Leading with Joy - SoundSage

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Learn more Acts 16:16-34; Revelation 22:12-14, 16-17, 20; John 17:20-26

Why is freedom so very scary? Why is it all we cry out for, and yet hesitate to embrace? How can it be a central value of a country that, at the same time, seems so determined to prevent it from happening? On this Memorial Day weekend, how can we imagine honoring those whose lives were taken while carrying out their pursuit of freedom, when we won’t allow the freedom they fought to protect to rule?

Though the particulars change from generation to generation; though the weapons of fear get more sophisticated in carrying out their task, the truth remains that humanity has always had a love/hate relationship with freedom. Not the concept. Not the political idea. But the real, empty tomb, abundant life, Jesus Christ freedom he gave up his life that we might know.

It’s there in Hebrew Scripture, as the Israelites follow Moses out of slavery in Egypt and into the wilderness. They are free. And that freedom has placed them in a wilderness that scares them. It doesn’t take them long before they are longing for the familiar captivity of Egypt.

It’s there in the reading from Acts. There in the story of the birth of the church is a story about imprisonment, and the reluctance to embrace true freedom. The girl is a slave, and struggles with what we would most likely diagnose as a mental illness.

She is healed, freed - both in body and spirit, and her owners lash out. They cannot rejoice in her healing; they do not celebrate her freedom. They want the liberators punished.

Paul and Silas end up in jail - literal imprisonment. In prison their faith in God causes the very earth to shake, shackles to fall from the ground and the doors of their cells to crack open.

Yet, when the guard wakes, before he can carry out his own corporal punishment for their freedom, he hears Paul’s voice letting him know they are still there. Shackles on the ground. Jail cell doors wide open. Yet they did not claim the freedom given. They remain willing captives until they walk out, together, with their captor.

We know this paradox in our own lives, don’t we? When we are offered freedom but too afraid to embrace it? Or perhaps hearing the cry of those who wish to be freed but too afraid to offer it?

Real freedom is scary, when there is no one to guide you in your being free. Prison recidivism isn’t about bad people continuing to do bad things. It is about people who have been broken getting tossed into the wilderness of freedom without a Moses to guide them. All too soon, Egypt starts looking better and better. Or more and more inevitable.

Substance Abuse isn’t about a desire to remain in the prison of one’s addiction. It is about not knowing how to leave the cell, even if the shackles have been broken and the door is unlocked.

Our culture wars are really wars about freedom. They are about allowing others to claim the freedom God is offering them, but of which we have made ourselves as the arbitrators.

When we talk about sin, we too often reduce it to a list of behaviors. And, surprise, we have made ourselves the judge and jury of that list.

But sin is really about a state of relationship with God. It means, “missing the mark.” When we are in sin, we are in impaired relationship with God, and God calls us to repair that relationship.

We have done the same thing with freedom. We have reduced the abundant freedom God has given us into a list of rights we label freedoms, and about which we argue and disagree fiercely.

We spend more time talking about what behaviors are and aren’t a sin than we do actually seeking restoration of relationship with God, the main mission of the church. It is right there in the Book of Common Prayer, page 855, “The mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”

We spend more time arguing about what is and isn’t a right than we do actually pursuing the freedom that is ours for the taking, and that God longs for us.

The events of the past two weeks - in Buffalo, NY and Uvalde, TX - tell us everything we need to know about whether we are a people seeking freedom for God’s people everywhere, or a people who refuse to let go of a power the world gives them even at the expense of the freedom God gives.

What is more free than a 10 year old?

What is more free than picking up some groceries for the family dinner?

What is more free than dancing in a nightclub in Orlando, going to a concert in Las Vegas, or attending a bible study at a church in Charlston, South Carolina.

What is more free than loving who God made you to love, or to be fully who God made you to be?

We are a country enslaved to a belief that our individual freedoms are inextricably dependent on another’s imprisonment.

We will see more laws passed to limit the rights of those who seek freedom until we embrace the truth that no one of us is truly free until each and every one of us is truly free. My freedom in Christ is dependent entirely on yours.

We will see more scenes like the one in Uvalde and in Buffalo until we escape the slavery of individual so-called rights having higher value than the freedom of all of God’s children.

We will do this dance over and over again. We will leave Egypt, until the wilderness gets too uncomfortable, and the promised land remains out of sight. Soon, Egypt will beckon us back with the siren calls of, “what can you do about it anyway?” or “I don’t want to discuss politics” and “your preaching to the choir.”

We will do this again and again. Our righteous anger and that of a few politicians will shake the earth and, for a moment, we will feel the doors of our cells open and shackles loosen and fall. We might even get a brief glimpse of the promised land, what life lived in freedom might actually look like.

But we will stay in our cells, waiting for the jailer to escort us before we will step into the daylight. And, while we wait, the shackles will tighten, and the doors to our cells will slowly swing shut until we are startled by the sound of them locking with us still inside.

In his farewell discourse, this part of John’s Gospel we heard this morning, Jesus is trying to let his followers know what he hopes will sustain him when he is no longer with them. These are the final words he has to offer, the words Jesus hopes will linger in the air after he is gone.

“That they all may be one.”

“That they may be one, as we are one.”

“That they may become completely one”

“So that the love with which you have loved me may be in them.”

Jesus’ dream for the world he was about to leave, his hope for the sacrifice of his life was that we would be as united with one another as God is with God’s very self. That we would know God’s love for us, as much love for us as God had for God’s Son, that we might share that kind of love for each other.

Imagine loving one another as much as God loved Jesus. As much as Jesus loved God. As much as Jesus loved us.

Imagine loving God enough to celebrate the freedom of another, whether or not we understand, approve of, or desire that freedom for ourselves.

Imagine loving God enough to put down our weapons, whatever they be, in order that beloved children of God might live the lives God gave them in real freedom.

We are in a wilderness time right now. The promised land seems out of sight and we don’t know where we are going.

We have an opportunity, though, this time, to keep going, in the wilderness, loving one another through it all until we get to the freedom God desperately wants us to claim.

Hiding behind individual privileges and calling them rights is easy. Real freedom, freedom that is dependent on the freedom of everyone around us is much, much harder.

Ignore the voices that will call you back to Egypt.

Celebrate the freedom of the one who had been enslaved and is now free.

Run as fast as you can out of the cell you are in before the shackles claim you once again.

Put down your weapons.

And let us love one another into the true freedom God intends for us.

Amen.

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Easter Two – Year C, Preached on April 24, 2022

Acts 5:27-32; Revelation 1:4-8; John 20:19—31

It’s a very different day for us here at St. Paul’s. For the first time since re-gathering at the end of last summer, we have transitioned to being a “mask-friendly” congregation. Following state, local and church guidelines, we are now leaving the decision of whether or not you wear a mask in church to you, deciding for you and your family what feels right for your health and safety. And we are re-introducing the common cup; the opportunity to participate again in sharing the sacrament in both kinds.

Of course, in both cases, no one must do one or the other. You may wear a mask, and we will support you in that decision. You may go maskless and we will support you equally in that decision. You might take the cup or not.

There is no one right answer for everyone. And that is part of what makes this time we are in so challenging.

This time is asking us to navigate uncertainty in a new way. And that is so much harder than either/or.

How we move through this time together will have much to say about how we actually live into our commitments to be a community who loves one another as Christ loves us.

For some of you, this transition is long past due. We are one of the last congregations in the Diocese and in Brookline to move to mask-friendly. Most stores, restaurants, gyms and schools have already made the transition. For some, your patience has been stretched.

For others of you, this transition might feel, as one person put it, as though the whole world is moving on without you. Perhaps your health or the health of a loved one means you do not have the luxury of even considering going maskless. Not yet.

There is no “on/off” switch in this pandemic. We are not waking up today with all of our fears, worries, anxieties and frustrations suddenly fixed. We are not beginning this phase from scratch. We have two years of trauma we are bringing with us.

In the divisive discourse of our country, we are constantly being asked to choose a side. One or the other. Are you ready to “move on” or are you taking precautions to ensure the safety of those you love?

In an Op-Ed in the New York Times, Palliative Care physician and author Dr. Sunita Puri tells the story of a patient’s wife who, because she was unable to be in the room with her husband who was dying of COVID, stood at the door of his ICU room as he died, her hands pressed against the glass.

Dr. Puri uses this illustration to ask some important questions about how we might enter this time we are in together, without divisiveness, but with compassion and empathy.

Dr. Puri reflects on the widow’s question of how she was supposed to “move on” without her husband.

Dr. Puri writes,

“I don’t believe in “moving on” and “finding closure.” This language distills the messy complexity of grief into tidy sound bites and asks people to leave something behind, bury it or lock it away.

The challenge for my patients and their families is the challenge for all of us: Can we instead move forward with grief? Can we find a way to integrate loss into life, to carry it with us? Can we feel tragedy together, without an artificial line between those who are ready to move on and those who can’t see a way out? We cannot simply be those who grieve and those who look away.”

It is hard work, rejecting “either/or” thinking and navigating the messier, but truer reality that we are all in a bit of “both/and.”

We long to grieve, and we want to look away. We want to honor the pain, and we want to move into the possibility of joy.

In our Gospel reading this morning, we hear the story of a similar struggle breaking the heart of the apostle Thomas.

Thomas, like all those gathered in the upper room, is grieving. It has only been a week since Jesus was executed and they are still in hiding. I like to think Thomas was out getting some supplies for the group. He is not with the others when they experience Jesus’ post-resurrection appearance with them.

Upon his return, he is asked to imagine the unimaginable. In that moment, Thomas is asked to choose. Is he ready to “move on” into the joy of the resurrection, or will he stay in mourning. Which is it, Thomas, is Jesus risen as he said he would be, or is he still dead?

Thomas wants to believe. Thomas wants to move forward, but he cannot just “move on.” There are wounds to be acknowledged, the broken body of Jesus to see before he can risk letting his heart be broken all over again.

Like the patient’s wife, hands pressed against the glass, he wants to witness for himself that the unthinkable has come to pass, so he can begin to pick up the pieces of his life and, what, “move on”? “Move forward?”

There is an interesting detail in this Gospel story that tells us something about what Jesus thought about Thomas and his need to see before he could allow his heart to believe.

Jesus came back a second time. Just for Thomas. Not only did he come back but he offered Thomas the chance to see and even to touch the wounds, that he, too, might come to know the reality of the resurrection.

Sure, Jesus says that line about those who have come to believe without seeing as being blessed. And, aren’t they? I am not included in that group.

I am amazed that anyone could come to know the power of the risen life of Christ without first seeing the wounds in the Body of Christ and witnessing God’s ability to transform those wounds into resurrection. So, I agree with Jesus’ words here. Those who have come to believe without seeing are blessed. Not better, but they are blessed.

If Thomas was wrong for demanding to see Jesus, why would Jesus have come back and shown himself to him? Why, if Thomas was out of line, would Jesus offer the marks in the hands and the gash in the side?

There is no on/off switch between seeing the empty tomb and knowing the fullness of the promise of Easter.

From the moment of the women’s arrival at the empty tomb on Easter morning there would be, forever, people in all sorts of different places in their lives of faith.

There would be those whose faith is as old as they are. There would be others whose faith is newer, more fragile, or in need of signs and showings.

There would always be those who would be ready to “move on” and those who would need more time before “moving forward.”

So maybe this time we are now in; yet another “unprecedented time” in a string of unprecedented times, maybe it isn’t quite so unprecedented after all.

Maybe the question isn’t whether you were ready for the next phase weeks ago or if you anticipate it will be weeks before you are ready to embrace the phase we are already in.

Maybe the question for us is how we will live and love one another while we figure out what it means not to move on, but to move forward in love, together.

What kind of radical love is God asking us to show one another, like wounds in our hands and gashes in our sides, scars made by the last two years we have traveled together?

Dr. Puri, in her article, describes how she and the rest of the staff could still see the handprints of the patient’s wife on the glass door of the ICU room, after she had left. Marks of a set of hands where grief once stood remain a sign to all who pass by while they return to whatever work awaited them next.

Thomas, and the others, bore witness to the hands of Jesus. Marks of the hands where death once reigned, while they all began the slow work of moving forward into their resurrection lives.

Can we bear witness to the hands of others that bear marks of all the pain and grief, loss and fear of the past two years, while reaching our hands out in love that we might walk, together, hand in hand, forward into the Love of God.

Amen.

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Easter Day 2022 (Year C) April 17

Isaiah 65:17-25; Psalm 118:1-2, 14-24; Luke 24:1-12

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The Lord is Risen, indeed! Alleluia!

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

This is the question the two angels ask the women who had come to complete the burial rituals they had not had a chance to do when Jesus had been placed in the tomb.

I imagine them standing there, spices and oils in hand, looking around the empty tomb, devastated that Jesus’ humiliation, begun at trial, followed him even after death, assuming someone had stolen the body they came to honor.

Why do you look for the living among the dead?

It is not, it turns out, how it first seems to them. Jesus' body has not been stolen, the angels explain. “He is not here, but has risen.”

It was true. Just as he had told them he would be.

Dare they believe? Dare they tell the others what they now know?

These women -- the first evangelists; the first to tell the Gospel truth that Jesus had risen -- had to ignore what their eyes could see. They had to look past the empty tomb, the burial cloths discarded to one side, in order to see what their eyes could not.

For these women, and for us, the tomb was not empty. Not at all. The tomb we call empty was, in fact, filled to the brim.

That tomb was full. It was full of hope. It was full of possibilities. It was full of life that would know no end. The tomb was full of evidence that the power of God’s love was greater than any other force that dared stand in its way.

Why do you seek the living among the dead?

How often we share these women’s best instincts. How often we, too, seek the living among the dead.

As a parent, this is something I know too well. As your child grows and becomes more and more who God is calling them to be, a parent’s longing can often be to look for the child they once knew, though they are no longer there. The heart aches to hold the child in a lap, though they no longer fit; to tend a bruised knee, to give a piggy-back.

Trips down memory lane and pining for simpler days are fine, as long as they don’t prevent you from loving and celebrating the child they have become and are still becoming.

We do this with the church as well. We sometimes seek the church of the past with the best of intentions. The church of our childhood, kept safely in the tomb of our hearts, is filled with memories, good or bad. And we return to the tomb expecting that church to be waiting for us.

It can be hard, even disorienting, when we discover that the church we left behind is no longer there. It is new, perhaps unknown to us. Maybe the church has changed, or maybe we have. If we cannot leave behind what was, we will never be able to join in what might be.

Why do we, in the church, seek the living among the dead?

This is an essential question for us to be asking ourselves as we find our way through this pandemic, unsure of what things might look like in the future.

A desire for things to return to “normal” is to seek the living among the dead. Our question as post-Easter Christians, our prayer and our mission is to ask where life is now, not where it once was.

These women; Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women who were with them; these women are not only the first evangelists, they are the saints we need for our day.

They do not yet know what it will look like or what it will mean that Jesus is risen from the dead. They do not know, at this point in the story, how it will be that Jesus will reveal himself to them; in what form he will appear, how they will know or what it will look like.

They do not yet know where new life is, only where old life is no longer.

But they do not wait. They do not need to know what comes next in order to proclaim what currently is.

These women stand in the midst of an empty tomb and see it filled with the potential that Jesus is very much alive; not as he had been, but as he will be.

These women do not hold back from proclaiming their truth to those who would disbelieve. They did not care that it would not make sense, that others could not yet see what they had seen.

This is a critical moment for these women and the rest of Jesus’ followers. For the scenes that follow; the post resurrection appearances of Jesus -- are dependent on them knowing the possibility that Jesus might just appear.

If they could not consider the angels words, if they could not hold out hope that the tomb could not contain the love of God, they would never have known it when it appeared.

Jesus could not be on the beach, grilling fish, if he was back in the tomb. He could not be walking with them on the road to Emmaus, if his body was someplace else unknown.

In order for them to see the fullness of God’s Love in the world around them, they needed to see the emptiness of the tomb.

They needed to stop looking for the living among the dead, and seek the living Christ in the life of the world.

This morning, these women are our evangelists, proclaiming to us the Good News that Jesus Christ is risen today.

And these women are our saints; our inspiration and our example of how it is God asks us to stop seeking the living among the dead. To stop seeking life at the empty tombs of our lives. To allow for the potential that new life is around every corner; a possibility that exists only when we stop insisting it can only be found where it once was.

We do not need to know where it is that the Risen Life of Christ will meet us on the roads of our lives. We need only know that the empty tomb we are in is not, in fact, empty, but full.

It is full of possibilities.

It is full of hope.

It is full of love.

It is full of life.

Why do you seek the living among the dead?

Alleluia! Christ is risen!

The Lord is risen indeed! Alleluia!

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Good Friday April 15, 2022 (Year C)

Hebrews 10:16-25; John 18:1-19:42

Therefore kind Jesus since I cannot pay thee, I do adore thee, and will ever pray thee. Think on thy pity, and thy love unswerving, Not my deserving. - Johann Heerman, “Ah, Holy Jesus” Hymnal 1982 #158

We are a culture obsessed with deserving.

We spend a great deal of time and energy trying to determine whether or not someone deserves something coming their way, good or bad.

Did that celebrity deserve that award? Were they that good? And after what they did?

Does that person in need deserve my assistance? What have they done for me? Why can’t they get it together like I did? Is there someone in greater need?

Did my loved one deserve the pain they are enduring? Did that person, so young, so kind, deserve the tragic events they endured?

Our economy is based on a system of deservedness. Blessings and curses come your way based on what someone thinks you do or do not deserve.

You get a raise if you deserve one, a job if you deserve one.

And curses work the same way. If someone dies from lung cancer with a history of smoking, perhaps they deserved it.

If you are a woman, dressed as you like, and are sexually assaulted, perhaps you deserved it.

These lists are long and the guidelines for who deserves what is often in the hands of the one doing the evaluation.

Today, we are confronted with the hard wood of the cross. We venerate a cross today, because of the time in which Jesus’ execution happened. But it just as well could be a guillotine, an electric chair, or a gun.

Did Jesus deserve it? Well, it depends entirely on who you ask.

Did he have to keep going after he was warned repeatedly to stop? Did he have to upset the moneychangers, argue with the Pharisees? Did he have to shun social conventions of his day, breaking codes and rules to prove a point about God?

Did he have to make himself an altar; a banquet table; a living feast for the world, so as to break every expectation of who was deserving of what?

Perhaps he didn’t. So, one could argue he deserved just what he got.

But, thanks be to God, that is not how God’s economy works, only ours.

In God’s economy, there is no deserving. There is only grace. There is only mercy.

In God’s economy Jesus did not deserve to die on the cross, not because he was Jesus, but because no one deserves to die at the hands of another. Ever.

