Blood Covenant (sermon)
I shall speak of the Sacred and the Profane. The Profane is on me. The Sacred is in the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. You may be seated.
Good morning, if you don’t know me, my name is Tom, I was priest here 1984 to 1998, a highlight of my life. Apalachicola is magical and beautiful and old and clean and new, but always magical. Coming back to settle in for ten days feels like Aslan calling me back into Narnia and never having left; except that if this were truly Narnia, upon crossing the Franklin County line I would’ve instantly become 48 as I was the first time Aslan called me here, instead of being 82; and I would never leave again.
It’s a joy and a surprise to be here this morning. A joy because I’m still in love with you. A surprise for several reasons, chiefly that over the years since we retired and moved away nineteen years ago, you’ve been in my dreams. Sad to report(!), always some variation of anxiety dream in which, supplying here for Martha or Father Joe, I drive up at the last minute on Sunday morning and, getting out of my car, hear the opening processional hymn starting without me. The sacristy/vesting room door is locked, I cannot get inside and start to panic. When Dot Hill or Susan Galloway opens the door for me, I go in to get vested, find that I forgot to bring a vestment. Looking through the closet, although I look and look and look and try on this vestment and that one, I cannot find a vestment that fits me. I hear the processional hymn ending and hope someone will say the opening acclamation and collect to get the service started. Panicking, I keep looking for a vestment until I realize I don’t know where my sermon notes are, search for them, realize they’re lost, and head around to the front door without a vestment or sermon only to find that you’ve completely rebuilt the church, you’ve moved the front door, I do not know where it is anymore, and I race around looking and cannot find how to get inside. By this time I’m quite late and I hear you singing the sequence, gospel hymn, and I’m still not inside, and my sermon starts in a couple minutes. I run around and finally get inside the church through the back door only to discover I’ve wasted the whole hour and all of you got tired of waiting and went home. I get in the pulpit and wake up in a sweat and heart pounding, preaching my sermon anyway, to empty pews.
My other anxiety dream is about my Navy years, equally anxious, but this is my Trinity Church anxiety dream, as it raids my sleep from time to time. So, you have been on my mind these last two decades, and also in my heart.
All of which reminds me, Jean Purdy, whom Linda looks after, Jean sends her best, said to tell you hello.
And the Nichols family, who participated faithfully here at Trinity for many years, certainly during my time with you, will have a memorial service for Dr. Photis Nichols next Saturday morning at eleven o’clock, Martha asked me to officiate for them. They plan a reception after, in Benedict Hall, everyone invited. Constantine Nichols is to coordinate all that with Shannon in the church office.
Now for the sacred.
This gospel from Matthew comes round every three years: I’ve preached it a dozen times over the decades, and it stirs memories and a cold chill. It’s a hard and unappealing gospel that some Bible scholars believe may reflect a disciplinary issue in the early Church rather the heart and mind and lips of Jesus. When I was here as your priest, it came round last in 1993 and 1996; and a day or two later one of our parishioners came to the office complaining to me about one of you as a sinner who should not be allowed to participate in worship. Listening, I reminded him or her (you will never know) that at Matthew 7 Jesus also said “judge not lest ye be judged,” and I suggested to the complaining person that his or her judging that other person might be more disobedient and sinful than the sin he or she was complaining about in the other. It’s well more than twenty years, but my recollection is, that accusing parishioner quit coming to church here, now angry with me. So with that unpleasant recollection, I leave this threatening gospel for Martha next time, when it comes round again in September 2020.
My sermon preference then is the Exodus old time Sunday School Bible story about Moses. You will remember that last week Moses encountered God at the Burning Bush: “Moshe! Moshe! you’re on holy ground, welcome! Take off yo’ shoes and make yo’self comfortable, I’ve been hoping you’d come by: we need to talk.” To Moses’ chagrin, God names Himself, Yahweh, eeyeh asherrr eeyeh, I AM that I AM, and drafts Moses to lead the Israelites out of bondage in Egypt, through forty years in the wilderness, toward the Promised Land.
That relationship between God and Moses does not start out well, does not go well all the forty years, and does not end well for Moses. And here we are at the start of it this morning: after plagues of water into blood, frogs, lice, boils, locusts and other miseries, now the horrendous and devastating Tenth Plague, God about to kill the firstborn child of every Egyptian family, to force Pharaoh and all Egypt “Let my people go.”
Before that night of desolating, profane horror that we can hardly understand about our God, whose commandment is Love, God establishes with his people, a Passover meal of blood covenant to be commemorated annually in every Jewish household. It will be remenbered throughout all generations forever as the night, the time when God saved Israel.
For us Christians, closely tied to Passover in the Last Supper, is our own blood covenant salvation meal, Holy Communion, Eucharist, Mass, the Lord’s Supper, in which, anamnesis, we do not forget, we remember Jesus in the Upper Room with his friends before his blood sacrifice on Calvary:
On the night he was handed over to suffering and death, our Lord Jesus Christ took bread; and when he had given thanks, he broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, "Take, eat: This is my Body, which is given for you. Do this for the remembrance of me."
After supper he took the cup of wine; and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, and said, "Drink this, all of you: This is my Blood of the new Covenant, shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this for the remembrance of me.”
With its origin and remembrance in Passover, the blood of the slaughtered lambs, the Eucharist is our own ritual blood sacrifice of thanksgiving, offered to us lovingly by God in Christ, the Lamb of God, the Lamb who was slain. We remember again this morning, everyone present invited and welcome to join us.
The Body of Christ, broken for thee.
The Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.
Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. I bid you come.
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Sermon or homily in Trinity Episcopal Church, Apalachicola Florida on Sunday, 10 September 2017, Proper 18A. Texts: Exodus 12:1-14 and Matthew 18:15-20. The Rev Tom Weller
The 10 Plagues of Egypt
1. Water into blood (דָם): Ex. 7:14–24
2. Frogs (צְּפַרְדֵּעַ): Ex. 7:25–8:15
3. Lice (כִּנִּים): Ex. 8:16–19
4. Mixture of Wild Animals or Flies (עָרוֹב): Ex. 8:20–32
5. Diseased livestock (דֶּבֶר): Ex. 9:1–7
6. Boils (שְׁחִין): Ex. 9:8–12
7. Thunderstorm of hail (בָּרָד): Ex. 9:13–35
8. Locusts (אַרְבֶּה): Ex. 10:1–20
9. Darkness for three days (חוֹשֶך): Ex. 10:21–29
10. Death of firstborn (מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת): Ex. 11:1–12:36