St. Paul's Westfield: Recent Episodes
Rev. Duncan Johnston
No doubt there were people in the crowd that day who had decided that Jesus was the real thing. They'd heard his words, they'd seen his miracles, and they had decided ‘yes, he is the One; we must follow him.’ Their decision did not follow days of prayerful thought; they hadn't carefully considered all the pluses and minuses, all the pros and cons of following Christ. They heard, they saw, and they got it. Let's go. And to them, Jesus speaks words – not of congratulations, but of warning. Before you make a promise count the cost. Don’t promise what you can’t deliver.
Aren’t you tired of the transactional life? Are you fed up with issuing invitations with the hope that you will give something in return? The opposite of the transactional life is the life of grace – the life of following Christ, the kind that forces us to give and give with no expectations because we just have to,
Love was more important to Jesus than being doctrinally pure. Human beings are more important than religious correctness. So, if you have ever been denied the ministry of the Christian church because you have broken religious rules, then know this – Jesus welcomes you and lavishes his grace on you. If you have been refused the sacraments because you are divorced, Jesus welcomes you. If you have been denied the sacraments because you have not been confirmed by a proper bishop, Jesus welcomes you. If you have been told that you can’t join a congregation, or serve in a leadership role, or be ordained, or minister the grace of God in some way because of who you are, then Jesus welcomes you.
Don’t resent the training, and don’t despise fourth place. Accept your weakness, embrace the darkness, celebrate the suck. Look to the Hebrew heroes and notice not just their faith but also their failings. Notice how those moral breakdowns and character meltdowns did not exclude them from God’s grace and did not evict them from the Hall of Faith. They are seated in the crowd – part of the cloud of heavenly witnesses. Those stands are full of sinners, but their sins were not as powerful as God’s grace.
This wallet will pass away. It will be consumed by mold, and its contents by moths. It is earthly treasure and contains earthly treasure. But we will invest in our spiritual wallets, won’t we? You can’t see it, but it holds a full and beautiful record of who you really are. Your acts of love, kindness and service will last for all time. When I compare my two wallets, I confess that the earthly one weighs more. It is stuffed to capacity. My spiritual wallet has a lot of room in it. Jesus says it is when we sell our possessions and give to the poor that we fill our spiritual wallet. In other words, acts of kindness, works of service, gifts of love. That multitude of little gestures and simple words that demonstrate the love of God to those who need it. “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide purses for yourselves that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will never fail, where no thief comes near, and no moth destroys.”
The first casualty of suffering is perspective. When we are in the crushing pain of here and now it is desperately hard to leave the dance, climb to the balcony, and survey the world from the perspective of the reign of God and the Lordship of Christ. We live with disorientation, instability, bewildering change. Confusion and decay are all around us and within us. But we have died with Christ and have been raised with him to the balcony. Seated with him, we receive a new vision of hope and serenity.
If you are looking for a foolproof way to turn your family and friends off God, then let me suggest one way that guarantees success. Be a hypocrite. There is nothing like it, especially if the person you are seeking to drive away is a under the age of thirty.
We are people on a mission. We live with intention. We are not willing merely to drift through life from one meaningless experience to another. No, we are here for a reason. Our lives have purpose. Each morning when we get out of bed, we do so with the clear goal that today we’re going to be better people, today we are going to be more ethical workers, today we will be more loving partners, more loyal friends, more faithful disciples. The Christian life is about focusing on something – and that ‘something’ is the back of Jesus as he strides ahead of us. Oh, and don’t forget where he’s going - a cross; but ultimately to glory.
Disintegration is the flavor of our day; alienation is the curse that defines this moment in human history. Uncle Edward, that old legalist, that guardian of our morality, drives our divisions between gender, race, and economics. But we are free from his guardianship. In Jesus we have grown. Filled with his Spirit we can make mature, holy choices - that build reconciliation and prosper our community.
The Rev. Christopher M. Decatur , Assistant Rector St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Westfield NJ June 12th, 2022
So this week, I found myself feeling frustrated and asking God how we can remain undefiled by the spirit that lures us into forming factions, judging, rejecting, and dividing, and how we can embrace one another - not just despite our differences, but because of them, because we recognize that we’re incomplete without each other. Our task is to joyfully listen to the views of Christians we disagree with because we know that they are made in God’s image, have God’s Spirit, and have an experience of God’s revelation that I do not have.
“Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” “People of Union County, why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” There’s work to be done. Don’t look up, look out – to our community. Don’t look up, look in – to the resources that God has poured into our lives. Don’t look up, look forward – to the future that God is designing Don’t look up, look out; and in; and forward.
It’s hard to live in exile. When you’re miles from home; when you no longer see the people you love; when you have your freedom denied you. But when your exile is just 2,000 yards away, it’s maybe harder. 2,000 yards away you can hear the sounds of the parties taunting you, mocking you, reminding you of your captivity, and the life you are missing. It’s hard to live in exile when freedom is 2,000 yards away. But how much harder is it when your exile is just a few feet from freedom?
We're very aware, painfully so, of Jesus' command to love our enemies. But it can be just as hard to love Christian brothers and sisters. Doing something compassionate for someone on the other side of the planet or reaching out to a person we see only occasionally doesn’t require great emotional investment. But when it comes to members of our parish, people we see up close and interact with frequently, it can be a different story.
We human sheep need a whisperer. A Good Shepherd. Someone who is not just powerful to protect us, but knows us by name, cares for us, loves us, even lays down his life for us. And the promise is this: “No one will snatch them out of my hand.” God’s promise to you is this: “No one will snatch you out of my hand.”
Sermon from The Rev. Christopher M. Decatur, Assistant Rector at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Westfield, NJ
Rector: The Rev. Dr. Duncan Johnston Assistant Rector: The Rev. Christopher Decatur Director of Music: Mark Hyczko
Sometimes we try to keep God out of our lives. We hide behind locked doors, like the Eleven - afraid of what might happen if we open up the doors of our hearts or minds. But even when we pull down the blinds, board up the windows, lock all the doors and install metal bars, we are not beyond the reach of God. Locked doors are not a problem for the Risen Christ.
What are you running from? I run from voices – especially that one in my soul that tells me I must perform perfectly if God is going to love me. I don’t work hard enough, my heart is not committed enough, my results not stellar enough. I have disappointed God and I’ve let people down. And this voice knows exactly when to whisper – after a grueling day, when I’ve had a disappointment, when I’ve messed something up. But the grave-shattering, life-instilling truth of Easter Day is this - stop running. Just stand, turn around, and behold the empty tomb.
Am I prepared to take the time and effort to search for the real Jesus, looking past my own thoughts and wishes about him? Are we ready to search for the Christ of Holy Week? Because he’s out there. He is the servant who stoops to wash our feet. He is compassionate with the sick, he befriends children, he is merciful to those who have been rejected. He speaks words of comfort to the uncomfortable, gives rest to the weary and companionship to the lonely. He never tramples on anyone’s dignity. He is never patronizing to the marginalized, but sees the likeness of God in the disabled person, the foreigner, the child, the woman. Does our Jesus match up to the real one, or does he have favorites?
In these final two weeks of Lent Mary breaks open a perfume jar, and breaks open my hard heart. She kneels before Jesus to pour her ointment, and she stands before me and challenges me to worship with the same uninhibited, sacrificial service. She touches those divine feet and calls me to touch people in my life who need compassionate connection. She literally lets her hair down and challenges me to abandon myself in the worship and service of God.
The lost son runs away, wastes his father’s money, and works for pea pods in a pigsty. But what if the Church has got it wrong these 2,000 years? What if the lost son is not the runaway, but the stay-at-home; not the lad who reeked of swine, but the one who smelled of apple pie?
In effect, Jesus says, “Don’t spend too much time wondering why God allowed this terrible thing to happen. Instead, think about how you are going to live in response to the evil and the catastrophe of this world. What are you going to do in the light of it – how are you going to change because of it?”
We worship a God who stoops to our level, who came to live with us to be like us; not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as the means of rescue. God will not be an imperious eagle, soaring above us, untouchable and unmoved, aloof and remote. God will not be the gorgeous songbird – elusive, shy, nervous, defensive, always out of reach. God will be the mother hen.
Hear God’s word to you. You are not what you do – you are God’s beloved child. You are not what you consume – you are the pride of God’s heart. You are not what people think of you – you are what God thinks of you. You are loved with a never-ending love. Let’s live in the joy of the truth.
Sermon from The Rev. Christopher M. Decatur, Assistant Rector at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Westfield, NJ
Rector: The Rev. Dr. Duncan Johnston Assistant Rector: The Rev. Christopher Decatur Director of Music: Mark Hyczko
We live with minds that are decaying and bodies that are wearing out. With every ache and pain, I remember that I’m not made for this. With every pang of envy, I remember that I’m not made for this. With every flare of anger, I remember that I’m not made for this. With every failure of memory or lapse in self-control I remember that I’m not made for this.
We were made for justice, and yet we watch good people suffer and bad people prosper. We were made for peace, yet we see aggression all around us - in world leaders, and just as troubling, in our own families and places of work. We were made for joy, yet we experience out of control chemicals or the lack of them in our brains. We were made for community, yet we throw up barriers between ourselves and exclude the other. We were made for love but every day social media, cable news, and bumper stickers provoke us into judging our neighbors, feeling threatened by our differences, and forcing us into artificial tribal identities. We were made for Eden, but we live in Babylon.
When we cross the road or turn the page or change the channel, or click out of the website, to avoid the people Jesus calls blessed we are depriving ourselves of the chance of basking in their honor. People who lack resources are our role models. They have discovered true riches, they are the ones we should look up to, the ones we should strive to be like.
Of all the metaphors Jesus could have used when he called these four brothers to the task of leading men and women to God, fishing has to be the most vivid and the most accurate. And the most troubling. Because it is tough out there. To share your faith with someone is all of the things trawling is - uncomfortable, inconvenient, and risky. You know it is. Most of us would be brave enough to say something personal about our faith in the safety of this building, to another Christian, but doing that with people who do not share our beliefs is frightening.
Paul had known certainty all his life. Now, in one moment, his convictions were trampled under horse feet. His old swagger was gone, the reassurance that he was right demolished, the secure castle of religious correctness flattened. O, the urge to cling on to the old certainties, the old prestige, his old cozy existence.
You may have been hurt by someone. Slandered, insulted, lied to, disrespected. They owe you. They really do. What they did to you was grievous. It has cost you your happiness, destroyed your trust, wrecked your friendship. You deserve to be treated better than that. They owe you an apology. They owe you an amends. Well, this is the Year of the Lord’s Favor. Declare a jubilee – drop the debt.
It’s a beautiful picture of what it means to be a child of God, and indeed, the Christian Church – sensitive to the needs of the world but open to the possibility of miracles. Standing in the gap. At this moment in history, as we daily grope our way through the mess and the suffering and the despair of the pandemic, we have a task – a noble calling. We are charged with standing in the gap – noticing and feeling the pain of this fractured and needy world, because we are a part of it. Its agony is our agony, it’s frustrations our frustrations. And yet we are more than that. We are ambassadors of God, mini bridges, channels of reconciliation, crying to God, along with Mary, “Lord, they have no wine.”
As I stand on the banks of American Christianity, and watch the river flow, I think I detect two baptisms, two gospels. The baptism of syrup and the baptism of mud. The gospel of sugar, the gospel of soil. The sanitized gospel, the earthy gospel. The synthetic life in God, the organic life.
The God of justice gets it. The God of suffering understands. He knows what it’s like to be us, and has taken decisive action in the life, death and resurrection of his Son to end the suffering of humankind.
Magnifying God? You can’t make the creator of the universe bigger – not in a literal sense. But I can make God bigger in my life. I can hold up my magnifying glass and make God bigger in my thinking, my words, my interactions. I can magnify God’s reputation and fame. We can hold up our magnifying glasses in our worship – drawing us to focus more intensely on God and allowing the warmth of God’s love to be intensified back to us like the rays of the sun to warm their hearts.
People come out to see John in the desert. He tells them to shape up and live right – and then he sends them back to their old lives. ‘Go home, do what you’ve been doing, but do it better, more ethically, more lovingly. Be a better person while you’re doing it – compassion, integrity, contentment.'
We are suffering. We are in pain. We have experienced all kinds of loss. But our suffering is not a sign that evil and death have won. The signs do not reveal God’s powerlessness or our destruction. They do not show us that God’s plans have been thwarted or that goodness has lost. They do not predict that the madness of our world has triumphed. No. These frightening and cataclysmic events are signs that the Kingdom of God is close at hand.
Like most people, Pilate is not interested in theology. He doesn’t care about religious debates. He wants truth. THE Truth. He wants the solution to his own deep hunger, the healing of his sense of alienation, the stilling of his internal troubled waters that tell him that he is missing out on the purpose of his life. He’s searching for the thing he was created for. In that way, I’m Pilate’s brother. Pilate has put into words the question at the heart of the human story - What is Truth?
God the Dome, God the Castle, God the hazmat suit? Well, as thinking, realistic Christians we survey our lives, and we know that our experience of God does not match these images. We get sick. We die. We stagger under the burden of suffering. Christians are still killed for their faith. We are tired of the daily struggle, weary of the weekly routines, heartily sick of the cycle of alienation. At this point of the pandemic, many of us are feeling deskilled, disconnected, kind of lost. We’ve succumbed to financial strains, relationship pains, and emotional drains.
The clunk of the big coins, the ting of the small, and one more sound - how about the crack of our hearts? Because this word hurts. That impoverished woman drops her coins into the chest and a bomb into our chests. I hear her story, and I wonder how much I ever truly give. Because if I don't really notice that it's gone, if I am not feeling a personal loss when I give, then maybe I've not really begun. That widow challenges the custom of naming public buildings after big donors. Maybe we should not name the new wing of a hospital after a wealthy person who gave a million dollars to the appeal, but the senior citizen who gave 200. This word hurts. It rips the mask off the superheroes of giving and reveals them to be not the wealthy philanthropists, but the ordinary men and women who give proportionately more of their income to their churches or charitable causes. Yes, this word hurts.
we’ve grown out of our pacifiers and security blankets, haven’t we? Or have we? Maybe all I’ve really done is graduate from one blanky to another – a more grown-up one. Maybe the source of my security now is my public persona, what people think of me, or my career, or my relationships, or my physical appearance, or my 401K, my portfolio or my insurance policies, or my status symbols, my badges of honor, my medals of accomplishment. Even my guilt and my inadequacy can be my security cloak. Because being inadequate can get me out of all sorts of challenges I’d rather not face.
‘Enough’ is what we all have. 'Enough' is a gift, 'enough' is a blessing, 'enough' is the attitude we must have if we are going to thrive in life. 'Enough' might not be what we want – we might strive for more, but 'enough' is all we need.
God still holds up perfection as the goal, because it should be, shouldn’t it? It is right and good and natural and noble that when a couple marries, they think big, they plan to be together forever; they don’t intend to mess up, neglect each other, or just drift apart. But if Jesus were standing here now talking about marriage, I think he’d remind us of this sobering truth that we’re all members of the Club of the Broken. Yes, let’s aim high – in all our relationships – let’s aim and being the best parents, children, siblings, friends, co-workers, church members we can. We’ve got to aim high, haven’t we? The love of God compels us to. But let’s remember that we’re broken.
The overwhelming tone of the music that James writes is this – we can’t do this alone. Following Christ is hard enough without trying to do it in isolation. Being a Christian is demanding enough without trying to do it in superficial relationships. We need each other.
St. Paul’s Episcopal Church 414 East Broad Street Westfield, NJ 07090
Rector: The Rev. Dr. Duncan Johnston Assistant Rector: The Rev. Christopher Decatur
Words are often unnecessary, but they are always powerful. So, when you use them, says James, think about the power you’re wielding. Words change lives. Words shape destiny. A single word uttered in an unguarded moment can end a career, as any broadcaster who has been caught in ‘hot mic’ moment can attest to. A sentence yelled in five seconds of uncontrolled anger can end a relationship. An idea poorly phrased or badly translated can even lead to war.
If you have ever wondered if your faith is real, then let me excite you. What James is doing is drawing this link between genuine faith and action. Without the action, the faith is dead. In other words, how do you know that your faith is genuine? Because you act on it. Sometimes we think our faith is weak, when actually, all we’re are experiencing is lack of certainty – which is not the same as lack of faith. Because faith shows itself, not in being certain about our beliefs, but in action.
But, even when God’s perfect mirror points out something unattractive in our character, there is always more wonderful truth it reveals. We may be scared to look into the perfect mirror of God because we know we will see imperfection in ourselves, and we’d rather not know. I don’t want to know how I need to change – that requires too much self-denial, discipline, hard work. And yet, what we see is God’s perfect love for us, that remains constant and unaffected by whatever faults we have.
I’m sure there are not as many atheists as people think. I am convinced that very many modern folks, especially in younger generations, think of themselves as atheists but are not, in fact. For them, there is meaning and purpose in life; there is something outside human beings, an intelligence or a principle, that gives order and the framework to make sense of life. They might not name it God – they may call it the universe, providence, science, new age philosophy, traditional wisdom schools, but whatever they call it, it does what God does – provides meaning, but without the personal nature of God.
But if we feed on Christ, the Bread of Life, he will give us the resources we need to make it through, to get up and face what he has called us to do. Often God doesn’t take away our challenging circumstances, but calls us to eat and drink Christ, taking his resources into our lives and finding in them the power to face and overcome those situations.
Am I in danger of preaching a brand of Christianity that turns Jesus from the Son of God into a self-help guru, and his religion into a lifestyle class, designed to make you feel good about yourself? Is the Gospel I preach really the one of the Cross, or is it a comfortable therapeutic Gospel? Does the Christ I present demand costly discipleship, or does he just want us to feel good about who we are, and boost our self-esteem? In my urgency to attract people to the Christian life, am I offering them food that lasts for ever, or food that perishes? The religion of Christ or a religion of convenience?
Those quick fixes that satisfy the tummy rumble for happiness, relieve my boredom, or send pleasure-giving chemicals around my brain. But we know what it’s like, don’t we? Soon the thrill of the new purchase wears off, the excitement of the experience is dampened by the ugliness of real life. The glucose high is over and we’re hungry again. Jesus says, “I am the living bread. Whoever eats of this bread will live forever.”
Don’t sweat the problems. Don’t doubt your resources. Simply take what you’re given and put it to good use. As we give, so we will discover that our resources will not run out. We will complete the task God has set before us, and we will have twelve baskets full left over. We will see the miracle; we will experience the lavish generosity of God. Because the Christ who made two fish and five loaves enough to satisfy thousands of people’s hunger is the same Christ who is with you and in you.
You see, today is the year that King Uzziah died. We mourn the death of old certainties, ancient truths, boring predictability when society was stable, and when all we had to do was unlock the doors on Sunday to enjoy a full church. But if God can invade his Temple in 742 BC, then why can’t he crash our churches, our communities, our grieving, broken hearts now, today, and why can he not set apart you and me for a magnificent task? Because when God does break in and break out, he utters the life-transforming question, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”
How can the church be one, when we live in the agony of a nation split by culture wars, where it feels like every little choice we make identifies us as being on one side or the other – whether it is the vehicle we drive, our attitude to the vaccine, even what is in your fridge will identify you as liberal or conservative or progressive or MAGA. We’ve all been drawn into the savagery of a cold civil war. How can we be one in a local parish church?
Today an invitation drops through our letter boxes. The stamp is from a country you don’t recognize, the return address seems exotic to you. You scramble to open the envelope, wondering what it contains, and who is it from. Your intrigue is peaked when you see it is an invitation to a party. It is being thrown by Herod. When Herod throws a party, the pressure is on. You’ll see things that will provoke you. You will hear the small voice of Christ prodding you to speak – to defend the victims, to demand justice, to point to the standards of God. Where you going go? Herod’s party. We must. We can’t miss this opportunity to be salt and light in God’s world. It’s why we were born. So, let’s pray for courage, wisdom, sensitivity and let us party up.
I’ve seen that child somewhere else. In the mirror. Maybe you have seen that child there too. You wish the master would come and take your hand, and tell you to rise. But the messengers speak another word. Don’t bother the master. It’s too late. You’ll never amount to much. You’ll always be a disappointment. You’ll never fulfill your potential. Don’t bother the master. It’s too late. You’ll always be unstable. You’ll never have a fulfilling career. You’ll always fail exams. You are a relational disaster area, and you always will be. Don’t bother the master. It’s too late. You’ll never be the person you want to be, never succeed like the others, talk like the others, be as witty or as smart or as attractive as the others. Don’t bother the master. It’s too late. Why would the master come to your house and raise you? Why would he contaminate himself, make himself unclean by touching you? Don’t bother the master. It’s too late.
“Lord, don’t you care if we drown?” Listen carefully this week and you’ll hear that phrase. O, maybe not those exact words, but the question will still be asked in various local dialects. When the US death toll from Covid reaches 600,000, “Lord, don’t you care if we drown?” When hunger threatens to kill millions in the Horn of Africa, “Lord, don’t you care if we drown?” When drivers doze off at the wheel, when the doctor’s visit brings the worst news imaginable, when the pink slip is handed to you, when you open the letter from an attorney, “Wake up, Lord, don’t you care if we drown?”
Many Christians are uncomfortable with the secret seed. They seek worldly power for Christ’s church. Churches may merge with political parties, trading their integrity for access to power. The lesson of history is clear – God’s kingdom grows at its fastest when it is powerless. The secret seed of God’s kingdom takes root and flourishes when the church performs its work on the margins, almost invisible, refusing to trade the gospel for a seat at the tables of the powerful.
It makes me wonder – if I’ve never been thought of as mad, am I really following Christ? If people don’t think I’m a bit unhinged, is it because I am actually just going with the flow, copying the values of the society around me, aping the patterns of our wayward culture? If people don’t see how I respond to aggravation, or the way I talk to people when I’m having a bad day, or when I give or speak, or when I post on social media and think, “There’s something not quite right about him. He’s different; he’s not right in the head”, then why are they not thinking that?
There are tongues of fire, but for us the bigger miracle is enduring suffering and not becoming bitter; There are strange winds that blow through buildings, but for us bigger miracle is being the target of unjust attacks and not responding with violence or spite; There are speaking in unlearned languages, but the bigger miracle is waking up to another day of pain, or conflict, or despair but choosing to get out of bed anyway, with the courage to persevere and the glimmer of hope that God is with you despite all appearances.
What a privilege it is to be called by God to be his ambassadors. And not just ambassadors, wonderful and awesome though that is, but co-workers with God. Here, in this picture of an olive, there is our purpose for being alive – our joyful duty, our high privilege as co-workers with God. If you are breathing this morning – this is why – to be the healing, peace-making, teller of good news to those in your world.
If you want to be a resentful Christian, a covetous Christian, a restless, peaceless, joyless Christian, then I recommend that you obey God out of duty, guilt, self-loathing, fear, or because you want to manipulate God. Try them and let me know how they work for you. But if you want the life of Christian freedom and joy then, yes, we need to obey God’s commands, but do so with the greatest motive – love.
