I expect you have a favorite movie, or movies. One of mine is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel which came out in 2011. Who remembers seeing it?

A quick reminder for those of you who haven’t watched it as many times as me. A group of older British people (all played by familiar actors) decide to retire to India to a hotel which has a wonderful brochure. But when they get there, they find that instead of being beautifully appointed it is direly in need of repair – one bedroom has no door and another is full of pigeons. The hotel is run by a young and eternally optimistic Indian man, Sonny. In the face of their indignation, Sonny frequently declares “Everything will be alright in the end, and if it is not yet alright it is not yet the end.”

Which is a wonderful statement of the Christian hope of the eschaton – that is the end of the age when all things will be reconciled in Christ. “Everything will be alright in the end, and if it is not yet alright it is not yet the end.”

Today we celebrate that hope - the hope of the fully realized Creation, reconciled to God in Christ. The day when everything is brought into balance and the lion lies down with the lamb in the Great Shalom. Today is the last day of the Church’s year and so it is a fitting day for us to celebrate our hope and our trust that “everything will be alright in the end, and if it is not yet alright it is not yet the end.”

And yet, and yet – our Gospel reading is not the victorious Sovereign Jesus seated on the heavenly throne surrounded by Cherubim and Seraphim and by all the beings of the cosmos worshipping and praising, living fully the love of God. No, it’s quite the opposite. Jesus, dying on the cross.
And here my friends is the contradiction, the paradox, the conundrum which is at the heart of the mystery of our faith.

In the middle of human agony, betrayal, suffering, Jesus IS the Sovereign of the world

The Apostle Paul tells of a time when he heard the Holy Spirit tell him, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:9)

My power is made perfect in weakness.
God’s power is made perfect in the weakness of the cross.
It makes no sense, does it?

Yet this knowledge of God’s power in weakness is absolutely fundamental to our understanding of Jesus’ teaching. He said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek…” (Matt. 5:2-5) and “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt.5:44)

These are not positions of power as we understand power. Yet this is the way of Jesus. And as his disciples, it is our way.

On the night of his arrest, Luke tells us that, ‘when Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear. But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him. And on the cross, he said, "Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing."

Forgiveness and healing, not hatred and violence. This is the way of Jesus the Christ.

God’s power is made perfect in weakness. God takes the total disaster of the crucifixion and turns it around. We cannot separate the crucifixion and the resurrection. You can’t have one without the other. The resurrection and subsequent ascension of Jesus the Christ come directly out of the crucifixion.

Jesus did not defend himself against the soldiers who came in the night. Jesus did not defend himself against the accusations of the high priests. He did not defend himself against Herod, or against Pontius Pilate. His non-defensiveness was his strength. God’s power is made perfect in weakness.

This is not as simple as when we humans are weak and down on our luck, God is strong. It is something much greater and more difficult to understand. It is the paradox that in God’s topsy turvy kingdom, the terrible weakness of Jesus is also his glory.

Philippians puts it like this, “And being found in human form, [Christ] humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.” (Phil.2:8-11)

And how does that passage start? It starts with the instruction that we are to have the same mind as Christ. We are to think like Christ who did not cling to the status and power of being God but instead became human and was obedient to the point of death.

We are to think like Christ?     Wow.

There’s another Greek word for this idea - Kenosis  which means pouring out. Just as Jesus poured out his life for us, so we are to pour out our lives for one another and for the life of the cosmos.
And therein lies the power of God.

We have an example of this pouring out in our galaxy. The sun, which provides the light which is the source of our physical life, the sun is burning itself out. It is steadily using up its fuel and in about 5 billion years it will stop giving out light and become a red giant. The kenosis  - the pouring out and dying of the sun is what gives us life.

In a similar way, the pouring out – the kenosis - of Jesus gives us life as he is the Sovereign of the cosmos.

I find it really difficult to wrap my mind around this paradox. For some Christians, power is in having firearms, or in political power or even in armies and militia. But that’s not how we understand Jesus the Christ. God’s power is made perfect in weakness, in forgiveness, in generous healing love.

Jesus dying in agony on the cross is also, at the same time, the Cosmic Christ.

And the calling forth of Creation, Jesus dying and rising again, the hope of the eschaton is all one story -the story of God’s creative and powerful love which calls a cosmos into being and into intentional and loving relationship consummated in the Christ.

People of God, we are called to live like Jesus. We are called to pour out our lives for one another and for the flourishing of all beings. We are called to risk being seen as weak when we don’t retaliate, when we don’t take up arms, when we don’t fight back. We are called to be seen as weak when we refuse to hate but rather love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

And we can take that risk because we know that God’s power is made perfect in weakness. And we know that Jesus is sitting at the right hand of God and that “Everything will be alright in the end and if it is not yet alright it is not yet the end.”

Or as the 14th century mystic, Mother Julian of Norwich put it, 'All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.' 

