The Reverend J. Howard Cepelak

Trinity Church

Waltham, Massachusetts

Pentecost XI – 12 August 2012

I Kings 19:4-8, Psalm 34:1-8, Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2; John 6:35, 41-51

From the First Book of Kings:
Elijah the prophet, afraid of the death threats emanating from the evil queen, Jezebel, and discouraged in his vocation, spoke to the Lord and said, It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life…. [But] an angel touched him and said to him, Arise and eat.

From St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians:
Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

From the Gospel According to St. John:
Jesus said, I am the bread of life …No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day…. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.

Let us pray.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer, our Strength and our Salvation,
Amen.

The inspiration for this morning’s sermon comes from two sources; one being the assigned lectionary lessons and the other from the beautiful Communion hymn, Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face. We will sing that hymn immediately following the sermon even though this is not a Communion Sunday. It doesn’t matter. The words of the hymn tell us that in the Sacrament of Eternal Life, the Sacrament of Christian Nurture, The Sacrament of the Great Thanksgiving, which is the Sacrament of Holy Communion – it all comes together in the broken body and in the shed blood of Jesus Christ.

Although we may not see His face in the Sacrament as the hymn says, we do come intimately close to God as we partake – and we can see, by faith, the miracle of our salvation. We may see bread – but it is His body. We may taste wine – but it is His blood.

How do we know? Because He said so. He said, This is my body. And He said, This is my blood. He did not say This is a symbol of my body. Neither did He say This is a symbol of my blood. And He also said, that unless you eat my body and drink my blood you cannot inherit eternal life. Although theologians differ in their speculations on the nature of the resurrection on the last day – some saying that all persons – believers and non-believers alike will be raised up and face judgment, while others hold that only the true believers will experience the resurrection, nonetheless I, for one, do not want to miss that greatest of all events in my life – in my eternal life.

If we take the Word made flesh at His word, we will see, in the Sacrament, beyond sight – beyond elemental bread and beyond accidental wine to true body and true blood. Again, how do we know? Because He said so.

Now, what does it mean to see Christ? We do not have a photograph of our Lord and Savior. Cameras had not been invented until the middle of the nineteenth century. But, by virtue of the divine miracle, perhaps we do have a photograph. Perhaps we, in our generation have been blessed with that picture.

The face of our Lord just may be the three-dimensional photograph of the crucified man imbedded in the very fiber of the cloth of the Shroud of Turin. I know that this is controversial. Many true believers do not believe in the Shroud. But many other most certainly do.

I know that even as I say these words, many of you will think that the shroud has been scientifically proven to be inauthentic. After all, National Geographic said so. Scientists have tested it. They say that it’s not even 2,000 years old. Carbon dating has told us that it’s only about 800 years old – so they say.

Don’t be so quick to reject the authenticity of the shroud. Never has any of the linen fiber of the image itself been tested – only the cotton fabric on the edges – edges that had been reinforced due to fraying about 800 years ago. Note that the Shroud itself is linen, but some of the edges are cotton. Cotton had not been commonly used in the ancient Middle East 2,000 years ago. But it had begun to appear in the middle ages.

Furthermore, carbon dating cannot be accurate if any form of radioactivity – or, for that matter, even intense heat as from a fire – has effected the material being tested. The Shroud survived at least one major fire. But radioactivity?

How did the image get embedded in the cloth? The investigators can only say that it came from some unidentified source of intense light. Perhaps the image came about by the force of a radioactive light. All photographs are a function of light. The amazing three-dimensional image on the shroud had never been seen until modern technology advanced enough to both take and analysis take photographs.

Today due to modern technology, we have radiographs as well as photographs. Radiographs are basically photographs resulting from radioactivity. Well, think about it. God created everything. He was – and is – and will be forever, light of light. He also created the force of radioactivity. It belongs to Him even though we did not even know it existed until modern human history. Our Lord’s resurrection, His being the true light of true light – well, you can complete the sentence.

