 and the next day\u2026 John told his two disciples\u2026 Look\u2026 here is the Lamb of God\u2026 and they followed Jesus\u2026 who noticed them\u2026 and asked\u2026 What are you looking for\u2026 and they asked\u2026 Where are you staying\u2026 They want to know where he’s staying\u2026 where he abides\u2026 this is one way of asking\u2026 what are you really all about\u2026 what is the structure of your selfhood\u2026 and the timing of their question coincides with the timing of Temple worship\u2026 and instead of sacrificing at the Temple\u2026 it’s through relationship that Jesus overcomes their alienation and unites them with the Father\u2026 when he says\u2026 Come and see\u2026 In a little while\u2026 we’ll conduct our Annual Meeting\u2026 we’ll look back across the last year\u2026 and look forward towards the future\u2026 we’ll have some discussion\u2026 and ask some questions\u2026 though we may be unable to get every answer we’d like\u2026 when do we ever get all the answers we’d like\u2026 but Jesus says\u2026 Come and See\u2026 In our opening prayer\u2026 we acknowledged that God illumines us with Word and Sacrament\u2026 so that we can shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory\u2026 but another way of understanding it\u2026 is that we are being invited to\u2026 Come and See\u2026 we are being invited into the prophetic work of those like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr\u2026 whose birthday we celebrate\u2026 and whose work helps us better see the water in which we swim\u2026 Fr. Rohr wrote that seeking God means that we’re ready to change\u2026 because true spiritual encounters change things like our relationship toward foreigners and the poor and the weak\u2026 our attitude towards money\u2026 our attitude toward war\u2026 our use […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1929,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sermons"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/Note.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1926"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1928,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1926\/revisions\/1928"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/twochurches.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}