The Bible Challenge: Week 27

***General questions to keep in mind while reading:
1. What did this passage mean for those for whom it was first written?
2. How does this passage apply to my life today?

Seven members of Christ Episcopal Church gathered tonight to continue The Bible Challenge (http://thecenterforbiblicalstudies.org/what-is-the-bible-challenge/). If you are joining us, here are the readings for this week. Remember, you can choose Track 1 (All The Readings), Track 2 (Just the New Testament), Track 3 (The Psalms), or any combination thereof:

Monday, July 8th: Day 183 – Job 10-12, Psalm 149, II Corinthians 8
Tuesday, July 9th: Day 184 – Job 13-15, Psalm 150, II Corinthians 9
Wednesday, July 10th: Day 185 – Job 16-18, Psalm 1, II Corinthians 10
Thursday, July 11th: Day 186 – Job 19-21, Psalm 2, II Corinthians 11
Friday, July 12th: Day 187 – Job 22-24, Psalm 3, II Corinthians 12
Saturday, July 13th: Day 188 – Job 25-27, Psalm 4, II Corinthians 13
Sunday, July 14th: Day 189– Enjoy hearing the Scriptures read aloud in church


On Monday, June 17th, the group will meet in the Sunday School building at 7:30 p.m. to discuss what we've read this week. In the mean time, or if you cannot join us this week, feel free to comment on this post with questions, thoughts, or whatever strikes you from this week's readings. If you comment, please remember to include your name in your comment.

Peace,

Nick Szobota +

The Bible Challenge: Week 23

***General questions to keep in mind while reading:
1. What did this passage mean for those for whom it was first written?
2. How does this passage apply to my life today?

Seven members of Christ Episcopal Church gathered tonight to continue The Bible Challenge (http://thecenterforbiblicalstudies.org/what-is-the-bible-challenge/). If you are joining us, here are the readings for this week. Remember, you can choose Track 1 (All The Readings), Track 2 (Just the New Testament), Track 3 (The Psalms), or any combination thereof:

Monday, June 10th: Day 155 – II Chronicles 13-15, Psalm 125, Romans 16
Tuesday, June 11th: Day 156 – II Chronicles 16-19, Psalm 125, Romans 16
Wednesday, June 12th: Day 157 – II Chronicles 20-22, Psalm 127, I Corinthians 2
Thursday, June 13th: Day 158 – II Chronicles 23-25, Psalm 128, I Corinthians 3
Friday, June 14th: Day 159 – II Chronicles 26-28, Psalm 129, I Corinthians 4
Saturday, June 15th: Day 160 – II Chronicles 29-31, Psalm 130, I Corinthians 5
Sunday, June 16th: Day 161 – Enjoy hearing the Scriptures read aloud in church


On Monday, June 17th, the group will meet in the Sunday School building at 7:30 p.m. to discuss what we've read this week. In the mean time, or if you cannot join us this week, feel free to comment on this post with questions, thoughts, or whatever strikes you from this week's readings. If you comment, please remember to include your name in your comment.

Peace,

Nick Szobota +

The Bible Challenge: Week 16

***General questions to keep in mind while reading:
1. What did this passage mean for those for whom it was first written?
2. How does this passage apply to my life today?

Four members of Christ Episcopal Church gathered tonight to continue The Bible Challenge (http://thecenterforbiblicalstudies.org/what-is-the-bible-challenge/). If you are joining us, here are the readings for this week. Remember, you can choose Track 1 (All The Readings), Track 2 (Just the New Testament), Track 3 (The Psalms), or any combination thereof:

Monday, April 22nd: Day 106 – I Samuel 25-27, Psalm 88, Acts 2
Tuesday, April 23rd: Day 107 – I Samuel 28-30, Psalm 89:1-18, Acts 3
Wednesday, April 24th: Day 108 – I Samuel 31, Psalm 89:19-52, Acts 4
Thursday, April 25th: Day 109 – II Samuel 1-3, Psalm 90, Acts 5
Friday, April 26th: Day 110 – II Samuel 4-6, Psalm 91, Acts 6
Saturday, April 27th: Day 111 – II Samuel 7-9, Psalm 92, Acts 7
Sunday, April 28th: Day 112 – Enjoy hearing the Scriptures read aloud in church

On Monday, April 29th, the group will meet in the Sunday School building at 7:30 p.m. to discuss what we've read this week. In the mean time, or if you cannot join us this week, feel free to comment on this post with questions, thoughts, or whatever strikes you from this week's readings. If you comment, please remember to include your name in your comment.

