O God, who hast taught us to keep all thy commandments by loving thee and our neighbor: Grant us the grace of thy Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to thee with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection….

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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Our Collect this morning bids us to pray that God would grant that we would be “united to one another with pure affection.” It’s a petition that gets right to the mission of the Church, which our Catechism in the back of the Prayer Book defines as the mission “to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” [1]. It would be difficult to come up with a better definition than that -- what Christian, after all, could not be moved by such a goal? 

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

In our reading from Deuteronomy this morning, God reminds the people of Israel that “the poor will never cease out of the land” -- a statement that our Lord himself echoes in Matthew’s Gospel when he tells his disciples that “you always have the poor with you” (Matthew 26:11). This was something that I was never allowed to forget about at my previous parish in Champaign, Illinois. The church was something like a hub for the homeless population in Champaign -- which was quite significant -- and the church grounds served as a reliable place for them to set up makeshift dwellings for themselves at night. It was a regular part of my routine to be greeted at the church door by some individual who was still asleep on a pallet of cardboard boxes and I would gently wake them to be able to get in and start my day. We also had a long-standing ministry of handing out sack lunches from the church office every weekday morning to the homeless and the working poor -- no questions asked. All of this struck me as exactly what a church should look like.

O Lord, we beseech thee, make us to have a perpetual fear and love of thy holy Name, for thou never failest to help and govern those whom thou hast set upon the sure foundation of thy loving-kindness….

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

For human beings, fear has never been about the stuff that startles us in the jump scene of a horror movie -- at least not primarily. What I mean is that fear is not exclusively about the mere existence of external threats or those dangers that lurk in the darkness and could strike us at any moment. These dangers certainly do exist, but they are not the main source of fear itself. Because if they were, then we would expect to find that modern people are the most fearless people that have ever lived for the simple reason that we have so thoroughly eradicated many of the dangers that haunted human beings for millenia. Think about it. Most of us don’t have hang our very survival on the hope that blight doesn’t devastate our crops each year. We don’t have to face the winter without any guarantee that we or our loved ones will necessarily make it through to see the spring. And yet, despite the degree of safety and security that we have ensured for ourselves, it’s clear that fear not only remains within us, but abounds. Modern society has by no means banished fear from among us; it’s just changed what we’re afraid of.

I have entitled this sermon: “A Tale of Two Kingdoms,” and I would like to start with a parable.
                   
There was once a very dynamic pastor of large megachurch in Dallas, Texas: The Rev. Nathan J. Pride. Thousands of congregants would come from the suburbs and even rural areas surrounding Dallas to hear Rev. Pride preach on Sundays.

Because the church was so large, several Sunday services were required. At each service, Rev. Pride would preach with fierce intensity, demanding that sinners turn from their wicked ways or face eternal punishment.

Rev. Pride was very famous and on the boards of many different corporations, to give them spiritual support and a vision for the future. He was called upon to give invocations at community events, college football games, and various celebrations.

After a long and illustrious career, Rev. Pride decided to retire. Upon his leaving, the massive congregation staged a great celebration in honour of his many years of ministry. The governor of Texas even showed up that Sunday to proclaim it: “Rev. Nathan J. Pride day.”  

The congregation sent him on his way with a million-dollar check in his pocket and an all-expenses paid trip around the world. 

Some years later, however, a very feeble Rev. Nathan J. Pride fell seriously ill and eventually passed. After his passing Rev. Pride found himself in front of huge pearly gates that automatically opened for him. 

It was just as he had preached on earth, you do the Lord’s work and one day you will be rewarded at the pearly gates of Heaven. As Rev. Pride walked through the pearly gates, a couple of rather large and important looking angels approached him.

The angels smiled, and bending down said to him, “Hello, we are Heaven’s welcoming committee. Welcome to heaven.” 

Folding his arms across his chest, Rev. Pride smiled right back at them and said, “I am Rev. Nathan J. Pride, the retired Senior Pastor of a large megachurch in Dallas, Texas. I assume you have heard of me. It is because of me, that many souls are heaven today.

But the angels just looked quizzical, not seeming to understand that they were in the presence of such a famous preacher. After a bit of discussion among the angels, one of them finally said, “I’m sorry, Rev. Pride, but we have never heard of you.”

Well, Rev. Pride was getting more than a little frustrated by this time. In no uncertain terms he informed the angels that on the Earth, he was a very important man! 

The angels again conferred with one another privately. After a while, they came back to the frustrated pastor and said this: 

“ Rev. Pride, we have just one question:…What is a man?”

