Christopher L. Webber

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St. Paul’s Church Bantam Connecticut on April 15, 2012.

Last Sunday I said some things about the new life God gives us in Christ and the failure of American churches  to exemplify that life. Then I went home to read the New York Times and found the feature article in the Sunday Review headed “Divided by God.”  It was a fascinating article and said a lot of the same things  I had said in my sermon. The article talked about the disappearance of a “Christian center” and said the result has been “division, demonization,  and polarization.”

That night I wrote a short letter to the Times.  I didn’t send it, but what I said was, “It doesn’t have to be that way”  I said that there are lots of churches like St.  Paul’s Bantam  that continue to stand  as near the middle as possible, keeping the traditional catholic ministry and sacraments  and trying to make a difference in the community.

But I think the Times is right:  there’s far too much division in American churches. And that means we all have a job to do  to find the things that unite us. I think there is a center. I think our job is to try to find ways  to draw people back  from the extremes that only divide us.  Now, last week I illustrated that  in terms of the resurrection. This week again, the readings are as good a place to start as any. The readings last week and today point to a central issue. Last week it was life.  This week it’s sin.

Let me talk about sin.  The epistle reading said: “ If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.”  In the Gospel, Jesus said, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.”  So we need to talk about sin.  Sin is a big part of life. You probably have some experience with it.  We all do.  But the gospel is not only about sin, it’s also about forgiveness.

I think the extremists miss the point.  I think at one extreme they ignore sin entirely and at the other extreme  they spend too much time on it but don’t really understand it.  On the one hand, there’s a kind of Christianity out there  that hardly ever mentions sin. They don’t want to upset people. They talk about being positive and happy and emphasize feeling good.  But that’s not Christianity.  Christianity is about the love of God, yes, but it recognizes the many ways we reject that love and shut God out of our lives. There’s a lot of Christianity that skips over all that and gives you comfortable chairs and entertaining music and says, “Feel good.” But Christian faith is about facing sin  and being restored to life, forgiven, renewed, nourished, fed. It’s about being changed  and changing the world.  And it starts with forgiveness for sin.

The other extreme knows that  and puts sin at the center  as if it were all that mattered. Some preachers make it sound  as if sin is all we care about.  They ask you to admit you are a sinner, repent, confess.  And not just some.  I think all the traditional churches  have been guilty of an overemphasis on sin, pounding it in over and over  and never moving on to the joy of forgiveness and the peace that comes afterwards. There’s a lot of it especially in the Evangelical tradition.  The old New England Puritan, Jonathan Edwards, is famous still for his sermon titled,  “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.”

Sin is still overdone in a lot of evangelical churches  and the worst part of it is that it often gets identified with sex. The Roman Church also has done that.  It’s one of the reasons why priests can’t marry and women can’t be ordained. Sin and sex get wrapped up together  and that misses the point too. It makes for a narrow kind of Christianity  that’s good at condemning but not very good at encouraging,  forgiving, renewing, strengthening, giving thanks for God’s goodness.

But sin is not just about sex or swearing or stealing  or lying – that’s the easy part. The churches that center on sin tend to center on personal failures and, of course, there’s plenty to talk about. There’s a lot to be said for private confession.  Our new Prayer Book has a form to use for private confession  and it probably ought to be used more than it is. But private confession also is often focused on private sins, personal sins,  Individual failures, and totally ignores  what may be the worst sins we’re involved in.

Sin is separation from God  and, yes, we separate ourselves from God when we cheat and lie and steal  and take God’s name in vain, but that’s mostly a private matter  and only affects ourselves. I think that maybe the worst sins  are the ones we seldom talk about in church: sins that have a social dimension:  war and unemployment and a justice system that fails to correct and an educational system that fails to educate and a health care system and economic system  that leave too many people outside. I can go down the list of the Ten Commandments  and check off making a graven image and committing adultery and murder  and feel pretty good about myself but where do wars come from  and why aren’t our schools better and why are there so many unemployed? Is no one responsible?  Does it all just happen to happen and nothing can be done about it? Does anyone think it’s God’s will?

