Podcasts about trinitytide

Week 2 of a Trinitytide series on giving and stewardship.

Week 3 of our Trinitytide series on the Decalogue

Week 2 of our Trinitytide series on the Decalogue

Week 1 of our Trinitytide series on the 10 Commandments

A Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity 1 Corinthians 15:1-11 & St. Luke 18:9-14 by William Klock “Two men went up to the temple to pray,” Jesus said.  The temple was the place where heaven and earth met.  The place where men and women could go to be in the presence of God.  Twice a day the priests would lead the people in prayers, at nine in the morning and at three in the afternoon, but people could go any time to pray. On this day, two men climbed the steps to the temple courts to pray.  “One,” Jesus said, “was a Pharisee.”  A Jew could pray anywhere—at home, wherever.  But if anyone was going to go out of their way to pray at the temple, it was going to be a Pharisee.  The temple was everything to them.  They weren't priests, but they lived their lives as if they were.  So it was natural for a Pharisee to go to the temple to pray. But there were two men this day, Jesus said, who went up to the temple.  “The other was a tax collector.”  If there was a polar opposite of the Pharisee, it was the tax collector.  The Pharisees were devoted to God's covenant and to his law.  They kept every last jot and tittle of it.  But the tax collectors.  When Jesus mentioned a tax collector, his whole audience recoiled.  They were the worst of the worst.  There were “sinners”—that means Jews who made lifestyle that rejected God's covenant with them—but then there were tax collectors.  They were a special kind of sinner.  The scum of the earth.  They got rich sucking up to the gentile dogs while swindling their own people. I expect that as Jesus described these two men, everyone had a similar mental picture.  The Pharisee, dignified, wearing his fine clothes, making his way confidently up the steps to the temple complex, and striding just as confidently through the outer courts.  Everyone knew him, everyone he passed greeted him respectfully as he made his way through the various gates and colonnades, further and further into the temple complex.  But then the tax collector.  Maybe it took him three times to make it up those steps, because twice he turned around, overwhelmed by guilt and shame.  And on the far side of the court of the Gentiles, the soreg, the low wall that marked the boundary between the pure and impure, made him pause.  He didn't belong on the other side.  But he'd already spent weeks tracking down the people he'd fleeced and making restitution to them.  There was no going back.  So he steeled himself and passed through, head down, trying to look unobtrusive, because he knew—he just knew—that everyone recognised him.  And he went to one of the men selling lambs.  And he picked one out, paid for it, took it in his arms—he wasn't used to handling animals—and he got in line in the courtyard outside the sanctuary, waiting for a priest as the lamb struggled.  And finally, a priest motioned him toward the altar.  He presented the lamb, his sin offering, and as the priest held it, the tax collector laid his hands on it and slit its throat.  And the priest collected the blood and poured it out at the base of the altar, then butchered the little lamb and burned its fat.  Now he was pure.  But there was still more to do.  The tax collector went back out to the outer court and this time he bought a ram for a guilt offering.  And a servant helped him with the ram as he, again, went back to stand in line for a priest.  And, again, he placed his hands on the ram as the priest held it.  And he killed it, and as with the lamb, the blood was poured out and the fat was burned.  And his guilt was expiated.  And now he could go and pray.  And there he saw the Pharisee.  The Pharisee had seen him, too.  The Pharisee had seen him all along.  As he'd chatted with a friend, the Pharisee had seen the tax collector buy his lamb.  And he'd seem him again as he bought his ram.  As he stood there praying, he'd seen the sacrifice.  God may have forgiven the tax collector, but the Pharisee sure didn't see him that way.  He took a smug look back at the tax collector and, Jesus says, “he prayed in this way to himself, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: greedy, unjust, immoral, or even like this tax collector.  I fast twice a week.  I give tithes of all that I get.'” And the tax collector.  Jesus says he “stood a long way off, not even wanting to lift his eyes to heaven.  He beat his breast and said, ‘God, be merciful to me, sinner that I am.'”  He'd gone through the formal actions of forgiveness, but he knew that mere formalism would never see him reconciled to God.  And so, after offering his sacrifices, he knelt humbly and prayed the words of Psalm 51: “Have mercy on me, O God—the psalm goes on—according to your steadfast love, according to your abundant mercy, blot out my transgressions.”  He knew.  God isn't a vending machine.  Offering a lamb isn't like pushing B4 and absolution drops into the slot for you to take.  He knew the words of the psalm.  David went on to sing, “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.”  And so the tax collector knelt—and without any presumption—threw himself on the grace of God.  And, as Jesus has said elsewhere, all of heaven rejoiced over this repentant sinner—even as the Pharisee scowled at him. And Jesus said to the people, “Let me tell you, he—the tax collector—was the one who went back to his home vindicated by God, not the other.”  That had to make some people angry.  It was one thing to grant—even if a little grudgingly—that there was something good about a repentant tax collector.  Okay, he offered his lamb and his ram and his contrition was obviously real.  But dissing the Pharisee?  That was too much.  But you see, this is exactly why Jesus told this story.  Luke introduces this episode saying, “Jesus told this next parable against those who trusted in their own righteous standing and despised others.”  And so Jesus explains: “Don't you see?  People who exalt themselves will be humbled, and people who humble themselves will be exalted.” Going to the temple, standing before the Lord, and singing out a litany of your own pious greatness—that's not pleasing to the Lord.  That's a good way to find yourself humbled on the last day.  And having this in mind that makes this bigger than the Pharisees.  