Homiletix

So, we thought you all might enjoy some of our sermons from this year of multiple sermonizings.

Click the link below to hear Noel's sermon on the Feast Day of Clive Staples "Jack" Lewis, November 22nd.  If you so desire, the reading that the sermon is based on is 1 Peter 1:3-9, read it if you want to follow along a little better. :)  Enjoy!

Living Hope

Happy Shriving!

Noel wrote this blog many years ago (remember when we all had Xanga's?) to first introduce a lot of her Resurrection friends to an old tradition of Pancake Suppering for Shrove Tuesday.  This year, we are not responsible for creating our own familial occasion but rather will be fellowshiping with the others at our church over pancakes.  Woohoo!  Most of you now probably know about this tradition now, but I thought it'd be funny to review something written ages ago....

"ok, so I am going to introduce you all to the Shrove Tuesday (Mardi Gras) pancake supper tradition of the Catholic and Anglican (and probably other) churches as well, I'm sure but hey, that's what I know. I was shocked and dismayed to find out that hardly
any of you had heard of, let alone participated in one such tradition...all you non and new anglicans out there!

As we all know, today is the day before Ash Wednesday and the inauguration of Lent. We all usually give up something for Lent...often foods or the like...as have countless number of saints before us. And back in the day, Christians would give up eating things fatty, eggs and dairy stuff, but in order to not be wasteful (yay for stewardship) they would eat all of the things that would go bad in the forty days of Lent on tuesday night. And it just so happens that pancakes are comprised of these aformentioned ingredients the Christians were giving up for Lent. Thus,
the pancake supper tradition and while some have taken this to absurd extremes-races,
olympics, even changing it to an enchilada dinner in a church in New Mexico, etc...
Consequently, Mardi Gras comes from this eating all the fat business, getting it's
name "Fat Tuesday".

Etymology lesson of the day: "shrove" comes
from the old christian practice of "shriving" which literally means "taking
off". And it was marked as a day of confession before entering Lent as well
as of feasting before entering this penitent season.  

For you Church History buffs out there, here's a link to some interesting legends on traditions of pancake suppering:
http://www.cptryon.org/prayer/season/fusco.html

And here's a prayer from our Eastern Orthodox siblings for this day of shriving.  We'll be praying this for you all and ask that you pray for us as well that the Lord will show us the cruciform way through which He transforms us into His likeness this Lent:

My dear Saviour who is Love, fill me with Your love that embraces and holds not back,
that accepts and not condemns, that forgives and not retaliates, that stretches out and not stagnates.

Make this Lent a positive time, a growing time but also a reflective time to see myself as You see me.
It is only when my soul is stripped and naked that I can begin once again. Help me to shed all my wrappings this Lent so that I may stand before You as You know me. Amen and Amen.

where you'll find us

So, we're now into our third week of classes or so and we thought you might like to know about our classes for this semester.  Classes do occupy about oh, let's see 75% of our time and about 98% of our mental energy (the rest given to things like studying Whedon's "Firefly" and how to get to the next age in Myst III).  But, we're having a good time and though this semester is much more of a doozie than last semester, we have a lot of fun things we're learning, researching and writing on.

Plus, we thought in case anyone calls or wants to get in touch with us, you can see where we're at and why we're not answering!  Though, this of course, does not include sleeping, working, etc.  We also have morning and evening prayer and are required to attend the one prior or after if we are on campus for class.  It's great.  Noel just officiated for the first time last week and did well, she even found a cassock about the right length and she didn't trip once!

Greg's days
Monday morning: Pastoral Leadership -pastoral care and servant leadership

*he almost always works from 2-10:30 pm on this day

Tuesday afternoon:  Christian Ethics - all things methodological and Biblical re: Ethics and morality

Thursday morning:  Medieval and Reformation Church History (lovingly dubbed "Mr. Church") - fabulous class on the church both on "the continent" and in Britain from about 500-1650ish

Thursday afternoon:  The Gospels - that is, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John

Noel's days

Monday evening: Hebrew - learning Hebrew, quiz every week, learn at least 10 new words per class, very difficult

Tuesday afternoon: Christian Ethics - Read Hays "Moral Vision of the NT", it's great

Thursday morning:  MR. Church 

Thursday afternoon: The Gospels - learning the whole book of John for a final exam? priceless.