I would think it was pretty obvious  that war and unemployment and so on result from human decisions,  but often a set of human decisions so interlinked that it’s hard to say who did it. And the truth is that no one person did it. No, lots of people did it. We all failed to be wise enough or caring enough  to make wise choices and the result is that people suffer.  Sin has a social dimension Jesus fed the hungry and healed the sick because how can you know God’s love when you’re sick and hungry  and can’t find a decent place to live? How can we come here and talk about God’s love  and not be concerned for those who are hungry and homeless and unemployed? But who’s responsible? Well, there might have been a time  when individuals could say “It’s not my fault.” But not in a democracy,  not when we choose the people who pass the laws  that either make a difference for those in need  or allow such evils to go unchecked and grow.

We may not make much use of private confession  in the Episcopal Church but hardly a week goes by that we don’t join in a General Confession  that says “we” not “I.” “We confess that we have sinned. . .”  We have failed, among other things,  to care enough for our neighbors. But the churches that talk most about sin,  as I said, are often the churches  that talk least about corporate sin. And if sin is whatever separates us from God  then there are social sins, corporate sins,  sins we act out together. And I think our society also  has created a whole new category of sin, stuff that doesn’t seem sinful  in any traditional way but separates us from God  as surely as murder and adultery. What about the organizations  that schedule events on Sunday morning? They scheduled a debate, for example,  at 11 am this morning among the Connecticut senate candidates.  You can go watch it or stay for communion.  Your choice: civic responsibility or relationship with God.  They can’t schedule it for prime time viewing, of course, because we have to watch “Dancing with the Stars” or something else more important.  And then we wonder why Congress is so incompetent!  And what about Little League; is Little League sinful?  Well, yes, if it keeps us from worship,  if it schedules its games on Sunday morning.  If it separates us from God, what else would you call it?  Somewhere someone, someones, are making decisions that keep people from God. That’s the definition of sin.

There was a day when our society  kept the Sabbath day holy. That made it a whole lot easier to be Christian.  But if society no longer takes faith for granted,  then we have a choice between going along with it, pretending it doesn’t matter, or finding ways to do what we need to do  to hold on to and build up and deepen our relationship with God. That begins, I think, with recognizing the social dimension of sin, that is more insidious just because it starts with others  and never asks us to make a conscious decision to disobey God,  just to go along and get along and pretend it doesn’t matter.

But it does matter.  Even the New York Times recognizes it.  And the churches need to recognize it as well.  The churches that carry on about abortion  are missing the point, taking the easy out. It’s much too easy to condemn someone else.  We can feel very righteous about condemning others. But the sins that beset our society  are broader and deeper and affect millions more than will ever want an abortion. They begin with us  and all the people who never let their faith inconvenience them. When was the last time I had to make any hard decisions because of my faith? When was the last time you did?  When was the last time you tried to think through the connection  between all the problems of our society and our faith?  If we say that we have no sin,  St John tells us, we deceive ourselves.

I think the New York Times was on to something.  The center isn’t there. Too many churches just ignore sin  and tell us God wants us to be happy. Well, yes, God surely does;  but we can’t happy – God can’t be happy – when so many of our neighbors are not happy. We are asked to love our neighbors as ourselves and we have too many neighbors  who aren’t experiencing love, and there’s too little being done  to create a social system  that doesn’t just feed the hungry but enables more people to find work that enables them to feed themselves.

Christianity is not about ignoring the real world,  or withdrawing from it or rising above it. Christianity is about getting into the world and loving it all as Jesus did  and working to feed and heal and help. There’s too much American Christianity  that doesn’t understand that, that focuses on feeling good  while ignoring the world’s problems.  The NY Times said, “We are all heretics.”  Well, not all, but many. It was often dissenters and rebels  who came here and it only got worse with time..  Americans invented Christian Science and Unitarianism and Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormonism and many other sects that are certainly not traditional mainstream Christianity.