Yet some will say, Even so, that’s just superstition. John Calvin, one of the most important of the Protestant Reformers, stood firmly over and against superstition. He rejected any form of relics, tokens or venerated objects as a kind of idolatry. As you know, Calvin’s teachings became the foundation of Presbyterianism and strongly influenced our Congregationalist / Puritan forebears.

Many of you will remember with great affection and equally great respect, the Rev. D. James Kennedy, the famous Presbyterian preacher who used to televise his services from the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl – those broadcasts ending with his sudden death in 2007. Although a strict Calvinist, he became convinced of the shroud’s authenticity – not as an idolatrous relic subject to superstition but as a gift from God that we may see His Son face to face.

Kennedy declared his belief in a Christmas sermon delivered just a few years before he died. Just as so many of us send Christmas cards with photographs of our children, so God perhaps sent us that kind of a card – a Christmas card with a picture of His Son. An interesting perspective.

I am not 100% convinced – but 99% comes pretty close. If Dr. Kennedy and I are wrong, so be it. No harm done. But if we are right, well we have seen the face of God – for the face of God the Father, pure Spirit, is perfectly revealed in the face of God the Son.

Superstition? No. Revelation. Yes. Again let me say, if we are wrong, no harm done. But if we are right and some do not believe, such great joy missed.

And besides, what difference does it make? People can believe without the shroud. They have for centuries. So, who cares? The point is well taken. But what if, in this age of disbelief, God has once again revealed Himself to us? One thing that we can all agree upon; God wants us to know Him, and in knowing Him, love Him and in loving Him, serve Him.

Keep this in mind as we look more closely at the Scripture lessons assigned for today. For the past three Sundays, the lectionary has focused on some of the most important and most beautiful passages from all of Scripture; all of which come from St. John’s Gospel and all of them referring to the true nature of the Sacrament of Holy Communion.

In these passages, Jesus Himself tells us, I am the bread of life – the living bread that has come down from heaven like the miraculous manna given by God in the wilderness. He also said (paraphrase), he who eats this bread will never again hunger but will live forever. He also promises us who partake of His broken Body and of His shed Blood, I will raise him up on the last day.

God offers us life and eternal life. The Sacrament comes from Him for that purpose.

All of life comes from God. He gives it. He takes it. As the ancient funeral liturgy proclaims, in a quotation
from the Book of Job, The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

When Job spoke these words, he did not have the historical reality of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Hence, he did not know that, by faith in the crucified and risen Christ, that the gift of life in one’s soul is never taken away but rather transformed – and also, that the gift of life in one’s body is fully restored in our resurrections. Yet by faith, Job proclaimed the resurrection reality even in his time in history – he proclaimed it because God had reveled it to him. Job said, I know that my redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes behold and not another. Some translations say, and in my body I shall see God and my eyes behold him who is a friend and not a stranger. Even Job knew that God wants us to know Him and to see Him.

The power – the life giving and the life restoring power of the Word made flesh – the power of the sacrifice of that same flesh broken – for you and for me – that broken we may be made whole is a miracle. We will be raised up on the last day – resurrected just like Him – just like Jesus who laid aside His shroud and walked out of the tomb.

The prophet, Elijah also knew the life giving and the life restoring power of God. Having served his Lord courageously pronouncing judgment against the evil queen, Jezebel, and her equally wicked husband, King Ahab, the good prophet lost his courage. With Jezebel threatening his life, he fled in fear. Exhausted and afraid, He said, and I paraphrase, Lord, it’s all over. I can’t go on. I give up. Like the prophets that went before me, no one listens. I can’t take it anymore. Take my life and put an end to this.

But instead of taking his life, the Lord restored it. Ministering to Elijah through an angel, God miraculously provided a cake and some water for the failing and discouraged man. The angel said, Arise and Eat. He did – and he lived. And finally, Jezebel was destroyed and Elijah lived – forever.

St. Paul had seen the Lord face to face. As a zealous persecutor of Christens, the Lord appeared to him in a vision that blinded him. Jesus asked him, Why do you persecute me? In his blindness, Paul came to know God’s power. He believed, knowing that he had been called into the Lord’s service.

