St. Michael's Sunday Sermons: Recent Episodes
St. Michael's Episcopal Church, New York, NY
Conversations around themes from recent sermons given from the pulpit at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church in New York, NY. For more information about St. Michael’s, visit our website at saintmichaelschurch.org
We are celebrating our patronal feast day today, the feast of St Michael and All
Angels. All the angels are with us – in our windows up there, in our procession
today, in our online community and in the communion of saints all around us, we
have lots and lots of angels hovering round. St Michael isn’t all by himself on this
glorious day or in the heavenly battle we heard about from Revelation. So even
our gospel reading had several angels bringing it to us, several voices offering the
good news.
Today we’re celebrating our feast even further by inviting the whole
neighborhood. When we finish our worship here, we’ll all dash outside so we can
welcome and celebrate with all who come to our block party. Instead of coffee
and cake inside, you’re all invited outside, to help serve and greet and feed our
neighbors.
We are living out our capital campaign logo of ‘Doors Wide Open’ literally. We
had some help in envisioning how we could do this. At the beginning of the
summer we had a community event called an asset mapping, where we invited
other community members – leaders of other churches, of other nonprofit
organizations, our elected officials – to come and see our new renovated spaces
and imagine with us about how we could use our assets for the good of all. It was
eye-opening. For one thing, most of the people we invited came, on a warm
weekday afternoon, and happily wandered around our space, commenting on
how beautiful it was and the possibilities they saw. We got scores of notes on
everyone’s ideas: how we can share our space with local artists, how we can
better link and cross-pollinate the different groups who already use our buildings,
how we can offer more ways to nourish body and soul for migrants, children, and
families around us. It was inspiring to hear all the good being generated in the
conversations that day.
So we’re starting to implement some of these ideas. Today’s block party is a
chance to welcome our neighbors, feed them, and thank them for their
longsuffering as we have gone through the noise and dust and chaos of
construction. But instead of just presenting ourselves and our ministries, we
invited our tenants to join us too. So today we’ll have teachers from our Russian
school doing a children’s science table, performers from the Gilbert & Sullivan
group singing a few numbers, flyers from our Spanish-language and Chinese
schools, and more – alongside information on our own ministries, and music by
our own wonderful musicians. All of these groups are also a part of our
community here at St Michael’s.
And there’s more coming up. We’re exploring a partnership with a theater group.
We already host concerts here from time to time; now we will host some theater.
Look for performances of the play ‘Fahrenheit 451’ by the Greenhouse Ensemble
later in the fall, upstairs in our beautiful recital hall – which they will help
upgrade, something we’ve been wanting to do for years.
And Mary Ellen is coordinating a ‘date night’ this fall – a chance for parents to
drop off kids for free babysitting one evening so they can take some needed
downtime together. That idea came directly out of the asset mapping event.
All of this is to deliberately further enmesh ourselves with the lives of the
community around us. There are so many people in New York doing so many
things that our temptation can be to find our club, go in, and shut the door on the
rest of them. This is the temptation most of our world is struggling with too, the
urge to wall ourselves in and others out. It’s probably human nature, it’s as old as
the hills, but it isn’t gospel living. As we’ve seen, this kind of tribalism makes it so
easy to despise those others – to disparage them, to disrespect them, and
eventually, to strike out against them with violence. It’s a cancer in our world, this
tendency of ours. The church is no place for continuing it.
Jesus teaches this so clearly in the gospel we heard today, offered with
commentary by our great teens – thank you, Deacon Marcia, for your forbearance
in letting them take over! The disciples come to Jesus, tattling and complaining
about someone else throwing out demons in Jesus’ name – someone else who is
NOT part of their club. Jesus’ response is immediate: Do not stop him! Whoever is
not against us is for us. Expand your idea of the ‘club,’ guys. Expand your
understanding to see that all these others who seek to do good are also part of
this same movement. More good is good! More good is of God.
And then he offers some stern words about how hard we ourselves need to keep
striving to do good – if you fail, gouge out your eye, cut off your hand, etc., I
notice the teens skipped over that part so I will too – and then winds up with the
pithy words, Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another. (Notice
it’s have salt, not be salty with one other. We’ve got too much of that happening
already.) Have salt – or as we hear in Matthew’s version of this exchange, be salt,
the salt of the earth.
But salt isn’t useful if it stays in its salt cellar – it can’t preserve the meat, it can’t
flavor the food, unless it’s mixed into the whole. If it stays in its jar it’s just there
being salty all by itself. If it is sprinkled in and stirred, it makes everything else
taste better. Isn’t that a great image for what we’re talking about here – to mix
ourselves in, to be what brings out the flavor, to help preserve what is good in our
community.
So we have a call to open our doors, to liberally sprinkle ourselves around our
neighborhood, to be seasoned in return by the good possibilities of the
community around us. We can make a difference. We can each give of ourselves
and our resources and our time to make positive change; we can also each bring
our faith, our groundedness, our peace, to people who need all of that
desperately. Does our world need people of peace and reconciliation right now?
People who don’t raise the anxiety quotient but instead seek to lower it? People
who speak the truth in a clear and loving way rather than shouting over each
other? I think the answer is obvious.
But as Jesus says, we need to keep our saltiness in order to be of use in this way.
We need to do our own work of saying our prayers and reading scripture and
finding our quiet time, the work of deepening our roots in God. We need to align
our own living with God’s desires, seeking out integrity in our actions and
decisions. The world doesn’t need more people being salty – quick to react and
slow to think, or ready to jump on the next bandwagon of outrage. The world
needs more people who are working to nourish the good within them, to bring
that good to the world around them – in the workplace, in school, on the streets,
right here at our block party. Good work, and plenty of it, being salt.
Today on St Michael’s Day we celebrate the good news of the angels’ victory in
heaven: ‘The dragon and his angels fought back, but they were defeated, and
there was no longer any place for them.’ That victory has happened – that work
has been done, God’s work of ultimate grace for us and all the world. It’s ours to
live it out, to extend the good news, to be part of the good news. And to be ready
to receive the good news, wherever we go. May today’s celebration start us again
on this road, with all the angels.
The post September 29, 2024–The Rev. Katharine Flexer appeared first on Saint Michael's Church.
Proverbs 31:10-31
Psalm 1
James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a
Mark 9:30-37
I’m so glad to be with you, to have this opportunity to serve Christ alongside you, the congregation of St. Michael’s, for a season. I look forward to getting to know each one of you. And I’m grateful that we are celebrating the season of Creation here at St. Michael’s.
Creation, by its very existence, is blessed by God and is a blessing to us.
And as we move through this season/time, we remember ourselves as a part of creation, rather than it being here to serve our needs. In this we find our belovedness as a part of the whole.
A creation-centered tradition I learned about recently comes out of the nations that lived in ancient Americas. It is a way of communal decision making – called the Children’s Fire. As the community gathers for decision making, they kindle, at the center of their circle, the center of their gathering, a Children’s Fire.
This fire is a pledge. A promise made by them to themselves that no law, no action shall be allowed that will harm the children’s future. So as all the chiefs, the powerful people of their nations – people of all genders – gather to make decisions, the Children’s Fire is their first priority.
The pledge they make is a pledge to life itself. So that life itself can continue past our own short stay here on this planet, we cannot place ourselves in the center of the circle. We must allow life – the future of all life – to be at the center of the circle.
It’s a humbling of human intellect and skill. A reigning-in of our power and of technology. And a recognition of our vital responsibility to be stewards and servants.
In our Gospel message today, we see this same effort at refocusing come from our teacher, our savior, Jesus. The one who saves us from ourselves. And our own short-sightedness.
In the Gospel, Jesus has been traveling with his disciples to Capernaum and when they arrive at their destination, Jesus asks, “What were you all arguing about?” But they didn’t answer.
I think we can conjecture that Jesus already knew the subject of their discussion and was just trying to get them to admit their behavior. Because he called them together and sat them down. And said:
“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” And he picked up a child. And in the middle of their gathering, he held this child so that all could see. And he said: “Whoever welcomes one such child, welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me, welcomes the one who sent me.”
The one who sent Jesus – God. The creator. The father and mother of all. The one who welcomes this child, who cares for this child, who serves the welfare and the future of this child, is the one who welcomes God.
Children being the ones in any society with absolutely no rights, no personhood, and no way of advocating for themselves. They are the most vulnerable. So they are the easiest to forget.
And in this act of Jesus’, he demonstrates that God’s blessing does not come through worldly power or an easy life of privilege. Having it all together is not a sign that we have been blessed by God – a concept that echoes the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and the Sermon on the Plain in Luke. Both filled with similar seemingly paradoxical statements as this message in today’s Gospel. What is Jesus doing in this passage? Why is he making this point?
I know that inside of me, there is a part of myself that wants to believe that if God loves me, then God will bless me. And, if I’m struggling, if I am among “the least of these,” then I’ve done something to deserve it. Perhaps you have this part too.
What I know, is that this is the part of us that doesn’t believe we deserve God’s love simply because we breathe. Simply because we are. This is the part that doesn’t believe we don’t have to earn love. This is the part that doesn’t believe that love is always there waiting for us to recognize it.
So it may sound like Jesus is judging the disciples, because this is also the part that is already judging us. But really, I think Jesus is just trying to get us to refocus. Because… wealth, prestige, power… all of it. This is not God’s blessing.
These are the rewards of playing the world’s game well. The game that makes us believe that the one with all the toys at the end wins.
God’s blessing comes as we let go of our need for and attachment to all of that. God’s blessing comes through the thriving of life. The uplifting of others. The placing of the Children’s Fire at the center of our decisions.
This is the paradox, the reversal that Jesus is trying to explain to his students. And it’s connected directly to last week’s Gospel question: “Who do you say that I am?” Which is to say, who do we think we are following?
Because it’s clear the disciples want a powerful messiah who will be contemptable on behalf of their own interests so that they can wage war against the powers that be. But this is not who Jesus is. This is not the salvation Jesus offers.
The salvation Jesus offers is the reversal of our need for power. And Jesus offers this here because the disciples had just been arguing about who was the greatest. They were arguing about power and skill and intellect.
And Jesus says, in this pronouncement, it’s not like you think it is. (paraphrasing…) I’m teaching you about the God of Life. The God who is Love. And God does not care about power and skill and intellect if it’s used for profit or promotion or other short-sighted, self-focused efforts. God wants us to use our gifts to care about life itself.
So, whoever wants to be first, must be last of all and servant of all.
And whoever welcomes this child as a servant of this child, is one who welcomes God. To me, it sounds a lot like the wisdom of those who lived in the ancient Americas.
What would it look like if we made the Children’s Fire the center of our decision making? What would it look like if we honored life itself and made our decisions based on how all life may thrive – especially those who come after us?
I recognize this isn’t easy most of the time. We live in a society that is about power-over-others, and we learn quickly that we need to advocate for ourselves before we are mown over.
But I think the disciples were facing a similar situation. Oppressed by the Roman Empire for nearly a century. Oppressed by their own religious hierarchy after centuries of power-mongering and war led by their political leaders. People having to make sure they got their own needs taken care of because they were in survival mode.
And sometimes I think that it’s inevitable, that this is just humanity and the Gospel is a pipedream. And then I read about how the peoples of the ancient Americas created the Children’s Fire, the center of collective decision making. And I wonder if it’s possible to start where we are to make changes where we can.
We may not have much access to the places of wealth, power, or privilege where decisions are made. Or maybe we do. But we do make decisions for ourselves. And we do have influence in our circles of family and friends.
Now, I don’t know you good people of St. Michael’s yet so I don’t know the kinds of ways you have influence on the systems and structures in your lives. So, if you will, take a moment now and consider where are those places for you? The organizations of which we are a member in some way. The businesses – both the ones we lead and the ones we support by being consumers. The non-profits. And, of course, here at St. Michael’s.
How many decisions we make are made on behalf of those who will come after us? On behalf of life itself? And how many are based solely on our own immediate need? And what is the right balance?
As Christians, we don’t exactly have a Children’s Fire. We have Jesus the Christ. The incarnate love that connects us one to another across time and space. The one who teaches us how to listen to the voice of the God of Life and we re-center ourselves around Christ.
Because Jesus is telling us here that this is about paying attention to the most vulnerable and making all our decisions as if they were at the center. This is the only way we will de-center power and privilege and wealth.
To de-center ourselves, even, and make our decisions as if we are a part of the lives of those around us, and for the lives of those who will come after us. Because we are a part of those lives. We are already and always a part of that community.
Our hope is not in ourselves alone. Our hope is and always will be in Christ and the interconnectedness of all life. Our hope is in those who come after us. And so, their hope, right now, is in us. In the decisions we make today.
Our true blessing then, is in learning how to serve the most vulnerable among us. Because Jesus tells us: “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
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Proverbs 1:20-33
Psalm 19
or Wisdom 7:26–8:1
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.
These words of today’s psalm are a traditional prayer for the preacher to say before they get started preaching – they were the words my childhood priest said in the pulpit every single Sunday. It’s an acknowledgement that words have power, especially words spoken from a pulpit or a podium, and as the epistle of James reminds us today, it is a fearsome thing to get up and speak words in front of other people. For all of us make many mistakes.
Which is, I’m sure, what our presidential candidates were thinking in their debate this week, right? They spent weeks preparing their words. Words chosen for their punch and sound bite quality; words chosen for their ability to needle the other person; some words not chosen at all but just blurted out, destined to become memes. It’s an interesting thing, this debate tradition. We keep this ritual not because it necessarily shows us which candidate will make a better president – but somehow we still value words and arguments as we go about choosing our leaders.
And today’s readings are all about words – words of wisdom or foolishness, words that hurt and words that teach, words that express our deepest hopes and dreams and words that show how little we understand. And ultimately, the words that Jesus asks his followers to speak, words that answer the question that lies at the heart of our faith: who do you say that Jesus is?
Turn to your neighbors and discuss. Kidding!
To give the context for this gospel passage: Jesus has argued with the scribes and Pharisees, and then he encountered the Syrophoenician woman, who seems to open his eyes to his greater purpose – not just to the anointed messiah of Israel, but to be savior and healer for everyone. He then heals one who is deaf and mute, restoring him to language and words (Interesting), and then, as he travels further along with his disciples, drops the question: Who do you say that I am?
It’s not a comfortable conversation, what ensues. Peter pipes up immediately with what seems to be the correct answer, you are the Messiah! But Jesus immediately tells him to shut up, sternly ordering him the way he elsewhere orders demons to keep still. Then he goes on to paint the picture of what will happen next, his suffering and betrayal and death, and Peter gets upset: What are you saying, Jesus?? Whereupon Jesus snaps at him and all the disciples, Get behind me Satan! I can’t imagine the dinner table conversation they managed to have after all this was over.
Why is Jesus asking this? Maybe Jesus just wants to know what people think of him, asking in order to gauge how his message is coming across, a sort of marketing focus group with his disciples. He’s tried over and over to get people to keep silent about him, telling people not to say anything – ridiculous, given that he’s just healed them and completely changed their life. That tactic isn’t working, so ok, let’s at least get on top of the message here. Or perhaps he’s further trying to understand for himself what he is doing. Coming as this does so soon after the Syrophoenician woman, it does seem like maybe he’s doing some major internal processing about now. But I think he also is asking because he wants his disciples to stop and think about their answer. He’s not just their friend. He’s not just a wonderworker. Who do they really believe him to be?
The thing is, it’s a compelling question not just for the disciples, but for all of us. We also need to ask that question of ourselves. Who is Jesus, really? Who is God? It’s not just something we engage in as an idle exercise, spinning theories about angels dancing on the heads of pins. I remember quizzing a friend ages ago who was doing his DPhil at Oxford on the doctrine of God. Why exactly does this matter, I asked? Well, he pointed out, what we say and believe about God affects what we do and how we live. Of course, there are also things we might say we believe about God and Jesus because we think it’s what we’re supposed to believe. We’ve absorbed ideas from church or culture and we think they’re the right way to understand God. But deep down – and we express this in how we spend our time and money, or how we treat other people or make big decisions in our life – we might really believe otherwise. It deserves some thought to begin to live more faithfully, and with integrity.
The tense exchange that follows on Jesus’ question shows how complex it is to answer. Peter gives what is technically the ‘right’ answer. Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one of God, the Messiah. The whole of our faith is based on that central belief – in our creed we say every week that Jesus is God from God, light from light, true God from true God, the incarnation of God. Yet when Peter answers, Jesus rounds on him and tells him to shush. Peter may have the right words, but he has the wrong idea behind them – he is instead thinking of the Messiah who will march in with his army and free the people of Israel from their oppressors, in this case, Rome. But Jesus instead explicitly spells out what kind of Messiah he will be – one who will suffer and die for us, for love of us, and who will rise again, conquering death. And if you want to understand what I mean, Jesus implies, stick around with me a while longer and see how this unfolds. These words may not make sense to you right now. But they will, when you have lived them.
The words might be the same: Jesus is Messiah. But the meaning of those words takes a long time to work out.
Just this week, I saw two different understandings of God that brought this sharply into focus. On Wednesday, I went to a performance at Joe’s Pub called ‘There is Room, Room, Room in the Many Mansions of Eternal Glory for Thee, and for Everyone.’ Yes, all that. It was a deliriously happy, all-inclusive love fest for people who experience God’s love as all-embracing, all-affirming safety – pretty remarkable while you’re sitting there drinking your beer at the Public Theater, by the way. And the next night I was at a screening of ‘Bad Faith,’ the documentary our own Anne Nelson is part of, about white Christian nationalism – the belief that God’s love is explicitly for white Americans, and that the Bible expresses God’s judgment and condemnation for all those who think differently. Same words at the center, you could say – the same Bible, the same Christian creed – but a pretty diametrically opposed understanding of those words. See why it matters to ask ourselves the question, who do we say that Jesus is? See why it matters to really dig down inside ourselves for the answer?
It’s not just about finding the ‘right answer.’ This is not about getting the nuances of doctrine correct, the right summation of the teachings so that we can repeat the password at the pearly gates. There are orthodox statements of faith, there is truth, and a foundation of truth, that we stand on. But that truth runs deep, deeper than we can understand at face value. We live more and more into that truth throughout our lives. Peter blurted out an answer to Jesus’ question, but he didn’t really understand what it meant until much later. Sticking close to Jesus as long as he could helped him really see and know who Jesus was, for him and for everyone. Jesus didn’t tell him he was wrong. But it was clear that Peter needed a lot more time to understand just what was right.
And that is the work of a life of faith. We need to hang around for a while to understand. We need to live out what these teachings mean in our lives, and understand and explore with others just what they mean. And we need to test them, asking critical questions of scripture and tradition and our own experiences, and asking those questions in community with others. We’re never really done – all of our life in faith is a long process of formation. When we stay close to God, when we pray and listen and wade through it all to hear what is true, we come to that truth as well – who we are, who God is, who Jesus really is for us. And then we really begin to know God’s love for us, and for all.
Who do you say that I am? asks Jesus. It’s a question we are called to answer. And it is an answer we are called to grow into, even as God continues to draw us further into that truth. So may our words come from our hearts, and may they show forth the love of God, our strength and our redeemer.
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Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Psalm 45:1-2, 7-10
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23
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1 Kings 8:[1, 6, 10-11], 22-30, 41-43
Psalm 84
Ephesians 6:10-20
John 6:56-69
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1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14
Psalm 111
Ephesians 5:15-20
John 6:51-58
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2 Samuel 18:5-9, 15, 31-33
Psalm 130
Ephesians 4:25-5:2
John 6:35, 41-51
We’re in a string of Sundays where we get to ponder and meditate on one of St Michael’s favorite scripture texts – Jesus’ teaching, I am the bread of life. Last Sunday we sang the hymn that sets these words to music, the hymn that opens our hearts and voices like no other. 100 people sounded like 800 people, and this on a hot, sticky day – standing, arms upraised, tears streaming down faces. No matter when we sing that hymn, this seems to happen. And these words are painted right up there on the wall of the church as you look at the altar, as you approach the table each Sunday to take part in communion. I am the bread of life – he who comes to me shall never hunger. It’s no wonder our longest running outreach ministry is our feeding program, our Saturday Kitchen. These words mean a lot to this place and to us all.
But what do those words really mean to us? Stop for a minute and ponder it. What is it that is so moving about that hymn? What does it mean to hear Jesus say he is the bread of life, that if we come to him, we never have to hunger?
The words seem to mean a lot to Jesus too – he teaches for some time on this idea, and he lives it out even more in his actions. The miracle of the feeding of the 5000 is one of the few stories that turns up in every single one of the gospels. The place where this miracle is said to have happened became a Christian place of pilgrimage within decades of Jesus’ death. The last thing Jesus does with his disciples before he dies is share a meal with them, and tell them, this is my Body, this is my Blood. This is absolutely central to who Jesus is and what he’s here for. Bread of life, that satisfies like no other.
Which I suppose is why there was such an uproar over the part of the Olympics opening ceremonies that seemed so much like the Last Supper. The image of people at a table, gathered around a person in the middle wearing something like a halo, is sacred to people. Seeing that image enacted with dancing drag queens and a blue naked man freaked people out. Outrage! Our outrage muscles are so well trained these days – catlike reflexes on those. It didn’t seem to help anything when the director tried to explain he had a whole different Olympian feast of Dionysius in mind, or that people pointed out that there were 17 people on stage, not 12, or any of that. Days later, the Vatican still had to weigh in and say how dreadful it all was.
Perhaps this is the moment to insert an image I have forever in my brain, from a Catholic retreat center I stayed in years ago. I was doing a silent retreat, I was bored, I was wandering the halls, and there in a display case was a handcrafted model of what was unmistakably the Last Supper, enacted by small fuzzy bears. You know, those little flocked bears from the 1990s, you’d get them as prizes or from vending machines. Someone had a hot glue gun and a lot of piety, and this was the result. So I mean really, let’s just consider the ways this image has been conveyed over the years.
At any rate. The whole kerfuffle felt like another time when people get exercised and offended about something and entirely miss the point. Which is what happens in today’s gospel. Jesus is midway into his teaching: I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. And everyone starts complaining. They’re listening to Jesus because he did this amazing thing and fed all these people with hardly any food, and that is a useful, useful trick. So they want to see him do it again, because they’re hungry too. Give us this bread always, give us what we’re looking for. What is all this about you being the bread of life? they say. That doesn’t even make any sense. Besides, we know your parents, and they’re not bread.
Those crowds think they know what they need. They want to eat something that sounds good to them, with clear and tangible results. They want a certain kind of bread. They want bread on their terms. Jesus tries to explain what he’s talking about, points out that when the Israelites of long ago ate the miraculous manna bread, it only helped them for a little while, they all still died, remember, and what he’s offering is totally different than that. Yeah, so where’s the bread? they all complain. Eventually, Jesus gives up trying to get it all across. Either they’ll get it or they won’t.
This teaching that Jesus is offering, that is so hard for his listeners to accept, is simpler than they think: he is teaching that God is all we need. God is ready to provide everything we need to live on. If we rely fully on God, if we start with God before all else, if we sink our roots deep down into God, God will sustain us through everything. Whatever storms may come, whatever famines there are in the land, whatever joys and pains we have in life, God is enough to carry us through it all. We don’t have to be afraid. We don’t have to worry. We don’t have to keep grasping for more.
But we so struggle to trust that. We love that hymn, I am the bread of life. We love those words. We want to know that we’re welcome to come and receive and be fed. But we’re not always ready to put our whole trust in it. We’re not ready for the bread to change our lives. We’re not always ready for living bread.
We look at the bread of life offered and try to make it a buffet. I’ll have a little of that kind, but not this stuff here. Or we simply say, Not today, I’m too busy. I already ate. We have all kinds of other bread to snack on, after all. The bread of pleasure, or success, or the ever-popular bread of anxiety (that’s one of my favorites). We nibble away at those all the time. They don’t actually relieve the gnawing hunger at our core, but that doesn’t keep us from chewing on them anyway. They aren’t, we know very well, the bread of life. They don’t satisfy. Sometimes they even make us sick. So we come here to church, we draw near to what we instinctively sense is the source, to feed us what we really need. But we pack ourselves snacks just in case. You might even be holding a piece of that other bread in your mind right this minute.
I am the bread of life, Jesus says. The full meal deal.
Here we can hold out our hands and receive. Here we are invited to accept of what we’re being offered and all that it might draw us into. Here we taste and see how gracious the Lord is, and allow ourselves to be fed. And if we can really receive it, really decide to trust in it, then we will find our lives shaping differently around that – our days incomplete without prayer, our decisions shallow without discernment of God’s call, our relationships missing something without the deeper grounding in God’s love. It’s not a once for all decision – but it is a decision, over time. To trust and believe that ‘I am the bread of life’ is not just lovely poetry – it’s the truth we need to live. As our opening prayer today said, we cannot exist without God.
May that nourishing love and the blessing of God settle deep into us. And may we receive it, and never hunger. Amen.
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2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a
Psalm 51:1-13
Ephesians 4:1-16
John 6:24-35
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2 Samuel 11:1-15
Psalm 14
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6:1-21
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2 Samuel 7:1-14a
Psalm 89:20-37
Ephesians 2:11-22
Mark 6:30-34, 53-56
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2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19
Psalm 24
Ephesians 1:3-14
Mark 6:14-29
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2 Samuel 5:1-5, 9-10
Psalm 48
2 Corinthians 12:2-10
Mark 6:1-13
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2 Samuel 1:1, 17-27
Psalm 130
2 Corinthians 8:7-15
Mark 5:21-43
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1 Samuel 17: (1a, 4-11, 19-23), 32-49
Psalm 9:9-20
2 Corinthians 6:1-13
Mark 4:35-41
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The Third Sunday after Pentecost
1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-10,[11-13],14-17
Mark 4:26-34
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1 Samuel 8:4-11, (12-15), 16-20, (11:14-15)
Psalm 138
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
Mark 3:20-35
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1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20)
Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17
2 Corinthians 4:5-12
Mark 2:23-3:6
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- Acts 1:15-17, 21-26
- 1 John 5:9-13
- John 17:6-19
- Psalm 1
The post May 12, 2024 – The Rt. Rev. Matthew Heyd appeared first on Saint Michael's Church.
- Acts 2:1-21
- Romans 8:22-27
- John 15:26-27; 16:4b-15
- Psalm 104:25-35, 37
The post May 19, 2024 – The Rev. Julie Hoplamazian appeared first on Saint Michael's Church.
- Isaiah 6:1-8
- Romans 8:12-17
- John 3:1-17
- Psalm 29
There’s a wonderful story that I’ve shared before – but I love it so much that I’m going to share it again. Maybe you’ll remember it, maybe you won’t. It’s from a book by the writer Ian Frazier called On the Rez, about life on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The story is about a high school basketball player in the late 1980s named SuAnne Big Crow, who became one of the greatest basketball stars of her tribe before she was killed in a car accident. Every time the Pine Ridge girls team played a certain other team, white kids from off the reservation, that school made fun of them. They made Indian war whoops and shouted things like, ‘Where’s your tomahawk?’ whenever the Pine Ridge team came on the court. The Pine Ridge kids get angry, often heckling back, stoking the mutual hatred. One day SuAnne insists on being the one to lead her team out onto the court before the game – and then stops suddenly in the middle. She takes off her warm-up jacket, drapes it over her shoulders, and begins to do the Lakota shawl dance, a traditional young woman’s dance. She performs the whole beautiful dance in silence, and the arena is completely still. Then she grabs the ball, dribbles it to the hoop, and does a perfect lay-up. The whole gym erupts into wild applause – and from that day on, when those two teams play each other, there is no more of that taunting. Friendships begin to happen between the two teams, and one of the Lakota girls says of the other school, ‘There are some really good people there.’
That’s a story that always makes me cry. It’s a story of a young teenage girl who responds with generosity and dignity to ugliness and hate. It’s a story of call, of doing the right thing at the right time. And it’s a story of changing others’ hearts and minds – of what happens when we live in alignment with God’s love in our world. When we live with integrity, growing into the full stature of Christ, realizing whom God is calling us to be – it changes everything.
My mother-in-law liked to say, we are not evolving well as a species, and sometimes, I fear she is right. In our daily prayers at our online Morning Prayer service, we pray for the leaders of the world, that they may act with wisdom, integrity and compassion. But so many of our leaders seem to utterly lack integrity. From our presidential candidate to our Supreme Court justices to many of our university administrators, we see people flouting moral standards, even federal laws, with impunity; serving their own interests instead of the common good; making decisions based on big donors instead of doing what is right. I was almost startled this week to hear the International Criminal Court’s announcement of war crime charges against both Hamas leaders and Netanyahu – the chief prosecutor reviewed the evidence and issued the decision without bowing to public opinion and threats. Whatever you think of his decision, it felt like a rare moment of integrity – we don’t often hear from someone ready to be such a grown-up. And so we’re not very well modeling to our kids what a grown-up should look like, either.
This can’t be the way God is calling us to be.
The story we heard from Isaiah today is in some ways the story that sets the paradigm for all call stories. It’s the reading often chosen for ordinations, as people step forward, feeling full of conviction to dedicate their lives to God and the church; it’s the language of that stirring praise song, ‘Here I Am, Lord’; it’s a powerful, mystical, profoundly personal story of the prophet receiving his commission directly from the Most High God. Isaiah’s only hesitation in replying is over his unworthiness: ‘woe is me, for I am a person of unclean lips.’ But God does not hesitate in return – don’t worry, I’m taking care of that. I will cleanse you and give you the integrity you need. Just go and speak my word.
The gospel story of Nicodemus, on the other hand, is another sort of call story. Nicodemus is a Pharisee, surrounded by people who all say this Jesus of Nazareth is a nut job. But what he hears from Jesus stirs something inside Nicodemus, and he quietly slips off to talk to him in the middle of the night. He’s confused in that conversation, but something seems to take – at the very end of the gospel, Nicodemus brings spices to Jesus’ tomb, along with Joseph of Arimathea. No longer hiding, he openly identifies with Jesus’ followers, whatever the cost. He hears a call, and he responds, in time, with integrity.
Some of us may experience a call like Isaiah’s – big, dramatic, supernatural and momentous. But more often, it’s something like what happens to Nicodemus, or like SuAnne Big Crow. The call comes because something happens inside of us. Something in us stirs, shifts, becomes uneasy with what people around us are saying. We find we have to make a change in our behavior, our community, our understanding of truth. Or something in us stays our first, hot reaction, prevents us from snapping back in anger and insult, grounds us in generosity and largeness of spirit. We might feel ourselves nudged to do something; we might feel ourselves restrained from saying something we shouldn’t. We might make a big change in our lives or we might just reach out in a small way to someone who needs it. We can make a big puzzling mystery out of call and vocation, seeking some kind of ultimate answer for which direction we’re meant to go. But seen another way, responding to God’s call is another word for living with integrity; which is another word for maturity. We are all of us called to grow up – into the full stature of Christ, as our baptismal words say. And that’s a long, slow process.
Today, Trinity Sunday, we honor one of the central doctrines in the Christian faith, the idea that God is a community, an interplay between different ways of being: the Creator, always creating; the Incarnation, drawing creation back into God; the Spirit, guiding creation’s response to that invitation. The Trinity is a fluid system of integrity – of absolute coherence and alignment, yet always shifting and flexing and growing. It’s often been described as a dance, never standing still, always moving.
And the Triune God invites us into that dance, that process of finding coherence. Calling us to respond, calling us to root ourselves in whom we were created to be, and to grow into whom we are called to become. To align our own trinity of head, heart, and hands, so that all we do and say and think and feel is of one piece, and of one piece with God.
And so on this Memorial Day weekend, how are we called? How are we growing up? And how are we helping others to grow as well?
It often is simple – thankfully, none of us are the chief prosecutor of the ICC, our call and so our response is a bit lighter to carry. And yet not always. Tomorrow is Memorial Day – at our cemetery in Queens, volunteers have walked the whole grounds, placing flags at the veterans’ graves. They do this to honor those who responded themselves to their own calls, to serve, to stand with others, to face into fear and evil and stay firm. Many of them were kids, not much older than SuAnne Big Crow. And yet they served, and sacrificed everything.
Other volunteers this weekend made our Saturday kitchen happen – people spent the morning putting food items into bags, carrying the bags outside, and handing them to guests. They did this to respond to the nudge inside of them that reminded them of how much they have and how little others have; to be with community instead of isolating alone. Others this week shared food with one another here over Bible study – our teens, that is – and stories of God’s action in our lives – our book group, our Revive small group, our choir. Others prayed for the names given to them that day to pray for on our prayer chain, offering up intercessions for strangers in need. Others found ways to serve God’s call in their daily work, with their families, in their own quiet prayer. All of these ways of living in integrity; responding to the Spirit; growing up. And all of these ways that help others to grow up too.
Most of the world’s leaders may fail at this; we pray for them daily anyway. But we’ve already responded enough to God’s call to get ourselves here today – so guess what, we’re the ones on the hook to continue responding. We are called in love, given a precious invitation, drawn into the dance. We are fumbling toward integrity, with God’s help. Our kids are watching, for one thing; our kids are showing us, for another. So may we live, children of God, in the full stature of Christ.
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- Acts 10:44-48
- 1 John 5:1-6
- John 15:9-17
- Psalm 98 The post May 6, 2024 – The Rev. Julie Hoplamazian appeared first on Saint Michael's Church.
- Acts 8:26-40
- 1 John 4:7-21
- John 15:1-8
- Psalm 22:24-30
So this isn’t normally when you expect a sermon to come – maybe you thought you’d escaped it today, thanks to the baptism! Attentive churchgoers might recall we tried this liturgical order out last All Saints – it allows the kids to be part of the baptism before they go up to children’s worship, and they get to escape the sermon. Kids love baptisms, and besides, a baptism isn’t nearly as special without all the kids gathering around, this celebration of new life and new family. Amaya is an official part of the family now, baptized and sealed with the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own forever, and that’s a glorious thing for all of us together to celebrate. And now she’s gone upstairs with her siblings to enjoy that.
Which is not to say Amaya wasn’t a member of the family before – she and God have known each other well for a long time. Bur her being made official today is a sign for us – almost more than for her. Baptism marks what is already true, and holds it up for us all to see: Amaya is a beloved child of God. And so are all of us. That’s what we’re trying to remind you of when we splash you with water – in case you’re wondering. God loves you, even when it ruins your hairdo.
That is the message of baptism, and why we do baptisms all together as a congregation – because we all need that reminding of God’s abundant, unconditional love. John’s letter today spells it all out: God is love; love is from God; when we love, we know God. If you have ever loved someone – if you have ever felt yourself to be loved by someone – then you know God. It’s as simple as that. You can stop trying to figure it all out now.
But we do usually want it more spelled out than that. Just exactly how far does this love go, and who is included in it? It’s the theme of some of the most beloved children’s books – The Runaway Bunny, to take one example. Over and over again the little bunny asks his mama, yes, you say you love me, but what if I turn into this, or that, something different and strange? What if I run away? What if I hide, fly away, disappear, reject your love? The mama replies, over and over again: I’ll love you anyway. I’ll come find you. I’ll still call you mine. At the end of that book, the little bunny gives up – oh well, then I guess I might as well just stay here and be your little bunny. Yes, you might as well, says the mama. ‘Have a carrot.’ (About the best last line of any book, I think.)