Peace,

Nick Szobota +

Sermon for April 21, 2013: "What Our Sisters and Brothers Have Done"

Acts 9:36-43
Psalm 23
Revelation 7:9-17
John 10:22-30

All quotations from scripture come from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, with the exception of the Psalms, which come from The Book of Common Prayer, 1979. Not all scripture passages from the lectionary may be quoted or referenced in a given Sunday's sermon. For more information on the lectionary used in The Episcopal Church, please visit http://www.lectionarypage.net/.

“What Our Sisters and Brothers Have Done”

The Rev. Nicholas S. Szobota

April 21, 2013
Christ Church, West River, Maryland

Fourth Sunday of Easter: Good Shepherd Sunday

As a child, my friends and I played “cops and robbers” or similar games. Usually played outside, to avoid the wrath of one’s parents toward indoor rough-housing, these games involved a good deal of running around and burning up energy. Preparing for the game also involved some negotiation. I recall that everyone wanted to play a cop and no one wanted to play a robber, because the robbers are supposed to lose. I know very few people who like to intentionally choose the losing side, but of course for this game to work some of the players had to choose to lose.

This childhood aversion to losing also has to do wanting to belong to the good side. The robbers lose in the game, because they are bad or evil. The cops win, because they’re the good guys. Perhaps in the real word, evil some times seems to win. This week, despite great evil, good won out in many ways. Good occurred in the resolution of the search for those responsible for Monday’s bombing in Boston, even though one of the suspects died in the attempt to apprehend the Tsarnaev brothers and others died or were harmed as a result of their actions.

In this real life struggle between the good guys and the bad guys, of course no sane person wants to in any way identify with the Tsarnaev brothers and their actions. In fact, I find myself wanting to distance myself from these men in any way possible. One way I notice that I do this is by identifying the ways that I am different from them. Since they immigrated to this country from elsewhere, though younger brother Dzokhar became a citizen, and I was born here as a citizen, I can say I am different from them because they are immigrants and I am not. One could do the same around issues of religion, gender, race, and so on. Any place where they and I differ becomes a means of making them something other than I am, of distancing myself from them and from their evil.

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus says to those listening to him, “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me; but you do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:25-27) The Fourth Sunday after Easter gets called “Good Shepherd Sunday,” because every year the gospel reading has to do with Jesus as the Good Shepherd. Today’s reading features Jesus making a distinction between those who come from his flock and those who do not. Since the gospel identifies those listening to Jesus as “Jews,” one might suspect that the categories of those whom Jesus accepts as part of his flock have to do with something like a person’s religious group or ethnic background. However, Jesus gives only one criterion for those who belong to his flock: My sheep hear my voice.

How does this apply to the human tendency to distance oneself from those who commit evil acts? Those who commit great evil clearly ignore Jesus’ voice. I think that Jesus cried out to the Tsarnaev brothers, “Don’t do this. You are about to harm your sisters and brothers.” The witness to the heavenly vision in today’s reading from the Revelation to St. John reveals, “After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands” (Revelation 7:9). The distinctions of tribe, people, language, and the like do not matter in terms of who comes before the Lamb, who is also Jesus Christ the Good Shepherd. Therefore, as followers of Jesus Christ, those distinctions must not matter to us in terms of who belongs to the flock.

Christians must understand the Tsarnaevs and those like them as our sisters and brothers before God. These brothers’ evil acts have marred that relationship, to be sure, and the living brother deserves to face the lawful consequences. God judges what will happen to both of them after death, as God judges each of us. However, they remain our brothers. I do not think this in any way diminishes the evil of their actions, because it means that they ignored the voice of righteousness crying out to them and took action against their own sisters and brothers. Any evil done by one of us, however great or small, is an evil perpetrated against sisters and brothers.

Now, the reverse of this situation also holds true. Any good done by one of us, any good performed because one of us listens to the voice of the Good Shepherd, is good done to a sister or brother. Those who rushed toward the site of the explosions, a story heard over and over again this week, did so out of a response to hearing that Good Shepherd’s voice. Oh, I’m sure some were acting out of instinct or in the line of duty. Some may not even have a concept of God, or Jesus Christ, or the Good Shepherd, or what that voice sounds like. Today’s reading from Acts suggests that doesn’t matter in the least. Although this story occurs in the context of a larger text that has quite a bit to say about Jesus, he is not mentioned once in the passage we have here. Instead, Peter does something very Jesus-like when he enters the room where Tabitha lies dead, prays, and says, “Tabitha, get up” (Acts 9:39-40). Tabitha, who had died due to illness, rises to life again. Jesus performed such miracles, as when he raised the widow’s son at Nain in Luke 7:11-17, but he did that of his own power. Peter does not raise the dead of his own power, but through the power the Good Shepherd whom he follows: Peter prays, and Tabitha lives. Yet, the text gives only an implied sense of Jesus’ activity through Peter. Likewise, some respond to the voice of the Good Shepherd with no clear sense of who calls, yet these too belong to the Good Shepherd’s flock.