Maybe they were the worst offenders, but Jesus gets to the heart of Israel's problem and exposes it.  They knew they were “in”.  They knew that when the Day of the Lord came, judgement would fall on everyone else and that they would be vindicated and go on to live in his presence in the age to come, they knew this because they faithfully bore all the markers of God's covenant.  They were circumcised, they kept the sabbath, and they ate the right foods—they kept God's law.  That meant they were righteous…or so they thought.  But Jesus sort of asks here: “Where is your heart?” This is what the prophets had been asking Israel—and warning her about—for centuries.  Reminding the people that formalism doesn't cut it.  Yes, God required sacrifices.  He'd given them a law.  But obedience was supposed flow from a humble heart overflowing with gratitude for God's grace.  It was supposed to be rooted in faith—faith in a God who had called a childless pagan named Abram and blessed him beyond anything he deserved; faith in a God who called a sorry and miserable group of slaves out of Egypt and blessed them beyond anything they deserved.  But Israel got complacent, and comfortable, and forgot the source of her blessings.  Instead of trusting God, she trusted in horses and chariots and kings—and even foreign gods.  She thought mere formalism would satisfy God's requirement for holiness.  And her heart became hard, idolatrous, and self-righteous.  So for all their love of torah, the hearts of the Pharisees were far from God—and in that, they represented most of the people in Israel.  They exalted themselves and presumed upon God, when they should have been humble before him, thanking him for his grace.  When judgement day came, they were ready to sing that litany of their righteousness: We're not like other people.  We fast and we tithe.  We're circumcised and we keep the sabbath.  And God would high-five them and the invite them along to go smite the sinners and tax collectors and gentiles.  Their hearts will filled with pride, not faith. Habakkuk was one of those prophets that had warned Israel in the days before the exile.  “Look at the proud!” he said, “His spirit is presumptuous and is not right, but the righteous shall live by faith.”  Pride and faith, Brothers and Sisters, are polar opposites. Habakkuk looked around him lamented to the Lord: O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not hear? Or cry to you “Violence!” and you will not save? Why do you make me see iniquity, and why do you idly look at wrong? Destruction and violence are before me; strife and contention arise. So the law is paralyzed, and justice never goes forth. For the wicked surround the righteous; so justice goes forth perverted. (Habakkuk 1:1-4) Wickedness, idolatry, injustice—pride.  Judah no longer trusted in the Lord and it showed.  The heart of the people was far from God and those who were humble, who did lean on his grace were trampled under foot.  And Habakkuk knew it couldn't go on like this forever.  He knew the Lord's judgement on a wicked and faithless and proud people had to come soon.  And so he cried out to the Lord and the Lord assured him: “The righteous shall live by faith.”  In other words, the righteous will live the way they always do, regardless of circumstances: by faith in the grace and mercy and goodness of God—not in pride, but by faith.   Pride is insidious.  It can take any form in order to push out faith.  The Pharisees were, in most ways, so close—but in them pride twisted faith itself.  I wonder what Habakkuk would think of our world.  We now have a whole season devoted to pride.  At first it was a month, but now it just seems to go on and on: Pridetide, the unholy parody of Trinitytide.  At least the Pharisees were prideful for their good works.  Today, the wicked and perverted announce their sins with pride and their “ally” lackies signal their virtue as loudly as possible.  And the wealthy and the powerful, governments and corporation and businesses big and small join in the litany of pride and woe to anyone who dares to dissent and on whom the scorn and wrath of the Pride Pharisees falls.  The more things change, the more they stay the same.  The proud are always convinced of their own righteousness and standing before God. And yet Jesus told so many stories in which the proud—so sure of their righteous standing—ended up finding themselves in the outer darkness, weeping and gnashing their teeth, while the tax collectors and sinners—having discovered the mercy and grace of God, having repented in faith—found themselves welcomed into the feast.  Again, pride and faith are polar opposites, mutually exclusive. And I think this is why the church, for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, has coupled this Gospel about the Pharisee and the tax collector with St. Paul's affirmation of faith at the beginning of 1 Corinthians 15.  He begins with the gospel, with the good news about Jesus.  He writes: “Let me remind you, Brother [and Sisters], about the good news which I announced to you.”  I love the way it works in Greek.  Paul talks about the gospel that he gospelled to them.  The gospel is the best news ever.  It's the news that changes everything.  It's the news that dispels—or, at any rate, it should dispel—any ideas we have about being proud of ourselves.  Because Paul goes on and says, “You received this good news, and you're standing firm on it, and you are saved through it, if you hold fast the message I announced—I gospelled—to you.  Unless it was for nothing that you believed.” These were men and women who had stood on all sorts of things.  Some of them were Jews and once they had stood on that: on their circumcision, on their sabbath keeping, on their general keeping of torah.  Some of them were Gentiles.  They'd stood on their pagan gods, or on the emperor, or on their philosophies.  But then Paul came and he gospelled the gospel.  He announced the good news and it changed everything.  Or, at least it did for a time.  And then pride started creeping back in.  It's insidious.  And as pride crept in, it pushed faith in the good news out.  And Paul says of that good news: “What I handed on to you at the beginning, you see, was what I received, namely this: The Messiah died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, he was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve, then he was seen by over five hundred brothers and sisters all at once, most of whom are still with us, though some fell asleep, then he was seen by James, then by all the apostles.” The good news is that Jesus died and Jesus was raised and that it happened just as God had promised in the scriptures.  