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A new priest came to town. The first Sunday he preached one of the best sermons folks had ever heard. Everyone was excited, believing that things were looking up for their church. They all complimented him on his wonderful and inspiring words. The following Sunday the new priest preached the exact same sermon, to the letter. Folks looked a bit bewildered, but it was so good, they all thought it was worth hearing a second time, just not two Sundays in a row. However, since he was new, no one said anything other than that they enjoyed the sermon. The third Sunday, once again the priest preached the exact same sermon. The Sr. Warden didn’t think they could take a fourth Sunday, so after everyone had exited the church he had a word with the priest. “Father,” he said, “that’s a good sermon you preached.” “Thank you,” he replied. “However,” continued the Senior Warden, “you have preached the same sermon three times now. We’ve all heard it and were wondering when you were going to go on to a different subject.” “Sir,” he responded, “when you all start acting like you’ve heard it, I’ll preach something else.”

O Lord! We installed him as rector yesterday and he’s going to turn into a tyrant today! Nope. That story has nothing to do with you all not hearing the message. Instead, it has to do with our Gospel reading, because after the next several weeks, you’re going to hear the Gospel reading and ask yourself, “Didn’t we just read this last week?” The answer is: almost.

Last week our Gospel reading ended with, ”I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” This week it began with that exact same verse. Next week the Gospel will begin with, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven,” and the week after that Jesus will say, “The one who eats this bread will live forever.” This particular grouping of verses – John 6:22-59 – is known as the Bread of Life Discourse. So, with these four weeks focused on that one idea of Jesus saying, “I am the bread of life,” we should all get the idea that an important message is being conveyed. To fully understand what Jesus is saying, we must once again go back to the story of Moses.

We know that the Israelites were slaves in Egypt for four hundred years and that God selected Moses to lead them to their freedom. While kneeling before the burning bush, Moses hears the Lord’s plans. At one point in the dialogue, Moses asked the Lord:

If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”  God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I am has sent me to you.’”  God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’: This is my name forever, and this my title for all generations.

“I Am” is the name the Lord gives Himself.

Now, I would not normally give a lesson during a sermon on the Hebrew language, because a) it would be really boring and b) I barely passed Hebrew in seminary, but…

God says His name is “I Am.” The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and so you will read the Hebrew word for “I Am” translated in different ways: Yahweh, Adonai, and Elohim. For fear of taking the Lord’s name in vain, many later Jewish writings translate it as Ha-Shem, which translates as “the Name.” However, we will most often read it as “the Lord.” In case the question ever comes up in Trivial Pursuit, it appears 6,823 times in the Old Testament.

The New Testament was written in Greek, not Hebrew (and for the record, I did a little better in Greek than I did in Hebrew). Even so, the Name of God will appear many times as Jesus applies it to Himself. In particular, there are the seven great “I Am” statements that we are most familiar with: I am the Light of the World; I am the Door of the Sheepfold; I am the Good Shepherd; I am the Resurrection and the Life; I am the Way, the Truth and the Life; I am the True Vine; and the passage we read today, I am the Bread of Life.

Juliet said to Romeo, “What’s in a name? that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.” In any other case a name may not truly matter, but here – in the context of Jesus applying the Name of God to himself – the Name is everything. For as we said, when translated I Am can be Yahweh or Adonai or Ha-Shem, but it may also be interpreted as Jesus. With that understanding, those “I Am” statements of Jesus can be written as: Jesus is the Light of the World; Jesus is the Door of the Sheepfold; Jesus is the Good Shepherd; Jesus is the Resurrection and the Life; Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life; Jesus is the True Vine; and Jesus is the Bread of Life. Jesus is the Great I Am.

Is that accurate? Is that a misrepresentation of Scripture, forcing it to say what we want it to say? Absolutely not. Paul, speaking of Jesus in his letter to the Philippians (2:9-11) wrote:

Therefore God also highly exalted him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

All of this goes to support Jesus’ claim that he is God, as he says in John 14, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father.” And in chapter 8, “Very truly, I tell you, before Abraham was, I am.”