It’s possible to suffer from runaway growth. Our lives can become unruly. We can grow a mess of shoots and leaves sprawling all over the place. Easy on the eye, pretty even, but not what we were made for. Our calling is to be simpler than that, to have the life-giving sap flow into the fruit and not the leaves. Cutting back the greenery will produce a healthier plant and a better crop. In God’s vineyard, leafy, showy branches are not the point. It is not about our possessions, our careers, our hobbies, even our relationships. Those things are usually beautiful, but sometimes they get in the way of what is truly important and rob the fruit of growth. What God is interested in is fruit
If you wanted to compare today’s Western world with a character in a fairy tale, you could probably not pick a better one than this narcissistic emperor. It took the pandemic to reveal the dark horror that we’re not in control. But if we could receive this revelation as a gift, if we would embrace it as a liberating grace, then we would be profoundly changed. Our self-image, our pride, our false sense of security would all be exposed – they are the emperor’s new clothes.
Thomas is our teacher because he tells us we must not settle for a secondhand experience of Christ. He reminds us that we cannot live on someone else’s faith, he calls us to encounter God for ourselves. So, are you ready to rehabilitate Thomas’s reputation yet? If not, let me ask you one final question that will surely persuade you. Who says doubt is a bad thing, anyway?
Mark ends his Gospel prematurely because he’s thinking of you and me. Mark begins a relay race. He has run his lap with brilliance. He has done his job perfectly. He has told the story of Jesus up to his resurrection, and now he is finished. There is more to be written, but not by him. Instead, he has passed the baton to us and said, “You finish it.” The tomb is empty, Jesus is alive, now what? How are you going to finish the story?
Wherever you go this Holy Week may you be aware that you carry Christ. You take him to the market, to the office, to the park. If you are not going out just yet because of the pandemic, you are taking him online – to your social media pages, you’re taking him on your phone when you talk to friends or family or businesspeople. So, may we bear Christ in the same way as Ned - with thoughtfulness, mindfulness, with co-operation and friendship, and with the nobility that comes through lowliness.
The scandal of Christian disunity. If you say you’re becoming closer to God but at the same time you’re becoming more judgmental of other Christians and more isolated from them, then you are kidding yourself. That’s not Jesus you’re getting closer to, but something else. Maybe dogma, or self-righteousness, or self-justifying purity tests. This is how people will know you are my disciples – if you love one another.
What is your poison? What is it that kills you? Anxiety? Fear? Anger? Guilt? Self-righteousness? Greed? We’ve all got our poison, our kryptonite, that thing that trips us time after time, that causes us pain and spoils our relationships. What is your poison? What color is your snake – green for envy, red for uncontrolled passion, yellow for cowardice? Today, let us take the vaccine. Let us come to the cross of Christ, and let us see there the antidote to the human condition.
There is another kind of anger – the kind that wakes up when it doesn’t get its own way, or when it feels slighted, or when it is stuck in a traffic jam, or when someone in a call center is having a bad day, or when it believes its privilege is threatened. But that is not worthy of us – the people who model our lives on Christ. Sometimes I like to kid myself that my anger is the righteous kind. Occasionally I pretend that I’m feeling angry for the sake of the poor, the marginalized, the victims, the suffering, when actually I’m more concerned about being right. My anger at people I disagree with is not so much about whether God’s will is being done; it’s about me owning my opponents, comforting myself that I am logical, reasonable, and Christlike and those others are just wrong and bad.
It’s tempting to want a small, tame, domestic cross. A cross that can fit neatly into our lives without too much inconvenience. Big enough to notice and to show off to the neighbors and guests; but not too big. I don’t want it to get into the way of me doing my own thing. This morning, this Lent, this trying season of pandemic, let’s explode the walls and rebuild our lives around the cross. Because "If any want to become his followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow him."
There are angels waiting on you. They went with you into the desert, when God threw you there, and they’ve been there all the time. It may be the wild beasts that make the most noise, but the angels are here – whispering their words of cam and hope. Sometimes they come in human form – and how we need each other. Sometimes they come in other forms. But God has sent them to support you and strengthen you until our forty days in this desert are over and we can return to one another.
What’s the key to soaring like an eagle? Waiting on the Lord. And if there’s one thing we should be really good at by now, it is waiting. You and I don’t need to be out there making things happen, doing deals, having meetings, planning the future. It is only on God’s thermals that we can soar. Desperately flapping our wings won’t cut it. I’m really excited that Lent is just ten days away, because it will give structure to our waiting.
God knocks us off our high horses not to humble us, though that is necessary; not to cause us pain, but that is important; not to expose our wrong-headedness and hard-heartedness, though that is always essential. God takes us low, to take us high. It’s what comes after the humbling that matters. God has a strategy for our lives. After we’ve sat in the dust and felt our bruises, contemplated our losses, and recovered our sight, we’ll be ready - to stand, to walk, to embrace what comes next – to go and open their eyes.
What are your nets? I’m not saying give up your job, your livelihood, the way the brothers did. We live complicated lives and when Jesus calls us it rarely involves giving up our careers, our homes, and source of income. (But don’t completely rule it out.) More likely is the call to enter a new relationship with your nets. One where they serve you not the other way round; where you use them for God’s kingdom, not your own; where they are handed over, and transformed into things that give joy and beauty to others.
It is in knowing they are loved for who they are that the addict experiences freedom; It is in knowing they are loved for who they are that the narcissist learns humility; It is in knowing they are loved for who they are that the greedy understand they are not the sum of their possessions. It is in knowing they are loved for who they are that the insecure person discovers they can trust themselves and others. It is in knowing they are loved for who they are that the angry person learns to rest and accept the way things are. It is in knowing they are loved for who they are that the liar becomes content to speak the truth without fear. It is in knowing we are loved for who we are that we are freed from being the center of attention, from having to get our own way, and from having to be right.
Words make worlds. Genesis 1 proves it, as does the gospel lesson from Mark, where God pronounces that Jesus is God’s Son with whom he is well pleased. Jesus proves it throughout the Gospels – he speaks peace to the wind and storms stop, he speaks healing to a sick person and health returns. Words make worlds. It is true for God and it’s true for us. And it is increasingly true the more power you have. It is vital that people who can influence public opinion use words wisely. Words that heal; words that are kind; words that are humble, words that express belonging, inclusion, and unity; words, above all, that are true.
In 2021, let’s make a covenant with God. An agreement to discover who we are in God, and then shamelessly to be that person. That is all God asks of you. As we grow in our relationship with God we become more fully who we are. Growing in Christ means becoming our true selves in all our uniqueness and beauty.
God so loved the world that he didn’t just send a book of instructions, an email, a text, or a tweet. Neither did he merely send a messenger to represent him. God didn’t stand on the edge of heaven and shout “I love you” very loudly, or tap out Morse code, or wave semaphore flags, or any of the other ingenious ways human beings use to express their thoughts and feelings. When God wanted to tell us he loves us he took his Word and made it human. “And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us.”
The real Jesus is so much more than human beings can imagine or understand. All those knock-offs are one-dimensional. He’s a baby or a judge or a miracle-worker or a social worker. But the genuine Jesus will not be reduced to a one-dimensional cut-out, The real Jesus will not be owned by Liberals or Conservatives; he will not be defined by the Right or the Left; he will not be controlled by Protestants or Catholics or Charismatics or Mainliners or Evangelicals. Jesus, the Genuine Jesus, is bigger than all that. He shocks and offends all of us – left, right, and center.
Over these nine months, God has shown us many things, and here’s an important one – waiting is a gift.
Waiting for the vaccine helps me think of people who need life-saving drugs every day – the type-1 diabetic, the dialysis user, the cancer patient.
Waiting for the travel restrictions to lift gives me sympathy for people who live with a disability which prevents them from ever going out even before Covid.
Waiting for restaurants and entertainment venues to re-open forces me to empathize with under-resourced people who even before Covid couldn’t afford to eat out or attend a concert.
Waiting for my normal routine to resume so that I can have the days off and the vacation time that my contract grants me makes me pray for those who would love to have a job but are among the 10 million who can’t find one.
But the Advent hope is stronger than that. It’s resilient because it comes from God, it’s robust because it takes root in our hearts, it is solid because it is built on the foundation of God’s faithfulness rather than our feeble hands and fickle passions. The Advent hope is more of an expectation than a wish. This Advent Sunday, we expect God to tear open the heavens and come down. We expect that one day Christ will return to establish peace, justice and union with God. Yes, we expect things to be smelly until then, but we expect to find a pony in the middle of it.
You can tell that their love is genuine because they do something about it. They don't just talk about helping the under-resourced, they get involved, they sacrifice, they meet the need when they can. That’s always the test of reality, the hallmark of authenticity – 'does it change people?'
True faith isn’t content to dig a hole and hide God’s gifts. Real faith risks time and energy, reputation and comfort, friendships and a quiet life. Faith is spelled R-I-S-K. But what’s the alternative? Digging a hole and hiding our talents, our time, our energy, our cash, our words, our love? Because burying these things in the ground is not free of risk either. In the ground, our gifts decay, our passion rots, our joy withers and rusts, and dies. “To whom much is given, of them much is expected, says Jesus elsewhere.” “The sin of respectable people is running away from responsibility”, said Dietrich Bonhoeffer. And he should know – he was a German pastor who was martyred for speaking out against the Nazi regime.
John Wesley, the great Anglican evangelist whose work in the UK and America has shaped 250 years of church history, wrote this in his diaries, "Today I met those of our society who had votes in the ensuing election, and advised them: "1. to vote, without fee or reward, for the person they judged most worthy; 2. to speak no evil of the person they voted against; 3. to take care their spirits were not sharpened against those that voted on the other side."
In a year of loss we dare to trust God. We give it up and let it go. We know that hoarding our resources, be they money, time, or our personal talents, does not grow the Kingdom of God. We know the secret that when we give the work of our hands, even when we think we have nothing to give, God does prosper our work. because if not us, then who; and if it’s not now, then when?
We are the bearers of his image. Dare we put ourselves in circulation? People follow the money. When they see us being God’s coins, bearing his likeness, sharing his kindness, they will follow the one whose image we bear. They will follow you to the Father, they will follow you to the throne of grace.
It's all about where we are looking. My eyes are often on the chaos. My ears are attuned to the voices of despair and the boasts of dishonesty. I focus on the reason to be miserable and the causes of doubt. I fix my eyes on the things I lack – some of those things belong to other people, some are beyond my ability to buy, some are denied me because I have responsibilities to work and serve and love. And this, I’m convinced, is the single greatest cause of my unhappiness, my wishful thinking, my resentment, my envy, my feelings of inadequacy and my fear of the future. Taking my eyes off God, rejecting Paul’s glorious invitation to focus on the beautiful, the true, the noble, the just, the honorable, the pure, the commendable.
Maybe the hardest person to tell the truth to is yourself. Somehow it’s easier to say it to God. But to tell yourself the truth is really hard, and if you do that then you may have to change. What are these truths that people find so desperately hard to say to themselves? ‘You’re too dependent on life’s trivia. Your values are shallow. You’re losing your grip on what’s really important in life. You’re an addict. Your relationship needs urgent attention. Your performance is slipping. You’re hurting yourself. You’re starting to believe your press. You are not as perfect as people think you are. You’re not as bad as people think you are.’ These are harsh truths. But how much better is it that we say them to ourselves before someone else says them to us. Because you know what? You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. Lies don’t do that. Carefully chosen words that are intended to mislead without actually lying don’t do that.
Spiritually speaking, the only people who can’t be healed are those who don’t think they’re sick. Christ saves us – but he will only save the real us – the us who know we need it. He can’t save our false selves, the mask-wearing actors we often feel the urge to be. Saints are not perfect people, we’re people who know we’re not perfect and so rely on God’s grace.
Because according to Jesus, it doesn’t matter when you were called to the vineyard, our reward is the same and so is our value. Those who have been in the church for many years provide stability, maturity, wisdom, perspective, an example of faithful perseverance which his crucial in any church. Those dear ones are the guardians of our story and the gatekeepers of our community. But, equally, the enthusiasm, the freshness, the healthy questions, the new perspective of the late hires is vital if we are to be a truly healthy parish church.
The strong Christians, though, have a big boat. It’s not so sturdy and is certainly less tidy that the other boat. In fact, it can get downright messy. With so many people in the boat, everyone has their own ideas about this, that and the other thing. There are a few rules, protecting the core values that keep the boat together, like love and joy that embrace the chaos and they welcome difference. They don’t sweat the small stuff.
Fourteen weeks From Eden to Egypt and Out Again. Here’s what I’m taking away – it’s the constant theme running through these stories, and is so apt for the summer of Covid. Hear the Word of the Lord: God has a plan. We can’t see what it is, but all our experiences are working together for the good – ours and the world’s. Hold on to that promise, go on in faith, and see what God will do for you.
A fugitive is not beyond restoration. A murderer is not beyond redemption. A person who lives with the consciousness of their moral failings, and who now wrestles with thoughts of whether God can ever use them does not just have a place in God’s heart, but a place in God’s plans. A person struggling with fear, doubt and inner conflict, a person who doesn’t even know who they are is the prime candidate for a series of miracles that changed a nation.
Faith seeks out the quiet sounds of God in the world filled with deafening noise. But as on a submarine, it does not take extraordinary spiritual ears to detect God’s work. All we need is ears, and the will to listen carefully. God often works in quiet mode.
But there’s another story running through all these events, and if you look hard enough you will see that same thread, unbroken and glorious, running through your life too. Stare hard. It’s the story of grace. It’s the epic tale of how despite our failures and our rejections and our weaknesses and our half-hearted, ham-fisted attempts of living a good life, we have not been alone. The God who sat with Joseph in a pit and rode next to him on a camel all the way to captivity in Egypt is the God who has gone with you through the most desperate times. And even today, if you feel like you’re in a pit, or being hauled out and carted off to captivity, God is going with you.
Wrestling with God is OK, it’s all right to have questions, doubts, fears; it’s OK to wrestle with the intellectual problems of being a Christian; it’s perfectly acceptable to want to resist God’s will if it involves suffering, But when the wrestling is over, when I’m just too tired to go on, when God has got me face-down on the canvass and in my exhaustion I smack the mat and voice my surrender, there is a new life.
God has plans for you and even now he is at work, even if we are blind to it right now. Like a GPS, we have a destination. We may make a mistake, we may turn right instead of left. It might mean you arrive at your destination a bit later than you’d hoped, or after spending more money on tolls than you’d planned. But God, our guide, will still get you there.
The place of cowardice is the place where we meet God. That is the experience of Jacob the fugitive. And I think I know the reason for this surprising spiritual truth. I think it lies in vulnerability. It’s why Jonah meets God in the belly of a fish, why Peter meets God while sinking into a lake, and why Jesus receives courage in the Garden of Gethsemane. The place of our deepest fears and our most overwhelming helplessness is the place where we meet God is his most gracious and powerful.
Human beings waste a lot of time and energy resisting the inevitable – ageing, sadness, loss, death. The gift of accepting things you cannot change is one of the greatest and most elusive of God’s gifts. When we have it we truly are free. When new lack it we become small, bitter, joyless.
Before we suffer, our faith that God is good is just a theory. Before we suffer, our faith that God will never leave us is just a theory. Before we go through the time of trial, our belief that God has a grand future for us, is just an idea. Before we experience the pain of the test, our faith that God will support us is just our point of view. When we are tested we find proof that we are God’s beloved, we see with crystal clarity that God is faithful and won’t abandon us, we come to understand where we are vulnerable. Like gold in a refiner’s fire, we are tested to make us stronger, to rid us of impurities, to learn that in God’s strength, we are going to make it through.
God will take even the very worst of evils performed by human beings and turn them into opportunities for goodness. He will take the cruel eviction of a mother and child into the desert to face certain death, and use it to found a nation that blesses the world. He will take my selfish actions and somehow, despite my goatish motives, use those broken shards to build something splendid. Hear the Word of the Lord – the God of outcasts and rejects, the God of haters and murderers. Be of good courage. Sin won’t win. The Kingdom will come.
The Bible is not a psychology textbook. What it is a revelation of God’s never-ending, all-consuming, overwhelming love. God’s eternal, incomprehensible, undeserved grace and acceptance of you and me. What the Bible gives us is not pop-psychology, but a God who takes the initiative – who gives and loves and blesses despite all the reasons why he shouldn’t. Sarah laughed her cynical laugh, and so do we. Yeah right, God’s going to bless me. Hear the Word of the Lord. Sarah did nothing. Nothing that made the promise come true. God had a plan.
At the heart of all Christian ethics – Catholic and Protestant, Evangelical and Liberal, Eastern and Western is this deep truth. A truth so profound that it demands us to respect it and live by it. Every human life is sacred. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.
Today, Pentecost 2020, we need the power of the living water to erode human hardness. If it took millions of years for the Colorado River to erode its riverbed to the depth of 6,000 feet, how long will it take for God’s living water – the Holy Spirit of Pentecost – to erode the hardness of human hearts?
There’s a time to be an activist, and it’s soon. There’s a time to be a contemplative, and it’s now. This is the time of staring into heaven, of preparation, learning, reflection, prayer, meditation, getting ready. Because sometime soon – the next phase of God’s mission to reconcile the world to himself will begin. And we will be at the heart of it. Gaze into heaven, experience God’s Spirit, get ready to change the world.
Our anxiety drives us to act in ways that override morality. We spend our money based on fear rather than stewardship. We make political decisions based on fear rather than the common good. We view our neighbors based on fear and not their divine image. We view people who are differ from us in color, nationality, or culture based on fear and not the love that God has for them. We participate in religious life based on fear rather than love.
Covid entered the sheep pen, and so the enemy cannot be Covid – or the death and poverty that resulted. No, the enemy in the bundle of things that want to come with it – the despair, the hopelessness, the fear, the crippling anxiety, the negligence towards our neighbors, the selfishness, and the fragmentation of society into two hostile groups along ideological lines that we are increasingly experiencing. The Good Shepherd taunts these things because they don’t have that power. Sure, we may get sick, of course, we may suffer in debilitating and devastating ways, but we can never be snatched away from the love and the ultimate protection of the Good Shepherd.
When we get to Emmaus, when we reach our destination on the other side of Covid, we will say, “He was with us all the time, and we never knew it. He has taken us to the place of salvation” Oh, he took the scenic route, he was in no kind hurry, he didn’t us a GPS, but he got us there. The place of resurrection awaits. We’re on our way, step by step.
Oh please don’t say all this suffering was for nothing. That tens of thousands of people died, that countless families were rocked by loss, that billions around the globe had their lives upended, their futures altered, their hopes dashed, their dreams strangled, and it was all for nothing. That we just went back to normality after a few months. That cannot be an option. It’s Easter Day, Christ is risen, and resuscitation is just not good enough. We want Resurrection. We must be transformed.
Blessings are for giving away. We are blessed in order to bless. It may be the blessing of money – or it may be the blessing of time, of energy, of intellect, of education, of experience, of love, your creativity, your leadership skills, your business acumen. Hear the Word of the Lord: we have been blessed; but not to stockpile our blessings, not to hoard our riches be they material, mental, physical or spiritual, but to bless others. Eco-systems exist because of flow.
Just as the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness, so the Spirit pushes us into this desert. Yes, we will be tested and tried and tempted. But for good reasons – to grow, to become stronger, to gain wisdom, to be more complete in our self-awareness and our God-awareness. Can you handle this desert? Yes, you can. What kind of God leads his beloved into places where they will inevitably fail, where they will be harmed, where they will become worse people?
Sometimes the cloud can descend in a doctor's office. It can appear out of nowhere with a phone call, or an email, or the boss wanting to have a word with you. Life is enjoyable, God seems close, circumstances are happy, the sun is shining. Then the cloud descends. Chaos gatecrashes the place where contentment lived, and we know that we must go down the mountain. So where is our hope?
Religious rules can stop me killing people or cheating on my spouse, but, they won’t change my heart. Deep down in the dark secret place - that is where God wants to do his work, the place where my motives are hatched, and my urges are birthed. Get to the place where the seed falls and let God work on it before it sprouts, takes root, grows, and eventually leads to a horror that destroys my life and other peoples’.
you ARE the salt of the earth. Hear the Word of the Lord: ‘Get out of the saltshaker and into the world.’ This place needs us – it needs you. We are to season this world that is often bland and frequently tasteless. You are the seasoning in your workplace, your school, your social circles, your online communities. Get out of the saltshaker and into the world.
Anna and Simeon have probably experienced failure, because that is vital if people are to gain wisdom. They have almost certainly let themselves down at times, because that is essential if we are to get a true knowledge of who we are. They have probably been stripped of things they once held dear, because that must happen if we are to find peace and contentment. Experience is something you gain just after you needed it, and they have gained it in spades.
So, what am I here after? Why did I get out of bed today? What’s my purpose? We live in a time and place, when these questions whispered as they are in the deep hiding places of every human soul, are drowned out by the orchestra of anxieties, demands, duties, and stressors. Does the sheer madness of this over-active, over-stimulated, over-entertained, over-informed, over-stretched, over-filled, over-loaded, over-expected life make you just want to throw it all in? Gigabytes of knowledge incessantly pound away at the hard drive between our ears so we never have the chance to defragment, clean disk, or reboot.
A call was placed on your soul. A plan was hatched in the mind of God for who you would become, for what you would be, for how you would become a coworker with God in the renewal and salvation of the world. You were set apart and given a noble and holy task, one that no one else can perform. God is proud of you. Those words of God proclaimed over Jesus at his baptism – God says those words over you – you are my daughter, my son, my beloved, with whom I am well pleased. So let’s be clear what this job is that God called you to when you were baptized. To be deeply invested in the murky lives of men and women. To be intimately involved with God in influencing the culture of your workplace, your family, your social network; changing lives, transforming society, cleaning the dirt.
This infant is transforming Egypt from a land of captivity into a new place of liberty. He is only a few months old, but he’s already redeeming the past. Imagine what he’ll do when he grows up. Our pasts can be redeemed. Places where we fear to go can become sanctuaries of peace – the dwelling places of God. Where is the place you fear to go – in your mind or in your physical world. Maybe this twelfth day of Christmas God has one more gift for you – not drummers drumming, but the transformation of the painful place, the cruel place, the place of captivity – into the place where the Savior lives.
This is what makes Joseph the Carpenter such an amazing saint. He has his fears, he has his pride, he has his doubts, but he holds them lightly, and when God asks, he gives them up. He exchanges his fear of the future for the Greatest of gifts. He regifts those feelings that drive him from the woman he loves; regifts the pride that frets more about his reputation than about his loved-ones; regifts the skepticism that labels his betrothed is a cheat; regifts the belief that God doesn’t do miracles. Joseph regifts a gloomy future – a life of resentment, anger, pain, restlessness, regret, the prospect of a blighted, shriveled life – an existence ruminating on his hurt and victimhood; and in its place he accepts the gift of being step-son to God’s miracle.
Far from being the enemy we fear, disillusionment is actually a friend. Until we become thoroughly fed up with a person, a job, a situation that is out of your control, you can’t truly receive the blessing that hides deep within it. You shall know the truth, says Jesus, and the truth shall set you free, not illusions. Or, as, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor martyred by the Nazis, put it, “The sooner the shock of disillusionment comes to an individual and to a community the better for both.”