St. Paul spent the rest of his life proclaiming the Gospel to non-believers. He called countless souls into the faith. In his Epistle to the Ephesians, the apostle encouraged them in their service to the Lord. He told them to put away falsehood and speak only the truth, do not sin in anger and never let the sun go down on your anger – good advice. He called them to honest labor, upbuilding speech, the avoidance of any form of slander and to extend kindness, forgiveness and tenderhearted, just as God had done to us in Jesus Christ. Hence he wrote, be imitators of God.

As some of you know, I attended the services at The Church of the Redeemer while on vacation in Sarasota, Fl. last month. The mission statement of that church reads as follows, to build up the Body of Christ by Word and Sacrament that … Jesus Christ may be known, loved, worshipped and obeyed…. Is this not the purpose of each of our lives as well as for any particular congregation? It was St. Paul’s purpose. It can be ours.

Regardless of the shroud of Turin or of any other manifestation of God’s mercy and grace, we do know one thing for sure. God wants us to know Him -to love Him – to worship Him and yes, to obey Him. He wants us to see Him face to face – and we will when He raises us up from our graves – if not before.

And we also know that the whole thing is a miracle – from creation to resurrection – it’s all a great, magnificent miracle received by faith.

Faith in the miracle – that’s what it’s all about. We cannot explain it. We can only proclaim it. That’s what I have attempted to do this morning.

So I will leave you with the words of someone who knew, loved, worshipped and obeyed God – Thomas Aquinas. Like St. Paul, he had been an evangelist proclaiming God’s miraculous revelation hundreds of year ago – long before photographs or radiographs or anything else of that nature.

Aquinas wrote, For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. But for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.

So be it. Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, bless us with the faith necessary to know you and to love you in the revelation of your Son and in the miracle of our salvation. Grant that in knowing you, we may obey you in lives of worship and of service to the greater glory of the same Lord, Jesus Christ, who one day we will see face to face.
We ask this in His most holy Name.
Amen. E

Seeing God
The Reverend J. Howard Cepelak

Trinity Church
E

Waltham, Massachusetts

Pentecost XI – 12 August 2012

I Kings 19:4-8, Psalm 34:1-8, Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2; John 6:35, 41-51

From the First Book of Kings:
Elijah the prophet, afraid of the death threats emanating from the evil queen, Jezebel, and discouraged in his vocation, spoke to the Lord and said, It is enough now, O Lord, take away my life…. [But] an angel touched him and said to him, Arise and eat.

From St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians:
Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

From the Gospel According to St. John:
Jesus said, I am the bread of life …No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day…. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.

Let us pray.
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be acceptable in thy sight, O God, our Rock and our Redeemer, our Strength and our Salvation,
Amen. E