If you believe this, Jesus is God, then what are the implications of such a claim when applied to our Gospel reading when Jesus said, “I am the bread of life… Whoever eats of this bread will live forever; and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

Last week we said that in tasting Jesus we will be satisfied. So, if Jesus is truly God and if Jesus is truly the bread of life, then what is it to eat the Bread of Life? How do we go about being satisfied and nourished by God? Answer: We seek to feed our souls just as we feed our stomachs and that is not something you only do on Sunday, but multiple times each day. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn said, “The belly is an ungrateful wretch, it never remembers past favors, it always wants more tomorrow.” Perhaps the soul isn’t quite that bad, but if we are not in the habit of feeding it on a daily basis, allowing it to taste God, then it will grow cold, isolated, and prone to sinful behavior. We have mealtime and we must also have soul time.

How do we nourish ourselves on God? We receive him physically through Holy Communion, truly the Body and Blood of Jesus, but we also feed on Him through the study of His Holy Word, prayer, and the other spiritual practices. Consider the questions we will ask as Derrick makes his Baptismal Covenant this morning and we renew our own. Each of them points to how we feed on God through repentance, fellowship, proclamation, giving, and serving. Jesus said in the Beatitudes, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” Your soul hungers for Him, so seek Him where He can be found. Feed on Him through these various practices and be filled.

Jesus is the Great I Am. He is the Bread of Life. Understand that He is the only one who will satisfy the hunger of your soul; therefore, set aside time each day to provide nourishment for your soul.

So that Derrick might join us in our life with God by becoming a part of Christ’s one holy catholic and apostolic Church, the candidate for Holy Baptism will now be presented.

Brennan Manning tells a wonderful story about Esther Schwartz – a Jewish woman – and her three-year-old grandson, Jacob. She was planning a trip to the beach with her precious Jacob, so she purchased him a canary yellow sun hat so that his beautiful little face would not get sunburned. She also got him a little pail and shovel so that he could play in the sand. The day arrives and they head to the beach. She marvels over little Jacob as he carefully picks the sand up with his little plastic shovel and puts it into the bucket. In her heart she prays, “Oh, Yahweh, thank you so much for Jacob.” Just then a tremendous wave comes along, picks up her precious Jacob – pail, shovel, canary yellow hat and all – and washes him out to sea. Esther Schwartz was very upset. She yells up at God, “Who do You think You are? Do You know who I am? I am Esther Schwartz. My husband, Solomon Schwartz, is a physician, and my son, Billy Schwartz, is a dentist. How dare you do that?” At that moment a second huge wave crashes in washing little precious Jacob, pail and shovel, right back on shore at Esther’s feet. She smiled down at her grandson, then looked to heaven with her hands on her hips and shouted, “He had a canary yellow hat! Where’s the hat?”

Do you think God ever looks down from Heaven and wants to shout, “You people are never satisfied!”

The Israelites had been slaves to the Egyptians for four hundred years before Moses came along and said to Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” Yet, even though they received their freedom, when they got out in the desert there was one complaint after another. The water was bitter, so God had Moses throw a piece of wood into it and the water became sweet. There was no meat to eat, so they complained to Moses, “If only we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.” God heard their cry and sent them quail and manna from Heaven, the bread of angels. Yet the people continued to complain. The Lord knew they needed bread, meat and water; and He would continue to provide for them just as He had in the past, yet the people grumbled?

Then there was the time that the Lord wasn’t acting fast enough for them. Moses had gone up the mountain to receive the Ten Commandments and when he didn’t return, they said to Aaron, “Come, make gods for us, who shall go before us; as for this Moses, the man who brought us up out of the land of Egypt, we do not know what has become of him.” Enter the golden calf. Not only were they not satisfied with the things that the Lord had done for them, they weren’t even satisfied with the Lord Himself.

Today we read about the sin of King David. We’ve discussed this one before. David sees Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah. David desires her, so he conspires to have Uriah killed. He succeeds and takes Bathsheba as his wife. The Lord, speaking through the prophet Nathan says to David, “I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. Why have you despised the word of the LORD, to do what is evil in his sight?” I did so much for you, why weren’t you satisfied?