Jesus puts it another way: I am the vine, you are the branches. You’re connected to me. My lifeblood flows through you. You can’t really separate yourself and run off – we are one. So you might as well just abide in me and bear fruit. And if you abide in me, you abide with one another also. It all goes together: John’s letter says, ‘Those who say, “I love God,” and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen…those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.’ It doesn’t get much clearer than that.
To bring the point home even further, we have the story of Philip and the Ethiopian eunuch. It’s a curious story. Philip, apostle and new deacon, has been in Samaria, preaching about Jesus and healing people – making new disciples amongst the Samaritans, despised enemies of the Jews. He’s called by an angel to get onto the road from Jerusalem to Gaza, ‘a wilderness road’ – words that have a particular resonance today, there’s a lot of wilderness between Jerusalem and Gaza, isn’t there. And on that road, a eunuch comes riding along.
The eunuch is from Ethiopia, highly placed in the queen’s court, wealthy and influential. But in Jewish terms, he is an outcast, outside the law as a eunuch. He can’t convert to the Jewish faith he so clearly admires. He’s returning home from Jerusalem, reading from a scroll of Isaiah as he rides along. The Spirit tells Philip to catch up with him, and Philip begins to teach him. Passing a pool of water, they stop the chariot: what is to prevent me from being baptized? the eunuch asks. It’s a poignant question, because so much has already prevented him from full inclusion. But nothing prevents him – Philip baptizes him, marking him as Christ’s own forever, marking and blessing what is already true – this wealthy eunuch, just as much as ragged, crazy Philip, is part of God’s beloved family. Unalike as they are, they are one. And then Philip takes off again, to preach and proclaim some more in other Gentile regions. He just can’t seem to stop preaching to all the wrong sorts of people.
On the road to Gaza, two unlikely people, opposite sides of nearly every binary, have this encounter. They listen to one another; they engage with one another; they learn from one another. And lives are changed – and not just the lives of these two people. This eunuch is understood as the founder of the Christian church in Ethiopia, one that continues strong to this day.
We are all of us branches of that one vine. And one branch can’t even live without the vine – if it tries to, it fails, dries up, is cut off. We only bear fruit when we’re connected to one another, stemming from the one true vine. Whoever does not love their brother or sister cannot say they love God. It’s all of a piece.
We know what happens when we forget that. Today Mother Julie is at a service at our cathedral commemorating the Armenian Genocide of 1918 – remembering this history at a time when Armenians are seeing a repeat of the same catastrophe in their homeland. The state of Israel is causing unconscionable death and suffering in Gaza in a war of retribution for a terrible attack, a war that has lost all proportion, over 30,000 dead. Russia doggedly plows through Ukraine, claiming territory, possibly hundreds of thousands dead now in that war. It is the history of our world. This is where hatred and despising the other can lead. There are no conversations between opposing sides. There is no listening, no understanding – just the frenzy that leads to war. And safe here in our most privileged universities, students supporting Palestine refuse to listen and engage with Zionists, while supporters of Israel call them antisemitic. Free speech is hotly contested – but free listening, no one wants to do that anymore. Because those whom we oppose are the other, the wrong ones – why listen when you can just shout louder? With politics carrying the weight of religion, it seems less and less possible for people who disagree to stay in relationship with one another. Why bother, when we know we’re right? And so we sow the seeds for still more violence to come.
Will you still love me if I run away? What about if I vote differently from you? What if I wear a keffiyeh? If I wear a star of David? Will you still love me then? Can we love our sisters and brothers and so love God, or can we not?
What we mark and make official today in baptism is that God loves us all even with all of this. We are each one of us beloved of God, whatever our political persuasion, whatever we post or refrain from posting on socials. Whatever our history or our people; whatever the privilege we carry or are denied. We are loved. And we are part of one vine, rooted in Jesus, in the full expression of God’s love for us. In the source of all our life, without whom we cannot exist. We are all a part of it.
Imagine if we listened as carefully as Philip did to the Spirit’s promptings – if we called out to someone completely unlike us and shared with them the good news of God’s love. Or as carefully as the eunuch, who invites Philip into his life to hear and understand him. If we lived out our faith that says that no one is outside of that love. If we heard one another and engaged each other even when we disagree – dropping the posturing and tribalism that blinds us to each other, and embracing our true shared identity, God’s children. That is the way of Jesus – what he taught, and what he showed. All of us part of the one vine – all of us beloved. May we take the radical step of acting like we believe it.
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- Acts 4:5-12
- 1 John 3:16-24
- John 10:11-18
- Psalm 23 The post April 21, 2024 – The Rev. Julie Hoplamazian appeared first on Saint Michael's Church.
- Acts 3:12-19
- 1 John 3:1-7
- Luke 24:36b-48
- Psalm 4
Last week, right after Easter Sunday, I traveled to Loreto, Mexico with my daughter Frannie to visit our old friend (and her godfather). Steve lives in a little house directly on the Sea of Cortez, and so for several days I began my mornings sitting, watching the waves, seeing the sun come up over the island opposite us. I spent most of my middays sitting, watching the waves, the pelicans flying by. Late afternoons I spent sitting, watching the waves, listening to the wind in the palm trees. And my evenings were spent sitting, watching the waves, looking for the stars as they began to come out. I think this will be my Easter week tradition from now on. I began the week exhausted – I ended it in peace.
So, Easter peace to you all, my friends. Jesus is risen – and just as he said to the disciples, so I say to you: Peace be with you.
We’re in the great 50 days of Easter, and Sunday after Sunday we hear story after story of Jesus resurrected, Jesus alive, Jesus appearing to his amazed disciples. Every one of the stories is just about the same as every other one: there the disciples are, doing their own thing, and suddenly, boom, there’s Jesus, who’s just walked through a locked door or turned up on the road or otherwise shown up where he shouldn’t be. And the disciples are scared, and Jesus tells them not to be, and then he does something to prove he is who they think he is, truly there in the flesh. And then he tells them to spread the word, and then he goes away. Leaving them with his peace.
And every time this happens, it all seems to sink in just a little bit more with the disciples. The very same disciples who ran away in fear when he was arrested, who deserted him when he was crucified, who fled from the empty tomb because they were afraid. Little by little, Jesus coaxes them into trusting that this good news really is true. And so the disciples go from frightened children to brave evangelists, and the church is born. They do what Jesus tells them to – they spread the word, they themselves preach and teach and heal just like he did, the Holy Spirit comes upon them, and the community of faith begins to grow. Sharing the peace with one another as Jesus shared it with them.
And all this gift even though they hadn’t at all shown themselves to be worthy of the job. This, to me, is one of the most amazing themes of our scriptures both in the Hebrew stories and in the later Christian ones: ordinary, messed up, broken people are chosen by God, who nurtures them, heals them, and calls them into new places and new work, expanding the reach of the good news of life to all the world. And if it happens to them, these unworthy characters of scripture, then it might just be that God is showing that it can happen to us too. How wonderful this is – and, perhaps we’d better look out!
That theme of our unworthiness is brought home in the reading we heard first today, from the book of Acts. Peter and John, two of Jesus’ dearest disciples, heal a man lame from birth, in the name of Jesus. The man walks and everyone stares, and Peter uses this as a preachable moment. ‘You Israelites,’ he begins, ‘why do you wonder at us?’ And then he goes on to point out how ‘you Israelites’ rejected Jesus and killed him. This is ugly language, some of what has fueled Christian anti-Semitism throughout the ages. But Peter himself is an Israelite, and this is the same Peter who denied Jesus three times in his hour of need. So his speech, blaming though it sounds, is to himself as well. His point is, we all did this. We all asked for a murderer instead of Jesus to be freed. We all crucified the Author of Life. Remember the Passion narrative on Palm Sunday? We all read the parts of the crowds calling for Jesus to be crucified, including ourselves with those who inflict such horror in the world.
It’s important to name this – it’s us, not ‘them.’ But Peter’s point goes beyond fixing blame. We acted in ignorance, Peter says. We were stupid; we humans always are. And God forgives us – totally. Wipes out the sin altogether, as though it never happened. Denying Jesus three times, running away from the soldiers, abandoning Jesus on the cross – all of that terrible behavior is left behind. When Jesus appears to the disciples again, he makes that abundantly clear. Peace be with you, he says. It’s ok. Or as John writes in his epistle: ‘See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are.’ God says, never mind all that – you’re my children, and I love you. And that grace is extended to all of us. And through us, it’s meant to be extended to everyone.
Because whenever God speaks to someone, they’re told to go tell it to others and share God’s word. Whenever God gives a blessing, it’s meant to be spread around. Peace is for sharing. All of it is gift. All of it is grace.
It’s a whole new layer on why we’re called further into spiritual growth and deepening. Often what gets emphasized in teachings about prayer and spiritual disciplines is that it is good for us. It’s part of a healthy lifestyle, a life of nutrition, exercise, good sleep, and mindfulness. Mindfulness itself has been picked up by popular culture, detached from religion and religious community. You can use an app to be mindful; you can go to a workshop on mindfulness at your tech company; you can teach mindfulness to children in a public school. From time to time that might tip over into Buddhist teachings about compassion and lovingkindness, that lowering our stress levels and building in quiet can make us more patient and gentle with others too. And of course that’s all to the good – this world can certainly use more healthy, loving people.
And – there’s more to God’s peace than that. The peace that Jesus offers the frightened disciples isn’t just quiet confidence and reassurance – it’s not only a forgiving pat on the head, relax, I forgive you. The peace Jesus brings is the peace of the Holy Spirit – peace that breathes into us and stirs us, might just rile us up inside, open our eyes to see injustice around us, open our hearts to see the suffering on the faces of those we love and those we don’t know, push us out to new places, to bring healing and peace to others and upset the structures of this world. Peter and John were on their way into the temple to pray when the man in need of healing showed up in front of them. They could have said, no, we’re going inside to pray and get more peaceful – no time for you right now. But they stopped, engaged directly with his need, and healed him in the name of Jesus – and then everyone comes running, there’s chaos, there’s excitement from the people around them – and then they get arrested, and the story keeps going from there. Just one of many of the stories of what happens to Jesus’ followers. And yet they never stop. Because they’re filled with God’s peace. And it just keeps pushing them on.
Peace be with you, Jesus says. Stop and breathe that in. Let go of the fear, let go of the crush of anxiety, and breathe. You don’t have to have waves to watch to do this. Do this every day, over and over, throughout the day – prayer and quiet, moments of rest, glimpses of peace that passes understanding, even in the midst of our busy chaos.
And then, look out. Because God’s peace keeps moving; the more you breathe it in, the more you will be stirred – turned from a disciple who learns and follows to an apostle who is sent. To spread the word, to right the wrongs, to bless this world. And to bring God’s peace. Because it’s for everyone.
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- Acts 4:32-35
- 1 John 1:1-2:2
- John 20:19-31
- Psalm 133 The post April 7 2024 – Seminarian Kate Schneider appeared first on Saint Michael's Church.
Genesis 1:1-2:4a [The Story of Creation]
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea]
Isaiah 55:1-11 [Salvation offered freely to all]
Ezekiel 37:1-14 [The valley of dry bones]
Did you know that it takes 10 compliments to undo one criticism?
Research on how our brains and nervous systems are wired reveals that human beings have a negativity bias — we pay much more attention to bad things, and easily overlook the good. Evolutionarily, this make sense; a long time ago, humans needed those instincts for survival. The ability to quickly assess danger meant the difference between life and death. And even though most of us don’t encounter lions and tigers and bears while going about our daily business anymore, the bad stuff coming at us and around us – news of war abroad, crime in our city, strained relationships with family, or coworkers, or friends – feels so much bigger and more consequential than anything good.
And if we’re not careful, we can forget that there’s a difference between this being part of the truth and this being the only truth we see.
When I was a teenager, there was a particular kind of optical illusion that became really popular – poster prints you’d hang on your wall, part of a bygone era before we all walked around with screens in our pockets. They looked like computerized Jackson Pollock paintings, but if you looked really closely, and blurred your vision just right, if you got lucky, an image would begin to emerge. Your eyes would see a three-dimensional image hidden in the two-dimensional image in front of you. And once you saw it, you couldn’t un-see it, or at least, you could much more easily focus your eyes to make the three-dimensional image appear. But the thing about these images was that it was really hard to see the three-dimensional image. You had to trick your eyes into seeing something that was obscured by the more obvious splatters of color in front of you. Some people would only ever be able to see the two-dimensional image. They’d stand in front of the image, squinting and straining, trying to see the number or the unicorn or the boat or whatever you were supposed to be able to discern in 3D, squeezing every ounce of concentration like when you’re all alone after seeing Star Wars for the first time and secretly try to use the Force to bring a pen into your hand, only to step away in frustration and throw their hands up in the air, “I don’t see it!” The brain has a bias, and you had to work hard to override that bias to see something much richer and more deeply embedded.
The holy days that we walk this week, leading up to this Easter moment, take us through a lot of suffering and death. You have to work spiritually hard to stick with it and get to the good news. There’s a whole week of trial and tribulation that lead up to this day of glory. And there’s a good reason we begin the Easter Vigil, the first proclamation of resurrection, in the dark. There’s a reason we begin by lighting a fire in the dark, with prayers and chants that remind us that “This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave.” There’s a reason we tell and retell the story of God’s saving work throughout history, and why we renew our baptismal vows, as part of the ritual of eventually proclaiming the joy of resurrection, all in the dark.
Because the darkness of the tomb, the darkness of hell, is where the Easter story begins. We tell the story of God’s saving work in the dark because we acknowledge that in many ways, this is our earthly reality. We can easily be given over to our negativity bias, to seeing the world in the darkness of two dimensions, and we can forget that what’s in front of us is not the whole picture. We can easily think that the truth of what’s bad is the only truth there is.
So if we don’t tell these stories over and over again – if we don’t renew our commitment to our faith – if we don’t rekindle the fire of God’s saving love in our midst – we only see in part, and not in whole. We so deeply long for resurrection, for good news, for the victory of life over death. And this is why we need this ritual. This is the night we proclaim resurrection out of darkness. Ringing these bells, proclaiming these alleluias, is not wishful thinking, or blind optimism. We proclaim alleluia even at the grave. There is such a thin place between death and life in our tradition. And we enter that thin place by telling these stories, lighting this fire, re-entering the waters of baptism. Reminding ourselves of what we need to know and remember to stay grounded in God, able to see the world in 3 dimensions, strengthened to see past our bias and to know that as much as it is true that things and people can be truly evil and awful, it is also true that Jesus shows us the way that leads to victory over evil and death. Not that we sit back and wait for God to do it for us — no, this is the night we are invited into the resurrection of Jesus. It’s not substitution, it’s participation. God doesn’t see the world in 3D for us – we now put on the eyes, and ears, and heart, of Christ, and we are invited into that very same life.
In the words of St. Epiphanius, Bishop of Cyprus (403 A.D.):
“Rise, let us leave this place. The enemy led you out of the earthly Paradise. I will not restore you to that Paradise, but I will enthrone you in Heaven. I forbade you the tree that was only a symbol of life, but see, I who am Life itself am now one with you. I appointed cherubim to guard you as slaves are guarded, but now I make them worship you as God. The throne formed by cherubim awaits you, its bearers swift and eager. The Bridal Chamber is adorned, the banquet is ready, the eternal dwelling places are prepared, the treasure houses of all good things lie open. The Kingdom of Heaven has been prepared for you from all eternity.”*
Alleluia, Christ is risen! The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
*https://holycrossoca.org/newslet/1204.html
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- Isaiah 52:13-53:12
- Hebrews 10:16-25
- John 18:1-19:42
- Psalm 22
He bowed his head, and gave up his spirit.
And so, in the story of Jesus’ Passion and death, we have come to the end. With those words from John’s gospel, Jesus is gone. Today the church is bare, the altar stripped. Today, Good Friday, is a day of fasting and mourning, a day of absence where once there was presence. Until the first rays of Easter shine, we live in the symbolic absence of our Savior.
Honoring this remembrance, our ancestors in the ancient church kept a fast on Good Friday not only from food and drink, but also from Holy Communion. It was the one day in all the year when the Eucharist was not celebrated, when the sacrament of body and blood was not shared. Although that began to shift in the Middle Ages, abstaining from communion is still the custom in much of the church, and it is one we’re observing this year – not only refraining from celebrating the Eucharist, but from receiving the reserved sacrament. Which means we don’t have Jesus symbolically present with us in that same way. When we celebrate the Eucharist we re-member, make present again, Jesus’ sacrifice. Today, however, we recall his original historical sacrifice, the cross erected there outside the city, the humiliating, slow, painful death that he died.
Crucifixion was a horrible way to die. It was death by exposure and suffocation, the victim hung usually by a roadside for people to see as they walked in and out of the city. It was meant to be not just execution but deterrent – the Roman Empire sometimes crucified hundreds of people at a time, a warning to the masses against rebellion. It was what they did to slaves, to thieves, to people without power – even innocent victims were rounded up and executed for show. Usually those who died were left hanging there, their bodies food for carrion eaters. When the gospel tells us Jesus was brought to Golgotha, the place called The Skull, you can imagine the scene. Here was a place where human beings were reduced to objects. Jesus cries out on the cross, ‘My God, why have you forsaken me?’ It is a scene of total desolation.
And yet at Christmas, we acclaimed Jesus as the Incarnation, the Word made flesh, God in man made manifest. Now the Word hangs heavy on the cross. On this day, with Jesus dead, we contemplate God absent also. God forsaking his son, and God forsaken on the cross.
What does it mean for God to be absent?
Often, it must be acknowledged, that’s our experience of God – absence. We hear horrible news of another act of senseless violence – so many of those in recent days here in our own city, and around the world in Moscow, in Haiti, in Gaza, in Ukraine – and we cry, God, where are you? We lie awake weeping in the middle of the night with grief, or because we feel lost and unloved, or because we are afraid, and we cry, where are you? We pray for a cure for a loved one, for a mending of relationship, for food for our hunger, and we cry, God, where are you? And all too often, we hear nothing in return. God does indeed feel absent.
We don’t often pray and talk about this in church. We ask for God’s presence and companionship with us; we remind those who are struggling that they are never alone. We name and hold onto an endless list of images for God with us, the rock on which we stand, the comfort of my Jesus in my heart, the warmth of love felt in community, the stirring passion of call and vocation. We tell stories of how God has acted in our lives, even in miraculous ways, looking over our histories with an eye to God’s presence with us. But I know from conversations with some of you that as beautiful as all those prayers and witnesses are, you struggle to experience God’s presence in your day to day. Or you did once experience God, but these days, you don’t. The truth is, many don’t. Few of us will live our whole lives without at least some period when that is true. Several years ago, when the diaries of Mother Teresa were published, it came as a shock that this saint among us had been living for years without a felt sense of God’s presence. The 16th century monk John of the Cross called it the dark night of the soul. Good Friday is a dark night.
We can’t gloss over this absence. We can’t skip over Good Friday in our rush to Easter. We’d like to – witness how many people are here today and how many will be here Sunday. But suffering and the hard news of the world force us to be honest. Either God is in our utter desolation and suffering, or God never was at all. If God is God, our experience of absence must also be part of God. Otherwise it’s all just feel-good fairy tale.
In the early Middle Ages, the church began to explore this experience in a more profound way. The desert fathers and mothers went out into the empty wilderness to live in silence and solitude, worshiping God beyond words and images. When people would come to them asking for wisdom, they would teach them to stop asking, to abandon language, to live with the unknown. By the 7th century the theologian known as Pseudo-Dionysius distinguished two different approaches to prayer – kataphatic, the kind of spirituality that we’re most familiar with, using metaphor and imagery and storytelling to describe the mystery of God; and apophatic theology, which finds itself speechless and unknowing before the glory of the divine. Like Moses on Mt Sinai, plunged into mysterious darkness, we come to terms with the limits of our senses and intellect. God is absent in every way we would perceive God; only as we abandon ourselves to that absence do we finally meet God. Only by letting go do we receive.
Several years ago Peter Matthiessen wrote a book called The Snow Leopard, a journal of his search in the Himalayas for a glimpse of the elusive cat. He trekked some 250 miles with a biologist named George Schaller, who was there to study the Himalayan blue sheep – but Matthiessen was really along just in hopes of seeing the snow leopard. Spoiler alert: He never sees one, and the book becomes more than a journal of outdoor adventure – it’s a meditation on seeking and not finding, on the hiddenness of ultimate reality. Schaller says, ‘Maybe it’s better if there are some things that we don’t see.’ Toward the end of their trek Schaller suggests sending a porter to a local village to buy an animal as bait, but Matthiessen writes that he doesn’t want to glimpse the leopard that way. ‘If the snow leopard should manifest itself, then I am ready to see the snow leopard. If not, then somehow (and I don’t understand this instinct, even now) I am not ready to perceive it…and in the not-seeing, I am content…That the snow leopard is, that it is here, that its frosty eyes watch us from the mountain – that is enough.’
On the hard wood of the cross, Jesus dies. It is not symbol or metaphor. Death and suffering are real. Darkness can’t be explained away. And the only way around it all is through.
And so we sit, in the emptiness of this day. At the end of the words and the music and the action today, there is silence. It is not easy to stay in that silence, but I invite you to do so. Our faith, our calendar, our hopes tell us that Sunday will come. But for now, it is Friday. And so let it be.
The post March 29th, 2024 – The Rev. Katharine Flexer appeared first on Saint Michael's Church.
- Isaiah 25:6-9
- Acts 10:34-43
- Mark 16:1-8
- Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
All the years that I knew him, my beloved Uncle Bob had a mustache. His was not a luxurious mustache with the edges curled up – his was a practical mustache, worn out of necessity – to cover a scar. Because, as the family story goes, one day he and his older brother – my dad – were out in the backyard of their home in Cashmere, in the high desert of eastern Washington. My dad, about 7 at the time, was playing with a snow shovel, trying to use it to pick up and fling a tumbleweed. He claimed he told his little brother to get out of the way: the snow shovel glanced off the tough tumbleweed and flew directly into Bob’s face, splitting his lip. As Bob wailed and cried, blood pouring from his lip, my dad’s first words were, Don’t tell Mom.
And so ends our resurrection gospel today: The women at the empty tomb run away, and ‘they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.’ Don’t tell anyone.
This has always been a curious turn in Mark’s version of Easter good news. The young man in white sitting at the tomb tells the women to go and tell that things have happened just as Jesus told them they would – tell the good news that their beloved friend, their teacher, the one who has shown them God’s love, is alive. Death has not had the final word – Life and Light are true. Up till now in this gospel, Jesus has repeatedly said, wait, don’t tell anyone who you think I am – wait till my life comes to its full conclusion, because then you’ll see and understand what God is up to. Now, here we are at the very end of the story, and it’s clearly time to tell.
Except that the women flee and don’t tell anybody.
And Mark finishes his gospel with that sentence – they said nothing to anyone because they were afraid. The last word in our English translation of this good news of Jesus Christ is ‘afraid.’ (Curiously, the Greek could also read, they were afraid, because…leaving the whole gospel story dangling on an unfinished thought. Because why?) Why are they so afraid?
Well, we can certainly imagine why. These are three women in ancient society, people without power in their time and culture. The male disciples have already deserted the scene, running away while Jesus was still on the cross. The women seem more faithful, showing up again to prepare Jesus’ body for burial. But this strange young man and his news upsets everything. Tell people? Who will believe us? People without power are never listened to. We’ll just be disbelieved, ridiculed, shunned. And so they tell no one.
Or, maybe they fear that what happened to Jesus might happen to them. The Roman Empire was profligate with crucifixions, sometimes crucifying hundreds of people in a day. If the women went to tell this tale, who knows what would happen to them. Jesus talked about taking up your cross and following, but faced with the actual threat of an actual cross, well, of course they were afraid.
But maybe what they were terrified of most was that resurrection might really be true. They just couldn’t dare to believe it.
More than one scholar has suggested that in this gospel, one particular parable is key – the Parable of the Sower, the story Jesus tells about seed falling on different types of soil. Unusually, Jesus actually explains this parable to the disciples, something he doesn’t do very often. The seed, he says, is the word. Will the word, the message, the good news, be choked out by the cares of this world? Will it sprout only to wither under persecution? Or will it take root in you and grow and bear fruit? This resurrection story seems to leave that question in our laps: here’s the good news. Everyone in the story so far has failed. But what about you: are you going to do something with this good news? Will it, in you, bear fruit?
Over 20 years ago an ad executive named Allen Kay came up with a phrase that has become ubiquitous in our world: If you see something, say something. New Yorkers will remember it was first part of the subway’s amped-up security after 9/11, but in 2010 it got adopted by the national Office of Homeland Security, and now is used in several countries around the world. As a security motto, it has its problems – sometimes people see things and make assumptions about other people based on wrong information, or on their own biases, as several civil liberties suits have pointed out. And as a security motto, its meaning is that we should all be on the lookout for bad things – keep an eye out for danger, and tell someone in authority about it if you see it. The world is a dangerous place.
But what might happen if we turned that motto to a positive – a gospel mandate? If you see something, say something. The world is full not just of danger, but of beauty. If you see something good, tell about it. You have good news about love and light and life? Share it. Because we all need to know – everyone needs this good news.
All too often, we too say nothing to anyone. We can imagine why that’s the case. We don’t want to misspeak or offend and so we say nothing – or on the flip side, we trumpet our opinion without caring what others think. We’ve all heard preaching – on Facebook and the subway – that is the opposite of the good news of life and light. And so we just talk past each other, or say nothing at all.
And maybe it’s also that we don’t want to embarrass ourselves. Today is a glorious day in church, full of good news to share. But will you go out and tell your friends and coworkers about it? what, you believe this stuff? How many people know you’re here in church this morning? What if you told them you go to church a lot, not just on Easter? If you told them what faith means in your life? What in the world would they think?
But deeper than that, I think we might be quite like those three women – maybe we don’t say anything because we don’t dare to hope that it’s true.
For some of us this may be pure survival instinct. We can’t claim to believe good news because it might open us to the scary thing in our heart we’re trying to keep in – the childhood trauma, the fear we live with, the anxiety that wracks us every day. Good news of God’s love – well, what if that too proves untrue?
For others of us, it bothers our tidy, rational worldview to contemplate resurrection. Jesus was a nice man. Can’t we just leave it at that?
For still others, it might just demand too much of our lives, so carefully arranged around the values of the world. If God’s abundant love and life are really true – then what might we have to change in our lives, in how we treat people at work, in what we buy and where we shop, in how we vote? This is risky. Better just to leave this here in church – say nothing to anyone.
At our vestry leadership retreat in February we talked a lot about our neighborhood here on the Upper West Side, and what we see around us, and how St Michael’s can do more to serve our community. One person wisely said, we’ve been talking a lot about what’s wrong in our neighborhood and the needs we see. What if instead we talk about what kind of neighborhood we want, and how we can help it get there? Ohhh, we all said. It was like a door opened.
So many polls lately tell us that Americans feel the world is in terrible shape right now. Whether it’s true or not, we read the polls, and we think, yeah, it really is awful. We could go on and on listing the wars and daily tragedies we are witnessing; the unequal systems we live in; the sense that things are headed in the wrong direction for our children and generations to come. We worry that we can’t fix it, and often we just give up trying. But what if we started looking for where we see light in the darkness, and shared that? What if we told others of the love of God – in words, and even more in how we act toward them? What if we risked believing that death is not the final ending, and Life is greater, always making a way out of no way – what if we told that good news? what world could we help speak into being?
The thing is, everyone of us here today has experienced resurrection. It is not just a story from 2000 years ago – it’s not just a doctrine of faith we choose to accept. It’s something that happens in every one of our lives. It happens in the springtime each year, as blossoms burst forth on bare branches. It happens in hospitals, when a deep sense of peace comes over a frightening situation. It happens in this community, when a lonely person is brought in and shown love and care. It happens over and over again in big ways and small, in moments when a door opens, when light shines, when the dawn breaks, and we see that there is more than what we imagined and feared. We see and know that Life that is greater than everything. We feel that love. We know it is true. We name it as resurrection. That’s what we celebrate today.
There’s an old favorite Easter hymn that many of you will know:
I love to tell the story;
‘twill be my theme in glory
To tell the old, old story
Of Jesus and his love.
The Savior of all people
Has brought his peace to you;
Now go and tell the story,
For others need it too
Do not be afraid – he is raised, just as he told you. Good news, even here at the grave – right here, where you never expected it. Go, and tell the others – for there you will see him. God’s love, for the whole world. Happy Easter.
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- Jeremiah 31:31-34
- Hebrews 5:5-10
- John 12:20-33
- Psalm 51:1-13
A little while ago, I was talking with a friend of mine who is a life and fitness coach. As we were catching up over coffee, she asked me directly how I was doing and what was going on in my life. Now, I know that when a life coach asks you that question, they’re expecting a different answer than maybe your average small-talk scenario where this question might get asked. So I mentioned that I was struggling with achieving a certain goal of mine that I’d set a while back. Fully expecting my life coach friend to come up with a flow chart, way to track progress, etc, I was surprised when she asked me one simple question: “What do you have to say ‘No’ to?” One of the mantras I’ve heard her say over and over again is that in order to say yes to something, you have to say no to something else. In order to get what you truly want, to say yes to your goals, you have to say no to the beliefs and habits that don’t serve your goals. Even though I’d heard her say this many times before, hearing it directed toward me and my own life hit me straight in the gut. The truth was, I already knew what I needed to says ‘No’ to, and I’d been hoping to avoid it. I had been hoping that the answer could be much more Episcopalian in nature, and be of the “both-and” variety. That I could have both my new goal, and my old habits. But it wasn’t. In order to say yes to the goal I had set for myself, I had to say no to a few bad habits that stood in its way.
What do you have to say no to, in order to say yes to something else?
There isn’t room for something new if the old is still lurking around. There isn’t room for truly eating healthfully if you always skip the vegetables. There isn’t room for getting in shape if you only exercise once a week. There isn’t room for starting your own business if you aren’t willing to give up a lot of your free time, savings, and self-doubt. There isn’t room for forgiveness if you’re still nursing grudges.
In order for something new to take hold, something old has to go.
In today’s reading from Jeremiah, the prophet is proclaiming that soon, God will be making a new covenant with God’s people. Soon, God will be doing something new. A covenant where God’s law isn’t studied, or known cerebrally, but known in the heart, acted on instinctually. A covenant of forgiveness and grace. At the time Jeremiah was making this prophesy to the people of Israel, they were in exile in Babylon, displaced from their homeland. And this meant being displaced from the temple, from the holy of holies where God resided, where the covenant lived. They were a people in need of some good news, of some hope that God had not abandoned them to their captors and given up on them. They seem to have had good cause for concern, since they are reminded of their history of straying from the covenant God had made with them – a history of idol worship and injustice. The words of the prophet Jeremiah must have been reassuring to the people who had broken their covenant with God. Not only was God not giving up on them, they were getting a new and improved relationship with God. This new covenant wasn’t just an upgrade of the old one. It had new, fancy, shiny features they were going to have to adapt to. This new covenant was going to write God’s law on their hearts, make God’s law so instinctual that it would no longer have to be taught. But in order to say yes to this new covenant, the people of Israel would have to say no to some old ways of doing things. They would have to adjust to a new way of being in relationship with God, departing from the tradition of countless generations. In short, it wasn’t a both-and situation. They couldn’t have both the old and the new covenant. It was one or the other.
In order for something new to take hold, something old has to go.
In one sense, we are a society that functions, economically, on this idea. Advertisers are constantly telling us we need a new phone, new clothes, new car, new computer… our economy thrives on the concept of “out with the old, and in with the new.” Except we, as people, often don’t. We are much better at “in with the new” than “out with the old.” We buy new clothes, only to have them sit right next to the old ones in the closet. We buy a new computer, holding onto the other one because we’re not ready to get rid of it. (I don’t know about you, but I’ve got laptops dating back to 2003 sitting in my closet!) If cellphone providers and car dealerships didn’t ask for a trade-in at time of purchase, who knows what would happen to our old gadgets. The thing our economy teaches us is that we love the concept of something new. But it doesn’t ask us to consider how we make room for it.
In order for something new to take hold, something old has to go.
But go where?
Lutheran pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber, a tattooed former alcoholic, has a compelling story of redemption. She describes her journey from Junkie to Jesus as one that was completely against her will. She says, “Getting sober never felt like I had pulled myself up by my own spiritual bootstraps. It felt instead like I was on one path toward self-destruction and God pulled me off of it by the scruff of my collar, me hopelessly kicking and flailing… and then plunked me down on an entirely different path. I was not allowed to die in exchange for working for God.” (Pastrix p. 38) In her own words, following Jesus “is about spiritual physics. Something has to die for something new to live.” (Pastrix, Introduction) She was given, albeit against her will, a new chance at life, but it meant that her drug and alcohol abuse, and the lifestyle that went with it, had to die.
In order for the new to take hold, the old has to go. But unlike life coaching, the Christian faith is not just about developing new habits and letting old things go. It’s about death and life. It’s spiritual physics. In order for something new to live, something also has to die.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus speaks about his own death when he says, “unless a grain of wheat falls to the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” The Gospel goes on to say that he said this to explain the kind of death he was to die. What Jesus is saying about his own death is that it’s the kind of death that bears much fruit, that it’s a death that has a greater purpose. He’s trying to tell his disciples that his death would not be the sad, horrible, dreaded thing his disciples were fearing. Death of a loved one is a natural thing to fear. Death by crucifixion was excruciating torture. To think of Jesus, their beloved teacher, dying this way, it’s natural they’d be a bit freaked out. But that wasn’t the end game. What they learned on that Easter morning, and what we know today, is that Jesus death led to new life. It’s spiritual physics. The kind of death that Jesus died is the kind of death that allows for new life to grow.
This passage about the grain of wheat falling to the earth and dying so that it can bear much fruit is one of the most familiar passages of the Bible to me. Growing up in the Armenian Church, it was read at every funeral, memorial service, and anniversary of a person’s death, both a reminder about the meaning of Jesus’ death, and a metaphor for the hope we can have as we grieve the death of our loved ones. I’ll be honest with you – I never found these words holy and reassuring. It always felt like a BS way of dealing with death. Because I never saw the fruit, the new life, springing forth from death. All I saw was grief and emptiness. Most, if not all, of you know that when someone you love dies, you walk through the rest of your life missing a limb. But the Church was right to remind people that this Gospel – that if a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it bears much fruit – this passage is not only about Jesus; it’s also about each one of us. It reminds us of the awful and awesome truth that ours is a faith that stretches far beyond the self-help section, and plunges into the depths of death and life. The Christian faith is more than a belief in Jesus the good teacher; it is hope and trust in a God who went as far as gruesome death and as far as glorious life. It is trust in a God who walks with us in all our dying and all our living, because there is nowhere we can go that God has not already been.
This penitential season of Lent is a time when we can dare to practice the spiritual discipline of examining ourselves and asking the hard question: what part of me has to die so that the God of love can dwell there? What resentments, what addictions, what greed, what anxieties have to die in order to make room for God’s love to grow anew? Every time we celebrate Eucharist here at this altar, we remember Jesus’ words: “drink this, all of you: this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for you and for all for the forgiveness of sins.” The new covenant comes to fruition at this altar and in the person of Jesus Christ.
When we drink from the cup that Jesus gives, the cup of a new covenant, what kind of forgiveness and grace do we drink? What is put to death by the bread of life and the cup of salvation?
