“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.”

I have often been asked by puzzled Episcopalians, “Why did you come to this church?”  The question was originally one of curiosity when I first came to the Episcopal Church six years ago, but increasingly the questions have been one of puzzlement.  The emphasis was on the church part of the question; now the emphasis is often on the this.  “Why did you come to this church?"  In some disaffected circles there is even an implication that I am an idiot or suffer from a serious lack of information, since if I was brighter or informed, I would have made a different decision.  This turn in the question certainly has to do with the recent struggles of the Episcopal Church and the Anglican Communion.  It is not my intention this morning to weigh in on these controversies or to presume I could solve them, but what I intend to do is to share some of the reasons why this church is extraordinarily attractive. 

 One reason why I get asked the question about why I am in the Episcopal church so often, is that I am not a cradle Episcopalian, in fact I am not a cradle Christian.  When this fact is discovered, I am often asked what I was raised as.  The thinking behind the question usually being, well, were you Jewish, or some other religion?  What Christians of the two generations ahead of me find very difficult to understand, because it is so different from the way they grew up, is that I wasn’t raised anything at all.  I had an a-religious background, and this is becoming more and more common.   Many of the freshmen who will fill the B.C. campus in the coming days, have never known any religious experience.  They did not grow up in the church, and for some, neither did their friends.  Some people call this the post-Christian age.  A veil of ignorance now obscures the religion that our parents and grandparents knew so well.  One advantage that evangelists now have is that Christianity, especially in Massachusetts, is not something that is expected.  Without the millstone of being a societal norm, the younger generations are increasingly curious about Christianity.  Agnosticism is not hip for people who grew up without a religion.   If one wanders over to Harvard and begins announcing that they don’t believe in God, this will hardly draw a glance from passersby.  When college students encounter the Bible and call it a destructive albeit influential series of fairy tales, they certainly won’t draw any attention to themselves.  So why can this be an advantage? 

 The younger generations are more open to being approached by evangelists.  Many are not rebelling against the religion of their parents because their parents did not have one.  I am not really talking about the floppy bible beating street evangelist, though honestly unlike the atheist ranter, they will usually draw a crowd on a college campus.  No, I am talking about the evangelists that we are called to be.  We certainly can invite people to church and talk about our faith, and more people than you might think are open to these invitations and conversations.  The cultural change is a good one.   

 Technology is also changing rapidly.  Remember CD’s, the 8 track of this decade.  The million dollar super computer that my father worked on 25 years ago is now worth 400 bucks because of the gold that can be recycled in it.  I am sure nearly all of us own some piece of electronic equipment that serves as a glorified paperweight.  The broader world is the same.  Events in the Middle East can raise our gas prices instantly, policy decisions in China can send the Nikkei in Japan downward and stocks could tumble on the US exchange by morning.  Poor lending practices by large corporations can affect a young family’s ability to take out a mortgage that just a few days earlier seemed easy to accomplish. 

 Our world changes quickly, and people are yearning for something that is not so transient.  Even the American family is hardly the rock that it once was.  What people are left with is a world that is, frankly, very scary.  The tide of change could overtake them at any time.  Is there anything that people can count on? 

 Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. 

Christ can offer us comfort.  This past February, I had change on my mind.  I was going to be graduating, getting ordained, moving, and I was going to job interviews.  There was a lot of change going on in my life.  To help clear my mind, I made a pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral in England with some seminary mates.  Canterbury Cathedral is the seat of Archbishop Rowan Williams and it has been a popular pilgrimage destination for the past thousand years.  As I wandered through the Cathedral, I couldn’t help take in the history of the place.  When I looked down, I saw slanted steps worn nearly flat by pilgrims crawling up on their knees.  When I looked up, I saw the entire scripture shining through brilliant stained glass.  I saw 400 year-old broken windows that the puritan iconoclasts destroyed claiming that the beauty within the church was a hindrance to God.  If you walk around long enough, you might spot a person high above you (there are many hidden staircases).  I was allowed to climb to the top of the tower and stand on the same roof where townspeople stood with shovels sixty-five years ago.  They were there to quickly shovel off German incendiary bombs.  There are pictures of young men wearing padded gloves so they could catch the bombs, and toss them away from the cathedral. 

 The place is timeless and yet filled with stories from the past.  In all of these stories is the living God.  Faith in Jesus compelled pilgrims to travel by horseback to visit the tomb of Saint Thomas Becket, the cathedral’s most celebrated hero.  Faith in Christ compelled illiterate, poor farmers to go to the Cathedral, meet with monks, and hear the Bible as told through brilliant glass.  Faith in Jesus compelled so many pilgrims to crawl up the altar steps that they caused wear on the stones that would have taken nature thousands of years to produce.  The cathedral is just a building, but the faith that produced it is our living faith.  The Cathedral is the earthly heart of Anglicanism, and pilgrims still come from all over the world.  The mission of the cathedral is strikingly similar to the mission statement of the Redeemer; their mission is “To show people Jesus.”  It is what we are all called to do.  Here I mean the responsibility to do it, but we are also called in a different way.  We are also called to God in the sense that we are drawn to God.  This week the Christian world celebrated the feast day of Augustine of Hippo.  Augustine prayed so memorably that our hearts shall have no rest until they rest in thee.  We are being called to a being that is true, lasting, and real.  We are being called to the one who is the rock of our faith.  We are being called to the one who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  We are being called by one who yearns to be with us.  We are being called by one who will fill our own yearning and our own emptiness.  The peace I find in this Episcopal Church of the Anglican Communion is based on the firm foundation of Jesus Christ who will not be here today and gone tomorrow like our X-boxes and Ipods or the CD’s of yesterday.  Jesus is our foundation in a sometimes-scary world.  Jesus gave strength to the young men catching bombs, gave courage to pilgrims traveling on dangerous roads, today gives patience to mission workers attempting to restore New Orleans, and gives us the joy of being in God’s house here today.  With Christ we can declare with the author of Hebrews and Psalm 118,

"The Lord is my helper;

I will not be afraid.

What can anyone do to me?" 

I will say amen to that.