In God’s economy you do not deserve God’s love because of anything you have said or done. If there is any deserving when it comes to our relationship with God it is because we are God’s children, made in God’s likeness, that we deserve what God longs to give us. Our deserving has nothing to do with us; our successes or our failures.

We are deserving of God’s sacrificial love because God makes us deserving of it.

We are worthy of the abundant grace of God because God has already made us worthy of it.

This bare cross is a symbol of our faith precisely because it was a complete and utter failure. Far from a trophy given to a deserving winner, this hangs in our sanctuary to remind us of what a great and utter failure it was when the state, colluding with religious leadership, tried to stop the banquet of love from happening.

It reminds us of how they tried to take the table of God’s love, break it, and turn it into an implement of silence and fear.

And it failed. It failed.

Because any attempt to stop God’s love from being known will always, in the end, fail.

Because any control we try to exert over the free-flowing Grace of God will always fail.

The cross is empty because it failed to keep the Body of Christ from living. It failed to stop generations of people of faith from continuing to confront injustice and oppression, even as new methods were invented to try.

The cross -- this one, or any other we might try to use on one another to stop the truth of God’s economy of Love from being know -- will always fail.

Yes, there will be moments when we are standing firmly in our own Good Fridays, staring at a cross in our own lives, and wondering if it has, in fact won the day.

But that cross, too, will fail. Because crosses always will.

Jesus met the cross not because he deserved it, though that’s what the powers and principalities of his day might have thought. Jesus met the cross to join us in our own crosses, to prove to us just how limited the power of the cross is, and to defeat it with the sacrifice of his life.

Cross, today you have your moment. But it will be brief. It will be fleeting. And you will lose. Because you always do.

AMEN.

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Lent 5 April 3, 2022 (Year C)

Isaiah 43:16-21; Psalm 126; John 12:1-8

We have a banner that sometimes hangs on the front lawn. It reads, “Love God. Love your neighbor. Change the World.”

We know that, according to the Jewish Shema from Deuteronomy, quoted by Jesus, and recited at the start of our worship this morning, the two great commandments are to love God with all our heart, with all our soul and with all our mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves.

I wonder, if you had the choice, would you rather do something to show your love of God, or something to show your love for your neighbor?

It’s a trick question of course, because we cannot do one without doing the other. Loving God is loving our neighbor and loving our neighbor is loving God.

To try to choose between loving God and loving our neighbor is to engage in a false dichotomy. Choosing one over the other is to lose an anchor that keeps us tethered to the heart of God. Choosing to love our neighbor without loving God makes what we do for our neighbor about us, and our goodness, and not about participating in God’s mission for this world, sharing what God has given us with those who God calls us to serve.

Choosing only to love God at the expense of loving our neighbor is, at best, blasphemous. It would grieve the spirit of God to receive adoration for show and not as a source and means toward justice, reconciliation, and liberation of all of God’s beloved children.

It is easy, though, to find fault with someone else’s attempt to pour themselves out in hopes of loving God more dearly, that they might see God more clearly in the world around them.

There is always something or someone we think more or less deserving of whatever resources are being shared.

It costs me nothing to point that out so all may know who or what is important to me and then do nothing to follow through.

The world is filled with people who have ideas and ‘shoulds’. There are many fewer who “will” and who “do.”

How easy it is for Judas to watch the scene before him unfold and, at just the right time, signal his virtue from the edge of the crowd in an attempt to undercut and shame the woman who dared pour out all she could in an extravagant display of love and devotion so close to Jesus she could wipe his feet with her hair.

Of course, Judas isn’t wrong. And that little bit about Judas’ motives in John’s Gospel are editorial. Let’s just, for the sake of our conversation this morning, assume Judas’ motive was truly to point out what he saw as a complete waste of valued resources.

It’s funny, though, that Judas’ commitment to the poor still allows him to be a guest in this very woman’s home. It doesn’t stop him from accepting her hospitality; her wine and food and warm welcome. Surely everything that was spent to throw this celebratory feast for Jesus after he raised their brother Lazarus from the dead all could have gone to feed the poor, or clothe the naked. So that isn’t his issue.

But there is something about Mary’s boldness. Something about her strength to walk to the middle of a room filled with men, break open an alabaster jar and let its contents flow out in abundance.

As Stephanie Spellers writes in her book, “The Church Cracked Open,”

“Does she offer the jar … to Jesus? Maybe pour some nard into her hand and anoint Jesus? No, she breaks the alabaster jar. …The crack and crash must have felt like lightning and thunder. … Our sister has no interest in a stingy drip-drip from the jar's small opening. She wants the healing nard to flow onto Jesus like rivers, like power, and there is only one way to get that kind of free flow. Crack it open.”

Spellers continues,

“Already, you can see why the Gospel of Luke assumes she's a sinner and later scholars painted her as a prostitute. What other type of woman would be wealthy enough to possess a jar of perfumed ointment and bold enough to walk into a room full of men? What kind of woman would initiate such a dramatic and sensuous (in the truest sense of the word) gesture? A woman of means. A woman with her own ideas. A woman to be reckoned with.”

Jesus responds to Judas’ rebuke with words that can be hard for our modern ears to hear.

“You always have the poor with you,” Jesus says, “But you do not always have me.”

It can sound a bit “let them eat cake” if we do not care to unpack what Jesus might be saying here.

It might be that Jesus is trying to undo the false dichotomy that Judas has posed for the crowd and remind them that the closer they pull toward him the closer they will be to those Jesus loves and cares for.

You could not be a follower of Jesus and not be forced into proximity with the poor. You could not want to be near Jesus and not end up eating next to someone you might rather not. You could not want to hear what Jesus had to say and not hear the voices of those who had been silenced.

To put Jesus at the center of your world is to put the historically disinherited in the very same place.

We can imagine that if Mary and Martha could afford to host this gathering and have a jar of nard on the shelf, they could afford to feed the hungry outside their door. And we can assume that they did just that. Because they loved Jesus that much. And loving God that much set them free to love their neighbor that much.

What Judas offers in this story is performance. What Mary offers is proximity.

If we keep God with us, we will always have the poor with us. We cannot love God and not love the ones God loves.

It isn’t enough to say we love God without acting like it.

Spellers writes, “What did Jesus notice and admire so much in her? He didn't see waste. He understood that she was literally giving up the best of what she had--the alabaster jar and the nard--because he mattered that much to her. He was the holy one, the center of her world, and she had reoriented her life around him as her focus.”

God does not need our performance. God needs our proximity. God does not need us to be careful, scared of making a mistake or being called out that, instead, we do nothing but yell what others ought to be doing from the sidelines.

You are a vessel filled to the brim with the healing ointment of God’s love for this world. Do not hold back. Do not be afraid there isn’t enough.

Do not worry that there might be a better way to love in some better way on some better day. Don’t listen to the voices from the edge that are ready to point out how you are falling short in their sight.

Love God. Break yourself open at God’s very feet. And let the love of God flow from you like fine oil over the world God has made. Love your neighbor, and let the world be filled with the fine fragrance of God’s abundant love.

AMEN.

Several sources were consulted while preparing this sermon. Any direct quotes are referenced as such.

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Lent 2 March 13, 2022 (Year C)

Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4; Luke 13:31-35

Two years ago this weekend was our first Sunday gathering in the new wilderness that was Zoom church. We didn’t have the technology, we didn’t have the experience, we didn’t have a clue what we were doing. We thought we were engaging in a temporary exercise that would surely be over by Easter.

Two months into this “experiment” of church and school and work online George Floyd was killed in the streets of Minneapolis, and the great racial reckoning of 2020 began.

We have ridden the waves of lessening restrictions only to watch the numbers climb again and restrictions tighten again.

And now there is another war. This time in Europe. This time with consequences that are far reaching for the entire planet, and not just at the gas pump.

And, still, we gather. And, still, we sing to the “Shepherd of Our Souls.” And, still, we raise support for the indigenous women and children of Guatemala. And, still, we explore our longings for a more just world at Friday Lenten House Church. And still we teach our children of God’s love for them in Sunday School, and still we break bread and gather at the table to be nourished by the one who was Love incarnate.

It has been a very long two years. And still we are not done. We are doing our very best to stay on the path, to keep on our way toward bringing about the vision of God’s beloved children living together here on earth as it is in heaven.

That isn’t to say that each of us have not had our moments when we have been tempted to raise the flag of surrender and give in to the whispers of complacency, the status quo or nostalgia. How much easier might it be to disengage from the hard work of loving one another as God loves us and just focus on me for the time being.

I don’t know about you, but I have had a recurring fantasy these past two years of moving to a cabin somewhere far from the tensions of the world; somewhere high enough to be able to ignore rising sea levels. Somewhere without obligation to anyone or anything but just me, and my family. I’ve told colleagues about my desire to open up a small store that sells unscented candles that no one would shop in. Something to keep me busy moving things around and maybe dusting, but no angry customer interactions.

Of course, anyone who knows me even in the slightest bit, laughs at my fantasies of solitude, knowing I would last maybe 24 hours in any of my dream scenarios.

But, it sure is nice to think about sometimes.

It’s been an exhausting, spiritually and emotionally draining two years. And the world shows no sign of giving itself over to God’s dream for it any day soon.

So, the work continues. And the temptations to flee the work; they continue to.

Things are starting to get complicated for Jesus in today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel. The Pharisees, who are Luke’s favorite foil for Jesus and his ministry, sense an opportunity to test Jesus’ commitment to his work and to his plan to continue toward the events that await him, should he stay on the path he has set himself on.

And there is a bit of a trick question for Jesus behind the Pharisees’ mask of concern for Jesus’ well being. “Get out of here, Herod wants to kill you” They say. Well, from elsewhere in Luke, we know that Herod does not want to kill Jesus, and he won’t kill Jesus in just a few chapters when Jesus is brought before him. Herod doesn’t want Jesus dead, Luke tells his readers, the authorities of the day, the mouthpieces of the status quo, complacency, and nostalgia want Jesus gone.

Leave, though, and Jesus abandons not only his work and ministry, but any claim to being a prophet in the line of prophets, aiming to disrupt the power structures to bring about God’s Peace, which is a peace born of justice and love.

Stay, and his fate is all but sealed.

When this confrontation happened, it had been an exhausting three years since Jesus was baptized and began his public ministry. Perhaps he, too, had fantasies of escaping to a small town in the desert, carving wood and sleeping well.

But Jesus is not deterred. In this moment, Jesus sees that the work he is about will not end with all of humanity gathered under his arms, like a hen’s brood under her wings, but with the brood continuing to choose fear over love, power over justice, conflict and destruction over peace.

But still he continues.

It may seem redundant or even a bit of gluttony for punishment that we still, given all that is going on in the world, engage in the practice of a Holy Lent. Isn’t the world “Lenty” enough? Why invite in confession and repentance? Why lift up images of barren desert and the cross? Why sing “Forty Days and Forty Nights” and not “We need a little Christmas?”

Barbara Brown Taylor writes about the early church’s need to create a Lenten season beautifully.

“When the world did not end as Jesus himself had said it would, his followers stopped expecting so much from God or from themselves. They hung a wooden cross on the wall and settled back into their more or less comfortable routines, remembering their once passionate devotion to God the way they remembered the other enthusiasms of their youth.”

She continues, “Little by little, Christians became devoted to their comforts instead: the soft couch, the flannel sheets, the leg of lamb roasted with rosemary. These things made them feel safe and cared for – if not by God, then by themselves. They decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian, and before long it was very hard to pick them out from the population at large. They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of holy, and God moaned out loud.”

They decided there was no contradiction between being comfortable and being Christian. They decided to be nice instead of holy, and God moaned out loud.

Lent is a season of repentance. It is a season of forgiveness. It is a season of God’s boundless love. And I’m not sure what will change this world but repentance, forgiveness, and love. In the words of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, how else will we transform this world, from the nightmare it often is into the dream God intends for it?

It is tempting, when the world shows no sign of giving us a break, to give up, and give in. It is tempting to trade “I must be on my way.”

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” It is tempting to trade nice for holy, or comfortable for following in the footsteps of Jesus.

Jesus answers the temptation to veer off course stating, “I must be on my way.”

We must be on our way. We must stay on the way. We must hold fast to God’s way, if we have any hope of changing the world.

And, we know, and there are those who have always known, that the Way of God is the Way of Love, and the Way of Love can be a terribly difficult road to walk.

So we do not walk the road alone, but with each other. And we sing while we walk. And we create art while we walk. We read good books and take long naps while we walk. We laugh and we cry, we rejoice and we lament, AND we walk. And we will love while we walk on the way we must be on.

We must keep walking on our way until we look up and find ourselves surrounded only by the fulfillment of God’s dream for this world, on earth as it is in heaven.

Amen.

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Lent 1

March 6, 2022 (Year C)

Deuteronomy 26:1-11; Romans 10:8b-13; Luke 4:1-13

In her book The Dream of God, Verna Dozier writes, “The important question to ask is not, ‘What do you believe?’ but ‘What difference does it make that you believe?’ Does the world come nearer to the dream of God because of what you believe?”

Belief is a tricky thing. Many of us come to this place this morning with various understandings of what it means to say “I believe” or even “We believe” as we do every time we say the Nicene Creed.

What does it mean to believe? And what does it mean that you believe?

Why do we even need to say the Creed, as I was asked recently after church, and not for the first time.

Well, there are a great many reasons we say the Creed. And there are a great many reasons we say the Creed we do.

The Creed we say every Sunday was born of the Council at Nicea in the year 325 and amended in 381 at the council at Constantinople.

It was agreed that this Creed would never be changed, standing as a hymn of unity among Christians the world over. Though the church would split between East and West in 1054, and despite further divisions and reformations, this Creed has remained a unifying cornerstone of our shared roots.

The Creed as we say it each Sunday is a hymn being sung by our siblings in Christ the world over. It means that the Creed we will say in just a few minutes is the same Creed that was said in the subway tunnels and bomb shelters in the Ukraine earlier this morning, or even now as we say it.

That, for me, is reason enough.

We could talk about the difference between saying “We believe in” and “I believe that.”

We believe. Not each one of us all the time, but as a collective body of Christ, we believe together in One God, in Jesus Christ, in the Holy Spirit.

Believing in is not believing that. Believing in is giving ourselves over to a relationship. It is dynamic. It is something we do with our very bodies.

Believing that is the territory only the mind; the intellect, or opinion.

Think of the difference between saying that you believe in someone and that you believe that something.

We believe in. We give our hearts to.

In the readings from scripture this morning we are given multiple examples of the difference between believing in something and believing that something.

In the readings from Deuteronomy, in the Psalm, in Paul’s Letter to the Romans and in the Gospel of Luke, we are shown that believing in God ought to lead to behavior that demonstrates that belief. It ought to make a difference in our lives that we say we believe.

In Deuteronomy, the Israelites are told how to respond to their belief that God delivered them out of slavery and into the land that was promised to them.

They are to give the first fruits of the land away.

If they believe that God delivered them with “a mighty hand and an outstretched arm,” they ought to act like it by doing the same to those who are now suffering.

In his letter to the church at Rome, the apostle Paul illustrates this point by writing that what we confess with our mouths is to be believed with our hearts. What we say directs the actions of our hearts. At least, it ought to.

And in Luke’s story of Jesus’ time in the desert, there are three temptations. The devil tempts Jesus by reminding him that, if he wishes, he can have bread to quench his hunger, he can have power to escape his vulnerability and he can have certainty to extinguish any doubt.

Jesus responds to each of these temptations with a confession of what he believes in, reciting three different verses from Deuteronomy.

“One does not live by bread alone” Deuteronomy 8:3

“Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” Deuteronomy 6:13

“Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” Deuteronomy 6:16.

What Jesus believes in makes a difference in how he acts in this wilderness confrontation with evil.

Jesus could have given himself personal exemptions from each temptation.

He could get bread, while others starve.

He could grab power, while others remain at the mercy of powers and principalities.

He could end all doubt; his or anyone else’s, by making a public demonstration of God’s favor for him on command.

In the desert, Jesus could have drawn the line between the “haves” and the “have nots” with him on the side of the “haves.” Instead, his belief in who God was, and who God was calling him to be, led him to place himself with those on the outside, with those on the margins. With those who fear, doubt and hunger. With us.

Friday night at our first gathering of Lenten House Church I made a comment about “redistricting privilege.” I’m not sure if I heard that somewhere or made it up in the moment, but the image that I had in my mind was how often, throughout history, the pursuit of justice and peace has included moments when people on the margins have drawn the new line of justice just wide enough that they are now included in it.

I was thinking of white women winning the right to vote in 1920 at the exclusion of women of color, who would wait another 45 years.

I was thinking of cisgender gay men who worked hard for equality by sacrificing and excluding our transgender siblings.

I was thinking of those in leadership positions in the church who are divorced or who are women who still work to exclude the GLBTQ+ community from ordination or leadership in the church.

It seems that just about every time we have the chance to blow the windows wide open and let the Holy Spirit do her work, we forget what we profess to believe in and act out of the temptation to pay attention only to our own self-interests.

But Jesus shows us another way. Jesus, throughout his life and ministry, consistently draws the line of God’s love and grace and mercy with all of humanity, all of God’s children inside it.

Where do we draw the line?

What we believe in ought to inform how we act in response to that belief.

“The important question to ask is not, ‘What do you believe?’ but ‘What difference does it make that you believe?’ Does the world come nearer to the dream of God because of what you believe?”

AMEN.

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Last Sunday after the Epiphany -- Transfiguration

February 27, 2022 (Year C)

Exodus 34:29—35; Psalm 99; 2 Corinthians 3:12—4:2; Luke 9:28—43

In his letter to the church at Corinth, St. Paul draws for his readers an image of the Jewish people as still having a veil between them and the truth of the love of God. Cutting Paul the greatest slack possible, he is guilty of tearing another group down in an attempt to build his own people up. It is very problematic. And it is dangerous. It is this language we hear in our church that, left unexamined, feeds the idea that our Jewish siblings are “less than” and in need of conversion at our sometimes threatening and too often violent hands.

There is a desire by many to have readings like this stricken from our lectionary cycle. It is exhausting to have to unpack these readings every time they appear, and it is lethal to our Jewish siblings not to.

If we hide these readings, and others like it, away, they are still there, part of our sacred book. By ignoring them, we become ill equipped to address them, to critique them and, as appropriate, to condemn them. Our sacred story is filled with images that we, as children of a loving God and followers of Jesus, must face head on, engage with and argue over in an unending pursuit of the Truth that reveals to us God’s dream for the world God has made.