Jesus led his people in a new exodus and in that exodus he revealed God's mercy and grace and God's power and might and glory.  He revealed God's faithfulness to his promises.  In Jesus' death sins are forgiven and in his resurrection the life of God, his new creation began.  If the exodus from Egypt and all it revealed about God and its annual remembrance every year in the Passover could dispel Israel's pride and fill the people with faith in their God, how much more should this new exodus from sin and death dispel our pride and bring us humbly in faith to God through Jesus?  If we will only believe and trust. That was Paul's problem.  He was filled with pride.  He refused and refused and refused.  He persecuted the church.  But as a testimony to the patient grace of God, Paul goes on.  He writes, “And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared even to me.”  It's hard to say exactly what he means here when he says “untimely born”.  The word in question is only used this one time in the New Testament, but it refers to a premature birth.  It could be a miscarriage or premature birth where the baby lives, but it could also refer to a child monstrously deformed by having been born premature.  It may be that some people in Corinth who didn't like Paul called him a monster because of his appearance and Paul is humble owning the accusation.  But the key thing, what Paul's getting at is the risen Jesus—not just a vision of Jesus but the real, live living Jesus—appeared to him last of all and Paul wants to stress that he didn't deserve it.  “I'm the least of the apostles,” he writes.  “In fact, I don't really deserve to be called ‘apostle' at all, because I persecuted God's church.  But I am what I am because of God's grace, and his grace to me wasn't wasted.” Paul has been the epitome of the proud Pharisee.  And then he met Jesus on the road to Damascus and every last bit of his pride came crashing down around him.  Seeing Jesus alive was the proof that the gospel was true and if the gospel was true, none of the things in which Paul had prided himself mattered any more.  The only thing that mattered was faith—faith in Jesus the Messiah who died and rose again.  Paul knew he didn't deserve that vision of Jesus.  He didn't deserve the grace of God.  But there it was.  God had given his son to die, so that Paul, the proud Pharisee could live.  And ditto for everyone in the church in Corinth.  God gave his son to die so that those other Jews there could live.  He gave his son to die so that soldier proud of his devotion to Caesar or the prostitute proud of her devotion Aphrodite or the witch proud of her magic or the philosopher proud of his philosophy could live.  Each one of them, confronted with the gospel had their pride dispelled and that same gospel filled them with faith in the living God and his son who died and rose again.  And forever after they came to him in humility to fall on his grace and to praise him for his merciful lovingkindness.  Even Paul, after all he accomplished as a missionary apostle, writes to them: “I am what I am because of the grace of God, and his grace to me wasn't wasted.  On the contrary, I worked harder than all of them—though it wasn't me, but God's grace which was within me.  So whether it was me or them, that was the way we announced it, and that was the way you believed.”  Paul won't even take credit for what had happened in Corinth as a result of the gospel being preached.  It wasn't Paul's skill or his reasoning or his apologetics.  It was the grace of God. Brothers and Sisters, be captivated by the grace of God on display at the cross.  There God displayed his glory and that glory ought to dispel every last bit of pride we have—whatever it is we take pride in.  The gospel shines so brightly, it exposes the things in which we take pride as filthy rags in comparison.  And when pride is gone, then the gospel—this good news of God's saving grace, this good news about the God who humbled himself to take our form and to die for us so that we, his enemies can be his friends again, good news of the god who gave his own life to forgive our sins, that good news ought to fill us with faith overflowing.  So Brothers and Sisters, hear the good news about Jesus this morning.  How he died and rose again for you.  Not because you are so great, but because he loves you—his precious creation so much—hear that good news in the scriptures and in the liturgy and when you come to his Table.  Let it dispel all pride; be humbled by the gospel, and be filled instead with faith.  In the midst of a broken word, faith in the living God will begin to set things to rights, not pride in ourselves.  Faith in the living God, not pride in ourselves, is our real and lasting source of hope. Let's pray: Lord God, you declare your almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity: mercifully grant to us such a measure of your grace, that we, running the way of your commandments, may receive your gracious promises, and be made partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Trinity St. Luke 5:1-11 by William Klock Our Gospels during these first few Sundays of Trinitytide—so far—have all had us following Jesus as he made his way to Jerusalem to observe the Passover for the last time.  But today's Gospel—from the Fifth Chapter of Luke—takes us back to the beginning of Jesus' ministry—those early days when he was travelling around the region of Galilee a long way from Jerusalem.  Luke gives a series of vignettes in Chapter 4.  Every sabbath, he writes, Jesus was teaching in the synagogues.  He read from Isaiah one sabbath in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth and then he told the people, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your own hearing!”  The people were so angry that they tried to stone him and he fled from the town.  So he went to Capernaum and taught in the synagogue there.  That's where a demon-possessed man stood up and shouted at Jesus: “I know who you are.  You're God's holy one!”  And just to prove it, Jesus then cast out the demon and word went out throughout the whole region.  On another sabbath, after preaching in the synagogue, he was invited to the house of Simon Peter.  