The heroes of this past week, and those like them, represent the kind of people that I suspect each one of us wants to emulate. We can take comfort, then, that they are our sisters and brothers. We need not let how they differ from us in matters of ethnicity, religion, race, gender, or any other qualification give us despair that we cannot be like them. May this understanding provide some consolation that those who do evil, including each of us in whatever evils we might commit, are also sisters and brothers. May each one of us seek to hear the Good Shepherd in the acts of those doing good in the world, and, in following them, tune our ears to hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and follow where he leads. Amen.

The Bible Challenge: Week 11

***General questions to keep in mind while reading:
1. What did this passage mean for those for whom it was first written?
2. How does this passage apply to my life today?

Seven members of Christ Episcopal Church gathered tonight to continue The Bible Challenge (http://thecenterforbiblicalstudies.org/what-is-the-bible-challenge/). If you are joining us, here are the readings for this week. Remember, you can choose Track 1 (All The Readings), Track 2 (Just the New Testament), Track 3 (The Psalms), or any combination thereof:

Monday, March 18th: Day 71 – Deuteronomy 19-21, Psalm 59, Luke 17
Tuesday, March 19th: Day 72 – Deuteronomy 22-24, Psalm 60, Luke 18
Wednesday, March 20th: Day 73 – Deuteronomy 25-27, Psalm 61, Luke 19
Thursday, March 21st: Day 74 – Deuteronomy 28-30, Psalm 62, Luke 20
Friday, March 22nd: Day 75 – Deuteronomy 31-33, Psalm 63, Luke 21
Saturday, March 23rd: Day 76 – Deuteronomy 34, Psalm 64, Luke 22Sunday, March 24th: Day 77 – Enjoy hearing the Scriptures read aloud in church
On Monday, March 25th, the group will meet in the Sunday School building at 7:30 p.m. to discuss what we've read this week. In the mean time, or if you cannot join us this week, feel free to comment on this post with questions, thoughts, or whatever strikes you from this week's readings. If you comment, please remember to include your name in your comment.

Peace,

Nick Szobota +

Sermon for March 17th, 2013: "Previews of Coming Attractions"

Isaiah 43:16-21
Psalm 126
Philippians 3:4b-14
John 12:1-8

All quotations from scripture come from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, with the exception of the Psalms, which come from The Book of Common Prayer, 1979. Not all scripture passages from the lectionary may be quoted or referenced in a given Sunday's sermon. For more information on the lectionary used in The Episcopal Church, please visit http://www.lectionarypage.net/.

“Previews of Coming Attractions”

The Rev. Nicholas S. Szobota

March 17, 2013
Christ Church, West River, Maryland

Fifth Sunday in Lent

Anyone who goes to a movie knows about the previews that come before the feature film. For years, the number of previews has grown. We now see previews for movies that will appear in theaters more than a year from now, not just movies coming in the next few months. Some enjoy seeing what’s to come, and some people find these previews an inconvenience.

Today’s gospel reading from John includes foreshadowing that gives us a preview of coming attractions. We learn that Judas Iscariot is about to betray Jesus. When Mary anoints Jesus’ feet with costly ointment and wipes the feet with her hair, Jesus responds to Judas’ complaint by saying she had purchased this ointment to prepare him for burial. This hints at Jesus’ death and burial, to come later in the gospel.

The beginning of today’s passage makes reference to Lazarus, Mary and Martha’s brother whom Jesus had raised from the dead. In John 11, Mary and Martha send a message to Jesus to tell him Lazarus is ill. Jesus does not come to Bethany in time to cure Lazarus, and he dies. When Jesus arrives, Lazarus has already been dead four days. He has been dead long enough for the stench of decomposition to emerge from his tomb. Still, Jesus tells the people to take away the stone covering the grave. He shouts, “Lazarus, come out!” The dead man emerges, not as zombie or a shambling mummy, but whole and alive.

Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead provides a preview of Jesus’ own Resurrection. In John 20, Jesus appears to his disciples after he rises from the grave. Thomas is not there, and he does not believe his friends when they tell him that Jesus is alive. Perhaps he would have found believing possible if he thought about how Jesus had already demonstrated power over life and death by raising Lazarus from the grave.

These stories of new life provide a preview of coming attractions for God’s plan for each of us and for the world. Just as Jesus rose from the dead, each one of us will not disappear after the end of our mortal life. God has more planned for us than oblivion or non-existence. God will draw each of us into new, deeper life with God. Some suggest that God will not simply provide us with new life, but that God will also bring about a new creation for the entire world. This will conform the world more closely with what God intended in the first place.

Resurrection does not only occur at the end, though. Previews of coming attractions appear for communities and people as life progresses. The Roman Catholic Church elected a new Pope this week. For Roman Catholics, this represents a time of new life for their church. I have seen the same in The Episcopal Church when a new bishop gets consecrated, new people join a parish, or a new priest gets called to lead a congregation.

Resurrection can occur for us as we live our individual lives, too. Perhaps this will look different for each person, but Resurrection can provide new life in the places that seem most dead or most dark in our lives. One way to approach this involves looking at the places that seem most dead or dark and us and believing that something new can emerge from their, that God promises to transform what is dead into some kind of new life. This kind of hope connects us with what God intends, but of course some hopes do not match what God wants to do. I could hope that each one of us will receive one billion dollars after we leave church today, and if it is God’s will may that happen, but more likely God has some other way in mind for us to address financial difficulties. Perhaps this means taking better care with the resources we already possess, or perhaps it means seeking other ways to produce income.

Likewise, a person facing sickness might hope for a cure. If no cure comes, despite fervent prayer and the work of medical science, Resurrection can still happen. New life might emerge as a person learns to live with a chronic condition or illness and experience the fullest life possible under those circumstances.

We can also gain hope for new life in our lives by looking at the world around us. In the northern hemisphere, natural occurrences match with the anticipation of Resurrection in this season of the church year. The flowers emerge from the ground, birdsongs remind us that birds have returned after a time away, and other animals that have been absent become more active.

We might also see signs of new life in people who change their habits so that they live a more humane lifestyle. Sometimes this change brings these people to live a more content and hopeful life. When someone shows us this kind of change, part of us might react with envy or hatred that things go well for them. If that temptation comes, one might pay attention to an alternative way of feeling: We might see these changes in others’ lives as reasons to celebrate with them and as previews of coming attractions for change and Resurrection that can occur in our lives.

God gives us preview of coming attractions for God’s plan for the world and for us. Resurrection awaits us at the end of our mortal lives, but we see previews even now in the world, in the Church, in our communities, and in one another. One can greet these previews as inconveniences along the way toward final Resurrection, or one can greet them with hope and joy. May God grant us the grace to watch and experiences these previews with growing hope for the main feature yet to come. Amen.

The Bible Challenge: Week 10

***General questions to keep in mind while reading:
1. What did this passage mean for those for whom it was first written?
2. How does this passage apply to my life today?

Eight members of Christ Episcopal Church gathered tonight to continue The Bible Challenge (http://thecenterforbiblicalstudies.org/what-is-the-bible-challenge/). If you are joining us, here are the readings for this week. Remember, you can choose Track 1 (All The Readings), Track 2 (Just the New Testament), Track 3 (The Psalms), or any combination thereof:

Monday, March 11th: Day 64 – Deuteronomy 1-3, Psalm 53, Luke 11
Tuesday, March 12th: Day 65 – Deuteronomy 4-6, Psalm 54, Luke 12
Wednesday, March 13th: Day 66 – Deuteronomy 7-9, Psalm 55, Luke 13
Thursday, March 14th: Day 67 – Deuteronomy 10-12, Psalm 56, Luke 14
Friday, March 15th: Day 68 – Deuteronomy 13-15, Psalm 57, Luke 15
Saturday, March 16th: Day 69 – Deuteronomy 16-18, Psalm 58, Luke 16
Sunday, March 17th: Day 70 – Enjoy hearing the Scriptures read aloud in church
 
On Monday, March 18th, the group will meet in the Sunday School building at 7:30 p.m. to discuss what we've read this week. In the mean time, or if you cannot join us this week, feel free to comment on this post with questions, thoughts, or whatever strikes you from this week's readings. If you comment, please remember to include your name in your comment.

Peace,

Nick Szobota +