And today’s Gospel story from Luke provides a very different relationship between Jesus’ followers and the Jewish faith they practice. This final epiphany in the season of Epiphanies tells the story we know as the Transfiguration; the revelation of Jesus as God’s chosen one on top of a mountain standing with Moses and Elijah. In this story, in which Peter and James and John learn who Jesus is, Jesus is not above the Jewish faith, he is not beyond it. He is surrounded by it, immersed in it, literally in conversation with it, as he is seen talking to Elijah and Moses.

So, please, listen to Paul, but do so with, as the academics call it, a “hermeneutic of suspicion.”

As I wrote this preamble of sorts to my sermon, it occurred to me that my desire to write it, and my ability to preach it here, and my hope that you will hear it comes only as a result of an Epiphany of my own, a Transfiguration experience in my own life.

There is an popular axiom on the internet that goes, “I can’t un-see that.” It is used in reference to bizarre or disturbing images. After watching your priest tap dance at a talent show, you might turn to the person sitting next to you and say, “Well, I can’t un-see that.” P.S. That is not happening this morning at our talent show.

In researching that phrase, “I can’t un-see that, '' I found what is believed to be one of the earliest expressions of that phrase on the internet. Canadian cartoonist David Sim wrote,

“Once a profound truth has been seen, it cannot be 'unseen'. There's no 'going back' to the person you were. Even if such a possibility did exist... why would you want to?” Dave Sim

That quote is the essence of what I understand the Transfiguration to mean for Peter, John, James, for Jesus, and for us.

“Once a profound truth has been seen, it cannot be 'unseen'. There's no 'going back' to the person you were. Even if such a possibility did exist... why would you want to?” Dave Sim

Having journeyed up the mountain with Jesus and having experienced this supernatural event of seeing the prophets, and Jesus glowing like Moses had before him, the cloud covering them and the voice from heaven declaring Jesus God’s beloved, it is all gone as quickly as it had arrived.

But what they had seen could not be unseen. What they now know could never be unknown. And they would never be the same.

The world into which they descend from the mountain top is, of course the same one that they had left to go up. It was the same world, and it was completely different; completely different for them, and completely different for Jesus.

The scene into which they descend tells of a man who asks Jesus to heal his child, after having asked his followers to, and they could not.

Jesus is exasperated, frustrated with the crowds inability to do the work of God without him present having to do it on their behalf.

The world was the same. The very same scene might have happened before the mountain. But maybe they walked right by it. Perhaps they didn’t notice the ill child or the desperate father. But what they saw on the mountain they couldn’t unsee. And they would never be the same.

Jesus’ ministry takes a drastic turn at the mountaintop. From here on in, the road Jesus is on leads right to the cross.

Once the glory of God is seen it cannot be un-seen. Once the shining light and resounding voice of God’s justice and peace and love has been seen and heard and felt, the world in which we have always lived our lives often looks a lot different to us. What was once bearable becomes somehow unbearable, what might have been tolerable becomes intolerable, what had been invisible is now as bright as the face of God.

We only feel for the suffering of the world because we know that it can be different. We only hear the cries of the poor and the oppressed because we have heard the voice of love and justice. We only see the injustice of the world because we have an idea of the justice and peace God desperately longs for us to receive.

Which leads me back to my preface to this sermon. I have heard that reading from Corinthians at least once every three years for 53 years. So probably 17 times. And how many of those times that I heard it, or even read it, was I unable to hear the danger in Paul’s words? Over the past decade or so, though, I have intentionally learned and listened to my Jewish siblings and colleagues, to academics and theologians, to friends and family, and now I cannot un-see what I have seen, unhear what I have heard, or un-know what I now know. The reading hasn’t changed. But I have.

My son goes to Curry College. You may have read in the news that Curry College has had a series of racist and anti-semitic graffiti and threatening language found on bathroom stalls and walls on campus. It resulted in the College going fully online for classes two days in the past few weeks. They have sent out notices to all students and families every single time they have found something.

I commented that I wished they wouldn’t let people know every single time. I wondered why they didn’t just clean the wall and move on. “Imagine,” I said, “If our parents got an email every time there was hate language on a bathroom stall in high school. Every time there was a swastika drawn, or racist or homophobic slur scrawled.

And then I let myself wonder just that. What if they had, 35 years ago, treated these cowardly acts of hate the way they were treating them now.

35 years ago, those words struck terror in my heart whenever I saw them on a bathroom mirror or someone’s locker. But I didn’t know then that it didn’t need to be an acceptable part of the life of a teenager and young adult.

35 years ago, the horrors of war were veiled to me. Now, the images of Ukrainians hiding in subway stations and Russians marching for Peace grip my heart and bring me to my knees.

If you are wondering what is happening in the world, where God is in all of this; if things seem like they are getting worse rather than better, well, maybe that is what is happening.

Or maybe, your heart knows something it hasn’t before known. Maybe your eyes can see now what they had not before been able to see, your ears now hearing what had always been spoken but remained unheard by too many of us for far too long.

Maybe the world hasn’t changed. Maybe you have. Maybe we are. Perhaps we are witnessing a world post Transfiguration. A world in which anything short of the kingdom of God on earth is simply not acceptable.

This reading of Jesus’ transfiguration is chosen as the reading for the the last Sunday of Epiphany because it serves as the tipping point between the Epiphanies of this season and the call to repentance and renewal we are offered in the season of Lent.

Between the mountaintop and the empty tomb on Easter morning, there is a great deal of pain to be witnessed. There are tables to be turned and there are thieves to forgive. There is betrayal and there is denial. There is desert and there is temptation.

For forty days we will walk with Jesus down from the mountaintop toward the cross, all the while begging Lord, have mercy upon us. Christ have mercy upon us. Lord have mercy upon us.

The world in which we live is the same world in which we have always lived. The “good ol’ days” weren’t good for everyone.

We are not called simply to get things back to the way they were before, but to make them better. To make the world more loving, more filled with the Peace of God, more ruled by God’s justice than human’s greed and fear and senseless hate.

God in Jesus has shown us what is possible when we let God rule our hearts.

Jesus has shown us what is possible.

And we cannot un-see what has been seen.

“Once a profound truth has been seen, it cannot be 'unseen'. There's no 'going back' to the person you were. Even if such a possibility did exist... why would you want to?” Dave Sim

For the love of God and God’s children, why would you want to?

AMEN.

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February 6, 2022

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

2021 Annual Meeting Rector’s Address

February 6, 2022

Good morning, church! And welcome to the one hundred and seventy-third annual meeting of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline, and my 13th Annual Address as your rector.

A few weeks ago, I was talking with some of my colleagues who are rectors of their parishes about our upcoming Annual Meetings and writing our Annual Reports.

One of my colleagues commented that she wished she could submit the following, “Rector’s Report for 2021. It was really, really, really hard. Respectfully submitted, your Rector.”

2021 was really, really, really hard.

And it was hard in lots of different ways.

Of course, the pandemic of COVID-19 continued. And not only did it continue, but it moved into grayer territory. Rather than clear guidelines and complete shutdowns, there were hundreds of decisions to be made in our daily lives, and in our shared life as a community. Do we? Can we? How might we? Should we? Shouldn’t we?

And as quickly as the weather turned warm and things looked like they were approaching a new normal, cases spiked, protocols reversed and we were faced with the reality that we would be in this for a while.

And then came Omicron. And as those numbers fall and daylight lengthens and we are once again wondering “dare we dream for a day when we are gathered fully again?” As my father used to say, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

But last year was hard in lots of ways. Our young people are struggling with isolation and uncertainty. The political divisions in this country continue to push siblings in Christ to opposing corners with compromise swiftly becoming a lost language and art.

The hate and fear which has lived under the skin of this country since its founding is erupting in episodes of violence against the historically marginalized.

And closer to home, in this community, we have worked tirelessly to do what we can with the resources we have to make church happen in every way we could figure out how; here in this building, in the community and in the world. We have worked tirelessly, and many of us are tired.

And, we are sad. For this year we lost a great deal, including several beloved members of our community. This year alone, since my last Annual Address, we mourned the deaths of Laura Rutherford, Maureen Carter, Linda Hastie, Ken Carter, Tim O’Brien and John Mahony. Not to mention friends and family members not in this community.

And so, my colleague was right. 2021 was really, really, really hard.

And yet, as I read the Annual Report (all 31 pages of it!), I was reminded of how much growth, new and continued, also happened in 2021. Sometimes they happened despite the strange times in which we live, and sometimes because of them.

I could use the entirety of my address thanking all the people who helped make this past year possible; the staff, the vestry, worship leaders and ministry leaders, the list is long. To begin to name is to ensure I will forget, though there will be time for some thank yous later this morning.

Instead, I want to recall some memories that serve as illustrations of what has grown this past year in, and through, this community.

People love to post pictures of crocus flowers peeking up through the snow as signs of new life emerging from the long winter.

The new image I will use for this is that of our choir. Standing outside, in the snow, to sing the Faure Requiem, like so many vocal crocuses signaling new ways of bringing life into being.

The continuing pandemic created the urgency for us to create the “Circles of Caring Ministry.” Every household in the congregation for whom we have contact information received a phone call or email two times in the past year. The image I use with the members of the Ministry Team is to imagine they are leaving warm loaves of homemade baked bread on each doorstep. Whether or not they ever hear back, to be contacted and prayed for is to be loved. Love itself sprouted and grew last year.

Our Racial Justice Ministry was born out of a charge I issued in my last Annual Address to think of our Racial Justice work at St. Paul’s not as a siloed ministry, but a lens through which we would begin to view everything we do as a community of Jesus followers. That ministry is still growing and wrestling with what it all means, but the wrestling is the work, and I am grateful to those who have helped shape that conversation.

We continued to put our faith into action, a core part of our identity. We still participated in the BSAFE Summer Camp program, despite pandemic and tropical storms. We still gave out almost $35,000 in grants to 20 different organizations through our Ministry Outside the Parish Team.

We held our most successful Prison Ministry Book Drive to date, filling the book requests for forty-five incarcerated individuals.

And while we experience their absence as a loss to us, we helped make possible the expansion of the Brookline Food Pantry which resulted in their securing larger accessible space for their operations at United Parish. The Food Pantry started at St. Paul’s over 30 years ago with a couple of people and a good idea. St. Paul’s shepherded that ministry through tremendous growth. We hired a Program Director as a member of the St. Paul’s staff. We helped them to become an independent 501(c)(3) so they could access new grant revenue, and we provided rent-free space for three decades until they filled every corner of the Great Hall, Middle Room, Choir Room, Kitchen and front lawn last summer.

A couple of people and a good idea by the grace of God is now feeding over 650 families per week.

I wonder what a couple of people, a good idea and the Grace of God might do next here at St. Paul’s Brookline.

Well, actually, I know a little bit. I know a couple of people thought it would be a good idea to join the Greater Boston Interfaith Organization to provide an opportunity and outlet for members of the St. Paul’s community to affect change and pursue justice at the policy level, and to become allies with communities of color throughout the Greater Boston Area. And, as the ad goes, they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on and so on.

We now have a vibrant GBIO at St. Paul’s Ministry and the budget you have been presented includes in it, for the first time, $6,000 from the Operating Fund, allocated for our participation in GBIO.

A couple of people thought it would be a good idea to get together and dream what the future of Children, Youth, Young Adult and Family Ministry might look like at St. Paul’s. They talked to two people, and to groups of people, to listen and discern a vision for the future of our ministry with the youngest among us.

Their final report, available online, made it clear that in order to realize the potential of our ministry to children, youth, young adults and families, we would need to commit substantial resources, both financial and human, to support the work we believe can be done to realize this ministry’s full potential.

And so, in the budget before you that your Vestry has passed for 2021, we are committed to hiring a full time Assistant for Children, Youth, Young Adult and Family Ministries. In fact, the job description went live online just this week. Spread the word.

And your response to these initiatives has been inspiring. You have volunteered to join the effort, or to be interviewed, you’ve attended meetings and held it all in prayer. And you have been generous. The response to this year’s Stewardship Appeal has been remarkable. As we see a large increase in this year’s budget due not only to these programmatic investments, but in uncontrollable expenses like utilities, you have responded generously and even sacrificially. Some of you even revisited your pledge and made further increases, in hopes of making our mission and ministry possible in 2022, and I thank you. We are now just under $8,000 away from achieving our stretch Stewardship goal of $400,000. In the end of the second year of a pandemic, we are on track to grow our financial stewardship by 10% over last year. Who could have imagined?

Actually, you could. You did. And you are.

I wonder. What will a few people, a good idea and the Holy Spirit do next?

Well, you will be hearing more about the exciting plans we have to replace our beloved but beleaguered Bozeman organ. There are plans to be made and funds to be raised, but I am confident that, come September when we all walk in those doors, we will be greeted by a musical instrument up to the task before it -- to match the abundant gifts of our choir and their gifted leader.

There will be much to be done to welcome our new Assitant for Children, Youth, Young Adult and Family Ministries and to ensure they are successful in their work by providing them all the support we can muster.

And we are making plans for a new purpose for our Middle Room, former site of the Food Pantry. We hope it will be a place of hospitality and welcome, to those needing a place to work, or rest or get warm from the cold; a place in which images of the church and of God represent the vast diversity of God’s creation and beloved children; a place where the whole world will know that no matter who they are or where they come from, they will be welcomed and invited here. Please keep a look out for more information about this initiative, which started as a few people with a Good idea led by the Grace of God.

And I want to ask each of you to step forward. To ask yourself how it is you might support our gathering as a community as we take more steps toward a new way of being together. It’s been a while. We’re a bit out of practice. We forget we can’t go get another cup of coffee in the middle of the sermon when we are actually in the sanctuary. Well, you can, but you can’t turn your camera off when you do it.

And it takes a lot to be together. It actually takes more than it used to. We still need readers, and ushers, and greeters, and altar guild members. We still need choir members, vergers, acolytes and coffee hour hosts. But we also need tech people and Social Media hosts. It takes a lot for us to worship together, and I hope you will pray seriously about what part you might take in it.

I’m ready to dream of coffee hours and dinners. I’m ready to hope for chairs and pews that are filled and online streaming that keeps us accessible to those who cannot be here, even when the worst of this pandemic is over.

I’m ready to unwrap the unexpected gifts this time has given us, though we may not yet know anything about it.

In her report on the Gardens ministry, Julie Starr talks about the intense pruning that was done as part of the Fall Buildings and Grounds Work Day. It was a lot of pruning, and it wasn’t done when pruning was supposed to be done, apparently!

Julie writes, “At the end of the day, when I looked at all the ‘debris’ that was carted away, it made me wonder if anything was left. Two weeks later, the roses were leafing out and four weeks later, they were blooming again. Rest assured, there will be a beautifully full garden in 2022.”

This time in our lives has felt like an abrupt, unwelcome, and untimely pruning. Some days, all it seems we can see are the empty spaces of what used to be.

But we are in a position to come back healthier, stronger and more vibrant than ever before.

Rest assured my friends. With your help and God’s grace, there will be a beautifully full Garden in 2022 indeed.

AMEN.

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Epiphany 3 (Year C)

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10; 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a; Luke 4:14-21

This week, I found myself bound in heart, mind and spirit to a varied group of individuals, most of whom I had never ever met.

Their names are, in no particular order, John Mahony, Fannie Lou Hamer, Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker and Michelle Go.

Perhaps some are familiar to you.

John Mahony was a long-time St. Paul’s parishioner who died last week whose funeral we celebrated yesterday morning.

Fannie Lou Hamer was a fierce civil rights activist and theologian. I attended a lecture on Wednesday about her life and witness as part of an interfaith clergy gathering.

Rabbi Charlie Cytron-Walker is the rabbi of Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Colleyville, Texas. Last week, an armed man held him and members of his congregation hostage in the latest grotesque demonstration of anti-semitism.

Michelle Go was an Asian woman pushed in front of a subway train in New York City.

This week reminded me of the ways in which I am connected to people simply because we are children of a loving God.

Though I do not know Rabbi Cytron-Walker, my heart immediately went to my dear friends and colleagues who are rabbis, and to their communities.

Though I did not know Michelle Go, my heart went to the many people I know and love who are of asian descent.

I did know John, as many of you did. And my heart went to his wife Arlene, to their daughters, family and friends.

It was a week in which I was made painfully aware that, because I choose to follow the Way of Love, my heart is always vulnerable to the pains and sufferings of others, no matter how well I know them, if I even know them at all.

Because we are connected by the God who loves us all, what happened in Texas, or on a subway platform in New York, or in a family in the community doesn’t just happen in Texas, or in New York, or just in that family.

Living with an open heart means giving up control over who or what might get in; who or what might break it; and who or what might have the capacity to heal it to love and break and heal all over again.

A clergy colleague remarked this week that they noticed that people were increasingly feeling “done” with one another. “I just can’t with that person any more” is heard more often. People are quicker to argue, quicker to offend, quicker to break off relationships.

I think that makes a lot of sense. We are living in a time when compassion fatigue is a real thing.

And the pain and grief we are all carrying from this seemingly endless exposure to suffering, when it is not named, not lifted up and not allowed, very quickly masks itself as anger, frustration, betrayal and hate.

When Fannie Lou Hamer was in jail and being repeatedly abused by her captors, she tried desperately to connect with them, calling on scripture to remind them of their connection as children of God, and siblings in the body of Christ.

After quoting a passage from the Book of Acts (17:26), “From one [person God] made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth,” the jailer responded that it was Abraham Lincoln, not the Apostle Paul, who had said that, and continued the abuse.

In order to carry out the brutal beatings of Hamer, her captor must have been able to look at her, look in her eyes and come to the conclusion that he had no need of her.

In fact, as Hamer recalled later that, as she was regaining consciousness after the beating, she heard the jailers talking to each other, and one commenting that they could throw her in the river, and no one would miss her.

St. Paul, in his letter to the church at Corinth argues that having no need of one another is a position we are simply unable to take and still call ourselves Christians.

We cannot, as a particular part of the body of Christ, say we have no need of the larger body and we cannot, as the body of Christ, say we have no need of any particular part.

“If one member suffers, all suffer together with it;” St Paul writes. And, “if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” (1 Cor 12).

This is the point Jesus, teaching in the temple, is making by connecting his ministry with the prophet Isaiah’s call for the people of God, to “bring good news to the poor … to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

We cannot say we have no need of the poor, if we are not poor; no need of the captives if we are not captive, no need of the oppressed if we are free. We can’t do that and call ourselves followers of Jesus. We can’t do that and know the liberating, healing Good News of God in our own lives.

It is tempting, in the face of all the suffering and injustice in the world, to quote Jesus at the wedding feast last week and ask “what does that have to do with me?” It has everything to do with you. Everything to do with me. All of it has everything to do with all of us.

While having a conversation with an african-american colleague about racial justice recently, she stopped and asked me, “Why do you care?”