Why the disguise? Why did the King of All There Is come to his world like a pauper? Love. Why does he still walk the streets of Union County unrecognized? Love. Why does he move delicately, invisibly, but oh so beautifully in your life? Love. The kingdom of God is not a matter of power and show, it’s about love – for his creation, its people, and you. For those you love, for those in need, for those in pain. It was for love he came; it was to die he came.
If our hearts are focused on what we lack instead of what we have, then we will be anxious. "There’s only so much money to go around, only so much happiness, only so much love, only so much God. If other people are enjoying these, then there’s less available for me. " If there’s not enough of God’s blessing to go around then we would be right to compete for God’s love, to fight for material things, to horde what we have, to be defensive, to be suspicious of other people, to reject the outsider, to close ranks and close borders, to shun risk, to settle for what we have and dedicate our energy to making sure no one else shares in it. What small minds, miniscule hearts, deformed and suffering spirits we endure when we focus on what we lack instead of celebrating what we have.
So, I’m downsizing my vocabulary. I’ve decided that looking at my circumstances and labelling them ‘deserved’ or ‘undeserved’ is a waste of time. If I simply ignore the concept of deserved and undeserved then I’d be freer to accept each day as it comes and receive its gifts. And that may help me forgive my enemies more easily.
So, I’m getting rid of the words ‘deserving and undeserving’, and I’m also throwing out the words ‘good and bad’, when I use them to describe events that happen to me. Because, how do I know what’s good or bad?
No matter where I go in life I will always see myself as a Philadelphian, Ah, the City of Brotherly Shove…I mean Love. And, so as to not exclude, we say, “the City of Brotherly and Sisterly love. Amen? (I said, “Amen?”). Well, if that is true, someone please tell that to the PPA. The Philadelphia Parking Authority. An institution that is, by nature of its role in the city, anything but ‘brotherly’, ‘sisterly’ or ‘loving’. I don’t begrudge them. Much. Although I am fairly certain that I got a parking ticket from them…last week…here…in Mountainside…in New Jersery…they are relentless!
I would be the Pharisee in this story. I look out at the world and see greed in business, scandal in Hollywood, crushing cynicism in the media, self-righteousness in Christ’s Church, self-promotion in places of power, violence, racism, and exclusion everywhere, and I pray, “Thank you God that I’m not like them – those power-hungry politicians, those greedy businesspeople, those scandalous celebrities, those judgmental Christians. Thank you that I’m better than them.” I pride myself that I hate no one, except people who hate; I’m not prejudiced against anyone, except people who are prejudiced; I’m not judgmental against anyone, except people I judge to be judgmental. Do you see what I mean? Even when I’m thinking like Jesus – when I’m spotting hypocrisy, I’m only a nanosecond away from committing the same sins I am judging the other person of. And I’m left open-mouthed and wide-eyed as I contemplate the grace of God. That somehow Christ sees the sins of others but loves them anyway, wants the best for them, can see past the bravado, the hate, the prejudice, the self-righteousness, to the vulnerable and often damaged soul that dwells behind the mask. That is love divine, all loves excelling, and it silences me.
Patient Number Three is a very busy woman. She has a life to get on with. It has been years since she'd spent time with her husband or embraced her kids. She is now free. She needs to go home and hug her family; she needs to run through the street and shout out that she is healed. She needs to get with her friends and celebrate. She wants to thank Jesus - after all, he has literally given her back her life. And she will when she sees him next. He’s bound to come back this way soon, and when he does she’ll make a special effort to go out thank him for what he's done. People call her impetuous, but she prefers to see herself as living passionately in the moment. Do you know any threes?
The first thing that goes is your heart. It becomes closed, hard, calloused. Then, into some tight little crevasse a seed falls. The germ of apathy. And when it takes root and sprouts, its shoots reach up from the heart to the eyes, and you are blinded to the suffering of others. The rich man is trapped in such blindness that even as he endures the torment he feels entitled - the purpose of Lazarus, he thinks, is to serve him. He still doesn’t get it. “Send Lazarus to give me a drink, send him to warn my brothers” he demands of Abraham.
Take the dishonest words, the mean gesture, the spiteful action, and turn them around. Take the negative, the petty, the mean, the vicious, the selfish, and transform it into something that will do good. When hurt is hurled at you, catch it, allow God to transform it, and then throw it back in the form of forgiveness and love. Return curses with blessings. Repay evil with good. Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth.
One possible response to Jesus’ warnings against making promises you can’t deliver is fear. The kind of paralyzing fear that makes you decide never to make another promise in your life. But there’s another response you can make. Hear the Word of the Lord: Sometimes prudence grasps a snake. Wisdom may take the risk. Virtue assesses the danger, anticipates the pain, counts the cost, and walks the way of the cross. Fear of not delivering doesn’t stop wisdom from making promises. The truly wise know that often the easy way is not the way to prosperity; usually the path to growth, the road to contentment, the track to fruitfulness is steep, rugged, and littered with obstacles. We have a higher calling that transcends the pain. But we make that choice. We stand at a font and make promises, we kneel before a bishop and make promises, we get out of bed and tell God that today in his strength and with his comfort, we will endeavor to live as his disciple - because we know we were made to male that promise. And we do it basing our confidence not on our own ability to keep our promise, but because God is faithful to keep his.
Like Abram we are called to a life of fruitfulness. Count the stars, if you can. To the schoolteacher, the fruit of young lives molded, sculpted, transformed into people who will make the world a better place: count the stars, if you can. To the checkout operator, the fruit of customers who see your peace and spot the presence of Christ in your life: count the stars, if you can. To the retired person whose service to God and the world is now prayer: count the stars, if you can. To the stay-at-home parent investing hour after hour of time and energy into raising a child, who will grow to shape neighborhoods and communities: count the stars, if you can. To the commuter wondering if the daily grind is worth it: count the stars if you can. To all of us who sometimes wonder why we got out of bed this morning, and whether there is any point to our existence: count the stars, if you can. These are the twinkling reminders of God’s presence in your life, the daily signs of blessing, the refreshing promise of glory.
But what if being heavenly minded is a good thing? What if you are so heavenly minded that you start to see the world through the eyes of God? What if you can be so heavenly minded that when you see the suffering of the world you feel God's pain? What if you are so heavenly minded that when you encounter injustice, prejudice, and cruelty, your faith forces you to do something about it? What if you and me and everyone who calls themselves Christians were so heavenly minded that when we encounter evil we can’t walk by on the other side, retreat to our hermit's caves, or pretend that everything is wonderful in paradise? What if we are so heavenly minded that we see from God’s perspective the true belovedness of every human being – joining in Paul’s great declaration that there is no longer “Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free, immigrant or citizen, white or of color, gay or straight, conservative or liberal, or any other division that we care to name. But Christ is all and in all?
Often we religious types think we can control God. If I do my religious duty, if I follow the Ten Commandments, if I read my Bible regularly, then God will treat me well. I’ll be blessed. If, however, I neglect prayer, never go to church, fail to live the Christian life adequately, then God will punish me; he won’t bless me, and he won’t answer my prayers. Now if those conclusions were correct then it would mean that we control God. God must respond in a certain way according to what I do. So, I’m in charge. I take the initiative and God merely responds. I make the decisions (to pray or not to pray, to be holy or not to be holy) and God must act accordingly. But the Good News is better than that. It is God’s nature to bless and there is nothing you can do to change that. Nothing.
When I sit at the feet of Jesus something wonderful and miraculous happens to me. I find myself wanting to be a better person. When I hear his words my soul is stirred and my mind expanded. I dream of what is possible and imagine a better world. I desire above all things to be a better husband, father, worker, pastor, and friend. But much of the time I sit with other voices – voices shrill will fear and twisted in resentment. When I sit with those voices I don’t want to be a better person. I actually want to become worse. I start to fear my neighbor and not understand her. I want to reject my neighbor and not listen to him. I don’t want to be peaceful; I want to be angry.
The love Jesus calls us to have is not the kind that is rooted in warm feelings – it is impossible to have that kind of love for your enemy. You can't grit your teeth and try very hard to produce affection for someone who has seriously wronged you. And if you want those feelings to come before you love your enemy then you’ll be waiting for eternity. No, this love is a different kind of love. This love for an enemy begins with a decision. It is a choice to see the humanity of the other, the belovedness of the other, the true image of God stamped on the soul of the other.
If we want peace and are prepared to do the hard job of sowing it, then we will receive it. If we truly want joy or love or any of these fruits, and if we want them desperately enough, then we will labor in the heat of the day, preparing the ground, plowing, weeding, planting, watering, we will reap. In this sense, God gives us what we want in life. But we have to really want it. God will probably not open up our lives to reap love if we're unwilling to sow it in other people first.
But when we focus too much on the past we flirt with twin dangers – nostalgia and regret. We can idolize the past, enshrine it as a time that was happier, holier, and all round better than now; or we can curse the past - ruminate on mistakes we made, decisions we blew, sins we committed. And those two roads are dead ends. It doesn’t matter which one of them you pick – they will both distract from seeing God now, make you fearful about the future, and depress your mood.
I wonder if you have broom tree. I wonder if you go there sometimes, sit under it, and submit to the demons of despair like Elijah. I wonder if you too have done great things for God or for humans; exerted yourself, stepped out in faith, put your time and energy on the line, achieved amazing results, and then crashed. Do you know that exhaustion that doesn’t just melt away with a good night’s sleep but that attaches to your body, mind and spirit, and like a creeping vine strangles the hope out of you? I wonder if you have been so low, and so unable to see a way up that you have even uttered Elijah’s prayer.
The year was 1226 -- the day was October 3rd, Saint Francis of Assisi left us and joined the realms of heavenly light. Saint Francis of Assisi -- a name that means "free man".
Maybe we don’t like the idea that the Holy Spirit is down and dirty, living in the ugly, the pained, the dying. We don’t like grey, even if it does come with a shiny neck. Grey is rain and cloud; it is drab and melancholy. Grey is the color of impersonal cities, soul-destroying high-rises, foreboding skies and threatening seas. Grey is at best dull, and at worst dangerous. Maybe that is why the pigeon at Christ’s baptism is white in Western art. Online you’ll find volumes of paintings of Jesus’ baptism. Many of them feature a bird. None of them are grey. This unsettling, unpredictable Pentecost we must resist the tendency to see God merely in the holy and the beautiful. Because we don’t live in the holy and beautiful. We live in the grey – where there’s distress, and death, and decay, and doubt. We live with the grey because that is where the Spirit of God is. We wish it were not so; we wish we could find the white bird and live aloof from the dirt of this world, be transported to a place without the mess.
We can choose to stay with them, and drag them around with us, like the ghost of Jacob Marley in ‘A Christmas Carol’. Or we can allow God the Chain-breaker to do what God the Chain-breaker does, and live in the freedom he has won for us. We can remain enclosed in our tight little, slight little vision of life. Stay safe and sound in our risk-free, small-minded, nothing-ventured-nothing-gained shackles of ordinariness. Take up residence in a cell of lukewarm faith, half-hearted commitment, low-energy discipleship. Refuse to invite God the Chain-breaker to set us free, fearing that if we turn over our hearts to him he may expand them, fill them with dreams, and stuff them with love.
I’m not a psychiatrist, neither am I an expert in public policy, so it’s not for me to suggest how you and I can make a difference to this appalling public health crisis. Except in one way. As your pastor I can suggest something. Love. Love our depressed neighbors, our anxious neighbors, our neighbors who have some imbalance in their brain chemistry, love those who were born atypical, or became so after trauma of some kind. Love them. And I’ll leave you and the Holy Spirit to collaborate in working out what that means in your situation.