The inspiration for this morning’s sermon comes from two sources; one being the assigned lectionary lessons and the other from the beautiful Communion hymn, Here, O My Lord, I See Thee Face to Face. We will sing that hymn immediately following the sermon even though this is not a Communion Sunday. It doesn’t matter. The words of the hymn tell us that in the Sacrament of Eternal Life, the Sacrament of Christian Nurture, The Sacrament of the Great Thanksgiving, which is the Sacrament of Holy Communion – it all comes together in the broken body and in the shed blood of Jesus Christ.
Although we may not see His face in the Sacrament as the hymn says, we do come intimately close to God as we partake – and we can see, by faith, the miracle of our salvation. We may see bread – but it is His body. We may taste wine – but it is His blood.
How do we know? Because He said so. He said, This is my body. And He said, This is my blood. He did not say This is a symbol of my body. Neither did He say This is a symbol of my blood. And He also said, that unless you eat my body and drink my blood you cannot inherit eternal life. Although theologians differ in their speculations on the nature of the resurrection on the last day – some saying that all persons – believers and non-believers alike will be raised up and face judgment, while others hold that only the true believers will experience the resurrection, nonetheless I, for one, do not want to miss that greatest of all events in my life – in my eternal life.
If we take the Word made flesh at His word, we will see, in the Sacrament, beyond sight – beyond elemental bread and beyond accidental wine to true body and true blood. Again, how do we know? Because He said so.
Now, what does it mean to see Christ? We do not have a photograph of our Lord and Savior. Cameras had not been invented until the middle of the nineteenth century. But, by virtue of the divine miracle, perhaps we do have a photograph. Perhaps we, in our generation have been blessed with that picture.
The face of our Lord just may be the three-dimensional photograph of the crucified man imbedded in the very fiber of the cloth of the Shroud of Turin. I know that this is controversial. Many true believers do not believe in the Shroud. But many other most certainly do.
I know that even as I say these words, many of you will think that the shroud has been scientifically proven to be inauthentic. After all, National Geographic said so. Scientists have tested it. They say that it’s not even 2,000 years old. Carbon dating has told us that it’s only about 800 years old – so they say.
Don’t be so quick to reject the authenticity of the shroud. Never has any of the linen fiber of the image itself been tested – only the cotton fabric on the edges – edges that had been reinforced due to fraying about 800 years ago. Note that the Shroud itself is linen, but some of the edges are cotton. Cotton had not been commonly used in the ancient Middle East 2,000 years ago. But it had begun to appear in the middle ages.
Furthermore, carbon dating cannot be accurate if any form of radioactivity – or, for that matter, even intense heat as from a fire – has effected the material being tested. The Shroud survived at least one major fire. But radioactivity?
How did the image get embedded in the cloth? The investigators can only say that it came from some unidentified source of intense light. Perhaps the image came about by the force of a radioactive light. All photographs are a function of light. The amazing three-dimensional image on the shroud had never been seen until modern technology advanced enough to both take and analysis take photographs.
Today due to modern technology, we have radiographs as well as photographs. Radiographs are basically photographs resulting from radioactivity. Well, think about it. God created everything. He was – and is – and will be forever, light of light. He also created the force of radioactivity. It belongs to Him even though we did not even know it existed until modern human history. Our Lord’s resurrection, His being the true light of true light – well, you can complete the sentence.
Yet some will say, Even so, that’s just superstition. John Calvin, one of the most important of the Protestant Reformers, stood firmly over and against superstition. He rejected any form of relics, tokens or venerated objects as a kind of idolatry. As you know, Calvin’s teachings became the foundation of Presbyterianism and strongly influenced our Congregationalist / Puritan forebears.