I was taken aback, unsure how to respond.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Why do you care? You don’t have to. You’re a white guy. You’ve got a good life. You don’t have to care, so why do you?”

No one had asked me that before. I said something about people I love, something about my own experiences of being hated simply for who God made me to be, something about my belief that as a white male, I have a particular responsibility and role to play in fighting white supremacy and racial injustice.

But at the end of the day, I know it comes down to this argument that St. Paul is making to the struggling church in Corinth.

Or to quote Fannie Lou Hamer, “no one is free until everyone is free.”

It is exhausting to turn on the news or scroll through social media, or show up to work or in the world as a witness and have your heart broken over and over and over and over again.

But what’s the alternative? How else can we know the Love of God, but to let our hearts give and receive it?

How else can we feel the mercy of God but to extend it?

How else can we feel a part of the larger Body of Christ, or the larger still siblinghood of the beloved children of God, but to connect ourselves inextricably to the members of it?

So, yes, please do take good care of yourself. Sabbath is a commandment, too. Rest. Grieve. Play. Turn off the news for a bit. Connect. Create. Love with reckless abandon.

Do take care. But do not give up on the world. Do not cut yourself off from the Body that will break your heart. And, please, do not cut off members of the Body in an effort to keep your heart from breaking.

Let your heart break for all the John Mahonys of this world; for all the Michelle Gos, for all the Rabbi Cytron-Walkers and all the Fannie Lou Hamers.

Let your heart break, because we are all one body. And when one member suffers, all suffer with it. Let your heart break, that you might know what it feels like to love as Christ loves us; with a heart that has been broken wide open.

AMEN.

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Epiphany 1 – Baptism of Our Lord, January 9, 2021 (Year C)

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Isaiah 43:1-7; Acts 8:14-17; Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

During a Marriage ceremony, we pray “grant that all married persons who have witnessed these vows may find their lives strengthened and their loyalties confirmed.”

I’ve had more than a handful of seasoned married couples come up to me after the ceremony to say how moving they found the ceremony for themselves. “Thanks for reminding us what this whole marriage thing is about,” they say.

Marriage ceremonies aren’t just for the two getting married.

Likewise, at funerals, the living who have gathered to grieve find something in their own lives affirmed in the words of the liturgy. Assurance of everlasting life, of God’s presence with us as “a comfort in affliction, and a pledge of our inheritance in that kingdom where there is no death, neither sorrow nor crying, but the fullness of joy with all your saints.”

Funerals aren’t really for the departed.

Yesterday morning, I attended an ordination to the priesthood. I listened, heart swelling, throat tightening and eyes filling as the Bishop prayed, “you are to love and serve the people among whom you work, caring alike for young and old, strong and weak, rich and poor. You are to preach, to declare God’s forgiveness…to pronounce God’s blessing..to share in the administration of Holy Baptism and in the celebration of the mysteries of Christs Body and Blood…in all that you do you are to nourish Christ’s people from the riches of his grace, and strengthen them to glorify God in this life and in the life to come.”

Ordinations aren’t just for those being ordained.

There is nothing like having your calling affirmed, feeling the presence of the Holy Spirit, gathered in community with others who share that calling to put a little spring back in your step, and hope in your heart, and joy in your spirit, as yesterday’s did with me.

Ordinations aren’t just for the one being ordained.

And neither are Baptisms.

The families of the two babies we were to baptize this morning decided wisely to postpone the baptisms until their friends and families could gather with us safely to celebrate.

And so, instead, on this Feast of the Baptism of Jesus, we will celebrate the Renewal of our own Baptismal vows. Of course, we renew our baptismal vows everytime we celebrate a Baptism. Each time, we answer the invitation to “join with those who are committing themselves to Christ and renew our own baptismal covenant.”

But this morning, there is no Baptismal Candidate upon whom to cast our hopes and expectations. There is no one else we are talking about who will promise to continue in the apostle’s teaching, in fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayer. No one but us.

No one but us who will promise to persevere in resisting evil, in proclaiming by word and example the Good News of God in Christ, in seeking and serving Christ in all persons, in loving our neighbor as ourselves, in striving for justice and peace among all people, and in respecting the dignity of every human being. No one but us.

There is no cute baby to distract us from the fact that these vows are our vows. Taken by us or on our behalf for the first time some time ago, they are no less true, no less critical, no less the essence of who God calls us to be in this moment, right now, today.

In Luke’s version of Jesus’ baptism that we heard this morning, Jesus sees the clouds part and hears God’s voice remind him of who he had always been up to that moment and who he will always be from that moment on.

You are my child. The beloved. With you I am well pleased.

That was not new information to Jesus. It was an echo through time of the lessons he had been taught from the Torah, as in today’s reading from Isaiah;

“You are precious in my sight, and honored, and I love you.”

Brought to the edge of the river Jordan, with thousands of others seeking renewal in their lives, longing to be more of who they knew themselves to be, Jesus gets in. Jesus immerses himself. In doing so, Jesus is reminded of who he has always been; precious in God’s sight, honored, and loved. And he is reminded of who he will always be; God’s child. Beloved. Pleasing to God.

In his sermon at the ordination yesterday, Bishop Thomas Brown of Maine* told a story of a young man just before his ordination who was on retreat. The Mother Superior of the community where he was on retreat sat next to him in the chapel and said, “now, tell me, how long have you been preparing for ordination?” [The young man] spoke about his years at Harvard, his connection to the monastery on Memorial Drive, and his time at General Seminary, and then said, “about 6 years.” To which the nun said, “Oh that’s a very long time, isn’t it? Imagine how long it’s been for God. Because God has been preparing for this moment since the beginning of time, waiting until just now for you to say, “yes.”

The Mother Superior’s question to the young man preparing for ordination is a good one for us to consider this morning as we prepare to renew our Baptisms.

“...imagine how long it’s been for God, waiting just now for you to say ‘yes’?”

Imagine how long God has waited for you to say yes.

To say yes, you are precious in God’s sight.

Yes, you are honored.

Yes you are loved.

To say yes, you are a child of God.

Yes, you are the beloved.

Yes, in you God is pleased.

Imagine how long God has waited for you to say yes.

Yes, because we are precious and honored by God,

Yes we will continue in the apostle’s teaching, in fellowship, in the

breaking of bread and in the prayer.

Yes, we will persevere in resisting evil

Yes, we will proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ

Yes, because we are beloved children of God,

Yes, we will seek and serve Christ in all persons,

Yes, we will love our neighbors as ourselves,

Yes, we will strive for justice and peace among all people, and

Yes, we will respect the dignity of every human being.

Baptisms aren’t just for the ones being Baptized.

Last week, Jesus was twelve years old, already about the work of God. Today, he is “about 30” when he steps into the river Jordan. Imagine how long God was waiting for him to say “yes.” Maybe today is the day…maybe today.

Jesus spent at least 18 years, if not 30, preparing to say yes. Then, when he does say yes, and gets in the river, he sees the skies open, the Spirit descend and knows his belovedness by God in his bones.

Now Jesus waits for us at the edge of the River. Wondering if we will join him. Wondering when we will join him. Maybe today is the day…maybe today.

How long have you been preparing to live this day as a beloved child of God?

Imagine how long it’s been for God. Because God has been preparing for this moment since the beginning of time, waiting until just now for you to say, “yes.”

AMEN.

*My gratitude to the Right Reverend Thomas J. Brown, Bishop of Maine, for his permission to use this illustration from his sermon given at the ordination of the Rev. Brett Johnson on Saturday, January 8, 2021. The soon-to-be ordinand depicted, and original teller of this story, was the Rev. Dr. Louis Weil.

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Christmas Eve, December 24, 2021

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Isaiah 9:2-4, 6-7; Luke 2:1-14

In the name of the One who meets all our hopes and fears tonight.
Merry Christmas, St. Paul’s!

I wonder if you, like me, come to this Christmas Eve with a strange mix of emotions. I am grateful that, this year, some of us can be in person for Christmas Eve. And I am sorry that we cannot yet all be.

I am filled with joy at the signs of tradition that remind me where I am and why we are here; the return of the great wreath, the poinsettias at the altar and our beautiful Nativity Set. And I am grieving the loss of care-free gatherings. I am missing the faces of those we have lost since the last time we were together for Christmas Eve.

And yet, most of all, I am filled with hope this night. A bit surprisingly, this year, this Christmas Eve, I find my heart being pulled toward what might lie ahead for each of us, for all of us. I am longing in the worst kind of way. Or maybe in the best kind of way.

Tonight, for you, is the Christmas you are celebrating a relic of the past, or is it a gateway to a future yet untold?

Some of you may have seen a recent post I made on social media about making a cheesecake.

Preparing to visit with my side of the family in RI, I set about making the cheesecake my mom would make each Christmas. The title on the recipe card is simply, “Grandma’s special cheesecake.”

I was surprised at how sad I became while making it. But following the directions and immersing myself in my mom’s characteristically beautiful handwriting, tears began to flow.

And then a moment of laughter. If you are a fan of the tv show that features the characters Moira, Johnny, Alexis and David Rose, the title of which doesn’t seem appropriate for a Christmas Eve sermon, you’ll know why the instruction to “fold in” an ingredient caused me to laugh.

As I thought about this moment with the cheesecake, I realized that it wasn’t just about missing my mom. It was about longing. It was about a desire to feel some of the things I felt whenever I would see that cheesecake set out on the buffet table.

I realized it was about a deep desire I have that my son will know the love I knew. It was a hope that some day, many, many, many years from now, I pray, that that love will grow in him and that he will be able to look around at his life, like I can at mine, and see it filled with people who love, not just him, but each other.

Those tears weren’t just about a bygone past, but a furiously hoped for future.

I think that’s what happens when Jesus meets us in our longings. They become suddenly possible hopes for a future where God’s dream for the world becomes the reality in which we will be living our everyday lives.

Everyone we meet in the story of Jesus’ birth are at a moment in which the achings of their hearts and the promises of God are met. The terrifying circumstances under which they are living become the very ingredients that make possible the birth of God-with-us.

The despair of the poor and outcast shepherd’s crack their hearts open to hear the promise that God has come to them, and their fear keeps them running right into the manger where Jesus lays, newly born and wriggling.

Those who were the first to know God in human form were not those who were comfortable with where their lives were.

They were those who were grieving for what was not, and who were aching at their soul’s core for what yet might be.

And they knew, though they had little reason believe it, that the child that had been born, had been born for them.

They heard, as they stared at the infant in the hay, the words of the prophet Isaiah that they had been taught to hold on to when the world got too uncertain, too harsh, too unknown.

“A child has been born for us, a son given to us.”

Well, my friends, a child has been born for us, too. This promise was not meant for just those people whose story we read in scripture. That promise was for us. For you. For me.

God longs to meet us in our longings. God is born for us that our fears of what is no longer or has never-been might be transformed into hope for what yet might be.

There are some who have no need of what Christmas is about. To them, the world is a place filled only with loss, devoid of potential.

There are others who, bless their hearts, know only hope.

The youngest among us will go to bed tonight dreaming only, I pray, of what might be waiting for them in the morning.
And most of us are somewhere in between.

Most of us come to this night carrying our own life’s worth of grief, of worry, of doubt and fear. And we hold on to the hope that still somehow dwells within us, speaking to us from the pages of scripture or a old recipe card of future we long to inhabit.

And that, my friends, is just where Christ is born. To you. This night.

All our fears. All our hopes. Met perfectly in a baby who will, if given the chance, change us that we might change the world.

AMEN

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NOTE: St. Paul’s, Brookline observes a seven week Advent. The readings remain the same. On this Sunday, the video stream was not working properly, so no video is available.

Proper 28/Advent 2 – Year B

Preached on November 14, 2021 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

1 Samuel; Hebrews 10:11-14 (15-18) 19-25; Mark 13:1-8

Every Advent season, hope is a word that gets thrown around a lot. It is a season of hope. It is a season of longing and expectation, which are really just other ways of saying it is a season in which we focus our attention not on what is, but what might be, when God’s dream for the world is known “on earth as it is in heaven.”

Because we are an Easter people, we are a people of hope. We know, theoretically at least, that how the world is, or how it seems, or what we are going through, these are but Good Fridays on the way to an empty tomb.

In the very worst of times, hope is the gift from God that allows us to get out of bed, put our feet on the floor and work another day on behalf of God’s dream.

The world can come at us with the worst it’s got to offer, but it cannot strip us of hope. And if we still have hope, we have everything we need.

As Saint Paul writes earlier in his letter to the Hebrews, “We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (Hebrews 6:19 NRSV).

Hope is our soul’s anchor, keeping us grounded in God’s love and grace while the boat in which we find ourselves is tossed about, seemingly out of our control.

None of this is to say that our hope is not tested and tried. Lord knows it is.

None of this is to say that we haven’t gone days, or weeks, or longer when it seemed the world had managed to rip the anchor of our soul from the ground and we wondered how much longer we could endure.

For many of us, for much of our lives, hope has been about a world that would be better than our current one, even as our current one was pretty good. In earlier days, the Hope expressed at Christmas was an idea that “others” might know justice, that the hungry “somewhere” would be fed, the thirsty in other parts of the world might drink, proverbial prisoners would be visited, the hypothetical lost would be hypothetically found and the proverbially “lowly” would be proverbially lifted up.

But not this year. This year, the hope that is set before us feels much closer to many more of us than it ever has before.

The pain and suffering of the world seems a lot less abstract. Isolation and fear are known by a great many more of us.

It seems as though I hear the phrase “I don’t know how much longer I can…” or “how much more can I take, can they take, can we take?” more than I ever have these past many months.

And yet, here we are. Here this morning, whether in person or online, because there is a hope in us that refuses to die. There is a hope within us that tells us, a lot of evidence to the contrary it seems, that the world can be different. And this hope tells us that, somehow, beyond our understanding or imagining, we might just have a role to play in changing the world.

We are here because hope is the anchor of our souls. You might not feel it, it might seem lost or out of reach but it is there.

And that Hope allows us to be, in the words of Dr. Catherine Meeks, “a half shade braver” than we thought we could be.

Whenever I am struggling with some part of my life of faith, I try to think of the teachers I have around me who might show me a way forward, or a new way of thinking about things.

I have a great many professors of hope in my life.

But it was meeting and working alongside the clinicians and patients in the Brain Tumor Clinic at Mass General and the Brigham that showed me the power of hope in the most powerful of ways.

Research and treatment has changed since I worked in the clinic, but a diagnosis of Glioblastoma Multiforme was a diagnosis that brought a hush to any room.

And yet, the hope that this diagnosis inspired, in the patients and in the doctors, in the nurses and clinicians who worked with them, would set me on my heels on a fairly regular basis.

Despite the studies and the often quoted five year survival rates, these doctors and their patients met each day with a hope that this would be the day when the cancer would be defeated, and for good. And this Hope seemed to make everyone just a half shade braver.

There were some hard days in those clinic rooms. Days when the hope for cure would become a hope for quality of life, or a hope for a day without pain, or a hope for a good death. But there always seemed to be room for hope as the walls seemed to be crumbling around them.

Sometimes, it is the very pieces of crumbled wall that become the foundation for the birth of a new hope.

Jesus and his friends are leaving the temple and they are, understandably, awe-struck by the beauty of the building in front of them. This beautiful structure was a physical triumph meant to stand as a symbol of God’s power and might. This re-built temple proved that God’s presence in the world could not be defeated.

But Jesus knew (or the writer of the Gospel knew, since it already had happened by the time Mark was written) that the temple would not stand. The beautiful structure around them would not last, but crumble. This would have been blasphemous to say out loud, practically proclaiming that God would be, could be defeated.

But Jesus knows that the hope that is in God, the love that is God, the peace that comes from God, none of that can be destroyed by a temple crumbling, or a war fought between nations, or an earthquake, or any other thing that might seem to indicate otherwise. Not even his own death on a cross.

But Jesus goes further. He says that these things that some would interpret as signs of God’s defeat would be, could be, the very “birthpangs” of God’s breaking into the world.

Maybe that’s the difference between those who can do the impossible and still hold out hope, and those who struggle to see any hope in the world at all.

Maybe those who know hope see things a bit differently. Maybe the hard things in the world that some might see as evidence that God is absent, the hopeful see as birthpangs, holding potential to birth God into the world.

When I think about the many hard parts of the last 18 months, I can think about them as evidence in the argument against a loving God, or I can think about them as birthpangs. Hard, excruciating pains on the wait to the birthing of God’s dream for the world, if we let them be.

Every challenging headline, every news report, every heart ache has the potential to be transformed from the last word on the subject to a birthpang on the way to God coming into the world if we meet it with hope, the anchor of our soul.

I wonder if anything in the world has ever changed for the better without a birth pang of one kind or another. But has God’s dream for the world ever been furthered by despair? Does anything have the possibility of changing if we don’t first see the signs all around us as the potential endings of the way things have always been so that the way they can be, might be, can have a chance in this world?

Signs of endings all around us. Birthpangs to the inbreaking of God, if we let hope be the anchor of our souls, and commit to being just a half shade braver, together.

AMEN.

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Proper 25 – Year B

Preached on October 24, 2021 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Jeremiah 31:7-9; Hebrews 7:23-28; Mark 10:46-52

“Precious Lord, take my hand. Lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, Precious Lord, lead me on.”

Bartimaeus is a saint for our time.

Jesus said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man said to him, “My teacher, let me see again.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your faith has made you well.” Immediately he regained his sight and followed him on the way.

And followed him on the way.

That’s where it gets tricky. Be careful what you wish for, Bartimaeus.

Following Jesus on the way, at this point in Mark’s Gospel, meant following Jesus into Jerusalem for his betrayal, his trial and his death on the cross. Things were about to get much worse before they get so much better.

I love the poetry in this story. At the start, it places Bartimaeus on the side lines “along the road” where Jesus and his followers were walking. At the end of the story, the same word for “way” is used to tell the listener that Bartimaeus now followed Jesus “on the way.”

Bartimaeus begins as an outsider, on the margins. He becomes a follower of Jesus. And in between, there is a healing.

I wonder if the healing isn’t really about a restoration of physical sight as much as it is a healing of restoration to wholeness, a restoration to community, a restoration to understanding that following Jesus means understanding things, “seeing” things, that had remain unseen, either by choice or by chance.

And I love that Jesus asks Bartimaeus what he wants him to do for him. Jesus does not assume what this person before needs, and make a decision for him. He asks Bartimaeus what he wants Jesus to do for him.

Bartimaeus does not ask Jesus for money, though he is a beggar. Bartimaeus is not content to simply continue the status quo, keeping him where he has been, on the sidelines. Alive, but not truly living.

Bartimaeus wants healing at his core. Though it would mean walking toward the cross, though it would mean watching Good Friday unfold before his newly healed eyes, Bartimaeus wants in, for it is better than remaining on the sidelines.

Be careful what you wish for Bartimaeus. For following Jesus on the way also leads to the empty tomb, and the promise of new life. In fact, through Good Friday is the only way to get there at all.

Bartimaeus is a saint for our time.

This time of pandemic, this time of racial reckoning, this time of awareness of the real danger that God’s creation is in — it has been a time when many who have had the privilege of not seeing, the privilege of sitting on the side of the road, the privilege of just maintaining the status quo day to day have had our eyes opened. We have had our sight restored without knowing we needed it. We have been healed. And it has been hard.

It has been a time when many have seen what they could not, or would not see before. It is a time when many have had their own “Come to Jesus” moment, whether they would call it that or not.

It is a time when, out of a longing for all the same things for which Bartimaeus longed, many have said “I want to see.” Lord, how we want to be healed.

What we have seen in this time, or what we have seen more clearly, it can feel a bit like walking with Jesus on the road to Jerusalem, with the cross coming into view on the horizon, and no sight of an empty tomb.

We have seen the broken-ness of our political system, or seen it again.

We have seen the wealth gap widen and income disparity grow.

We have seen the iniquities of race in this country.

We have seen the precipice upon which so many families exist, and how fragile the balance they knew really was.

We have seen the power of fear to divide.

We are tired, we are weak, we are worn.

And so we hear longings for things to “go back to normal,” the current version of “the good ol’ days.” But we know now, because we have seen, that the “normal” of before isn’t going to work, because it never did. And the good ol’ days weren’t so good for everyone.

At some point during Jesus’ final week, Bartimaeus had to wonder if he wasn’t better off back there, on the outskirts of Jericho, sitting in his usual spot, hand outstretched. And each day, each hour on his journey with Jesus, he had to make the decision to keep going.

He probably remembered his Jewish forebears who wondered in the desert if they weren’t better off as slaves back in Egypt. And he probably kept hearing Jesus ask what he wanted. And he kept choosing wholeness. He kept choosing healing. One step along the way at a time.

Wholeness and healing is everything God wants for us. But it isn’t easy. It is the only hope of new life, a life worthy of living, but it isn’t without hard struggle.

There are things I know now that I wish I didn’t have to know. There is pain and evil in the world I wish I didn’t have to see. But it is only because I know the things I know and have seen the things I have seen that I am at all able to lift a finger to change them.

It makes me think of people who hate going to the doctor, because they don’t want to know what the doctor might tell them. Of course not going doesn’t change what is happening in our bodies. It only changes our ability to do anything about it.

It is knowing the things I wish I didn’t and seeing the things I wish I hadn’t that compels me to reach my hand out on the side of the road of my life and say, “Jesus I want to be healed.” I want to be made whole. I want to live the life to which you call me. A full life, not an easy life. I do not want to sit on the sidelines refusing to see.

Jesus asks Bartimaeus “what do you want me to do for you?”

Can you imagine Jesus asking you the very same thing?

You, specifically. You, on the side of the road of your life, wanting more, wanting healing, wanting wholeness, wanting to live the life to which you are called, no matter how hard, or scary, how unknown it may be or how uncomfortable it might make you.

Can you hear Jesus say to you, “What do you want me to do for you?”

Can you hear your answer?

Can you see Jesus meet your outstretched hand with his own and invite you to follow him? Follow him to the Jerusalem that awaits, yes, but to the abundant life that waits on the other side?

Precious Lord, take our hands. Lead us on, let us stand. We are tired, We are weak, We are worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead us on to the light. Take our hands, Precious Lord, lead us on.”

AMEN.

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Proper 24 – Year B, The Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost -- Stewardship Kickoff Sunday

Preached on October 17, 2021 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Isaiah 53:4-12; Psalm 91:9-16; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45

How often do you get to build, or re-build a church? In this part of the world, in this part of the country, most of the churches we drive by date their cornerstones to the 19th, or 18th, or even the 17th centuries. The suburbs are sprinkled with some mid 20th century edifices, but few of us sitting in this room have been part of any laying of a cornerstone, defining the mission and architecture of a congregation from the ground up.

If we have been, or if we had been, a part of the discussions we would have had would have centered around what we understood to be “essential” in the church community we were building.

We would have considered what it was that was going to make-up the character, the ethos, the essential core of this new church of St. Paul’s in Brookline.

Some of you may remember a moment akin to this in St. Paul’s more recent past. When a fire destroyed the sanctuary in January of 1976 leaving only the exterior walls still standing, the gathered community, a church already in progress, needed to have many difficult and honest conversations about what it would mean to be St. Paul’s going forward, if they were going to go forward at all.

From the stories I have been told, everything was on the table. From that discernment, three things -- connection with the community, support of music and the arts, and outreach through a percentage of our income to work beyond those fire licked walls -- came to the center of St. Paul’s identity. These ideals became part of our newly adapted DNA and continue to guide our decisions and inform our mission to this day.

Of course, there have been more times in our history for adjustments, for reshaping and re-focusing. Each new rector called, each Capital Project completed, each new ministry began or ended has been an adjustment in how we have continued to be a “church already in progress,” trying to hold fast and build up what we have come to understand as essential in our life together.

But none of us were prepared for the foundation-shaking events of the past eighteen months. Few of us were praying to do church online before we were forced to. Even the introverts among us were not hoping there would be an extended time during which we could not gather together, could not shake hands at the peace, offer a hug to a friend at coffee hour, or share the cup at communion.

These past 18 months have forced us to consider, over and over again, what is essential to how we are being called to be God’s church in this world.

As we begin to gather again, we are wondering how to piece our community life back together. We are asking, once again, what is essential to being St. Paul’s? What is essential to being church in this time and place to which God has called us?

We did not shrink in this pandemic time. We adapted, and in some cases we grew. Our Racial Justice Ministry took on new shape and continues to ask new questions in our pursuit to create Beloved Community here and in the world. You will receive a letter from me in the next few days outlining the multitude of ways we have stretched, adapted, grown and challenged ourselves to meet the demands of this new day.

And we have grieved, and we are still grieving, and we will have more grieving to do as the toll this pandemic has taken on us begins to become more fully known.

Two of the members of this community who we lost during the pandemic were Ken and Maureen Carter. Ken and Maureen met each other in Sunday School here at St. Paul’s and spent the next seventy years in each other's lives.

Ken and Maureen were two of the many great pillars of this community. I used to love to hear them talk about the changes they had seen in their time in this space. How many times the liturgy changed, the “new prayer book” and rector after rector after rector.

And I can still hear Ken describing to me what it was like to stand across the street and watch the church they knew and loved burn to the ground before his eyes.

And they, with some of you present here this morning, took what was essential about St. Paul’s, brought it with you to the chapel that is now our Great Hall, and continued to be a church in progress while also asking hard questions about what St. Paul’s would be.

Thanks to Ken and Maureen, and the others of you who were a part of those conversations, we are here this morning. We are so different from the St. Paul’s of 1976 when the fire struck. And, yet, what was essential remains. What is essential endures. What is essential thrives.

So, here we are, in 2021, returning to a church many have not stepped in for almost two years. And we are wondering, what will be the same? What will remain? What needs to change? All of that is to ask, “what is essential?”

I have, over these past 18 months seen how St. Paul’s is essential in the lives of so many; both members of this worshiping community and beyond.

I have seen how the skills and talents you have offered to this community have been essential in our ability to continue to be church.

I know that your financial generosity in this time has been unwavering -- essential gifts to keeping the mission and ministry of St. Paul’s going and growing.

But, simply put, you are the essential gifts, each one of you. First time here this morning or if you pre-date the fire, you are an essential gift from God.

You are the essential gifts that St. Paul’s needs to grow more fully into who it is God is calling us to be, and to leave behind what no longer serves us in our pursuit of God’s dream for this world.

You are an essential gift, simply for being the beloved child of God that you are.

And your skills and interests and questions and hopes are essential gifts the church needs to do the work God gives us to do in this time.

And, frankly, your financial support of St. Paul’s is an essential gift.

Whatever the amount, every dollar you give to the work of this place, of our shared mission and ministry makes possible things we are incapable of doing on our own, it makes possible our transformation into being who we simply cannot become on our own. We do all of this with God’s help, and with each other’s.

I can’t tell you today how this pandemic will change St. Paul’s for the long haul. God’s time will show us that.

What I can tell you is that we have ambitious hopes and dreams for the possibilities this time might hold for us. We want to invest in our children and youth in innovative and exciting new ways, we want to continue to center our Racial Justice work both internally and as agents of justice in our community and the world.

I am excited and a bit overwhelmed by the possibilities that lay in front of us. And I know that none of it, not one bit, will be possible if we do not, in whatever way we can, to the fullest extent that we can, all offer our essential gifts to the shared purpose and work of being St. Paul’s, a community seeking to follow Christ, to love God and love one another, a church already in progress and yet somehow brand new and never before.

Your essential gifts are what is needed to become a brand new church already in progress.

Essential Gifts are what each of us have been given, and what each one of us has to offer in return.

An essential gift is what you are.

AMEN.

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That Sunday I preached a children’s message with a broken foot on the Sunday we were celebrating St. Francis (hence the barking)!

Proper 2 – Year B

Preached on October 3, 2021 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Mark 10:2-16

“Precious Lord, take my hand. Lead me on, let me stand. I am tired, I am weak, I am worn. Through the storm, through the night, lead me on to the light. Take my hand, Precious Lord, lead me on.”

Bartimaeus is a saint for our time.

And followed him on the way.

That’s where it gets tricky. Be careful what you wish for, Bartimaeus.

Bartimaeus begins as an outsider, on the margins. He becomes a follower of Jesus. And in between, there is a healing.

Be careful what you wish for Bartimaeus. For following Jesus on the way also leads to the empty tomb, and the promise of new life. In fact, through Good Friday is the only way to get there at all.

Bartimaeus is a saint for our time.

It has been a time when many have seen what they could not, or would not see before. It is a time when many have had their own “Come to Jesus” moment, whether they would call it that or not.

It is a time when, out of a longing for all the same things for which Bartimaeus longed, many have said “I want to see.” Lord, how we want to be healed.

We have seen the broken-ness of our political system, or seen it again.

We have seen the wealth gap widen and income disparity grow.

We have seen the iniquities of race in this country.

We have seen the precipice upon which so many families exist, and how fragile the balance they knew really was.

We have seen the power of fear to divide.

We are tired, we are weak, we are worn.

Wholeness and healing is everything God wants for us. But it isn’t easy. It is the only hope of new life, a life worthy of living, but it isn’t without hard struggle.

Jesus asks Bartimaeus “what do you want me to do for you?”

Can you imagine Jesus asking you the very same thing?

Can you hear Jesus say to you, “What do you want me to do for you?”

Can you hear your answer?

Can you see Jesus meet your outstretched hand with his own and invite you to follow him? Follow him to the Jerusalem that awaits, yes, but to the abundant life that waits on the other side?

AMEN.

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Proper 21 – Year B

Preached on September 26, 2021 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Numbers 11:4-6, 10-16, 24-29, James 5:13-20, Mark 9:38-50

A few weeks ago we heard the part of Mark’s gospel, a chapter earlier than this one, in which Jesus asks his disciples, “who do you say that I am?”

The question of identity as followers of Jesus; that is, “who is Jesus” and “who are we who follow the one called Christ?” continues through this morning’s reading from Mark.

Last week, Jesus addressed who ‘the greatest’ among them was, and who they are called to be as ones who welcome God by welcoming the least among them.

This week, the disciples’ identity crisis continues. They want to stop a group of people from healing in Jesus’ name because the ones doing the healing weren’t part of their group.

It’s hard to imagine that the disciples couldn’t figure out what Jesus would say in return, given the last two or three exchanges they’ve had with him, but they complain anyway. And Jesus responds quite predictably. Basically he says, “Look, they’re doing the work, aren’t they? That’s what matters. What’s the problem?”

The reason we get so many questions of identity in Mark’s gospel is because the community to which Mark was writing was having their own struggles with identity. These new, small groups of Jesus followers were trying to figure out what it meant to be a part of that group. And as differences between groups began to appear, the very human instinct to try to discern which group was “right” began to emerge as well.

So Mark, using Jesus’ teaching, tells the early church, “Stop fighting over who is better. Just do the work.”

Jesus continues with his warning that his followers ought not to be stumbling blocks for anyone desiring a relationship with him.

It would be better, for someone who gets in the way of another’s relationship with God to have a millstone tied around their neck and be tossed into the sea. Not one of Jesus’ more subtle images.

Jesus’ harsh warning caused me to ask myself, “how might I be a stumbling block to anyone who longs for a relationship with God? How might I get in the way?”

Of course, as a leader in the the institutional church, I know that the church itself has been a stumbling block. When the church has erred on the side of power, or greed, or fear, the church has caused many to stumble. And in many places, I know it still does, and it needs to repent. It is a human institution, and as long as it is run by humans who seek after power and greed or use fear as their guide, it will continue to fall short of the church God calls us to be.

But I wonder about how I, as an individual, can be tempted by those same things. How does fear, or greed, or a longing for power find a home in my heart? And how does it all find its way into my words and my deeds? What stumbling blocks have I thrown on the path of another?

It can be easy, as a more progressive congregation in a more progressive denomination in a more progressive part of the country, to assume we are without stumbling blocks. Let’s remember, though, that women have only been ordained in this church for 45 years. They have only been bishops in this church for just over 30. Women clergy earn less than their male counterparts and hold fewer leadership positions at the parish and diocesan levels. Though Gene Robinson was elected the first openly gay bishop in 2003, today there are only three openly gay diocesan bishops in the Episcopal Church, out of over 110.

And we are only just beginning to uncover and tell the truth of the church’s historic and current role in the oppression our siblings in Christ who are black, indigenous, Asian, and Latino/a.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but when my portrait joins those of the previous 13 rectors of St Paul’s Brookline lining the hallway, mine will be the 13th picture of a white male.

So, yes, there is work to do in the church.

And, yes, there are many stumbling blocks we as a parish, as a diocese and as a denomination are actively working to dismantle. And much of this work involves teaching people who God is not. God does not hate Gay people. God is not male. God is not white. God is not..

We are well versed in the “God is not” conversation, helping us to unlearn old stumbling blocks.

But I do wonder if I have been as clear with those who might seek a relationship with God about Who or What God IS as much as who or what God is not?

Are there stumbling blocks I create that are “stumbling blocks of omission”?

This week I saw a post on Facebook that referenced studies that reportedly say that the number of young people who profess to believe in God is the lowest they have ever been.

Now, I usually don’t engage with these kinds of click-baiting posts that don’t cite the research they are referencing, or clarify their terms. What do they mean by “believe in God?” What were the terms used? Maybe I don’t believe in that image of God, either.

But then I saw a comment from a college friend of mine suggesting that young people don’t believe in God anymore because they've come to realize the church is a force of oppression and they don’t believe in all that nonsense.”

Okay. Ouch.

Now, I know better than to try to engage in these kinds of conversations on Social Media.

I write sermons instead.

Reflecting on that post and my friend’s response, I wondered if young people say they don’t believe because they are clear about who God isn’t, but not so sure who God is.

Are they clear on what Christianity shouldn’t be a bit fuzzy on what being a part of a community who follows Jesus can be? Ought to be?

Are we as clear about who we are as a church and what we stand for as much as we are who we are not and what we reject?

Who are we? Who do we say that we are?

I can hear Jesus say, “do the work.”

That’s what James is saying in his letter. “Do the work.”

The suffering should pray.

The cheerful should sing songs of praise.

The sick should call on the community for healing.

We should confess our sins, not in the privacy of a confessional booth, but to one another, removing isolation and shame and building trust and growing in mutual love.

We should pray for one another. Whatever prayer looks like for you. Pray for me. And I’ll pray for you.

This is who we are, who we ought to be, who we can be.

What do you need in order to finish the sentence God is….? Jesus is…? The church is…?

Jesus doesn’t love us for who we aren’t, but for who we are.

Let’s do the work. And return God the favor.

AMEN.

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Proper 20 – Year B

Preached on September 19, 2021 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Jeremiah 11:18-20; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37

Our parish mission statement is “To be a place in this world where all can experience the fullness of Christ's love and learn to follow the Two Great Commandments: to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our strength; and to love our neighbor as ourselves.”

Most of us are clear on the love our neighbor as ourselves part. There are no shortage of opportunities at, and through, St. Paul’s to enact our love of our neighbors. Both within these walls and in the world, love of neighbor is a catalyzing energy of this shared community.

But what about loving God with all our heart, and with all our soul, and with all our strength?

How do we love God, apart from the ways we love God by loving each other?

What does it even mean to love God? How do we show it? How do we teach it?

Expressing our love of and for God can be tricky terrain for many of us. Our relationship with God might, at best, be like a child to a parent. It’s there, in the air, assumed but rarely expressed.

There is a reason many cards for Mothers’ and Fathers’ day, but also for anniversaries contain the words, “I know I don’t say it enough, but…”

Those same words might be a fitting start to my prayers.

Maybe we don’t know what loving God is supposed to sound like. Or maybe, particularly in this part of the world, expressing our love of God makes us squeamish.

I don’t know if God is a jealous God, or a needy God, or that God needs me to articulate my love for God when I know that God knows the contents of my heart.

So maybe loving God isn’t for God. Maybe loving God intentionally is for us.

We want to control and manage our relationship with God, but God is seldom controlled or managed. So when we work to keep God in a box, we end up only knowing and seeing the parts of God that remain in the box where we try to keep God contained, and there’s seldom much of God in those kinds of places.

Today’s Gospel story reminds me of a poster many of us had up in our Sunday School rooms as children. Jesus, in the middle of a crowd, with a child on his lap.

It is a sweet image.

But Jesus’ action of taking a child from the crowd, putting them on his lap and saying “this is what it looks like to be the greatest, this is what it looks like to be in relationship with and to love God,” that was anything but sweet. It was downright subversive.

After an argument on the road about who among them is the greatest, Jesus uses a child to illustrate what greatness really looks like.

Jesus reaches past the faithful disciples. He reaches beyond the men and the women. He finds the one in the crowd that would have been at the very bottom of the social hierarchy.

So Jesus teaches them, and us, that if we want to see what God looks like, look for the least likely among us; the outcast, the downtrodden. There, in the “least among us,” we will see the face of Christ. And by welcoming and loving and serving them, we will welcome and love and serve God.

But Jesus also shows his disciples what it looks like to love God directly. Loving God is like holding a child on our laps.

Last week, we had lots of children back in the service, and it was glorious. They were adorable. And they were restless. They were curious, and they were verbal about it. They had to be nursed when they were hungry and taken to the bathroom when, well, they had to go to the bathroom.