In both cases, the Israelites in the desert and David with Bathsheba, their lack of being satisfied with what God had already provided and their desire for more, led them to complaining and sin. The Psalmist says:

Take delight in the Lord,
and he will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act….
Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him.

Yet, when God refused to give them what they wanted, they sought to satisfy those desires themselves. I’m glad we’re not like them! I wish that were true. Unfortunately, I think there is a little complaining in us all.

Jesus tells us that our Father in Heaven knows our needs even before we ask. Even so, he tells us not to hesitate in asking, going on to say, “Whatever things you ask in prayer, believing, you will receive.” And again, “How much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!” However, even though we may receive, even though we may have all that we need, even though God has provided for us in the past, we may still complain.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote in The Sorrows of Young Werther, “A dim vastness is spread before our souls; the perceptions of our mind are as obscure as those of our vision; and we desire earnestly to surrender up our whole being, that it may be filled with the complete and perfect bliss of one glorious emotion. But alas! when we have attained our object, when the distant ‘there’ becomes the present ‘here,’ all is changed; we are as poor and circumscribed as ever, and our souls still languish for unattainable happiness.” Even when our desires are fulfilled, we immediately start looking for more.

A band that was around throughout the 90’s, “The The” – Yes, that’s their name! – “The The,” wrote the song, True Happiness this Way Lies. A bit of the lyrics:

Baby!… I’ve got my sight set on you
And someday… you’ll come my way.
But when you put your arms around me
I’ll be looking over your shoulder for something new.

Any truth in that?

So Fr. John, what is the problem? Why am I never satisfied? Why am I always looking for more? Answer: Because you are looking for bread that will only fill your stomach. You are looking for something that will only satisfy you for a few hours instead of seeking that which will satisfy you for all eternity.

The day before our Gospel reading is the feeding of the 5,000. It is this group that has followed Jesus across the dangerous sea, but they have followed him, not because He is the Lord and not because He has offered them salvation. They have followed Him because He may provide some immediate, but temporary satisfaction. He even calls them out saying, “Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” If we seek Jesus with the same motivation, immediate and temporary satisfaction, we will most always be disappointed.

To be satisfied, we seek Jesus for love of Him, not for the love of what he can do for us. Yes! Ask for whatever you will. He wants you to, but don’t love Him for what He does for you, because if He doesn’t satisfy that immediate and temporary desire, then you will complain against Him. Instead, love Him for who He is. Consider these words of Thomas a Kempis from The Imitation of Christ, “The wise lover regards not so much the gift of Him Who loves as the love of Him Who gives. He regards the affection of the Giver rather than the value of the gift, and sets his Beloved above all gifts. The noble lover does not rest in the gift, but in Jesus who is above every gift.” Archbishop Michael Ramsay picked up this same thought in his work Sacred and Secular. He wrote, “the gift must not be loved more than the Giver.”

Our relationship with God, our love of God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit – is not based on those gifts that he may give us, instead our love for God is based purely on the fact that he is God. He has already given us that which we are in most desperate need of: Eternal Life with Him.

Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.”

It is in tasting Jesus that you will be satisfied.

St. Francis Xavier wrote a beautiful hymn, My God, I Love You. A translation of his words serve as our prayer. Let us pray:

My God, I love You; not because I hope for heaven,
Nor because those who do not love You are lost eternally.

You, my Jesus, You embraced me upon the cross;
For me You bore the nails, and spear, and manifold disgrace,
And griefs and torments numberless, and sweat of agony;
Yes, death itself; and all for me who was Your enemy.

Then why, Blessed Jesus Christ, should I not love You well?

Not for the sake of winning heaven, nor of escaping hell;
Not from the hope of gaining anything, not seeking a reward;
But as You have loved me, O ever-loving Lord.

So would I love You, dearest Lord, and in Your praise will sing;
Solely because You are my God, and my most loving King. Amen.

God is sitting in Heaven when a scientist says to Him, “Lord, we don’t need you anymore. Science has finally figured out a way to create life out of nothing. In other words, we can now do what you did in the beginning.”

“Oh, is that so? Tell me,” replies God.