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 
 
 
 

Last week we reflected on the eschaton or the end of time when all things will be brought into balance. Today’s readings continue that theme. The first reading, from Isaiah, starts with the thrilling words, “For I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating…” (Is 65:17)

The Gospel however is not so optimistic.

When some people were admiring the temple Jesus instead of admiring its beauty, declared that it would all be destroyed. And he was right. Some forty years later it was gone. In the year 66, there was a Jewish uprising against the Romans, and in 70 the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, eventually destroying the city, killing or enslaving tens of thousands of people and razing the buildings.

I don’t know whether Jesus had a premonition, or whether he knew that the ways things were going politically it was bound to happen or whether, since the gospel was written after the destruction of the temple, the gospel writer figured that Jesus would surely have foreseen such a terrible event. Whatever it was, we can be certain that this gospel passage relates to the devastation of Jerusalem.

The destruction of the temple meant an end to temple sacrifices and Judaism changed radically to a religion based on the Torah and Rabbinic teaching and centered in synagogues. At the same time, Christianity was developing as more than a Jewish sect and Christians were being persecuted. So we can take this whole gospel text as describing the upcoming conflict with Rome in Jerusalem and the terrible persecution of Christians under the Emperor Nero.

Which for us is almost 2,000 years in the past. Can an ancient text prophesying an ancient disaster have any relevance for us today?

Whenever we read scripture there are two of us present. Us, the readers, and the Holy Spirit. We can think of it as a triangle – the scripture, the gathered community of faith (that’s us) and the Holy Spirit. So our task is to read and listen and ask “What is the Holy Spirit saying to us this morning?”

I hear something about permanence and impermanence. What lasts and what doesn’t.

In the past week or two several people, both members and non-members have commented to me about how much they like this space for worship and for music. But as a congregation you know that buildings do not last forever. Just like the temple, in 1961 St. Peters was destroyed by fire, but unlike the temple you were able to rebuild and this is the result.

Church buildings do not last forever and neither does church as we know it. Rectors retire and move on, beloved parishioners die or move or are no longer able to get here. Everything changes.

Except one thing.

The incredible and astonishing love of God.

The one thing that lasts is love. Which is why Jesus can say “…do not be terrified… not a hair of your head will perish.”

He is not promising that our bodies will be permanent. He is not promising that we will be protected from danger or kept away from grief. We only have to look at his own life to know that. What he is promising is that God’s love is permanent, God’s love is greater than warfare, greater than betrayal, greater than pain and God’s love always underpins us. God’s love always sustains us even in the darkest times. God’s love will bring us through.

And our love too, our love lives on.

For love is the one thing that is permanent. Not the sentimental, hallmark type of love but the deep love that Christ births in us. The deep love that wants just one thing, the flourishing of all beings in the reign of God.

As you know, the two great commandments are to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. This is bedrock. This is permanent.

Whatever we are doing we can do it with love. Sometimes I imagine that all our lives we are busy building things, building a family, a career, a church, a good life but that when we die all that falls away. And then we realize; we realize that what we thought was real and important was just the scaffolding. What we have actually been building, the one thing that lasts, is love itself. And as the scaffolding falls away, we can see with God’s eyes the love that we have built.

There’s a wonderful song by Dolly Parton, “When we’re Gone, long gone.”  Here’s the chorus:

And when we're gone long gone
The only thing that will have mattered
Is the love that we shared
And the way that we cared
When we're gone, long gone.

For love is the one thing that lasts and that is our eschatological hope, that in the end it will all fall away except for love.

The prophet Isaiah put it like this:

“I am about to create new heavens and a new earth; the former things shall not be remembered or come to mind. But be glad and rejoice forever in what I am creating; for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.”

In the place of the old physical Jerusalem which beautiful as it was could be destroyed by the Romans - in place of the old Jerusalem, the old world, God is creating a new heavens and a new earth. A new heavens and a new earth filled with joy and people who delight God’s heart – the Great Shalom.

And as co-creators with God we too are building the new heavens and new earth, the Great Shalom of love. Whenever we choose to let go of anger and resentment, whenever we forgive, whenever we look for the best in someone rather than criticizing them, we are building the new. Whenever we stand up for justice and refuse to be caught up in politics of hate, we are building the new.

People of God, this is our calling. We are called to share God’s steadfast love even in times of change, in times of disaster – we are midwives of the new heaven and the new earth which God is even now creating in our midst. And we can be confident that however bad things get, God’s love is sustaining us and holding us close.
 
Let us pray for help in creating the new. Please join me in the prayer attributed to St Francis which you will find on page 833

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is
hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where
there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where
there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where
there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to
be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand;
to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is
in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we
are born to eternal life. Amen.

​the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall
 
 

The season is changing, fall is here and winter is on its way. I had the joy of spending most of this week in Virginia with dear friends, surrounded by trees, many of whom were shedding their leaves for the winter and creating an ever-changing display of extraordinary color and beauty. And here on Morro Bay, the wintering birds are arriving together with the beginning of the rainy season.