And as much as the rest of the community sent over smiles of love and understanding, I couldn’t help but feel for those parents who were trying desperately to have an experience of church while dodging meltdowns and spit-up.

And I watched, as these same parents let the squirmy ones crawl up in their laps, as they picked the tired ones up and let them rest a head on their shoulders. I saw as they looked down at these children demanding every ounce of patience they had, smile, and say “I love you.”

And the child, looking at their parent, the center of their whole world, says “I love you too.”

And I thought, isn’t loving God a bit like that?

God is unpredictable; sometimes downright squirmy. God can ask things of us we feel completely unprepared to offer. God can bring us places we’d never thought we’d go. God can fight with us as we attempt to wrestle God into the childseat. (I’m just guessing here.) God can bring us to our knees, unsure of what it is God wants from us and just wishing God could use God’s words and tell us.

God looks at us, the center of God’s world and waits for the smile. God longs for the “yes, I’ll watch you do that thing for the hundredth time as if it were the first,” and then give us the sunrise. again.

God drags us to the hockey rink for a 7am practice, or the recorder recital. God wants one thing from us today and tomorrow demands something completely different.

The disciples and followers in the crowd had an image of God and of the Messiah, of the who the greatest would be that was based on power over. It was about control and order.

Jesus shows his followers how to love God, and what loving God is like. Jesus takes a child into his lap and says that to love God is to welcome the least among us.

But he also shows that loving God is like loving that same child.

Jesus invites us to transform our relationships with God; to let go of the idea of God that is confined to a predictable, rational, controllable box that needs nothing from us. And Jesus invites us to imagine God like a child on our lap. There will be squirming, there may be frustration, and there may even be a little spit up.

And at the end of the day, Jesus invites us to let God know how we feel. “Wow, Good job on that fall foliage God.” “Thanks for doing what I asked you to do, God, it really helped.” Jesus asks us to look God right in the eyes, and say “I love you, God. I hope you know that, even though I don’t say it enough.”

For what God wants more than anything is to look right back at you, the center of God’s world, with a smile and say, “I love you, too.”

AMEN.

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Easter Six– Year B

Preached on May 9, 2021 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Acts 10:44-48; Psalm 98; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17

This morning is my last Sunday with you before I leave for an extended time away. Part sabbatical and part vacation, I will leave on Thursday for three months, returning on Monday, August 16th.

Many of you have expressed your wishes to me that this time be what it is God wants it to be. That is my prayer, too. I hope I am open to what it is God has in store to show me, teach me, and feed me in the wilderness of stepping outside of the tasks and routines in which I can lose myself and that can come to define me, if I’m not careful.

I pray that I will return to you grounded, once again, in the love of God as made manifest in Jesus; centered in the love Jesus prays that each one of us will come to know. I ask you for your prayers during this time. They will sustain me, and I will need them.

Some of you have told me that you are jealous of me. I completely understand. What a privilege it is to work in an institution that understands and honors the need for sabbath rest, for the sake of the health not only of the individuals, but for the health of the communities and institutions they serve. I wish each of you had this gift in your own life and vocation. Alas, we live in a culture in which earned vacation time remains unused and working while sick is rewarded.

When my dad retired, his last day at work was almost two and a half years, I believe, before he actually retired, finally using the time he had accumulated. My dad was very proud of his attendance record. Given how little time he had to live after retirement, though, I wish he would have enjoyed it more as it came to him.

Some of you have let me know how glad you are I am taking my sabbatical time now and you’ve added, very lovingly, how much you believe I deserve it.

Per my earlier comments, I think we all deserve it. Especially after the heart breaking and emotionally draining experience of the past 15 months.

And I pray you will find whatever time you can to grieve what you need to grieve, heal what needs healing and renew and re-create yourself.

Taking sabbath is a commandment. And following God’s commandments is, Jesus tells us, how it is we are to love God. Show your love for God. Take a day off just to be with God, if you can. If that thought terrifies you, you probably need it more than you think.

And you deserve it. Not because of what you do, but because of who you are -- a child of God.

We get so caught up in notions of deserving and worthiness. Without even thinking, we apply this economy to everything from time off to tragedy or illness. “She didn’t deserve that diagnosis.” Who does?

This very human way of thinking about receiving what we deserve and deserving what we receive stands at odds with God’s economy. In God’s economy, we are not given what we deserve, we are not given what we are worthy of receiving and we are not given what we have earned. In God’s economy, we are given simply what we have been promised. We are given freely what God gives us not because of what we do, or don’t do, but simply because of who we are.

Many of us take issue with the language in our liturgy in which we talk about being unworthy. “We your unworthy servants” the General Thanksgiving begins. “We are not worthy to gather up the crumbs under your table,” the Prayer of Humble access proclaims. These prayers fall out of favor with us because we misunderstand what is meant by our unworthiness.

We say we are unworthy of God’ love and grace not because we are bad, but because our worth has nothing to do with it. And I, for one, am grateful beyond measure that that’s how God rolls.

Unconditional love is just that. It comes to us without conditions. And God asks us to share it in the very same way.

We have a hard time trusting that which isn’t earned. We joke about participation ribbons as though showing up isn’t worth celebrating.

The entertainment industry has more awards shows than actual programming it seems. Many of us can tell recite off the top of our head what years the Red Sox won the World Series.

Worthiness and winning is our currency. But not God’s. For God, belovedness is the only currency that matters. And no one of us is more or less beloved before God than anyone else.

This means that if you think you have earned God’s love for you, you are mistaken. It was poured on you without any regard to your accomplishments.

It also means that if you believe that God couldn’t possibly love you, delight in you, treasure you, you, also, are mistaken.

That God loves us equally and abundantly is made perfectly clear in scripture. There is nothing we can do, or say, or be to earn more or less of it.

How much we shower God with our love in return is a different question. How much we love God back is entirely up to us. And it all has to do with how much we love one another.

God loves us first. We must decide how it is we will love God back.

Is our love for another earned or given freely? Does it depend on who they are, what they’ve done or haven’t done or is it the unconditional, abundant and sacrificial love to which God calls us, the love which Jesus models for us, and shares with us?

We did not choose God, Jesus tells us. God chose us. No matter where we are in our journey with or toward God, we have been chosen by God for love. There is nothing we can do about that.

The only thing in our control is how we will respond to being chosen.

Know yourself to be loved by God.

Love one another as God loves you.

Go ahead. You deserve it.

AMEN.1

1 While all direct and indirect quotes are always cited, there are sources I read regularly in preparation for sermon writing. Chances are thoughts have been spurred by these sources and so I list the usual suspects here: David Lose, In the Meantime, The New Interpreters Bible, Sacra Pagina

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Easter Four – Year B

Preached on April 25, 2021 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Acts 4:5-12; Psalm 23; 1 John 3:16-24; John 10:11-18

“How do you know if something is ‘of God’?”

This was the question one of the members of my discernment committee asked me when I was in the ordination process.

We often say we are working to do God’s work in the world, but how do we know that what we are doing is, in fact God’s work? How do we know it is not the work of our own self interests slapped with the “God’s Work” stamp of approval, like the “certified organic” label at the grocery store?

Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, is now famous for his pithy litmus test in this regard. He says simply, “if it ain’t about love, it ain't about God.”

This makes good sense, and it feels right, as we know that God is love itself.

But what if my understanding of love includes sending someone I claim to love to reparative therapy to “pray the gay away?” If I do something out of my love for them, regardless of how it affects them, does the fact that I am doing it out of love mean it is of God?

How do we know something is “of God” if we do not all agree on what it is God desires for the world God has made?

In today’s reading from John’s Gospel, Jesus isn’t only offering a picture of himself, of God, as simply any shepherd.

He is the Good Shepherd, he tells us. And he is setting himself apart from others who neglect and abuse their role as a shepherd of their sheep.

The thief is a shepherd, too, inasmuch as the thief leads the sheep where the thief wants.

The hired hand is a shepherd, insofar as the hired hand feeds the sheep when they are hungry, checks the gate to make sure it is secure and watches out for thieves.

Jesus’ characterization of himself as the Good Shepherd is meant to be heard not by itself, but over and against the other images of the thief and the hired hand.

Jesus is trying to help the crowd discern how it is they might know whether someone, or something, is of God.

How do you know something or someone is of God?

God is not the thief. God is not the hired hand. God is not simply a shepherd, any shepherd. God is the Good Shepherd.

The Good Shepherd, we are told, lays down their life for their sheep. Elsewhere we hear that the Good shepherd leaves the 99 and goes after the 1. The Good Shepherd rescues the sheep from the ditch, even if it means breaking the rules and doing it on the sabbath.

Tragically, far too many have grown up being taught of a God who is more thief than Good Shepherd. Too many have learned of a God who seeks not abundant life for them, but to steal them of themselves, to rob them of the very life God has given them to live.

Others have known an image of God that is closer to the hired hand than the Good Shepherd. This is a God whose love is conditional. A love that is shown only when things are easy, when we are compliant, when we do not stray, or doubt, or struggle or sin. This is a God who is noticeably absent just when a shepherd is needed the most.

The church is not immune from being the thief, or the hired hand. In fact, if your experience of God has been anything other than that of the Good Shepherd, it is because a church taught you that kind of God was possible.

Anytime the church has been on the wrong side of God’s dream, as it has been more often than it cares to admit, it has betrayed its calling to be a Good Shepherd for the people who entrust it with their spiritual lives.

And the church isn’t alone in this.

Our lives are filled with thieves, hired hands, and Good Shepherds.

Has anyone ever made you feel less than? Has anyone ever made you feel diminished, ashamed, unable to live your truth fully and with love and joy? You have known a thief.

Has anyone ever left you feeling used, exposed and abandoned when your presence no longer served their purposes? Has a friendship or relationship fallen away when it was no longer convenient for the other person? Then you have known a hired hand.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus gives us not just an image for himself as one who would physically lay down his life so those he loved might be free from the power of death; he gives us a litmus test for how we are to know whether a friend is of God, if a relationship is of God, if a church is of God, if our very understanding of God is, in fact of God.

How do we know if something or someone is of God? They are the Good Shepherd.

Their love for us is greater than their love of their own status or power or greed.

Our experience of being in relationship with them, whether an individual, a community, an institution or even with God, leaves us feeling as though we have been in the presence not of a thief, or even a hired hand. Not just any shepherd, but with the Good Shepherd of which Jesus himself serves as a human and a divine example.

How do we know something is of God? How do we know what it means to be in relationship with a Good Shepherd and not a hired hand or a thief?

When Jesus offers himself as the Good Shepherd, he draws on the example given to him and his followers, and to us, in the stunning imagery of the 23rd Psalm.

How do we know something or someone is of God? We might use the 23rd Psalm as our guide. We might use it to ask ourselves if the relationship we are in, the institution of which we are a part, and especially the God that is being taught to us, meets the Good Shepherd standard Psalm 23 illustrates, and Jesus embodies.

Do they leave you feeling like you have everything you need to be the person God made you to be?

Do you feel as though they are leading you to rest as in green pastures and sit beside waters that are still?

Do they revive your soul?

Are they with you through it all? Are you more able to face life’s greatest challenges because they are there with you in it?

Do they shower you with abundant love, no matter what others think of you?

Do you feel your soul replenished and revived until it spills out, overflowing, of your heart?

That’s what the psalmist tells us being in relationship with God feels like.

That’s what Jesus tells us we should expect from any relationship that claims to be “of God.”

That is what love, that is the Love of God, looks like.

Or, to put it another way:

If it ain’t Good Shepherd love, it ain’t God love.

The Lord is my shepherd. And my cup runneth over.

AMEN.1

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Easter Two – Year B

Preached on April 11, 2021 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA
Acts 4:32-35, Psalm 133, 1 John 1:1 - 2:2, John 20:19-31

I am tempted to say that there are two kinds of people in the church; doubters and liars, but I know that’s a false dichotomy. But doubting is certainly part of my experience, and it has been the experience of every single person of faith I have known; friends, clergy colleagues, bishops. Even Jesus on the cross wonders why he has been forsaken.

I know doubt to be an integral part of my faith. Without allowing for doubt, we rely only on facts, and who has facts when it comes to matters of the Divine? We are called to lives of faith, not lives of fact. As a person of faith, I am in pursuit not of facts, but of truths. I believe that the entirety of scripture is True, capital T. And some of it is also fact.

Our idolatry of certainty and intolerance of doubt leaves many of us feeling as though we are living only partly true lives of faith.

It makes us wonder if we “believe enough” or if we are imposters, faking our way through our relationship with God.

Quite contrary to a cautionary tale, I hold Thomas up as an example of what it takes to know the reality of the resurrection, what it truly means to be in a relationship with the Risen Christ.

Thomas doesn’t ask for anything the other disciples didn’t get. Thomas is no less longing to know the risen Christ than they were, he is not flawed, he does not have a deficit of willingness to believe. He just isn’t convinced that the absence of Jesus’ body proves that Christ is alive.

He doesn’t ask to see the empty tomb. He doesn’t say he will believe when he sees Jesus ascending into the clouds crowned in glory and accompanied by a chorus of angels singing Alleluia!

He wants to see the wounds. He wants to see the body of Christ bearing the marks of what the world did to the embodiment of God’s love in this world.

Thomas tells his friends who claim to have seen the risen Christ, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

And, lest we have forgotten, just four verses earlier, the author of John’s Gospel tells us that when Jesus was with the rest of the disciples a week before, he “showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.”

The 11 disciples see the wounds in the body of Christ and they believe. Thomas sees the wounds and believes, but he is the doubter? Notice he does not touch the wound. He does not put his hand in Jesus’ side. He, like the others, sees the wounds in the body of Christ, and he believes.

I’m sure the point of making Thomas the doubter was to encourage those who would come generations after the events in this Gospel to trust the testimony of those who have come before, those who were there, those whose Gospel story is being shared.

That Jesus says that those who believe without seeing are “blessed” is not saying that they are “better,” though we have come to understand being blessed as being better. It simply means they have reason to be “happy.” Happy are those who trust in this testimony, and who haven’t seen for themselves.

Now, that I believe. I have my whole life been envious of those whose faith and trust in God appears effortless, for that has not been my experience at all.

I, like Thomas, and like all those gathered in that upper room, I have needed to see the risen Christ myself. Most importantly, I have needed to see the wounds and the wounds have shown me the risen Christ.

I haven’t known a lot of empty tombs in my life. Like most of you, I have come face to face with the broken body of Christ more than I have the Christ robed in royal majesty standing triumphant with his foot on the grave.

And it has been in those moments when the Body of Christ has gotten my attention by showing me where it has been broken, that I have been able to see that the wound on which I am focused actually belongs to a Body of Christ that is not vanquished, not defeated, not dead, but alive.

I see the evidence of the worst things the world can do first, and then I come to see the glory of the power of love and life that is bigger than the wound on which I am currently focused.

I have been one of those who are blessed, but not because I believe without seeing, but because I have been privileged to see in order that I might believe.

Families grieving have shown me the love that continues to live on.

Young people coming out show me the love that gives them strength and courage to be who it is God has made them to be.

Confronting our need for racial equity in this country has shown me the love that cries out for justice for the whole Body of Christ.

The poor indigenous women of rural Guatemala have shown me the love that keeps them going in the face of unimaginable obstacles.

The line at the Food Pantry that now stretches down the block points to the love of those who fight obstacle after obstacle to provide for their family, and the love of those who work tirelessly to feed their neighbors.

Those struggling with addiction have shown me a love that reminds me there is always the possibility of new life.

The wounds in the body of Christ have shown me the power of the resurrection.

It has not been the absence of life’s scars -- empty tombs of radiant light -- that have drawn me to the heart of God, but the wounds, the scars, the evidence of the worst life can bring that has consistently brought me to my knees and shown me the risen Body of Christ before my eyes.

I am blessed. Because throughout my life, like Thomas, Jesus has called to me, over and over again, inviting me to see his punctured hands. To reach out my hand and see the gash in his side that the world put there.

And sometimes, I have been lucky enough to get a glimpse of the resurrected body of Christ of which that punctured hand or torn side is a part; and I have been set on my heels with only “my Lord and my God” on my lips.

It is interesting, isn’t it, that Thomas asks to see the marks of the nails and the wound in Jesus' side in the first place? No one tells Thomas that’s how Jesus appeared.

Thomas knew that the true resurrected body of Christ would bear the wounds. It had to have scars. Thomas knew that the Spirit of the risen Christ would enter our lives through our own broken places, through our wounds and our gashes, the places where we, as the Body of Christ in this world, have been broken open.

He doesn’t expect to see Christ risen with the proof of his crucifixion erased. Thomas knows that the power of the resurrection isn’t that it erases or pretends that the breaking open didn’t happen. It’s that the breaking open didn’t win. The wounds don’t testify to the power of death, but to the power of God, the power of love and life to overcome death.

Thomas sees the wounds, not the empty tomb, and he believes.

My Lord and my God!

AMEN.1

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Genesis 50:15-21; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

Proper 19 – Year A , September 13, 2020, Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Genesis 50:15-21; Romans 14:1-12; Matthew 18:21-35

Archbishop Desmond Tutu says, “Those who say forgiving is a sign of weakness haven’t tried it.”

Forgiveness is a tricky topic in the church. Much like “sin” or “salvation” or even “kingdom of heaven” (also featured in today’s gospel), the concept of forgiveness requires a bit of unpacking before we can proceed with any possible application for our own lives.

For many of you, the word “forgiveness” brings up impossible standards, such as Joseph forgiving his brothers after they plotted his death, as we heard in our reading from Genesis this morning, or Jesus on the cross speaking the unimaginable “forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”

For some, the call to forgive feels deeply wrong, because there are people, groups of people, and institutions who have hurt you deeply, betrayed you, or abused you, and the expectation that you would forgive your perpetrator feels like just one more abuse on top of all the others.

Everytime I preach this Gospel, or talk about forgiveness, I try to be very intentional to draw the distinction between forgiveness and condoning, between forgiving and forgetting, between forgiving and denying the truth.

In our current national context, I wondered how communities of color might hear a Word about forgiveness.

The anger and built up frustration with our country’s historic unwillingness to address the violence perpetrated upon communities of color is pushed back upon, tamped down and even the nonviolent protest is booed in football stadiums.

Violence on property is vehemently condemned while the violence on black and brown bodies continues to be tolerated, rationalized and explained away.

How much like the first servant in today’s Gospel is the white supremist culture in our country; others must forgive us for our negligence, while we refuse to forgive the response our 400 years of negligence incites.

We elevate grand, miraculous acts of forgiveness. Like Joseph with his brothers and Jesus on the cross, we remember the Amish who forgave in the wake of a mass shooting. We remember the relatives of those killed at Charleston’s Emanuel AME church forgiving the one who killed them while at bible study.

