Easter 5, Year B (2018)

Acts 8: 26–40; Psalm 22: 24–30; I John 4: 7–21; John 15: 1–8

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, April 29, 2018.

“HELP US, DEAR LORD!”

(Homily text:  John 15: 1–8)

Help us, dear Lord!

That request might characterize everything we are doing here at St. John’s this morning.

Help us, dear Lord!:  Help us to know you as you are revealed in the pages of sacred Scripture.

Help us, dear Lord!:  Help us to know you as you are revealed in the Body and the Blood of Jesus Christ under the elements of the Holy Eucharist.

Help us, dear Lord!:  As we struggle to be changed more and more into your image and likeness, that we may be images of God (The Latin phrase is:  Imago Dei) in all that we do and in all that we say in the world around us, each and every day.

Help us, dear Lord!:  Help us to support one another in our walk with God, lifting up those who stumble or fall, sustaining and supporting those who are struggling, and kindling in the hearts of those whose faith has grown cold a new fire for God.

Help us, dear Lord!:  To live into the reality that we have died with Christ in our own baptisms, that we may do our part to bring Amelia Ruth to come to know you personally and deeply.

Help us, dear Lord!:  To be so grafted into the vine of Christ Jesus that we may bear good and bountiful fruit for the kingdom of God in our time and in our place. (John 15: 1 – 8)

AMEN.

Easter 3, Year B (2018)

Acts 3: 12–19; Psalm 4; I John 3: 1–7; Luke 24: 36b–48  

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, April 15^th, 2018 by Fr. Gene Tucker.

“FAITHFUL TRANSMISSION OF THE STORY”

Games can bring a party or other social gathering to life. Consider, for example, the game of Charades: A person acts out, using gestures, a saying or an idea, and it is the job of the onlookers to guess what the saying or idea is.

Another game that is played at a party is Telephone. In this game, a person reads a statement, then whispers that statement into the next player’s ear, who, in turn, does the same until the train of messengers reaches the end. The last person to receive the message then says what the message is. Following that, the original message is read aloud. It can be very entertaining and even illuminating to see how the message changed as it was passed from one person to the next. Details are sometimes missed or are even altered significantly. Or in some cases, the original statement is distorted to the point of being unrelated to the statement that began the process. Of course, in fairness to the players of the game of Telephone, a really good team can faithfully pass along the original message.

The biblical story is a bit like the game of Telephone. Before we look at the similarities between the game and the texts of the Bible, we ought to clarify the meaning of the word “story”. Here, we are using the term in the sense of something that is true, not a made-up or fabricated tale.

In Holy Scripture, we find texts that often (though not always) began life as an orally told story.  These original authors passed along a story, a story about God’s activity in the human experience, to listeners or even to another generation. Sometimes, a text will bear the markings of its original, oral existence. For example, a text might repeat a central idea, and sometimes, not just once, but more than once. Repetition helps the listener to remember the story.

And so, stories of God’s mighty acts, quite often things that God did in times past to save His people, form the basis for a story. The Passover account is one such story, a story about God’s deliverance of the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. In Jewish homes on Passover today, that story is repeated to those who are gathered around the Seder table.

Over time, texts that began as oral history became written history. These written accounts, brought together in what we now call the Bible, span a period of many hundreds of years and reflect widely differing human circumstances. But all of them recount what God did in those various times and places in the past.

Now, we should return to the game of Telephone. This game highlights how we human beings handle the things we have experienced or heard. We human beings can miss important details in the things we hear. We can also misinterpret the things we hear, even as we are also capable of faithfully receiving and passing on the things that we experience.

But the written accounts of Holy Scripture help us to faithfully receive the truths of God’s work among humankind in times past. The pages of the Bible serve to remind and educate us about the ways in which God has worked, for the God who is the same yesterday and today and forever will work in similar ways among us today. The written accounts of the things we read in the Bible help us to recognize God’s working today and tomorrow.

Each new day brings with it the possibility that we will be presented with an occasion to pass along God’s story, a story we read in the pages of the Bible, but also a story that is lived out in our own lives. It is our task to faithfully tell that story in the things we say and in the things we do. Our task is to match our lived-out story with the stories that the Bible makes available to us.

AMEN.