Truly I tell you, if those grains of wheat fall to the earth and die, they will bear fruit. Amen.
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- Numbers 21:4-9
- Ephesians 2:1-10
- John 3:14-21
- Psalm 107:1-3, 17-22
Happy Laetare Sunday, everyone – Easter is just 3 weeks away, and today in the tradition of the church our Lenten fast lightens a bit and we get to celebrate, modestly. It is also known as Mothering Sunday, the day when one would visit one’s mother church – the church where you were baptized. So for all of you who are feeling overmuch the rigors of Lenten discipline, today is a day to relax that a little bit. And for all of you who are gloomy for other reasons, like, say, you read the news this morning, well, take today as a chance to lighten up a little as well. No matter how bleak it looks, there are still spring flowers coming up amidst the dry leaves.
I just finished reading a beautiful book called All the Beauty in the World, about our very own Metropolitan Museum. It’s written by Patrick Bringley, who worked there as a museum guard, going there shortly after his older brother died, a young man reeling with the loss of someone he really loved. He’s not a religious person, not raised in the church, but finds incredible solace in the art around him, and in the long stretches of quiet that he has as a guard in the galleries there. At the end, on his last day, he goes back to his favorite piece of art in the whole museum – a scene of the crucifixion, by Fra Angelico. He describes it well – the broken body on the cross; the crowd of people around, mostly not seeming to care; the grieving Mary fainting at Christ’s feet. In Bringley’s time of loss, bewilderment, grief, it is beauty, and most especially the tragic, complex beauty of a crucifixion painting, that anchors him and brings him back to life. That vision of Jesus on the cross brings life, even just hanging in an art museum.
Today’s gospel tell us, Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.
The image of Jesus lifted up on the cross is tied directly to Moses lifting up the serpent, in that bizarre and troubling passage we heard from Numbers. It comes from the long journey of the Israelites to the promised land, with all the ups and downs in the relationship of God and God’s people. The book of Numbers has seven so-called ‘murmuring stories’ where the people complain and God responds. Lots of complaining, in other words. In this one, the people complain about the food and how long the trip is taking – sounding a little like the kids in the back seat – and God sends in venomous snakes. Not manna, not quail, not water, but pow, snakes. This is the first time God has seemingly punished the people directly for their complaining – perhaps because it’s the first time they’ve complained against God directly, instead of just about Moses. But when the people repent and ask for help, God makes the sign of their suffering to be the sign of their healing: make an image of a snake, God says, and when you look up at it, you will be healed.
Of course the troubling part is, Why does God send the snakes in the first place? We don’t like this idea of God. Of course, the text doesn’t explicitly say the snakes are punishment. But then God doesn’t take the snakes away either – God just provides a means of healing for those who are bitten. It’s not an easily explainable story, and it’s a hard reading.
And perhaps we’d rather leave it there, safely in the mysterious ‘Old Testament,’ about ‘the Old Testament God’ – who, you might recall, is the God that Jesus worships, and the God of our Jewish siblings today, all part of why that mindset is, in fact, a heresy. But leaving that aside, the gospel passage picks this passage right up, directly linking Jesus crucified to the image of the snake. Jesus crucified is also a symbol of suffering and death; and yet Jesus crucified is a sign of life for the world. And then the gospel continues with John 3:16, one of the most famous scripture verses, often the sign and signature of evangelical Christians at sporting events. ‘For God so loved the world,…so that everyone who believes in him may not perish.’ We sometimes read those signs as more about the perishing than the love. But as the passage goes on to say, ‘God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.’ What we see as condemnation and death, God means for life and love. There in a nutshell is the message of Good Friday and Easter. The paradox of the cross; the paradox of human suffering. Troubling truth. Not easily understood – and yet life-giving.
All of this triggers all kinds of things for us. Does God really punish us? Can’t God just take away our suffering altogether? What about the people that died from those snakes? What about those who don’t believe in Jesus? There are about 20 hard questions for preachers embedded in today’s readings – sermons I’ve preached over the years, good, valid hard questions we Christians have to wrestle with. And yet, I hazard to say, in some of that questioning, we can miss the point. Jesus on the cross is about is love and God’s embrace. It’s right there in the language of John 3:16. Everyone who believes in him shall be saved. Or ‘Whosoever believeth,’ in the King James version. Whosoever – everyone, no matter what, is welcome. Whoever believes in him, meaning whoever trusts the revelation of love that Jesus incarnates. Whoever tries to follow in his way of love. Whoever asks for God’s help when we fail.
There’s a quote I came across from the mid-century Black leader Mary MacLeod Bethune. Bethune was a child of enslaved parents who grew up to help found Bethune-Cookman University and became a civil rights leader and an advisor to both FDR and Truman. Bethune was also a faithful Christian, and writing about John 3:16, she said,
With these words [John 3:16] the scales fell from my eyes and the light came flooding in. My sense of inferiority, my fear of handicaps, dropped away. “Whosoever,” it said. No Jew nor Gentile, no Catholic nor Protestant, no black nor white; just “whosoever.” It means that I, a humble Negro girl, had just as much chance as anybody in the sight and love of God. These words stored up a battery of faith and confidence and determination in my heart, which has not failed me to this day.
I wonder if this might be part of why Jesus calls the poor in spirit blessed in his Sermon on the Mount – those who are in real need of God’s saving embrace, they know that embrace. When you’re well established in society, when the world seems on your side, when all is well in life – when you don’t feel as much like you need what God is offering, then it’s comfortable to sit back and hold it all at a distance. Maybe chew over the questions for a while, and then set them down and move on. Then it’s easy to be like the onlookers in Fra Angelico’s painting – idly curious, busy, distracted, bored. We can turn away from Jesus on the cross as just another picture, and not believe. We can stay in our wilderness of snakes and not be healed.
Ultimately the message of the cross, though, is more basic than that: All are loved. All are healed. Death turns to life; condemnation turns to love. All that is needed is for us to look and see. To see not just with our heads, full of all their questions – but with our hearts, ready to know and be known. That is the good news of Good Friday. That is the amazing gospel that is given to us to share with the world. The paradox at the heart of our faith – God’s love in the midst of suffering – isn’t meant to be figured out so much as it’s meant to be lived out.
The Rev. Dr. Kelly Brown Douglass often notes that the church isn’t always good at being church. We’re more often aspiring to be church, she says. And I think this is one of the ways we falter. At the heart of our faith is a treasure that we can so often fail to see – and because we do not see, we do not share it with others. That deep love at the heart of it all is there for us and there for every single one of God’s children in creation. That, church, is a treasure we need to share. We Episcopalians, we progressive Christians, we Upper West Siders spend a lot of time apologizing for our Sunday practice, hiding from our co-workers that we go to church, distancing ourselves from ‘those people’ Christians, downplaying the importance of our worship to the ministry of this parish. As if what we’ve got here is something optional and unnecessary and frivolous, not worth mentioning. Is it really?
But this world needs healing. In ways people know and in ways they don’t, they need the truth of this message of love. Not just in a banner, ‘John 3:16’ – but in the truth of our witness and our lives. Here is a place to come be with people who will love you, misfit that you are. Here is a place that holds up the truth and speaks it – not social media ‘truth’ of the day, but real truth. Here is a place that teaches us to love our neighbor, and even more, to love our enemies. Here is a place that feeds the hungry, that sits with the dying, that prays for the sick and the lost. Here is a place that shows God’s love. You can get a spiritual feeling from watching the sunset – and a dopamine hit from sharing it on Instagram. But real love must be lived out in relationship and community. God loved the world enough to show us what that looks like.
God so loved the world. God so loved you. Think of it. No – don’t think of it, feel it. Let it seep past all your barriers and spread through you for a minute. And then tell me: how are you going to show that love today? How will you be a witness? Whom will you love? So let it be.
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- Exodus 20:1-17
- 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
- John 2:13-22
- Psalm 19
Last year the Episcopal Church released a book called “Realizing Beloved Community,” a publication of the House of Bishops’ theology committee. It examines one of the greatest threats to Christianity today, and indeed to our democracy as well: white Christian nationalism. This is not only an ideology but a heresy that seeks out the power of the nation to exert what some believe is the power of God. It subjects God’s power to the nation’s power, making redemption and life in God only possible if God can rule through earthly powers and principalities. It is the highest and most egregious form of idolatry. We have seen this heresy at work as recently as this past week, in the ruling in the state of Alabama. Christian religious language is woven throughout the ruling. We see this heresy at work whenever people claim to believe in Jesus but the power they trust is in fact a political party, or a former president, and the laws they seek to fulfill ensure the oppression or even destruction of people of color, queer people, women, and immigrants. And we know this is heresy because it seeks to destroy the very people Jesus spent his earthly ministry reminding of their inherent worthiness and belovedness.
In the words of the pastor Benjamin Cremer, “It tragically reveals how little we Christians truly believe in the power of Christ when we act as though his kingdom is dependent upon a political party, supreme court, president, and a nation maintaining, advancing, and enforcing his will.”
It’s enough to make true Christians wish they could do what Jesus did, to use the whip of justice to clean out the corruption in our own temples of power. Yet, we know that only Jesus has the courage and the authority to do so. All we are able to do is wait and repeat the words of the Psalmist, “How long oh Lord, how long?”
The story of Jesus and the money changers in the temple takes place in the first Passover of his public ministry and his first known visit to Jerusalem as a grown man according to John’s gospel. The other gospels put this visit just before his arrest and crucifixion. As one scholar notes, early in his ministry, Jesus still considers the Herodian Temple his “Father’s House.” But by the end of his ministry, when he weeps over Jerusalem as “the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it,” he declares it to be the people’s temple. “See, your house is left to you,” he cries, and the implication of desolation is in his words.
And this episode is rather uncharacteristic of Jesus. For the entirety of his public ministry, Jesus is calm, self-differentiated, non-anxious, clear on his mission. Think of how he was in front of Pilate, or with the woman caught in adultery, or in the boat with his disciples while a storm was raging. The epitome of calm. So why did Jesus become so angry when he saw his father’s house being made into a marketplace?
Well, as our lesson from Exodus tells us, in the Ten Commandments, idolatry of any kind was forbidden by God. You shall have no other gods before me. The money changers had a purpose: taxes had to be paid to the Roman overlords, but the Roman money carried the image of Caesar on it. The High Priests, considering this image idolatry, had ordered that the money paid in taxes should be converted to the shekel in order to be acceptable for Temple business. In that exchange, a great profit went into the coffers of these same priests. Anyone of us who has had to exchange our dollars for foreign currency knows how crippling that can be. Jesus knew that this was both profanity of the Temple and exploitation of the poor citizens. It was another form of idolatry—here the idol was earthly gain, a god ever present both then and now—a god not named by his followers but worshipped nonetheless.
Jesus also knew that his acts in the courtyard of the Temple would bring him in direct conflict with these same high priests, but this did not cause him fear. At this point in his earthly ministry he is very popular with the people, so the priests don’t dare touch him. As his interpretation of who God is and what God demands of us continues throughout the land, he becomes a stumbling block to the high priests, and the people, not getting the signs that they demand, agree to his death. But on this first Passover in Jerusalem, filled with the Holy Spirit, he burns with the fire and power of Truth. Afraid of that fire, they don’t dare touch him, but their desire to see him dead begins on that day.
A few decades after Jesus’ death, Paul will articulate this all very clearly to the Corinthians. The Jews, Jesus’ and Paul’s own people, were scandalized by Jesus’ courage, by his claim to know the mind of his father, by his willingness to meet his death without any retaliation or violence. To the Gentiles, with whom Paul is sharing what he learned from Christ, all this is foolishness. It goes against their own admiration for wisdom and philosophy, even for courage in battle. Paul summarizes the reaction to the acts of Jesus in brilliant brevity: “For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
In today’s gospel story, John shows the scandalous activity of Jesus in all its glory. The leaders of the Jews had fooled the people with a piety that had become idolatry and had allowed physical structures to take the place of a God who demanded, “You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.” Our culture has forgotten this command also, and so many signs or symbols today have been turned into idols: the Ten Commandments are not obeyed, but their depiction on stone is approved; the flag that is supposed to remind us of the human longing for freedom becomes an idol to be worshipped; money that should be used to educate and feed children becomes an idolatrous acquisition for those who already have too much of it, while our streets fill with unhoused people; schools and libraries, once safe havens where information was made publicly available, have become battlegrounds to slaughter truths about racism, homophobia, and bigotry. Guns, instruments of death only to be used in the extremity of war or self- protection, are worshipped as symbols of freedom as they have become the leading cause of death of children in this country; medicine, health care, means of healing, the very thing Jesus spent his entire earthly ministry dedicated to, is cast not as a right for all people but a privilege for the few.
We need Jesus’ courage to cleanse the temples of idolatry. We long for his kind of integrity that dares to call out the oppressors, no matter who they are. We pray for the power to overthrow the tables of the moneychangers who cheat the poor and the voiceless. In Paul’s words, we too must “proclaim Christ crucified.” Nowhere does Paul ever speak of a prosperity gospel.
As we approach Holy Week, we need the love and the passion that can sustain us even unto death. We will be laughed at when we resist the culture of our day, but we will remember with Paul that, “The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” Let us be aware, more than ever during this season of Lent, that the power of God goes with us. Amen.
https://www.episcopalchurch.org/sermon/resisting- the-idolatry-of-the-age-lent-3-b-2018/
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- Genesis 9:8-17
- 1 Peter 3:18-22
- Mark 1:9-15
- Psalm 25:1-9
Many hard years ago, the apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Rome, encouraging them in a long dark time: ‘Suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint.’ (Romans 5:3-5) This is probably the origin of that familiar parental response to kid whining, one that drives kids so crazy: ‘I’m sorry you’re bored and miserable, honey, but this is building your character.’ So here we are, in another character-building time: Lent. A time of self-examination, fasting, and self-denial. What fun!
Forty days and forty nights can feel like an awfully long time. The good news is that we’re already 4 days in, so we have only 36 more to go. For various reasons recently I’ve been remembering Lent of 2020, the Lent that started off strong and two weeks later found us shut out of church and hiding in our homes. The Lentiest Lent we ever lented, we said at the time. It felt like the good news of Easter would never come. Well, now we’ve done that, we know we can get through this, right? If you can make it through Lent 2020, you can make it through Lent anytime.
Now, I haven’t sat down with each one of you and asked about your Lenten observance. I don’t know which of you are stubbornly trying yet again to give up chocolate, or checking out a new prayer app, or signing up for 5 weeks of serving in Saturday Kitchen; and I don’t know which of you are thinking right now, uh, Lenten observance? Me? So if I go off talking all about 40 days of endurance and character-building, I may just be speaking into thin air. I realize that. No judgment here about whether this is the first you’ve thought of any of this. But I do suggest that now you do think about it, and for good reason. We all could use a little character-building.
Forty days and forty nights is not a random number, of course. The character-building of Lent is based on the character-building in the Exodus story, the 40 years that the Israelites wandered in the wilderness on their way to the Promised Land. It’s also based on the scripture stories from today: the forty days and forty nights of rain that caused Noah’s flood, the forty days and forty nights of Jesus’ fasting in the wilderness. Times of real suffering – 40 years being lost, nearly starving, fearful and afraid before finally finding a home. 40 days of rain when everyone and everything on the earth is swept away and drowned, only the small handful on the ark surviving to start a new world. 40 days in the desert being tempted by demons, with wild beasts as doubtful company, until the new ministry can begin. It makes you wonder, did all that character-building really need to happen?
In the case of Israel and Jesus, the scripture seems to say it does, as it is God who takes them out to the wilderness in the first place. Something needed to happen to take them from the high of that initial experience – Israel’s crossing of the Red Sea and being saved from the Egyptians, Jesus’ profound spiritual experience of baptism – to the hard work of new life and living out God’s call. Wilderness time, though full of suffering, is apparently intentional, and fruitful in the end.
But in the case of Noah – it’s less clear. God puts the rainbow in the sky to promise a flood will never happen again – not just a promise but a reminder, something that when God sees it, he’ll remember that he doesn’t want to do that again. Which feels a little like an oops, doesn’t it – like, God says, gee, maybe I overreacted and this destruction of the world thing didn’t need to happen – let’s not do it again. That’s a story that gets more disturbing the deeper you sift it.
But maybe in some ways the needlessness of suffering in the Noah story is part of the point of it. Because although we try hard to find meaning and purpose in suffering, the fact is that most of the time, the suffering we go through didn’t really need to happen. And that does make it harder to know how to live with it.
How many different stories like this can we tell? Here’s just one: Today is the 82nd anniversary of Executive order 9066 – signed by FDR, which sent 122,000 Japanese Americans to internment camps. 70,000 of them were American citizens. Given 48 hours notice, most of those people lost their homes and property – a report in 1983 calculated a total of $1.3 billion of property loss and $2.7 billion of income loss (1983 dollars). Finally in 1988, Congress passed a law that acknowledged the injustice of the incarceration, apologized for it, and provided partial restitution – a $20,000 cash payment to each person who was incarcerated. In other words: Oops, that was a mistake. The internment of Japanese Americans is one of the horrors of our recent history, but it’s just one of the things this country has done to people of Asian ancestry; just one of the things done to people who weren’t white, and didn’t look like those who were in power. Just one example of intense, needless suffering inflicted on a group of people by another. We can ask why it happened, and in response we come up with a handful of human sins – fear, and hatred, and jealousy, and bigotry. We can pass laws and make changes so it never happens again. But none of that really explains the suffering. It didn’t have any purpose – it just happened.
Theology has tried for centuries to explain why suffering happens. It feels like a huge conundrum, how suffering can happen to good people. Why people are struck with disease, born into poverty, killed as collateral damage in a horrific war. So we have stories in scripture and tradition that tell us suffering is somehow God’s doing, part of a plan – stories that never quite ring true in the end. Because God doesn’t make suffering happen. You can’t gloss it away with easy answers.
And yet we dare to believe that God doesn’t just let suffering be, either. Without wiping it all away, still somehow God can take trauma and tragedy and work it into blessing. Think of people who have gone through great suffering and emerged stronger than before, who speak with profound gratitude of the wisdom they gained through their trials, or the empathy, or the grace. Famous people like Nelson Mandela or Harriet Tubman; ordinary people like, well, some of you sitting right here in this congregation. People who have buried loved ones, or battled cancer, or lived through persecution, and yet found joy and hope in the process. They can seem superhuman to those of us just struggling to get through the days. They don’t deny the suffering, they don’t pretend it didn’t happen, but somehow, they are able to make it through and even thrive. Psychologists talk about the need for resilience, the ability to adapt well to suffering and difficulties, and there’s been much written about the need to build that resilience in our children especially. But as the theologian Richard Rohr wrote recently, ‘Resilience is really a secular word for what religion was trying to say with the word faith.’ Christians aren’t guaranteed any easier passage through life than anyone else. But we are given tools to grow through it all – to come through darkness and yet still declare our hope. How can we come through it all and thrive?
This Lent we’re focusing on building up our faith and resilience – our strength for the journey. There’s a lot happening in the world these days, and given our media diet, it will undoubtedly continue to be unsettling and distressing throughout this year. We read about suffering and see it and hear it every single day. And we each go through personal storms in our own lives, shipwrecks that at first can feel like the utter end of everything. So this season of Lent feels like a good time to work on our spiritual muscles, to put down deeper spiritual roots, to build a stronger spiritual foundation – pick your metaphor, whatever works for you – to weather any storm that might come our way. We need to build our character – and we don’t just have to wait for suffering in order to do it.
So we’re going to work on our prayer lives, the foundation to our relationship with God. Not by teaching anything new, but by highlighting the prayer practices all around us in this community. We have candles to light at the back of the church, prayer cards to write to be prayed by the prayer chain, healing prayer to ask for in our chapel each Sunday. We have our common prayer here together, daily in our morning prayer and noonday services, and weekly this season, an evening prayer service on Wednesdays. Prayer is communication with God, and you have to communicate to have a relationship. If you haven’t tried it before, now is a good time to start. If you don’t know how to go about it, your clergy are here to help – and the people next to you in the pews might have an idea too.
And there are other practices along with prayer that can deepen our relationship with God. In our forums we’ll look at them through the lens of our sister faiths, Judaism and Islam. How do we all pray and worship? what about fasting? The practice of pilgrimage, traveling to a holy place. Mysticism, the deeper connection with God beyond all ideas and languages. And what it means to be saved, and how we see that at work in our lives. We’ll have a quiet day for listening to the voice of God, practicing quiet and discernment to recognize how God speaks to us. And our ongoing ministries with our music and our children and with our Saturday Kitchen provide practical places to serve with your voice, your hands and heart, always getting something more in return.
Sometimes advertising Lent feels like making the cover of a popular magazine: Lose weight by eating healthy and exercising! Feel better by getting more sleep! Be less stressed by simplifying your life! Well, duh. There are no actual gimmicks here – it’s just the basics, what we teach and try to practice all throughout the year. But it’s all worth another look.
Lent, in other words, is another chance at a restart. It’s a chance to square our shoulders and try growing up a little bit more in our faith. Whether this is your first Lent or your 60th, it’s a good time to come a little closer in. Take a little daily intention, fast from something, set aside some time. Keep it up and restart it if you falter. This part is on us. It does mean a little work on our part. Hard work if you’re finding yourself in a shipwreck right now – the refiner’s fire may be already at work on you, like it or not. But if everything right now is smooth and easy – well, you may need the strength for what is yet to come. It’s worth building up your practice.
But it isn’t all on us to get this right. In the stories of character-building in scripture, God didn’t just send people off on their own to figure it out for themselves. God was with them, ministering to them and feeding them and guiding them – God was even with Noah in the midst of that terrible flood. And the good news is that God is with us too every step of the way – ready to deepen us, ready to bless us, ready to turn our sorrows into joy. Ready to redeem our suffering, to bring something out of it for us and for others. Ready, in other words, to build our character. So that we can live in hope, and share that hope with this world. So may you have a holy Lent.
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Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28
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- Acts 2:14a,36-41
- 1 Peter 1:17-23
- Luke 24:13-35
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- Isaiah 49:1-7
- 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
- John 12:20-36
- Psalm 71:1-14
Collet for Tuesday in Holy Week
O God, by the passion of your blessed Son you made an instrument of shameful death to be for us the means of life: Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
—
Good evening St. Michaels,
So good to see you all on the Tuesday of Holy Week, a day that tends to be overlooked by many Christians. With so much going on this week, this day can feel like a break between Palm Sunday and the rather heavy emotions we’ll all go through this coming weekend. To do so, however, would be to miss an important aspect of the story that connects the triumphal entry into Jerusalem with the coming Passion–namely, that Jesus knew what was to come and he accepted what today’s Collect refers to as the ability to “gladly suffer shame.”
Gladly suffer shame? That’s not something I’d be eager to sign up for. Is that what we are called to do? In short answer, yes. But what I would like to discuss is why and how we can do so tonight.
Jesus admits in the gospel today that his soul is troubled. He knows that his hour has finally come. Throughout the Gospel of John to this point, he has repeatedly pointed out that his hour had not yet come. But now it has and he has to deal with everything that entails. The knowledge of his coming betrayal and death, the hardship and the drastic changes that will follow, and the pain that his passing will cause to those who follow and love him. And yet, he doesn’t succumb to depression, nor does he try to escape. His soul is troubled. But as he says to Andrew and Philip and to all people around him, the hour has come for him to be glorified, and to be lifted up, and through this for God’s name to be glorified. Jesus knows what must happen for God’s glory.
For us, this might be a harder task. We often face troubles in our lives. We may feel as though we are suffering, or even suffering shame. Do we accept it gladly? Probably not. We may at times feel that we do not have the same assurances that Jesus did. We may feel like there’s no point to our suffering and no hope for a better future. In my own life, I didn’t give birth to my son Ian until I was 40 years old. My husband Paul and I spent years trying with no success and it was painful and even shameful to feel, for lack of a better word, barren. But we got through it together, with the support of others. I did IVF, went through some complicated medical conditions. Now, for us, Ian is the living sign that I could suffer gladly. What in your life sometimes makes you feel like you are suffering shame? Do we give up? Do we succumb to depression?
According to Jesus, we absolutely should not. Yes, this is a troubling time for him. Yes it is. What Jesus highlights is that these troubled times are not the end. That’s the mystery of faith we have proclaimed. Christ has died, Christ has risen and Christ will come again. We have been all lifted up like Jesus on the cross. We will all be lifted up someday, like resurrected Jesus, full of life, after we pass through the troubles and tribulations. Like the grain of wheat, we will die, but we can also bear much fruit with how we live our lives. We can gladly suffer cross for life, because our Jesus Christ suffers for life with us and for us.
Now, that’s a lot easier to preach than to practice. Let us acknowledge the suffering. Let us accept it and know that we all suffer one way or another. It’s a lot easier to say it will pass when it’s not your own. Acknowledging our own and other people’s suffering is hard work. And it requires faith to see the light at the end of the tunnel. That’s where our faith comes in. We just might not be able to do it alone.
Look around you. The people here at St. Michaels are the ones who help us sit with suffering when the world is dark. They help us believe by sitting with darkness and suffering, believing that we are children of the light. They help us believe that it is worth suffering gladly for the sake of life.
One of my favorite authors, geochemist Hope Jahren, once wrote in her book, Lab Girl.
Quote “Something so hard can be so easy if you just have a little help. In the right place, under the right conditions, you can finally stretch out into what you’re supposed to be. After scientists broke open the coat of a lotus seed and coddled the embryo into growth, they kept the empty husk. When they radiocarbon-dated this discarded outer shell, they discovered that their seedling had been waiting for them within a peat bog in China for no less than two thousand years. This tiny seed had stubbornly kept up the hope of its own future while entire human civilizations rose and fell. And then one day this little plant’s yearning finally burst forth within a laboratory. I wonder where it is right now. Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.” End Quote.
For two thousand years, a tiny lotus seed stubbornly kept up the hope. The right place, the right time has not come yet. During the winter, the tree waited faithfully to be blooming. Every time we reach out for hands to pray together, we could be like scientists broke open the coat of a lotus seed and coddled the embryo into growth. So I want to thank everyone here, for all that you do, known and unknown, that being present with others when they are suffering. Whether you know it or not, you make the promise of Holy Week real for us all.
On this Tuesday of Holy Week, Let us walk to the cross of our savior together. It is too soon to see Easter on Holy Tuesday. Yet with all the confidence of Easter, let us sing like psalmist once again so that “we will hope continually and will praise God yet more and more.”(ps. 71:14) Grant us so to glory in the cross of Christ, that we may gladly suffer shame and loss for the sake of your Son our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
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- Isaiah 42:1-9
- Hebrews 9:11-15
- John 12:1-11
- Psalm 36:5-11
LET JOHN HIT YOU OVER THE HEAD
Back before the days where people would say things like “if you go to
college and don’t major in business or engineering, you will never get a
decent paying job and be able to support yourself!!!” (People really do say
such outrageous things) I majored in Religion and Religious Studies at
Duke University. I had a wonderful time at it too. As such, this is not my
first time reading with you the Gospel of John, and I want you to know right
up front, John is not my favorite.
You see, John constantly hits you over the head with it, so to speak. My
New Testament professor at Duke stressed that John leaves nothing to the
imagination. Jesus is the one. He is the way, the truth and the light and so
John is going to tell you exactly why you must believe. With John, if there’s
any room for interpretation or imagination—then he is going to rob you of
that privilege. Jesus does not speak in mysterious or symbolic parables in
John. You will not think for yourself or read between the lines, or sit and
ponder anything. This is the reason the Church labels John, “the
Evangelist.” His message is direct. Right here in today’s Gospel, John is
telling us in excruciating detail, exactly why Judas is upset that Mary of
Bethany is wasting expensive perfume on Jesus, because, of course, you
are not smart enough to figure the context of things out for yourself.
Yes, like I said, John is going to hit you over the head with things.
Today we begin the Holy Week journey. This week, we are present with
Jesus for his descent to, then triumph over death, an experience we will
sing about at Resurrection Sunday. For this week, I decided to leave my
undergraduate frustrations behind, to unite myself with John and his
gospel, and to allow it teach me something. And this learning is what I
prayerfully share with you this evening.
Back to the story.
In the Gospel, John tells us a very compelling story of a woman, very
committed to Jesus. A woman who believes that Jesus is the Messiah, the
Savior. Mary of Bethany is perhaps the first Christian believer, or maybe
her sister Martha. They experience Jesus’ redemption in the most personal
way possible. Remembering that John leaves nothing in the passage by
mistake, everything being deliberate, I very much understand that John the
Evangelist is telling us that women like Mary of Bethany are the pillars of
the Christian Church and that women’s preaching is central, indeed
primary, to the good news of Jesus Christ.
Now how many of us have heard this kind of message told to us in Sunday
School, or since? Well, let John tell it to us.
Jesus is at the home of Lazarus, whom Jesus had raised from death, along
with Lazarus’ sister Mary. Mary immediately begins to bless and anoint
Jesus as the agent of God’s miracles and God’s redemption, applying what
we would consider to be $1000 a bottle perfume to his feet with her hands
and hair –another clear indication that she recognizes Jesus’ role as
servant leader as well. Another dinner guest, the famous Judas Iscariot,
yells at Mary for such a wasteful practice. Then Jesus predicts his death,
and we know that Mary understands this too by perfuming his body with
fragrances and tears prior to his journey to Calvary. But here I want to be
clear: Mary is giving Jesus an anointing, what I see as an undeniable act of
her priesthood, as Jesus begins the journey that we now call his Passion.
Now have we ever heard Mary of Bethany called a priest or pillar of the
church by this action, and why not?
The Church has spent millennia and so much of its Biblical scholarship on
Jesus’s passion story discussing the roles of the male disciples at Jesus’
trial and sentencing, their roles leading up to his crucifixion, and their roles
at his death at Golgotha, to the obvious exclusion of the first central action
of Jesus passion, an anointing and the preparation of his body for all that
he would experience in the coming days. Again, John is here hitting us
right over the head with it. And we should let him do it. Why haven’t we
listened to the Evangelist all this time?
And although it is not the subject of today’s Gospel, we can connect Mary
of Bethany’s action here to that of another Mary, Mary Magdalene, rushing
from Jesus’ tomb to announce that has is not there, and when risen Jesus
first appears to her, Mary becomes the first preacher of the Christian
Church—Telling us, “I have seen Rabboni. My Lord and my God!” Curious
isn’t it? How we spend so much time focused on the “great pillars” of the
Church, all the volumes that have been written on Peter, Paul, Andrew and
others, while brushing by the words of our first evangelist, our first witness
of the Resurrection, Mary Magdalene. And those of Mary of Bethany. The
women, the first heralds and preachers of our salvation. When you leave
here, repeat Mary Magdalene’s words again “Rabboni. My Lord and my
God.” Each time I say them, a chill hits my spine and I feel the excitement
she must have felt as Jesus revealed his full divine nature to her. These
are the same words, “Rabboni. My Lord and My God,” that got me unstuck
while writing so many papers in graduate school.
Tonight and all this week, I pray that we are blessed by Mary of Bethany’s
revealing of our Messiah from John the Evangelist. Let us also be blessed
by the female energy and leadership that brings us the Word of the Lord
weekly here at St. Michael’s, and by their pastoral care that strives to keep
us on the side of Jesus and his Kingdom.
And as John the Evangelist would have it, tonight and every day on this
Earth, let us save our most expensive perfumes, our greatest work and our
greatest desires, for our Lord Jesus.
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- Isaiah 50:4-9a
- Hebrews 12:1-3
- John 13:21-32
- Psalm 70
Why did Jesus break bread with his betrayer – Judas Iscariot?
And why does God allow His people to suffer, including His beloved Son?
Tonight’s gospel reading captures the moment where Jesus foretells his betrayal and shares this with his disciples at the Passover table. Coincidentally, tonight is also the first night of Passover in our current calendar year. I had the pleasure to celebrate an early Passover Seder with my Jewish friends in Connecticut last weekend, where we read from the Haggadah and ate foods to remember the story of Exodus, the bitterness of their enslavement, and the sweetness of their freedom. Tonight, our Jewish friends gather for the official beginning of Passover.
Just as Simon Peter reclined next to Jesus, our Jewish friends recline during their Passover meals to embrace their leisure as free people. The Book of Exodus walks us through how God delivered the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. However, we should not overlook the betrayals and sufferings that had brought the Jewish people to this point. The Passover story starts with a
betrayal of a 17 year old boy, Joseph, who was sold by his brothers into slavery
in exchange for 20 pieces of silver. During Joseph’s enslavement, the Lord was
with him. With dreams sent by God, Joseph helped to prepare Egypt for a terrible famine. When his brothers fled to Egypt to escape starvation, Joseph was able to provide for them. Throughout his time in Egypt, Joseph became the Pharaohs’ right hand man. A second betrayal follows, though, by Pharoah of the Jewish people – that led the Jews to enslavement in Egypt. We rejoice in their eventual escape out of Egypt into freedom, with the help of the Lord.
We can’t help but draw parallels between these betrayals: of Joseph, the Jews in Egypt, and Jesus. During the Last Supper, Jesus gathered with his disciples to honor the tradition of his own Jewish community and share a Passover meal. This is where the traditional Passover festivities take a turn. A shroud of darkness descends on the scene when at the Passover table, “Jesus was troubled in spirit and declared, ‘Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.’” (John 13:21). It’s here where he feeds a piece of bread to Judas, and “Satan entered into him.” (John 13:26-27). We learn in Matthew’s gospel that Judas betray his Rabbi for 30 pieces of silver. Why would Judas betray Jesus for 30 pieces of silver?
Why did Joseph’s brothers betray Joseph for 20 pieces of silver? Was it greed? Was it the desperation of poverty? Many of us can remember a time when someone close to us, whether a friend, family member, colleague, or a leader betrayed our trust. They may have not kept a promise, or they may have put you in danger, whether intentionally or by accident. These betrayals may have been the result of pride, or lust, or envy. Yet no matter the reasoning behind it, broken trust is one of the deepest wounds one can feel. It feels deeply personal. We wonder, “Why did this happen to me?” Why did God allow me to suffer like this? It would be natural if Jesus felt sorrow and anger about Judas’ betrayal, as
someone whom he had trusted so deeply as one of his closest followers, who
would eventually turn him in to the Jewish High Priests and be responsible for his fate of suffering and death at the hands of the Roman Empire. And yet, if we
continue reading this gospel, Jesus lets his disciples know that while suffering is imminent, joy is also imminent. “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with
them…So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will
rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (John 15:23, 16:22). This joy
mentioned in the book of John is based on God’s Commandment of Love – a love that led God to lower himself into human form to tend to the poor people of Galilee, perform miracles, wash his friends’ feet, and ultimately, die for all of Us. We must remember that even when we face pain today, God is there to lift us out of our suffering and bring us joy. Our readings today remind us that God indeed is there no matter what may come. God knows how much evil has ravaged the human spirit, and how much humans perpetrate on one another, as sinful creatures. God is all too familiar with evil. While we may never fully understand why we must suffer at the hands of other’s sins, or why we cannot help but sin and hurt our friends, family, and enemies, we can only put our faith in God. A God who – through messy human actions – turned a betrayal of brother against brother, ruler against subjects, and friend against teacher into an opportunity to reveal His works through His fallen peoples. God is so intimately familiar with darkness that He sent down Jesus to suffer and die for our sins, and be our light.