This line on the floor is a hinge, a boundary, a gateway, a Prime Meridian. It’s the one that Peter straddled in the attic in Joppa. On one side is Tabitha’s bed, Gazelle’s bed, the place of death. And on the other is the land of the living. On one side is the graveyard of dreams. On the other the maternity ward of hope. On one the law of cold hard justice – the salary of sin is death. On the other is the law of grace – the free gift of peace with God, with people, with yourself, and with all creation. Peter straddled it because that’s what we followers of Jesus do. We grasp the hand of God, and resurrection passes through our bodies, across that line to touch the people and situations in the place of death.
Here’s the end of your life - where Christ has gone, so will you. As he has passed through death and into resurrection, so will you; as he has faced down humankind’s last enemy and walked on victorious, so will you. This is your destiny. Yes, the right way to read a book is to begin at the end. Your life is not heading into oblivion. Your future is not bones fossilizing for ever under ground, or ashes scattered in Yankee Stadium. Your future is resurrection – a new body, free of pain and aging, a mind without anxiety and confusion. Start the book from the end and let God’s pure light illumine the true nature of what you are experiencing now.
In these final two weeks of Lent Mary breaks open a perfume jar, and breaks open my hard heart. She kneels before Jesus to pour her ointment, and she kneels before me and begs me to worship with the same uninhibited, sacrificial service. She touches those divine feet and calls me to touch people in my life who need compassionate connection. She literally lets her hair down and challenges me to abandon myself in the worship and service of God.
How do you feel about attending a party thrown by an unfair God? Because that is the God and Father of Jesus. Is this the Parable of the Lost Son, or the Unfair Dad? God does not treat people the way they deserve. He loves the haters; he adores the spiteful, welcomes the violent, opens his arms to the immoral, the greedy, the seedy. He stands on the top of his house and gazes longingly, desperately, eternally at the horizon, pining for the evil-doer. And then when he sees a human figure appear in the far distance, he picks up the hem of his robe and he runs. And he nauseates the self-righteous.
Jesus is not breaking the link between sin and suffering. He is breaking the link between suffering and punishment. Luke 13:1-9. 3rd Sunday in Lent 2019.
Man cannot live by doughnuts alone. Welcome to Lent 2019. Are you ready to rumble? Because that is our call. Every first Sunday of Lent we read about Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. Jesus strides into the desert to do battle with himself and his adversary. This is a forty-day bout for the championship of the world.
Perspective is everything. And usually in life there is more than one to choose from. And it is a choice. Something happens and we have two perspectives to pick from. Either this is an utter disaster; it is the end of something wonderful and the start of never-ending misery. Or it is a painful event, which God has under control and from which, in time, good things will grow. Disaster or opportunity, the end or a new phase, a sign that I’m cursed and fated to be unhappy or a brief spell of painful challenge which will transform me into a better Christian and happier person.
We’re used to Jesus and his upside-down world, aren’t we? Where the last shall be first and first last, where the mighty will be humbled and the lowly exalted, where the hungry are fed and the rich sent empty away, where two copper coins are worth a million dollars, where the more you give the more you have, and now – get this - where the people I don’t want to be like are the very people I should aspire to be like. This one hurts. When Jesus stood on level ground and described the men and women who are blessed by God, he turned the whole of human wisdom upside down.
Paul’s mission was this, as his friend Luke records it in today’s lesson from Acts. “Get up and stand on your feet; for I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify. I will rescue you from your people and from the Gentiles-- to whom I am sending you to open their eyes.”
Do you ever feel like all you have to offer God is water – and not 150 gallons of it either, but a pint, a cup, a champagne flute? When we feel smart, creative, talented, alive then, on those days, life is so good. We want to bottle those moments, force a cork into the top and carry it around with us. Then take it out when the need arises and splash it around, blessing people and God.
It’s the Feast of Seekers. How wonderful to have a day when we honor and celebrate the millions of people who feel there must be more to life than this, who have that deep inkling that there is something out there and that he/she/it is calling them, drawing them, beckoning them home; who know in their souls that life has a meaning and they must find it, that they were born for a purpose, and they must discover it.
A miraculous night. A night that changed the world. Glad tidings of great joy. What are the odds?
It’s always a privilege, but a sobering one, to stand in this box and share with the people of St Paul’s what I think God may want to say to them. But this afternoon, I am deeply moved and honored to stand here by invitation. So, thank you, John Francis, for including me in this most glorious of days.
This morning in a spirit of humility, in keeping with the spirit of Advent, I thought I would bring some evidence of my sins to show you.
The votes are in, they’ve all been counted, and the results are shocking. I was appalled, and, actually I suspect some voter fraud, because surely this can’t be right. But I read it on the websites of two reputable newspapers, so I guess I must accept it - the electorate has spoken, and their voice is clear. My vote went to a candidate that came in only 6th, so I’m upset, and I’m disgusted by the moral decay of our nation. The question was more straightforward than many on ballot papers around the country this month, it was simply this: “Who is your favorite Superhero?” And the winner was Batman. Give ignorant people the vote and this is what they do with it. I mean, he doesn’t even have any superpowers. He is just a creepy rich guy who had a bad experience in childhood. But he does have a cool car, and I can’t help thinking that impressed shallow voters. Now, my candidate, the superhero who to any balanced, reasonable voter, HAS to be the greatest, who demands the title of superest superhero is the original and the best – Superman. It must be. Who needs a cool car when you can fly faster than a speeding bullet? Who wants to be a billionaire, Bruce la-di-da Wayne, when your resume includes saving the world multiple times? And when it comes to overcoming your psychological demons, OK so young Master Bruce saw his parents being murdered, but Kal-el (for that is Clark Kent’s real name) experienced his entire planet exploding. Holy trauma, Batman.
Hidden out of sight and usually out of mind, on the north-east coast of England, is a city that was once a vibrant port to Northern Europe. Now it is not much of anything. It’s called Hull, and you have probably never heard of it. The reason I say that with confidence is that I've barely heard of it and I lived there for three years. It has a second-tier professional football club and a third-tier university, which was why I lived there for three years. One of God’s geographical jokes was to place Hull in blissful isolation near the end of a very wide estuary called the Humber. It is so remote that even though it is home to 284,000 people with an extremely rare accent, the only reason you would go to Hull is to go to Hull. And you’d only go to Hull if you had nowhere else to go. Unless you are a civil engineer. Because Hull has one astonishing, breathtaking, mesmerizing claim to fame.
Last year while preparing to move to New Jersey, I sifted through my bookcases, and I came across one I’d forgotten I had. It’s a family heirloom. It is called ‘The Children’s Book of Hymns’, and it was published in the 1920s. And two things make it interesting. One is the beautiful illustrations by an artist named Cicely Barker.
There were many things I had to give up before I could move on. One of them was Mickey. Mickey was my best friend, my constant companion, the ground of my affections, my source of safety. If I close my eyes I still see Mickey – his eyes were abnormally wide, his smile so broad that, actually, now I think about it, it was slightly creepy. And there was his smell. If noses can have memories, then that aroma is carved into mine. If I were to catch a whiff of it now, perhaps on a crowded bus or even at coffee hour, I’d recognize it immediately, even though I’d be unable to name it.
The other day I read online the most moving and romantic letter you could imagine. And in the interests of sharing the joy, I feel led to read it to you, so if you need to take out a tissue and dab a tear we will understand.
“If We Are Not Just Animals, What Are We?” That was the headline in the New York Times a few months ago, and below it a well-known philosopher gave his answer. It’s a vital question, one no one can ignore, because your answer will determine how you live. This morning’s poet in Psalm 8 asks that question – but in slightly different words. “When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars you have set in their courses, what are humans that you should be mindful of them?”
At 11pm on April 25th, 2003 Aaron Ralston parked his truck at the Horseshoe Canyon Trailhead in Utah, climbed into his sleeping bag and drifted serenely to sleep. The next day would change his life profoundly and shockingly for all time. He woke the next morning, oblivious to the magnitude of this day, wolfed down a high energy breakfast, and mounted his bike. 15 miles later, he locked it to an isolated tree in the wilderness, and strode purposefully to his destiny with terror - Bluejohn Canyon. It was 2:45 before he began his descent into the chasm, and within a half hour disaster struck. I say ‘struck’, but ‘rolled’ would be better. Aron was negotiating a 10-foot drop between two ledges when an 800-pound boulder shifted above him, and rolled onto his right hand, crushing it against the sandstone wall.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?” At school I feared that question. I tried to put off answering it for as long as I could. In fact, the only reason I went to college was because I couldn’t think of anything else to do, and it bought me three more years of not having to tackle that question. The reason it scared me was that I was the third child of three, and so my thoughts and wishes were not really very important. I was used to just tagging along with whatever my sister and brother wanted to do; their voices were the ones my parents heard. And I was fine with that because I learned that even though I didn’t have a say in what I was going to do on Saturday, or where I was going on vacation, or what movie I was going to see at the cinema, or even what I was having for dinner, everything always turned out happily, and I enjoyed whatever was decided. My career path became clear when I was 21 and an undergraduate, but I didn’t really decide even then. No, God had taken the place of my parents and siblings, and he chose what I was going to do when I grew up.
Now before I really get into this sermon, I’d like all of you to repeat a few words after me. Here we go: “aaaaarrrggghh”, “shiver me timbers”, “I’ll make ye walk the plank”. Well done. You’re now fully prepared for a major event on the global calendar. Wednesday of this week is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. It’s true - the 19th of September. For the simple reason that it’s fun to call someone a scurvy rat. This important festival was started in 1995 by people with far too much time on their hands named John Baur and Mark Summers, and in the last 23 years it has gained momentum like a Spanish galleon in full sail. According to the Web site talklikeapirate.com, it has become so popular that they have issued a set of guidelines for how to celebrate the day in the workplace. For example, you need to wear red and black, and don’t be afraid to accessorize with an eye patch or a parrot.
His name is Arthur Bühl, and if you ever see him loitering near your house, be worried. You see, Arthur Buhl has a set of skills that make him a potential nightmare to the rest of us. So advanced are these skills that Arthur Buhl often goes by the name “the Arthurmeister” and even less modestly, Master of the Universe. For much of the year Arthur hauls his 6’5” German frame intimidatingly around the globe menacing all who stand in his way of glory, confronting every challenge hurled his way. Arthur is a champion in a sport that I had never even heard of until I started thinking about this sermon. It’s called Locksport, or lock picking, and it is exactly what you’d think it is. The sport of lock-picking was apparently invented by Louis 16th towards the end of the 18th century. Pretty ironic, really, when you consider that he had so much money that his wife advised people who had no bread to eat cake instead. All his lock picking skills couldn’t stop him being parted from his head at the guillotine.
There are many things I’m grateful for about living and working in Westfield. One of them is that our parish is across the street from the police station. Not because it affords us extra security but because it allows me to say that there is grace opposite law. It also means that I’m handy to vouch for a member of the parish who may have spent the night in a police cell and needs me to attest to their good character. Which I was called on to do earlier this summer.
To listen to some health gurus you’d think that bread would kill you. It’s high in carbs and can spike blood sugar levels, it contains “anti-nutrients”, which sounds terrifying. I’d never even heard of an anti-nutrient – but now I have I’m not sure I will ever sleep again. I’m having visions of mean-looking ingredients, lurking in the dark corners of your sandwich waiting for innocent nutrients to pass, and when they do, jumping out from behind a slice of tomato, beating them unconscious, and drowning them in mayonnaise. Apparently, even in its non-processed form bread may raise bad cholesterol by a whopping 60%. And so there is now a thriving industry devoted to the catchy little slogan “The more you eat bread, the sooner you’re dead.”