Many of you will remember with great affection and equally great respect, the Rev. D. James Kennedy, the famous Presbyterian preacher who used to televise his services from the Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Ft. Lauderdale, Fl – those broadcasts ending with his sudden death in 2007. Although a strict Calvinist, he became convinced of the shroud’s authenticity – not as an idolatrous relic subject to superstition but as a gift from God that we may see His Son face to face.
Kennedy declared his belief in a Christmas sermon delivered just a few years before he died. Just as so many of us send Christmas cards with photographs of our children, so God perhaps sent us that kind of a card – a Christmas card with a picture of His Son. An interesting perspective.
I am not 100% convinced – but 99% comes pretty close. If Dr. Kennedy and I are wrong, so be it. No harm done. But if we are right, well we have seen the face of God – for the face of God the Father, pure Spirit, is perfectly revealed in the face of God the Son.
Superstition? No. Revelation. Yes. Again let me say, if we are wrong, no harm done. But if we are right and some do not believe, such great joy missed.
And besides, what difference does it make? People can believe without the shroud. They have for centuries. So, who cares? The point is well taken. But what if, in this age of disbelief, God has once again revealed Himself to us? One thing that we can all agree upon; God wants us to know Him, and in knowing Him, love Him and in loving Him, serve Him.
Keep this in mind as we look more closely at the Scripture lessons assigned for today. For the past three Sundays, the lectionary has focused on some of the most important and most beautiful passages from all of Scripture; all of which come from St. John’s Gospel and all of them referring to the true nature of the Sacrament of Holy Communion.
In these passages, Jesus Himself tells us, I am the bread of life – the living bread that has come down from heaven like the miraculous manna given by God in the wilderness. He also said (paraphrase), he who eats this bread will never again hunger but will live forever. He also promises us who partake of His broken Body and of His shed Blood, I will raise him up on the last day.
God offers us life and eternal life. The Sacrament comes from Him for that purpose.
All of life comes from God. He gives it. He takes it. As the ancient funeral liturgy proclaims, in a quotation from the Book of Job, The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
When Job spoke these words, he did not have the historical reality of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Hence, he did not know that, by faith in the crucified and risen Christ, that the gift of life in one’s soul is never taken away but rather transformed – and also, that the gift of life in one’s body is fully restored in our resurrections. Yet by faith, Job proclaimed the resurrection reality even in his time in history – he proclaimed it because God had reveled it to him. Job said, I know that my redeemer liveth and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though this body be destroyed, yet shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself and mine eyes behold and not another. Some translations say, and in my body I shall see God and my eyes behold him who is a friend and not a stranger. Even Job knew that God wants us to know Him and to see Him.
The power – the life giving and the life restoring power of the Word made flesh – the power of the sacrifice of that same flesh broken – for you and for me – that broken we may be made whole is a miracle. We will be raised up on the last day – resurrected just like Him – just like Jesus who laid aside His shroud and walked out of the tomb.
The prophet, Elijah also knew the life giving and the life restoring power of God. Having served his Lord courageously pronouncing judgment against the evil queen, Jezebel, and her equally wicked husband, King Ahab, the good prophet lost his courage. With Jezebel threatening his life, he fled in fear. Exhausted and afraid, He said, and I paraphrase, Lord, it’s all over. I can’t go on. I give up. Like the prophets that went before me, no one listens. I can’t take it anymore. Take my life and put an end to this.
But instead of taking his life, the Lord restored it. Ministering to Elijah through an angel, God miraculously provided a cake and some water for the failing and discouraged man. The angel said, Arise and Eat. He did – and he lived. And finally, Jezebel was destroyed and Elijah lived – forever.
St. Paul had seen the Lord face to face. As a zealous persecutor of Christens, the Lord appeared to him in a vision that blinded him. Jesus asked him, Why do you persecute me? In his blindness, Paul came to know God’s power. He believed, knowing that he had been called into the Lord’s service.
St. Paul spent the rest of his life proclaiming the Gospel to non-believers. He called countless souls into the faith. In his Epistle to the Ephesians, the apostle encouraged them in their service to the Lord. He told them to put away falsehood and speak only the truth, do not sin in anger and never let the sun go down on your anger – good advice. He called them to honest labor, upbuilding speech, the avoidance of any form of slander and to extend kindness, forgiveness and tenderhearted, just as God had done to us in Jesus Christ. Hence he wrote, be imitators of God.
As some of you know, I attended the services at The Church of the Redeemer while on vacation in Sarasota, Fl. last month. The mission statement of that church reads as follows, to build up the Body of Christ by Word and Sacrament that … Jesus Christ may be known, loved, worshipped and obeyed…. Is this not the purpose of each of our lives as well as for any particular congregation? It was St. Paul’s purpose. It can be ours.
Regardless of the shroud of Turin or of any other manifestation of God’s mercy and grace, we do know one thing for sure. God wants us to know Him -to love Him – to worship Him and yes, to obey Him. He wants us to see Him face to face – and we will when He raises us up from our graves – if not before.
And we also know that the whole thing is a miracle – from creation to resurrection – it’s all a great, magnificent miracle received by faith.

Faith in the miracle – that’s what it’s all about. We cannot explain it. We can only proclaim it. That’s what I have attempted to do this morning.
So I will leave you with the words of someone who knew, loved, worshipped and obeyed God – Thomas Aquinas. Like St. Paul, he had been an evangelist proclaiming God’s miraculous revelation hundreds of year ago – long before photographs or radiographs or anything else of that nature.
Aquinas wrote, For those who believe, no explanation is necessary. But for those who do not believe, no explanation is possible.

So be it. Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, bless us with the faith necessary to know you and to love you in the revelation of your Son and in the miracle of our salvation. Grant that in knowing you, we may obey you in lives of worship and of service to the greater glory of the same Lord, Jesus Christ, who one day we will see face to face.
We ask this in His most holy Name.
Amen.