“Well,” says the scientist, “we can take dirt and form it into the likeness of You and breathe life into it, thus creating man.”

“Well, that’s interesting. Show Me. ”

So the scientist bends down to the earth and starts to form the soil.

“Oh no, no, no,” interrupts God. “Get your own dirt.”

In the beginning. In the beginning when God created would have been something amazing to see. I think it would have been something truly beyond our abilities to imagine or even comprehend. Yet, that has not stopped us from trying. Last week we did a 31,000 miles per hour drive by of Pluto. The New Horizons space probe traveled 3 billion miles on its journey to get there and it takes 4.5 hours for a signal to reach earth. You thought your internet connection was slow. How big is Pluto? If earth were the size of a basketball, Pluto would be about the size of a golfball. The universe is one of those situations where the more we know, the less we know.

When the author of Genesis began writing his understanding of creation, he did not have the scientific knowledge that we have today, but he did have his own cosmology. His own understanding of the universe, which a careful and imaginative reading of Genesis can reveal.

This cosmology can be demonstrated best by taking a bowl, turning it upside down, and pressing it down in the shallow end of a swimming pool. Imagine, instead of floating up, that this bowl would rest on pillars coming up from the bottom of the pool. Then, imagine a disk and place it inside the air pocket created by the bowl, and have it also supported by pillars. That disk is surrounded by water on all sides. Therefore, the disk is the dry land and if you were to look up, essentially looking up at the inside of the bowl, you would see the firmament, the heavens, where the sun, moon, stars, Pluto and all the rest are held. Below you, below this disk is Sheol, what we now call hell. Above the surface of the swimming pool is Heaven. So everything, the bowl, the dry land, the firmament, Sheol, everything is surrounded by water, and the water is chaos.

When God created the heavens and the earth, he brought them out of this chaos. He brought order. The flood during the time of Noah, was God allowing the water, the chaos to once again reign over creation. Moses and the Israelites passing through the Red Sea shows God delivering His people through the chaos and into the Promised Land.

All of this ties into the use of water at baptism, because going into the water is going into the chaos, going into disorder and death. Consider Paul’s words, “We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” Going into these waters of baptism, of chaos, is being buried in them. It is death.

Now, with that understanding of the waters, consider again our Gospel reading: “When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were terrified.”

They were terrified because out of the darkness came this figure, walking across the waters of disorder, chaos, and death. With their understanding of the waters, can you imagine the fear they experienced? But then He spoke to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.”

The Psalmist wrote:

God is our refuge and strength,
a very present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear though the earth should change,
though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
though the mountains tremble with its tumult.

And Jesus spoke to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” And God spoke to them, “It is I; do not fear though the earth should change, though its waters roar and foam.” Do not be afraid.

Today, some are experiencing chaos in their own lives, but we can all look out towards the horizon of our own lives and and even though we may not hear the thunder, we can see the flashes of lightning in the clouds. “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust.” And so there are times in our lives when the rain falls, the thunder crashes, the seas roar, and we become afraid. There are days when we may not want to even come out of the minimal security of our rooms, but Jesus says, “It is I; do not be afraid.”

Put yourself in the place of the disciples on the boat. Jesus says, “It is I; do not be afraid.” Here He is, the one who treads on the waters of death and chaos, but do you trust Him or are you still afraid? And if you are afraid, what would you do if you weren’t?

For example: If you weren’t afraid of the storms that may come in your life, how much would you give? If you weren’t afraid that there wouldn’t be enough for you, that it wouldn’t run out, if you weren’t terrified by the proverbial rainy day, how much would you give?

If the events in your past life didn’t trap you in the fear that they might happen again, how much would you care? If you weren’t afraid of losing someone or something? Of being ridiculed or laughed at? If you weren’t afraid of shedding a tear, how much would you care for family, friends, or even a stranger?

If the chaos of loving someone hadn’t isolated you from loving others, how much would you love? We’ve all had our hearts broken at least once, but if you weren’t afraid of it happening again, how much would you love? If you weren’t afraid of revealing your true self, your greatest joys, hurts, weaknesses, strengths, and shortcomings; if you weren’t afraid of death, and if you weren’t afraid of being a true friend of Jesus, how much would you love?

In the midst of a terrible battle, two soldiers who were friends became separated. As the fighting raged on all sides, one of the two soldiers suddenly saw his friend lying on the ground, badly wounded and with no protection from the bullets and the bombs. The soldier turned to his lieutenant and begged for permission to go to his friend, to try to rescue him, to try to carry him out of the firefight and to safety. The lieutenant forbade him. “I order you not to go. You would stand no chance of coming back alive.”

A moment later, while the lieutenant was turned in another direction, the soldier took off. He ran into the clearing, knelt by his friend, picked him up and began to run. Part way back, a spray of bullets hit him. But stumbling, he made it back to safety with his friend. The lieutenant came over. He was furious and grief-stricken at the same time. He said to the soldier, “What a waste. Look at your friend. He’s dead. You brought back a corpse. And look at you. Look at your wounds. What a waste.” The soldier looked up at the lieutenant. He smiled and said, “Lieutenant, it wasn’t a waste. When I got out there, my friend was still alive and he looked up at me and said, ‘I knew you’d come.’”

Jesus says, “It is I; do not be afraid.” A quote that made the rounds awhile back, “Be the kind of person that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, the devil says, “Oh no, they’re up!”

In the beginning, God created. He created the heavens and the earth and everything in between. And he created you. He created you to love and worship Him, but He also created you to give, to care, to love one another. He created you to live. Still, He understands your fear of the stormy, chaotic waters of this life, but just as He did not abandon His disciples, He will not abandon you. Even now, He comes to you, walking on those waters. “Do not be afraid.” Do not be afraid to give, to care, to love. Do not be afraid to live.

Let us pray: O Dearly beloved Word of God, teach us to be generous, to serve You as You deserve, to give without counting the cost, to fight without fretting at our wounds, to labor without seeking rest, to spend ourselves without looking for any reward other than that of knowing that we do Your holy will. In Jesus Name we pray. Amen.

A story is told of a man who loved old books. He met an acquaintance who had just thrown away a Bible that for generations had been stored in the attic of his ancestral home. “I couldn’t read it,” the friend explained. “Somebody named Guten-something had printed it.” “Not Gutenberg!” the book lover exclaimed in horror. “That Bible was one of the first books ever printed. Why, a copy just sold for over two million dollars!” His friend was unimpressed. “Mine wouldn’t have brought a dollar. Some German fellow named Martin Luther had scribbled all over it.”

Holy Scripture. If you want to get into an argument, pull out a verse or two and start discussing them in a group. If you can find more than one who agrees with how you understand that particular passage, then you might be on to something. You may even want to consider seminary!

As a priest, I have stated as part of my vows what I believe of Holy Scripture, as have all priest. During the opening section of the ordination of a Priest, the candidate says, “I solemnly declare that I do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation.”

The Catechism in the back of the Book of Common Prayer (if you didn’t know we had one – or even if you did – you might want to consider taking the Confirmation class this fall!) states, we call the Holy Scriptures “the Word of God because God inspired their human authors and because God still speaks to us through the Bible.”

Now, I remind you of all this so that I can ask you a question. Take a look at your insert for this morning, the one with the readings printed in really small font that no one can really see. Look at the first lesson from the Old Testament. What is it? 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19. All things necessary for our salvation are included in Holy Scripture which God continues to speak to us through. So my question is: what happened in verses 6 through 12a? Did those who put the lectionary together not think that bit was important for our salvation? Was it just a long list of begats and a bit too boring to read?

I confess, when they leave out sections like this, I immediately go look up what they have omitted, and here’s what I discovered this time: We read that David and 30,000 of his men are returning the Ark of the Covenant to the City of David. They’re dancing, singing, and making sacrifices as they go. There is a seemingly minor detail mentioned, “Uzzah and Ahio, the sons of Abinadab, were driving the new cart with the ark of God.” Ahio was going before the Ark. It is here that the lectionary folks hit the fast forward button. What did we miss: “And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. And the anger of the Lord was kindled against Uzzah; and God smote him there because he put forth his hand to the ark; and he died there beside the ark of God.”

Perhaps this is why they’ll never ask me to be on the Lectionary Committee, but in my opinion, that’s good stuff! I can preach that and I think I’m going to!

They’re going along, celebrating the return of the Ark. The Ark is on a cart that Uzzah is driving when suddenly they hit a pot hole – must have been in Enid – Uzzah is afraid that the Ark is going to fall off the cart, so he reaches out and steadies it. A natural reaction, but for this action, God smites Uzzah. Why?

For the answer, we must go back early in the history of the Ark, when the Israelites were still wandering in the wilderness. We know that when they were camped, the Ark was kept in the Tent of Meeting, but as they moved from one place to another, the Lord gave them specific instructions on how to “break camp”. When it came to the Ark and the other holy items, the Lord said, “When Aaron and his sons have finished covering the sanctuary and all the furnishings of the sanctuary, as the camp sets out, after that the sons of Kohath shall come to carry these, but they must not touch the holy things, lest they die.” The holy things cannot be touched. The unholy coming into contact with they holy ends in death.

We also know that not only touching the holy brings death, but even looking upon the holiness of God will end in death. Moses, while on the mountain, asked to see the face of God, but God says, “You cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live.” The prophet Isaiah has a vision of the Lord, and even there he is afraid saying, “Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” He’s afraid he’s going to die.

The unholy, the unclean coming in contact or within sight of the holy leads to death. You touch God, you die. You see God, you die.

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Jesus said, “I and my Father are one.” Jesus said, “He who has seen me has seen the Father.” Jesus is God. Jesus is the holiness of God. Yet, how many saw him as he went about the work of the Father and yet lived? How many touched him, but didn’t end up dead like Uzzah? How many did he touch, that instead of dying were healed or brought back to life? With Jesus, we know that things are different. We know that God is with us and that he came so that we “may have life.” We know that he is “the way, and the truth, and the life.”

We can see him and we can touch him. Something has changed in our relationship with God. What is that? Through the Blood of Christ, we have been made clean, we have been made holy. Paul declares, “You were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.”

Like Adam and Eve before the fall, we are allowed into the presence of God. We are even invited into the presence of God, but… but… make no mistake about it, you are still coming into the presence of the holy. And even though you have been invited, it is not a safe place. Things happen in the presence of the holy. Lives are transformed. The unclean is burned away. The light shines in the darkest corners and exposes everything that is hidden there. This is the holy, this is Your God and let me tell you, He is not safe.

In a scene from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, that great classic by CS Lewis, two children, Susan and Lucy ask Mr. and Mrs. Beaver to describe Aslan, who is the Christ figure in the story. They ask if Aslan is a man. Mr. Beaver replies, ”Aslan a man? Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the Sea. Don’t you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion– the Lion, the great Lion.” “Ooh!” said Susan. “I’d thought he was a man. Is he–quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.” “That you will, dearie, and make no mistake,” said Mrs. Beaver, “if there’s anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they’re either braver than most or else just silly.” “Then he isn’t safe?” said Lucy. “Safe?” said Mr. Beaver. “Don’t you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about being safe? ‘Course he isn’t safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you.”

Paul, in his letter to the Hebrews wrote, “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” But he also spoke true a bit further on in that same letter, “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.”

We may come with confidence before the throne of God, but we must also remember that like Moses before the burning bush, we are on holy ground and it is not safe. Great and awesome things happen in the presence of our God. He is Alpha and Omega, beginning and end. King of Kings and Lord of Lords. He is the Bright Morning Star. And as he tells Moses, He is “I Am.” Therefore, when you come before Him, whether in prayer, in His Holy Scriptures, at the Eucharist, or wherever you may encounter Him, always remember who you are and always remember who He is.

Let us pray: Breathe in us, O Holy Spirit, that our thoughts may all be holy. Act in us, O Holy Spirit, that our works, too, may be holy. Draw our hearts, O Holy Spirit, that we love only what is holy. Strengthen us, O Holy Spirit, to defend all that is holy. Guard us so, O Holy Spirit, that we may always be holy. Amen.