In the Church, the season is changing as well. In just two weeks we will be celebrating the last day of the Church’s year, the Reign of Christ; and then Advent starts as we prepare once again for our remembrance of the coming of the Christ in Bethlehem. If you forget that the Church’s New Year is right after Thanksgiving, it can seem surprising that one week we celebrate the culmination of the Christ event – the time yet to come when all things are brought into balance - and the next we are preparing for the coming of the Christ in the Incarnation.

But if you listen carefully to our readings now and into Advent you will hear a common theme. “Get ready, Christ is coming!”  Both these last Sundays in Pentecost and the first Sundays in Advent are focused on the hope of Christ’s coming, both in the incarnation and at the end of time. We have a long word for our belief in the coming time when God  will, as we say in our Eucharistic prayer, “in the fullness of time, put all things in subjection under your Christ.” Theologians talk about the eschaton which comes from the Greek word for last. So our eschatological hope is in the coming of Christ in the end times.

Some people get caught up in ideas about the end times. The end of the world has been predicted again and again, some people count as many as 300 times over the years. In today’s gospel reading the Sadducees (who didn’t believe in resurrection) were trying to trick Jesus by asking him a question about resurrection. He told them they were thinking too literally.

There are many people who want to take things literally – who want the certainty of knowing exactly how the end times will unfold, and who compare the political events in our world with Biblical prophecies.  It seems that the church in Thessaloniki was getting confused by people doing exactly that, because in the New Testament lesson we heard Paul telling them not to get caught up and scared by stories about the end times. The stories he said were just a scam.

I admit find myself doing it sometimes – wanting to identify this world leader as the great beast of Revelation, and this one as the Anti-Christ, as though somehow condemning them in my mind will make it all better.

But our eschatological hope is in something much more vague and yet much more certain – the unconditional and never-ending love of the living God. Our eschatological hope is that the living God is creating in every minute and working with us to bring about the very best outcome in every situation. So even when it doesn’t look like it, the ever-expanding universe is being drawn towards the highest and best.

That is our hope, people of God, that in every situation however dire, God is living, God is here among us and beside us and within us and is working with us to bring about the peace and justice of Shalom. We translate shalom as peace, yet it is a fullness of peace which means much, much, more than just an absence of conflict. Its root in ancient Hebrew has the sense of making whole, of well-being and health.

The living God did not just start the ball rolling with a big bang and then wander off. The living God is right here with us as we work to expand the reign of God, as we work for shalom in our lives, our community and our world.

Working for shalom does not necessarily mean doing things because shalom is a state of being.
Looking again at the New Testament reading. Paul does not give thanks for all the good work that the Thessalonian church is doing, no, he gives thanks that they are called to be “the first fruits for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and through belief in the truth.” I’m not going to unpack that statement this morning; my point is that who they are in Christ is as important as what they are doing. The doing flows naturally from the being.

Our own experience of shalom is important. Jesus once said that the kingdom of God is within you. (Lk 17:21) When our inner life is one of shalom it creates a beautiful ripple effect which blesses those around us. I imagine Jesus was like that. I think that just being in his presence would have brought a sense of comfort and peace because he was abiding in God. Wouldn’t it be amazing if our inner lives were so deeply grounded in Spirit that wherever we go, even to Albertsons, people around us would find themselves calmed and turning toward God?

Inner shalom does not come by ignoring the difficult things both in ourselves and around us but by praying for healing, and remembering that difficulty is not everything.

I don’t know if you have ever had this experience - I’m listening to the news on the radio while I’m driving. I’m driving through great and amazing beauty but my mind and my attention is on something that is happening in Washington, and it’s not good. But then I turn off the radio and suddenly notice that the tide is low and the estuary is full of birds and the hills are starting to turn green, and the marine layer is giving way to sun. My attention shifts and I give thanks.

I think it’s like that with the ‘not-yet but coming’ end times. They give us hope because they provide us with a vision of what is possible. Although we get to focus on what is in front of us, bringing shalom into the difficulties of daily living in this time and place, we do that within the context of something much bigger. Within the context of the creative love of God drawing all things towards balance and completion.

Our trust in the endless love of God helps us to know that we are working and walking towards something glorious.

Most of us in this room have more of our lives behind us than in front of us. It has been fascinating to read the biographies that y’all have been sharing in the Pebble - the places we have been, the people we have loved, the decisions we have made and how our lives have unfolded in expected and unexpected ways. And my friends we have the confidence that our path is taking us toward something much more glorious yet – the day when we will meet God face to face.

And we can take every step between now and then with hope. Yes, our bodies are not what they once were and sometimes it seems like just simple activities take so much longer, but we are, both together and individually, living every day in the presence of the living God, with the support and encouragement of the Spirit, knowing that we are, however imperceptibly, moving toward the Great Shalom.

the Rev. Dr. Caroline Hall