My friends, it seems we human beings, even those claiming to be powerful religious leaders, are afflicted with pride and arrogance; afflicted with the desire to be admired and congratulated; the desire to be famous and sought-after, the desire to be praised and exalted.

It seems that this is a flaw that has plagued humanity since time began. Certainly, it was present in time of Ezekiel in our old testament lesson today. Allow me to sum up Ezekiel’s story just a bit.

Some 2500 years ago, Ezekiel was a young priest in Jerusalem. At this time the Kingdom of Israel was besieged by the Babylonians and many Israelites were taken prisoner and exiled to Babylon. Ezekiel is one of them.

About 5 years into his exile, Ezekiel is sitting by a river, grieving, homesick and singing the blues. Suddenly he has a vision of God on his throne. God commissions Ezekiel to be a prophet to Israel and to the nations of the world; to tell them that they have failed to keep the covenant and are now worshipping foreign gods and idols. 

Even more damning, God tells Ezekiel that their kings are worshipping themselves and setting themselves up as god. And because of this, their kingdoms are doomed to fall.

God tells Ezekiel this: “Mortal, say to Pharaoh, king of Egypt and his hordes: Whom are you like in your greatness? Consider Assyria, a cedar of Lebanon, with fair branches and forest shade, and of great height, its top among the clouds…so it towered above all the trees of the field…

All the birds made their nests in its boughs; under its branches all the animals of the field gave birth to their young; and in its shade all great nations lived. 

Therefore thus says the Lord GOD: Because it towered high and set its top among the clouds, and its heart was proud of its height, I gave it into the hand of the prince of the nations; he has dealt with it as its wickedness deserves…I have cast it out. Foreigners from the most terrible of the nations have cut it down and left it.

On the mountains and in all the valleys its branches have fallen, and its boughs lie broken in all the watercourses of the land; and all the peoples of the earth went away from its shade and left it.”

Ominous prophecy indeed, for Egypt and Syria have never regained the greatness they once had long ago.

And yet, this prophecy is as true today as it was 2500 years ago. That which makes a nation great is not its military power and its ability to dominate other nations. What makes a nation great is its benevolence, its generosity, its justice for all persons and its service to the needy. 

It has been my experience that life has a rather interesting way of humbling those persons and those nations with massive egos, whose arrogance and pride have caused them to act selfishly, recklessly and brutally. After all, nobody likes a bully, not even his friends.

On the other hand, we have the example of our Lord, who basically owned nothing but the clothes on his back, a pair of sandals and a walking stick. He healed all those who came to him without regard to their race, their gender or how sinful they were. He provided profound life-changing teaching wherever he went and did not charge one red cent.

 Not even once did Jesus act out of arrogance or pride. St. Paul reminds us of this in his letter to church in Philippi. He says this: 

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. 

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross.”

Jesus further illustrates the power of humility in our gospel lesson today, when he likens the Kingdom of God to that of “a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all seeds on earth; yet when it is sown and it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

A tale of two kingdoms…indeed.

My friends, Jesus repeatedly presented his followers, the chief priests, scribes and Pharisees with the contrast between two kingdoms, the kingdom of God and the kingdom of men.

The kingdom of God is ruled, not by pride and arrogance, not by brutal military power or oppressive emperors, governors and kings. The kingdom of God  is ruled by love, humility, benevolence, generosity and service, especially to the needy.

The kingdom of God lifts people up, and heals and frees them, while the kingdom of men oftentimes enslaves and crushes them, even crucifies them if they dare speak of another kingdom, a greater kingdom...A kingdom not of this world…but it could be, and that is precisely the point of the Lord’s Prayer:

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”

My friends, the Kingdom of Heaven is here and now…and we are God’s mustard seeds.

Amen +

When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is the Spirit himself bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ….

In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

So today is Trinity Sunday -- the feast that has spawned a thousand jokes among preachers about how this is the Sunday to avoid preaching on at all costs. But I can’t think of a more exciting topic to preach about! And then there are all the various analogies that we’ve come up with to somehow explain the mystery of the Trinity that you might hear on Trinity Sunday: water as ice, liquid, and vapor; the three-leaf clover allegedly used by St. Patrick; an egg with its shell, white, and yolk; and a bunch of others, I’m sure. Most of them are fine enough, but if you take any one of these too literally, you’re probably bound to end up walking into some straight-up Trinitarian heresy! After all, we’re dealing with an unfathomable mystery here; we’re dealing with who God really is; the God who has revealed himself to us and whose true nature is known and proclaimed by the Catholic Faith that we receive as the Church.