The Times last Sunday said, “we’re a nation of heretics in which most people still associate themselves  with Christianity but revise its doctrines as  they see fit.” That’s exactly what I was saying last week.  And that’s why this week’s readings are so important. “We deceive ourselves,” St John tells us,  “if we say that we have no sin.” We deceive ourselves, if we fail to see the real and deep problems we face and just go along when decisions are made  that draw us away from God. We deceive ourselves  if we opt for a “feel good faith” or imagine that sin is about somebody else  or just about private matters.  Sin is corrupting and destroying our society  and most churches and Christians are looking the other way.

The Gospel calls us to recognize our sin and repent and seek remedies and that will be hard work.  But the Gospel also tells us that God’s will is forgiveness. God’s will is to love us.  God’s will is to call us together  to recognize our failures  and find forgiveness and to love God and love our neighbor and carry the new life we are given  out to a world that needs to know that love and that forgiveness.  If we know that, if we understand that,  maybe we can begin to come together and begin to solve some of our country’s problems and our own as well.  If we face the truth about ourselves, and know the truth about God’s love and forgiveness,  then, with God’s help, we can begin to make a difference.

A sermon preached at St Paul’s Church, Bantam, Connecticut, on Easter Day, 2012, by Christopher L. Webber.

The problem of preaching at Easter is     that you can say it all in three words:  He is risen. But if I don’t stop there, there’s no way I can say what needs to be said  about this day’s good news  in ten or fifteen minutes – or an hour -  or a week – or a year – or fifty years. I could say, “Jesus Christ is risen today”  and move on to the next thing in the service but if I don’t stop there, there’s always more that needs to be said.

This is about life – new life – eternal life. It changes everything. If you understand this day’s meaning  it changes the world.  And surely the world needs to be changed.  Surely something is missing when the churches are full  but the world seems unchanged.  I’ve said too much in recent weeks about politics  but that’s what we read about day after day and see on the evening news. And if this is, as some believe, a Christian country,  shouldn’t we see the difference that makes?

Certainly the vast majority of Americans  still call themselves Christians, so where’s the evidence?  What’s the difference?  Where would you look?  What would you expect to see? They said of the first Christians  that they had “turned the world upside down.”  What would that mean today? Would anyone say it about us?  I’ve heard it said that you should always read the newspaper with the Bible in one hand  and the newspaper in the other. I’d like to see you try it without burning yourself  and ruining the paper! But seriously,  the question we ought to be asking, it seems to me, is:  does our faith make a difference?  Does Easter make a difference? If it does, shouldn’t we see it in the news?

The center of today’s Gospel is  an empty tomb, the triumph of life over death.  The gospel is about life – new life – eternal life.  The newspaper and evening news on television are also about life – the very latest news  on life in this world today. What about health care?  Isn’t that about life? Over the centuries, the church has made more of an impact on the world by involvement in health care  than any other way. If you travel in Asia or Africa  you find good hospitals where there were none two hundred years ago  and the first ones almost always were started by missionaries as an expression of their faith, their concern for life.  In this country as well,  the first hospitals were usually begun by Christian leaders. How many hospitals are named for saints? Here in CT we have St Raphael’s, St Francis, St Mary,  St Vincent -  to say nothing of St Charlotte Hungerford.

Do you know Charlotte Hungerford’s story? Let me quote from the hospital web site: “active in almost every religious and civic activity in Torrington. This redoubtable woman was known for her courage, cheerfulness and moral strength. At age 20, she took on her husband’s two children from his first marriage and then went on to add 12 children of her own to the family. When her husband died, she “took over his business, supporting herself and her family while continuing her charitable endeavors.”  No wonder her son endowed a hospital and named it for her. That’s what I mean by making a difference, changing the world, sharing life.

But my point is,  modern health care systems began as an expression of faith,  Easter faith, faith in life. And in this most Christian country  Christians have always been deeply involved in that work,  so it’s appropriate  that we be concerned about health care.  But constructively.  Constructively.

I was interested to see on the news last week  that Republicans are beginning to worry about what to do if the Supreme Court overrules the current law because, as one of them said,  we will have to do something. Exactly.  We have to do something,  especially if we are Christians  with an Easter faith in life.  Health care is too expensive and too limited. Our lives are confined and constricted by an inadequate system instead of being opened and shared. I can’t tell you from this place  what the best solution is but I can tell you that we need solutions,  we need a way to express our concern for life, new life, risen life, eternal life. And if Christians can’t work together to find solutions to our problems we have really failed as people of faith, our faith has failed to make a difference, and we need to get down on our knees and repent and ask for help and guidance.

It’s all about life.  So is almost every issue we face.  It’s about connecting our faith  to the world out there. A faith that doesn’t connect, that doesn’t make a difference, is a useless faith.  What about abortion and the death penalty?  Isn’t that about life? I’m opposed to both myself. But I also don’t believe it’s the government’s job  to decide who should live and who should die, whether an unborn fetus or a murderer – let the government put the murderers in jail  but otherwise stay out of the way.  It’s about life, new life, unrestricted life.  Every abortion is a human failure.  But laws are not the answer. Every murder is a human failure,  but another death is not the solution. We believe in life, eternal life.  That’s what my faith says to me. You may get a different message  and that’s fine – but let’s talk about it, not fight, not slander each other.

Go on down the list: Afghanistan, illegal immigrants,  whatever it may be, it always comes back it seems to me to life. And there are no easy solutions, believe me.  God does not give us a simple black and white set of questions and answers as some like to believe. When God says “Choose life,”  what does that mean in relation to Afghanistan? So long as we are there people are dying. If we leave, people will still be dying – maybe more  than if we stayed, maybe fewer. Money spent in Afghanistan could be spent here  for life – better schools, better hospitals. But from God’s perspective, are schools here  more important than schools there? Is the life of an American soldier  more important than the life of an Afghan peasant? I know my own priorities,  but that’s not the question. The question is God’s priorities that we are called to reflect and if you have a clear insight on that,  please speak up!  I don’t have any good answers so if you do, I’d love to hear them.

But I think the answers begin  with agreement on basic principles. And I don’t hear the discussion we need to have.  I just hear people shouting at each other and that’s not helpful,  not life-giving. It’s about life, sharing life, a gift given, not earned.  So why can’t Christians work together  to find answers; not to score points but find solutions?  Why can’t we do that?

The point is life, new life, risen life, eternal life,  a gift we are given not alone for ourselves but always – always – to share with others. I see far too many so-called Christians  happily receiving God’s gift and trying to keep it for themselves. But you can’t do that and really be a Christian.  The minute you fail to share that gift you lose it and that’s what it seems to me all too many of us are doing. We go to church, we thank God for the knowledge of salvation and we go home to enjoy it ourselves and fail to make any difference  in our community. So we have the paradox of this most Christian nation  bitterly divided over life-changing issues and battling it out  in the most self-centered language imaginable  – all about MY health care, MY taxes, MY medicare, MY privacy,  But why are Christians talking that way  when the most basic principle  of the Old and New Testament alike is:  You shall love your neighbor as yourself. It’s about them, not me.

People are entitled, we are told,  to make all the money they can, unrestricted by government. Yes, they are.  And they have a perfect right     to buy as many mansions and luxury cars as they want and build themselves more mansions  and bigger mansions -  but you might remember the Beatles singing  “money can’t buy me love.” You can pile up your millions  but you can’t expect to be loved. I checked the Gallop poll list  of most admired people of the 20th century and there’s not one millionaire or Wall Street executive on the list. Instead it’s people like  1. Mother Teresa 2. Martin Luther King, Jr.  5. Helen Keller  7. Billy Graham  8. Pope John Paul II  13. Mohandas Gandhi 14. Nelson Mandela – not one of them wealthy, at least in financial terms. “It is in giving,” St Francis said, “that we receive. And in dying that we are born to eternal life.”

The message of this day is life,  abundant life, new life poured out,  more than enough for all, and it is – it’s something many of us know from long experience -  only increased by giving it away.  Charlotte Hungerford knew that.  The apostles knew that. St Francis and Mother Teresa and Bishop Tutu and Nelson Mandela knew that and acted on it.  You know that too. Some of you work in soup kitchens  and food pantries and health care facilities  and bring the food for others that is offered  at this altar every Sunday because you know it’s about life – sharing life – giving life  – reaching out to others  with the love God pours out on us.

It’s about life, the life we receive here at the altar. This day proclaims that life. So let’s go tell the world; yes, and show the world by living that life ourselves.

A sermon preached  by Christopher L. Webber at St. Paul’s Church, Bantam, Connecticut on March 25. 2012.

I remember reading an interview years ago with a famous Russian Jewish writer who was asked what he would do if Tolstoy or Dostoevsky moved in across the street: would he be anxious to meet him? No, he said; he had read their books  and had no need to meet them.

What would you say  if the opportunity came to meet Jesus: would you say, “No, thanks, I’ve read the Bible and that’s enough?”  Actually, I can imagine saying, “No, thanks; I’ve read the Bible and I’d be scared stiff!”

Some have said that after you die  you will first of all come face to face with Jesus. The bishop who ordained me said he had heard that, and he said, “Frankly, I’d rather be fried.”  Well, I understand that.  When you stop to think about your life – what you know Jesus called you to do  and what you actually have done – speaking for myself,  I don’t think I’m any where near ready.

And yet, on the other hand, isn’t there an enormous difference between the opportunity to meet Dostoevsky or Shakespeare or Charles Dickens  or anybody on today’s best seller list or George Washington or any other human being  – and Jesus? Meeting anyone else might satisfy my curiosity but meeting Jesus is coming face to face with the meaning of life. Christians believe it would be coming face to face with God.

For some three years, Jesus had been traveling in Palestine, primarily in Galilee. From Galilee to Jerusalem  is about the distance  from Bantam to Greenwich and in those days it would have taken about four days to walk it. So obviously news about this possible Messiah  had reached Jerusalem; Jesus himself might have been there briefly, but now he had gone there himself  and the people in Jerusalem had a chance to see for themselves  who this famous teacher, this wonder worker might be. And not just the people of Jerusalem  but thousands of other people who had gone there to keep the Passover:  Jews from all around the Mediterranean world, Jews who might never have been in Jerusalem before,  people who had come back to the city of David, the center of their faith,  to keep the Passover in Jerusalem and found it astir with excitement:  had the Messiah come?  Had God’s promise been kept?

And not only were there these Greek-speaking Jews  from around the Mediterranean world but Gentiles as well.  There were Gentiles  who had become interested in Judaism,  seeing it as much more appealing than the foolishness of the Greek and Roman gods  and maybe they had come to Jerusalem to see for themselves the place this belief in one God,  an invisible Creator, had come from: to see Jerusalem, to see the Temple,  to talk first hand  with the best known rabbis. And now there were rumors in addition to all that  that the Messiah had come. Some of them found Phillip, one of the inner circle of Jesus’ disciples,  Phillip, a disciple with a Greek name who presumably could speak their language,  and they told him, “We wish to see Jesus.”

Now that’s not just an interesting little story,  it’s a critical new stage for Jesus’ mission.  This meant contact for the first time  with the Gentile world, the rest of the world. And Jesus saw the importance of it  Now, said Jesus, now the hour has come, “now is the judgment of this world, now when I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself.”  Now.  “We wish to see Jesus.”  Now, symbolically, the door is opening to the whole world. That’s the story in today’s Gospel:  a critical turning point  leading directly to the events of Holy Week,  leading up to crucifixion and resurrection and the gift of the Holy Spirit  and the beginning of the mission  that would carry the gospel out  to the rest of the world – and to us. But pay attention to those critical words:  Sir, we wish to see Jesus.

They tell the story of a rather inept preacher  who went into the pulpit week after week  and talked about one thing and another  but never seemed to focus on the Gospel, the good news about Jesus.  He went into the pulpit one Sunday morning  and found a note taped to the pulpit desk: “We wish to see Jesus.” Well, yes: that’s what it’s all about.  We are Christians, followers of Jesus. We need to know Jesus, see Jesus. And that is a radical revolution in the history of faith:  to see Jesus, to see the one who unites us to God,  to come face to face with God in human form.