Easter Day, Year B (2018)

Acts 10: 34–43; Psalm 118: 1–2, 14–24; I Corinthians 15: 1–11; John 20: 1–18

This is the homily given at St. John’s, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, by Fr. Gene Tucker on Sunday, April 1, 2018

“AN IDEAL TALE, FIRMLY ROOTED IN REALITY”

Our household would be very different place if we didn’t have old movies to watch on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) and AMC (American Movie Channel). The sorts of movies I have in mind are those that starred such actors as Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, Jimmy Stewart, and Barbara Stanwyck, movies from the 1930s through the early 1960s. (OK, I am dating myself, I know.)

Whenever an old movie comes on that is the favorite of one of the two of us who live in our house, a comment is often made to the effect that, “The first fifteen minutes of movie is my favorite part of the movie.” Or, at other times, a comment is made to the effect that, “The ending of this movie is so wonderful.”

After having heard these sorts of remarks, along with comments like, “Well, you know that so-and-so was offered this leading role, but they turned it down,” the other of us in the household began to suggest that this lover of old movies ought to write a book.

Lately, I have offered to be my wife’s consultant in the writing of such a book. (Now you know who the lover of old movies is…her husband knows little-to-nothing about movies, by the way.) As her consultant, I’ve already posed the idea that she write a book about the beginnings of movies, and why she likes those parts of the movies she really likes. Then, recently, I suggested she also write a book about the endings of some of her favorite movies, and why she likes the endings. And even more recently, I’ve suggested she write something about the middle parts of movies. I’ve also devised a marketing strategy, suggested that these books be marketed as a “Prequel”, a “Sequel”, and so forth. (Maybe the book about the middle parts of movies could be titled a “Middlequel”….I’ve just coined a new word.)

Beyond the plans I’ve laid out, I’ve also suggested other books. For example, she could write a book about families of actors: Did you know that Warren Beatty and Shirley MacLaine are brother and sister? The possibilities are virtually endless. My wife could write a whole string of books, all of which, I am sure, would be best sellers.

Old movies of the sort I have in mind often focused on an ideal world, and many times, that world was a world that was detached from the realities of everyday life. Many of these kinds of movies are pure escapist fare. But even when an old movie did deal with a very real-world situation, it often held up some ideal or some virtue. (In that respect, old movies differ from much of what is available to watch these days. Today, many of our movies, TV shows and video games are often filled with graphic violence…is it any wonder that people act out in real life what they are seeing on the screen?)

The Easter story is much like an old movie: The events of Easter Sunday morning are viewed through the lens of the Bible, and the events sound very much like a fairy tale, don’t they?

There is an ideal world present in the Easter accounts that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John pass along to us: A man who had been wrongfully killed is brought back to life again. His followers are delighted that he will be with them again. Who could argue with that sort of a story? It is the stuff of “Once Upon a Time”.

But the Easter event is rooted in the everyday world. There is no “Pie-in-the-Sky” present here.

Why can we say this?

One reason is that Jesus rose from the grave with His physical body completely intact. He makes a number of appearances to His followers. On one occasion, He says to them, “Do you have anything to eat?” On another occasion, He tells the disciple Thomas that Thomas should put his hands into the print of the nails in Jesus’ hands. (This is a text we will consider next week.) Jesus said, in effect, “Go ahead and touch me. See that it is I myself,”

The reality of the raising of Jesus brings us to another important aspect of what happened on this day: It is the proof that God has the power to create and to re-create. Jesus is made a new creation. He is given life again after having been dead, completely dead.

God alone has that power. Genesis, chapter one, affirms God’s creative power when it says, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light.” (Genesis 1: 1–3)

The power to create and to re-create is given to Jesus Christ. In the beginning verses of John’s Gospel account, we read this: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. (In a few verses, we will learn that this Word is Jesus Christ.) He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” (John 1: 1–5)

These two passages are very similar, aren’t they? They both confirm God’s power, residing in Jesus Christ, is the power to cause light to shine in the darkness, to create, to make all things new.

The power that Jesus Christ displays to us is the power to create a new heart for us. That is the basic meaning of Easter, and it is an ideal world, an ideal world which breaks into our broken and everyday world, making all things new.

What are we called to do in response to Jesus’ power to give us a new heart, a new way of looking at things, a new and better life where the ideal world of heaven meets the everyday world of life? We are called to accept this power into our lives, into our minds and into our hearts. God the Son will not come uninvited, we must open the door, so that the Lord may show us a new and better way, bringing to life again that which was dead in our hearts.

AMEN.