Peter's mother-in-law was sick with a high fever.  Jesus rebuked the fever and straightaway she recovered and served them lunch.  Pretty soon everyone who was sick or who had a demon showed up and Jesus healed them all.  And because of that, no matter where Jesus went, Luke writes, the crowds hunted for him.  And that's how today's Gospel begins.  One day Jesus was standing by the lake of Gennesaret.  Finally a moment of peace.  An early morning walk on the beach.  He found a little cove.  The shores of Gennesaret (or Galilee as it's otherwise known) are full of little coves.  He watched as the fishermen dragged their boats ashore after a night of hard work.  But then someone came down the trail to the beach.  And he saw Jesus.  And he went running back up the trail out of sight shouting, “He's here!  He's here!  I've found him!”  And others began to follow the man back down the trail to the beach.  And more and more until another crowd had gathered and was pressing in on Jesus.  They had seen for themselves or they had heard the stories of the amazing things the God of Israel was doing through Jesus and they wanted to see more.  They wanted to hear more of the good news that Jesus was proclaiming. But it was no good trying to preach from the middle of the crowd.  People kept interrupting them with their problems.  Even if he could get a few words out, the crowd just couldn't hear him.  So Jesus had an idea.  Sound travels wonderfully over water and the little beach cove was a perfect amphitheatre.  So he made his way down to the water where he'd seen the two boats, and got into one of them, and standing there, he called to one of the fishermen.  Jesus recognised the man.  It was the same fellow who'd invited him to lunch after the synagogue service.  It was the same fellow whose mother-in-law he'd healed.  “Hey you!  Was it Simon or Peter or Simon Peter.  Yes, this is your boat isn't it?  Row me out a little way from the land.”  Maybe Peter felt like he owed Jesus something or maybe he was flattered that Jesus had chosen his boat and remembered him from the other day.  Whatever the case, Peter set aside his net, got in the boat, and rowed Jesus out into the middle of the cove.  And Luke says that Jesus sat down in the boat and began to teach the crowd. It was probably some version of Jesus' favourite sermon.  Luke has preserved one version of that sermon that we sometimes hear called “The Sermon on the Plain”—because Jesus preached it in a flat, open place, but mostly because it contrasts with the version preserved by Matthew, where Jesus preached from a hillside.  We call that version “The Sermon on the Mount”.  That's the sermon where Jesus preaches about the kingdom of God.  It's the sermon in which he calls the people of Israel to trust in the Lord because he never fails to provide.  He clothes the flowers of the field that wither tomorrow.  He feeds the birds so that they have no need to worry.  How much more important are you—the Lord's elect, chosen, called covenant people—than flowers and birds?  So stop worrying and trust him.  Pursue, seek his kingdom above everything else, and trust him to take care of you.  Israel had struggled for forever with idolatry—in one form or another—instead of trusting in and giving her full allegiance to the Lord.  That's what got them exiled to Babylon.  The Pharisees were right.  That idolatry and fickle faith was what kept them in a sort of in-house exile in their own time.  So, in other words, Jesus is saying to the people of Israel: Give the Lord your allegiance.  Give your all to his agenda: to holiness, to being light in the darkness, stop being so fickle.  You do that and, just as he promised, the Lord will take care of you—he'll even pour out his blessings on you. And Peter sat there right in front of Jesus, holding the oars, keeping the boat in position and Jesus facing the shore, and he listened.  The Bible doesn't tell us anything about Peter's past, but just like anyone else, he had one.  I don't think Peter was any great or notorious sinner or anything like that.  Reading between the lines, I think it's safe to conclude that he was just your ordinary, average Judean who obeyed torah as best he could, who celebrated Passover with his family every year, who went to the temple in Jerusalem as required—at least most of the time.  But he knew he wasn't perfect.  He could be impetuous at times.  He could fly off the handle.  But most of all, as Jesus preached, I think Peter was convicted of his own fickleness.  He tithed, but sometimes he did so grudgingly.  He kept the sabbath, but sometimes he worried where the money was going to come from when he took off that one day a week from fishing.  Some days, especially in the summer, sunset on Saturday just couldn't come soon enough for Peter so he could get back to work. Jesus got Peter thinking.  Did he really trust in the Lord?  Or did Peter trust in Peter?  Had he really given his full allegiance to the God of Israel or was Peter really serving Peter?  And Peter mulled on these things as Jesus finished speaking and said to him, “Put out into the deeper part, and let down your nets for a catch.”   Peter was still playing through in his head what Jesus had been saying about trusting the Lord and giving him his full allegiance.  This snapped him out of it.  No more introspection.  It's like Jesus knew what he was thinking.  Peter didn't really want to let down his nets.  He'd fished all night and they hadn't caught anything.  They certainly weren't going to catch anything in the daylight.  That's because they fished with nets made of linen.  The fish could see them in the day, but they'd swim right into them in the dark at night.  And Peter had just finished cleaning and mending his nets.  Now he'd have to clean them—and if they hit a snag, maybe mend them too—all over again.  Peter was born and bred to fishing.  He knew everything there was to know about it.  He knew the habits of fish, he knew about nets, he knew about the seasons, the time of day, and the play of light in the water.  He knew about boats.  He knew about marketing and selling fish.  He was a fisherman!  And if First Century fishermen were anything like Twenty-first Century fishermen, the last thing you'd want to do with Peter is start an argument over fishing—especially if you're not a fisherman.  And, of course, Jesus was not.  