Now go back.  Go back to the first chapters of Genesis with its stories of Adam and Eve  and a God who wanders in the garden in the cool of the day, Those are good stories and they make a valuable point  but God is not like that and you don’t have to go very far  – just into Exodus, the second book of the Bible to come to Moses and a deeper understanding  of who God is. Moses said, “Show me your glory, I pray.” And God said, “I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you the name, ‘The LORD’; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face; for no one shall see me and live.”  (Ex 33 19-20)

There is, after all, a difference between human beings and God. There are areas of the world  around Chernobyl and Sendai where people may never again be able to live  because of the power of the radiant energy that has seeped into the soil. No one can go there and live.  One definition of God is pure energy, radiant energy,  life giving energy. But how safe can it be  for us mere human beings to encounter that energy face to face?

Did you ever read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe  in the Chronicles of Narnia? There’s a lion in it called Aslan who’s a stand-in for God.  There’s a point in the story at which Susan, one of the children,  has heard about Aslan and asks, “But is he safe?”  And the answer comes, “Of course he isn’t safe. But he’s good.  He’s the king, I tell you.”  So, yes, it’s a risk.  You don’t dare take God for granted. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” said Jesus  in the Sermon on the Mount, “for they shall see God.” Those who are not pure in heart  may also see God but they – I, most of us – can hope and expect to have the impurities purged out and that might be painful.

Coming face to face with God’s holiness  is not safe.  That’s why there are the commandments: You shall make no image of God;  you shall not take God’s Name in vain. Yet I hear it taken in vain all the time – OMG – even put that way I want to step back in case the lightening strikes. Good, yes, but not safe.  Not safe, but the center and source of life, the meaning and purpose of life. And God, out of love for us,  wants us to see and to know,  and comes to us in Jesus. No one can see God and live, says the Old Testament.  No one can truly live, says the New Testament, if they have not seen Jesus.

And isn’t that what we come here to do?  I often think of that unfortunate preacher  who found the note in his pulpit. I may be off target,  I’m sure I sometimes am, but I want you to see Jesus here, I want you to see what those Greek pilgrims  wanted to see. I want you, for better or worse,  to come face to face with Jesus.

John Donne, for my money, was the greatest preacher in English and he said this: “Do not therefore be strangers to this face.  See him here that you may know him there. See him in the preaching of the word.  See him in the sacrament. Look him in the face as he lay in the manger, poor,  and then do not murmur at temporal wants,  and doubt not that God has large and strange ways to supply you. Look him in the face in his father’s house,  a carpenter and only a carpenter . . . But bring him nearer and look him in the face as he looked on Good Friday when he whose face the angels desire to look on. . . was so marred, more than anyone . . . when he who bore up the heavens bowed down his head and he who gives breath to all gave up his spirit. And then look him in the face again as he looked on Easter Day, not decayed in the grave, but raised victoriously, triumphantly, to the destruction of death itself. Look him in the face in all these respects, of humiliation and of exultation too.  And then, as a picture looks at the one who looks at it, God on whom you keep your eye will keep God’s eye on you. And, as in the creation, when God commanded light out of darkness but gave you a capacity for this light, and as in your calling, when God shines in your heart, God gave you a beginning of this light, so in associating yourself to God at the last day, God will perfect, consummate, accomplish all, and give you the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Yes, see him in all those places  and see him also in the poor and the suffering, see him in the evening news, see him in Trayvon Martin, and see him at the checkout counter  and in your neighborhood.

Let me tell you a story  about one time when I know I saw Jesus. I was making hospital calls one day and in a bit of a hurry because someone was waiting for me and I was walking down a corridor where there was a row of wheel chairs  with elderly and apparently senile patients. I’ve often had the experience  of such people seeing my collar and asking for a blessing, but I was in a hurry so I was trying to avoid eye contact  and I heard a voice.  The voice was inside my head but I heard it  loud and clear: “He had no beauty that we should desire him.”  It’s a familiar verse from the prophet Isaiah and often seen as a prophecy  of Jesus’ suffering and dying. He had no beauty that we should desire him. I’m sure there’s a good scientific explanation  of how a familiar verse would come to mind under the circumstances, but out loud?  All I know is  that Jesus was sitting there in a wheel chair and I was trying to avoid eye contact, trying to avoid seeing his face.

My advice to you is,  don’t ever do that. Be prepared to see Jesus today or tomorrow  and never turn away. Ask God to open your mind and heart  to see that face, to see Jesus beside you, with you, in you so truly that others will see Jesus in you.

A sermon preached by Christopher L. Webber at St Paul’s Church Bantam Connecticut on  March 18, 2012  

John 3:16 is a bumper sticker.  You’ve probably seen it; maybe just the reference: John 3:16, maybe with the text which would be too small to read unless you’re closer than you ought to be to the car ahead of you.

John 3:16 is the second verse in today’s Gospel reading. I have an “Amplified Bible” that enlarges, dilates, expands on, every verse of the Bible and it puts John 3:16 this way:

For God so greatly loved and dearly prized the world that he even gave up his only be-gotten, unique Son so that whoever believes in, trusts in, clings to, relies on Him shall not perish, come to destruction, be lost but have eternal, everlasting life.

Well, OK, but what does it mean?  What difference does it make? What should I do about it?  Faith is a hard thing to pin down.  The people who put those bumper stickers on their car would probably tell you they are evangelical, born again Christians. Well, we are all born again Christians except some of us were born again when we were baptized and some weren’t.  Some people never got a good start or maybe got a good start and then drifted away and so they had to be born again later on or maybe had to be born again again and when that happens it’s often an emotional thing and some churches cater to that and make worship a dramatically emotional thing with a lot of hand waving and hallelujahs and that’s ok – maybe – sometimes.

But the trouble with emotions is that they come and go. You can get very involved emotionally in a movie or book or church service but you can’t live on emotions all day.  You can get very emotional about a new relationship but it won’t be like that for fifty years – - not every day.  You have to do the shopping and pay the bills and put food on the table and those aren’t emotional activities most of the time. You feel good briefly, but it wears off.

The churches that cater to the emotions come and go, they don’t last. The people that center their faith on their emotions very often don’t apply their faith, they leave it in church and don’t take it with them into a world that needs something more than an occasional emotional jolt. You can’t keep up March madness very far into April.  There are churches that pop up like mushrooms, build a big box on the edge of town and fill their parking lots with people provide coffee and donuts and bowling alleys and, yes, the emotional impact of a service with a rock band and power point sermon. But does it build a community? Will it still be there when a new preacher comes?

Emotional religion also tends to be a very individualistic thing.  It’s all about me; me and my feelings. There must be something about the life we live these days that makes us respond to that type of approach. The standard Episcopal Hymnal has 14 hymns that begin with the word “I.” The Renew Hymnal was 17 in half as big a book.  There’s another supplemental hymnal produced by the Episcopal Church with even more first person hymns. And surely they have a place.  We are all emotional beings, we tear up at weddings and funerals, but some of us more than others.

Emotion is also a cultural thing to some degree. The English, you know, are famous for the stiff upper lip and restrained emotions.  I spent a month many years ago in an English parish and I stood with the Rector at the door at the end of the service to greet people as they left. And they would nod slightly and say, “Good Morning, Mr Chamberlain,” and he would nod slightly and say, “Good morning, Mrs, Jones” or “Good morning, Mr Smith” but they never actually touched each other.  In the four weeks I was there I only saw one person actually shake the Rector’s hand and he was an American visitor.

Episcopalians have a good deal of that English restraint. It’s not that we aren’t emotional, we just don’t express it as openly. It’s not that one pattern is good and the other is bad.  Some of us would like a bit more emotion and some a bit less and we need to find patterns that work for all of us as well as we can. We don’t all have the same favorite hymns we don’t all have the same needs for physical contact.  God made us different and our parents made us different and our society makes us different and there’s a place for all the variety or God wouldn’t have made us as we are.

Somehow an old spiritual came to mind as I was thinking about this, one that goes, “Sometimes I fell like a motherless child, a long way from home.” Yes, sometimes – maybe more for some than for others – but probably sometimes for all of us and we need a hug, need an emotional charge to get us through whatever it is.

Our pattern of worship in the Episcopal Church is not emotional in that outward sense, not a lot of opportunity for arm waving and Hallelujahs. We do get to touch each other at the peace nowadays; we didn’t used to. But maybe a less emotional worship is more deeply satisfying, maybe more like meat and potatoes as opposed to a chocolate ice cream Sundae. We all like to indulge ourselves once in a while, but it’s not a healthy daily diet, not what you want for breakfast, not something that can sustain you long term.