Today’s readings challenge us to keep the faith, even when it is scary, even when it is difficult. Our Isaiah reading reminds us of concrete things we can do to listen to God and trust God in order to endure suffering. This reading is particularly visceral by emphasizing the feeling of physical pain that also translates into emotional pain, the shame of being hurt, “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced;” (Isaiah 50:6-7) The speaker in Isaiah stands strong, knowing that God is there and will ultimately deliver, especially when all feels lost. We need to stand strong when enduring pain caused by other imperfect human beings. To find peace and strength, we need to lean into faith and pray for God’s deliverance. Today’s psalm is a good one to bookmark for a prayer of deliverance.
I challenge us to remember today that even when darkness seems to hover over
the horizon, light will shine through if we keep our faith and persevere. What’s so beautiful about the exhortations in our Hebrews reading is this idea that we are in this together running towards the light. As it states: “We are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith.” Though we may
constantly betray and hurt one another, we continue to be witnesses of our
Christian faith who are running in community towards our deliverance, our light, our hope for today and the future. Amen.
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Genesis 1:1-2:4a [The Story of Creation]
Genesis 22:1-18 [Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac]
Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea]
Ezekiel 36:24-28 [A new heart and a new spirit]
Matthew 28:1-10
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- Acts 10:34-43
- or Jeremiah 31:1-6
- Colossians 3:1-4
- or Acts 10:34-43
- John 20:1-18
- or Matthew 28:1-10
- Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24
I heard an interview the other day with the actor and writer Brett Goldstein, of ‘Ted Lasso’ fame, where he described a service that he attended, something like a funeral, I’m guessing, that was deeply moving and solemn and sad. He was sitting toward the back of the church, and behind him, a woman came in to begin setting up for the reception. As the congregation leaned forward to absorb the sad stories they were hearing and the loss they were mourning, the woman wheeled in a tea cart with one loudly squeaking wheel, rattling with stacked china as she rolled it slowly along. Reaching her destination, and obviously trying to be quiet, she began clattering cups down on the table stack after stack, clearly trying her utmost not to disturb anyone but persistently going about her setting up for long excruciating minutes, totally distracting everyone in the service. The ridiculous humor of this struck him, Goldstein said, and he realized, ‘This is life…I’m literally in the middle of this powerful, beautiful, profound thing in front of me, and behind me, this ridiculous, mundane thing of a woman trying to stack some cups quietly… I was like, this is it. This is all of it in one moment.’
And here we are today, on Easter Sunday – having all of it in such a moment. It is a powerful, beautiful, profound thing that we are celebrating today, this joyful Eastertide, this glory of life breaking through where once there was death. And it is messy and ridiculous and mundane too, all at the same time. Our buildings are under construction and there is dust everywhere, even though we’ve tried to clean this place up for you all. We are a big group of all kinds of people and some of us might have a harder time sitting still and being reverent, which is wonderful, because there’s an egg hunt after the service. We’ll probably sing a difficult hymn you don’t know so well, and someone’s voice will crack, and the sermon will go on too long. And then we will leave this service and maybe we’ll have brunch or something, and we’ll take off our fancy clothes, and it will be back to the same old same old. And yet today, of all days, we act like this is the best party we’ve ever been to, with the very best news we’ve ever heard, the unbelievable idea that life conquers death. How can we dare believe it?
Mary and Peter and John the disciples might have been tempted to disbelieve too. Just a few days before, they had seen their friend and teacher crucified, a slow, painful, shameful death on the cross. His body had been laid in the tomb. It was over, and all the hope they had had for new possibilities was over too. They were back to the same old, same old. When Mary encountered that gardener outside the tomb, she could have turned away, not trusting that he was Jesus. When Peter and the other disciple saw the empty tomb, they could have simply gone back home, confused but none the wiser. They all could have decided, no, this is impossible. We saw him killed. We know how this goes. To pretend otherwise is just a fairy tale.
But something made them believe. Somehow in that empty place of death they found life. And they believed it. And their believing it is why we are here today.
One of the anthems in our Prayer Book burial office begins, ‘In the midst of life we are in death.’ It’s a prayer attributed, get this, to a Crusader battle song written in the year 912 by a monk named Notker the Stammerer – don’t you just love church history? You can’t make this stuff up. ‘In the midst of life we are in death.’
The prayer goes on, ‘From whom can we seek help? From you alone, O Lord, who by our sins are justly angered.’ The prayer was considered so powerful that 500 years later a group of nuns threatened with the reform of their order chanted the prayer in protest, prostrate on the floor – and temporarily scared off the reformers, who feared it was a curse. Media vita in morte sumus. In the midst of life, we are in death. It is an anthem at burial, but it is also the anthem sung at the Holy Saturday service, when the church hangs in the waiting time, the nothing time, quiet in the tomb. Life leads to death, inexorably. Suffering and loss are inevitable. None of us can escape it.
But today, the tomb is empty. And the power of that chanted prayer is that the reverse of it is also true: in the midst of death, we are in life. That’s not a curse at all. It’s a promise. And a statement of faith. Of faith that has carried God’s people through thousands of years: as the prophet Jeremiah said so long ago, God loves us with an everlasting love. (Jer. 31:3)
When we sing glorious music with trumpets and brass and we put flowers to cover the ugliness of the cross and we’re here in the beautiful church with all these people, it can all feel plausible. We are, I think, wired more to hope for good news than to believe the bad. It’s why we love our happy endings, why we find it possible to laugh even in the hardest moments of life. We can learn to be cynical pessimists, but I think that we still hold a germ of hope despite ourselves, especially on a beautiful spring morning when there are flowers in the air.
But how do we believe it when we go back out into the world of suffering and pain? How does this day make any difference in our lives? There was a film made a few years ago called ‘Free Solo.’ It’s the documentary chronicling Alex Honnold’s climb of El Capitan in Yosemite, the 3000-something foot cliff that looms over Yosemite Valley. Alex Honnold famously climbed all 3000 feet of it without any rope, by himself – that’s what it means to free solo. It is an excruciating film to watch, because even though your brain reminds you that of course he makes it because otherwise you wouldn’t be watching this, seeing him dangle from his fingertips from a granite face thousands of feet in the air is, well, sickening. I’m not even that afraid of heights, but oh my goodness. If you’ve ever done any climbing yourself, you can feel in your body just how risky it is.
When I tried mountaineering many years ago, crossing glacier slopes with crevasses you can fall into, I was perfectly content to be in the middle of the rope team, with two strong, skilled guys on either side of me. Yes, I still had to do my own part and not pull everyone down, but the rope, and their skill, was what kept me safe. The idea of going out on my own with no rope, trusting in my fingertips – that just feels frankly insane.
Alex Honnold acknowledged as much. But, he said, ‘The casual observer might think free soloing is all crazy and reckless…’ An MRI showed that Honnold’s brain does not experience fear like other people, leading people to think, ‘“There’s something unique about his brain.”’ Honnold said, ‘I find that slightly irritating, because I’ve spent 25 years conditioning myself to work in extreme conditions, so of course my brain is different—just as the brain of a monk who has spent years meditating…would be different.’
So the brain can be trained to climb thousands of feet in the air without any safeguards. What sounds impossible to us to imagine becomes possible when we train ourselves to it. Our brains can change. We can learn to trust what seems untrustable. Just look around at some of the elders in this church here today. There are people right here in this room who have learned the long lesson that God is faithful – that God makes a way out of no way, as Dr King said. They know it because they’ve experienced it over long time. That’s one of the many, many benefits of being part of a church community, that we get to do life with experts.
But we don’t get to be experts immediately. Even Alex Honnold had to start as a beginner, with a rope and strong partners to help him. He had to practice, and fail, and learn, before he became the climber he is. Just like no one can meditate the first time they sit down to try it. Just like we find it hard to trust this news of resurrection and love when we first come to it – or when we come to it again after trauma and grief. We need a community of other climbers to learn with; we need routes to follow that others have accomplished; we need that rope of commitment to hold us when we fall.
The disciples could have quite reasonably turned away in that garden and gone back home, chalking the whole vision up to fear and trauma. But they had spent time in in-depth training with Jesus, witnessing his healing, feeling his love, hearing his teaching. They had the promise and witness of generations before them that God’s love delivers people out of enslavement and fear and desperation, into the promised land of freedom and joy. And they had one another, the community that Jesus assembled for just this very purpose, so they would have each other when he was gone. And so they were able to claim the radical good news, the unbelievable news, that their Jesus was risen from the dead. And their lives were forever changed because of it.
So if today you’re here and you’re not so sure what this all means and whether you can trust Easter to be real, it’s ok. Life truly is hard. And it’s terrifying sometimes to step out and try to see otherwise. But you are not alone. These people all sitting around you, they’re your community. Some of them are beginners too; some of them are total experts. And every one of us has fallen and been wounded along the way. And whether we trust it or not, whether we feel it or not, God is there, always there, ready to catch and to heal us – to turn our suffering into dancing and our mourning into joy, just when we least expect it. God loves us with an everlasting love. And we can rejoice and be glad in that.
Happy Easter.
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Maundy Thursday
- Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14
- 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
- John 13:1-17, 31b-35
- Psalm 116:1, 10-17
“By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Good evening. I am a fortunate one indeed.
I get to preach about feet. Journey worn feet; filthy, tired feet that need to be washed before dinner. Where do I begin, with a basin of water, towels to dry, perfume to scent, or wishing aloud that ancient times had spas where people could be sent?
Just another manic Maundy!
Tonight, on Maundy Thursday, our mandate is more than the superficiality of the act, our mandate is to love. Less a mandate, I suppose, more a gift of grace given, to those of us who yearn to follow Christ more deeply.
As we consider this Gospel scene, let me instead begin by talking about love, /beautiful words of love from the poet Kahlil Gibran, /words as pleasing as a scent of incense rising.
“Speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon
the people, and there fell a stillness upon
them.
And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you… follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you… yield to
him,
And when he speaks to you… believe in
Him.”
Tonight, love beckons…
We are asked to do as he has done. To wash the feet of the world. There are no feet excluded from love. Even Judas’ feet were washed.
As part of our hospital end of life training for nurses, my supervisor and I offer a presentation on cultural humility and spiritual sensitivity. We show a video entitled “If the World was a Village of 100 People.” Through it we understand the needs of the world on a micro level. Our society has become mutually inter-twined and inter-dependent. We are global citizens.
If the world was a village of 100 people:
- 61 would be Asians, 12 Europeans, 8 North Americans, 5 South Americans and Caribbeans, 13 Africans, and 1 from Oceania.
- Out of 50 men and woman, 1 would be nonbinary
- 47 would live in an urban area
- 9 would be disabled
- 33 would be Christian
- 18 Muslim
- 14 Hindu
- 6 Buddhist
- 13 Other
- 16 non-religious
- 43 would live without basic sanitation
- 18 without improved water source
- 6 people would own 59% of the wealth
- 14 can’t read
- 7 are educated at the secondary level
- 12 have a computer
- 3 have Internet
- 1 adult between 15-49 is positive with HIV or has AIDS
- The Village spends more than 1.2 trillion on military expenditures
- Only 1 billion on developmental aid
- If you have food in a refrigerator, keep clothes in a closet, have a bed to sleep in and a roof over your head, you are richer than 75% of the population.
- If you have a bank account, you are one of the 30 wealthiest people.
- 18 struggle to live on $1 per day, 53 struggle to live on $2 per day
Think of all the feet that walk the paths of our global community, who pass through our lives in a day, a month, a year, a lifetime. Many of whom we don’t know, don’t notice, or have no idea how they are living.
So many feet, young and old, tired, lost, angry, hurt, broken, /have we noticed, /have we washed them /have we received them like Christ?
What have we done to care for those feet? What will we do for them? Ignore them, step on them, be repulsed by them?
Whose feet might we be asked to wash? Feet that have walked through the muck of life. Feet of different hues, feet that walk a privileged path like mine fresh with my Maundy Thursday Pedicure?
Truth is we all need to be willing to wash and to be washed, /the action, and the metaphor for serving like Christ served, /for loving like Christ loved.
In this evening’s Gospel, Jesus teaches us that every relationship must be a whole-hearted love relationship, / offering abundant love to all, /especially to the most vulnerable. He gifts us with the Eucharist to nourish this community mission to love.
Nourished by the sacrament, powered by the mystery of the metaphor of washing the feet of others, we move from being spectators or re-enactors of Jesus’ life, to being engaged in Jesus’ ministry, servants ministering to God’s beloved people.
Sometimes “washing the feet of others” is more daunting than we realize. Yet, when we separate ourselves from washing the feet of others, either knowingly or unknowingly, we reject the heritage bequeathed to us this night, Jesus’ mandate, forgive me, gift to love one another.
Too often though we are blinded, we fail to see who journeys with us.
There is a French Fable:
One night a cobbler dreamed that Jesus was coming to visit him. The dream seemed so real that he got up very early the next morning and hurried to the woods where he gathered greens to decorate his shop for the arrival of such a great guest.
He waited all morning, but to his disappointment, his shop remained quiet, except for an old man who limped up to the door asking to come in for some warmth. While the man was resting the cobbler noticed the old fellow’s shoes were worn. Touched he took a new pair down from the shelves and saw to it that the stranger was wearing them as he went on his way.
Throughout the afternoon the cobbler waited, but his only visitor was an elderly woman. He had seen her struggling under a heavy load of firewood, and he invited her into his shop. He saw to it that she had a nourishing meal before she went on her way.
As night began to fall, the cobbler heard a child crying outside his door. The child was lost and afraid. The cobbler went out, soothed the youngster’s tears and with the little hand in his, took the child home.
These three guests, not unlike the worn shoes we see as our Saturday Kitchen guests wait on our food line, on the faces of those in war torn places like Ukraine where they struggle under the heaviness of war, in the tears of our children as they feel unsafe in school, or struggle to make America a new home with their families.
When he returned the cobbler was sad. He was convinced that he had been away and missed the visit of his Lord.
In his anguish, the cobbler cried out – “Why is it Lord that Your feet delay? Have you forgotten that this was YOUR day? Then, soft in the silence he heard a gentle voice, “Lift up your heart for I kept my word.
Three times I came to your welcoming door; three times my shadow was on your floor.
I was the man with the bruised feet.
I was the woman you fed.
I was the child on the street.”
Ah yes, “Speak to us of Love.
And he raised his head and looked upon
the people, and there fell a stillness upon
them.
And with a great voice he said:
When love beckons to you… follow him,
(Though his ways are hard and steep.)
And when his wings enfold you… yield to
him,
And when he speaks to you… believe in
Him.”
Tonight, as we end this service, as the altar is stripped, and the lights are dimmed, we go deeper into the dark place of emptiness.
In the stillness, love beckons us to be light.
“By this everyone will know that we are disciples, if we have love for one another.”
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Fifth Sunday in Lent
- Ezekiel 37:1-14
- Romans 8:6-11
- John 11:1-45
- Psalm 130
There is a [Southwestern] desert legend about an old woman called La Loba, or the Wolf Woman.
The sole work of La Loba is the collecting of bones. She is known to collect and preserve especially that which is in danger of being lost to the world. Her cave is filled with the bones of all manner of desert creatures: the deer, the rattlesnake, the crow. But her specialty is said to be wolves. She creeps and crawls and sifts through the mountains and dry riverbeds, looking for wolf bones, and when she has assembled an entire skeleton, when the last bone is in place and the beautiful white sculpture of the creature is laid out before her, she sits by the fire and thinks about what song she will sing. And when she is sure, she stands over the creature, raises her arms over it, and sings out. That is when the rib bones and leg bones of the wolf begin to flesh out and the creature becomes furred. La Loba sings some more, and more of the creature comes into being; its tail curls upward, shaggy and strong. And La Loba sings more and the wolf creature begins to breathe, and as she sings, the wolf opens its eyes, leaps up, and runs away down the canyon. Somewhere in its running, whether by the speed of its running, or by the splashing its way into a river, or by way of a ray of sunlight or moonlight hitting it right in the side, the wolf is suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free toward the horizon.
The ancients called the desert the place of divine revelation and transformation. Perhaps that is because the desert is a place where life is very condensed. The roots of living things hold on so that the last tear of water is preserved. The flower hoards its moisture by only appearing in the early morning and late afternoon. Life in the desert is small but brilliant, and most of what occurs lies in wait underground.
So often, we live desert lives: operating in scarcity, holding on to what little sustenance we can, storing it up because we are never sure of when the next rainfall will come. Many of us live in the desert: showing signs of life here and there, but rooted in dryness and despair, our spirits lying in wait underground.
When the Lord told Ezekiel to prophesy over the dry bones in the desert, God was not only performing miraculous signs, giving sinew and flesh to the bones on the ground. God was showing Ezekiel what the dryness of despair looked like. “These bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely.’” Before God brings life back to the dry bones, God shows Ezekiel just how personal it all really is. It’s about how greatly God cares for God’s people, that God sees the death of their despair, and reminds them that God will not leave them to be a pile of dry bones buried in the sand of the desert.
We all [come to God], at least at some point in our lives, as a bundle of bones lost somewhere in a desert, a dismantled skeleton that lies under the sand. And we come to God seeking the story of La Loba, of Ezekiel – seeking the story of the resurrection of our dry bones. Our Collect of the Day prays that God would grant us the grace to desire what God promises, but I don’t think we need that prayer to desire God’s promises. The truth is, we desperately desire God’s promise to “open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people” and bring us back to the promised land. The promise to put God’s spirit within you, so that we might live. We seek the promise that if we sing the song of faith, God can call up the remains of the dry bones of our despair and darkness, and give them life again.
One of the reasons we pray, dance, drum, make theater, write poetry is to do the work of gathering all the bones together. But [then], we must sit at the fire and think about which song we will sing over the bones, which creation hymn, which story, which symphony. We must sit next to God, who asks us, “Mortal, can these bones live?” and faithfully proclaim, “O Lord God, you know.” We must look, not toward the certainty of our convictions that we can do it alone, but the promises of God that with
God’s help, with God’s song, the dry bones can live. [1]
It is this promise of God that Jesus is proclaiming when, with tears still streaming down his face, he raises his dear friend Lazarus from the dead – the final sign of wonder he performs as he foreshadows his own death and resurrection. It is the promise that God breathes new life into that which we think is dead.
In the words of the scholar Karoline Lewis, “Simply to believe in the resurrection comes nowhere close to what resurrection means. … Once you are sure in your confession, “Christ is risen,” you should stop and think. Really? What makes me so sure? What convinces me of this creed? What secures this so- called salvation?
This is the heart of the story of Lazarus. Resurrection is not a confession. Resurrection is not a theory. Resurrection is not some sort of ambiguous promise. No, resurrection is real. Resurrection is relationship with God. Resurrection is now. We are so determined to say “resurrection is…” followed by something boringly theoretical. …We desperately preach that Easter matters for some sort of guaranteed future when actually, at least for Lazarus, Easter is first nothing other than reclining on Jesus and having dinner.””[2]
Resurrection is now. Resurrection is the song that puts sinews and flesh on our dry bones. New life, arising out of a heavenly symphony.
“Mortal, can these bones live?” Can that which has died – your faith, your hope, your trust – live again? Can you collect that which is in danger of being lost to the world, and play the music that gives it new life? Can you sing the song that proclaims, “Yes, Lord, you know: these bones can live again?”
Amen.
[1] Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. Women Who Run With Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wile Woman Archetype. pp. 27-38.
[2] https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx? post=4847
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Fourth Sunday in Lent
- 1 Samuel 16:1-13
- Ephesians 5:8-14
- John 9:1-41
- Psalm 23
The question is, How do you know what you know? I mean really. How do you know?
There’s a long study of this question in the world of philosophy. It’s called epistemology – investigating how it is that opinion becomes ‘justified belief,’ in the words of the OED. We arrive at what we know through several different routes. We figure something out through logic and reason – I have thought this through, and it makes eminent sense, so I know it is true. Or we know based on intuition, the felt sense that operates on a deeper level than reason, where we know how someone is doing even before they tell us. We know things because we’ve experienced them, certainly, it happened to us. We know things because someone else gave testimony to them and we trust what they say. And, some philosophers allow, we might know something because of divine revelation, a knowing that comes in some way from beyond our faculties. Of course, every kind of knowing involves the possibility that we might be wrong, or that our subjective experience – who we are, our experiences and background, how we’re feeling that day – is shaping our knowledge. That certainly comes up when it comes to matters of faith, questions about God. It’s one thing to say that we know the pew is hard, or that the train is late, or that a friend seems sad. It’s another to say with certainty that we know God is present here and now. That kind of knowing – well, how do you know what you know?
One thing I know is that this is the Lent of long gospels, as the deacons will tell you. They’re great stories, but long ones, all from the gospel of John. But they’re also each focused on one compelling character: the Pharisee Nicodemus, the woman at the well, Lazarus, the beloved friend that Jesus raises from the dead. And today, this man born blind, and the long state of confusion that follows after Jesus heals him and brings him sight. These are stories rich with symbolism – nighttime darkness and the bright light of day, water and thirst, seeing and not seeing, death and life.
But they are also stories with characters who are real, vivid and knowable. I’ve always had a particular soft spot for the man in today’s reading. There are a number of stories in the gospels about people who are blind being healed by Jesus, all with great rejoicing and delight. In this one, Jesus sees the man, and in response to his disciples’ stupid question about sin, heals the man’s sight. But then the story spends most of its time on the mostly negative reaction everyone has to this miraculous healing. Through it all, the man just keeps repeating his story over and over – working in some pretty great zingers along the way too. He healed me. I was blind but now I see. How do I know if this guy is a sinner? All I know is that he healed me. You want the story again? You wanna be his disciples too? …But for all his pains, the leaders and Pharisees throw him out. Too much truth-telling can be unpopular.
One commentator pointed out that this man who is healed follows a trajectory exactly like the one Jesus does in the gospel of John. His identity is questioned, even though he tells them clearly, I am the man – paralleling all of Jesus’ famous ‘I am’ statements in the gospel; he speaks frankly and logically, asserting the facts, but no one believes him; he resorts to sarcasm and truth-telling to put the Pharisees in their place, only to be cast out completely from their community. This is also the story of the early Christian community that produced John’s gospel, cast out from the mainstream Jewish community for their belief in Jesus. The Pharisees in this story are people who do not want to be troubled with the facts. None of what the man says, or what Jesus says throughout the gospel, is enough to persuade them. They simply can’t see the truth.
In our Lenten forum series, we’ve been exploring what the Bible says about reparations, the action to redress wrongs done to those whose enslavement built this country. It turns out there’s a lot the Bible has to say about this, numerous passages throughout Hebrew and Christian scriptures that call us to make our repentance and reconciliation tangible and meaningful. Slavery is often assumed in the biblical worldview – but so is the need to make restitution for it in the community of God’s people. Pair these scriptures with the facts of our American history, including our economic history and the history of the church, and it is not hard to make a case for morally and financially redressing the wrongs done. But the idea of reparations remains controversial in our country and in our churches – to put it frankly, it’s hard to give up money and status. It’s obvious that conveying the facts alone is not enough to persuade people to take this uncomfortable step. It is only when we connect with empathy, shared feeling, to one another that the conversation turns from ‘why should our group do something for your group?’ to ‘we all have suffered this, we all need this healing.’ Empathy, not the facts, leads to a different way of seeing that takes the conversation from us-them to us-we. And from there, we can begin to take action to change.
This is just one example of an issue we are struggling with in our world today. We live in an age when facts often fail to persuade, and facts are subject to opinion far more than the other way around. Yet we return to facts over and over again, attempting to get others who disagree with us to see, as if we can argue them into seeing differently. It never works. And if we do some honest self-evaluation, we have to admit that we also aren’t always accepting all the facts. Just notice how the same set of facts about COVID resulted in such a wide array of responses from us, to take one recent example. Our own worldview, whatever it is, our assumptions about what is right and how things came to be, that also blinds us to what may be obvious to others. We all struggle with knowing what we know – even more so with acting on it. We all struggle with truly seeing.
The beloved hymn ‘Amazing Grace’ – which we’ll sing later on in this service – quotes from this gospel story today: ‘I once was blind, but now I see.’ John Newton, the slave ship master, came to see and realize the great sin of the work he was doing. But not all at once. He was converted to Christ after surviving a terrible shipwreck – but he kept on in the slave trade for many more years. It was only in the midst of an illness that something at last showed him the full horror of his ways, and he made such a full repentance that he became a committed abolitionist, seeking to ban the trade he’d profited from before. Something helped him truly see, and then truly change his ways. Somewhere in there he had to make a choice. It couldn’t have been easy, and yet it saved him – and the hymn he wrote has saved many of us ever since.
The man who is healed in the gospel story is healed by Jesus, made to see by the pure grace of God’s action in his life. But he comes more truly to see as he engages more and more with this miracle, telling the story over and again in the face of opposition. When Jesus finds him again at the end of the story, he sees clearly who Jesus is: the Messiah, the Son of Man. First his eyes are made to work again – but what truly changes him is the healing he receives – he sees and believes Jesus when no one else does, because he has a full, deep experience of the presence of God. His life is changed and he knows it. And he chooses to know it: ‘Tell me, sir, that I may believe in him.’ No facts told him by someone else could have opened his eyes this way. He knows God because he has felt God, and lived into what it means to feel God, and chooses to continue to know God in his life, and to share that for the good of others. From a man known only as ‘the man born blind,’ this man is fully healed to become a true apostle of Jesus’ good news.
How do you know what you know? And what difference does it make?
The thing is, in the life of faith, we are often asking ourselves that question. We experience God, and then we don’t. We see healing, and then we see suffering. We think sometimes how irrational faith is, and yet we feel something deeper than ‘rational’ all the same. We hear the testimonies, we read the stories, and sometimes, maybe only rarely, we feel a spark. Or perhaps we live and breathe the presence of God every single moment, light and air all around us. It is different for each of us; it is different throughout our lives. And yet, somehow, we know what we know – or we choose to know – or we long to know. And we choose to live accordingly. Jesus see us, and says, You have seen God. I am he, the one who is speaking with you. I am. God is. Love is. There to be seen. So now live.
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Third Sunday in Lent
- Exodus 17:1-7
- Romans 5:1-11
- John 4:5-42
- Psalm 95
“Jesus left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria.”
We have here a (very long) story about Jesus going through Samaria, a place where good, devout Jews do not travel, to get where he’s going. It’s important to know that Jews and Samaritans did not associate with each other. Samaritans and Jews had the 1st century equivalent of separate water fountains. There is a very long history between these two peoples. Roughly 1,000 years before Jesus, Israel divided into two kingdoms. The northern kingdom kept the name, Israel, and formed their own nation. Two hundred years later, Assyria conquered Israel. Assyria had a policy: In order to discourage nationalism and rebellion, it removed skilled people from the conquered territory and replaced them with people from other conquered countries (II Kings 17:24). In addition they changed the name of the country from Israel to Samaria. Intermarriage followed, producing what Jews considered a nation of mongrels and half-breeds who had also corrupted the religion of Judah. Over their history there were many instances of intrigue, betrayal and war and this produced centuries of hatred and mistrust. Everyone was keeping score in the hope of someday settling the score. It was in this state of antagonism that Jesus decided to travel through Samaria on his way to Galilee, even though there were other ways to go.1
And this provides an encounter with the Samaritan woman. In Western Christianity, she is only known as “the woman at the well.” In the Eastern Orthodox Church she is considered a saint and has a name, Photini, which means “bringer of light”, because St. Photini brought an entire city of people to know the light of Christ. Jesus’ conversation with Photini is longest recorded conversation he has with anyone in Scripture.
That tells us that Jesus’ encounter with Photini is significant. Because their dialogue is so elaborate, there is a lot to draw out of it. So I want to highlight some interesting and important things about this encounter with Photini:
1) Photini is at the well at noon. The sixth hour of the day. The brightest, hottest time of day. This is significant for a number of reasons:
– It stands in stark contrast to Nicodemus, who encounters Jesus in the middle of the night
– It is odd behavior, because women typically came to the well to draw water in the early morning, while it was still cool
– Photini is alone. It was customary for people to travel to the well with companions.
2) There’s the question about Photini’s past; she had 5 husbands and is now living with a 6th guy. That’s a little excessive, even for our recent American presidential standards.
– Was she a loose and promiscuous woman? This is often the assumption based on the fact that Jesus could have chosen to talk to her about anything, but he chose her marital history, pointing out her multiple husbands. And it’s easy to hear an accusatory tone in Jesus’ words, as if the subtext is, “you’re correct, you don’t have a husband, but you’ve had FIVE husbands, you dirty harlot!” A woman like that would certainly have been divorced by her husbands. But the truth is, a woman committing adultery on such a scale would have been stoned to death long before a 5th marriage.
– While it would make an intriguing Agatha Christie novel, it is probably NOT likely that she killed each of her husbands…
– Though it IS possible that her husbands all died, making her a widow five times over… And this might have marked her as a cursed woman. It would also explain why this 6th guy wasn’t so eager to marry her.
– It is also possible that she was infertile, resulting in multiple divorces. Remember that in Jesus’ time, women’s value was in bearing children, especially sons. A woman who could not produce children could easily have been divorced by every man she married.
3) Regardless of the reason, Photini has a really questionable past. And Jesus a).Somehow miraculously knows all about it; and
b).seems to have no problem with this. There is no judgment. Simply an acknowledgement of the facts of life.
And these things together – his knowledge of her past, and his acceptance of her as she is – show her that he is indeed the Messiah. Jesus is recognized not only by the signs and wonders he performs, but by the equally miraculous unconditional love and acceptance he shows to a Samaritan – a person who least expects to receive any dignity from a Jew. She can’t believe it – and she she does not mince words in her response, “Hey, dude, remember your people and my people don’t mix?” Jesus’ encounter with Photini shows her, and her entire Samaritan city, and us, that human boundaries are no barrier to God’s love.
Photini is the culmination of the primary two female biblical archetypes. First, is the archetype of the barren woman who becomes part of God’s saving activity with God’s people. She had no children, since she’s not living with a son, but with a man who is “not her husband.” She falls right in line with Sarah, Hannah, and Elizabeth.
Photini is also the foreigner through whom redemption comes. Throughout Scripture, women outside the tribe of God’s chosen people helped to bring about God’s saving purpose. She falls right in line with Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, women who weren’t Israelites but still brought redemption to God’s people.
As the culmination of these two archetypes, Jesus speaks with her. She is, in a sense, the first Gentile disciple – the first person to spread God’s saving grace beyond the Jewish people. God’s saving purpose for the whole world is revealed and made manifest through her.
But none of this makes any difference if we forget how this all started: “Jesus left Judea and started back to Galilee. But he had to go through Samaria.”
Cutting through Samaria is the shortest route from Judea to Galilee, but Jews from Judea would often cross the Jordan and go around Samaria in order to reach Galilee. There’s no indication that Jesus was in a rush to get to Galilee, and just figured “what the heck, I’ll risk it.” So why did he “have to” go through Samaria?
The original Greek shows us that in the gospel of John, the word for “had to” is used on occasions that signify divine will. Jesus wasn’t trekking through Samaria for convenience. The theologian and preacher Fred Craddock says, “Jesus’ decision to follow this route is not a statement about historical or geographical necessity. Jesus’ obligation to pass through Samaria is a theological statement, consistent with [John 3:16,] ‘for God so loved the world.’ Jesus is inaugurating the expansion of the gospel beyond the Jewish people. There was a different route that could have avoided “those” people. But he had to go.”2
Jesus is in Samaria on purpose. And he initiates a life-giving conversation with the Samaritan woman Photini, a conversation that leads to conversion, offering her the living water he provides. Even she, a Samaritan, is worthy. Jesus in in Samaria because it was God’s will for the whole world, even the places and people we think should be left out, to be held in God’s saving and loving arms.
So, friends, in this season of Lent, in this time of self-examination and renewal, I think this poses a critical question to us: What is the Samaria that God is calling YOU individually, and us as a church, to walk through? What are the geographic and spiritual place you would rather avoid?
How is God directing you, and directing us as a community, along a more difficult route, outside our comfort zone, one that reaches people we would normally avoid, people we might even hope to exclude?
There will always be ways to bypass Samaria and play it safe, to avoid certain people and places we would rather not deal with. But the Gospel tells us that those are the places we meet Photini at the well. Those are the places where living water springs up, where a close encounter with the “other” allows us to meet the new, the different, and the unexpected. We, too, have to travel through Samaria in order to discover and bear witness to the depth and breadth of God’s love for the world.
So let’s leave Judea, and head back to Galilee. Samaria awaits us.
———
1 A Centering Moment by The Rev’d. Douglas Spencer (sacramint@rochester.rr.com)
2 Feasting on the Gospels: John (Homiletical Perspective), p. 89.
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Second Sunday in Lent
- Genesis 12:1-4a
- Romans 4:1-5, 13-17
- John 3:1-17
- Psalm 121
Today’s Gospel reminds me of a memoir I read “Seeking Allah, Finding Jesus: A Devout Muslim Encounters Jesus.” Given the provocative title, I thought it might help me to demystify a religion some vilify and discover what I could learn from another man’s journey of faith.
Nabeel Qureshi’s experience immediately reminded me of Nicodemus. He too came to Jesus by night. He too tinkered on the margins of Christianity seeking truth. And his journey taught me how our faith must be lived.
Curious about a faith others vilified, Nabeel was drawn to Christ. Something deep in his heart beckoned Nabeel to Jesus, just like it did Nicodemus. Despite the risk of losing his family, friends, and status in the community, he willingly questioned his and his families deeply held Islamic beliefs. In the darkness of night, ladened with these apprehensions and fears, the light beckoned him forward.
On this second Sunday in Lent, we are invited to do some interior work, just like Nabeel and Nicodemus, to break ties with the familiar, explore our beliefs, and pursue a deeper relationship with God and others. And, if we are to stretch the metaphor, we too come to Jesus this Lent in the darkness of these past few years, suffering so much loss, isolation, fear, the breakdown of so many things central to our lives, that have weakened our bodies, minds and spirits, and maybe even brought us some doubt. Yet the light of Easter beckons us forward.
In today’s Gospel, John provides Nicodemus timidly guiding the way, but he does little to introduce us to him. We know that he is a Pharisee, a member of the Sanhedrin, one of 70 men on the Supreme Jewish Council of chief priests, scribes, and elders. As a leader and a powerful man in Jewish circles, Judaism was central to his beliefs, his way of life, his family, and his relationships. His encounter with Jesus puts him at considerable risk.
Yet, something deep in his heart moves Nicodemus to emerge out of the darkness to seek Jesus. And understandably, he’s not quite ready to fully commit. He hovers on the margins, lurks in the shadows, remains cautious, discrete, unwilling to risk power, prestige, and relationships.
Despite his hesitation, there is something genuine and heartfelt about this encounter with Jesus. It’s as if Jesus is extending his hand in outreach and Nicodemus desires to accept. Yet the experience seems to leave Nicodemus confounded.
Just like the events of the past few years leave me confounded from time to time.
As he questions Jesus, Nicodemus seeks empirical evidence, confirming facts that Jesus is of God. “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.”
All Jesus had to do was to give him a simple answer. Tell Nicodemus, “Yes that’s true.” But not surprisingly, Jesus doesn’t respond as expected; he uses the moment to teach Nicodemus about faith. And Nicodemus doesn’t immediately know what to make of it, Jesus’ response is confusing and vague.