His father had taught him the carpentry and the building trade. Peter really, really didn't want to cast his net into the water again and he wouldn't have for anyone else.  But this was Jesus.  Just like everyone else, Peter wasn't quite sure exactly what to make of him, but he'd not only heard the stories; he'd seen it for himself.  His mother-in-law had been on the verge of death, but Jesus made her well—so well that virtually instantly she was up serving them lunch.  And so he says to Jesus, “Master”.  Let me pause there.  Master is okay, but it might not be the best translation.  In the Gospels people address Jesus as “teacher” or “rabbi” or even as “lord”, but unique in Luke's Gospel, people occasionally address him as epistata.  An epistates is someone in charge, someone with authority.  The ten lepers address Jesus as epistata.  The disciples, when they were in the boat being tossed around by the storm, addressed him as epistata.  That's how Peter addresses Jesus here.  “We were working hard all night and caught nothing.  But okay, Master.  You're the boss, you're calling the shots here.  So if you say so, I'll let down the nets.”   Peter sounds like he's letting down his nets grudgingly.  I wonder if that's how it really was.  He's been convicted in his own heart of how he's been half-hearted in serving the Lord.  He's just been hearing Jesus preach about God taking care of flowers and birds.  Or something along those lines, because we know Jesus liked to preach on that topic.  It was exactly what fickle, half-hearted Israel needed to hear.  So Peter probably didn't want to go through the hassle of letting down his nets again, but I think he wanted to trust that through Jesus, the God of Israel really would look after him.  Jesus might not know anything about fishing, but Peter had seen that Jesus had authority and that he took charge of things—whether demons or blindness or sickness or even the fish in the sea.  He could see, plain as day, that the God of Israel was working through Jesus.  Peter was thinking on those words: “Seek first the kingdom of God and all these thing will be added to you.” I think the main reason Luke records these words from Peter about having fished all night and caught nothing is that he wants to remind us that this is the way the Lord works.  Jesus is telling Peter to fish at the worst possible time to fish.  Jesus does this throughout the Gospels.  He hears that Lazarus is sick and near to death, but then he waits three days before going—time enough for Lazarus to be well and truly dead.  So instead of healing Lazarus from sickness, he raises him from the dead and calls him out of his tomb.  Or think of the woman who was bleeding for twelve years or the man who was blind from birth.  In that last instance Jesus had the opportunity to explain why these things happened.  The disciples with their conventional wisdom assumed that either the man or his parents were great sinners and that the Lord had punished him with blindness.  But Jesus said that, no, the man was born blind that God might reveal his glory.  Because that's how the God of Israel works and Israel is the chief example.  The Lord allowed his people to become slaves in Egypt so that he might display his glory both to them and to the watching nations.  In the events of the Exodus the God of Israel exposed the king and the gods of Egypt as frauds, totally lacking the great power and authority they claimed to have.  The God of Israel single-handedly beat the gods of Egypt at their own games and humbled mighty Pharaoh—the greatest king on earth—and drowned his army in the sea.  And at the same time, in Israel, he created a people who would forever be singing his praises and announcing his glory to the nations.  All because they had watched him do the impossible.  Every newborn baby boy was circumcised and, in that, he was given the sign of God's covenant promise.  And every year the fathers of Israel led their families as they ate the Passover meal and recalled the Lord's promises and the glory he displayed on their behalf in the Exodus. Jesus was doing the same thing.  He had come to lead the people in a new exodus and along the way, he was acting out that exodus, that divine deliverance as he did the impossible—and the more impossible the better, because the more power and authority it displayed.  Why had Peter (and James and John, his partners) why had they been skunked that night?  I don't know.  Maybe Peter said something unkind to his wife before leaving that night.  Maybe he'd shorted the Lord in his tithing that week.  Maybe he'd dallied too long with that dancing girl the day before.  Maybe Peter thought his empty nets were punishment for some sin.  But if he'd asked Jesus, “Why did I toil all night and catch nothing?  Did I sin?”  Jesus would have said, “No, Peter.  It was so that the Lord, the God of Israel, would be glorified.” And that's exactly what happens.  Luke writes, beginning at verse 6 that when they let down their nets, they caught such a huge number of fish that their nets began to break.  Usually they'd fish all night for a catch that wouldn't break their nets, but now Peter let down his net and before he could even pull it back into the boat to keep from becoming over-full of fish, the catch was so great that it strained the integrity of the net.  I assume it was just he and Jesus in the boat and he and Jesus were, themselves, straining to pull the net in.  They signalled to their partners in the other boat to come and help them, Luke writes.  So they came, and filled both the boats, and they began to sink.   And right there, in a sinking boat, with fish wriggling all around them, Luke writes that Peter took stock of everything that had just happened.  He fell down at Jesus' knees.  “Depart from me, Lord!” he said, “Because I'm a sinful man!”  James and John, the sons of Zebedee, Simon Peter's partners were just as amazed, Luke writes.  But being in the other boat, they couldn't kneel at Jesus' knees.  But Peter knelt there convicted of his sins by this amazing display of God's glory.  I found myself asking this week why Peter didn't have this same reaction when Jesus healed his mother-in-law.  Why was Peter's mother-in-law sick?  For the same reason: so that Jesus could display the glory of the God of Israel.  Presumably Peter was impressed when he saw the healing.  But it didn't impact him the way the multitude of fish did.  And maybe that's because Peter was a fisherman, not a doctor.  