The city was Brussels, the occasion was a meeting of European Union bureaucrats, and the focus of humiliation was me. It was 1990, and I was a career civil servant in the UK government’s social security department. Every couple of months my boss traveled to grand meetings in Brussels, where along with officials from all the other nations of the European Union, she would discuss rather dull regulations governing social security for migrant workers. I knew virtually nothing about this, but someone had to sit behind her, in a sharp suit looking like they were a vital part of UK delegation, and that month it was me. My job was to look knowledgeable, and represent Her Majesty’s Government with grace and dignity.
According to Elton John, and this may be the only time you hear me quoting Elton in a sermon, “Sorry seems to be the hardest word.” But statistically speaking, he probably is not the best person to write that song lyric, because according to research I read last week in preparation for this sermon, the British (Elton’s people) use the word ‘sorry’ more than any other people on earth. Apparently, if you bump into a Brit in the supermarket the chances are they will blurt out ‘sorry’, even if it’s you who caused the collision. In fact, in an academic study of 1,000 Brits the average said ‘sorry’ for something eight times a day, and one in eight used the word twenty times a day. Sorry about that.
I have some wonderful news to share with you. I’m so excited, I can hardly control myself. It’s an email. Now, you know those emails that just go straight into your spam folder and you don’t even see them. Well, it was not one of those. No, no. It was from the none other than the FBI. At first, I thought it was to do with my naturalization test which I took last Wednesday – and passed, woo hoo! But it was even better than that.
Three friends are looking back over their long and eventful lives, and reflecting on how they would like to be remembered at their funerals. One of them says, "I want my priest to say, 'Here lies a woman who was a good wife, a loving mother, and a loyal friend.'" The next one says, “I want the pastor to say, 'This man was a skilled worker, a respected professional, and an accomplished leader.'” And the third friend says, “Well, at my funeral I want the preacher to say, 'Look! She’s moving!'”
The memory of that day will live with me forever. It was November 22, 2003. The place was Ann Arbor, Michigan. Just three months earlier my kids and I had disembarked a plane at Grand Rapids Airport, just the latest in the eternal line of promise seekers to step onto these shores. We were not here because we were huddled masses yearning to be free, but because we had heard the rock n roll, seen the movies, tasted the burgers, worn the Levi’s, even met some of the people of this fair land, and we needed to come and see for ourselves if it was all real.
“God, how long is a thousand years to you?”, asked the Christian in their prayer time one morning? “My child”, God replied, “a thousand years to me is like a minute is to you.” “I see”, said the novice believer, who then turned to silent meditation on the vastness of God. A few moments later they asked, “Sorry God, one more question. How much is a billion dollars to you?” “To me,” answered God, “a billion dollars is like a penny to you.” “God, forgive my impertinence, but one more thing. Do you think you give me one of your pennies?” And God said “Absolutely, I’ll send it in just a minute.”
In Scotland he is a hero. The stuff of legends. The darling of tales of gallantry shared with patriotic nostalgia. Guardian of the Highlands, Vanquisher of Kings, Defender of the Crown. Everything really but Mother of Dragons. Even today, some 316 years later, misty-eyed Scots will raise a wee whiskey to his noble memory and pronounce, “The Little Gentleman in Black Velvet.”
That day dawned just like any other. There may have been clouds wafting overhead. There probably were; and there was possibly some sunshine too – somewhere. Somewhere else it rained. I suppose. The temperatures were likely around average for the time of the year. It was a Sunday, and so the postman didn’t deliver anything out of the ordinary, and most of the shops were shut, so no one bought anything especially interesting. Because it was Sunday some people went to church and I’m sure listened to perfectly average sermons and sung exceptionally normal hymns in a splendidly routine way.
It was not the most important invention of 1991 – that was surely the Internet, and neither was it the safest invention of 1991 – that was definitely the car airbag. But it was one of the most intriguing inventions of 1991, and certainly well worthy of taking up the first couple of minutes of this sermon. To David Kendrick, its inventor, it was a tiny piece of heaven, a speck of eternity captured in chrome, attached to a leather strap, and clamped on your wrist. It was designed with love, inspired by a wish to make the world a better place. It was David Kendrick’s gift to the world and he believed it would spur people on to acts of kindness and heroism, prod them to think deeply about life and cause them to live it wisely.
There are two types of people in the world – those of us who are happy to live with uncertainty and those of us who like to have everything nailed down; those who are comfortable with ambiguity, and those who prefer things to be precise. Now, I know which kind I am, and it’s not the one I’d like to be. I’d like to be the first kind – the person who can cope with not having all the answers. They appear so happy. No need for rules or clear instructions – they just live a life of freedom and spontaneity. But, I’m not that person. I’m the other one. So imagine my angst, my inner turmoil, if you please, when last month I found myself standing at the supermarket checkout labelled “about 25 items or less”.
Their story starts in a hospital in Winchester, MA. It starts in 1962. It starts in the maternity ward, where Judy Hoyt gives birth to baby Rick. And it starts in tragedy.
Judy and Dick, her husband, endured the anguish of an abnormal delivery. As his head crowned, it became frighteningly clear that something was terribly wrong. The umbilical cord had become wrapped around Rick’s neck, cutting off the flow of oxygen to his brain. Despite the best efforts of obstetricians Judy and Dick were sentenced to endure the devastating reality that their precious son could not move his limbs and showed few signs of being able to live a life of any kind of quality. Neo-natal specialists advised Judy and Dick to prepare for the worst. There is nothing going on in Rick’s brain, they said; his life will be short, they said, better put him in an institution so that at least he would get round-the-clock care, they chillingly said. But if this is a story that begins in tragedy, it is also laced with hope. Because, Judy and Dick were not content with that diagnosis.
For Christmas Gelind bought me a genetic testing kit. I was very pleased with this, because although I was pretty sure that there is quite a lot of British Isles in me, I was curious about what specific regions of those cool, damp, islands my ancestors haled from. And I was shocked by the results. Not the UK part - as expected, I am substantially British – 97% in fact. It is the other 3% that forced me to sit down and take some deep breaths. This 3% explains why I feel so much at home in Northern New Jersey, and why I take so naturally to lasagna. I am 3% Italian. Did I hear an ‘Amen’ from some of you? I put it down to the invasion of Britain by Julius Caesar in 55BC.
The Williams College Purple Cows, The Campbell College Fighting Camels, The Earlham College Hustlin' Quakers, The North Carolina School of the Arts Fighting Pickles, and The UC Santa Cruz Banana Slugs. A handful of the strangest nicknames in college sports. Well, in the UK, they don’t have the same intensity of university athletics as here, but what they lack in imaginative college names they more than make up for in military mascots. Adopting an animal as a symbol of regimental pride goes back several hundred years and has taken on the kind of eccentric proportions that you would expect from the British. So every regiment of the British Armed Forces has its own mascot from Shetland ponies to Irish wolfhounds, goats, tortoises, antelope, there's even a battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment that has a ferret as its mascot.
But what happens when you have a re-organization of the military, and you combine two regiments each with a long and noble tradition and each with a dearly loved mascot?
The town of Middlesbrough in the north east of England is not very famous, and the average New Jersian can be forgiven for never having heard of it. It is home to 174,000 people, a football club that bounces between the Premier League and the second tier of English professional soccer, and the ghosts of factories and shipyards long dead.
But it’s the spooky story of one of those 174,000 residents that makes this average post-industrial town worthy of beginning this sermon.
April 23 is a famous day. For one, it’s Shakespeare’s birthday. For another, it’s St George’s Day, so if you’re English April 23 is a day to celebrate. But, thousands of miles west of England, April 23 1985 was a momentous, historic, even world-changing day for less joyous reason. Not a day of celebration, but of dismay; not of glory but of ugliness; not of jubilation but of catastrophe. April 23 1985. If you were alive that day, what were you doing? Where were you enjoying that beautiful spring morning, what daffodils were you picking, what blossoms were you sniffing, what birdsong were you enjoying? I hope you were oblivious to the pain caused by that day. I hope the agony did not trouble you or the despair come near your door. Because April 23 1985 will long live in the archives of infamy.
Last week I Googled the phrase “What went wrong?” and it returned 923,000,000 links. Everything from “what went wrong with Christianity, with the economy, with Afghanistan, with Netflix, with Kim Kardashian, the entire 20th Century, Three-Mile Island, something - anything that went wrong and caused unexpected problems. It seems that an awful lot has gone wrong. I’m beginning to think that ‘WWW’ stands for ‘what went wrong’. I also tried the phrase “tragic mistake” – Google returned 13.4 million web pages. “Where did it all go wrong?” – 1.3 billion hits, including ‘The NY Giants – where did it all go wrong?' The most amazing thing about that is that millions of people are still asking it.
He stands on the highest peak of preaching endeavors, a colossus towering over your average priest or pastor. Those of us who occupy the foothills of Mount Sermon can only gaze adoringly at his feet, because that is all we can see of him, so far above us does he tower. At gatherings of clergy, his name is mentioned in hushed tones, if it is mentioned at all. Some of us are too in awe of him and too conscious of our own inadequacy, that even naming him appears disrespectful. Donald Thomas, but you can call him 'your majesty'. Quite simply, he is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having preached the longest sermon ever delivered. A challenging 93 hours. God's filibuster. There are no reports of any survivors. And you'll be pleased to hear that his record is in no danger this morning. Actually, research by social scientists has found that if you took everyone who has ever fallen asleep in a sermon and laid them end to end, they'd be much more comfortable.
The shrine gleamed in the winter sun, as I took my place in the queue of pilgrims waiting to pay homage. The atmosphere bubbled with excitement - the anticipation of ecstasy, which called the faithful to flock here from all over the world. This modern house of worship was dedicated to the glory of its god in just 2007. In fact, the deity it houses is a mere youngster - its incarnation occurring just 132 years ago. Yet, despite its brief life, this idol has won billions of devotees from every nation, tribe, and tongue. Worshipers often refer to their savior as "The Real Thing". For they have tasted and seen that their lord is good. And now, in downtown Atlanta, in the corner of Centennial Olympic Park, proudly rubbing shoulders with the 20-year ghosts of the world's best athletes, I was visiting this place of prayer, this temple of tacky, this mind-blowing tribute to instant gratification.
While I was still living in Pennsylvania I was shopping in the supermarket, and I was wearing my clerical collar. Now, bagging my groceries that day was a small, cheerful, and very talkative woman. It's always refreshing to see someone enjoying their work, and she was certainly enjoying her work, chatting away to the bagger at the next checkout about nothing in particular. Actually, it was about something in particular - it was about make-up. And I made some knee-jerk, and not very flattering, assumptions about her.
This week all New Jersians should be celebrating two of our athletic stars. Two native daughters, who scaled the heights of physical prowess and mental resolve in the ice and fire of mid-winter competition. For one, the challenge was pure athleticism. Months, years even, of building muscles, toning body, honing technique. For the other, the field of dreams was more mental - perhaps a sterner, more testing arena than the other - for in her sport only the most agile of mind and intense of focus carries home the crown of laurels.
To say that Elizabeth Throckmorton had a bad case of missing her husband would be an understatement. We know this fine, but slightly eccentric, woman as Lady Raleigh, the wife of Sir Walter Raleigh, the English explorer who visited this continent at the end of the 16th century and gave his name to an airport in N Carolina. Among other things he named Virginia after the Virgin Queen Elizabeth, and he took back to England the potato and tobacco. Thanks for spuds, Walt, but you can keep the cigarettes. If Lady Raleigh were alive today, I don't really know what psychotherapists would make of her. There must be some disorder or syndrome that we could attribute to her, because she really did do something very odd.
When I was very young there was a place I would never go. In fact, even the thought of that dreaded place would cause me to panic - heart racing, hands sweating, pupils dilated, feet restless - all the signs that my tiny, four-year-old body was getting ready to fight or run away. And for me, running away has always seemed the smart option. So, there was no way I was ever venturing anywhere near That Place. That Place - that chamber of blood-curdling horror, was in my grandmother's backyard.
Well, to take a leaf out of the book of our patron saint, whose conversion we celebrate today, and who famously wrote in 1 Corinthians 13, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels but have not love, I am nothing", I'd like to start by reading in a foreign language. Here goes. "vaD joH'a' vaj loved the qo', vetlh ghaH nobta' Daj wa' je neH puqloD, vetlh 'Iv HartaH Daq ghaH should ghobe' chIlqu', 'ach ghaj eternal yIn." Anyone know the language? Well, it was John 3:16 ('For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.') And the language was ...
Today we read one of Jesus' most memorable statements about what it means to follow him. Fishing. Yup. Fishing for people. It's beautiful and powerful image, and it captures us and compels us to act.
Jesus’ To Do List: · First Sunday of the year - be baptized. Check. · Second Sunday of the year – call some disciples. Check.
Yes, that is where we are in the church year. The calling of Jesus’ companions and coworkers, who would help him in his mission to turn the world upside down.
The church calendar is a beautiful thing, and makes sure we keep the life and ministry of Jesus as the tailor’s dummy, on which we drape our life together.
Now, about those disciples … this Sunday we meet one of them – Nathanael of Cana. He could have been a 21st century Westerner. He’s a cynic. Well, actually, what I really mean is that he begins his encounter with Christ as one, but, as so often happens with folks who meet Jesus, his life is transformed.
This 2,000-year-old photograph proves what we Anglicans have always known - sprinkling is as good as dunking. So, this Sunday, we celebrate the Feast of the Baptism of Christ. It's a significant day in the life of liturgical churches like ours, as we recall our own baptisms and fan into flame the deep call to follow Jesus and be God's ministers in the world.
The fullness of God’s time is risky, it is inconvenient, it does not suit our agendas, and even our self-declared availability. The fullness of God’s time arrives in weakness and obscurity. The fullness of time finds us vulnerable, depending on him. But when the fullness of God’s time arrives, when the minute hand of God’s clock ticks over to the moment of completion, when the last grain of sand descends from the top chamber of his hour glass into the bottom, be ready, because the miracle is about to be born.
I’m not sure I’d like John the Baptist. He’s a bit too direct for my liking. No real finesse, not much nuance. And don’t get me started about his clothes and his diet. Not very Episcopalian, at all.
Yet, each year the people who decide these things, demand that we read about him three times in the space of a month – twice in Advent and again early in the New Year. They clearly think he’s important. The first of Gospel lessons is this Sunday. His challenge is shrill, but needed. Get yourself ready – the Messiah is coming. Even if he doesn’t come in an apocalyptic sense today, he most surely will stand at the door of our lives and knock.
The return of Christ has had a bad press. The Church has filed it under ‘embarrassments’, like the eccentric aunt we hide in the attic when visitors come.
It’s not surprising we have lost faith in the Second Coming. The Church has a history of rather unbalanced Christians proclaiming that it’s going to happen a week next Thursday, or some such.
It takes a gigantic leap of faith to believe something so pre-modern and pre-scientific. Jesus returning in a great show of glory, to wrap up this sad, mad, bad order of things and establish God’s perfect reign of justice and peace? Utter foolishness. But then … without this conviction, what are we living for? What hope can we have? Why even get out of bed in the morning?
Welcome to Advent 2017 – season of hope and expectation. Come, Lord Jesus!
Apparently, sheep have 54 chromosomes. Goats have 60. I suspect those extra six allow them to eat coats, climb trees, and do other things that sheep wouldn’t dream of doing.
There’s one other difference between sheep and goats. Sheep earn consistently high marks in the Bible, goats get a bad rap. Sheep are God’s people, special, beloved, destined for glory. Goats are, well, goatish.
Nowhere is this contrast more vivid than in the story Jesus tells in today's Gospel lesson. Sheep recognize Christ in people who are under-resourced. Goats do not. What a pity. If Jesus was obvious about where he was, instead of hiding in plain sight, then maybe more goats would give up their goatishness and act like sheep. Maybe we would be quicker to have compassion on under-resourced people if we knew Jesus was, in some mysterious way, actually them. Maybe.
Jesus tells a story of two risk-takers; two people who see what is possible, step out in faith, and reap the fruit of their courage. They’re both employees of a businessman who goes on a trip, and entrusts his wealth to these two managers. To one he gives 5 coins, to the other 2. Oh yes, I nearly forgot. There’s a third manager, one who digs a hole in the ground and hides his share of the company. But I don’t want to talk about him. It’s the risk-takers that interest me, they are our teachers.
Some days I ask God to renew my fire, because it’s cold out there. I ask God to not let it die, because it’s cold out there. I feel my flame flicker, because it is so bitterly cold out there.
On this Sunday we read a story of ten bridesmaids, five of whom experienced the dying of their flames. We explore our fires – those deep ones, and we will gather around God’s furnace to fan into flame our passion and faith.
Last Friday I made a 24-hour trip to Boston. Gelind was on business and I went to carry her bag and to see a city I’d wanted to visit for as long as I’ve been in the country. I was familiar with the original Boston, the one in Old England. It is on a geographical feature called the Fens – which is as flat as a pancake and about as interesting. There aren’t even many trees. I used to live near there, in a town called Peterborough. I was ordained in Peterborough Cathedral, but that is possibly the least boring event that has ever occurred in the town in its 1,900-year history.
You can say it with flowers, you can say it with a smile. You can say it with chocolates or cards. And you can say it with coins. Larry Gasper of Redding, California, decided on the last of these. Larry had got a bit behind in paying his property taxes. In fact, he owed the Shasta County tax collector $12,658. So, just as the county was planning to auction his house, Larry made a trip to the tax collector’s office and paid his bill. In coins. In a wheelbarrow. And two buckets. “It took four of my staff a little over two hours just to count all the cash,” says Mary Axelson, Shasta’s chief deputy tax collector; “and then it took probably another hour to get it bagged up to go to the bank.” But, the loss of 12 staff-hours was better than the alternative, thinks Mary. She says, “I could have turned him away. There is a taxation code section that says we do not have to take payment in coin. But he came in looking for confrontation and I just wasn’t going to give it to him.” So, if you can say it with coins, I’ll leave you to judge what it was Larry was wanting to say to the tax collector.
They’re called ‘first world problems’ and when you hear them they make you cringe. They are the petty, insignificant events that well-nourished, soundly-housed, comfortably-incomed people complain about. Now, there’s only one thing worse than hearing other people complain about their first world problems, and that is the feeling of shame and self-loathing you feel when you hear yourself lamenting some problem so trivial that you have to be in the top half a dozen percent of the world’s richest people to even have it. I did it the other day.
Archaeologists have just unearthed an ancient papyrus, which I need to share with you. It appears to be a missing chapter of Genesis:
After Adam and Eve had been evicted from Eden, they complained to God, “Lord, when we were in the garden, you walked with us every day. Now we don’t see you anymore. We are lonely and we forget how much you love us.” And God said, “No problem! I will create a companion for you that will be with you forever and who will be a reflection of my love for you. Regardless of how selfish and unlovable you are, this new companion will accept you rand will love you as I do.”
YEAR A PROPER 21: OCTOBER 1 2017 MATTHEW 21:23-32
I’d never witnessed anyone’s attitude change as fast as his. One moment we were chatting pleasantly, the next he was spitting contempt in that way people do when they feel under pressure, under attack even. “I don’t want to get into religion with you, but I just want to say one thing…” That was the hint that his personality was morphing from placid to hostile, from Jekyll to Hyde, from afternoon tea with genteel company to prosecuting lawyer attacking a hostile witness. He became intense, agitated. His face and shoulders, relaxed and engaged moments earlier, now tightened.
FIFTEENTH SUNDAY AFTER PENTECOST 2014 JONAH 3:10-4:11
Like a child on Christmas morning I massacred the envelop in my eagerness to get to its contents. It bore a UK stamp, a dead giveaway as to the identity of the sender, and its shape and size confirmed that this was what I’d been waiting for. I clutched it lovingly, relishing the artwork on the front, the names on the back, and the cool smoothness of the plastic container. Here it is. A DVD. A low-budget British movie. ‘The Foley Artist’, it’s called. I’d never heard of it, and I suspect neither have you. But somewhere deep down, where logic and reason don’t shine their dismal light I knew it would become my favorite movie.
I knew I had blown it even as I was saying it. The genie was out of the bottle, the toothpaste was out of the tube, the banana was out of its skin. There was no going back. You know that moment don’t you, when your mouth declares its independence and throws off the rule of your brain and launches torpedo words that sinks the ship of your life. I tried to catch those words, imagining that I could somehow stop them in their deadly path towards the ears of my conversation partner, but voices travel at 767 miles an hour and they weren’t coming back. I should’ve known better. I did know better. In seminary, they spend years training you in what not to say. You attend classes to learn how to bite your tongue when a parishioner says something that makes you want to throw a fit, throw the furniture, or throw up. But, in whatever profession you pursue, there are always those moments when your training lets you down and your unbridled emotions leap from the stable of your soul and gallop over the hedge to cause mayhem in your neighbor’s field.
PROPER 18 YEAR A SEPTEMBER 10 2017 ROMANS 13:8-14
When I remember my teenage years, the intimidating figure of Paul Murphy usually swaggers into my mind. Paul Murphy was in the year above me. Paul Murphy was sophisticated, I was naïve; Paul Murphy was hip, I was square; Paul Murphy had a bulging social calendar, I was shy. Paul Murphy rode a shiny new Honda motorcycle to school each day. It was a 250cc machine, which, for a 17-year-old was more power than anyone needs. It also gave him that most precious and sought-after commodity – the ability to impress girls. My motorcycle was only 125cc, so Paul Murphy was twice the man I was, with double the prospects on the romance front. His bike was silver and it shimmered in the sun in a way that made it appear like some chariot from heaven, or even more impressively, from hell. Mine was red. A perfectly acceptable color, if you’re choosing curtains.
I was driving to work a few months ago, when she glided into my life. She rocked my drive to work; waltzed into my dreary commute, and gilded my day. She was driving one of those SUVs that has the spare wheel fastened to the outside of the fifth door. Protecting this wheel was a plastic cover, which demanded attention. “Life is good” it screamed from thirty feet away. And just to prove it there was the image of a big daisy beneath the slogan. That wasn’t the only message her car blared. There was a sticker in the back window: “Cancer, you picked the wrong witch.” Actually, it wasn’t ‘witch’, but you get the point. I was beginning to form a picture of the lady behind the wheel. She clearly had a great story, and it was having an effect on me. Not only is life good but I am now smiling because of the window sticker. A minute later and we both stop at a red light. And as I sit there, looking through the back window of the SUV, I see the driver waving her arms around wildly. I think she must be angry with someone, but I can see no one else in the car. Intrigued, I study her every move, and I realize she is dancing. In the car. And not that sedate nodding of the head in time to the music, which is how most of us dance in the car. This is passion and energy and abandon. She is tearing up the dance floor. It’s not just her arms that are flailing around, her whole body is in motion. This SUV is jerking from side to side. I’m wondering how the suspension is going to cope. This is ‘stomp’ but with fewer garbage cans. And there am I, shaken not stirred, watching, thinking, “Cancer, you picked the wrong witch”. She shimmies, she rumbas, she trips the light fantastic; she is Dances with Cancer.