“No one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.” / “Flesh gives birth to flesh, / the Spirit gives birth to spirit.” / “You must be born again.”
This is the moment where most, including Nicodemus, probably want to pray the “Jesus Really Prayer,” a patient taught me. It goes like this, “Jesus REALLY!”
Obviously, we know that one can’t physically be “born again.” And, yes, these are powerfully charged words with all sorts of connotations.
Yet, Jesus’s words are theologically rich if not provocative. He challenges Nicodemus and us to do some interior work, to think more deeply about faith, /what it means to live in relationship with God, /what it means to live fully into relationship with others.
Nicodemus learned that faith grows beyond our knowing facts, compiling evidence, or gathering answers.
He discovered that faith defies rational understanding and sometimes confounds us; /faith is nourished when it is felt in the heart, / experienced through actions.
Nabeel Qureshi learned this as he tried to understand his Islamic faith. As he and a Christian friend debated the merits of their faith, they sought to explain their belief by gathering facts from their scriptures. But as in the encounter with Nicodemus, Jesus had something different in mind for Nabeel. And he too left the encounter with his friend and Jesus somewhat confounded.
Something took hold of Nabeel’s heart that defied his understanding. Jesus captured his attention, his world was rocked, his heart forever changed. He became a Christian.
Much like Nicodemus, he was challenged to understand that living faith is far beyond having all the answers, it’s hearing Jesus’s voice inside you, a call of the heart that we respond to, best expressed, and deepened by experience and action.
In a very poignant moment, Nabeel shares a cherished memory, an Islamic action that nourished his faith. At the time of birth, his father gently whispered the AZAN (uh-zaan), the daily Muslim call to prayer, into his ears. “God is great. There is no god but God.” He used the story to illustrate how powerful a simple daily gesture of faith, an action can be.
Moved by this story I decided to adapt the practice. Each morning I say the words said at Baptism. “You have been sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked by Christ’s own forever.”
As I start my day, this morning prayer helps me to remember not only who I am, but also whom I belong to in a world that tries to tell me otherwise. It helps me to remember the Baptismal call, the promise to live our faith through experience and action. And the commitment I made as a deacon to help you do the same.
Through our Baptism, we are born anew in water and spirit, “sealed by the Holy Spirit,” “marked as Christ’s own forever, sharing in the Divine Life given to us sacramentally.
Reborn in this way, /reborn into God’s family, we are shaped and sustained by the Spirit who enlivens spiritual gifts within us that aid our ministry as we build God’s reign on earth.
If we are “marked as Christ’s own,” and possess spiritual gifts, we have a responsibility to move from faithful curiosity, to one of action, leaving our “marks of faith” in a world that desperately needs us to.
The Anglican Church offers us these “five marks of mission.”
TELL – To proclaim the Good News of the Kingdom: To be willing to boldly come out of the darkness of night and to step into the light sharing our faith experience with others.
TEACH – To nurture our faith through study and education, to share what we know so that others might come to Christ.
TEND: To respond to human needs through loving service.
TRANSFORM – To transform unjust structures of society, / to pursue peace, reconciliation, and reparation, /eradicate injustice, /advocate nonviolence, /purvey forgiveness, work to end discrimination, and ignorance, /to dismantle all that blocks Christ’s love from filling the world.
TREASURE –strive to safeguard the integrity of Creation, to sustain and renew the life of the earth, to commit to be good stewards, to observe and promote practices of sustainability, conservation, and renewal.
This is our faith in action.
This is what it means to be “marked as Christ’s own, for us to leave our mark as we work to build the reign of God.
This is what it means, despite the darkness, to be “born of water and Spirit.”
This Lent, the light of Easter, beckons us to come out of the night, like Nabeel and Nicodemus into the light, to move forward in grace.
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The First Sunday in Lent
- Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
- Romans 5:12-19
- Matthew 4:1-11
- Psalm 32
And just like that, the Lenten springtime has begun. 40 days of preparation and renewal, getting us ready for the joyful celebration of Easter. It feels like it was just Christmas, but here we go.
In the invitation to a holy Lent that is part of the Ash Wednesday service, we lay out the history of Lent in a few short sentences: Lent historically was the season of the church when new converts to the faith prepared for baptism, preparing to join the community; and when those who had been separated from the church by ‘notorious sins’ could be restored and reconciled to the community. 40 days to be made ready to join, or to rejoin, the community of God’s people. So Lent is a reminder to us of God’s forgiveness, and of our need to continually repent, reset our lives and reclaim that forgiveness. As Fr Frank said in his sermon on Wednesday, it’s not just about the chocolate. This season is serious business.
The season of healing and reconciliation, a time to mend broken relationships and end our isolation from one another: These forty days are our chance to set things right. We all could use a little time to work on getting back into right relationship.
Our two scripture stories today take us right there, to the breaking and healing of relationship. Adam and Eve are created and put in the garden, living in a world of mutual trust with one another and with God – but then they are tempted, they fall prey to distrust and pride, and they pull away, from God and from one another. Whose fault is it? It’s his fault; it’s her fault; it’s the serpent’s fault. Even in the question of blame, the problem is made clear: The union we were made for, between us and God and between us and each other, is broken.
But then we come to Jesus in the wilderness preparing for his ministry, clarifying his vocation, knowing/fearing that if he chooses this path, he will have to give up everything. For forty days he struggles with this. And he grapples with the temptation to stay separate and not to reconnect in that union – to be self-sufficient, to gather power into himself, to distrust God’s mercy and provision for his life. But he resists, and stays steadfast in his faith in God – and because he sets forth on his path, we are shown the way back to ours. The way of Jesus leads back to love and to life lived in union again.
But looking at the world as it is now, it’s obvious that it remains such a strong temptation for all of us to pull away from one another. To pull into groups and tribes at war and conflict with each other – we’re one year into the Russian war on Ukraine, and so many more years into endless other wars and conflicts in our own country and all over the globe. To isolate ourselves from God and even from those we love – our collective mental health is at an all-time low, manifesting most of all in young people. We continue to succumb to the temptation to disconnect from the ground of our being and union in love. And we suffer because of it.
You could say that this disconnect comes to us naturally. I’ve been reading a few books on animal cultures, exploring the idea that cultural differences can be observed among animals in the wild. We’ve tended only to use the word ‘culture’ to refer to human society, yet learned and shared behavior and language is prevalent among animals as well. Even amongst others of their own species, animals will gather into groups, associating with those who vocalize the same as they do or have the same hunting habits, or even with those who share the same perception of beauty. Orcas in northern Puget Sound won’t mix with orcas in southern Puget Sound, even though they’re genetically the same. Certain flocks of Amazon parrots make similar sounds that can only be described as regional dialects, different from other flocks nearby even though they are the same species. Crows make tools, passing along techniques from one animal to others, which then become normal for their group – but different from how other crows make their tools. Animals have distinct cultures, even tribes. There’s something natural, apparently, about gathering with others who share a common culture – and natural, too, about fighting with those who are in a different group.
And yet most of us humans feel called to reach beyond these ‘natural’ boundaries we experience, to find the common humanity we share despite differences of culture, language, color. Babies seem to do that naturally; we all have to work to do it as we grow older. It is one of our ongoing struggles of living together in a diverse world, seeking to move beyond differences, to live into the vision that is also a part of our spirits and souls, the vision of connection across all peoples. That’s a way that we are called to move past what comes naturally, the temptation to separate into us vs them. That’s one kind of reconciliation work we are called into as Christians, hard work as we interrogate our assumptions, our behaviors, our souls.
That work involves overcoming what comes ‘naturally.’ And yet in other ways we struggle to live in what should be an entirely ‘natural’ way. Human beings also are social animals – we need each other in order to thrive and survive in this world. It is natural for us to be with each other. And yet we seem to have a regular temptation to do what is not natural, to withdraw and go it entirely alone. To act as if we can be self-sufficient and a god unto our own selves. ‘It is not good that the man should be alone,’ God says in the creation story, and God first creates other animals, and then creates multiple humans, created in open and honest relationship with one another, naked and vulnerable to each other and to God. But as that story shows, we find so many ways to turn from that relationship. So many ways to wall ourselves off even from family and friends; walling ourselves off from God in our very center. It’s not natural at all, but we do it all the same. Restoring natural relationship with others around us, and the source of our life within us, is another kind of reconciliation we are called into.
So our invitation to you for this holy Lent is to work on connecting to God and to one another again. This has been a long strange time of crisis, these last few years. We have lost some of our sense of how to be in right relationship with others. Lent can provide a reset, a time to stop and turn to a new path. Time to wonder and explore: What are the habits that have crept up on us over these last few years, that are keeping us from connection with others and with God? Too much indulgence of the instinct to stay in and stare at the screen? Fear of other people as agents of contagion? Social awkwardness because you just haven’t spent time lately with people besides your close family? or with anyone? Too much alcohol consumption, maybe? The temptation to see others in categories, rather than as actual people? Too much attention to our own fragility and ‘triggers’? Laziness – let’s be honest – because it’s just too much work to put shoes on and go somewhere? These are the notorious sins that have been keeping us separated from one another. But they’re not inevitable. They are habits that we can break, with God’s help.
Instead, we can nurture the habits that lead us back into right relationship: setting and keeping a regular prayer time, where we sit in vulnerability with God, acknowledging our needs. Finding time to read from scripture and other nourishing texts, wisdom from others for our path. Making an 8-minute phone call to one longtime friend every week. Prayer and study and real conversation with a small group, or a spiritual companion. Regular attendance at church, where you mix with people you may or may not know well, who may not be just like you. Cultivating curiosity about other people who think or talk or act differently from you, to know and understand them beyond the news headlines or the curated feed of social media. Looking more deeply in order to find our common humanity.
This is work we need as people of faith, in this time and in this place. And it is work that our world needs us to model and share, too. I invite you into it, to take this on as your discipline during this season of preparation. Ours is a reconciling faith, this message of Jesus – reconciling those who have been opposed to one another in this life, and reconciling us to the deep love of God at the heart of all things. The good news of Easter lies ahead of us, news that we can celebrate together, in community, restored to God and one another. In these 40 days and beyond, may God overcome our temptations, and lead us into hopefulness and joy. Amen.
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Ash Wednesday
- Isaiah 58:1-12
- 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
- Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
- Psalm 103 or 103:8-14
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Last Sunday after Epiphany
- Exodus 24:12-18
- 2 Peter 1:16-21
- Matthew 17:1-9
- Psalm 99
I had my first mountaintop moment on a real mountaintop. Nestled in the shores of Saranac Lake in upstate New York, I was attending a Christian camp for high school kids. High school kids are notoriously difficult to impress, but this place pulled out all the stops – our daily activities included canoeing, swimming in a pool with a 50-foot water slide, parasailing, ropes courses, and more. But these thrilling activities, designed to allow us to enjoy God’s creation, were not the transformative part of the week; it was the nightly “talks” where a pastor would talk to us about faith. I was transfixed by the message, so much so that one night I found myself waiting until the hundreds of teenagers had cleared the room so I could talk to the pastor. I told him that I’d been feeling really distant from God, and his talks had made me realize just how distant I’d gotten, that I wanted to reconnect to God, and I had no idea how to do that or even if God would want me back. He listened gently, and then he took a piece of paper, wrote something on it, and handed it to me, and said, “Take this, grab your bible, and find a quiet spot to sit for a little while.” As I walked away, I looked at the paper, which had one simple question written on it: “How does God feel about Julie? Luke 15:11-32.”
With my Bible in hand, I climbed onto one of the rocks lining the lake, and under the moonlight, I opened it to the Gospel of Luke, chapter 15, verse 11. I was only one sentence in when I realized I was reading the parable of the prodigal son. As the soft evening breeze whispered through the trees, it felt as if God herself was whispering to me to return home, to return to God’s loving, open arms. I wept. Never before had Scripture felt so deeply personal; never before had God’s unconditional love for me felt so real. It was a tremendous mountaintop moment, on a literal mountaintop, a profound experience of God’s loving presence in my life, and a transformative turning point in my own faith. I climbed down from that rock feeling like a completely different person, and returned home with a vigor and joy I hadn’t had in a long time.
A few days after I’d returned home, I was talking with my mother, about how amazing this retreat was and how much it had changed me, how on fire for God I was. She said, “I remember going on retreats and coming home feeling like that, you’re on a spiritual ‘high’ for a little while afterwards. It doesn’t last, but it feels good for a little while.” In the moment, it upset me, like she was completely invalidating my experience – “gee, thanks for being a buzzkill, mom.” But of course, she was right. Those mountaintop moments are profound, but fleeting.
Perhaps that’s why Peter, James, and John wanted so desperately to capture their mountaintop moment with Jesus. This Messiah, this leader they’d been following, who had caused a lot of stir and quite a bit of controversy, was revealed for who he really was – God incarnate. Literally standing in the dazzling presence of God, with God’s voice booming overhead, who can blame them for wanting to capture the glory of that moment forever?
Religion is designed, in some ways, to give us mountaintop moments. And sometimes I worry that this is where religion fails us. It gives us the mountaintop, an escape from the valleys and harshness of he world we live in. We worship in a sanctuary – literally and legally, a safe and protected space. We construct temples and sacred spaces and erect works of art and tiffany windows and pray liturgies and sing hymns that are ancient and comforting. We come in our Sunday best, or our Sunday comfortable, we celebrate the diversity and the good will here, and for a brief moment, we can have a break from the brokenness that surrounds us.
But as much as religion acknowledges the valleys we inhabit, I wonder if it truly prepares us for them.
I wonder if we come to religion for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.
Like Peter, James, and John, we would prefer to set up camp in the safe and happy places. We are still living in the valley of the shadow of the pandemic, in the dark shadows of police brutality where unarmed Black men continue to be murdered, in the sinister wells of white supremacy, in the literal earth-shattering devastation of natural disasters, in the valleys of our own grief, and fear, and anxiety. I don’t know about you, but those are some valleys I’m happy for Jesus to lead me out of and away from.
But like my mother said to me so many years ago, Jesus says to his disciples, “Get up,” and when they look up, it’s all gone. What a buzzkill Jesus was (I think he learned from my mom), and how disappointed his disciples must have felt (I can relate). Their Lord and Savior gave them this amazing moment of grace – and it was so fleeting they were barely able to enjoy it before he forced them to get up and face reality.
The tension point of the Transfiguration is that Jesus leads his disciples up to the mountaintop … and then, he leads them back down away from it. He leads them to something glorious and wonderful. Then, he leads them back to the valley. Back to the place where there is illness, and poverty, and all manner of difficulty. The disappointing truth is that if we follow Jesus, all our mountaintop moments will end.
But is that really disappointing?
Let us not forget what really happened on that mountaintop so many years ago. Jesus’ disciples had a profound, transformative moment with their Lord and Savior, a moment where they experienced the deep love, abiding hope, and steadfast faith that comes from God. They want to remain in that moment, on that mountaintop, and Jesus says, “You cannot stay here.” And if that was all Jesus said, it would be very disappointing indeed. But that’s not all Jesus says. The gospel account says that “as they were coming down the mountain,” Jesus spoke again to his disciples. Jesus does not send his disciples back down the mountain alone; he accompanies them. Not only does he accompany them; he leads them. He says, “Follow me back down the mountain, and together, let’s get to work.”
Last week, Fr. Frank gave us a good word and reminded us that the greatest gift God gives us is the power to make choices. I wonder how each of us, in our own way, consciously or not, are choosing the mountaintop and avoiding the valley. I know there are valleys I avoid.
But we are about to enter the season of Lent, a time we often take up a particular discipline or practice. As you consider what will your Lenten discipline be, I wonder: How will you encounter the world more, in all its brokenness? What can you do that will build the practice of walking into that world with Jesus by your side?
How will you let Jesus lead you – and trust that even if it is to a place you do not want to go, that he is there with you, the whole way?
It might not feel like good news to know that Jesus doesn’t lead us to mountaintops and let us stay there. But it is good news that he leads us no matter the altitude. The promise is true: God will not leave us or forsake us.
Now let us walk into the valley. Amen.
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The Sixth Sunday after Epiphany
- Deuteronomy 30:15-20
- 1 Corinthians 3:1-9
- Matthew 5:21-37
- Psalm 119:1-8
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The Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
- Isaiah 58:1-9a, [9b-12]
- 1 Corinthians 2:1-12, [13-16]
- Matthew 5:13-20
- Psalm 112:1-9, (10)
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The Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
- Micah 6:1-8
- 1 Corinthians 1:18-31
- Matthew 5:1-12
- Psalm 15
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The Third Sunday after Epiphany
- Isaiah 9:1-4
- 1 Corinthians 1:10-18
- Matthew 4:12-23
- Psalm 27:1, 5-13
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The Second Sunday after Epiphany
- Isaiah 49:1-7
- 1 Corinthians 1:1-9
- John 1:29-42
- Psalm 40:1-12
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The Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord
- Isaiah 42:1-9
- Acts 10:34-43
- Matthew 3:13-17
- Psalm 29
Happy Epiphany (season)! Christmas is officially over and today celebrate the baptism of Christ and the start of his ministry. For me, this is the beginning of Jesus’s story. Christmas is wonderful, don’t get me wrong—I look forward to years of sermons on the life-affirming wonder that is the incarnation. But Jesus was just a baby. I don’t know how many newborns you have been around recently but they tend not to be the most impressive beings. Wondrous, beautiful, life-shattering little creatures. But even the son of God would have been asleep most of the time and those awake bits, well, a dozen soiled diapers a day gets old pretty fast.
But Jesus, the man—the man who we all follow, the reason we are here this Sunday morning—that story begins here, with his baptism. This past fall I took a class on Jesus’s healing and exorcism stories in the Gospel of Mark and the story of Christ’s baptism held a special significance. There were a few biblical scholars that we read who interpreted Jesus as shaman or a spiritual healer. For these authors, the moment of Christ’s baptism and anointing by the Holy Spirit should be read as a trans-formative rite of passage in which God’s Spirit overcame Jesus, possessed Jesus, and filled him divine power. The very power that enabled him to heal the sick, to exorcise demons and perform miracles.
I am sharing this not to convince you of this particular scholarly interpretation—to be honest, I’m not sure what I think—but, rather, I hope it offers a re-framing of a touchstone moment in the gospels. As I was preparing for this sermon, I realized that I had generally thought of Jesus’s baptism as a coronation of sorts—something changed, spiritually/metaphysically, but it wasn’t a surprise. It was a birthright, destined to happen eventually. The Spirit alighting on Jesus merely affirmed something he always knew. But what if it was shock? What if the Spirit of God seized Jesus, claimed him as “my Son, the beloved”? Pulled him out of the water and into a whirlwind of a life that would change the world forever.
And if we look at Jesus’ baptism through this lens, what does it mean for our own baptism? Having been baptized as an infant—actually, right over there, 30 some odd ago—I have no touchstone for that transformation. I’ve essentially always been a baptized Christian. There was no conversion experience, no before and after. But we actually do acknowledge this change in our baptism liturgy in a way that is remarkably similar to the language of possession noted earlier. “You are sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.” Just reading those words I get chills. I feel a deep sense of awe and humility in the face of the divine. I am nothing and yet I am God’s. As the psalmist sings, “What is man that you should be mindful of him/the son of man that you should seek him out?” I feel so small, so insignificant in the face of God who has claimed me.
But perhaps that response is not exactly right. Not to say that there is no value in owning one’s own relative punyness. I firmly believe that the world would be a better place if we did a better job of remembering just how small we are and vast the universe is. But maybe God doesn’t need me to grovel. Maybe fear and trembling isn’t the only way to face the divine. What might be possible if I own the very fact that God wants me? That God has claimed me. That I belong to God.
Reflecting on this, I remembered an interaction I had recently with a parishioner at St. Ann’s—the parish where I am currently serving as a seminarian. I have a young son—18 months old—who I bring periodically to church with me and I was speaking with this parishioner a few weeks ago about him. She was being very kind and talking about how she had seen me interacting with him as a parent and the love and affection she had seen us share. And then she spoke about what it will be like for him to grow up in the church, to feel sense of belonging in the places I serve, how he will “walk into church with his chest puffed out, so proud of his daddy.”
I tell this story because I wonder if that’s what I’m supposed to feel about God. That sense of ownership, that sense of pride, that sense of belonging. That God has claimed me and I can claim God in return. That I can walk around with my chest puffed out, so proud of the God who loves me. And if I do that, if I can actually stake my place in the Kingdom of God assured of the hold that God has upon me, what else becomes possible? How will that shape the way I live my life?
This is where our reading from Isaiah comes in. “He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will faithfully bring forth justice.” God’s call is not one of accolades or triumph. We care for dimly burning wicks here, we are not building bonfires for our own glory. We shouldn’t expect heaps of attention. There is humility in Isaiah’s words but it comes from a place of strength, not debasement—it is a quiet confidence born of deep security, the blessed assurance that we belong to God. That is the ground on which we stand. Claiming God as our own and quietly working, “faithfully [to] bring forth justice.”
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The Feast of the Holy Name
- Numbers 6:22-27
- Galatians 4:4-7
- Luke 2:15-21
- Psalm 8
Today is the Feast of the Holy Name, of Jesus that is, the feast day that falls on New Year’s Day in the church calendar. It’s 8 days after Christmas, which means it’s 8 days after the day of Jesus’ birth, the traditional day for the bris, the circumcision and naming of a Jewish boy. It’s an event that gets one line in Luke’s gospel: After eight days had passed, it was time to circumcise the child; and he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. But the holy name of Jesus, that gets a whole lot more besides. We pray in Jesus’ name, we dare sometimes to speak in Jesus’ name, we bow at the name of Jesus, some of us actually and physically in the midst of worship. This is a feast day within the larger feast of Christmas, and one that offers us the chance in this new year to ask: what’s in a name?
What’s in a name? In some ways we don’t really get the importance of a name in our culture. We think a lot about what to name our kids, whether it’s a family name or something from a book or something we make up, and we sometimes comment on how a person’s name suits them, or doesn’t suit them. Jewish custom chooses a name for a child beginning with the same letter as a deceased ancestor’s name – or more traditionally, the full name as an ancestor. Traditional African names often have stories behind them – a friend of mine told me of a Ugandan child he met named Accident, which I realize would have been my name if I’d been born in that culture. And then there are cultures where your name is believed to reveal so much who you really are, that only family can be trusted to know it. Your name is secret, because knowing a person’s name gives you power over them, something you don’t want potential enemies to have.
In the stories in the Bible, the name of a person is always somehow connected to and descriptive of that person’s essence and personality. That’s why people have their names changed in stories where some radical shift happens to them – like Abram becoming Abraham, or Saul becoming Paul. And now we have that beautiful renaming ceremony in the Episcopal church for when someone chooses a new name, like we did with Annie a few months ago. Names have meaning, names have power.
And maybe especially so with the divine Name. God tells Abraham in the encounter at the burning bush that his name is I Am, or YHWH, a name that is written only in consonants (the four letters are called the Tetragrammaton). The name is never said aloud by an observant Jew. But it is a name that reveals God – God is. God is everything that is. Without God, nothing has being. And for God’s son, the Messiah, the name is chosen by the angels before he is born: Jesus or Yeshua, a name that means ‘God saves.’ That is Jesus’ full identity: the essence of who Jesus is, in other words, is to show us that God saves.
The name doesn’t tell us how this happens. But when we look at Jesus’ life, we see how. It’s revealed right from the very start: Ordinary working people, shepherds, are the first ones to get the news about Jesus’ coming. They find him in the form of a baby, vulnerable and small. At the end of his life, this Jesus gives up his life for the world, emptying himself and taking the form of a slave. And in between we hear of a Jesus who welcomes all to the table, who calls the powerful to account, who heals the sick, who blesses children. This is who Jesus is; this is how God saves. God saves not through dropping down out of outer space to pull supernatural feats of power; God saves through weakness and vulnerability; God saves in gathering in the lost and caring for the unloved; God saves through loving us as one of us. God saves by getting right in there, in the muck, with us. I am, says God. I am, right here with you.
And if we claim Jesus’ name – God saves, through servant humility and love – if we pray ‘in Jesus’ name’ and ask God’s blessing in Jesus’ name – then it also implies something for us. If we bear Jesus’ name as Christians, then we are ourselves supposed to live the way Jesus did. ‘Have the same mind in you that was in Christ Jesus,’ Paul tells the Philippians: do as Jesus did. Set yourself and your agenda aside, stop worrying about your own pride and ego, let God be the source of your strength and worth, and reach out in love to others. Get out of the way, in other words, and let God do God’s work in you and in the world. It should be so simple.
I don’t know if any of you have made New Year’s resolutions. Usually resolutions tend to be something about eating healthier, exercising, quitting bad habits. Things we should be doing all the time but for some reason aren’t – so we take the new year as a time to restart again and do better. I could suggest one more: come to church more regularly. It has been shown repeatedly to be good for your physical and mental health, for your family and relationships, for your sense of happiness, purpose, and self-esteem. Really! Going to church is good for you. The more regularly you attend, the better. Keep that in mind.
Self-improvement projects can do us some good, of course – but they can also run the risk of putting our focus thoroughly onto ourselves above all. We can do them for the wrong reason…I’ll look so fabulous at the reunion that everyone will be jealous; I’ll build up my confidence so I can tell so-and-so to get lost; I’ll stop spending time trying to take care of other people and go to the spa to treat myself instead; I’ll go to church to improve my self-esteem! these are the kinds of things you see on the covers of the magazines in the check-out line. New Year, New You! they scream. Another chance to put ME first. Yes…but.
If you need to quit smoking or swearing or waste less time online, then by all means, use New Year’s as an opportunity to start. And come to church. But I encourage you this year to pray as you do so – to listen to God’s desire for you and to pay attention less to what you want and more to clearing the way for what God wants to happen. It may not mean great power and strength – and fitness and beauty – in the way you think of it. God saves in humility and weakness. So you may need to allow a little weakness and vulnerability in yourself. Stop the distractions, whatever they are, long enough to feel your own need. Set aside the attempt to prove yourself – at work, at the church meeting, at home – and hear instead God’s love for you as you are. Listen to the needs of another person, and care for them first instead of later. Get your stuff out of the way, and let God do some work in you.
Jesus’ name means ‘God saves.’ Each one of us ‘Jesus people,’ people who try to follow Jesus, bears that name as well, secret or not. God saves. God saves me. God saves you. God saves you through me, and me through you. No one of us is complete unto ourselves; no one of us is the savior. But allowing God in us and through us to love – putting our egos to one side, and acknowledging God’s power – that’s how salvation works. That is how we honor Jesus’ name. Let the same resolution be in you that was in Christ Jesus: to love, to be consumed by love. Happy New Year.
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Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord
- Isaiah 52:7-10
- Hebrews 1:1-4,(5-12)
- John 1:1-14
- Psalm 98
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Feast of the Nativity of Our Lord
- Isaiah 9:2-7
- Titus 2:11-14
- Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
- Psalm 96
“And when we give each other Christmas gifts in His name, let us remember that He has given us the sun and the moon and the stars, and the earth with its forests and mountains and oceans–and all that lives and move upon them. He has given us all green things and everything that blossoms and bears fruit and all that we quarrel about and all that we have misused–and to save us from our foolishness, from all our sins, He came down to earth and gave us Himself.”― Sigrid Undset (Norwegian-Danish novelist)
That beautiful quote was in the Christmas card from old friends of ours this year, parents of one of my best friends. Enclosed with the card was a letter that began with the announcement that at the age of 80, my friend’s father had given up nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol. It was a hard physical withdrawal (which he details in the letter at some length), and now as he sits to write he feels bitterly the loss of his pipe and coffee. But, he wrote, he remembers how his Midwestern Norwegian mother always used to say, ‘Oh well, you won’t have that problem in the grave.’ And, he says, it cheers him up right away. (The letter just gets better from there, by the way.)
The juxtaposition of those two things, the beautiful Sigrid Undset quote and the morbid humor, tells you a lot about this man. But this is hands down my favorite Christmas letter of all time. Because I think it gets right to the heart of it all. Everything is a gift – freely given, freely received. And when we hold it lightly we receive it all the more.
We gather tonight around this old, beautiful, simple story of the Nativity. And what a story it is. It’s such an unlikely story for someone who accidentally became the founder of a new religion (which Jesus didn’t think he was doing, by the way – Jesus was Jewish, a deeply faithful Jew of his time and place, important to remember in these days of rising antisemitism). It’s not much of an origin story for a superhero, all those poor people in a backwater place, no glitz and glamor at all. Just shabbiness and smells and uncertainty. It is amazing, truly amazing, that this is the location for our story of God coming to be one with us, Emmanuel.
But perhaps it was entirely intentional. Perhaps God didn’t come as a baby born in a palace because we might get all the wrong ideas from that. And it can be hard in a palace to keep your integrity. There’s a lot of power in a palace. There’s a lot of gold and comfort and deferential treatment. The lifestyle can make it all too easy to compromise.
Because later this baby will grow to a man, and before he begins his public ministry he will go out into the desert to prepare himself. There he will meet with three temptations – to turn the stones into bread, for he is famished; to command the angels so he won’t get hurt; to take control of all the kingdoms of the earth[1]. In other words, he will be tempted to grab power and purpose for himself rather than to live into God’s purposes for him. Which is basically our temptation, there, in a nutshell. How much harder it might be for Jesus if he’d already been used to comfort and plenty.
No, at Christmas we start with the simplest of all stories. We go back to the story of the baby laid in the manger and the poor young couple, and the shepherds, no one else of any account. It’s no wonder the secular world tries to leave this story behind in the celebration of Christmas, in the watered down references to ‘the Christmas spirit,’ whatever that’s meant to be. We struggle with the lowliness of Jesus, because we don’t want that lowliness for ourselves. This story of poverty and smallness is an affront to all we try to hold onto for our own meaning and purpose.
At a deeper level we know this, of course: that’s why we keep making and watching all those classic Christmas movies like It’s a Wonderful Life – your worth is measured by how you help others, not by your success. Or Miracle on 34th Street – the profit motive even for Macy’s isn’t as important as caring for one another. Or A Christmas Carol – you gain nothing by holding onto your wealth. Even Home Alone and Elf: all the high-powered jobs or fabulous vacations in the world aren’t as good as your family being together. All these secular stories about ‘the Christmas spirit’ – we watch and re-watch them because our hearts know better, even if we can’t quite get our lives to line up with our wisdom.
Meanwhile the health of the retail business depends on our Christmas shopping. 942.6 billion dollars is the forecast this year. The economy hangs on what we are buying. And we keep doing it, despite fears of a recession, and we are frantic about getting more. I still remember the Christmas I worked for customer service at a catalog company, taking call after call from people who were deeply angry and upset that their packages hadn’t arrived. You’re ruining her Christmas, one man told me, when I apologized that the holiday-themed blanket for his daughter couldn’t get there in time. It was a deeply unsettling experience, working that job.
But it’s not just the holiday consumption. It’s how anxious we are when the stock market goes down. How stingy we can be with our giving of time and money. And how tied up in guilty knots we are about all that we have, when so many around us have so little. It’s hard to live in our palaces, as God knows. (And it leads us into all kinds of loudly spoken and fervently held opinions about the world – smokescreens for our own lack of integrity. I’m convinced that this guilt over inequality fuels much of our political discourse these days, on both sides of the aisle.) Blessed are the poor, Jesus said, and I think he meant in part because in scripture to be poor, or poor in spirit, means being off to the side and out of the limelight, unencumbered with the complications of wealth and possessions, aware in every moment of our dependence on God alone. Our self-sufficiency trips us up a lot, in so many ways. We are glutted and anxious, all at the same time.
The truth is that we were created to live in abundance – look at the story of Adam and Eve. They weren’t placed in an arid desert to scrabble out a meager existence, even though that was the context of the location the story came from. They were placed in a lush garden, with everything they could possibly want and need. There as a gift. There to be received, with gratitude. There to be nourished by. But not to grab hold of and amass, Eve with her pile measured against what Adam had managed to hoard. And not there to forget who it was who gave it all to them, who it was who liked to walk with them in the garden in the cool of the day. They were created and not the creators, part of the beauty of creation, part of the abundance all around them. As are we.
What if this Christmas began the year for us to come back to that simplicity? I’m not talking about what is or isn’t under the tree, or how much Christmas spirit you have, or whether your week matches the secular vision of a perfect holiday. I mean what if we start again tonight with accepting who we are – each one of us God’s beloved child. God’s beloved, given so much. God’s children, naked and lowly and humble in birth and death. God’s beloved, shown in Jesus what it looks like to live fully surrounded by and dependent on God’s love – nourished through the good and the bad, upheld through fat times and lean. God’s beloved who don’t have to pile up securities and second and third and fourth homes to feel safe because we already are. Held by God in the wilderness, fed when we need it, led through the valley of the shadow of death, never abandoned.
The simplicity of the story – it is our story as well. Whether we were born in plenty or in scarcity, whether tonight we go home to much or to little. We are children of God’s abundance, meant to live in joy and gratitude and to hold it all lightly – ready to give it to others, ready to give it all up. Because it is God who holds us, tightly, powerfully. So we can let go. Merry Christmas. And blessings to you all.
[1] I owe this idea to Barbara Brown Taylor’s talk on Evolving Faith in the Wilderness
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Third Sunday of Advent
- Isaiah 35:1-10
- James 5:7-10
- Matthew 11:2-11
- Psalm 146:4-9
- or Canticle 15
Gaudete! Christus est natus ex Maria Vergine! Gaudete!
Rejoice! Christ is born of the Virgin Mary! Rejoice!
“Gaudete,” meaning “rejoice” in Latin, is the theme for our third Sunday in Advent. This word is taken from Paul’s letter to the Philippians,
chapter 4 verse 4: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice.”
But does rejoicing in the third Sunday in Advent, when we are still waiting for the birth of Jesus (even if we know what happens already) not seem preemptive? I find myself asking, is it not too early to rejoice?
There’s an urgency as we await the birth of Christ. During what I consider to be one of Manhattan’s busiest seasons, I notice the extra urgency that our neighborhood and our city impresses upon us. I’m rushing to finish my final exams, to finish this sermon, to send out all my Christmad cards, to make sure everything’s ready to travel for the holiday, that all my gifts are bought!
We’re waiting for Christmas to come, it often feels like, so it can be over.
We want to get to the part where all the cards are mailed, all the gifts are opened, the morning Christmas service has been celebrated, and we get to take a Big Christmas nap! Or at least know we won’t be caught in the throes of peak tourist season or SantaCon.
But what might it look like to cherish these moments leading up to the Christmas holiday, and especially to the birth of Christ, a little bit more — so we might rest in them as well?
In his 2014 Gaudete Sunday homily, Pope Francis said that Gaudete Sunday is known as the “Sunday of joy”, and that instead of fretting about “all they still haven’t” done to prepare for Christmas, people should “think of all the good things life has given you.”
I like this image, as difficult as it may be to envision when we’re already so stressed.
But – you may ask – what is joy? What is Pope Francis even talking about, when there’s so much to do and things to remember and sermons to write and cards to mail and finals to finish and bills to pay?
Is joy a cup of coffee or a piece of chocolate, a moment alone or of quiet when your kids aren’t clamoring for attention or the subway isn’t totally packed during rush hour?
Theologian Thomas Aquinas described the difference between joy and happiness.
Happiness is the final end of man, eternal contemplation of God, which is an act of the intellect. It’s essentially man-made and can be achieved “on our own” through doing things we enjoy for the sake of our own benefit.
Joy, however, is itself not a virtue, but is an effect of the virtue of charity, or love. The act of giving one’s self, for the sake of others, or for the greater good of humankind, sparks joy, to quote Marie Kondo.
But who else does that sound like? Giving one’s self for the sake of others?
Joy is not manufactured, it is bestowed, and only through a true breakthrough of love.
So, what makes joy different from happiness?
The distinction brings to mind the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ.
The very notion that Christ was born & died for us, that we ourselves might be saved from sin & grow closer to God as God’s own children – is that not something worth rejoicing in, in feeling and knowing the joy of God’s love?
Now of course, I’m getting ahead of myself here when it comes to our liturgical seasons, you may say. But Advent is almost Lent-like, if we can let it be – the church life is cyclical – in experiencing the waiting twice a year, there’s a need for rest, for pausing, for coming into that joy through Christ.
The waiting in this season of Advent is to remind ourselves that through the recollection of the birth of Christ we might remember Christ’s true divinity and the need for his resurrection and our redemption.
That’s similar to what Paul’s noting with his letter to the Philippians. He wrote this letter as a word about his upcoming sentence in Rome, and of his optimism in the face of death.
He was imploring the Philippians to rejoice in the Lord despite one’s circumstances, just as he did, and as others of the Christian faith did, have done, and will continue to do.
He gives the Phillippians the reminder to rejoice in the Lord with the conviction that his and their salvation is within Christ, and through Christ, and Christ’s works are what will redeem us all.
Our reading from the Gospel of John for this Sunday also lays this claim, as it describes the mission of John the Baptist through the eyes of Jesus, connecting John even deeper with Advent.
Jesus praises John, as he is out in the wilderness and in the world heeding the call from God. He’s not wearing a golden – or even a white – robe, nor is he loudly condemning sinners. He’s not doing anything beyond the simple act of baptism – of bringing people to water and recognizing their divinity.
Jesus knows this, and emphasizes how John is conducting the work God has called him to do, and is in dialogue with the ways Jesus engages the community in the same manner of grace and love.
Jesus is reminding us that those who act on their recognition of humanity and the need to do good works are those who will sustain us.
They are the ones who will bring us joy, and the places they create are the spaces where joy can enter in.
We can’t simply slip into complacency or avoidance – that’s not what God is calling us to. It takes action, real, tangible, communal action, to create joy.
It’s easy to hope & to believe that God is near solely through partaking in the Eucharist, but time & time again we see the way Jesus calls us into action – the way Jesus is begging us to recognize the means by which we too might experience joy.
Think about our country at this moment. In the midst of a battle over queer rights, same sex marriage is slated to be codified into law. It took a majority of House and Senate to make that happen – along with countless voices calling for it to become a named reality, for the joy of families and communities to feel safe and secure within that codification.
During such a volatile and uncertain time for our country, where joy often feels far and hatred is creeping in, Rapahel Warnock won his Senate seat, giving (to my knowledge – despite all things I’m anything but a politician or lobbyist) Democrats the Senate and a fighting chance at equity and justice in our country. He couldn’t have done that without this community, near and far, rallying around him, and empowering others.
Warnock said that a vote is like a prayer, and I think there are many actions that contain the same righteousness and God-guided action.
If joy is achieved through the works of charity enacted with inspiration from God, caring for our neighbors through programs like Saturday Kitchen or even voting for someone who will protect our most vulnerable neighbors are a substantial opportunity for joy for ourselves as well as our community.
I’ve talked a lot about what we can do and what we have done, but I also recognize it’s taken a lot to get to where we are right now, and we’re likely pretty exhausted.
With that, I think it’s also really powerful to realize just how amazing it is to notice all these opportunities that have shown themselves in the acts of community and country to care for each other, as well as in the silences in between where we might feel God’s presence and know God.
While we ask for more, and continue to do more, can we not find joy in celebrating these achievements?
Rest itself is an act of charity, and a means for joy, especially at this time. We might feel closer to God as we make room for these sacred pauses.
I have seen the means by which this congregation touches joy, especially as we are embodied, full, and entering in with our complete and messy selves.
I’ve watched the way this congregation has continued to be refreshed and reinvigorated by one another, by living in the image of God.
Last week, our “mini-bazaar” raised over 500 dollars for the Masaka Association of People with Disabilities Living with HIV/AIDS and even more money for Saturday Kitchen.
We also celebrated the Jollys before their departure to their Australian homeland, and moved right into conversations about the Saint Nicholas Gift Drive, the Greening of the Church, and the Christmas Pageant and Brunch.
That’s a lot of work, done with the intention of seeing the God-given dignity of our neighbor, and of cherishing this community we hold so dear.
There’s also silence as we take more time during our service to pray silently, to look at the images in our stained glass, and to let God enter in.
This joy we’ve created can be our restoration and our hope, too, as we love our neighbors, our community, ourselves, and God. The world is a dark and scary place, but I find optimism to be a means by which I can be refreshed. Sometimes – most times – I need someone else to remind me that this optimism is part of being reinvigorated, so I can do the hard work. And I find that here, with each of you, and I find it as I continue to pray and remember the birth of Christ, While we continue to patiently await, we can also remember that when Christ comes – Gaudete!
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Second Sunday of Advent
- Isaiah 11:1-10
- Romans 15:4-13
- Matthew 3:1-12
- Psalm 72:1-7, 18-19
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First Sunday of Advent
- Isaiah 2:1-5
- Romans 13:11-14
- Matthew 24:36-44
- Psalm 122
We finally took part in the experience of watching the Macy’s parade on Thursday. My friend Ann Kansfield, who preached here earlier this year, is a chaplain with the Fire Department, and because of that, she was able to invite friends along to a prime viewing location along Bryant Park. I’ve never watched the parade before, but there we were, hot chocolates in hand, cheering the high school bands and wondering who the celebrities were (well, the teens knew, but the rest of us were clueless). It was a beautiful day, and ok, it was pretty dang fun – one of those times big city NYC turns into kind of a small town. And as you all know, the parade, which begins with fall leaves and turkeys, reaches its pinnacle at the very end, when Santa and all the Christmas performers make their way to Macy’s on 34th Street. Enough with the Thanksgiving spirit, here come the real holidays, and Santa is here to bring you everything you want, which you can buy at Macy’s!
Ready or not, here we are: Santa is installed at Santaland and the holidays have begun.
So in response to all of this, we’ve built in a little more Advent to the worship. In the place of one of the readings, we gave you…quiet. You’re welcome. We’ll offer this the next few Sundays as well, with a reflection question and prompts for how to use the time – but you can also just sit there and close your eyes. We all need this kind of time, even just 3 minutes. Maybe you can try adding in something like this for your every day.
The season of Advent is the season of preparation, of waiting and longing for God to be with us, to come to be one of us at Christmas. But of course God already has come to be one with us, and always is one with us, even as we can often feel like we’re still waiting. The seasons of the church year express different aspects of our spiritual lives that are always true, but it’s like we hold up different aspects for focus and intent at certain times of the year – spiritual growth, penitence, the experience of resurrection, the light of God, and so on, all parts of our lives always, but highlighted in the church at certain times of the year. So too, Advent, the season of waiting, is the season we’re always in really. We are always longing for God; we don’t always feel like we have found God.
I’ve been listening to a podcast with the writer and teacher James Finley, about the mystic Julian of Norwich. Julian was an anchoress, a solitary who lived in the 14th century in Norwich, England. She was led to this life commitment by a profound vision she had as a young woman, when she was on what she thought was her deathbed from a serious illness. The priest came to give her last rites and held up the crucifix before her, and as she gazed on the face of Jesus, she had a powerful experience of Jesus’ suffering and redemptive love – so powerful that when she recovered from this illness, she devoted the rest of her life to writing and meditating on this vision, and counseling others in their spiritual path.
In her work, Julian writes about her vision, which she called ‘Showings,’ and then writes, “I wanted to see more. I was answered in my reason, if God wishes to show you more, God will be your light. You need none but him. For I saw him and I sought him.” “I had him, and I lacked him.”
With these words, Julian names one of the basic truths of the spiritual life. We have some experience, some moment, when we get a glimpse of God – perhaps when we’re a small child, maybe in a time of prayer. But it also might come in a situation where we don’t think of it as God, when a piece of music overcomes us, or our breath catches a little at the sunset, or we find ourselves tearing up in conversation with a trusted friend. And maybe it’s only later that we come to call it God, this inner awakening, this feeling of God. But it doesn’t stay, this feeling, and we want to feel it again – so we embark on the spiritual path. We saw God, we caught a glimpse, and then God wasn’t right there anymore. So we start seeking after God. We have God, we grasp God all in a moment, and then the next minute, we realize we don’t have God at all. We long for God, and we have to live in that longing.
So here we are today, gathered together in our longing. This time of year is an easy time to get distracted by other things – the busyness of the holidays, the demands of the job at year-end, the family drama, the money woes. And we are so often easily distracted from our longing. We try to seek to plug the gap with other things besides God – anesthetizing ourselves with drugs or alcohol or food, turning our spiritual desire into unhappy romance, subverting our desire for spiritual growth into professional ambition. But just as the holidays provide all kinds of ways to distract ourselves, they also seem to bring us reality checks, as we see that our lives don’t stack up to the ideal visions around us. The pictures and images of this season show people at peace with one another, in warm and loving families, surrounded by an abundance of good things. When we are in strife with our loved ones, or living alone or in poverty, or dealing with trauma, those images can show us all too starkly how far we are from our ideal. Just as the church season of Advent highlights the waiting and longing that are always part of our spirits, so too the secular holiday season highlights all the ways we try to avoid it. No wonder everything feels so keyed up this time of year. We feel our longing even more acutely, even while everything around us tries to pretend that longing isn’t there.
But Julian’s words also include the deeply comforting idea that as we seek God, we can trust that we are exactly where we should be: ‘I wanted to see more. I was answered in my reason, if God wishes to show you more, God will be your light.’ As James Finley words it, ‘God’s presence is completely given to you. And the love of God’s given to you completely as where you are, not where you think you’re supposed to be. And when you do see more, God will be the light in which you will see more.’
In other words, whether we see God or don’t see God, whether we feel God’s presence or don’t, God is completely present and completely loving us in that moment. It doesn’t depend on us getting it right, as if only when we pray correctly or get more religious will God show up for us. God’s love is pure grace, right here and now. We keep seeking, and God shows us more and more, in God’s good time. Every year we come around again to the season of waiting and anticipation; every year we come further and further into the mystery of God’s love for us. And we don’t have to do anything at all to receive it.
So welcome to Advent, again. Welcome to the time where the conditions around us get especially in our way on the spiritual path; welcome to the time when the conditions around us put us even more firmly on that path. Both are true. So take a little quiet where you can find it. And may this time be holy for you – holy in your longing, holy in the emptiness, holy in the wisps of joy that point us toward God. God loves you now and always. Always.
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Christ the King Jeremiah 23:1-6 Psalm 46 Colossians 1:11-20 Luke 23:33-43 From our reading from the letter to the Christians at Colossae: May you be made strong with all the...
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The Twenty-Third Sunday after Pentecost Malachi 4:1-2a Psalm 98 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13 Luke 21:5-19
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All Saints’ Day Job 19:23-27a Psalm 17:1-9 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 Luke 20:27-38
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The Feast of St. Simon & St. Jude Deuteronomy 32:1-4 Ephesians 2:13-22 John 15:17-27 Psalm 119:89-96 And Jesus said to his disciples, I am giving you these commands so that...
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Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost Jeremiah 14:7-10,19-22 Psalm 84:1-6 2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18 Luke 18:9-14
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The Nineteenth Sunday after Pentecost Genesis 32:22-31 Psalm 121 2 Timothy 3:14-4:5 Luke 18:1-8 “And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?” Rabbi Abraham...
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Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7 Psalm 66:1-11 2 Timothy 2:8-15 Luke 17:11-19
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The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost Amos 6:1a,4-7 Psalm 146 1 Timothy 6:6-19 Luke 16:19-31
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Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost Amos 8:4-7 Psalm 113 1 Timothy 2:1-7 Luke 16:1-13
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Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost Exodus 32:7-14 Psalm 51:1-11 1 Timothy 1:12-17 Luke 15:1-10
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Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Psalm 1 Philemon 1-21 Luke 14:25-33
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Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost Deuteronomy 30:15-20 Psalm 1 Philemon 1-21 Luke 14:25-33
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Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost Sirach 10:12-18 Psalm 112 Hebrews 13:1-8, 15-16 Luke 14:1, 7-14
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Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost Isaiah 58:9b-14 Psalm 103:1-8 Hebrews 12:18-29 Luke 13:10-17
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The Tenth Sunday after Pentecost Jeremiah 23:23-29 Psalm 82 Hebrews 11:29-12:2 Luke 12:49-56
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The Seventh Sunday after Pentecost Genesis 18:20-32 Psalm 138 Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19) Luke 11:1-13 The hard thing about summer is that it’s really hot in church, people are on vacation,...
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The Sixth Sunday after Pentecost Genesis 18:1-10a Psalm 15 Colossians 1:15-28 Luke 10:38-42
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The Fifth Sunday after Pentecost Deuteronomy 30:9-14 Psalm 25:1-9 Colossians 1:1-14 Luke 10:25-37 A lawyer stands up to test Jesus and asks him this question: what must I do to...
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The Fourth Sunday after Pentecost Isaiah 66:10-14 Psalm 66:1-8 Galatians 6:(1-6)7-16 Luke 10:1-11, 16-20 Many years ago, one of my cousins got married in Charlottesville, VA. Now there’s nothing particularly...
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The Third Sunday after Pentecost 1 Kings 19:15-16,19-21 Psalm 16 Galatians 5:1,13-25 Luke 9:51-62
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The Second Sunday after Pentecost Isaiah 65:1-9 Psalm 22:18-27 Galatians 3:23-29 Luke 8:26-39
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Trinity Sunday: Youth Sunday Proverbs 8:1-4, 22-31 Romans 5:1-5 John 16:12-15 Psalm 8
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The Day of Pentecost Genesis 11:1-9 Acts 2:1-21 John 14:8-17, (25-27) Psalm 104:25-35, 37 Take a deep breath. Maybe put your hand on your chest. Feel your lungs expand...
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The Seventh Sunday of Easter Acts 16:16-34 Revelation 22:12-14,16-17,20-21 John 17:20-26 Psalm 97
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The Sixth Sunday of Easter Acts 16:9-15 Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5 John 14:23-29 Psalm 67
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The Fifth Sunday of Easter Acts 11:1-18 Revelation 21:1-6 John 13:31-35 Psalm 148
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The Fourth Sunday of Easter Acts 9:36-43 Revelation 7:9-17 John 10:22-30 Psalm 23 Theme: Good Works – the tool for our Witness This week was one of those sad weeks...
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The Third Sunday of Easter Acts 9:1-6, (7-20) Revelation 5:11-14 John 21:1-19 Psalm 30
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The Second Sunday of Easter Acts 5:27-32 Revelation 1:4-8 John 20:19-31 Psalm 118:14-29
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The Feast of the Resurrection Isaiah 65:17-25 Acts 10:34-43 John 20:1-18 In our household, we love funny movies and TV sketches. But even more than watching them, we love retelling...
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The Great Vigil of Easter Genesis 7:1-5, 11-18, 8:6-18, 9:8-13 [The Flood] Exodus 14:10-31; 15:20-21 [Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea] Isaiah 55:1-11 [Salvation offered freely to all] Ezekiel 37:1-14...
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Good Friday Isaiah 52:13-53:12 Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:7-9 John 18:1-19:42 Psalm 22 And so we’re here to commemorate and remember and relive a terrible, tragic death that happened 2000...
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Maundy Thursday Exodus 12:1-4, (5-10), 11-14 1 Corinthians 11:23-26 John 13:1-17, 31b-35 Psalm 116:1, 10-17
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The Fifth Sunday in Lent Isaiah 43:16-21 Philippians 3:4b-14 John 12:1-8 Psalm 126
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The Fourth Sunday in Lent Joshua 5:9-12 2 Corinthians 5:16-21 Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32 Psalm 32 I’m an only child. I know nothing of sibling rivalry and family jealousy. Yet, I...
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The Third Sunday in Lent Exodus 3:1-15 1 Corinthians 10:1-13 Luke 13:1-9 Psalm 63:1-8
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The Second Sunday in Lent
- Genesis 15:1-12,17-18
- Philippians 3:17-4:1
- Luke 13:31-35
- Psalm 27
There’s a little chapel on the Mount of Olives overlooking Jerusalem. The name of the chapel is Dominus Flevit, meaning The Lord Wept (it’s built in the shape of a teardrop). When you stand facing the altar you look through a window out over the old city of Jerusalem on the mount of Zion just opposite you. On the front of the altar is a mosaic of a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings. It’s a great big mother hen, with the little chicks going this way and that, kind of oblivious, pecking at seeds and whatnot. In Latin all around the image is Jesus’ lament over Jerusalem, with the words, ‘et noluisti’ directly under the hen with her chicks: ‘you were not willing.’ I would have gathered you all together – and you were not willing. The church commemorates the place where Jesus spoke these words we heard in today’s gospel – commemorates God’s weeping over our hardness of heart. It is a place of lamentation for all that we have done – and all that we continue to do.
In this season of Lent, we are making a place here at church to lament, and to let go. Attentive worshipers may have noticed that in order to create some of that space, we are dropping one of the usual readings in the service, so that instead there’s a place for silence together. That silence comes after the psalm, and every Sunday this season we have particularly rich psalms to meditate on. Last week it was psalm 91, which begins,
1 [They] who dwell in the shelter of the Most High, * abide under the shadow of the Almighty.
2 [They] shall say to the Lord, ”You are my refuge and my stronghold, * my God in whom I put my trust.”
And this week we have the powerful psalm 27, which begins
1 The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom then shall I fear? * the Lord is the strength of my life; of whom then shall I be afraid?
Such deep assurances of God’s protection and power: statements of faith made from a place of trust, trust even in a time of fear. Psalm 27, memorably, was recited by Bree Newsome, the young Black woman (and cousin to our parishioner Julie Leak) who climbed the flagpole several years ago at the capitol building in Charleston, South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag. In an interview later she was asked about why she recited that psalm as she climbed, and she said, ‘…faith is something that we practice, so even in that moment just praying and staying focused and calling out to God was very important.’
This is why, friends, we need to know our Bible – these are words of power and focus in times of trial. We will not avoid times of pain and suffering in our lives – many of us would say we’re in a time of that right now, worrying over Ukraine, recovering from the pandemic, divided from those we once knew. When hard times come, we can’t just switch on a button and instantly have faith to carry us through. We have to practice our faith, practice it like we practice our multiplication tables or our scales on the piano, with words of scripture that tell the deep truths we may only barely begin to understand. The psalms are a great place to start – to read and read them until the words become part of you, part of your prayer.
Psalm 27 starts with a series of statements about what God has done, ways that the psalmist knows that God can be trusted. “When evildoers came against me…they stumbled and fell.” I know that God can be trusted because of what God has done for me. We look back in our lives and see where we have felt the presence of God. How do we do that? We stop and reflect, at the end of our day, or once a week, or at the turn of the year; we read old journals and old letters, or listen to the stories from our elders. And we hear and read of the times when we felt joy, when we found courage, when we were surrounded by a sense of calm and strength, or when others came to our aid. Times when we felt the fruits of the Spirit, unexpected peace. Times where things worked out for the best even though we didn’t know it yet. In every one of our lives, however full of suffering, we can find these stories. Telling and retelling them is like fingering the prayer beads we have out for you here – touchstones for how God has been in our lives, whether we named it as God then or not.
And because of these records of past performance, the psalmist seeks the Lord as the one thing, desiring God above all else. Nothing else sustains in the same way; nothing else works as an explanation for all that has happened for us. The more we have of God, the more we want. When we recognize God’s actions in our past, we begin to be hungry for more of that. Though we often keep trying to look in the wrong places, of course.
And then the psalmist expresses trust in what God will do – what they believe God will do, even though things right now are maybe starting to get dicey. Hearken to my voice, God – don’t hide from me. (Subtext: Are you hiding from me, God? I’m not finding you as easily.) Sustain me even when my father and mother forsake me. (Those whom I trusted have turned against me – I feel betrayed. I put everything into that job, and they’ve let me go. I loved her so much, and now she’s left me. I thought human history was on an upward trajectory, and now there is disease, and war, and planetary disaster. Help.} Deliver me – I have adversaries and enemies coming against me, internally in the voices in my head that will not let me rest; externally in the people who hate me because of who I am; maybe even right there in my family, those who I thought knew me and loved me best. Help me. I am scared.
And then finally, the psalmist reminds themselves – remember the stories from before. Remember the ways you experienced God with you. You trusted and God comforted you. God was there when you needed her. Wait and trust that God will again be with you. Be strong, and wait.
There it is, the life of faith, summed up in one psalm. I look back and see where I felt God in the past; I trust that God will be with me now and in the future. But I also name and acknowledge my fear, and the real dangers rising up around me. Faith isn’t about pretending that everything is ok. It is an expression of trust even when everything is not ok. Trust even in the midst of our lament.
And yet we struggle with this, don’t we. Oh how I longed to gather you together under my wings, says Jesus, as a mother hen gathers her chicks. And you were not willing.
Why are we so often unwilling? Why is it so hard for us to affirm the faith in the psalm, the Lord is my light and my salvation – of whom then shall I fear?
I wonder if it’s partly because like the chicks, we are oblivious, going off in all directions. We live our small lives, distracted by small things, unaware of the great wings stretched out over us. We don’t remember the times before, the stories of our ancestors, the days when we felt God’s presence. We discount those, focus only on the bad times, the grudges we hold, the trauma we identify with.
Or maybe we don’t like the other chicks coming in under those wings – we don’t want to be gathered together with those people. We don’t consider them family. They’re not like us.
And yet we are faced not just with other things to do or petty arguments to have – we are faced with the fox, as Jesus calls Herod. The fox, the predator who divides the chicks, separates them from one another and from the mother hen, and destroys them. Herod isn’t the only such fox. There are many such foxes in this world – some of them human beings with names, either in our lives or on the world stage; some of them forces in our own hearts, beyond our strength. But Jesus tells us of the mother hen and the chicks: God as a mother, not a fierce predator alpha sort of creature, but a mother chicken, a vulnerable creature. Able only to protect the chicks by gathering them in and protecting them with her very life. Loving us enough to do just that – to give herself up just for us, so that we do not have to be afraid. Gathering us in again and again, every time we stray. Shining the light of salvation.
In times of trial, in times of suffering, in times when God feels silent and distant, these are when we need the shelter of those wings the most. These are the times when we need to practice, and practice, and practice our faith, so that it truly becomes a part of us. The fox is real; the suffering is not for pretend. But even more real is the self-giving love of God, our light, our strength, our assurance that we need not be afraid. May we come in under those wings. And may we, as followers of Jesus, spread out our own wings to cover others – that all might come within the reach of God’s saving embrace.
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Ash Wednesday
- Isaiah 58:1-12
- 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
- Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
- Psalm 103 or 103:8-14
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The First Sunday in Lent
- Deuteronomy 26:1-11
- Romans 10:8b-13
- Luke 4:1-13
- Psalm 91:1-2, 9-16
Hopefully what I’m about to say won’t surprise you: I’m a very empathetic person. I feel other people’s pain, or joy, deeply.
I can’t handle excessive violence on screen.
One of the things that really makes me shudder/cringe is when someone has dislocated their shoulder, and they’re in pain, and someone else – either a fellow soldier, or a doctor – has to pop it back in.
And they’re always like “I know it hurts now, but we have to pop it back in, and just to warn you, the pain you feel now is nothing compared to how much it hurts to put it back.”
But they know they don’t have a choice, because they can’t walk around with a dislocated shoulder.
And the doctors, or soldiers, or whoever, are like “OK, get ready… 1, 2, 3…”
And they pop it back in…
And the person SCREAMS.
Sometimes at the moment of that scream the camera shot is from down the hallway, and everyone turns and looks…
I cringe every time there’s a scene with a dislocated shoulder because I know what’s coming. Because everyone tells the character “this is REALLY going to hurt.”
And if the character were silent, maybe it wouldn’t seem so bad.
If they just winced… well, that would seem bad, but bearable in the end.
But the cry they release … ugh. I just feel their pain in my bones.
Something about the expression of pain, not just the experience of pain, makes it so much more severe.
I read an article recently about a group of moms who organized a group scream. Literally, the event was: to go out into the middle of a football field and scream. Release all the stress, and anxiety, and grief, and anger, over the last 2 years of pandemic, trying to hold it all together while the world falls apart. Just shout it all into the void. All of the women said it was the most cathartic thing they’ve ever done.
As strange and wacky as that sounds, I think they’re onto something.
They knew they needed to do something with their pain. They’d been experiencing the pain that so many parents, but especially mothers, had in the pandemic – juggling remote learning with working from home, and bearing the brunt of child care. They didn’t need a book group, or a ladies night at the bar, or something that talked about their experience of pain from a distance. They needed to express their pain. They needed a primitive, raw scream from the depths of their souls.
They needed lament.
Lament is not the same thing is grief. Grief is the experience of pain, Lament is the expression of it. Like a dislocated shoulder being popped back into its socket – grief is the pain, lament is the scream.
Lament is holy. It exists throughout Scripture. God’s faithful people wail in pain, anger, and sorrow when they are captured and exiled from their homeland, or otherwise endure the conquest of other foreign armies. Lament is God’s invitation for us to bring our wailing directly to God, because there is no expression of pain too severe for God to handle.
Lament is not for the faint of heart. It takes all the grief you feel inside and externalizes it. You might be able to ignore grief, but you cannot ignore lament.
And quite frankly, for the past 2 years, I worry that that’s largely what we have been doing: ignoring our grief, because it is just so much to bear, and because, well, quite frankly, we haven’t exactly had time for it when we’ve been in survival mode, trying to literally live through a pandemic. We’re walking around with shoulders dislocated from the burden of grief because confronting that injury and setting it right would require so much more pain than what we’re able to limp along with right now. Pain that would be so overwhelming that it would cause outright, unfettered, yowling, wailing lament.
How can we really fathom over 950,000 — that’s almost a million — Americans dead from Covid-19, and almost 6 million worldwide? Russia invading Ukraine, and the possibility of nuclear war? Trans kids being persecuted, not just by classmates, but by their elected public servants, hunting them down to throw their caretakers in jail? Black bodies being treated as disposable by the forces sworn to protect them? Asian bodies under attack by random acts of hatred? Remember 2 years ago, as the world was about to shut down, and we said that it would probably just be a few weeks before it all passed? And here we are, 2 years later, still wearing masks and not entirely convinced that this time really was the last time a new variant would threaten a return to normal? How can we really begin to face just how much we have lost over the past 2 years, and how broken the world is?
It’s so tempting to want to walk away from that hardship. When we’ve been famished in the desert for a long time already, the temptation toward the quick nourishment of convenient escape is strong. And in fact, those are the moments our own faith can be used against us. “Aren’t you a Christian? Isn’t your faith supposed to mean you know how to handle all this stuff?” Not unlike the devil quoting scripture to Jesus: “Go ahead, throw yourself off this roof. Doesn’t your faith say, ‘God will command angels concerning you, to protect you?’” We’ll be breaking down some of that bad theology in our Wednesday night lenten series this year.
Like Mother Kate said in her sermon last week, we can easily get tempted by things that offer a quick fix away from pain and hardship and seem to offer healing and hope, but which ultimately just leave us stuck and helpless. And it’s not just our turning to physical things around us – drugs, alcohol, sex, Netflix, food, endless doom-scrolling. It’s also our turning to spirituality that offers half-truths and snappy tweets but doesn’t answer the hard questions borne of our pain. The truth is, the only way out is through.
Just like a dislocated shoulder, the first step on a road to spiritual healing is the most painful one. Setting ourselves right is going to hurt. We will cry and scream and wail. We will have to lament.
And that is why, this year, we are walking a Lent pathway of letting go. Letting go of all we’ve lost – loved ones, safety, security, normalcy, social skills, knowing what the bottom half of people’s faces look like. Letting go of all the things we will never “go back” to. Because as a wise person once told me, “it’s not the letting go that hurts. It’s the holding on.” So we begin by lamenting all we must let go of. By not just experiencing pain, but expressing it. Lament is holy. There’s even an entire book of the Bible named after it. Lament is the reminder that God is never separate or distant from our pain.
To that end, we’ve brought a few new things into the sanctuary, to help you lament. And you can do all of this at home, too. Honestly, there is so much toxic positivity around us now that lament can seem daunting and foreign. And these practices are simple, ancient, and accessible.
Write down your prayers of lament. Tack them to the wailing wall in the sanctuary, or find a place for them in your home. Light a candle as you say a prayer and let its flame carry your prayer after the words have run out. When you’re at a loss for words, pray meditatively with prayer beads. Let these ancient practices and structures hold you and carry you on the holy pathway from lament to hope.
Most importantly, beloveds, do this together. In community. We are never meant to bear our burdens alone. You don’t pop a dislocated shoulder back into place without someone else to hold onto as your cry fills the air.
We may not be on a football field, but gathered together in this sacred space, we are organizing our own group scream. We lament, together. We travel this Lenten road, together. And we will arrive at resurrection, together.
God, in your mercy. Hear our prayer. Amen.
The post March 6, 2022 – The Rev. Julie Hoplamazian appeared first on Saint Michael's Church.
The Last Sunday after the Epiphany
- Exodus 34:29-35
- 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2
- Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a]
- Psalm 99
I came across a Washington Post story of a few years ago, about how animals in search of food often wind up getting their heads stuck in human trash. There was a raccoon in a tree with its head in a peanut butter jar, a young deer with a glass bowl on its head, a cat stuck in an empty can of Chef Boyardee. All of them got saved, so even though it’s sad, it’s really kind of comical too. A wildlife rescuer who managed to save a coyote stuck for 10 days in a plastic jug said, “A lot of people go, ‘If they got their head in, how come they can’t get it out?’ Well, once they get in it … they don’t have hands to move it around.” So, yes. Part of the problem is the trash that people leave lying around. Part of the problem is that the animals just can’t free themselves from the trash when they get stuck in it. Maybe we know something of how that feels.
But here we are at the mountaintop, the last Sunday of the season of light we call Epiphany, once more telling the story of the Transfiguration and poised to descend into the dark valley of Lent. It’s always this particular gospel story on this particular Sunday in the church year, just before we begin the season of penitence that leads up to Easter. Only it feels like we’re already in the valley of Lent, doesn’t it. Did we ever actually climb out of it from 2020? The Lentiest Lent we ever Lented? Or is this one of those sand dune mountains, where we take one step up and then slide back two?
No wonder Peter urges Jesus to let them build dwellings up there on that mountaintop. He’s well aware of what awaits them back down below. I get the temptation. If we’re lucky enough to have a mountaintop to retreat to these days, the temptation is great to fortify that dwelling and just stay there, isn’t it – and block all the rest of it out.
But Paul urges the Corinthians and us to act with boldness and not to lose heart. No cowering on the mountaintop, people. We have to make our descent, like it or not.
We and our Jewish siblings base our faith on the good news of the Exodus, on the essence of God as the one who delivers us from slavery. The story of God bringing the people out of Egypt and into the Promised Land is central to both of our faiths, repeated every year for the Jews at Passover and echoed for us in our Easter celebration. Jesus for us Christians is the continuation of that Exodus deliverance, the ongoing saving grace of God that brings us out of all that holds us captive.
So, it’s not too surprising that the Exodus is part of today’s story of the Transfiguration, of Jesus on the mountaintop. As our Old Testament reading lines up for us, the mountaintop is also where Moses met God, where Moses too became radiant with light. And it’s where Moses was given the authority and direction to lead the people out of slavery – not just the physical slavery of Pharaoh in Egypt, but the slavery that persisted in the people’s hearts. With the Law, the commandments for how to live, God was trying to show people the way to freedom: do this, and you shall live.
So when Jesus has his moment on the mountaintop, his friends Peter and James and John should be catching the allusion. To make it clearer, Moses and Elijah appear there with Jesus – Moses the leader out of Egypt, and Elijah the prophet who came to remind the Israelites of God’s redeeming power. And Luke lets us eavesdrop on their conversation just enough to know that what they’re talking about is Jesus’ ‘departure’ – that’s the translation we have, but the Greek word is ‘exodos.’ Sound familiar? They’re talking about Jesus’ exodus. This word appears nowhere else in the gospels, mind you.
And then the vision disappears and Jesus looks normal again, and the disciples are so confused they can’t even figure out what to say about what they’ve seen. And they travel back down the mountain to the valley below, and just as they feared – it’s chaos. There’s a ‘great crowd’ and people shouting and a father frantic about his son possessed by a demon, and the disciples left down below have done a terrible job of managing it all. But Jesus steps into this chaos and rebukes it – rebukes the chaos of the terrified disciples who thought they could do magic, rebukes the faithless father who is losing hope about his son, rebukes the chaos of the demon in the boy, and heals them all. The boy is set free and healed; his father is set free and reunited with his child; the disciples are set free from their failure to put their trust and power in God alone. It’s an exodus, right there in the valley.
The Exodus (capital E) happened long ago in Israel’s history. But it wasn’t a onetime thing. That wasn’t the only time God’s people had to be delivered out of slavery. Over and over in the prophets, we hear the call to return to the God of deliverance, to be freed. And over and over again in the gospels, Jesus reminds us of this call. Right at the start of his ministry he declares, I am here to proclaim release to the captives and to let the oppressed go free. He heals people, over and over again releasing them from their illness, from their fear, from their place on the margins. His death and resurrection are also an exodus, a deliverance. We claim that deliverance in the language of our baptisms, that we are cleansed from sin and born again, delivered, set free. Exodus is deliverance from all that binds us, and God does this over and over again. And over and over again we have to claim this deliverance for ourselves.
So my friends, here on the mountaintop that feels more like a valley, what do we need to be delivered from?
I could make you turn to your neighbor right now and name a few things. But I know, we’re all still getting used to there being other people next to us, so instead, I’ll throw a few things out there. Most of this is mine, but not all. I think you might hear something of yourself in these.
We’re trapped by fear: Especially fear of the news. Of Putin and war in Ukraine and maybe beyond. Of our country’s own potential to turn from democracy to dictatorship. Of the climate crisis and how nothing is being done to change it. Of rising crime on the subway. Of being attacked because we’re Asian, or because we’re trans, or because we’re Black. And so on.
We’re caught by anxiety: I’ll never get this whole list of things done. I’m wasting my time. I’m not as good as I should be, or as they think I am. My children will make the wrong friends and become like the teens in ‘Euphoria.’ There’s so much to do. Did I mention I’ll never get it all done?
We’re captive to what Walter Brueggemann calls Pharaoh’s anxiety system: I have to work or I’ll be fired. I don’t measure up. If I lose my job I’m nothing. If I retire I’m nothing. If I never had a career, I’m nothing. I need more money. And more and more money. Also more stuff. There’s not enough! I’m not enough!
We’re addicted to certain outcomes: My mom must get better and live to 100. My kids must flourish and be happy. My life must follow my carefully scripted plan. I must run faster in my next race. I must lose 10 pounds. I must get better.
We’re addicted to other things too, to alcohol, to substances, to sex, to eating. More dangerous addictions, with an even greater hold on us.
We’re slaves to our proud isolation that keeps us from being vulnerable with one another. I don’t want to belong to a club that has people like me in it. I’d rather just stay home and safe behind my Zoom screen. No, you can’t come into my apartment.
And we’re weighed down by the chains of our grief, at all that we have lost in this pandemic. All the assumptions and expectations that we thought were normal, all the plans and dreams that came crashing down, all the rites of passage that didn’t happen or even worse, happened only on Zoom, all the friends we didn’t see and the years we missed with our grandkids. And so on.
Jesus says, let it go. Be set free. I am here to lead you out, to show you the way out, the exodus. Follow me, and be free. I am the way, and the truth, and the life. The truth looks like this: let yourself go, lay your burdens down, live. Put all of this in my hands. Stop holding on so tightly. And I’ll lead you out each and every time you forget and trap yourself again.
Because the thing is, all of that is trash. It might look like food. It might smell good and be brightly colored and make us think it’s important, or even good for us. But in the end, we just get stuck in it. And we don’t have the means for getting ourselves out. We don’t have the ability to set ourselves free. We need an exodus.
This Lent we’re going to see if together, with God, we can let it all go. Letting Go is the theme – I wanted to make it Let It Go and get you all singing, but Julie said no. We’re going to grieve and lament, to sit in quiet, to talk down the voices in our heads, to nourish ourselves with prayer and discipline and community. We’re going to put our hands into Jesus’ hands, and let him lead us out. As that famous poem from the eve of WWII goes, ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.’
No Exodus is easy. It takes work to unstick us. This might be a long journey. But God will deliver us, again. And to that we say, Alleluia.
The post February 27, 2022 – The Rev. Katharine Flexer appeared first on Saint Michael's Church.
The Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany
I’m not a comic book superhero aficionado. But over the years, because I love my husband, and I am admittedly entertained by the temporary escape into a fantastical world, I have humored him and watched the seemingly endless stream of blockbuster movies and television shows about yet another superhero. They’re all fun and entertaining, but I confess, I feel no investment or gravitas in their quests. With one exception: the Netflix series Daredevil. As a priest, I found this character captivating. Blinded and orphaned at a young age, he’s taken in by a local Roman Catholic church and convent, raised by the nuns and priests there, and grows up a devout Roman Catholic. His superhero powers come from training his other four senses to be extremely heightened, but for me, his intrigue as a character comes from his internal struggle with good and evil. Like many superheroes, he works as a vigilante, bringing down the bad guys who evade the long arm of the law. And because he does this by way of physical violence, he finds himself turning to the sacrament of confession regularly, struggling with his morality, asking a priest for forgiveness for the bad things he has done, or knows he is about to do — for the sake of the good.
I couldn’t help but be invested in Matt Murdock/ Daredevil’s inner conflict as he grappled with what is good and what is evil; what is righteous, and what is sinful; who gets to play judge and jury to the actions of others, and what justice looks like. What makes a person an enemy, and how we respond to their wrongdoing.
Daredevil explored a complicated question: Is it OK — and does God think it’s OK — achieve good by means of evil? Is it holy to right a wrong by doing wrong in return?
In the world of comic books and fantasy, where you can neatly separate people into simple categories of “good guy” or “bad guy,” the answer was easy: yes, of course it’s okay. The goal is to get the bad guy. And good guys do what they need to in order to get the bad guy.
But in the real world, people don’t always fit into such neat categories.
And the Bible doesn’t give us the answer a vigilante might hope for.
In fact, the Bible seems to offer a pretty strong opposing argument:
Take, for example, Joseph’s embrace of his murderous, traitorous brothers. It’s a shame we don’t read the entire story of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat and only get the tail end of it today, but hopefully this is a story you all know—a story about extreme betrayal and remarkable forgiveness.
Or these words from Psalm 37: Refrain from anger, leave rage alone; do not fret yourself; it leads only to evil.
St. Paul, in another letter, his letter to the Romans, says “do not return evil with evil, but overcome evil with good.”
And Jesus’ words today: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.”
The Bible sure seems to suggest that in our world, it’s not our job to put anyone in the “bad guy” box, let alone decide their fate.
Do not judge, and you will not be judged; do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.
But what about when there really is a bad guy? What about when true evil has been done?
Do these words hold up if they were spoken to, say, an enslaved person being beaten for not working fast enough under a hot summer sun? What if they were told to my great-grandmother as she was marched to her death through the Ottoman desert? Or to the victim of sexual or racial violence?
The Bible has a lot to say about that, too:
For example, the prophet Isaiah reminds God’s people what God desires:
Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?
(Isaiah 58:6)
The prophet Jeremiah says: Thus says the Lord: Act with justice and righteousness, and deliver from the hand of the oppressor anyone who has been robbed. (22:3)
Or Jesus, cleansing the temple of the people conducting shady business there, turning over their tables and running them out.
After all, as the prophet Micah reminds us: what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God?
It can seem like “loosening the chains of injustice” and speaking out against evil can stand in direct opposition to “judge not lest ye be judged.” Even Jesus’ own life can leave us confused. When an armed mob came for him in the Garden of Gethsemane, he did not fight back, told his disciples to lay their swords down, even healing the soldier’s ear that Peter cut off… but he also stormed into the temple, turned over tables, and let his rage take flight when he witnessed sinful behavior.
So which is it? Are we supposed to reject evil and stand up to injustice, or are we not supposed to stand in judgment of anything?
During this Black History month, I’ve been reflecting on the writings of Bayard Rustin, who introduced the method of nonviolence resistance to Martin Luther King, Jr. and organized the March on Washington. He had such a clear vision of the way nonviolence would change the world. It’s almost like he was guided by our Collect this morning: “without love whatever we do is worth nothing.” His movement of nonviolent resistance employed God’s unbounded love to confront the evils of racism.
Unfortunately, as an openly gay man, he was unable to stay on the front lines of the fight for civil rights — LGBTQ+ rights were still several decades away. But his impact on the civil rights movement reaches far and wide. And his stories about using nonviolent resistance in his everyday life — despite the frequent attacks he endured — are awe-inspiring. His capacity to love had superhero strength.
The nonviolent resistance movement take this question — whether we should stand up to injustice, or not stand in judgment of anyone — and says, yes. You must do both. In a speech, Rustin says:
“[W]e must remember that we cannot hope to achieve democracy and equality in such a way that would destroy the very kind of society which we hope to build. If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end. If we desire a society in which men are brothers, then we must act towards one another with brotherhood. If we can build such a society, then we would have achieved the ultimate goal of human freedom.”
Rustin knew that it was not holy to right a wrong with another wrong. And he also knew it was holy to name injustice whenever he experienced or witnessed it. He trusted in Jesus’ words: the measure you give will be the measure you get back.
He spoke truth but did not condemn. He found the difference between naming evil and doing evil in return.
In the examples Jesus gives: bless those who curse you, turn the other cheek, give your shirt if someone steals your coat…. In Jesus’ time, these would have been unheard of responses to that kind of wrongdoing. To us, it kind of sounds like he’s asking us to be a doormat. But In the social codes of his day, this kind of response would have completely disempowered and embarrassed the perpetrator. It was the original path of nonviolent resistance.
Loving our enemies is not weakness. It is the daring proclamation of the kingdom of God.
“Without love whatever we do is worth nothing.” Loving those who love you so easy, even the bad guys can do it. Our faith asks us: How far does your love extend? Does it extend only to those who reciprocate? Can it extend farther?
Summoning that kind of love may require superhero strength. And in this world, it is the only thing that will save us.
The post February 20, 2022 – The Rev. Julie Hoplamazian appeared first on Saint Michael's Church.
The Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany
O God, the strength of all who put their trust in you…help us in our weakness. Amen.
I’m the kind of person who gets dehydrated easily, and I have many stories of swooning from dehydration at various inconvenient times – in summer camp as a kid, in the car on road trips, here in our chapel in the middle of leading the service, on the trail out in the wilderness, you name it, I have fainted there, and caused great consternation and concern to lots of people in the process – my family especially, but even some of you. Don’t worry, it’s all been checked out, it’s just one of those things I have to watch carefully. I’m always trooping around with a bottle of water, and taking electrolytes, and so on and so forth, so if I ever suddenly drop and disappear behind the altar, just nudge me with some Gatorade and salt tablets, and I’ll be fine.
But it means that imagery of deserts and streams and drought all resonate strongly with me – thirst and water are very real to me. And there’s a lot of that in our scriptures, since they were written in a desert climate. I know in my body the taste of cold, clean water when you’re really thirsty; I know too the feeling of deep thirst and being parched and dizzy when you can’t get water fast enough. When Jesus tells the Samaritan woman at the well that he is the living water that alone can satisfy, I am right there with my bucket, ready to drink. And when Jeremiah tells us that when we turn away from God, we’re like shrubs in a parched desert, I know exactly what he means. Or that is, I know exactly what he means in terms of bodily thirst. I’m less good at the more symbolic thirst that the scriptures are really talking about. I find it terribly easy to get dehydrated in other ways – spiritually, mentally, emotionally. Because the world offers us so many other ways to try to nourish ourselves – and we can go along with those for a long ways before we realize how parched we are.
I think many of us are feeling pretty parched these days. I can feel it in our low energy voices and singing; I can see it in our faces; it’s obvious in how we answer the question, ‘How are you?’ Wearily we hear news of ending mask mandates and resuming normal life, and wonder, yeah, but until when? We make plans so tentatively still, not knowing whether summer will truly be different. We’re not sure yet what is safe and what isn’t, and it’s wearing on us.
That’s all understandable – all of it a response to the circumstances of living through these weird times. But I’ve heard more besides: Some of us feeling rattled by the stock market’s ups and downs. If we’re working, we’re working too much and we’re sick of Zoom meetings. If we’re not working or retired, we’re feeling feel isolated, and bored. We’re reading too much news and freaking out over it. And all of us are saddened at how many funerals we seem to be having at church. All of this is also understandable, all part of the package of these times. But this malaise can start to eat at us more and more deeply – and erode our hope. And it makes me wonder: Why are we working so much? Why should it matter how much our retirement accounts lost, really? Does our happiness really depend on geopolitics, or the next elections? What makes us think that there shouldn’t be funerals? Not that this all isn’t important – but that we let it get to us so deeply. Why do we find it so hard to live in the present and give thanks for what we have? Why are we so dehydrated? Where is the water that we need?
The prophet Jeremiah says: ‘Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals and make mere flesh their strength…they shall be like a shrub in the desert, in the parched places. Blessed are those who trust in the Lord…they shall be like a tree planted by water.’ His point is clear: not as a reward or punishment, but just a description of how things are. We put our trust in God, in the power and living water of God’s blessing – because all the stuff around us that we think is so permanent and try to hold onto is ephemeral, like chaff blowing in the wind. But we grab onto it anyway, don’t we.
Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, too, makes this point. The Beatitudes, we know, present a vision of God’s world that is completely different from the values of our secular world, where those who are poor and suffering are praised as blessed and even ‘happy.’ Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, however, goes further, offering not only blessings for the vulnerable, but woes for those of us who think we have it together. Woe to you who are rich, who are well-fed, who are laughing, who are praised by others. But blessed and happy are you if you have none of these things. This language would have made Jesus’ audience absolutely nuts. The word he uses in calling the poor ‘blessed’, the Greek word ‘makarios’, was the word that was used only to describe the wealthy and powerful of the day – because they believed that if you were wealthy and powerful and all people spoke well of you, then that was a sign that you were blessed by God. For Jesus to call the poor and hungry ‘makarios’ turned that kind of prosperity theology completely on its head. And instead, woe to you if all signs point to yes? What is he saying?? they must have thought, listening to him.
And indeed, what is he saying?? is our question too. Jeremiah wrote about it in 600 BCE; Luke wrote about it around 85 CE. We’re still struggling with it in 2022 CE. We carry that kind of prosperity thinking around with us more than we realize. When things go well for us, we might not consciously think, ‘I have all this because God rewarded me and I deserve it.’ But we might well think when things aren’t going well, where is God? …Now, I won’t ask for a show of hands. But I would bet that if I did, I’d see every hand here go up, if I asked, Have you ever felt or thought, how could God let this bad thing happen? Every one of us thinks this at some point, when things seem bad enough. But consider what the question implies: As if our belief in or trust in God depends on everything breaking our way. As if we expect there to be an implicit promise in the universe, that if God loves us, God will bless us with good things and make it all good for us. As if all that is merely circumstantial and ephemeral in our lives should, we believe, hold our weight when we lean on it hard. And then we’re yet again surprised when it won’t. We’re surprised how thirsty we still are.
One of the best books I read during my sabbatical is a profound one, called Sabbath as Resistance: Saying No to the Culture of Now, by biblical theologian Walter Brueggemann. In the book, Brueggemann lays out in no uncertain terms the freedom that the God of the Exodus intends for us, freedom that is built into the practice of Sabbath. It’s there in the Ten Commandments that we set aside the Sabbath once a week, a day without work, a day designed only for rest. And yet we routinely break that commandment. ‘Sabbath,’ Brueggemann writes, ‘ is not about worship. It is about work stoppage. It is about withdrawal from the anxiety system of Pharaoh, the refusal to let one’s life be defined by production and consumption and the endless pursuit of private well-being.’ The refusal to be defined by production, consumption, the endless pursuit of private well-being – to be free from slavery to all that does not satisfy our thirst. Instead, Sabbath ‘provides time, space, energy and imagination’ for realizing that all the ephemeral things of this life: the producing, the acquiring, even the happiness, the feeling that everything is going great…none of that can satisfy. Sabbath is ‘an arena in which to recognize that we live by gift and not by possession’ – when we can embrace again our true identity as children of God. We stop, we disengage, and we realize again that God loves us.
This is one of the reasons I am trying now in my life to take Sabbath – not just as a good self-care and family time and such, though it is that too – but to unhook myself from the circumstances around me. To remind myself that my ultimate well-being, my identity, the abundant life Jesus promises me, is there in my status as a child of God. That no ups and downs in the pandemic, no ups and downs in my health or family’s health, no perfectly planned summer or totally canceled trip, can ultimately dictate who I am; no work done or left undone, no achievement or failure, defines me. That God is the one rock in whom I can trust, the true stream of living water that will satisfy my needs like no other. And on the Sabbath, I can drink from that well, and reorient to that well throughout the rest of my week.
That’s what all the spiritual disciplines we urge on you really are for: to re-ground and re-member who you are. Prayer, fasting, Sabbath, serving others, retreats – all of those pull us out of the rat race of unreality that we live in, deafen the siren calls of all the other things that claim to give us meaning, untangle our childish expectations of reward and punishment, and make us stop. Stop to hear again God’s love. Stop to know again who we truly are.
The season of Lent begins in just a few weeks. It’s not too soon now to start thinking of how you will mark the season, how you will stop, let go, hear God’s voice. Lent always gives the opportunity for that. PSA over.
Paul boldly proclaims the good news of the resurrection in his letter to the Corinthians. What we are told in the message of the cross and resurrection is that neither worldly glory nor even the finality of death are lasting; none of the stuff we clutter our lives with can truly matter. Ultimately, it is only God’s love that abides. And if we reach our roots down into that living stream, we will find there strength enough to last us through everything. Rather than trusting in all the clogged and faulty methods of our own devising, we can drink from running water and be refreshed, even in the midst of dry, dark times. It is said in Luke’s gospel that the people who gathered to hear Jesus as he spoke his words of blessing and woe crowded around him and tried to touch him, ‘for power came out from him and healed all of them.’ May we also so crowd around and reach for God and God’s healing love, and drink deep of the living water of the real stream. Amen.
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The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany
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The Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany
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The Third Sunday after the Epiphany
And Ezra said to all the people, “This day is holy to our Lord; …do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Today is our Annual Meeting, a day set aside holy to the Lord, to look back at the year past and forward to the year to come. It’s in our parish bylaws that we do this every year, that we all as a community come together to hear what’s what, to vote for new vestry members, to look at the financials and talk together about the future. And we do so, as we do each year, beginning in worship, with words from scripture to sustain us and ground us. The words we hear convey a message for us, something God wants us to hear, wants us to listen for in our common life together. And wonderfully, our scriptures today tell us of people in other times and places who did this exact same thing – maybe not holding annual meetings, but gathering together, looking for the Spirit together. Stories from the Bible, of people who are reading…the Bible. Scripture about reading scripture. It’s very meta.
First, in Nehemiah from our Hebrew Scriptures, the scribe and priest Ezra reads aloud from the scriptures to the people who have returned from the Babylonian exile. They are rebuilding the city of Jerusalem and struggling to reconstitute themselves as a people, and when they hear the scriptures read and interpreted, they are overwhelmed with the sadness of their long exile and the distance they feel from their God. Ezra consoles them, saying, no, it’s ok! Don’t weep! God loves you. Go feast and celebrate this new beginning! The joy of the Lord is your strength.
In Luke it’s Jesus who reads to the gathered assembly, his hometown synagogue in Capernaum. He reads Isaiah to them and interprets the meaning, and they are delighted with how well their golden boy can preach. As we’ll hear next week, once he gets going with his sermon they aren’t that thrilled with the content of that sermon, but we’ll save that for another time. In this week’s passage, Jesus begins his new ministry with scripture, with the people gathered and sharing in the hearing of that scripture together. And this scripture, he says, is fulfilled in their hearing.
All similar to what we are doing here today. The people gather together, someone reads aloud the scripture, and then offers interpretation of that scripture for the people who hear it. And the commandment is given to the people listening: rejoice, hear this good news, the joy of the Lord is your strength. This scripture is fulfilled in your hearing. This is what we do as people of faith when we need to make a new start. And today in our annual meeting, we are doing just that. Before we get into the review of 2021, before we get into nuts and bolts and numbers for 2022, we ground ourselves in scripture and tradition; we wait to receive the good news of the sweet, sweet Spirit here among us. It’s been a long year. It’s time for a new start.
Our mission as people of St Michael’s is to follow Jesus Christ and joyfully live out his love in this world. Our work and ministry is all about growing deeper in our faith, growing our community to be more and more one that reflects and includes all God’s people, taking our part in the long history of God’s people as we care for those still to come. And in these days of fretful distress and disaster, we have needed to keep that mission front and center for ourselves here.
In 2020 we kept marveling at the new possibilities of our new hybrid community, one where people could join and come together online from all over the country and even the world. In 2021 that hybrid format became more and more a reality. We’re still figuring out what that means – there are those sitting here in the pews, and there are those sitting there at home, and we’re all gathered in the one and the same Spirit. We are such incarnational people that when we don’t see one another regularly in the flesh, we can forget this – but we have this much greater community than what you see here in the pews, we have those gathering online too, sometimes equivalent in number to who’s here in person. And besides those here on Sundays, we have those who are participating in our small groups and weekday worship, those serving in our Saturday Kitchen and Homework Help. This community is greater than our eyes can see, connected in many different ways.
Our community has continued strong. But in some ways 2021 really seems, looking back on it, like it was an interim year. It was the year the pandemic didn’t end after all. It’s so wearying now to be worrying over the virus yet again and doing so much on Zoom. But we need to remember and remind ourselves of all the good that came about for us as a community last year. I had forgotten that all the way up until Pentecost on May 23, we had no congregation gathering here in the pews. We had a few people in church putting on the service, and all the rest of you were at home. We had no early service until we started a small Zoom meeting kind of service in Lent. But at Pentecost, we jumped back into church with joy, so happy to be with one another physically again – first with the pews all taped off for social distancing, then a little closer together, and at last, on St Jude’s Day in October, starting to sing together again at last. Worship is what anchors us and connects us most of all as a faith community, and we have kept it up throughout this pandemic – indeed, we’ve added to our worship through the pandemic, with our three online daily office services and so many people joining who had not really joined before. And so many leading who had not led before – we have so many lay officiants in worship that it would take too long to name them all now, isn’t that amazing? Worshiping God in beauty and holiness, recharging ourselves, feeling the Spirit, knowing ourselves to be one community – online, in person, hybrid, all of it fed us and our faith this year.
How else did we stay connected to one another? We celebrated a new member welcome entirely online a year ago, including several new members who don’t live in NYC. We’re due for another one of those, only we’re waiting in hope that we can do it in person too – we have a number of new people who have joined in this last year. The vestry did its opening retreat on Zoom (pray God, we’ll do it in person this year), and vestry members made time for two series of one-on-one conversations with me, walking circles through parks or meeting over Zoom, as we talked through life and church and all of the above. Small groups met online, lots of them – Julie will have more to say about those, but so many have talked about deep friendships formed, faith strengthened, in those groups. So many thanks due to all the parishioners who have served as facilitators of these groups over the past year. Even Shrove Tuesday happened online, the most fun I’ve had in any online Zoom event, hands down. And once we were back in person again, our amazing Parish Life leaders Margaret Jolly and Yang Li spearheaded outdoor hospitality on Amsterdam, offering food and fellowship to worshipers and any and all neighbors who came by. Our in-community connection became an all-inclusive sharing with the neighborhood. That’s definitely the work of the Spirit.
Our Saturday Kitchen connected people to one another, to resources, and to St Michael’s – the grab and go system and Ray Luetters’ experienced leadership meant we served so many more people, who find a little community as they come for food and share in hot drinks. Neighbors and friends serve in that ministry, our volunteers spanning a range of faith traditions – Jewish, Muslim, Hindu and no faith tradition at all – sharing together in multiplying the loaves and fishes to feed all those who come. The miracle of abundance repeats over and over again in our midst. Come by here nearly any day of the week and you’ll see someone working to prep food for Saturday – whether you know them or not, they’re part of this body of Christ.
Our long-cherished value of diversity solidified and strengthened this year, with our Lenten series on reparations and the emergence of our reparations committee as an active force for change and hope in this place. St Jude’s Day served as a celebration, a wake-up call, and a compass for the future, thanks to the work that Mother Julie and the reparations committee put into it. I’m still hearing about what a marvelous day that was. Next week our reparations committee will bring before us all the recommendations they gave to the vestry a few months ago. There is deep, good work in process here, challenging us to grow and change more and more.
We stepped forward in our stewardship of these buildings too, seeing through a long process that led to the renovations plan we’ve presented to you all in the past few weeks. We have cared well for our buildings; now we will be embarking on work that makes them serve our mission and ministry on into the future. We live out our mission of welcome and connection and growth in new ways online; now we will be able to live that out in new ways here in person, in these buildings, literally bringing in those who could not make their way in, and connecting and serving folks better once they’re here. The buildings house our ministry, they are not themselves our ministry – but the resources of lovely and accommodating and welcoming space are important in this city, and will make our mission flow better on into the future.
We welcomed new staff with Laura Inman and Michael Hammett – children’s choir director and administrative assistant, respectively. We said sad goodbyes to Dusty Francis, Andrea Dedmon, and Deacon Richard Limato. But we had all of us overlapping and together on our summer staff fun day, reviving a tradition we have kept up now for 6 years, halted only by the worst of the pandemic. And in the transition we have kept our focus on children and youth, growing and strengthening the youth choirs and doing the groundwork to hire a new minister of faith formation for children and youth in this coming year. Great thanks to Monica Hakoola who has kept the coordination of our Sunday School and youth groups going through this year, and to all of the wonderful teachers and group leaders who have faithfully cared for our kids.
At our cemetery our staff dealt with continued high numbers of sales and burials, the ongoing fallout of the pandemic crisis. Dennis Werner and all our staff and workers there have put in long hours, serving on the front lines in the hardest times of this pandemic, and they deserve our prayers and thanks. We’ll get to hear from Dennis directly later in the meeting about plans for this coming year.
Here in church in 2021 we baptized three little girls, all of them third generation St Michael’s kids – two Bagwell girls and one Holder-Moseley. And we grieved and buried many of our beloved elders, including BJ Lawrence, Margaret Cotterell, Eleanor Mefford, Kay Clanton, and Dorothy Johnson; and Herb Downer, whose service took place at Heavenly Rest.
And we rounded off the whole year with a Christmas that felt just a little more like the old times, but with modifications: a multigenerational Lessons & Carols instead of the children’s pageant, one Christmas Eve service instead of two, and many of us viewing from home instead of holding candles together here in church. But it was still Christmas, and God was with us, and is still.
And you all gave me the great gift of a sabbatical in summer and fall – something that is still fueling me today. Again, a huge thank you to Mother Julie, to the Rev Bill Doubleday, to our deacons Elena and Richard, and to all our wonderful staff and vestry as they carried things forward in my absence.
In other words, we have continued to live out our core values that we named for ourselves in early 2019, just one year before the pandemic began – thanks be to God for leading us through that process just when we would need it most. We have followed Jesus Christ in ways that took more effort from all of us: growing more deeply in our faith, building our community out beyond our walls, putting grit and work behind our desire for diversity, stewarding our resources for the future, and doing it all with joy, the joy that is the infallible sign of the presence of God (Teilhard de Chardin). Give glory to God – this has all been hard, but God has turned it to blessing.
So we’ll give you some visuals and details for all of that in the meeting that follows this service. But for now, hear this: the joy of the Lord is your strength. This scripture is being fulfilled in your hearing! God has been with us through this year, God has deepened us and nourished us and broadened us and stretched us, and it has not been easy. We have done our part faithfully. And thanks be to God, the real work of this place has not been ours to carry, but is the work of the Spirit.
I leave you with these words from a Sabbath poem by Wendell Berry, written in the fields near his home as he meditates on the hard labor they represent:
And yet no leaf or grain is filled
By work of ours; the field is tilled
And left to grace. That we may reap,
Great work is done while we’re asleep.
The Spirit knows what she’s about. Our strength, our ability to do this, our presence here today, is because of that Spirit. So now rest, good friends. Rest and give thanks for the good news here in this place, and all that God has done here. And so may we make a fresh start again. Amen.
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The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
Mawwage… marriage is what brings our readings together today. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist!)
In this season of Epiphany, when we celebrate the light of Christ come into the world, and on Martin Luther King Jr weekend, marriage seems a strange idea to wrestle with in light of these occasions. But these are the assigned readings for today, so wrestle with them we must… and you may be surprised at what they offer when you dig a little deeper.
The reading from Isaiah comes from final section of the book of Isaiah, which was written after the people of Israel have returned to their homeland following their exile in Babylon. They have been freed from captivity, but they’ve had to come home empty-handed, to a land has been ransacked, their sacred places desecrated, their livelihoods demolished. No reparations paid by their captors, starting over with little more than what they carried with them, the absence of their homes and houses of worship, places of stability and identity, suggesting that God might be absent too.
In this desolate, forsaken setting, the prophet proclaims, “I will not keep silent, I will not rest, until Jerusalem’s vindication shines out like the dawn.” The prophet promises a future glory for this desolate land and these forsaken people. A future so glorious that they will even be known by different names. “You shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married.” The prophet promises the unsurpassed delight of a bridegroom and bride. It’s probably fair to say that the people listening would have had a hard time believing that could ever be possible.
And at the wedding in Cana, there is a different kind of desperate situation: the host of the wedding has run out of wine. SUPER embarrassing. After a bit of strong-arming from his mother, a slightly whiny, rather annoyed Jesus turns somewhere between 120-180 gallons of water into the finest wine these guests have ever tasted. This is the first of seven “signs” – which is the word that John’s gospel uses instead of “miracles” – the first of seven “signs” that Jesus gives to show us who he is and who and what he is pointing to.
This all comes together when you know a little about biblical symbolism. Throughout Scripture, the wedding banquet is a metaphor and image of God’s restoration of Israel. For the promised land to be renamed “marriage” is to say with certainty that God’s promise of restoration has come to fruition. For Jesus’ first sign to take place at the celebration of a marriage is no accident.
And wine is used as a symbol of the joy associated with salvation. The abundance of fine wine that Jesus produces at a wedding feast symbolizes the abundance of joy in the restoration and salvation he brings, the ultimate fulfillment of God’s promise to bring good news to the poor, to set the captives free, to proclaim the Lord’s favor.
So perhaps it isn’t so strange, after all, that we read today about marriage feasts and overflowing wine, with their somewhat hidden but extremely powerful message of the promise of God’s abundant restoration of the holy reign of justice and peace. The wedding banquet is a setting for rejoicing, for a new and restored identity — even for miracles.
We need that hope now more than ever. In a country where we would rather disdain than discuss, undermine rather than understand, where divisions have become defining, where the rich become richer and the poor become poorer, where racism infects every social good from health care to education to policing, we stand among our own political, social, and economic wreckage. In some ways, better, and in some ways, worse, than the wreckage Martin Luther King Jr. stood at, almost 60 years ago.
Dr. King had the persistent hope of Isaiah — the trust in God’s promise not yet realized — and also believed the fulfillment of Jesus, the assurance of God’s restoration here and now. We need the faith, the hope, and the love that Martin Luther King, Jr. had, both in the now and in the not yet.
And we must not sanitize or sentimentalize his memory. Dr. King was popular, yes, but he was threatening to the establishment, to the religious and political and economic and social systems that did not want to be disrupted. He was hated by many for his message of justice and equality for all, despite his revolutionary nonviolent way of love. And ultimately he was killed for that message. So let’s not be too quick to soften the edges of his mission and his message that still, today, remains radical.
Toward the end of his life, Martin Luther King launched the Poor People’s Campaign, wanting the organization, commitment, and leadership of the poor across all lines of division to end systemic racism, poverty, and a war economy. That mantle has been taken up today by the Rev. Dr. William Barber II, who has revived the Poor People’s Campaign (https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/). Dr. King’s legacy lives on, in the continued fight for voting rights, the eradication of poverty, fair housing, safe and equitable public education, quality health care, and more. These are lofty goals, but they are holy, biblical, and Christ-like goals. And they might also seem nearly impossible.
But Dr. Barber has said, “The only way you can truly, truly, truly remember [Martin Luther King Jr’s values], is to reach in that blood, pick up the baton, do your part in your age to carry it on.”
That is a striking and uncomfortable image. Certainly a far cry from the image of a marriage banquet.
Continuing Dr. King’s work is not easy, and it is not popular. But it means standing in the rubble of our desolate, forsaken land, believing that its vindication will one day shine like the dawn, that it will one day have a new identity that is only recognized by the abundance of joy that flows from it, where justice rolls down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Hold onto that image for a moment — the image of a mighty river flowing. If you’re in NYC, take a stroll past the Hudson at some point today, and take in the beauty and force of a mighty river. We do not worry about the Hudson River running out of water – it’s a river, it always has water. Right? Now just ruminate on that belief, that faith, that trust, in abundance, for a moment. That is the kind of abundance God promises. Not just glasses of the best red wine, but the kind of abundance where the thought of scarcity just… isn’t there. Where we never worry about others having more, because we know there is enough for everyone.
THAT is the divine wedding feast. Justice and equality is not a zero-sum game. It’s not the case that if you get more, somehow I get less. If you get more money, somehow I won’t have as much. If you have fairer access to voting and education and health care, somehow I won’t have as much of an advantage. If you are given an advantage in your college or mortgage application, somehow that’ll freeze me out. That is simply not the case… but I think we need to be reminded of it. Because there does seems to be such a scarcity of everything these days, from patience to covid tests to common human decency. But God is not in the scarcity game. What God makes real – what we experience in Jesus – is abundance, more than enough for everyone, a grace and mercy and love that never runs out.
So do not keep silent. Do not rest. Don’t be the frozen chosen (though the temperatures today might render that literally true). Without God’s faithful people doing the work, justice and equality for all will remain just a dream. Speak out in the variety of spiritual gifts God has given you until no one is ever called forsaken. The divine wedding banquet awaits. Amen.
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The Second Sunday after Christmas
Jeremiah 31:7-14
Ephesians 1:3-6,15-19a
Psalm 84
Luke 2:41-52
Jesus is training his parents well. Yes, a week ago, we left him swaddled in the manger . . . and in 4 days we will celebrate the arrival of the 3 Kings come all the way from Persia to honor the infant King . . . yet, for those of us who have been blessed to absorb this miraculous, soul-nourishing story of God’s gift of life and light to us all . . . some of us as very young children, others later in our lives . . . all the ways that God offers us spiritual gardens to grow and tend and keep . . . possibly, without our even noticing, until we may realize . . . through verse and song and scripture . . . through the scent of God’s landscape around and within us . . . and always that light – the predominant symbol and expression of our Christian faith . . . if only we can pause to see it . . . to feel it . .
One of my favorite examples of God’s radiance in our everyday occurred the first Sunday after our shutdown here at St. Michael’s when we were beginning to host a small number of parishioners and staff to stream our Sunday 10 AM live and spiritual communion Service with only those attending who were in the service. On this first Sunday morning one of the participants came with her young son and his friend . . . both children about 6 years old . .. Our parishioner’s son was so eager to come back to Church, eager to show his friend all the special places. While the mother was trying to calm some of this very excitement our young parishioner raced down the side aisle calling his friend to come and see as he, still racing, banked a sharp curve into the Angel Chapel and made straight for the row of Angel windows along the side wall. At the wall, on tiptoe with his head straining back as he reached up with one hand attempting to touch the angel, he called out to the angel, ”We’re back! I told you we’d be back!”
We are blessed to have a fluidity of messages and meaning, continually touching our everyday lives . . . if only we can notice . . .
Thank you, John, and all your magnificent musicians, for having us sing all those carols for all those days . . . and more today so that we are never separated from this miraculous story!
Now, in today’s Gospel, Jesus is 12 years old, and beginning to train his parents in what it means to have God’s son as their son living among them as a family. . . Jesus has been missing for 3 days while Joseph and Mary, having searched all the neighbors and relatives with whom they normally make their annual Passover Festival trip to Jerusalem and then home again to Nazareth with Jesus still missing . . . Mary and Joseph now return to Jerusalem where they find Jesus sitting in the Temple among the teachers . . . listening to the teachers . . . and asking the teachers questions . . . 12 years old! . . . unheard of in this time and culture . . .
Luke tells us that Joseph and Mary are astonished to find Jesus engaging with these Biblical scholars . . . so that all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. . . . His parents scold him telling him he has been disrespectful, causing them great anxiety . . . Jesus responds with logic so simple it is quite profound . . . “Why were you searching for me . . . wouldn’t you know I must be in my Father’s house?”
Luke tells us that they did not actually understand what Jesus was saying to them and that Jesus then went with his parents to Nazareth and was obedient to them and that Mary treasured all these things in her heart as Jesus grew in wisdom and in years . . . in divine and human favor . . .
Let us pause here for a moment to ponder what really might have been taking place . . .
Joseph and Mary have had over twelve years now to shepherd and protect . . . to love . . . to cherish their son . . . and most essential, to learn to trust God beyond all they could possibly know – other than moment to moment – with God’s own son as their own . . .
Jesus, in his dialogue with the teachers in the Temple, has been calling attention to himself . . . and so his parents must distract everyone from what this could mean . . . Instead, they must direct everyone’s attention to a young boy reprimanded for being disrespectful . . .
Perhaps this time at the Temple reminds us of a much earlier and more dangerous version of the oft repeated story of God’s son being acknowledged . . . being recognized . . . by Kings with royal gifts come all the way from Persia to a tiny, simple shed from which came such radiant light that these Kings following God’s star, travelling this great distance so that they might kneel at the cradle of this child while, at the same time, King Herod was also launching his search to end the life of this child . . . so that the young parents at that time must flee into Egypt . . .
Here Luke is telling us 12 year old Jesus went with his parents to Nazareth where he was then obedient to them . . . and that his mother, Mary, treasured all these things in her heart . . . possibly treasured each time they were forced to meet the potential dangers of life with and within this beautiful boy . . . God’s gift to us all . . . each time in his early life some or all of his radiance may be visible and yet, at least for now, mercifully protected . . . so that here, Luke says, “Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.”
How do we see this child?
How does a humble setting hold such power and majesty? Is it perhaps because of the simplicity and vulnerability . . . that it is filled only with the presence of God? Jesus was not born into the busyness and noise of the public inn. God must come to birth in the quiet places and moments in our lives where we are able to contemplate this extraordinary light come among us – this “true light, which enlightens everyone…”
And yes, great kings and wise men were following that light to come and pay homage to the newborn King, but first came shepherds from the hillsides, listening to the messages of the angels to follow the light of this wondrous star.
How do we listen to the messages of angels today?
Where do we find our quiet place to recognize and reflect on their messages – to guide us in seeking and following God’s light directing our lives?
Is it in the silence of the temporary armistice now several wars ago when soldiers from opposing nations quietly climbed out of their frozen trenches, softly singing a carol familiar to all . . . walking across a deadly wasteland to greet one another in Christ’s name, and then returned to their silent separation of humanity pitted against one another, yet strengthened in their resolve that, should they survive their obligations to their countries, never again would they believe war a solution to establishing peace on earth.
In our Old Testament passage today in Jeremiah the people of Israel are finding the depth of God’s love in the wilderness. It takes courage to profess God’s radiant goodness in the midst of suffering. The wilderness for Israel is a place of sin and desolation . . . the 40 years of wandering that came after the exodus . . a place of hunger, depravation and darkness where hope is in short supply along with everything else needed for life . . . And yet, Jeremiah claims that it was in the wilderness that Israel found the depths of the love of God. In the wilderness, God remained steadfast to God’s promises to God’s covenant people. Though the faith community failed to keep its promises to God in the wilderness, God demonstrated the persistence and resilience of God’s luminous presence in gracious care for all . . .
The prophets of Israel often use the wilderness as a metaphor, comparing that time to Israel’s time of exile and darkness. The wilderness is that place no one wants to go to, but eventually in this life everyone must. Wilderness is that shadowy place where we are apt to lose our way, where there is that day to day struggle just to survive as the shadows darken God’s path. And yet the prophet makes the exuberant claim that even in the wilderness . . . especially in the wilderness, the grace of God is experienced. The implication is that anytime the community of faith finds itself in some “wilderness” we are to look up . . . be attentive . . . and expectant . . . because even there . . . especially there, we will find God’s Grace . . .
And this is so beautifully echoed in our Epistle today from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians. We hear the synagogue prayers of Paul’s Jewish past . . the central prayer of the synagogue liturgy turned on the blessing of God for all good gifts. Also it was customary in some of the Jewish communities in Paul’s time to emphasize praying constantly by offering these blessings thrice (3 times) daily. . . This practice was clearly continued by the earliest Christians . . . Paul’s vision of a loving, radiant God forming an adoptive family praying constantly and coming together into prayer 3 times each day . . . these are our roots . . .
Phrases and concepts that in these continued pandemic times offer us a similar strength and courage to hope as we continue to meet with one another in prayer . . . that these Old Testament concepts of seeking God’s nourishing presence in the wilderness offers to us God’s radiance and loving care that we may share this with one another . . . our families . . . our neighbors . . . whomever God sends into our welcoming community and wherever God may call our prayers . . . because this light that permeates our very being and profoundly alters the way we see the world, inspires us to recognize Christ in one another – that in the birth of Jesus we are no longer separated from God. Our humanity is now one with God, permeated by God’s “true light, which enlightens everyone…”
We are so blessed when we can recognize God – in Jesus Christ and in one another . . . and we are so very blessed when we are fortunate enough to be present . . . part of a growing ministry for all . . . especially when God gets pushy!
Not so long ago, many of our churches offered glorious Christmas services with heavenly music and fervent words from the pulpit, while many of the congregation did not know or greet or have personal conversation with one another, most especially about their faith. It was considered not quite the right thing to do to share one’s personal faith experience . . .
Reluctantly, these congregations struggled with changes in their beloved 1928 Prayer Book, awkwardly passing the Peace, possibly even making eye-contact if only briefly –not what anyone was used to ….they would have much preferred our compulsory social distancing . . . and were of course the generations that refused to use nametags . . . Yes, It took a pandemic for us to seek and welcome those nametags . . .
During these anti-nametag years, I was in a large Boston parish – a huge, majestic building, usually about 1/3 filled of a Sunday yet stuffed for all the Christmas and Easter services – with those whose families had always come to this church on these days, and with those who needed to have a church experience on these days and this was the somewhat famous, historic church across the beautiful urban gardens and fashionable boutiques with the glamorous windows so that, somehow, to be inside this church, coming and going by these beautiful gardens and shop windows seeming to promise that if we can look like the figures in these shop windows our lives will be perfect and we will never know pain…..that we will have a perfect and beautiful Christmas. And perhaps some of us may be inspired to return more often – to feel safe and beautiful more often than twice a year…..
Pastorally, we used to call serving in these settings, “mission work” as so many of our people did not have language for why they needed to be there, . . . generations of not talking about one’s personal faith or one’s doubts or fears or needs . . . of God present among us . . .
And yet, regardless of how beautiful and photogenic so many were trying be, we are all mortal, the world brings its challenges into our lives and the lives of our loved ones . . . and since, as so beautifully offered in our readings today, God never leaves us – is always seeking a relationship in our hearts – it was a creative challenge to offer and quite literally, help to give birth to much-needed spiritual resources among our flock . . . something so many parishes have been learning in new ways in these pandemic years . . .
This particular parish, had a longtime tradition of writing generous checks to support charitable good works in the larger community. We had begun to train and lead people into some of the places of need throughout the City gradually creating opportunities for projects and programs sharing leadership and resources with and for all those participating. This was not always smooth or easy and we spent a lot of time encouraging all our participants to trust God’s Grace in overcoming their feelings of unfamiliarity and awkwardness…Everyone was afraid of doing the wrong thing!
Until the year of the Christmas coats….
The parish had collected a number of coats which they delivered to a neighborhood civic center to help people in need through a brutal winter. The coats were collected all
during Advent and delivered weekly before Christmas. Accompanied by some parishioners, clients from the neighborhood center were hired to help ferry the coats from the Church to the center several blocks away. With each trip from the Church, we shared some warm soup and hospitality with our helpers, showing them the Church and having a simple prayer in thanksgiving for being able to help people stay warm in the winter, and for new friends. Several times throughout the tour and prayer-times in the Church, we explained that everyone was welcome to come into the Church at anytime, whenever the doors were open. “Anytime?” they asked us over and over – “We could come anytime?….Even on Christmas?…anytime?”
“Yes,” we said – “most definitely”….and we gave them lots of take-away cards listing the Christmas services, to deliver back to the center along with the remaining coats.
Wistfully, we wondered if anyone would actually come. We also worried about the hospitality on Christmas Eve with so many long-time families appearing for their
semi-annual attendance, many expecting to sit in what was once “the family-owned pew,” and just as many not necessarily expecting to share their space with the wonderful diversity gradually growing over the years in this parish and the surrounding community . . .
We were hoping to increase this night by possibly . . 6 . . . 8 . . . a dozen new friends from the neighborhood
center . . .
In the bustle of the first of 3 Christmas Eve services, some of us wondered . . . stole quick looks out over the congregation, hoping to greet our friends from the neighborhood center. The choir was finishing the Christmas Prelude, the last bits of space were being filled with people in their Christmas finery. And then, just as the choir was re-forming for the Christmas Procession and the nervous treble was humming his pitch to begin “Once in Royal David’s City,” the Head Usher held up his hands to halt the start of the Procession so that one of the other Ushers – mercifully, from our outreach team – could escort several of our friends from the neighborhood center, and their friends – Yes, 12 in all! – to escort them to the only remaining seats in the congregation – the front rows on either side of the center aisle where, for generations going back over a hundred years, no one ever sat. In fact, so sure was everyone that no one sits in the front row, both of these pews held several coats belonging to the elegant occupants of the next row. And in the silence that was the pause before the beginning of the Procession, as our new friends were being escorted to their seats, smiling and even waving to those of us they recognized – and yes, we waved back – the Usher heard them telling one another, “This is the Church of the coats. They give away coats to people who aren’t warm enough in the winter….Look, we are going to the very 1st row….and see, there are coats just waiting for us if we aren’t warm enough…”
Later, with tears openly running down his face – and ours as well – the Usher confessed to the outreach team, “I was absolutely incapable of saying, ‘no, these are not coats to give away.’ My heart was in my mouth preventing me from speaking and I was terrified for what I was sure would happen the minute they might touch one of those coats . . .”
But God worked a miracle that night as, in complete silence, several occupants of the 2nd row not only watched as our guests from the neighborhood center offered one another a warmer coat to wrap around their shoulders, but also offered to help – moving extra coats aside and helping to adjust the ones now wrapped around our guests. Quietly, kindly, our guests were welcomed to settle into the first row of the big Church, to be warm and, yes, to leave that night wearing new and warmer coats.
Our newest guests were not the only ones transformed that night.
And because the Usher stayed until everyone was seated, and then returned up the center aisle very red of face, biting his lip, the glimmer of tears beginning to show – also a first in that Church – the Christmas Procession was delayed long enough for the Usher and so many sitting toward the front of the Church to hear one of the new guest say, “See, I told you they wanted us to come to Church here, and I told you they give you coats if you are cold…”
In the simplicity and vulnerability of the manger, listening to the message of God’s angels, we recognize “the true light, that enlightens everyone…” the light that comes again and again into the world, permeating our very being and profoundly altering the way we see the world, inspiring us to recognize Christ in one another – that in the birth of Jesus we are no longer separated from God.
And this is how God shows us the gifts God wants us to recognize . . . to enter into with love . . . respect . . . humility and thanksgiving . . .
These are the gifts God wants from us . . . that we may recognize and respond to God’s beautiful opportunities for us to love and care for and support one another . . .
So here is a starter gift for God in this New Year . . . the kind of gift God longs for us to recognize . . . to offer . . . and to live . . .
Try living our Collect for today as one of your gifts for God in this New Year . . .
as once again we pray:
Oh God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your son Jesus Christ . . .
AMEN
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The First Sunday after the Epiphany
Water – we can’t live without it. Basic survival skills teach that after air and shelter, water is the most important thing a human needs to survive.
Water is life-giving, cleansing, refreshing, and sustaining. We drink it. We bathe in it. We swim in it.
Water is beautiful. The still waters of a mountain lake reflecting the beauty of the nature around and above; the rushing roar of a waterfall; the lull of a babbling brook; the crash of ocean waves… all offer us awe-inspiring beauty.
Water is also destructive. It can wash away everything from a speck of dirt to an entire town. It can batter and break the sides of buildings and flood basements and foundations. As climate change happens in real time, we New Yorkers witnessed the destructive and fatal waters of Hurricane Ida just a few months ago.
Water can be dangerous. Maybe you’ve learned the hard way, like I did when I was a kid, never to stand with your back to the ocean.
Water is powerful. It is a force to be reckoned with.
And as Christians, this powerful element unites us. It makes us one family.
We come to the waters of baptism to be reborn, made anew, to emerge from these waters alive in a new way. We come to the waters of baptism because as followers of Jesus, we follow in his footsteps, even to the Jordan.
And today, Katherine, Jaxon, and Kane, with the support and love and prayers of their family and friends, will take those steps and be born anew as members of God’s family.
Christians for 2000 years have been born anew in the waters of baptism. As our first words of worship stated today, “there is one body and one spirit, one hope in God’s call to us, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and father of all.” We are united to every follower of Jesus in these waters, made one family, one body, in Christ.
The waters of baptism are miraculous in this way.
Baptism isn’t an eternal insurance policy or a ritual for institutional affiliation. We don’t get baptized to avoid hell or get our names on the books as a practicing Episcopalian. Baptism is entrance into the body of Christ; it is an awakening to a belonging, an adoption into the family of God and a radical new way of love.
The waters of baptism unite us not only to those we know, but those we will never meet. They connect us to a family that extends beyond this time and place. Baptism is more than membership, or even belonging; it brings with it a birthright, with both the responsibility and privilege that comes with a family name.
Water is powerful. The waters of baptism wash away our wandering lost selves, and like an ocean on a hot summer day, refresh all who gather in its waves.
In our baptismal vows, we say that we will strive for justice and peace, respect the dignity of every human being, love our neighbor as our selves. In our baptism, we are part of a community of people who are not only changed, but who are charged with changing the world. As members of God’s family, we bear the family name of Love. And because of our baptism, we are meant to live up to our family name.
But let’s be real for a moment. This Christian family isn’t a utopian kum-ba-ya feel-good round of hugs – whether that is this St. Michael’s family, the family of the Episcopal Church, or zooming out even more, the family of Christians of all stripes, everywhere. This Christian family is much more like the families we come from, the families we were born or adopted into: some people we love, some people we have to love, some people we will always struggle to love, and always at least one crazy drunk uncle. Members of this family are not just fellow Episcopalians, but Bible Belt Baptists, dreadlock- and Birkenstock-wearing hippies, Pentecostals speaking in tongues. Members of this family are a wide array of people who are very different from you; people who, like your racist uncle at the Thanksgiving table, sometimes make you scratch your head and wonder, “How on earth could I possibly be related to this these people?”
But water is powerful, and the waters of baptism are stronger than the dividing lines we create.
In today’s Gospel, John the Baptist is telling the expectant people about Jesus: “I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming;…His winnowing fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” John is speaking to a crowd filled with expectation, who have burning questions about the Messiah and who it is who will save them.
We know what that’s like. We may not be waiting for a Messiah, but certainly we know the longing for a divine balancing of the scales – for the righteous to get their just reward and evildoers to get their just punishment. For the good to be distinguished from the bad, the wheat to be separated from the chaff. Even though we aren’t fire-and-brimstone Christians, we must admit there is some reassurance in hearing that the righteous and the unrighteous, the wheat and the chaff, don’t end up in the same place.
The difficult part of this Scripture is not hearing that Jesus will separate wheat from chaff, but that it is his business, and not ours, to do that separating. It is a very human impulse to both see and seek these distinctions in the world around us, who’s good and who’s not, who’s in and who’s out, who’s wheat and who’s chaff. But here’s the thing: wheat and chaff come from the same plant. The chaff is simply the hard shell around the grain that must be removed before the grain can be useful. The waters of baptism are not about marking who’s in and who’s out; the waters of baptism wash away the chaff around each of us so that we can grow as fruitful, useful members of God’s family of love – so that we can be the body of Christ.
Water is powerful. And the waters of baptism create a community that is powerful. Recently, I was talking with a friend who, until a few years ago, was a rather content atheist despite being a churchgoer her whole life. Church, for her, provided a cultural and social experience, but provided little spiritual value. A few years ago, her priest approached her and asked if she would teach Sunday School. Being a teacher by trade, and a helpful person by nature, she agreed. This began a process of learning and asking questions about church doctrine, theology, and biblical studies she had never thought about before. And I watched her faith in God grow slowly and strongly over time. But what was so striking in our conversation was what she said helped her become a person of faith: “It wasn’t all of the stuff I learned,” she said. “I mean, those things were interesting and helpful. But it was the community and how much they all believed in God, some of them despite devastating life circumstances, that made God real to me. I saw how they lived by faith, and I didn’t feel alone.” She saw the wheat in action. She experienced the baptized body of Christ.
Water is powerful, life-giving, sustaining, destructive, and necessary. The waters of baptism, too, are all of those things. Baptism creates a powerful community of not only changed people, but people charged with changing the world, one person at a time. In the waters of baptism, God washes away the chaff of what weighs us down and holds us back, and gives us new life as members of God’s great family of love. Born out of powerful waters, with the power to change the world. This is God’s family, the family of love. As our presiding bishop says: may we live into the loving, liberating, life-giving family name.
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The Feast of the Nativity of our Lord
Isaiah 9:2-7
Titus 2:11-14
Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
Psalm 96
Well, we’ve been here before, haven’t we.
Remember last year’s Christmas, Christmas 2020, the first Christmas of the pandemic? There were so many holiday lights up in apartment windows starting in, I think, October, or maybe September; so many people at home in their pajamas streaming ‘Elf’ and ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ because they couldn’t travel to family and friends; so many cookies baked and consumed in our elastic waist Zoom pants. ‘Cozy’ was trending last year, or ‘hygge’ if you were going for the Scandinavian version of it. (And there were so many cocktails consumed. Not everything we do in pursuit of happiness is wholesome and good for us.) But we all hunkered down, believing that if we did so for that one year, we’d all come to a happy ending in just a few months.
This year, we all hoped we were more back to normal – less hygge and more actual hugs from people, holiday dresses at parties instead of pajamas at home, travel and concerts and theater and…then came Omicron. Which has either sent you scurrying back home with rapid test kits, or heedlessly saying, Oh screw it, and heading off to the airport anyway, depending on your health and/or personality. No happy ending. No ending of any kind, actually. Just exhaustion and a lot of mad. Am I feeling you?
We’ve been here before, haven’t we.
There’s a story that every few years arises again in my mind – so you may have heard me tell it already and if so, I apologize – just adding to the ‘Groundhog Day’ quality to life these days. It’s an old Swedish folktale that was written into story by a writer named Selma Lagerlof at the beginning of the 20th century, The Legend of the Christmas Rose. It tells of a miraculous Christmas Eve blooming of spring in the bleak winter forest, a vision that only a family of outlaws and outcasts get to see every year. An old abbot from a neighboring monastery hears of it, and begs the outlaws to allow him to come and see the vision for himself. They grudgingly agree, and he promises in return to try to seek pardon for them – the archbishop tells the abbot that if he can bring back a flower from this midwinter vision, he will pardon the robbers and allow them to move back into the village.
So the abbot goes into the forest, accompanied by a protective lay brother from his monastery. And there they hear a bell ring, and then in waves, light and warmth and green growth and flowering blossoms transform the dead woods. Animals come and bear their young, and birds sing. Finally they can hear the angels singing, coming closer to them. But when the vision is at its peak, the lay brother, overcome by suspicion, shouts out that it is all of the devil, not of God – and the vision disappears, the heavenly beings and the light fleeing, the writer says, ‘in unspeakable terror for the darkness and cold in a human heart.’ Shocked by the loss, the old abbot dies, but not before he grabs hold of some flower bulbs, which the brother later plants in the monastery garden. They bloom again the next Christmas, and the outlaws are pardoned and restored to their life in the village – but never again does the forest come into bloom, never again do the angels sing for mortals.
I heard this story several years ago and it has lingered with me ever since. It’s a beautiful story, but it’s also an unsettling one somehow. It doesn’t quite unfold the way I want it to. The outlaws are desperate, nasty people, and even though they experience the heavenly vision year after year and are pardoned at the end of the story, they don’t ever seem to become much nicer. The old abbot finds joy beyond measure in the vision and yet has his happiness snatched away right as he reaches out to grasp it. The brother acts out of fear and love for his abbot, and yet his curse destroys the miracle forevermore. Everyone in the story experiences this amazing grace of the garden blooming – and yet there’s no happy ending. Lives are not made perfect and whole, and the beauty never comes again in its fullness – except that the Christmas rose, the hellebore, continues to bloom in deepest winter. Not much of a holiday story to tell on a dark, unsettled Christmas Eve.
On Christmas, we really, really, want a happy ending. Not just on Christmas, actually. We Americans in particular are famous for this admittedly childish desire. We want the bad guy out of power and the good guy to save the day. We want the plague to end and happy times as we knew them to return. We want the special Christmas donation to end hunger forever, the heart-to-heart conversation to fix the relationship once and for all, the treatment to work and the cancer to disappear completely. It irks us, it angers us, it wears us down when we apply the solution and the problem remains stubbornly in place. We tend to want to throw out the product or the person who promised the fix when it doesn’t work – we want to throw out the savior with the bathwater.
Which is why our Christmas celebration can start feeling a little false – we load it with a lot of emotional freight. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, gosh darn it! Be happy! We can forget that the Christmas story itself, the story of Jesus’ birth, is a dark, unsettling tale. All is not made perfect with the birth of the Christ child. The shepherds and the magi come to see and then they leave and we never hear whether they become better people afterward. Herod the king wants to kill the baby, Joseph and Mary must flee to Egypt, other children are murdered in the slaughter of the innocents. If, as fables say, the creatures of the earth really did pause in peace and harmony to see the Savior’s birth, they went back to hunting and being hunted soon after. And the baby grows up to be a man who is tortured and crucified on a cross. Good Friday hangs around the edges of the story of the Incarnation.
So no wonder that two thousand years later, we can’t say that everything is perfectly resolved. Division and hatred, sickness and death, hunger and need continue on. If it feels like we’ve been here before, well, we have. This is usually how it is, everywhere, always. Suffering is a constant. Christmas has never come at a time when all the world was perfectly well and at peace. Christmas has never made it so. It always comes in bleak midwinter, and the winter tends to get bleaker after Christmas is done. No matter how many songs we sing about angels.
In the Swedish folktale, when the lay brother cries out his distrust of the vision of flowers and light, the angels draw back, fleeing ‘in unspeakable terror for the darkness and cold in a human heart,’ and never come again. But that’s not how it happens in the stories of scripture. There are a number of stories of angels in the Bible, a number of times they appear to bring a message to mortal human beings. But in the Bible, the angels do not flee in terror from human beings, even when every time they come they are met with fear and disbelief. They keep showing up to tell people not to be afraid. Not because everything is perfect and ok, or about to be made so. But simply because that is their message: do not be afraid. When people protest that they aren’t capable of the job they’re being asked to do, when people profess doubt that what they’re hearing is even possible, when people laugh derisively at the ludicrousness of the message, the angels hold their ground. They point to the promise that was made ages ago, they point to the reality of God with us here today, they point to the hope of God’s redemption and restoration at the end of all things. And they point to us, weak human beings, as the chosen beloved of God’s desire. The angels sing glory to God in the highest because that is what they are all about, that’s what they’re created to do, that’s what living in God’s presence draws forth from them. They shine light even when the night is dark, because they know that the light is stronger than the darkness. Angels embody persistent hope. They are our messengers because they live in the presence that melts and warms all of our darkness and cold. They are the reminder that the springtime blooming is there for every one of us to see, and it is never snatched away.
Yes, my dear friends, it is Christmas, and we are worried, and afraid, and tired, and mad. And yet it is Christmas. It is the story told once more that reminds us that in darkness and cold, God’s light shines still – that in the unresolved pain and messiness of our lives, God is here – that deeper than our fears, beyond our doubts, within our struggles, God’s Spirit is at work. Telling us not to be afraid. Showing us the beauty of the garden in bloom. Sending us to carry that message of persistent hope to those who live in darkness and the shadow of death, guiding our feet into the way of peace. May we find our rest and hope in that light, that shines always. And may we be heralds of that good news for this time, this joy to this world. Merry Christmas.
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The Third Sunday of Advent
Watch the sermon here.
Zephaniah 3:14-20
Philippians 4:4-7
Luke 3:7-18
Canticle 9
Today is the third Sunday of Advent, the Sunday called Gaudete Sunday – Rejoicing Sunday. If we were keeping Advent more like a penitential fast of preparation, this day is a chance to lighten things up a little bit, to be a little less somber. So how many of you are keeping an Advent fast? Right. In my household we start the birthday season the second week of October, which flows into the Christmas season, and it’s one long string of baked goods and chocolate. No fasting going on for me. So hooray, we light a pink candle today instead of purple, but otherwise, this day tends to pass by on the church calendar without much more than a blip.
But today is also the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, La Virgen, Mary the mother of God as she appeared to an indigenous peasant in Mexico. December 12 marks the day of her feast, and it truly is a day of rejoicing and celebration. Many of the faithful make their pilgrimage to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City; others run torch relays through other towns to carry the news of the Guadalupe – including one relay that begins in Mexico City and ends here in New York. The runners of the Carrera Antorcha Guadalupana arrive in New York today, bringing the torch here, the end of the 2500 mile relay run – you may have seen them coming down Riverside. You have likely seen La Virgen’s image in Mexican restaurants or Catholic churches or truck windows. La Virgen is everywhere.
The story is that in December of 1531, La Virgen appeared to the peasant Juan Diego on a hill called Tepeyac, a place that was sacred to the goddess Tonantzin, and told him to go to the bishop to tell him to build a basilica in her honor. Juan Diego obeys her, but he must go back to the bishop repeatedly before he is finally listened to. La Virgen continues to encourage him, and finally provides him with the proof he needs to persuade the bishop: blooming red roses, growing in the midwinter desert. Juan Diego carries the roses to the bishop in his cloak, and when he opens the cloak, there is the image of La Virgen, the one that is so famous now. That cloak with the image is on display in the basilica to this day.
If you’ve heard other stories of Marian apparitions from around the world, you may think of this as just another somewhat strange Catholic story, something from a tradition quite different from ours. But what is especially wonderful about this story – and to me, so compelling – is that La Virgen appears to the peasant Juan Diego as a dark-skinned indigenous woman, dressed in indigenous clothing and speaking to him in Nahuatl, one of the indigenous languages of Mexico. She is one of the dark Madonnas, La Morenita. It is precisely this that makes the bishop so disbelieving – for the bishop is a Spanish-speaking colonial, unable to entertain the idea that the mother of God could be anything other than light-skinned and Spanish-speaking – even if, God forbid, she did decide to show herself to a peasant. The Castilian roses La Virgen sends the bishop finally persuade him otherwise, and so the basilica is built. Not the first time a lavish gift convinced someone in power.
This is a story that makes me cry every time I hear it or see it told. Our family particularly loves a version of the story enacted in a pageant by El Teatro Campesino, a Chicano theater company in San Juan Bautista, California, originally part of Cesar Chavez’ farmworkers movement. Many of the cast members are not professional actors, but simply members of the Latino community in that central California farming town, putting on this pageant in the old mission church, with all of its complicated history. When La Virgen makes her first appearance and sings out ‘Juan! Juan Diego!’, and Juan Diego falls to his knees, overcome, I always start to cry. It is such a powerful story of God coming to every one of us, looking like us and speaking our language, all to tell us how much we are loved. Even in the midst of our human sin and blindness.
And yet it’s also a story of how we can fail to recognize God when she comes – when what God looks like and how God acts doesn’t fit our preconceptions. The bishop can’t imagine God taking the form of an Indian peasant and so misses a direct communication and request from God. Not the first time race, class, and power get in the way of someone seeing God at work. It makes me wonder how often I, too, miss the message. When do I fail to listen to one of God’s messengers, because they don’t look like me or speak language like mine? Or when do I ignore something God might be saying because it doesn’t accord with my own vision of what I want?
In Advent, of course, there’s John the Baptist, another sort of messenger from God. He looked the part, locusts and crazy hair and all. And he starts off his sermon with “You brood of vipers!” – which to his listeners may have been oddly comforting, the familiar notes of a prophet of the Lord. For us it’s not the best entrée, perhaps, but he gets the crowd’s attention, with a message of wrath to come. They ask him what they should do in response to this news, and John tells them. Every one of his answers has to do with economic equality and financial integrity. Share what you have; don’t cheat people in your work; don’t abuse your power. This too fit the prophets of old: a message of economic justice (that good scripture readers have ignored as much as possible ever since).
But this is not a message just to nod and smile at before we head out Christmas shopping this afternoon. Because this too has to do with God coming to us in the midst of our world. How we deal with our money shows something of what we believe about God. Are we just? Are we generous? Are we caring for others’ needs? We praise God for his justice, mercy, and love; do we live out those attributes as well? Because living this out in our lives witnesses to the God we say we believe in. But if not, if we’re stingy and self-serving in the stuff of this world, that suggests we don’t really have faith in that God after all. We don’t trust that God enough to hold on less tightly to our own money and power.
In other words, how we go about our lives is itself a constant witness to God. We are made in the image of God; we are the image of God for each other. We are what others see and experience of God. Do we show in our lives the great love of God? Or do we tarnish God’s image in our lives? Maybe you need reminding that God’s image is in you – you, whatever you look like and however your life has unfolded. Which is part of what La Virgen comes to show Juan Diego: this poor man of a conquered people, he too is one of God’s beloved. We every one of us are God’s beloved, carriers of the sacred image of God.
As you leave here today, spend some time with the image in the back of the church, Christ on the cross. Christ as a Black man, suffering: that image brings a message of God, just as the image of the Guadalupe does. It says to people who have suffered in this world, Here is God, our God, in our skin, with our features. Here is a God who knows what our life is like. Here is God in our flesh, living as one of us, rejoicing with us and mourning with us. That is what the Incarnation is about – God as a vulnerable child; God as a brown-skinned son of a poor family; God as a wandering traveler with nowhere to lay his head. God knows what it is to suffer. God knows what being human feels like.
That is the God we bear witness to here in this place. And other people will know that God by seeing him in us, if we are able to show him. They will know that God by what we do with the stuff of this world – our money, our resources, our status and privilege or lack thereof. They will know God if we take care to shine God’s image of love in this world. The light shines in the darkness, through us. May the example of La Virgen de Guadalupe, the example of John the Baptist, the example of Christ on the cross, show us the way of justice and mercy. Amen.
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The Second Sunday of Advent
Watch the sermon here.
Baruch 5:1-9
Philippians 1:3-11
Luke 3:1-6
Canticle 4 or 16
Besides being a sap for Hallmark Holiday movies, one of my favorite Christmas films is The Bishop’s Wife.
It’s the story of a suave angel named Dudley played by Cary Grant who comes to earth to save a woman, Loretta Young, and her Episcopal Bishop husband, David Niven, from spiritual doubt and a lack of love for life itself.
The movie premiered here in New York City on December 9, 1947.
Everyone is charmed by Angel Dudley, even a non-religious professor played by Monty Woodley.
Everyone that is but Henry, the Bishop.
He’s too obsessed with building a grand Cathedral, to the detriment of his family and other relationships. He seems to have lost the true purpose and meaning of life, a life lived in Christian community.
Now it may seem odd to begin this Advent 2 sermon with a Christmas movie. We need to focus on anticipating Christmas, John the Baptist, and repentance.
And it may seem odder to also throw a Christmas carol into the mix, but here goes.
One of my favorites is “Oh Little Town of Bethlehem.”
The third verse always grabs me.
“How silently, how silently, the wondrous gift is given.
So God imparts to human hearts, the blessing of his heaven.
No ear may hear His coming
But in this world of sin
Where meek souls will receive him still
The dear Christ enters in.”
Let’s take these words in for a moment.
Silently, the wondrous gift is given, – given to me, to you, to all the beloved community.
God imparts to us – His heaven, – the gift of stewardship.
No ear may hear – we are often all too deaf or fearful of the darkness, there is too much sin, too much disbelief, too much clatter that obscures the gift.
But in this world of darkness – the dear Christ enters in.
The film The Bishop’s Wife, and these beautiful Christmas lyrics, aren’t in conflict with the message of the Baptist, the iconic figure of this Advent season.
John’s a persuasive presence throughout Advent, isn’t he?
Not as suave perhaps as Cary Grant, I mean Dudley, and not as eloquent as the lyrical message of the hymn, but as persistent in message – if not charming in his own way.
Venture into the darkness, into the wilderness, John bids, recognize the work to be done, and as good stewards of the light, let’s build God’s reign.
“Prepare the way of the Lord. Make straight his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth, and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
This is a particularly important message for us this year.
Let’s stand ready to discern what we’ve learned from our own wilderness experiences of this pandemic time, /reflect on our relationship with God, /and how we can be courageous together to respond to the darkness with light.
For God is often found in these wilderness experiences, hope is often born in places of despair, and as Christians we believe that light will surely brighten the darkness.
Yet it’s so easy to lose hope, isn’t it? Life in the wilderness persists, there are many new variants of all the ills that plague us.
Hatred persists, inequality of wealth thrives, a lack of regard for the common good presses on about us, all challenging our awareness of God’s presence and our own capacity to respond to God’s people with compassion and mercy
The path appears anything less than straight, the obstacles insurmountable, and glimpses of God’s heaven seem fewer and fewer.
I often find myself asking, “Where is God?” “Where Is there hope amidst all of the despair?
This Advent, my friends, is an opportunity for silence and prayer.
A time to set aside more time to reflect on what we’ve learned from life in this pandemic, to understand what draws us away from God, so we can unwrap the true gifts that surround us, to find the light that permeates this darkness.
It all begins here, in Advent.
It begins with embracing our faith, with a real desire to live as beacons of God’s hope in a world that so desperately needs us.
John baptized as he prepared people for Christ. Our Baptism claimed us as Christ’s own forever. Set us apart – to let the Spirit work within us, to make the old – new, to transform a dying world by breathing new life into it.
It starts with our willingness to do the hard work.
To make the spiritual journey, to listen for God’s call, to hear and be ready to respond to the injustice, the inequality, the hatred, the lack of fraternity with all that we can muster.
Only then will we be ready to give prophetic voice to a vision of a new world, transformed by the dear Christ entering in through the incarnation of His love through us.
We need to be a Christian people of transformation, to lead a life of faith driven by integrity, purpose, meaning.
It matters less who we claim to be, for claims can be empty ones, if we fail to act on our vision.
What matters is who we are, what we say, what we do.
Although fraught with persistent challenge and disappointment, our faith assures us, even with our earthly longings and ideals shaken to their core, light can pervade the darkness, transformation can happen. It all begins with our belief and our own willingness to act.
Are we willing to discern God’s call?
Are we open to a change of mind, a change of heart, and a change of direction?
Are we ready to reorder our choices, are we willing to make straight God’s path?
Nicholas whose feast we celebrate this day was known as a “wonderworker,” a bearer of secret gifts, to people in places where they were most needed.
Are we ready to be “wonderworkers” and to present our gifts?
In the film, The Bishop’s Wife, Dudley the Angel, rights the Bishop’s course, helps him to find true meaning and purpose. He also gifts him with this sermon Henry delivers on Christmas Eve.
“Tonight, I want to tell you the story of an empty stocking.
Once upon a midnight clear, there was a child’s cry, a blazing star hung over a stable, and wise men came with birthday gifts. We haven’t forgotten that night down the centuries. We celebrate it with stars on Christmas trees, with the sound of bells, and with gifts.
But especially with gifts. You give me a book; I give you a tie. Aunt Martha has always wanted an orange squeezer, and Uncle Henry can do with a new pipe. For we forget nobody, adult or child. All the stockings are filled, all that is, except one. And we have even forgotten to hang it up. The stocking for the child born in a manger. It’s his birthday we’re celebrating. Don’t let us forget that.
Let us ask ourselves what HE would wish for most.
And then, let each put in his share, loving kindness, warm hearts, and a stretched-out hand of tolerance.
All the shining gifts that make peace on earth.”
This Advent are we prepared to hang and to fill the Christ Child’s stocking now and throughout the days to come?
For, “Where meek souls will receive him still – the dear Christ enters in – through me, through you, through us.”
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