Hope your days go well also.  Greg works at least 3 8-hr shifts a week, some combo of M-W-F-Sat/Sun.  Noel is doing odd jobs as they are presented to her.  Please pray for Greg as he is sleeping (at noon) while I publish this blog as he now has the cold that I had last week and is quite under the weather.  Thanks, dear 'pfiles!

some more incomplete works

 On a personal note:  Noel dedicates this "essay", an assignment for Early Church History, to write an article, as for a church newsletter, on the practical implications of the doctrine of the Trinity, to the good people of Holy Trinity Anglican in San Antonio, TX (not least of which to her parents who dubbed it thusly).  Thank you for worshiping God as He reveals Himself; as the loving Trinity.  Noel is very excited to worship with you one day soon.

Greetings, church! As we approach Holy Trinity Sunday, let us imagine together our ordinary days profoundly lived in the light of the One God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit whom we worship. What do you imgine when I say that? Do you think of an apple? Water? A flame? While these analogies can be helpful in certain matters, what I want to address here will glean little help from them lest, as Gregory of Nazianzus says, “we be frenzy-stricken for prying into the mysteries of God” (Guy, 280). So, let us proceed in humility. Because we take God at His word that He has revealed Himself as Trinity that this should have an impact on our daily lives. But, perhaps, we might ask, I know we affirm, pray and worship the Trinitarian God on Sunday morning and in morning and evening prayer, but I’m still fuzzy on the details, can you fill them in? I hope St. Augustine might be of some help to us on this. He says,

“has redeemed us through His own blood, giving His soul for our souls,
His flesh for our flesh, and has also poured out the Spirit of the Father
for the union and communion of God and humanity, imparting indeed
God to human beings by the Spirit, and on the other hand, attaching
humanity to God by His incarnation, and bestowing upon us at His
coming immortality durably and truly, by means of communion with God.”

This is a good synopsis of God’s working out of our salvation in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus as well as through the indwelling of the Spirit. What do we see that can help us in our daily living? How does this effect how I go to work tomorrow or hang out with my kids tonight?

Well, first of all, we can trust in the mediation of Christ that Augustine spoke of, both His mediation of Himself to us and of our humanity into the life of God. Isn’t that amazing? That sends shivers down my spine to think that God did that! We receive this mediation through the Spirit, moment by moment. And friends, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom! 2 Corinthians 3 goes on to say that in this freedom, we reflect the Lord’s glory and are being transformed into Christ’s likeness by the Holy Spirit. And He is with us always as Christians. So, engage Him at all times of day with confidence, ask Him to join you to Christ’s likeness and to live into those good works He has for you. Ask Him to help you really love and care for Jim in the cubicle next to you whom you are sure has a fingernail growth condition for as often as you hear his clippers being used! Be assured that the triune God is working in your workplace, at your home, in your grocery store, at the post office and He invites you to participate with Him as a minister of reconciliation in the world. So, repent for those times you have been unwilling to participate and ask Him to help you understand Him more and to help you be more like Him.

Another means of practicing our Trinitarian faith is through remembrance. Friends, we as Anglicans, stand in a long tradition of those who have chosen to remember and celebrate God’s events in history. You might notice that much of our liturgy involves this recollection with gratitude, nowhere noted more than in the Great Thanksgiving, Eucharist. By remembering the salvation trajectory, we can know Father, Son and Holy Spirit for willing together to sustain the creation even after sin entered, for destroying the power of sin and death, and restoring us to new life in communion with God, as Augustine said. In all things, thank God for the ways in which He does these things in your life now, recall them with others, use them to tell others the Good News. Even ask the Spirit to help bring these things to mind as part of practicing this Trinitarian way of living.