It highlight the fact that God gets to each of us in different ways to convict us of sin and to move us to faith.  Every one of us has a different story of how God got hold of us.  That, too, is how he works.  But one way or another, each of us has been amazed and captivated by the glory of God. Our reactions to that revelation are often different too.  Some people encountered God's glory and were moved to faith as Jesus wiped away their tears.  Peter, however, is met by that glory and is moved to tears.  He knew how the prophets had preached about the coming judgement of Israel for her sins.  He'd heard Jesus preach—not just the warm-fuzzies, but also the announcement of soon-coming judgement.  And when he saw the glory of God, when he experienced the presence of the holy, Peter found himself overwhelmed by his own sinfulness.  He knew he didn't belong in the presence of the holy.  He knew he belonged with those people who would find themselves in the outer darkness weeping and gnashing their teeth.  He responded just like Isaiah when he found himself in the presence of the holiness of God.  Remember Isaiah.  He cried out, “Woe is me!  For I am lost.  For I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.  For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5).  But it was just as Isaiah acknowledged his sinfulness that an angel flew down to touch his lips with a cleansing and holy fire.  The angel announced that his guilt had departed and that his sin had been blotted out.  And when the Lord called out, “Whom shall I send?  Who will go for us?  Who will proclaim my message to Israel?”  Isaiah cried out, “Here I am!  Send me!” And it's that scene all over again in that sinking fishing boat on the Sea of Galilee with fish wriggling all around.  Peter knelt there shaking at Jesus kneels and Jesus said, “Don't be afraid.  From now on you'll be catching men!”  Jesus is, himself, the holy fire who purifies us from our sins. Now, it doesn't come across in our English translations, but when Jesus says that Peter will be catching men, that “catching” isn't usually a word associated with fishing.  It has the sense of catching someone or something alive—like a warrior catching an enemy, but sparing his life.  There's a reason behind Jesus' odd choice of words.  What he's doing is echoing the words of Jeremiah 16.  There, through the Prophet, the Lord announced the judgement that was about to come on the people of Judea for their unfaithfulness and their idolatry.  The Babylonians would come and none would escape.  The Lord says, “I am sending for many fishers, declares the Lord, and they shall catch them…For my eyes are on their ways.  They are not hidden from me, nor is their iniquity concealed form my eyes.”  Jesus draws on the common Greek translation of the prophet.  He uses the same word: catch.  The people of Judea in those days wouldn't be killed, but neither would they escape the judgement of exile.  But now Jesus flips the imagery around.  The people of Judah are still in their long exile, still experiencing the punishment brought by their sins, but now the Lord will send fishers again, this time to catch sinners and to rescue them alive from the coming judgement.  What was in Jeremiah's day an image of the Lord's judgement on sinners, Jesus now turns into an image of God's mercy for them.  As Jesus says in John's Gospel, “God did not send the son into the world to condemn the world, but so that the world could be saved by him.”  That's what Jesus has come to do.  And even though only he can go to the cross to accomplish the redemption of sinners, he's not going on this fishing trip alone.  He's calling Peter (and James and John and eventually a whole host of men and women that we call the church) to go fishing with him, to catch men and women that they—that we—might be delivered from our sins and from the coming judgement. How much of this did Peter understand that day?  Probably not much.  But what he did know is that in Jesus the God of Israel was at work.  He knew that judgement was inevitable and he knew that somehow and in some way the Lord was making deliverance possible through Jesus.  He had seen the glory of the Lord and there was no going back.  And so, Luke writes, They brought their boats to land, then they abandoned everything and followed him.   Peter walked away from all of it.  The boats, the net, the sea, the fish.  They had been his source of security.  That's what he'd trusted.  But he heard that reminder from Jesus: Seek first God's kingdom, and all these things will be added to you.  If the Lord could fill his nets to bursting just to make this point, Peter was ready to trust him with everything—to give his full allegiance to Jesus the Messiah.  If God could do this, he could do anything.  And so Peter gave his allegiance to the Lord Jesus.  And he knew hardship and he knew persecution and eventually he would even come to know martyrdom.  His faith and his love for Jesus would eventually lead him from Jerusalem all the way to Rome and all along the way he proclaimed the glory of God.  All the way he proclaimed the good news that Jesus died to forgive sins and rose to restore God's life to us and to the world, and that this Jesus is the Lord of all who shows us the glory of his Father.  Peter went out into the world to challenge the fake gods and the fake kings in whom we trust, and proclaimed the crucified and risen Lord so that everyone would know the glory of the one, true God.  Peter eventually died for that message.  But Peter knew that his risen Lord was master over death itself, just as he'd been master over all those fish that one morning years before.  And so he trusted Jesus' promise: Seek first God's kingdom and his righteousness—even if it means martyrdom—and he will take care of you. Let's pray: Father, you have called us and made us your people.  You send us out, like Simon Peter, to fish for people that they might know the life of your kingdom.  When we're tempted to protest, thinking that we are unworthy of the task, that we are too sinful, that we aren't up to it, remind us that in Jesus you have forgiven us, that you have made us holy, that you have filled us with your Spirit, and that you have given us this remarkable and irresistible story to tell the world, this story of your goodness, your love, your grace, your mercy, and your faithfulness.  Your glory.  Give us the grace to do the work of your kingdom as we trust in your faithfulness to us and to all who hear it.  Amen.

Trinity 18 Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29 Psalm 19:7-14 James 5:13-20 Mark 9:38-50

Trinity 17 Wisdom 1:16-2:1,12-22 Psalm 54 James 3:13-4:3,7-8 Mark 9:30-37

Trinity 16 Isaiah 50:4-9 Psalm 116:1-8 James 3:1-12 Mark 8:27-38

Trinity 15 Isaiah 35:4-7 Psalm 146 James 2:1-17 Mark 7:24-37

Trinity 14 Deuteronomy 4:1-2,6-9 Psalm 15 James 1:17-27 Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23

Trinity 13 Joshua 24:1-2,14-18 Psalm 34:15-22 Epheisans 6:10-20 John 6:56-59

Trinity 12 Proverbs 9:1-6 Psalm 34:9-14 Ephesians 5:15-20 John 6:51-58

Trinity 11 1 Kings 19:4-8 Psalm 34:1-8 Ephesians 4:2-5:2 John 6:35,41-51

Trinity 10 Exodus 16:2-4, 9-15 Psalm 78:23-29 Ephesians 4:1-16 John 6:24-35

Trinity 9 2 Kings 4:42-44 Psalm 145:10-18 Ephesians 3:14-21 John 6:1-21

Trinity 8 Jeremiah 23:1-6 Psalm 23 Ephesians 2:11-22 Mark 6:30-34, 53-56

Trinity 7 Amos 7:7-15 Psalm 85:8-13 Ephesians 1:3-14 Mark 6:14-29

Trinity 6 Ezekiel 2:1-5 Psalm 123 2 Corinthians 12:2-10 Mark 6:1-13

Trinity 5 Wisdom 1:13-15; 2:23-24 Psalm 30 2 Corinthians 8:7-15 Mark 5:21-43

Trinity 4 Job 38:1-11 Psalm 107:1-3,23-32 2 Corinthians 6:1-13 Mark 4:35-41

Today's Mass is called the Sunday Next Before Advent. it is a week given to prepare for this blessed liturgical season. We turn a corner from the long season of Trinitytide where we have reflected on how we should live from the finished work of Jesus Christ. Advent is the Season where we begin again preparing both for His coming and His Second Coming. St. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 11 that "If we would judge ourselves, we would not be judged." Today we understand this to mean if we would come into agreement with God each day on how He sees us, we would be in agreement over our sin and our fallenness. If we live in that way now, we encounter the Divine mercy of God on a daily basis and find great healing and transformation in our lives. We see that if let God judge us and give us His mercy now, we shall surely have it on the last day.

We are beginning to turn the corner from the Liturgical Season of Trinitytide to the Season of Advent. In the Season of Advent, we enter into a longing for the deliverer to come and deliver us. We also enter into a preparation of our soul for the Second Coming of our Savior. Every one of us needs healing and deliverance from our fallen condition and the suffering that condition causes us. Thanks be to God that this is our Lord's desire, to deliver us and lift us up. Today we look at an authentic cry for deliverance as our prayer even in preparation for our journey through Advent.

Twentieth Sunday in Trinitytide Exodus 33:12-23 Psalm 99 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 Matthew 22:15- 22

Twentieth Sunday in Trinitytide Exodus 33:12-23 Psalm 99 1 Thessalonians 1:1-10 Matthew 22:15- 22

Trinitytide is the liturgical season that teaches us how to live as Christians with the finished work of Jesus Christ accomplished and the Holy Spirit having been poured out. It is no surprise that on the first Sunday of this season, our Lord puts before us the foundation virtue and tells us to become it. The greatest of all virtues is Divine love. The Apostle St. John taught in 1 John 4 "If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us." Today we look at the Divine love of God and how the greatest daily litmus test indicating whether we are actively abiding in Christ or not is this: are we becoming love?

Living into the Season of Trinitytide

The greatest of all virtues is set right before us on the first day of the Litrugical Season of Trinitytide; a season in which we consider how it is that we now can live as those filled with the Holy Spirit. Today, by considering both the Parable of the Rich Man & Lazarus as well as the writing of the Apostle John from 1 John 4, we see that it is only possible to become love if we have first truly experienced the outpouring of God's love into our lives daily. Living waters cannot flow out of us unless they are daily being received with in us from the Lord.

June 21, 2020 - Today is the first Sunday in the longest liturgical season of the year, Trinitytide. Having remembered by grace the conception, birth, life, death, Resurrection, and Ascension of our Lord Jesus Christ; and, having celebrated the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon all of those in Christ at Pentecost we turn our attention throughout this blessed season to learn how shall we now live because of all of this. On the first Sunday after Trinity, our Lord so faithfully sets the stage by calling us to become love as God is love. This homily encourages us to offer ourselves to Christ in such a way that we become the experience of the love that God is for all around us.

This week Fr. Alex Farmer brings the sermon. Pentecost is the day Christians celebrate the gift of the Holy Spirit being sent to the early believers in Jerusalem. Liturgically, it is the start of the longest season of the Christian calendar: Trinitytide (or "Ordinary Time" as some call it). We're glad you found us. If you'd like to learn more about who we are, check out the links below. servantsanglican.org linktr.ee/servantsanglican #ServantLifeGNV #ServantsAtHome

A guest homily from our Seminarian, John Mack, concluding our Trinitytide sermon series from the Epistle to the Ephesians. Text: Ephesians 6:10-23.

Part 2 of our Trinitytide sermon series through the Epistle to the Ephesians. Ephesians 1:15-23. Note: by way of correction when discussing the parable of the pharisee and the publican, I mistakenly refer to the pharisee as the publican! That's what I get for going off script!

We begin our Trinitytide preaching series through the Epistle of St. Paul to Ephesians with Eph. 1:1-14.

June 30, 2019 - Here on the first day of the Liturgical Season of Trinitytide, we are given two Scriptures that offer us the true foundation of our Christian life. Today we receive the call to become love as God is love. We hear this call clearly in 1 John Chapter 4 and then we see love fleshed out for us in the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus from the Gospel of St. Luke Chapter 16. Love is the offering of our life for the sake and blessing of another just as we have received from God. At the core of this sermon is the Orthodox prayer, "Lord set us free from the service of ourselves that we may do Thy will."

June 10, 2018 - On this first Sunday in the Season of Trinitytide, we are given an incredible teaching on becoming love as God is love by St. John in St. John Chapter 4. In this reflection we consider his words section by section. We remember that we cannot become love without first being recipients of the love of God in our own lives. What keeps us from experiencing God's love toward us? When the answers to that question are thrown down we are able to receive the limitless love of God which draws us to Himself and transforms our lives forever.

Mr. Sharad Yadav | Psalm 137 | 10th Sunday of Trinitytide by All Souls Anglican

Christ Our Clothes | Fr. Stephen Hall | Galatians 3.23-29 | Fifth Sunday of Trinitytide by All Souls Anglican

Instructed Eucharist | Fr. Stephen Hall | Fourth Sunday of Trinitytide by All Souls Anglican

The Great Prophet | Fr. Stephen Hall | Luke 7.11-17 | Third Sunday of Trinitytide by All Souls Anglican