So for some people John 3:16 is an emotional charge. For all of us there ought to be an emotional component. But beyond the emotions that come and go we need a faith that’s maybe less spectacular but perhaps more deeply felt as a constant transforming presence.

Nicholas Herman was a young soldier in the French army in the seventeenth century when he looked at a barren tree, one winter day, stripped of leaves and fruit, and realized it awaited the sure hope of a springtime revival and summer abundance. Gazing at the tree, he realized that even though he himself felt spiritually dead, there was hope that God had life waiting for him, and at that moment, he said, “first flashed in upon my soul the fact of God,” and a love for God that never ceased.  He left the army to join a monastic order and take the name Brother Lawrence and be assigned to work in the kitchen since he had no education and there he spent the rest of his life.  He said that never after that did he fail to know God’s presence as much in the work of the kitchen as in the monastery chapel. “I began to live,” he said, “as if there were no one save God and me in the world.”

That’s a great gift: a constant sense of God’s presence. Most of us work at it from time to time but somehow never perhaps get there, never quite satisfied. There’s always a nagging feeling that  there’s still room to grow.  But we’re all different.  For some people, a relationship with God is much more an intellectual thing, it’s a question of getting good answers to questions, understanding the Incarnation and Trinity, the sacraments, how it is that God comes to us, more knowing and less feeling.

I was at Hartford Seminary Library last week and noticed a book on John Hus and the Conciliar Movement of the 14th century and on an impulse picked it up and borrowed it. John Hus was an intellectual whose ideas about faith and reforming the church led to conflict with the pope but he said, “I would rather die than forsake the truth” and he was finally burned at the stake. So those were exciting times but the book is not a page turner. I’m about a hundred pages into it and it’s not exciting reading, I have to admit, but interesting – to me – and something I can turn to in an idle moment, when March madness gets boring, that brings me back again to an awareness of God at work in a 15th century martyr and still today, a reminder that God is still at work and calling people as different as John Hus and Nicholas Herman – and you.

So we can know God’s presence and our relationship with God through emotions and intellect but we can also know God’s presence in action.  For some people, the best way to know God or be with God is to be with others, maybe as intentionally as at a soup kitchen or food pantry or after school tutoring program or volunteer work in a hospital. Remember how Jesus said, “Inasmuch as you have done it for one of the least of these, you have done it for me.”  For some, the deepest relationship with God is a relationship with human beings in need – who need our presence  maybe even more than our help – the knowledge that they are not alone,  that somebody actually cares. And maybe we need them to remind us that Jesus is present  in other people and our relationships. Jesus is there in that activity,  that relationship, as truly as in the church service,  the Bible study, the time of prayer.

There’s a place for all these patterns of faith, these various ways of responding to God’s love. Some churches thrive by holding revival services with lots of shouting and emotion; some thrive by offering study groups and speakers to stimulate thought, and some thrive by getting deeply involved in outreach and mission whether in Torrington or Africa, and some thrive by offering a pattern of worship that offers a weekly liturgy that’s familiar and beautiful and peaceful and challenging, and God is present in all of these – and more.

I want to know God’s presence as a conscious, constant reality giving me security and peace and guidance and renewed strength and sometimes I do. And sometimes I don’t. But I also know that my sense of God’s presence is constantly distracted by the business of life and the inadequacy of my devotion.  For me, a deep sense of God’s presence is a rare thing. But the sleeping child whose mother or father looks in on him or her and tucks the blankets back in place is completely unaware of the parent’s care and it doesn’t matter. God also is there for us whether we know it or feel it or act on it or not.  I need to remind myself of that as often as possible at the very least by daily prayer and weekly worship.  A bit of emotion from time to time can also be helpful, a commitment to some outreach activity is important. But John 3:16 is still true for all of us, each in the way that works best for us.

John 3:16 remains a vital text: God loved the world so much that God came into the world in Jesus Christ to bring us the gift of life, life now, life here, and life forever.