Last but certainly not least is that our Trinitarian God is within Himself love and relationship. The source of all our love, ability and yearning to relate is in Him. He is known in relationship and it is for life in Him that we are saved. When Jesus prays, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know you sent me and loved them even as you loved me,” He is not just saying something nice and comforting. He is expressing the reality that the triune God desires for us, that the Church be Christ’s body, one with Him and the Father. After Jesus ascends, He sends the Spirit of Truth to work in those whom He loves the reality of unity that is the same unity between the Father and the Son. How do we know this? Because the Spirit is also one with the Father and Son as God! So, we are, in a profoundly real way, being bound together in love as members of Christ’s body, the same love that is found in the Trinitarian God of the Universe. So, love in freedom! Practice our Trinitarian faith with risky love through hospitality, gift-giving, gift-receiving, prayer for one another, asking the Spirit to help you see others needs and a way to help, carrying others burdens, befriending the lonely, and all of those things that Jesus did in the Gospels in the power of the Spirit. We are living into our call as the royal priesthood when we welcome others into loving relationship just as we were welcomed into the loving relationship of the Triune God by the mediation of Christ worked out in us by the Spirit.

 

We will explore more of these themes and perhaps imagine a few more as we explore the vastness of the doctrine of the Trinity in our Christian Ed series beginning in Pentecost. All of this here has been just a tantalizing morsel of what is to come and at the least you’ll learn some new cool words to impress friends and family! We will meet together in the hope that “we, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that we may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” 

PT500

Whoooooaaaa.... we're halfway there                              

WHOOOOAAAA-OH!

livin on a prayer!

Not only great in the Rockband experience between readings and assignments, but no greater singing prophet of the 80s than bon jovi could've given us this gem of truth. Halfway through the semester and we're looking to be in good shape. We're still hunting for and of course praying for balance in the force of our lives: schoolwork, workwork, playtime and praytime.

To focus on the schoolwork, this week we highlight Spiritual Formation with Martha Giltinan. A quick aside concerning Martha (as it is inevitable): We were warned about her more than any other professor as someone who is difficult to follow and “a little over-the-top”. She's a Drama Queen Empress and “little over-the-top” is far too insufficient, however, she has offered some of the richest in-class experiences we've had in some time and she approaches the material from such a sense of pastoral conviction that this class is one of the highlights of the week. She doesn't strike me as one who would offer benefits for brown-nosing, so I'm very comfortable lauding her... I'm also comfortable going on record as saying that when I first heard her launch into soliloquy I thought she sounded like a cross between Bullwinkle J Moose and Billy Sunday (what higher praise is there for a first impression?)

Spiritual Formation classes I've (Greg) had in the past have been very basic, “let's read some Dallas Willard” and learn about spiritual disciplines and talk about all those things we want to do for our growth in the Lord but certainly don't have time to do. Good stuff, but always the same stuff. I don't believe we've cracked open any Dallas Willard yet, but the disciplines and the quest for virtue hasn't changed all that much... now we're just reading everyone who likely influenced the Willard. This is great news! We don't have to try and be inventive or creative about fasting, lectio divina, Sabbath rest, the practice of the presence of God, etc because learning how to grow in Christ-likeness and abiding with God through the continual and active presence of the Spirit isn't new either... the people of God have been getting it wrong (and getting it right) for centuries!!! Blessed be the Name!

So, from this class we've learned to envelop ourselves in the great cloud of witnesses that we might learn a lesson or two and go and do likewise, trusting that God will draw us close and conform us to the image of his Son as we walk on that way of becoming like Jesus (status viatoris for the Pieper fans out there). We're going to forget to read our Bibles somedays and we're gonna forget about the blessing of fasting and just be cranky; but all glory to Him who loves us and calls us His own and nurtures us with His Spirit that sometimes we will get it right (whatever that means in this crazy world of spiritual formation) and we will mature and grow in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Since I opened with a hymn, I figure it's good to close with one as well: