St. Peter's Church Podcast: Recent Episodes
The Rev. Claire Nevin-Field
St. Peter’s Church is a thriving Episcopal parish led by the Rev. Claire Nevin-Field in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Together we are working to use the Christian principles of charity, compassion, tolerance, and faith to enhance our own lives and the lives of those around us. Our mission is to know the transforming power of God’s love and to make God’s love known to others. Enjoy our podcast and please visit us at stpetersphila.org.
As the disciples try to figure out what resurrection living looks like, they are invited, over and over again, to recognize that they are a part of something bigger than themselves, something bigger that God is up to.
The forty days of Lent, including the customs associated with the discipline of sacrifice, came about in imitation of the period which Jesus spent in the desert immediately following his baptism and the announcement that God’s favor rested on this servant. The sequence of events may help us to understand Jesus’ retreat a little more deeply.
I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me not to get caught up in my awe for someone like Absalom Jones. How did he do it? Bear the abuse? Keep the faith? Not punch someone in the face? Like, a lot.
As the church, we have a responsibility to participate in these conversations about prophets. They are a part of our tradition while also connecting us to other religious traditions.
The hardest thing for Jonah to swallow in this story is God’s mercy to those Jonah was 100% sure were lousy, totally undeserving people. He basically hated it when God got all loving, forgiving, and merciful to others. And the uncomfortable truth is we tend to think the same way-that God should definitely love and forgive us, but really should take a firm line with others.
Jesus’ baptism story is essentially the story of Jesus joining us in the mud- hopping in the pit and wallowing right along with us.
Mary was keenly aware that God invites each of us to participate in the great and eternal mystery of life- in God’s project.
Advent is a season of waiting, waiting for God to come into the world. Waiting for the birth of Jesus that declares God is with us, establishing God’s justice and mercy and peace. We do not wait passively or distractedly; we wait actively and fiercely. John the Baptist captures this in one word: Prepare.
Many of us have long known that how we read a parable is dependent on who we are, what our life experiences are, what assumptions we make about the world, and what assumptions we make about the characters in the story.
The story of Job exists at least in part because there are in fact no good answers to why awful things happen to people. Because even the most elegant theology falls flat when you are looking at a murdered child, a destroyed life.
To embrace the glorify creation means to embrace all of creation, including that which is not objectively beautiful or otherwise felicitous.
This view, that humans are to dominate nature, is deeply ingrained in western Christianity and it has erased creation from the faith experience and absolved us of any ethical concern for it. It has opened the door to massive exploitation of land, animals, and people, with the church either complicit, not noticing, or occasionally finding the energy to whisper about it.
We might well wish for a little more of “heaven” right now. It would be so nice to be able to look forward to a place where there is no Covid, no politics, no racism, no global warming, no hurricanes, no robocalls!
The truth is, as Christians, our track record on keeping the simplest of commandments: Love your neighbor as yourself is rather dismal. We often act as if Jesus’ core teaching was merely a polite suggestion.
Stories, especially Biblical stories, do not have A point—they are stories—they have many facets. And because as readers and hearers we bring our own experiences to them, they have different points for each of us.
As a first-century poor uneducated Jewish man living in a brutal client state with an unchecked priestly aristocracy under the Roman occupation, Jesus was a politically, economically, and religiously traumatized person. Jesus’ own lived experiences of over-taxing the poor, both by the Temple and by Caesar, influenced his desire to show the 5,000 hungry families how the kin-dom of God operates in a divine economy of abundance, where all have what they need.
Being crammed together in a small boat which is tossing on stormy waters seems to be about as good a metaphor to describe our current existence as anything, The question is, how can we deal with our fear?
When it comes to the state of income inequality in our country, and all other systems of oppression, it feels like we need a miracle. I think miracles could happen, just like our story from Matthew, if we’re willing to organize ourselves like Jesus did.
Those of us who follow Christ in this moment face a choice. The truth, of course, is that we face choices on a daily basis. Christian life is a series of small decisions about how and who we are in the world, from the dramatic to the trivial.The choice right now is dramatic.
Parables don’t give us clear answers. Jesus says he uses parables to intentionally confuse and elude people who hear but do not understand, and he only starts using them after his explicit teaching is met with hostility.
Over time, we have become more and more aware that symbols and memorials which may be heroic for some are often heinous for others. I am astonished at how long it took me to become even marginally aware of the true story of the founding and establishment of what we now know as America.
In the face of all that has been unfolding in our country and throughout the world—not just for the past weeks or months—but seemingly for the entire history of Christianity, maintaining a sense of faith in the inherent goodness of all of creation can seem naïve and dangerous.
One of the things I tend to do when feeling scared and overwhelmed is...hide. Just get somewhere safe and hope that whatever is terrifying me goes away. The adult version of putting my fingers in my ears, closing my eyes tightly, and yelling “stop.” When that doesn’t work I try to take comfort in God or in the Church-rest in healing, forgiveness, restoration, peace, resurrection- all the “good stuff” God gives and all the sense of safety the church offers.
The Trinity is one of the messiest and most elusive tenets of our faith: One substance, three persons. Three in one. Different and undivided. Alive, moving—yet always unified. Constant. Faithful. Yes. But static? Never. The Trinity leaves us with more questions than answers. (Sermon includes a video slideshow which may be viewed here: https://youtu.be/TZz6O3WOs_w?t=2266)
I can’t help but wonder if the Spirit is working up to a hurricane right about now. If she is honking to get our attention, trying to lead us in a different direction. I cannot help but believe that, now, with each of us locked by the pandemic in a sort of upper room, she is on the move again—swirling through our homes, our heads, our hearts.
In crisis, we tend to shut down, not open up. To close ranks, fend for ourselves. But does this hold up to our image of God? Not just God’s love, but how God lives.
Stephen was the first person recorded to have died for following Jesus. On the face of it, he is an odd choice to die first. He was not one of the original 12 nor was he chosen to replace Judas. He was a solid, good, faithful person who was all about serving others."he knew how to run a soup kitchen like it was his job. He was the first person the church named as a deacon—“a term that means "through the dust." So, one who serves others through the dust.
The promise of the gospel is that God is with us, even and especially, in the feelings we do not want to face nor know how to deal with. In our grieving and loss, our waiting and anger, in the places where we can only feel our way through - right there, is where Christ meets us.
Matthew’s version of the Resurrection of Jesus begins with an earthquake. After which an angel who looks like lightning with clothes white as snow, comes winging down from heaven, rolls back the stone, and casually sits on it. The guards around the tomb, quite sensibly, pass out cold. And the angel says to the women, “do not be afraid”.
Perhaps we need this foretaste of what is to come-Jesus doing for his friend what God will do for him. We need this hint of the assurance that there is a power loose in the universe which is stronger than death, stronger even than our fear of death. A power that is able to call us out of all the stinking tombs of our lives, all our fears, griefs, and deaths.
In Jesus’ time, blindness wasn’t just a vulnerability. It was a sign of sinfulness. So, who sinned?, the disciples ask. Which is another way of asking, Whose fault is it?
We use the word “journey” a lot in church, and I worry we use it in a way that makes it seem like it’s not a word for everyday life. The kind of church-speak that makes us call a cup a chalice and a napkin a paten; not necessarily in a bad way, but in a way that tries to signal that something special is happening. But sometimes that’s how words lose their meaning. Because they feel too far away from or even irrelevant to our own lives.
I bet there are many of us who might feel a little bit worn out by too much reality. We are being bombarded by a seemingly new reality in which “facts” are distorted or ignored, what is real is presented as fake and vice-versa, and our various forms of media seem to present us with at least one catastrophic event on a daily basis.
We know our racist history. It’s included on our website, because we know it’s important to recognize that churches not only allowed our country to be built on slavery, but that we were active participants.
Waiting, patience, is something we, as a culture, seem to struggle with. Our lives are increasingly built around
instant gratification and we glorify efficiency.
There are tensions within us. And we do not like tension. That makes sense. Tension sucks. Tension in your neck. In your relationships. In our world. We can only handle so much before we need relief. Take a deep breath in and hold it for five full seconds. Exhale it out - tension and release. We need both. This isn’t weakness. Part of our imago dei - part of God’s image in us - is our desire for resolution, our longing for reconciliation.
If we truly want to honor Dr. King, we cannot continue to let years roll on saying I have a dream because we refuse to wake up. We need to wake up and get on with Dr. King’s agenda of civil rights, of tackling poverty and an economic system that is wildly inequitable, of ensuring that all children have access to a good education, an agenda of peace in the face of our thirst for war, an agenda of breaking down walls and barriers. An agenda with radical notions of fairness and inclusion that requires us to name and protest injustice wherever it exists and whatever the cost, but especially in this nation right now.
Why indeed did Jesus go to this wild prophet and his mission of baptizing people in the muddy waters of the Jordan river? Whatever meaning this baptism had for anyone at the time was certainly somewhat different from the way Christians think of baptism today.
Christ is coming alright, but not as a cute little baby, but at an unexpected time in an apocalypse where one is taken and one remains.
The Biblical poetic imagination has long pondered exactly how and who Jesus the Christ IS. John puts him squarely at and in the beginning—In the beginning was the Word—the principle of divine reason and creative order, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. John starts with a wide camera angle to encompass the entire story of the Cosmos then focuses in on the person of Jesus, containing all that was, and is, and is to be. How exactly does all of that work? How do we think and talk about it without ending up sounding like quintessential 60’s flower children?
Greed and worry were just part of the air I breathed in my childhood. And they’ve followed me ever since–much more difficult to shake than many of my other personality quirks.
There certainly are many places in the gospels where we are enjoined to have more faith, and are even told that faith makes all things possible. I just have trouble accepting the idea of faith as a rather passive state that doesn’t also motivate action. Faith is not an end in itself, but is an opening to a realm of possibility beyond our own power.
If you want a fabulous vision of God’s end-game for creation, there is no better place to look than the end of the Book of Revelation, with its golden streets and pearly gates—no more tears or pain. The seven plagues are over; all the trumpets have been blown. Michael has defeated the Dragon and the Beast has gone down to the dust. And behold, there is rejoicing in heaven as the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven and all the saints of God make their way to the marriage supper of the Lamb. These verses are about the end of life, perfect for All Saints. Bit isn’t it a little bit weird to be baptizing on a day that is focused on our end?
For all the good our private wells and spigots do for us, they can keep us from having neighbors. They keep us from the village well, where you have to wait your turn and find ways to share things with people whose language you don’t speak. And dodge kids on laundry carts, and open the doors for people whose arms are full and hope they will do the same thing for you. Not because you know them, or like them, but because their lives, like yours, depend on this water.
As people largely at arm’s length from the vicissitudes of nature—most of us being city dwellers—how are we to think about and talk about a relationship with the land? About the value of land, the meaning of land, the purpose of land? We tend to think more about real estate, about property, about architecture, than we do about the land itself. And this, of course, is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of humanity.
We live at a time in human history where we are slowly coming to an awareness of the vulnerability of the natural world. For generations, those who raise crops or rely on the availability of animals for their survival or sail the seas have been aware of the impact of weather patterns and the importance of favorable conditions for optimal outcomes. But our dawning consciousness of the precariousness of our global climate and the potential negative effects on all the earth have brought a new sobriety (among many, at least) and, unfortunately, anxiety.
Jesus said more about money, about wealth, than he did about any other moral issue of his day. The gap between rich and poor seems to have bothered him more than stealing, lying, or any sort of sexual behavior. And this is especially true in Luke where Jesus confronts the rich four times more often than in the other gospels.
What do you think about when you think about gun violence? What kinds of scenarios, settings, and contexts come immediately to mind? Active shooter alerts? Schools on lockdown? Mass shootings in public places? Heated debates and political stalemates about gun control laws?
Jesus being criticized yet again by the Pharisees for hanging out with lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes–and worse than just hanging out with them, he is eating with them. He has “received” them returning their hospitality and receiving them as any host would receive a guest. The sinners are fascinated–no one has ever treated them like this before, so whatever this man has to say, whatever he is going to do, they want to be there with him. They come closer as he invites them in and the Pharisees and scribes blow a gasket.
There is nothing bad about a safe, warm environment. Nor is there anything bad about being polite and kind. But that is not what Jesus was all about, not the vision Jesus has for his disciples. He says we cannot be disciples unless we carry our cross, turn away from our family, and give up all our possessions.
If God was hosting a dinner party, God would be sure to invite all the people we would never have considered inviting. Not out of malice toward us, of course, but simply because God has the capacity to enjoy, to delight in, the people we find most unappetizing.
We are a people of divisions, breaches. As with Isaiah’s people many, perhaps all, of our breaches are at root our failure, our refusal, to see those who are different from us as equal, as children of God. Breaches formed by our limited and limiting understanding of God and Creation.
There’s a certain militance that is detectable in some of Jesus’ speaking and acting, and this tone can make us uncomfortable. It would be so much easier if we could just write it all off, so much easier if we could just frame this as some sort of aberration.
In Hosea’s time things were bad: priests and religious leaders were running amok and exploiting the poor and the weak—interpreting scripture to justify their own prejudices and desires, creating rules to ensure they remained on top, hopping into bed with the King, and using religion as a weapon against the other.
Many of us may harbor a degree of skepticism regarding the power of prayer to accomplish what seems to be promised. And, for all of the sermons and classes and books describing Christian prayer, we may find ourselves somewhat vague about what prayer really is.
Amos was living in a society where the gap between rich and poor was massive. Amos can clearly see that the health of the market, the health of the few, has become far more important than the health of all the people and God really just can’t take it anymore. Time to expose this rotten core—to smash the economic idol and bury it—complete with sackcloth and ashes.
Asking for and receiving help just isn’t something many of us like to do. We prefer to be the helper, rather than the one who is being helped. We relish the power of offering help, but hate the powerlessness of needing it.
When we stay, when we consent to sharing the whole gamut of human experience, when we agree to the continual process of forgiving and being forgiven, something quite magical happens. We find that we will begin to call this place, this time, these relationships sacred, holy.
For the past year or so, ever since we began allowing children to be separated from their parents at our border, I have a strong suspicion that Jesus would have been easy to find among the migrant families seeking entry to the United States. Jesus would be there,
attending to the needs of the children...God’s children. God’s frightened, wounded, trampled, traumatized children.
The church had huge fights early on about what exactly the Trinity was and how we describe it. And not surprisingly, in cultures that were patriarchal, and councils that were made up entirely of men, the doctrine landed on imagining each aspect of Trinity as male—and that has stuck as male theologians defined what was orthodox and wrote THE definitive theologies. But despite this binary language and doctrine, the God of the Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament cannot be constrained in a binary box, a Trinitarian box, or any of our theological constructs, rather God transcends all the names, descriptions, imagery and attributes ascribed in Scripture and Christian doctrine.
We try to build towers into the heavens, having no sense of boundaries or limits, no sense that Creation is a delicate and intricate balance of forces, no sense that the Creator has been trying again and again, gently and not-so-gently, to put us in our places.
Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns. And I can’t imagine they were whispered songs but loud, strong hymns of faith, deliverance, freedom. “Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me around”. Songs sung while shackled to the wall with no idea if they would be executed the next day or if they were going to spend the rest of their lives in prison.
Despite the fact that many people assume I must have a good idea of what exactly life after life looks like, I really don’t. Even Jesus didn’t really say too much about it. So what we have are a handful of stories of resurrections and the freedom to decide what we will make of them.
This Gospel breakfast story is absolutely full of clues for all those times we are stuck in the sea in the middle of the night, afraid we have come to the end of something with not a clue how to begin again.
The aftermath of the first Easter was not at all uniformly joyous for those who had loved Jesus. Indeed, those early post-resurrection days were much more emotionally complicated than our contemporary Easter festivities ever let on.
Whatever the resurrection was and is—its fullness lies in holy darkness, shielded from our eyes. All we can know is that somehow, in an ancient tomb on a dark night, God worked in secret to bring life out of death. Somehow, in the utter darkness, God saved the world.
Ritualized touch. Holy touch. In a world terrified of touching. In a world where touching has earned a terrible reputation. Perceived more often as a source of harm than as a source of healing. Touch is experienced largely as threatening, dangerous–because it has been misused far too often, especially in the church.
And yet still, touch can move us. Still, we crave touch. Still, touch can be safe, sacred, moving, transformative.
Jesus’ parable is more the Parable of the Dysfunctional Family than anything else. A weak father. An absent mother and wife, and two out of control sons. Yet this father is willing to sacrifice his own honor in order to keep his family and community together. It is a story about reconciliation and reunion, not repentance.
Luke does not describe what Jesus saw when the Tempter shows up. Luke doesn’t even say if Jesus knew exactly what he was going toe-to-toe with—perhaps the Tempter maintained a clever disguise, even showed up as something that looked familiar to Jesus. But whatever it is that Jesus, sees, hears, or knows, the story that follows is a battle of cosmic proportions.
As the ashy grit is smeared on our foreheads we hear the words “remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return”. These ashes are smeared on anyone who comes forward, infants to the aged, the healthy and the sick, without partiality. A reminder that we are all in this together and we will all end the same way. Our return to dust being the great equalizer of life.
Whether or not they could hear the utterances of the glorified Moses and Elijah, the disciples surely did know that something was off, that Jesus’ was a bit troubled, that there was already a slight haze of fear and trembling in the air. But here, here in the midst of all of it, hundreds of feet above the trials and tribulations of their ministry, above the growing specter of negative attention from the authorities, there was this moment of reprieve, of illumination, of hope.
The very idea of quickly forgiving someone who was guilty of a terrible crime seemed obscene, even a violation in itself of a greater ethical standard of justice. I could not honestly predict how I would react if someone very close to me were harmed by another.
Absalom was a slave, owned by a member of St. Peter’s, who refused to grant him freedom until he was 38 years old. So telling the story of Absalom Jones necessarily means telling a story about slavery and also a story about race: a story that should leave us discomfited by our own history and by the sanitized ways that it has so often been written and told.
Talking about “call” may not be something most people spend a lot of time angsting over—it seems too churchy. Surely it only applies to those who want to be deacons or priests. But “call” put another way is the question of what am I to do with my life? What is my purpose here on earth? What gives us and our lives meaning? This is a struggle that I would guess many of us have experienced. What exactly does God want me to do, and when and how is God going to telegraph it to me?
Recognizing the Christ in others is not simply an exercise in getting misty eyed at those who have unexpectedly helped us, it is recognizing the Christ in those offensive people God has a knack for sending our way. Not every offensive person is carrying a word from God, but some of them are most definitely people sent to upset our worldview enough that we don’t confuse our own ideas of God with God.
The idea that church is a nice add-on to one’s personal, individual relationship with the Divine is quite endemic to American Christianity. And perhaps, it’s because the church hasn’t often been very good at explaining exactly what it is we’re doing here. But I think...I think if we’re really honest, the primary difficulty is that being church is really, really hard.
What Paul was trying to teach the early churches was that what was true inside their skin was also true outside it. That wholeness was a matter of many different parts all being themselves and doing their jobs. In other words, unity and diversity were not contradictory terms.
Everything that happens in Jesus’ ministry happens after his baptism and his proclamation that he has been anointed to preach good news, all of it happens because the speaking of God’s word is how the world came into being and it is how it goes on.
From the very beginning, we are told, God has had something to say. And God’s speech, echoing through the cosmos brought entire worlds into being. And as John tells it: eventually God’s Word, when those worlds were ripe, was spoken into flesh, into the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
We have so very many expectations about Christmas. We expect Christmas to make us feel a certain way. All the good feelings; none of the bad. We expect Christmas to make everything right, to guarantee that everyone will be merry and bright. Of course, we’ve done Christmas so many times before, so we presume to know what we can reasonably expect from it. And also: What’s worth expecting. What might be too risky to expect. What to not even bother expecting.
Anyone who gets freaked out and scared off by John is unlikely to be able to handle the One who comes after him. So we are being given fair warning. And, though John and Jesus turn out to be quite different from each other, with quite different ideas of what God is all about, it is actually a good thing that we trip over John before getting to the manger, because John’s judgment precedes Jesus’ grace. They go together because those who know nothing of judgment need nothing of grace.
As is always the case with God, there is no easy, pretty, or short way to get to the manger. No star bathing us in warmth and light on the journey. In fact, just the opposite. In this season of Advent things literally get darker before the light shines.
From time immemorial, we humans have been swayed to-and-fro by worldly powers. These days, we have become beholden to the technocracy that both shapes our desires and sells us infinite promises of fulfilling them. We reserve our “spiritual lives” for God, of course, but just about everything else we hand over to the market.
You would think that Christians, we who believe in a God who in Jesus became human, a child of the universe and made from the dust of the earth—a God who became kin not just to humans, but to algae, tadpoles, skunks, bears, and blue jays—you would think we would have long been rooted in a theology of Creation, but at times we and our theology have become quite caught up in our own importance...
God, from our beginnings in the garden, knew that we would tend to be self-centered, need to put ourselves in God’s place. And God knew that would not go well for us and for God’s beloved creation and so warned us again and again. But we have not listened; we have wandered far from Eden. And we live in an age when pretty much any academic discipline has more authority than, “Thus says the Lord.”
God created the rivers, oceans, lakes, and streams—incubators of life from the watery depths of the sea to the watery darkness of the womb. In the beginning it was over the water that God’s Spirit hovered bringing order from chaos. It was through water that God delivered the people Israel from slavery into freedom.
How in the world can and should we live our lives, with such specific and devastating threats looming over us? Threats that demand not just change in our personal habits of consumption, but swift and decisive global policy action, if we aren't already too far gone. What shall we do? Who can help us now?
That the courage of women who speak up, say no, and claim their dignity will never be rewarded. This whole sordid story, this routine dehumanization of women, is as old as time. And as old as the Bible. Time and time again in the stories we hold as sacred, women are dismissed, demeaned, denigrated.
Welcoming children means welcoming powerlessness, dependency, need. None of which is very appealing to most of us. Childhood can be a far more terrifying thing than many of us give it credit for.
We can be as good as gold, and still we suffer. Goodness is no protection from pain. This is something that should be screamingly obvious to those of us who call ourselves Christian. Jesus was as good as it gets, and he suffered pain of all different kinds: physical certainly, but also spiritual and emotional.
I know that huge numbers of people now strongly associate organized religion with immorality and depravity and abuse. And it makes me ashamed and embarrassed.
Jesus was not nice—much of what he had to say, much of what he did, was offensive to his disciples, and to us. Gentle, nice people do not end up on a cross. In the last few weeks worth of readings Jesus seemed to be saying that he himself was God’s own manna, come down from above to give life to the world. That doesn’t really offend us, but to his first hearers, it was offensive.
How can this man give us his flesh to eat? It’s a good question. An authentic question. And it’s a familiar question, too.
More often than not, it seems as if God doesn’t really provide; it seems as if God allows for way more than we can really handle; It seems like all these ideas of a comforting, benevolent, reasonable God must be holdovers from a simpler, easier time… “once upon a time,” we might even say.
On this very day, millions of people will be physically hungry, and in the face of such deprivation, thinking about the reality of spiritual hunger can seem like the very definition of privilege. But many human hungers spring from deep emotional needs and thwarted desires. For all the strength and beauty of being human, we are also “but flesh” as the psalmist says: vulnerable in our physical and emotional states. We are creatures who exist, as poet Mary Oliver says, (in and through) “the soft animal of our bodies.”
Last week we celebrated the Feast of Mary Magdalene. And I talked about how striking it is that almost no women get to tell their own story in the Bible. And not only do they not get to tell their own story, but their perspective is just never represented. They are truly powerless—at the mercy of the men around them within the story and in the telling of the story. This morning we just heard a doozy, a story of the use and abuse of power, and of another silenced woman.
Despite the fact that Mary was the first apostle, the one to whom Jesus first appeared after being raised from the dead, she has not until now had an official feast day. The reason is that she stands in a long line of women who have been ignored, demeaned, abused, or worse by the Bible, the church and the world. And that ignoring, demeaning, abusing, and worse continues.
I bet if Jesus told you how little you were allowed to pack for your missionary journey, well, that just might be the final breaking point in your discipleship. Because we simply don’t want to have to rely on anyone else. We don’t want to risk not having what we need. We want to live in a world that we can fully manage. A world that’s under our control.
There have been times in my life I have been suffering and I would surely have loved one of Jesus’ miracles. There are times I have sat helplessly next to people who are suffering and wished for, prayed with every fiber of my body, for a miracle for that person. But it never came. And on the flip side there are people who get miracles without appearing to ask, or even give God a passing thought. So what do we make of that?
I can relate to the disciples who were terrified—in an out of control situation—and there is Jesus, snoring away—sleeping as if he didn’t have a care in the world. I would be right with them thinking, saying, “what is WRONG with you—get up and FIX THIS NOW’.
Kings become despots, ever more bent on amassing power. And it doesn’t matter to them who’s trampled in the process, how extensive the collateral damage of their rule might be. We think we want someone to fight our battles for us, until we end up becoming the enemy.
Stories are how we make sense of the world, how we build meaning. Stories help us place ourselves in the sweep of history—help us identify our people and see how they lived. They help us understand why we are the way we are. And they help us understand that, even when we are sure we are one of a kind we are really just the most recent players in the age-old dramas of life and death that connect us to every other human being who has ever walked the face of this earth.
Although the God that we Episcopalians profess is a lot less condemnatory than many other versions of God out there in American Christianity, I’m not sure we Episcopalians are really all that much better at love than most other Christians. We definitely talk about love more than most. But I think that often, what we’re really talking about is something more like acceptance. And proclaiming acceptance just isn’t the same thing as practicing love.
If ever there was a moment we needed Pentecost, needed this particular communion creating work of the Spirit, it is now. Division, hatred, rancor, pain, and injustice haunt our nation. Our political discourse is poisonous. While you might think that Christians would at least agree on basic issues of human dignity, on Jesus’ call to serve the last and the least, we do not. In fact, some of the worst divisions are within and among Christian churches. We are infected with tribalism, ignoring or demonizing those who are different from us.
Christianity was born in a difficult environment and faced daunting challenges in attaining a place of security and respect within the cultural landscape. Christians were literally mocked for worshiping a leader who not only laid claim to be the Son of God but died on the cross. Relatively few Jews were enthusiastic about abandoning their deeply held traditions and expectations from their own religious beliefs. Rome was pressing its power and opposing these independent and uncooperative religious groups who threatened Rome’s agenda of absolute control. As usual, those with the power win in the short run, though Christianity continued to spread and, to some extent, flourish in an underground form for more than two centuries. Christians undoubtedly took pride and received some consolation in their status as persecuted outcasts, and certainly looked to the words and example of Jesus for solace and support.
When Jesus calls us friends, we should be startled. Because in many ways, we’d rather be followers than friends. We’re happy to receive Jesus’ teachings. And we try to enact his precepts as best we can. But when it comes down to it, we still want to be able to walk away. We don’t want to get in too deep. We want to maintain a semblance of freedom.
It is hard to know how to talk to outsiders. Hard to approach them, the ones whose lives, beliefs are very different than our own.
It’s interesting to note that Jesus never offers any “new” teaching. His primary goal seems to be to reassure his closest followers that he is still with them, although in a different manner. But one element that is distinctive is the empowerment by the Holy Spirit and the mandate to not only preach the good news, but to, in particular, preach on repentance and the forgiveness of sins.
When is the last time you really felt part of something? The last time you had the overwhelming sense of deeply connecting with a group of people? The sense of sharing a cause, a purpose, a vision, a mission? The sense of being rooted in something much, much greater than yourself?
Though it seems that many Western Christians are obsessed with believing the “right” things, “saying the right formula”, I am not so sure God cares what we say–cares if we have all our doctrines right. And I am quite sure God cares a lot about what we do and how we live. And so I have come to think that resurrection is less doctrine than practice.
This is not new—God consistently disappoints us—mostly because, at heart, we are more interested in what we want God to be than in who God is. We do a marvelous job of projecting our own wants, needs and desires onto God. Why didn’t I get that job, God—what’s wrong with you? Why did my friend get cancer, why did you let that happen God, what’s wrong with you? Why did my loved one die—if you had been here he wouldn’t have died, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you care at all? Why do you so consistently disappoint me? We want God to be a talisman-the One who protects us from bad things and when that doesn’t pan out, we are disappointed-and angry.
Jesus is painting a picture of his impending suffering for the disciples—of the redemptive power of his suffering. This is a very difficult message- no easier to hear then that in it is now. The message that if we protect our lives as they are—if we prevent conflict, change and pain-we will find, at the end, that we had no life at all. If on the other hand we hate our lives-which I take to mean if we hate all that cheapens our lives- spending our time and energy chasing comfort, security, power and prosperity—if we start chasing God instead of all of these things, we will find abundance.
Jesus cannot possibly be condemning people who do not believe in him, can he??? There has to be room for people of other religions and people with no religion, right??? There has to be another way, a less exclusionary and more compassionate way.
This morning we encounter a Jesus who probably shakes all our ideas of him. No gentle Jesus meek and mild here-instead a table turning, whip wielding, people turfing, angry man. Why? What could drive this ever compassionate man to this extreme? Well, when Jesus loses his temper, it is usually about injustice or about religious people acting in ways opposed to God’s will. This morning it is a little of both. But why does Jesus get so riled up about people defiling the Temple?
Just like the disciples, “we’re setting our mind not on divine things, but on human things.” We’re evaluating things using the wrong framework. We still don’t want to believe that the first shall be last and the last shall be first. Because it’s hard to believe. Because we’ve tried so hard to be first. Because we thought winning was everything.
Admitting that “it’s not all okay,” and that we can’t seem to make it all okay, no matter how hard we try…well, that’s the first step toward freedom.
Because telling the truth–the truth that we can’t do it on our own–allows space–finally–for God. The God we box out with all our efforts at self control, self sufficiency, and self promotion.
When it comes right down to it, there’s really not all that much room for God in most of our lives. And I think we tend to be pretty content with this, because our God is a God who somehow ended up dying on a cross. And that’s really a pretty terrible thing. It’s not something that makes much rational sense. Not something that feels very safe or comforting. Not something that inspires us to enthusiastically join up as followers.
The notion of Satan, of some sort of concentrated personification of evil, no longer makes sense within our rational worldview. But in lieu of Satan, most of us have little in the way of explanation for how and why things so often go so terribly wrong, for why the world so often rebels against the ways of God. We place an awful lot of the weight of evil on individual actors–on bad eggs, as it were.
Simon and Andrew didn’t seem to have a lot to leave behind–they were throwing their nets in from the shoreline so didn’t have boats. James and John, though, had a business complete with boats, and employees–not to mention their Dad, Zebedee–whom they left standing beside the boats while they scurried off down the beach following this decidedly odd Rabbi–disappearing into the distance as Zebedee stood dumbfounded. Rich or poor, though, both sets of brothers left everything that was familiar behind in order to go after a stranger who called them to follow.
Wherever we find ourselves when the question “who do you say that I am” comes our way, Jesus’ question is the critical question of our faith–and it is one each of us has to answer individually and collectively as the Body of Christ we call the church.
Repent literally means: “to turn around.” To set one’s face in a different direction. To face, in the case of John’s repentance, toward the Holy. And then, necessarily, to confront the question that seems to eternally confound humanity. The question: what does the Lord require of you?
People have legitimate concerns about the complex issues of immigration policy and border security, but rather than address these concerns with intelligence and compassion, our government has chosen to regress to a primitive appeal to our worst instincts as human beings.
Despite all the paintings and carols that depict a rosy and serene scene, I have to believe the holy family was tired, afraid, and bewildered. And if you look at the sweep of human history this sense of bewilderment and fear is a recurring theme.
So many people are just waiting for things to change. Wanting things to be different than they are. And the combination of wishful thinking and the imagined virtuousness of patient waiting means that we wait, and wait, and wait. And all this waiting just doesn’t seem to get us anywhere. So why on Earth would we devote a whole church season to it? Is there really any wisdom in waiting?
Christian hope is not pie-in-the-sky, reality denying hope—it is instead knowing deep in our bones, that, evidence to the contrary, God is working in the world and God’s dream for the world will be fulfilled at some point in time. We may not see any evidence of it right now, but we hope, because we know that God is with us, in us, and desires to work through us. We know that the world, darkness, does not have the last word. We know that light always begins to seep into the cracks
Indeed: the Biblical witness contends that no creature nor place on this Earth, no place in all the galaxies of this universe, is remote from God. And depending upon how you look at it, this is either very good news, or very bad news. Because there are no secret corners where sin goes unobserved. And there are no caverns of desolation where love cannot reach. God is with us in everything.All of it.
While we might all easily get on board with this prescription for salvation, we also can’t avoid the inconvenient message that assures us that we will all be judged, maybe less by what is in our hearts than by what we have actually done in our response to others. And, keeping in mind the selection from Micah today, we can also reasonably conclude that when the Son of Man returns, he is going to be really pissed.
Generally speaking, the saints are distinguished not by their goodness, but by their passionate love for God—which shines brighter than anything else about them.
Now, when we think of commandments,we mainly think of prohibitions, don’t we? We mainly think of things we aren’t supposed to do: thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not covet, thou shalt not lie, etc. But many of the Bible’s commandments are, in fact, prescriptions rather than prohibitions. Things God really wanted the people of Israel to do. Of course, it’s a pretty exhaustive list, and most contemporary Jews and Christians have given up on trying to abide by all of them. There are just soooooo many, and they often feel random–even arbitrary–to modern ears.
Nowhere in Genesis does it say that humans are the greatest thing ever. Yes God looks at humans along with the creeping things and cattle and says “this is very good”, but God does not say “these humans are just the best”. We just got all creative and assumed that is what the story says.
Wonder is the beginning and the end of learning to care...to love. Yet, in our demythologized universe, wonder must be actively cultivated. It is not inherent or automatic or easy. And I think wonder can perhaps best be aroused through the intentional practice of gentleness. Through learning to touch the Earth with kindness and care...with a desire to be re-rooted, re-connected to our source. And isn’t more gentleness what we most need in our world right now?
For unfathomable reasons, God loves each of us wildly—even unfairly—without regard to effort. And God apparently enjoys dismantling the systems we carefully set up to sort folks into the ones God should love and those best given a wide berth. God seems to want us to know that if we look at life through God’s eyes we might start to question our ideas of fairness, we might start to wonder why we get so riled up when our lines don’t work.
It take a whole community to help us desire something counter-cultural, to help us be good in a world that rewards lying, cheating, and stealing...to help us learn to truly love one another as God loves us. And I’ve always had this hope, you see, this hope that the church could be such a revolutionary place.
Community is a word that we churchy folk love to throw around and that conjures up an image of a group of perpetually smiling, nurturing, caring, sensitive, always forgiving people. An image of a place where we are never lonely, we are accepted for exactly who we are, and where everybody knows our name. And who wouldn’t want that? It’s a great vision. The problem is reality—the reality that the church community is made up of people, actual people; people who can be irritable, irrational, challenging, selfish, difficult, unreliable—not that I am talking about you or me, of course. So what to do with this pretty big gulf between the vision and the reality, how do we replace an unrealistic vision and work with who we are and what we have to make a true community in Christ?
The most common expectation would-be followers of God possess, I think, is that if we are faithful to God we will be protected, rescued, defended, upheld, showered with blessings. The morally and Scripturally bankrupt “prosperity Gospel” preached by Joel Osteen and others is all about this idea—the idea that wealth, possessions are a sign of God’s favor, God’s reward for being a fabulous person. But from a Biblical perspective this is absolutely bonkers—I can’t recall reading about a single person who received public acclaim, wealth, power or prestige from living into his or her call. Prodding or dragging the world towards God’s dream is hard work and it does not come with a fancy sign up bonus. Fighting for justice for all people, fighting the forces of evil and hate, takes courage, it takes a realistic assessment of what you are signing up for. It takes the willingness to let go of the idea of reward—that we are owed anything for living into God’s dream.
Be not conformed, then, to a world that tells you that you are insufficient. Be conformed to a God who tells you that you are infinite....you are everything. Give everything to God so that God can give you back to yourself – the same and yet different – the luster of infinity shining just a little bit brighter. God has made you good, and acceptable, and perfect.
It would be so much easier, of course, if white supremacy were just about some pitiful neo-Nazis whose ideology and violence we could condemn and sanction and then dismiss. But white supremacy is far more insidious and far more pervasive than that. So undoing it requires much more than simple denunciation, much more than protest.
The Kingdom just isn’t something that can be humanly constructed. It isn’t something that can be /achieved,/ even through our very best efforts. The Kingdom is something to be received, rather than something for us to make.
And this is uncomfortable knowledge. It doesn’t match our understanding of ourselves as people who want to do good, who want to make the world a better place, and who think that trying harder is almost always the best way forward.
I think we in progressive Christian churches DO need to talk about sin. Because even though God made us in God’s own image and called us very good, we don’t always treat one another or ourselves as God’s image-bearers. We so easily get separated from the deepest truth of who we are – that we are God’s beloved daughters and sons – and we allow fictions masquerading as truth to define us and our potential and our future.
When it comes down to being a provider of God’s love, there is really only one provider—the One who sends us out with absolutely nothing yet with everything we need: healing, forgiveness, restoration, resurrection. That is really all we have to share with the world and, coincidentally, that is exactly what the world really needs.
Trinity tells us that God is the ground and source of all being and is the life from whom all being takes life and exists. That God delights in everything that is and wants to be in relationship with everything that is. That God is, within God’s own self, relationship: Holy 3. Eternal, Unending Love flowing from Creator to Word to Spirit and back in an endless circle—a dance of life.
It is rhythm, more than any other language, that powerfully draws people together across lines of race and class. It is rhythm that builds new communities as it moves our bodies together; as it coaxes our faces into smiles; and as it erases just a little bit of our tightly wound inhibition. We ease into the beat and let ourselves move. Dance even.
“Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” asked the angels. The angels wanted to remind the disciples, God’s friends, that if you wanted to see him again, standing looking up was not going to cut it. They needed to look around instead, at each other, at the world, at ordinary people living ordinary lives. The angels wanted to make sure they knew that the way they would find him was not the way they used to know him but the new way, not in his body, but in their bodies. The angels wanted to make sure they knew that the Risen ascended Lord was not anywhere on earth so that he could be everywhere instead.
Think about the way. The way is a road or a path or a trajectory. It is about movement and action, about coming and going. It is not snug or static or sheltered. The road that Jesus traveled was certainly not comfortable or safe. And frankly, neither is ours. But that doesn’t stop us. We are strengthened by our faith and inspired by the model that Jesus gives us of a loving and just and outwardly focused life with and in God.
“I know my own and my own know me” is first century Palestinian for “I love you and I’ve got your back”. We all need to have someone who will stand up for us. Someone who has our back. Always—no matter how unworthy we are of having a champion, no matter how screwed up we are and what a mess we have made of our lives. We all deserve to have someone who demonstrates the self-giving love, the constant care, of the good shepherd. The one who is willing to lay down life for a band of scruffy, sorry looking, rock-headed sheep.
God’s vision of how things should work is often quite different than ours. Which seems to be why God must use disruptive innovation to catch our attention, to catch us off guard, and to open us to a freer, truer way of being human.
Despite our endless fascination with the “how” of the empty tomb, none of us can ever really know—at least not in any way that would answer all questions. Exactly what happened in the tomb sometime between Friday night and Sunday morning was between God and Jesus. Easter, as we know it, really began the moment Mary heard the gardeners say her name and she knew, she knew who it was. That is the miracle. The encounter with the living God. And it still is the miracle. And every time we encounter him we change a bit—we become a little more confident, bolder, stronger, a little more like him.
We are always and everywhere called to bear witness. To sit face to face with the the pain and suffering of others and to see the face of Christ in that agony: humanity and divinity always and everywhere mysteriously co-mingled. Because, of course, when one’s pain is seen and acknowledged by another, it can be transformed, it can be redeemed, and it can be healed.
Whenever we drink it we remember, we accept the gift, renewing the covenant and reminding ourselves that we do not live for ourselves alone. Remember that we are possessors of a double life—having taken our friend’s life and nature into ourselves. Inside of us God flows through our veins, to our heart where the covenant is forever inscribed: I will be your God. And you shall be my people.
We experience salvation by and through Jesus’ courageous refusal to participate in the power games of Empire...even though it means putting his own life on the line. Through Jesus refusal, a space for alternative possibilities is opened. And in that open space, where the boundary between heaven and earth thins, all manner of things become imaginable. Life beyond death becomes imaginable. “Enough for all” becomes imaginable. Living in peace becomes imaginable.
Who are those who set themselves up as guardians of the faith? Who claim to be the only true Christians? The fully initiated, law abiding, dues-paying, creed-saying, theologically correct people who can spot a heretic a mile away. In our 21st century society we have plenty of folks who fit this bill—who are certain they hold the right beliefs—the only right way of approaching God, or of pretty much any other aspect of our common life. According to John, these are precisely the people to worry about because they think they can see. And not just see, but see much more clearly than others. And they will not hesitate to tell you that what you see is wrong—they do this because they love God and maybe even love you too—they do it to protect you from believing the wrong things.
We do not serve because other people are needy. We serve because we are ALL needy. Because we all need the kinds of relationships that only happen when we consent to becoming resident aliens – when we become people who are willing to put our bodies, hearts, and minds in places that are uncomfortable, in places that might not seem like they have much to offer, in places where human need is palpable and seemingly endless. Because even, and maybe especially, in these places – there is always something to receive, as well as something to give.
That understanding, that view of life that none of this is really ours, that we are finite, may be hard to take—hard to view as good news. But it is, in fact, good news. It is good that we are not in charge but God is. Not in the sense that we are pawns on a chess board and God is moving us around, but in the sense that God is the ground, the beginning and the end of all life and that God is in essence merciful, gracious and good. We don’t have to be afraid because the One who created us in love is with us now and will be with us at the end.
What if Lent is actually nothing more than an opportunity to start again? To re-receive all that we are and all that we have as gifts? To be reminded that we are dust, and to dust we will return. And with the loosened grip made possible by the fact of our mortality, by the fact that we are not God and don’t have to try to be God – to inquire about what is really necessary. About what is really of worth and value. And then to pare our lives down to the basics, and learn to receive all over again. Learn that everything is gift. Gift upon gift upon gift.
We are in a world both starved for contact with the holy and afraid to talk about holy moments when they happen. And the good news is that they do happen—I firmly believe that there is no shortage of epiphanies in this world. The light from another place still breaks through in God shaped beams, illuminating the darkness and breaking through the thick cloud, leaving our faces glowing.
What reward is there for staying in our small worlds? Have our small worlds liberated us yet? If not, we have to make our worlds bigger. And the best place and time to start is always right here and right now. So I’m going to ask you, in just a moment, to get up, to find someone you don’t know very well, and to tell them about something or someone you love.
We are called to do this work—the hard work of radical, threatening love. We are to remember that the Spirit of God has already anointed us, already sent us to proclaim this gospel with our words and with our lives. We, you and me, have a role to play in binding up the broken-hearted, preaching liberty, freedom and release to captives and prisoners, ending the systems that perpetuate racism. We are to proclaim God’s love made flesh in Jesus. God’s response to the brokenness of this world is divine love, not a warm, fuzzy feeling, but living, breathing, redeeming, transforming love active in the world; a radical, threatening love.
The bad news Isaiah is delivering is that the people of Israel are doing it all wrong. They still – after God has sent them so many messengers – still don’t seem to know how to walk in the ways of God. And for many of us, not a whole lot seems to have changed since then. Because looking at our society and our political landscape right now, we also seem pretty collectively confused about how to walk in the ways of God in our own time and place.
And I think the progressive church is just as confused as just about everyone else. Many of us feel as if we’ve been teaching and preaching and living an inclusive, loving form of Christianity for quite a long time. So we’re confused about why so few of our fellow Americans seem to have heard our message. We’re confused about why our culture’s understanding of Christian values often seems so very different than our own.
I believe the beatitudes are heard as judgment or blessing not in the way they are constructed or pronounced, but in the way they are heard. I can guarantee you that people in a refugee camp or stranded in detention at Philadelphia Airport hear the beatitudes differently than we do, than an all-black congregation in Mississippi or west Philadelphia hears them. They sound differently from on top than from underneath.
God saves. God saves by loving. And in order to show the incredible depth and width of this love, God came to be with us, came to be with us to teach us our true names. Beloved. The name that changes everything. The name that tells us who we really are. The name that creates lives and worlds anew.
No matter what sort of a mess we have made of our world, of our lives, God is in the center of it, loving us. Christmas assures us that God became flesh and still becomes flesh. Assures us that there is nowhere God will not go to reach us. Assures us that God doesn’t need a perfect world or a perfect place to be born, God is born anywhere, anywhere we can make a baby-sized manger in our lives. If ever there was a Christmas, at least in my lifetime, that it is clear we need to make room so the Christ Child can be born in us, it is now. If ever the world needed people who strive to live God’s love, justice, and peace, it is now.
Joy is a spiritual reality, Isaiah seems to be saying, that is always and everywhere with us. It’s not something we have to go looking for. It’s not something we have to struggle to obtain. And yet, joy can still often feel so distant, particularly in a world that feels filled to the brim with strife, and hate, and violence...as well as the pain that so many of us experience in our personal lives.
For many in this congregation, we seem to suddenly be facing a world where our notions about inevitable, steady progress toward justice and equality are crumbling. A world where the very ground under our feet feels as if it’s crumbling. We don’t quite know where to stand anymore. We have no idea where or in whom to place our faith. Many of us are flailing, confused, and experiencing chaos in our souls. We’re just not used to not-knowing what to do next.
Into the very midst of our anxiety, fear, and frustration, then the Gospel of John makes this announcement: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
I am not sure there has ever been a time in my life when I have been so clearly reminded that we live in a broken and hurting world. Nor has there been a time when it is so clear that we who follow Jesus need to remember and act on our call to serve the poor and the vulnerable, to loudly and clearly insist on justice, for all people. Nor a time more important to remember that as Christians, we believe in the sure and certain hope of resurrection. Of new life.
We are natural creature—cousins to rhinos, hippos, and slime mold. We are not independent of creation, we are dependent on creation. Humankind is embedded in nature and nature is embedded in human beings. We are children of the universe, governed by the laws of life and growth and death—as are fish, and birds, and the grass of the field. We thrive in the warmth of the sun as does every other living being. We come from the earth as from a mother, and we are nourished from this same source of life. Yes, we each have intrinsic value, but so does everything that God made and makes.
So what might it look like to see yourself as enough, as fully beloved? Claiming belovedness, at its root, means claiming a sense of connectedness: a sense that you are part of God’s cosmic project of love and redemption. Claiming belovedness, therefore, automatically begins to synchronizes us with the heartbeat of the universe...so that we find ourselves beginning to experience communion with all of life, in all its diversity.
We have a tendency to believe the entire universe was put here to give birth to us, focusing on ourselves, forgetting to look around, look up, with wonder and awe at the diverse beauty of God’s creation. But if we look around we see that the universe has a story to tell—one that does not necessarily star human beings—one that includes everything God made—and that reflects the beauty of the Creator. The story of the universe, our origin story, stars God.
Francis was able not to differentiate: not to classify in order to embrace some parts and reject others. Rather, Francis found himself drawn into relationship with the entirety of of God’s creation. Francis understood that all of God’s creatures are made beautiful and good by the transfiguring love of God. Indeed: all of creation is itself the miraculous result of God’s endless, overflowing, creative love. And as such, nothing in all of creation...nothing can possibly be beyond God’s love, or exempt from God’s love. Nothing can be left out. Absolutely nothing.
The truth here is one we continually miss, that we are victims of our own way of life. That in our society where we have succeeded in cutting ourselves off from one another, where we learn how to live with the misery of other people by convincing ourselves that they deserve it, where we defend our own good fortune as God's blessing and decline to see how are lives are woven together with all other lives, we are the losers. And not because God is punishing us, but because we punish ourselves.
We’re all implicated. And there’s no easy way out. Structural sin happily coexists with the authentic goodness that so many of us are trying to cultivate in our personal lives. But, as today’s parable shows us, unmasking lies is the first step to collective liberation. And that is something we all can do. It certainly takes some courage, and we have to be willing to feel the pain of others, but as Jesus promises: the Kingdom of God waits for us just beyond our fears.
Our idols might be different shapes—credit card shaped, calendar shaped, cellphone shaped. Shaped like a job that will finally give us true security. Or a house that will give us real comfort. A relationship that finally makes us safe. A car that confers prestige. A position in the community that gives us real power. A veritable row of little golden calves neatly lined up on the shelf. These things are not bad in and of themselves—just bad when we place them high on our spiritual shelves and bow down to them regularly. The problem is when we take a good thing and make it into an ultimate thing. Because these things have not, and never will be, God.
The call of the Gospel, as I see it, is a radical call to move toward other human beings, and not just those humans we would choose for ourselves, but rather, whatever humans God happens to put before us.
Jesus is inviting us, through the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, to become answers to one another’s prayers and openers of doors to all who knock. In God’s economy, all prayers shall indeed be answered. Because there IS enough to go around…and there will be enough for tomorrow, too. Which means that we can safely release some of our surplus to benefit the common good, in order that everyone can have what they need for today.
I will always and everywhere proclaim that Black Lives Matter, rather than that All Lives Matter. Because the Gospel points us specifically to wounded bodies, and Black bodies are disproportionately wounded in this nation. So this is where we must place our attention and our focus. Because if we can find a way to honor and dignify Black lives, we’ll be well on our way to honoring the dignity of every human person. We must start where the pain and inequity are the greatest.
The cross stands as a repudiation of violence—it is the ultimate symbol of the emptiness, the dead end, to which violence leads. But though we killed Jesus, we did not take the life out of him, for that belonged and belongs to God. To the God who sent him to lead us into another way to live.
All week long, people have been asking: what shall we do now? The most obvious technical fix is that we must regulate guns. We must! But gun regulation will never be enough, on its own. Gun regulation is the beginning, but not the end, this story. Because God calls us to more: to become friends to the friendless and hope to the hopeless. God calls us to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners.
Many of us walk through our lives saddled by a sense of scarcity, feeling as if we just won’t ever have quite enough: not quite enough for the retirement we want, not quite enough for the house or car we want, not quite enough to take the vacations we want, not quite enough to give our kids the educations we want them to have. It can surely sometimes feel as if we’re teetering on the edge of not-enough-ness, even while living in relative comfort, prosperity, and privilege. So we keep as much as we can of what we have for ourselves, just in case, for a rainy day, because it’s the smart thing to do.
It is not a crime to pray for the gentle Spirit of God—the comforter—to pray for predictability, for the removal of risk and the illusion of control so we can sleep at night. But on Pentecost we remember that God’s Spirit can also set us on fire, transform our lives, turn the world upside down. It is far from predictable. It is risky. It is out of our control.
We tend think of unity as over-and-above the call of duty. Something that would be nice to work on when we’ve solved all of our other pressing problems. But what if division IS the problem? What if segregation IS the problem? What if our chronic “Othering” IS the problem? And what if there is also a way forward, a way out of these deeply ingrained patterns of separation?
All of us Christians are sort of like the oldest children, left in charge to take care of things until Christ comes back. And everywhere we go we see the faces of those whom he loves and has asked us to take care of for him in the meantime. Some of us keep waiting for his return. Some have really become rather tired of waiting and have given up. Some started to think it was all just a story, a pretty good one at first, but the ending left a little to be desired, so they went looking for a different story, something that seemed a little more solid, a little more sure. And those of us who wait, can’t help but wonder, where is he? He said he would be back, and not only at the end of time. He promised.
We make a big mistake when we assume the spiritual journey is supposed to be a safe one. Of course, God doesn’t want us to put ourselves in harm’s way, or to invite or condone mistreatment from others. But God IS inviting us to explore whether being in the presence of our enemies, which is fairly unavoidable in this human life, is really as dangerous as many of us presume.
I continue to be challenged by the fact that belief is the primary category employed by many Christians to delineate their engagement with God. You’re either a believer or an unbeliever, with little room for anything in between. Belief is so important among Christians, in fact, that people generally seem terrified for my immortal soul, when I tell them that I don’t think faith or spirituality really have all that much to do with belief.
Self-emptying is just so very embarrassing, so very humiliating, when it comes right down to it. Who really wants to join a movement if it isn’t going to be successful or powerful or admirable? And indeed, Jesus is making it quite clear in this moment that success and power and admiration aren’t the name of his game.
This is Palm Sunday. A day that questions everything. A day that asks us if we are willing to live for something bigger,even if it’s also scarier. A day that asks us what exactly we are willing to lay down. A day that asks us whether we’re willing to walk with Jesus to Calvary, to see a new world being born.
If God was a party animal, then I would no longer be sure how to tell right from wrong, up from down, saint from sinner. Even scarier: maybe God wasn’t even all that interested in good and bad. Maybe God doesn’t need categories as badly as me.
But what if, what if…by attending to those in most need, Jesus is healing something in us, too? What if saying “it’s not all about you” really is the most loving, caring thing Jesus could say?
What is important is that we try to articulate what we believe. And what is more important is that we live what we believe. We can confidently, boldly take risks, live our call to be a community of faith that serves this neighborhood, serves our neighbors because we can trust in the rock that is the foundation against which nothing, not even the powers of death can prevail.
We don’t get peace by doing our best to stay out of each other’s way, by remaining strangers, by associating primarily with people who share our style, our politics, or our class. We don’t get peace by lauding diversity online while living our enfleshed daily lives in largely homogeneous settings. These days, encountering the Other seems to me to be more about coming to know people whose worldviews differ significantly from ours,more than any other kind of difference. And to encounter this kind of difference, we often have to go pretty far “out of our way.” Maybe not as far as the Magi traveled to meet Jesus,but on journeys of risk and trust and hope, nevertheless.
In the days after Christmas, many of us lift our weary heads off the pillow, look around and say, is that all? Somehow that wasn’t quite what I expected. What do I have to show for it all? What am I left with?
My prayer for us this Christmas is that we slow down and see God’s story unfolding around us—in our lives and in the world around us...that we see the impossible being done through the unlikely—through you and me. Watch. See. It happens all the time.
As inheritors of Christ’s priesthood in baptism: how might we stage unexpected indictments of the injustice and terror and devastation in the world around us? For hot-tempered, self-righteous indignation seems to me to change very little…seems like more of just the same… more of what we ultimately wish to eradicate: a culture ruled by antagonism and hatred.
The horrific events of the last few weeks, specifically the attacks on Paris and Beirut have left most of us reeling—grief stricken, afraid, unsure what to do. We viscerally responded to the pictures of cities devastated and under fire—we remembered what that looked and felt like. The images reminded us that for some time now we have felt like the world is less safe than we think it should be, reminded us that we are scared to our core.
It is difficult, with our minds that want to sort everything into neat, perfectly oppositional categories—to grasp that while each of us does in fact have infinite value to God, so does everything else on this planet. That the whole web of life is of vast importance to God, breathes God’s own breath. That God looks at everything crawling, swimming, flying, running, walking on this earth and it all makes the holy eyes twinkle.
What do we think might happen if we just slowed down and let go for a while? I don’t know—but whatever it is it scares the life out of us. And that fear has caused a painful separation in our lives—from God, from each other, and from God’s marvelous creation. The air that we breathe, the water we drink, the birds whose song lifts our hearts, the flowers that delight our sense of smell, these are not resources, these are fellow creatures, created by God just as we are—and beloved of God.
From the time Adam and Eve decided apples were on the menu we have been self-centered, have had an urge to put ourselves in God’s place. We have read Scripture as if we were the main character—using it as evidence that we are the most important things in the world. We have mostly ignored the Book of Nature with its breathtaking array of life—of God’s other beloved. We have ignored the creation story other creatures might tell.
From before we draw breath into eternity God reaches out to us in love. And that love that reaches out to us does not depend on our gender, denomination, religion, sexual orientation, income level, political affiliation or anything else. It is the ultimate “given”–the ground of all life, of all being. And as participants in God’s creation, we are called to do, to reflect that same love, to respect the dignity of all human beings--no exceptions. And we don’t need to have the right beliefs or to be members of any particular group to do that. Discipleship is not about membership in a club at all—it is about doing God’s compassion, justice and mercy.
We need to let the world know we are a community of followers and losers—people who are willing to lose anything that keeps us from following Jesus: our fears, anxieties, our pasts or our futures, our status or our schedules, our need to be in control of our lives and our faith, anything that keeps us from losing ourselves in the abundance of the grace that we receive, the love that we share.
The church is not perfect—it never was and never will be. If you are waiting for that you will never be satisfied. Wherever people get together there will always be things that offend, always reasons to leave. But it is here, as the church, that we learn we need each other to save us from self-righteousness. We need each other to help keep us in shape for God. Do you sometimes want to go away? Of course you do. We all do. But where would we go? This is where we have heard the words of eternal life. This is where we have come to believe and know the Holy One of God.
Faith is not about never running away or questioning, never feeling sorry for ourselves, never trying to figure out a different way. It is about knowing that, with God, we are never alone and we are never done. As long as we have breath we are on a journey with God as our companion on the way.
God is telling Paul, telling us, that what we think is power, is not power at all, and what we think is weakness, is not weakness at all. The power of Christ, God says, is not delivered in a shiny package with a tasteful ribbon, but rather as a big thorn covered in dirt. A thorn that bugs you every day of your life.
Belief is not, despite the insistence of some, a sort of super force field that protects us from any harm or grief. It is more like walking on a rope bridge across a deep gorge, not a whole lot to hang onto except the stories we have heard of others who made it across, trusting that the ropes will indeed bear our weight and hold us up so we make it across.
Invariably, fear and faith are found in close proximity. We want to follow; to give ourselves into God’s hands, to leap with abandon. And we’re scared to death of what that might mean, because we feel certain it will involve relinquishing control – and that’s going to feel like a big dark storm.
All the time and all around us the kingdom of God is alive, pulsing with life. The seeds in the ground and the buds on the trees are growing – right now, all the time. It’s a symphony out there – in here; a raging storm. It is a gift: to be able to see, to notice, to taste, to hear and smell, to rejoice in the life abundant.
Trinity Sunday is an invitation to witness. To have seen something and tell the truth about it. An invitation to imagine life with God for the whole, longing world. And then proclaim it. To proclaim the gospel that: God so loved the world that God the Father gave God the Son so that everyone who believes in him won’t perish but will have eternal life in God the Spirit.
The Holy Spirit rests on and in each of us in this place. Upon each and every instance of life. Filling us with her breath and blowing us by her winds she works in us and energizes us so we can be what we were created to be. Filled with her breath and blown by her winds each of us can become, is, Christ for the world.
In the hearing and the telling of stories of Baltimore, of racial and economic injustice, of protesters, police, and prosecutors; of the constitutional rights of certain individuals; of steps taken by any person of any gender toward self-actualization, beware the interpretation that allows “us” to imagine that what is sought is something different for them or in them or in their neighborhoods. Even if are moved with all benevolence and gracious intentions toward the other, let us realize that through these events and experiences the Holy Spirit is seeking to convert our hearts, our lives, our relationships. If there is an “us” and a “them,” let us realize that they are bringing the Good News of Christ to us, and let us be glad, and be grateful.
We will always have questions, and many of them will be hard to admit and even harder to ask. The question, “How are we supposed to believe this?” is a timeless one. We have all asked it. We will each ask it again. And then again. Asking, disbelieving, encountering, believing, proclaiming, and acting (and not always in that order!) – this is the stuff of life.
It seems to me our call is to know that resurrection is not the end of Jesus’ story but the beginning of ours. To live expecting resurrection, the gracious act of the only One who can make life out of dust, not just once, or even just at the end of time, but over and over again. To believe life is more than we can taste, see, or feel. To remember that God has power beyond anything we can understand or know, that life is stronger than death, and that none of us can say for sure that everything is over for us. If God can raise the dead—and if we believe God can raise the dead—then despair is always temporary and hope is always invincible. Not because of anything we can say or do but because God always knows how to breathe life into what looks like piles of dust.
Our very creation – our birth, our life – is an expression of, a manifestation of, God’s love. We might say that God loves us into being, God loves us into life. To be in the presence of God’s love is to be aware that God sees in us more than we can see in ourselves, that God’s awareness of our preciousness is deeper than we can possibly ask or imagine. To be in the presence of God is to be awakened to the sense that we are intricately interwoven one to another and are here in this life to love one another with all our heart, with all our mind, and with all our strength.
Obedience comes from the Latin audire, meaning “to listen.” As we enter this Holy Week and find ourselves among those gathered along the way, we too, might seek with our whole heart to listen, to submit, to empty ourselves, to be obedient to what we love, be obedient to God.
There comes a time – a hinge – in the life of most people when they stop and look at the life they have constructed; they stop and wonder, where am I headed? What have I got? Where have I gotten to? Such times may come uninvited – with a change in an important relationship, a sudden change in employment, the death of a parent or dear friend, with children leaving home. There need not be a precipitating event – when it arrives more organically; just the next chapter in our lives. When we arrive at this hinge moment, Jesus’ teaching applies: something breaks open; it is time not to build, but to let go; not to achieve, rather to accept.
Our hope and our salvation is forged in a crucible of hardship and suffering. Not random hardship, random suffering, but the hardship and suffering that comes from intention, that comes from living toward justice, living with faithfulness, that comes from seeking to truly love our sister and brother, enemy and neighbor, that comes from acknowledging God in the heart of our lives.
Being a Church means that we struggle together with all the challenges of the world and of making faith real! We come to hear the Word because we want to take Scripture seriously, as well as to engage in real conversation about how we are to take it seriously, in the context of so many competing claims, cultural complexities and psychological diversity.
If you are finding the way to be long and hard, having to make choices when no choice is ideal, hurting others or yourself, you are not alone, we are not alone. The promise is good and true. The way of faith is not straightforward. Hold to the promise; stay on the way of faith.
Above all else, Lent is a season to put aside our sin of striving and control and accomplishment. Forget striving, forget acquiring and accomplishing! God will be gentle. God loves us. God loves you. Lent is a season to submit ourselves to God’s care, to God’s love; to be still enough and quiet enough that we can – for starters, just remember and recognize that there is that divine spark of God within.
I have found that for most of us, there’s something deep within that needs healing. That “something” is different for each of us: loneliness, self-doubt, a grievance, anger, broken trust, depression, a scary diagnosis, or unfettered anxiety…. Each of us seeks healing and each of us seeks restoration of our relationships, restoration of love lost.
Spotting the unclean spirits in the other, or even obsessing about our own, won't get things very far. We do need to confront what we see as wrong, both at a domestic and a social level. But we do so with the humility that we are all sinners--all more human than not. This kind of radical acceptance can actually liberate us to fall back into God's embrace. The God who knows the whole story.
God long ago threw away the abacus and threw open the holy arms to everyone and everything God had created and is creating. There is enough and more than enough for me, for you, for every single thing God has created and loves passionately, wildly and completely.
Each of us is somewhere along the way in our relationship with the church, with religion, with God, somewhere along the way in our own experience of the holy. But even if there is not a right or wrong way, there is great power to be found through acknowledging and confessing where we are and what it is we believe – if only, at first, to hear our own voice as we seek to give voice to the truth within our own heart.
If we really believe in a God to whom we all belong, if we really see in these waters the perfect completion of a story of creation that begins and ends with Love, then we have to claim everybody. And, especially, the suffering. For, as Jesus says elsewhere, the poor will always be with us. The poor of spirit. The poor of hope. The poor of health. The poor of wealth. The poor of love. The poor of wholeness. The poor of respect. The poor of belonging. The poor will always belong to us. A part of “us.”
Almost as soon as Christmas Day is over, as a culture we move on –all traces of Christmas are quickly eliminated from our malls, our houses. We want to put Jesus back where he belongs –out of sight and out of mind. We don’t want to be reminded what this child asks of us, staring innocently up into our face and making us know deep in our gut that what he will go on to say and demonstrate, that we cannot serve two masters, God and money or God and human power, is deeply true.
Every religion and philosophy teaches the virtue of compassion. Those of us who are Christian, those of us who receive God through this Christmas story of incarnation, those of us who receive God as an infant in vulnerability… our compassion, Christian compassion begins and ends with the realization that in each newborn child, and each full-grown child is the fullness of the presence of God.
Being not the light but pointing to the light often means, first, being silent and listening deeply. Bearing witness to the light of God in that conversation may mean wondering aloud how God may be present with you. Simply ask, “How do we find God’s love in the midst of this situation?”
It is challenging and it is difficult but the only way we will move forward, we will begin to live into God’s dream, into a world where every valley is raised and every mountain laid low, is when we name the truth of our structures and institutions-when we open our eyes to and name the privilege that those of us who are white, who are wealthy, who are male, implicitly hold. When we begin to have those myriad individual and collective truth-filled conversations that we desperately need.
Why are the skies darkened and the heavens shaken? Why do we cry to the potter who shaped us? Why this loud lamentation? We cry out because, despite our greatest human aspirations and efforts, the world in which we live is not just; the world in which we live is not just.
Very often we miss the big picture because we have small things that we’ve made big. So we can’t see what’s really big. We can’t see what’s really true. We can’t see what’s really meaningful because we’ve placed our meaning in other things. We have our smallness masquerading as bigness and it blinds us to the truth of what really matters.
This morning “I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you.” Jesus’ parable of the sheep and the goats at the last judgment is a compelling call to open our hearts and our eyes to see Christ in those among us whom society considers least.
Perhaps farmers, those living close to creation, to the heartbeat of life, have a deep understanding that permanency, control, and security are illusions. They trust the land enough to keep going, but they know much of their life is just not in their control. Perhaps more than others they know that the world is not ours. We did not create it and we are in control of neither growth nor harvest.
A river is flowing. River of life and love that carries us along in her current, drawing us close, then propelling us beyond, spreading us wide; flowing steady, deep and dark, or tumbling, churning o’er the rapids; irresistible and eternal in her flow.
Although endings and death seem to surround us, the story of Jesus' resurrection reminds us that there is a good word in the graveyard. The promise of Jesus' resurrection declares that where there seems to be only endings and death there can be beginnings and life.
From the human perspective, the arc of justice and the transformation of the world can seem so long and bend so gently that we lose sight of what is on the horizon. Events ranging from terrorist attacks to American political campaigns suggest a devolution, not the opposite. And love? From the human perspective, it can seem too partial, so imperfect and fragile. We can be lost in the egocentrism of love, losing sight of its transforming energy. It’s hard to fathom the full fire of God’s love. Yet it is the fact that God so loves the world…loves us…that creates the very possibility for us loving at all.
The words of the Book of Genesis remind us that the world is given into our care, which means that we are given the freedom to see the world as a resource and commodity for us to exploit, and the freedom to see the world as a gift that reveals the love of God, a gift for us to hold and cherish for this brief moment of our lives, to nurture and care for it, and to pass it along for our children’s children. We are stewards, caregivers, and midwives for the next generation.
From the time Adam and Eve decided apples were on the menu we have been self-centered, have had an urge to put ourselves in God’s place. We have read Scripture as if we were the main character—using it as evidence that we are the most important things in the world. We have mostly ignored the Book of Nature with its breathtaking array of life—of God’s other beloved. We have ignored the creation story other creatures might tell.
We were never meant to be owners, just beloved sharecroppers. It is not the American Way, but it is the Kingdom Way. A way of tending, watering, nurturing, giving glory to God and giving self away in a harvest of love filled lives that will take your breath away.
Some Christians think we are called to be admirers of Jesus Christ. “Boy that Jesus, what a guy! He was courageous and committed and kind, and he gave his life for us!” All of which is true. Except Jesus never said, “admire me.” Jesus said, “Follow me. Do what I do.” That is our authority and I think we come to church to reminded of that fact and equipped to live it out, in the world, Monday through Saturday.
Most of the time we are not fully in alignment with God. There is a distance between God’s ways and our ways. And there is an invitation...to swim in the river of God’s movement. To do so, we will need to let go of our pride, of our determination to do it our own way. We will need to stop striving, earning, climbing, getting it right, proving ourselves worthy.
People hurt and abuse each other and the web of creation. And God stays present in all of this, all of our mess, and keeps right on being God, creating whole worlds out of chaos, breathing life into piles of dust, taking the wreckage of our lives and making something beautiful out of them in spite of us.
Our tendency when we’re hurt is to turn the other into a monster, to depersonalize them and ascribe to the other all manner of horrific attributes, because then, instead of resolving the matter, we have an enemy; can seek revenge and retaliate – sweet, sweet revenge. And that feels far easier, somehow, than actually resolving differences.
God, through Her Grace, will give us strength to lose our life and carry that cross in Christ’s work of forgiveness and reconciliation in the world. We do that in community… Christian community…right here….when we pray and meditate, sing and break bread, listen and learn, laugh and cry, share and support, and partner in solidarity with others to work for peace and justice together.
Each one of us – of any and every gender – carry within, safely in baskets of our own making – the sparks of hope. Do not fear Pharaoh; fear God. Seek those who conspire to do whatever is needed to keep that hope alive.
Is justice ever freely given or must it be demanded by those in want? Must justice be demanded even from the Messiah, the son of God? Does justice come only when we’ve had enough...and rise up with insistence, with the fierce determination of a mother who seeks life for a child? Is there justice for us to demand in our lives?
The difficulty of life together comes in the continued reality that brothers still threaten and capture one another, leaving their siblings trapped and vulnerable. It is overwhelming to live in a world where suffering exists in large part because of the ways we mistreat one another.
It is God’s desire to feed us—not later, now. The feast is offered now, whether we are in our homeland or in exile, whether we are found or lost, filled with joy or parched in heart and soul. The banquet prepared by God for all the beloved children of God is here before us, right in front of us.
If you were to describe the kingdom of God, what sort of story would you tell? Maybe more than anything else, the kingdom of heaven is a willingness to leave the final judgment to the angels and to keep our eyes and ears and hearts open to what God is doing all around us and within us.
That urge to judge, to separate into good and bad, seems to exist in all humans-as if we aren't all hybrid plants--wheat and weeds grafted into one stalk. As if we can tell in an instant what a person’s character is-- and is if we get to be judge and jury rolled into one. And one of the obvious problems with “easy” classifications is that we can write off those we deem to be weeds--judging them to be less valuable than others and dismissing them--until eventually we have dehumanized them completely.
Humans are, in a sense, a collection of stories-stories about what has happened to us and about who we are. Our stories can be fairly accurate reflections or they can be a little, or even more than a little, off base. Sometimes, if we are lucky, others will point out to us when our inner story seems to be out of whack with our outer story. But sometimes not and we, both as individuals and as institutions fumble on cocooned in our own mythical narrative-harboring a blind spot that threatens to engulf us.
I have written you this letter on the day of your Baptism. It is a very special day; I am honored to be here with you. As an infant, you are too young right now to be paying much attention to what I am saying, but I hope your parents have saved this letter so you can pull it out and read it now and again. Hopefully, we still know each other, although life has a way of taking us off in different directions. Please pray for me as I shall pray for you.
Once upon a time long, long ago, there was a little girl who lived on a farm with her mother and father, several aunts and uncles, and her sisters, brothers, and cousins. Their farm was in a very hot and dry land. The little girl and her family worked very hard together to harvest their modest crops.
One morning, when the little girl was filling buckets of water from the well, she looked up and saw people approaching from the distance. As they drew near she saw that they were children – but not all of them; one was a man. One of the children ran ahead and got to the well first.
We must discern and claim how we name God in the context of our own 21st century empire...how do we do this? We might begin by not settling for less--not settling for smallness, but choosing instead to live large lives, turned toward the life that we see in the world around us.
Being contained, secure, and predictable is not what Christianity is all about, though Lord knows we have done our best to try to force faith into boxes through many of our traditions, doctrines and institutions. I have come to see the Easter message as fundamentally a call to relinquish a sense of the ordinary and tumble headfirst into the fantastic.
Given the magnitude and pervasiveness of economic disparity in our city, nation, and globe, how might our lives be shaped by the spirit of Christ?The problems are daunting. But doesn't that simply mean that our dreams need to be more far-reaching, more courageous?
These moments of loss happen in our lives. But it’s not the last moment. Even though the one we love has died, we have not died. Even though the future we imagined is no longer, we will live into a different future. Ready or not, the dawn comes; we awake and arise to a new day.
In this age of science, when we can see everything from galaxies far away to atoms through microscopes, when we want proof of anything and everything, we have no room to sneer at Thomas -- we are Thomas. And there is nothing wrong with that.
Easter happens when God’s love breaks through our human expectations, upsets our definitions; when God’s love works something unexpected in our hearts and our lives. Easter happens when our little human tombs are exposed for the folly and foolishness that they are. You can’t keep God in a tomb!
In place of a sermon this week, we engaged in an ancient Christian practice called lectio divina or "divine reading" of the Passion Gospel -- listening with the ears of the heart rather than the mind.
We cannot save others from death. Neither can we raise others from the dead. Yet in the midst of death, we can reveal to them and to one another the presence and love of God.
The good news today is not that Jesus will give us courage, patience, fortitude, generosity of spirit. The good news is that Jesus will open our eyes to those things to which we are blind. Not the things we see and need help addressing, but the things we cannot see.
Jesus said, the way to salvation is me, it’s now; it’s this very moment; it is truth – revealed, the one who is speaking to you.
It’s never too late to strike out for the Promised Land....Never too late to claim the promise of God’s future.