I think these stories make the news and attract our imagination because of how impossible they sound to us, were we the ones in the position to forgive. But it also creates a dangerous narrative that grace-filled forgiveness is the only appropriate response to being wronged. Anything else is less than Christian, sinful even. We, as a society, ask “Why can’t you be more like those nice victims of hatred, and forgive? If they can do it, why can’t you? Why can’t they? Why can’t I”

And that false dichotomy prevents far too many of us from exploring the possibility of practicing forgiveness in our own lives. Forgiveness, as it is taught to us, is unattainable, it is impossible, or it appears to condone the transgression, or dishonor the pain and the loss we have experienced.

But that’s not the forgiveness to which we are called. That is not the forgiveness Jesus is talking to Peter about and it is not the forgiveness that Jesus himself practiced in his own life.

This conversation with Peter comes just after last week’s instructions on how to be in disagreement and remain in relationship.

How many times will I need to forgive the ones I love?

Over and over and over and over again.

Forgiveness is not a “one and done” event. It isn’t, in our everyday lives, like the climactic moment of a Hallmark movie or reality show. Forgiveness is a practice, it is a way of life for those of us who want to taste a bit of the world as God imagines it for us.

Forgiveness isn’t really about the other person, at all. It is about freeing us from the hold the other person holds on us. Forgiveness can be practiced completely separately from apology or even acknowledgment. Forgiveness can be practiced without the perpetrator ever even knowing it. We can forgive even those who are no longer alive to hear our words of forgiveness.

Elsewhere in scripture, Jesus tells his followers to “shake the dust off their feet” should they encounter a town who does not want what they are trying to offer.

Shaking the dust meant not carrying the weight of one town into the next. It meant to start fresh, free from the burden of old hurts and past transgressions.

Forgiveness is about freedom, but it is about the forgiver’s freedom, not the forgiven’s.

Forgiveness is the best way to understand the mercy that God shows us, the forgiveness we receive constantly from the one who made us and loves us enough to forgive us over and over and over again.

In today’s parable, the fact that the first servant ends up in eternal torment isn’t supposed to be teaching us about the character of the God of Love. Ours is not a God that longs to torment us for our inability to show the same kind of grace to others that God shows us.

The eternal torment comes from the servant's unwillingness to forgive the other servant. Without giving forgiveness, the servant can never know the kind of forgiveness they have been given. And their life is so much the worse because of it.

Attributed to many, but thought to come out of AA, there is a great truth that says “withholding forgiveness is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”

Notice that, at the beginning of the parable, Jesus says, “the kingdom of heaven is like.” What he means there is not about what happens to us when we die, and what we need to get to the “Good place.” What he means is that to experience the reality of God in our lives, here and now, this is how it works.

Withholding forgiveness means never really knowing how forgiven we are.

Forgiving isn’t about condoning, or accepting, or subjecting ourselves to repeated transgressions. Practicing forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves, not to earn God’s forgiveness, but to feel the enormous grace and mercy of the forgiveness we have already been given.

You are loved. You are free. You are forgiven. Who might you need to forgive to know just how loved, how free and how forgiven you are?

AMEN.

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Proper 16 – Year A Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

Isaiah 51:1—6; Romans 12:1—8; Matthew 16:13—20

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Proper 7 – Year A

Preached on June 21, 2020 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

Jeremiah 20:-13, Romans 6:1b-11, Matthew 10:24-39

One week after George Floyd’s death, I posted something on my Facebook page about an action I was taking in support of racial justice.

A childhood friend commented on my feed. “Enough!,” he wrote. At first, I thought he was expressing his frustration at the centuries old systemic racism that exists in this country. But his frustration was with me, and with those who were still talking about race a whole week after George Floyd was killed. One week in, and he had had enough. It was time to move on.

If only the past three weeks were enough to have “fixed” the systemic racism that has plagued this country for 400 years. If only the books I have read, the videos I have watched and the rallies I have attended since May 25 were all it was going to take.

How I wish I was sitting before you this morning with systemic racism and the COVID-19 pandemic in the rear-view mirror. I pray for the day when this time in our history becomes a cautionary history lesson. “Remember when there was income disparity between white people and black people in this country? Remember when the average life span on Beacon Hill was thirty years longer than the average life expectancy in Roxbury? But that isn’t history. It is present lived reality for to many.

It’s now been four weeks since George Floyd’s death, and as hard as it is for some to believe, we haven’t fixed the problem.

It has been 56 years since the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and we haven’t yet fixed the problem.

It’s been 155 years since the word reached Texas that slavery had ended two and a half years prior to them hearing the news. And we haven’t yet fixed the problem.

It has been 401 years since the first group of enslaved Africans hit the shores of what would become the United States. And we have yet to recover from that voyage and the legacy it would unleash in this country.

Maybe you tuned in this morning to hear something new, something different, a sermon about something other than this uprising we are living through or this pandemic we are finding our way through.

But tuning out, turning off, or turning away is a privilege only some of us have. Wanting to keep politics out of polite conversation is a privilege only some of us have. Wanting to hear the “nice stories” from scripture that remind us of our belovedness before God, but without the work that belovedness calls us to is a privilege and it is a distortion of Jesus’ message.

If Jesus had lived to make everybody feel better about themselves, he probably wouldn’t have been nailed to a cross for teaching that in the temples. But he didn’t want to make people happy. He wanted to set people free.

As I reel from the almost constant uncovering of injustices, and as I fight feeling overwhelmed at how much I have to learn, as I live in fear of saying the wrong thing or not doing the right thing, and as I worry about who I am offending, or upsetting or what relationships are being strained under the weight of truth telling, I open my bible and I find Jesus.

I find Jesus sitting with his disciples and as I read this passage from Matthew I see Jesus turn to me and say, “I hate to say I told you so, but, well, I did.”

There, in the 10th chapter of Matthew, Jesus is telling his disciples what they might expect their lives to look like, to be like, if they make following him their highest priority.

If they think that they are going to go into their neighborhood, or their church, or their family dinner table and start talking about a vision of the kingdom of God here on earth; a vision in which teachers and students are equal before God; a vision where slaves and masters are worth the same before God; if they think they can start talking like this and everyone is just going to fall in line, and nod in agreement they had better think again.

If they want to follow Jesus, if they want to put God first in their lives, things are going to get hard, and they are going to stay hard until the dream of God is brought to its full and complete reality.

Jesus knows that fear is the greatest threat to building the Kingdom of God. The cross wasn’t just meant to kill. It was meant to terrorize followers from continuing the work.

Jesus prepares them in a brutally honest appraisal of what awaits them should they continue the work.

Rejection. Humiliation. Suppression. Conflict.

These were the forces at work in Jesus’ day. And they are still the forces at work today.

What will people think? What will people say? How will I be treated? What might I lose? Why can’t we just agree to disagree?

Jesus tells his followers they will be ridiculed and made to feel worthless. But, remember, God loves the sparrow, sold for half a penny each at market.

How much more does God love you? Is God’s love enough?

The chants in the street remind us that without justice, there is no peace. As William Allen White famously wrote, “Peace without justice is tyranny.”

Jesus’ message was a direct threat to the Pax Romana. Here, Jesus clarifies that the peace of tyranny is not the peace he was bringing to the world. The Peace of Christ is the Spirit of the living God, meant to restore all the world to the creation God intended it to be.

Working for that peace would bring a sword of division that would split families in two. And it still does.

Jesus finishes with letting his disciples know right up front that, in order for the work of God’s justice and God’s peace to get done, loving God above all else would have to come first. Following God would have to come first. God above pride. God above the perceived ease of the status quo. God above fear.

To do this work, we must choose as our sustenance God’s love for us, not the world’s approval of us.

When we have a choice between keeping things easy and picking up the cross, we must pick up the cross.

Whenever we have the option of keeping our lives the way they are, and laying them down, we must be ready to lay our lives down in order to live the lives God longs for us to live.

There is no shortcut to the dream of God that does not involve the sword of division, the cross of oppression and the loss of our lives as we’ve known them.

But we must also remember that, when we do lay down our lives, in ways big and small, we are promised a resurrection, a new life every bit as glorious as Christ’s own.

“O Lord,” Jeremiah says, “you have enticed me, and I was enticed; you have overpowered me, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all day long; everyone mocks me. For whenever I speak, I must cry out, I must shout.”

We must cry out. We must shout. Love demands that we do. No matter how hard it is to do. No matter how many mistakes we make on the way. No matter how long it takes.

We must cry out. We must shout, until we can proclaim that it is truly “on earth as it is in heaven.”

AMEN

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Easter Five – Year A Preached on May 10, 2020 At St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline

Acts 7:55–60; Psalm 31:1–5, 15–16; 1 Peter 2:2–10; John 14:1–14

While checking in with someone this week, they commented that they thought, perhaps, that God was simply asking too much of them.

I’m sure most of us can empathize. Most, if not all of us, are being stretched to the very edges of our abilities. If you had told any of us what we would be doing today, a year ago, we wouldn’t have believed it.

A year ago, we all had enough on our plates already.

Six months ago, we were already trying to set boundaries and to say “no” more often.

Three months ago our lives, personal and professional, were already demanding our A game too many hours a day, too many days a week.

And then came COVID-19 and with it came social distancing, school closings, and furloughs. Then came masks as our tickets to the outside world.

And then came the murder hornet.

And then came what would have been the 26th birthday of Ahmaud Arbery and the video that would finally bring arrests in his lynching surfaced.

And then it snowed. On May 9th.

And those are just the things that have happened to all of us in the past two months.

In this time, our personal lives have brought their own challenges, too. Loved ones have died, jobs have been lost, families have been separated.

Even the celebrations we count on in this season to midwife us into summer have been taken from us. Birthdays and graduations, new births and new jobs. Today is Mother’s Day, and no one can visit like they would have.

The metaphor that we are in a marathon, not a sprint, now a cliche, doesn’t even seem true anymore. At least running a marathon, you know where the finish line is. This feels more like a session with a masochistic personal trainer who keeps telling you that you only have to do “four more”, only to keep saying “only four more” over and over and over again until you collapse on the floor.

So, it’s a good question. Is God simply asking too much of us? Is God pushing us until we break under the weight?

My response to her question, was really a question I needed to ask myself. I asked, “What, exactly, is God asking of you?”

What is God asking of you in this time? What is God asking of me?

As I listened to her responses, and thought of what my own might be to the same question, I realized that much of what it is I imagine God is asking of me, what feels impossible, is really only what I am expecting of myself.

Is God asking you to accept things the way they are?

Is God asking you to meet the challenges of the present moment with skill and perfection?

Is God asking you not to get angry, not to become overwhelmed with grief, not ask why or not wonder if you have what it takes?

Is God asking you any of these things, or are you asking them of yourself?

I can’t find anyplace in scripture where Jesus tells his followers to “plow through,” “suck it up,” or keep a stiff upper lip.

I can’t find support in Jesus’ life and ministry for the expectation that I get it right every time in every way, or that the total responsibility for the enormity of suffering in the world is laid squarely on my shoulders, and mine only.

So what is God asking of me in this time? And is it too much?

Many of us have had the experience recently of not knowing what day it is.

Our Gospel reading from John doesn’t help. Though today is the fifth Sunday of Easter on the calendar, the Gospel story takes us all the way back to Maundy Thursday, between Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and his arrest.

Jesus spends a good long time in John’s Gospel saying goodbye, anticipating their grief and their confusion.

Throughout his Gospel, John uses the disciples’ questions as a vehicle for a pronouncement or teaching of Jesus. In John, the disciples are often plants in the audience.

And they usually say exactly what I’m thinking, at the very same time they are thinking it.

If you were to separate this morning’s Gospel reading into two separate narratives, one for the disciples and one for Jesus, the sayings of Jesus would read like a selection from the “Greatest Hists of Jesus” list.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled.”

“In my Father’s house, there are many dwelling places.”

“I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

If you piece together the Gospel narrative using only the disciples’ voices, it plays more like the conversation I had this week, like the conversations we are all having when it comes to the question of the present time and our lives of faith.

“Thomas said to him, ‘Lord we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?”

and later,

“Philip said to him, “Lord show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.”

Both of these might be translated, “God, where have you gone. And where are you now?”

Would it be nice if God could answer these questions with enough proof that we might grab hold and hang on as we are tossed about by the challenges of our days?

The disciples knew things were spinning out of control, and nothing could prepare them for what was about to come. Who could have predicted the crowds turning, who could have seen that following this rabbi would put their own lives in danger? Who would’ve guessed that beloved Peter would deny, or that Judas would betray?

Show us God, Jesus. Tell us where you are going, and how we are supposed to get there.

God where are you? What do you want from me, and how do I get there?

“I am the Way,” Jesus says to Thomas.

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father,” Jesus tells Philip.

If we need to know where God is calling us to go, we need to walk in the path that is Jesus.

If we want to know where God is in the world, we need only look for where Jesus is in the world.

If Jesus were in the world, where do you imagine he would be? What might he be doing? What do you imagine he would have to say? What do you imagine he might ask of you?

Well, in scripture, he was with the brokenhearted, he was weeping at the grave, he was yelling in the temple, he was loving the unloved. Might that not be where he is now?

What is God asking of you? Well, what has God always asked of those who long to be in relationship?

To get it right? To never stumble? To cower in fear? To believe the voices that tell us we are not good enough, not important enough, not doing enough or not smiling enough?

Of course not. That’s not the God I read in scripture. And it’s not the God Jesus points us to giving himself, his life, his ministry, his death and his resurrection as an example of what Love looks like.

Jesus couldn’t tell his disciples not to let their hearts be troubled if he expected them to get it right, or perfect, or even to be able to change the violent forces at play.

He could only ask them not to let their hearts be troubled if he knew, as God has always known, that they would not get it right, they would make mistakes and fall far short of their expectations of themselves. That they would not be able to stop Good Friday from coming. And yet. Even though all would seem lost and any return to normal would evaporate, still God would be there with them in it. Still the stone would roll away and the tomb would be empty. Still God would walk with them on the road, sit with them over breakfast, speak to them in their hearts and show the Glory of God in the midst of it all.

Though the disciples couldn’t yet know it. God did.

Though we can’t always see it now, God does.

Where is God in this time?

Crying at the graves of the dead.

Healing the broken-hearted.

Feeding the hungry.

As Queen Elizabeth so beautifully put it, “Our streets are not empty, they are filled with the love and the care that we have for each other.” Our streets are filled with the love of God.

Our buildings aren’t closed because God has left them, but because God has stirred our hearts to love.

Do not let your heart be troubled.

Easy for Jesus to say, to his disciples and to us.

Possible only if we let go of what it is we think God is asking of us.

Instead, just take one more step on the path in front of you that is Jesus.

And know that, where you see hope and love and peace and justice getting done in the world, wherever and whenever you see that glimpse of the Glory of God, God is there.

God is there.

God is here.

Amen.

While all direct and indirect quotes are always cited, there are sources I read regularly in preparation for sermon writing. Chances are thoughts have been spurred by these sources and so I list the usual suspects here: David Lose, In the Meantime, The New Interpreters Bible, Sacra Pagina .

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Here’s a short video I made to remember that Easter happens anyway.

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Preached at St. Paul’s Brookline , Brookline, MA

1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; John 9:1-41

I miss you all. I miss the children in the play area and the choir in the pews. I miss the hustle and bustle of the 9:00 hour when groups are usually gathered to learn more about God. I miss coffee hour. I really miss Holy Communion. I miss gathering around this altar in a circle. The silence in this resonant sanctuary brings up in me a profound grief for all that is not as it should be in the world right now.

And, at the same time, I am feeling blessed and grateful. I am grateful to have a home from which to work. I am grateful for food to put on my table three times a day. I am grateful that I am safe and loved in my home. I am grateful for the acts of generosity and love the St. Paul’s community has shown to me and to each other in the past week. I am grateful for technology that allows us to be together in a less than perfect way.

This Gospel story about the healing of the man born blind is another one of my favorites. To me, there is humor in the writing. This long gospel passage is mostly about “proving” what happened in the healing, after assigning blame for the affliction.

Whose fault is the blindness? What did he do wrong to deserve such a fate? And once he is cured, he explains the healing multiple ways, to ears that cannot hear his testimony. There is suspicion of the man himself, and of his healer. The whole healing itself is suspect, as it happened on a Sabbath when working wasn’t permitted.

But, where is the rejoicing? Where is the astonishment? Where are the neighbors lifting up this man who they had outcast, and welcoming him back into the life of his own community? Where’s the party? You better believe when we are allowed to gather again, there will be a party.

It is easy to draw a parallel between this gospel story and the times in which we live. There was, and continues to be, plenty of blame to go around. Whose fault is this? Where did it start? Who knew what when?

Countries are in a battle to be the first to develop a cure, or a vaccine.

Honestly, I don’t care who develops it. I will just be so grateful to whoever it is.

My sister told me that a colleague of hers explained that he believed that this is a judgement from God. And those who believe that God acts in such ways -- sending pandemics to teach lessons -- have their choice of scapegoats who are to bear responsibility for it.

Anxiety and fear are powerful motivators. We can laugh that there is no toilet paper in the store, but the only reason that there isn’t any is because people are afraid there won’t be any. The narrative of anxiety and fear makes the object of the anxiety and fear a reality.

But I don’t think the “Good News” of this Gospel story has anything to do with the details of the healing. It’s clear that trying to get to the bottom of what actually happened, to whom it happened, by whom, and when it happened didn’t get the blind man’s neighbors to understand that the point wasn’t how he came to see, but that he did.

What matters is that the life in front of this man is nothing like the life behind him. It is a story of life “before” and life “after.”

Conversions are hard to explain. Healings are hard to trust. Cancer doctors are cautious never to use the word cure, but remission. People in recovery are constantly aware of the possibility for the addiction to rear its ugly head once again.

Getting distracted with the details of the conversion or the healing or the recovery is to lose sight that the conversion, the healing and the recovery happened, and that there is a new life being lived that had once been lost.

This time we are in will go down as one of those “before” and “after” times. Like the weeks after 9/11 or the early days of the AIDS epidemic, we will remember the panic, fear, anxiety, blame, and suspicion that currently grip us. We will remember the communities who were marginalized and sacrificed in our efforts to assign blame. We will remember schools closed, working from home, getting laid off, closing our small business, talking on the sidewalk to each other six feet apart.

And we will remember meeting like this.

We will remember worshipping through the very screens we had been working so hard to limit our time on “before COVID-19.”

Jesus knew something about social distancing. The man at the center of the story was, himself, a target of the practice himself, as was the woman at the well from last week, and the ten lepers, and the man with many demons who was chained up in a graveyard.

In each case, Jesus’ answer was to come close; to break boundaries; to touch, even to spit into mud and rub that mud into eyes.

For a time, we cannot be Jesus’ hands in that way. We cannot put our bodies where Jesus would have put his. We can, and must, call and write to each other and continue to be Jesus’ voice and heart in this time.

But that doesn’t mean Jesus can’t go where we can’t. The risen Christ remains as close to us as ever. Perhaps the miracle in this time will be that we discover through the disruption of our lives and the longing in our hearts that, through it all, God was there. God was always there. God is here, just as God told us God would be. Just as God always has been.

Is there a possibility to put a hold on the fear, push the pause button on the blame, set the worry aside for just a moment to discover the miracle of Jesus’ healing touch on our hearts?

Might there be an “after” to this time that holds something better than our “before?” I wonder what I will be able to see when this is over that I couldn’t before.

Will I ever take going to a restaurant for granted again? Holding a baby at coffee hour, or stopping on the sidewalk to talk with friends. Choices of toilet paper on the shelves of the supermarket. Doctors and nurses and teachers and grocery store clerks. Playing a long, slow game of cards with my family.

Coming here to see you all, in person. Or breaking bread and placing in the palm of your hand.

Will this time just happen to us, or does it hold the possibility of conversion, of “before” and “after” that brings us closer to God and to one another?

Now, just as I don’t believe that God sends us pandemics to punish us, I don’t believe God sends them in order to teach us a lesson.

But how we respond to such times, how we search for the God who loves us in the midst of our fear and anxiety, how we seek new life as we walk in the valley of the shadow of death, that is how God redeems times such as this. That is how there is conversion, how there is healing, how there can be an “after” that promises us so much more than our “before.”

I’ve said many times that we don’t come to this building to make God happen. We come here to celebrate and make known that God happens in our lives all the time.

So, here is our time to celebrate the miracle of that truth. Wherever you are, God is there with you.

We will gather here again. We will break bread again. Until then, may God break open our hearts that God’s healing love might be set free.

AMEN.

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Genesis 12:1-4a; Psalm 121; Romans 4:1-5, 13-17; John 3:1-17

When I pray I am grateful for the assured confidentiality that comes with that arrangement.

I can say whatever I want to God, and God won’t tell anyone.

I am also grateful for the grace that comes to me in those conversations. I do not feel harshly judged, or shamed, or ridiculed for the questions in my head or the contents of my heart. Any judgement or shame or ridicule I do hear or feel, comes from a source other than the God of love to whom I am praying.

I am grateful, too, for the perspective my conversations with God give me. For a time, I’m able to see the struggles of my life, my deepest questions and longings in a perspective that is bigger than my own. A view from above, if you will.

Most of all, though, I am grateful for the love I feel surrounded by when I pray. Though I am over 50 and my parents are now deceased, the desire to be held, assured and loved unconditionally has not waned. God seldom disappoints, though I may not feel it all the time.

We are, in this season of Lent, in the “Pray” part of our Way of Love journey this year.

Teach me your ways, O Lord. Teach me to pray.

Being able to pray is a gift, and it is not one I have always enjoyed. The ability to pray can seem to come and go as unpredictably as the wind Jesus references in the reading from John’s gospel.

I believe prayer is a response to, not a conjuring of, God. That is, whenever we pray, we are responding to an invitation from God to “come and have a chat.” When we worship, it is the same. We are here this morning not to make God happen. We are here because God happened and we responded.

Nicodemus was a Pharisee. Now, erase from your mind that paradigm of “pharisee-bad, Jesus good.”

The Pharisees were one group of Jewish people in the time of Jesus. The Pharisee is a learned man, as Jesus was, who would have known the Torah inside and out.

But he has something to say to this fellow Jew and rabbi colleague Jesus. “We know,” Nicodemus says. “We know that you are from God.”

I see in this story a man who has made his life about being an authority invited to consider that, despite all his training and his stature in the community, there might just be something left for him to learn. There might be something new to understand about how God might be moving in his life.

Nicodemus couldn’t doubt, he didn’t feel like he had permission to wonder. He needed the cover of night to hide this encounter for fear his friends and family and other colleagues might discover he didn’t have all the answers. It's not Nicodemus’ fault. It’s how he was groomed.

For his courage, for taking this risk in asking the foolish question or seeking a connection with Jesus he isn’t supposed to want, Nicodemus is rewarded. In this encounter, he receives grace. Jesus doesn’t send him away and tell him to come back when he isn’t ashamed. Jesus doesn’t say, as I may have, “Come back when you can sit with me in the daylight.”

Further, Jesus tells him that his seeking and his wondering shows that he has, in fact, been borne from above. He is able to see things others cannot see. He has a perspective that is beyond his grooming. It is a God perspective. What a beautiful, wise, loving response to Nicodemus.

Nicodemus teaches us to pray. And Jesus shows us what we might expect when we do. Like any time we spend in prayer, Nicodemus is met with Grace, and Wisdom. Oh yeah, and Love.

“God so loved the world” Jesus tells Nicodemus near the end of their encounter. God SO loved the world. That’s why Jesus is doing what he is doing, and saying what he is saying. Not to condemn the world, but to love it into transformation. “You are loved, Nicodemus. You are loved more than you can imagine.”

This interaction with Nicodemus teaches us to pray in our conversations with God. But it also holds deep wisdom for how we might pray through our actions in the world.

As a white male in America, I have been groomed to believe that I should know all the answers and be able to imagine all the possible solutions. Not knowing the answer, not having a way to fix a problem undoes me in a way I am often embarrassed to admit.

I struggle, as a leader in the church, that I don’t know what will fix all the problems we face as a people in this world; poverty, racism, sexism and misogyny. I am confronted with my limitations as I try to face these challenges that are generations, centuries or millennia in the making. Despair tempts me as I think of the work in front of us, and the time it will take to get there.

Too often, I am forced to stand with Nicodemus as he wonders with God simply, “How can these things be?”

Sometimes, when I am at my boldest, I might seek wisdom under the cover of darkness, afraid I will say the wrong thing, ask the wrong question or betray an ignorance I ought not to have.

I wonder if this interaction between Jesus and Nicodemus doesn’t hold deep wisdom for how we might move forward together as God’s people in the world today.

I wonder if, like Nicodemus, we might risk asking questions we don’t think we should have. If we might risk vulnerability we have been encouraged to seal over. If we might open our hearts to the wisdom of someone we aren’t “supposed” to listen to. If we might practice sitting at the feet of those we have been told to stand over.

I wonder what might happen if we encouraged each other to have all the questions, not all the answers. If we supported each other in listening for the way the Spirit is moving and held one another in abundant Grace and abiding Love while we fumble our way through, together.

We might begin by speaking aloud to God what we cannot yet imagine ourselves saying out loud to anyone else. We might begin by asking God the questions to which we are supposed to have the answers. We might start by asking God for the perspective we can’t yet see or the way forward we don’t yet know.

And maybe, just maybe, when we take it to God, and we receive that Grace and Love and Wisdom Nicodemus received, we might just risk taking it to one another.

And when we take it to each other, we create relationships of grace, communities of mercy built on the solid foundation of the love God has for us, made known to us in the one who came because God loved us, loves us, so.

So, then, in word and deed, let us pray.

AMEN.

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Ash Wednesday

Isaiah 58:1-12; 2Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Mathew 6:1-6, 16-21

Someone once told me that they don’t come to church during Lent because, “Life was too lent-like already.”

I hear some version of this just about every year. Maybe not a complete absence from church for the season, but some expression that it would be just as well with them if we could skip from Epiphany to Easter.

The music is a little more solemn. The prayers mention things like sin and repentance. There’s lots of talk about discipline and giving things up that we like.

It all starts to meld into one giant ball of “bummer” or “downer”. And who needs more of that in a world that seems to have a constant supply of bummer and downer at the ready?

This morning, Isaac and I stood outside on the Aspinwall steps offering ashes to any passerby that asked. Some were from this church. Many were from other traditions, who feared they would miss ashes because of work or life.

You get lots of different looks standing outside, dressed in robes with ashes on your head. You don’t always get to know what’s behind those looks. Lots of strained relationships with the church, I suspect.

And a lot of suspicion why anyone would enter such a season as Lent willingly.

At the end of the time, I was by myself, thinking about how the mild weather of 7:00am had turned cold in my feet and hands.

A car drove by and did a u-turn. The passenger window rolled down and a woman in peer up at me. “Oh thank God you’re here,” she said. “Oh thank God.”

I reached my hand into the car to shake her hand and introduce myself to her. She grabbed my hand with both of hers and brought my hand to her mouth, kissing it and crying.

Her son was the driver, now outside the car next to me. Her husband in the backseat leaning forward, and mouthing, “thank you.”

Jane, as I’ll call her, was on her way to Dana Farber Cancer Institute for her weekly chemotherapy treatment.

She’s had sarcoma in her legs for three years and can no longer walk.

I gave her ashes, the words getting stuck in my throat as I said them to this woman who has been facing her mortality for years. “Remember that you are dust,” I said, “and to dust you shall return.”

“Thank you.” She said yet one more time, tears and a smile on her face.

“No,” I said. “Thank you.”

I let her know we would be praying for her, and that we were here, just two blocks away, should she need anything.

The window went up, and the car turned around, back down Aspinwall toward Dana Farber.

To lots of folks who drove, or walked, or ran by this morning, we looked foolish, perhaps quaint, and to some, unnecessarily focused on what is broken in us and in each other.

But to at least one woman, in the midst of a three-year Lent spent keenly aware of her physical broken-ness and mortality, ashes on the sidewalk was connection. A strange priest offering ashes was connection. Ashes on her forehead was balm.

And to this priest, this woman was Christ. This woman was hope. This woman was courage, and this woman was peace.

In between ashes and chemo there was nothing “bummer” or “downer” about this encounter whatsoever.

And that’s what I hear in these readings. I hear Paul writing not to the Corinthians, but to us. I hear Paul reminding us that, to the outside world, following Jesus looks strange. To the world, it looks like they are sorrowful, though they are rejoicing, that they are dying but they are alive, that they have nothing, but they possess everything.

To the world, Lent looks strange. To the world, there is no sense in looking more closely at the things in our lives that separate us from the love of God because the world encourages us to ignore those things, cover those things up, or blur them out of our minds with things to consume, or to drink.

But that’s not what this season is about at all. This season is a gift. This season of Lent is a chance to turn down the volume in our lives that masks God’s voice calling us back home, back to center, back to our belovedness.

This portion we hear from the Matthew’s Gospel is part of a long discourse from Jesus on how to be in a relationship with God. Though we have cropped the reading to sound as though these are Jesus’ instructions for Ash Wednesday, they are really part of Jesus teaching his followers simply how to be with God. Here, Jesus teaches them how to be in conversation with God, how to talk and how to listen to God.

The part we don’t read in the middle of this Gospel reading is where Jesus teaches them, and us, the words of the Lord’s prayer.

The whole thing is really just a long exhortation to his followers and to us to turn the volume down. Don’t make it fancy. Don’t make it loud. Don’t try to make it perfect. Don’t feel like you need to do it the same way anyone else does.

In the words of poet Mary Oliver, “I know a lot of fancy words. I tear them from my heart and my tongue. Then I pray”

The point of the Lenten season, the reason we do all of the things that are associated with Lent -- the fasting, the praying, the almsgiving, all of it -- it isn’t to earn God’s favor. It isn’t to earn credit against previous bad behavior. It isn’t to feel bad for feeling bad’s sake. It isn’t to suffer for suffering’s sake.

It is only ever to see God in the midst of our lives and to be able to hear God speak to us, call us closer and whisper “I love you” in our hearts.

I invite us to approach lent like Jane, the woman in the car. She does not need Lent to remind her that she is mortal, she already knew that. Not to feel bad about herself, she doesn’t need that. It was, for her, a “time out” from the chaos of her life to encounter a moment of grace; to remind herself that no matter what her blood test shows today, she is God’s beloved child.

At least that’s what she taught me, though the world walking by would have known nothing about it.

“You are dust, and to dust you shall return.” It’s really good news. It comes from Genesis where God is reminding humanity that we are a part of God’s creation. We have come from God, and we will return to God, no matter what happens in between.

Remember you are God’s, and to God you shall return.

If you don’t know that, if you can’t hear that, Lent is the season to wonder why not. Why don’t you know that? Why can’t you hear that?

I invite you to do whatever it takes over the next 40 days to clear away the clutter in your life that competes for your attention.

Use this time to turn the volume down until the loudest voice in your heart is God’s.

Until you can hear God’s voice speaking peace. God’s voice speaking hope. God’s voice speaking a love that promises to make you whole.

AMEN.

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Eighth Sunday after Epiphany; February 23, 2020 (Year A); Preached at St. Paul’s Brookline

Exodus 24:12-18; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

This morning we remember the Transfiguration, when Jesus ascends the mountain with three of his followers, is transfigured before them, and stands with Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets. This morning we remember Peter, whose impulse it is to build places for Jesus and Moses and Elijah to stay. We remember God’s voice again proclaiming Jesus God’s beloved child. And we remember that all of this disappeared as quickly as it arrived, as Jesus and his followers go back down the mountain, toward Jerusalem and all that waits for them there.

This morning, we are invited to consider how we might “practice Transfiguration”in our own lives, today.

Chances are that most of you are here this morning because, at some point in your life, you experienced a transfiguration of your own, though you may not have used that language.

But you may have had an experience of God that planted a seed within you that would keep you seeking that experience for the remainder of your lifetime; a word spoken by an elder; knowing the unconditional love of another, or offering it yourself.

I know I have had mine. The reason I find myself ordained and leading a congregation is due to a deep desire I have for others to know what I have known in my life about the transformative love of God in Christ, and to experience those moments of Transfiguration again for myself.

I wonder what transformative, if not transfigurative, experiences are being held in your heart that have sustained you in your lives.

Or maybe you are here because you have heard someone talk about an experience of God they have had in their life and you long for a mountain-top experience like that for yourself.

Whatever longing you have in your heart, God has placed it there, and it’s all there in this story from Matthew’s Gospel. Though it seems ancient and maybe a little sci-fi, I love this story because it strikes at a basic truth for all of us who strive to follow Jesus.

And that truth is that we might glimpse God on a mountaintop, and that glimpse might leave us certain of the presence of God in our life, but we are always led, from those experiences, back into the “real” world where we are to serve God, no matter how unsure of the presence of God we might again become.

We keep trying to climb mountaintops, and God keeps sending us into hard work of the world.

Peter wants things to stay like they were at the peak, up in the clouds. He offers to build tents for Jesus and Moses and Elijah. Set apart from the world, basking in the certainty of God’s voice and Jesus’ glow, Peter wants things to stay just like that. And who can blame him? Peter, quite literally, has his head in the clouds.

But Jesus knows that the Kingdom of God is not on that mountain peak. It is back down the mountain and toward Jerusalem where he is certain of the task in front of him. The path down the mountain will lead him to the cross.

We climb the mountain with Jesus, Peter, James and John this morning as we do every year on the last Sunday after the Epiphany, the last Sunday before Lent.

This feast is, in our liturgical calendar, the moment we descend the mountain top seasons of Christmas and Epiphany and head into the forty days of Lent that leads us to Jerusalem and to the cross.

We will turn our attention from the radiant experiences of God’s revelations among us; as an infant, as one worshiped by the Magi, presented in the temple, and baptized in the River Jordan. For weeks we have heard the stories of our faith that center on the revelation of God to the world, weeks reminded of where God is in the world and how God is moving. Weeks of mountaintop experiences.

But we cannot stay there. We cannot build tents and live in Christmas or Epiphany. We must head into the world where the Kingdom of God lives.

We must practice Transfiguration. (Many thanks to Carl Greg for his ideas on “practicing transfiguration.” https://www.patheos.com/blogs/carlgregg/2011/02/lectionary-commentary-practicing-transfiguration-for-march-6-2011/)

To consider how we might practice Transfiguration in our own lives, we might ask ourselves how we are intentionally creating time and space to climb the mountain with Jesus as our guide. How might you place yourself in the presence of God? What feeds your relationship with God and how intentional are you about practicing it?

Maybe it is weekly worship, or daily prayer. A time of intentional silence or a long quiet walk along the Muddy river. Where is God waiting to meet you, to show you the radiance of God’s glory that you might be fed and sustained for the work ahead of you?

That is practicing Transfiguration.

Practicing Transfiguration is also asking ourselves what tents we have built in our lives to keep God from slipping through our grasp. Is it hard to see Christ in the world because we have left him back up on the mountaintop?

The tents we build have power over us. Nostalgia tricks us into thinking God was more present “back then” or “back there.” We invent the “good old days” and we place God in a place and time not our own. Remember back when Sunday schools were overflowing, back when churches were packed, back life was easier and people were nicer.

More than shining faces and voices from clouds, the real myths of the Transfiguration are the tents we have built for God in our lives. These tents do nothing but rob us from God’s presence in the here and now and they ignore the reality that, while some might have been living on the mountaintops of the “Good Old Days,” it was only because countless others were living out their lives on Calvary.

We are not meant to live out our lives on the mountaintop. They are but momentary and fleeting glimpses of the Divine. These glimpses serve to nourish us for the journey back into the world where we see the face of Christ in everyone we see. Down the mountain and in the world where we clothe the body of Christ, liberate the prisoner Christ, free the slave Christ, feed the hungry Christ, soothe the suffering Christ, and heal the broken Christ. We do all this, sustained by the power of the Risen Christ who is always waiting to greet us at the empty tomb.

So, come. Hear the Good News.

Receive the Peace of Christ and hear that you are God’s beloved.

Share with us in the Breaking of Bread where we know the Lord Jesus.

Experience the healing power of Christ’s Love.

Bask in the radiance of God’s glory sung in joyful voices.

Be transformed, and maybe even transfigured.

Enjoy this time on the mountain, for there is a world of Jerusalems waiting for you, needing you, just on the other side of those doors.

Alleluia. Amen.

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2019 Annual Meeting Rector’s Annual Address

February 9, 2020

Good morning, church! And welcome to the one hundred and seventy-first annual meeting of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline.

This is my 11th Annual Address as your rector. And, as is my practice each year, I want to start by reminding you how much I love you, and how much I love being your rector. Let me state, once again, that it is a privilege to walk your journeys of faith with you and I am humbled by your faithfulness and your trust.

I do not wish to subject you to a reading of the Annual Report. I hope you read the digital version emailed to you this week. If you didn’t get a chance to, please do. You will be amazed -- even those of you who have been here for years will be amazed -- at the breadth and the depth of ministry happening in and from this place.

I do want to take this opportunity to make sure you know who our ministry leadership team is. These are the people with whom you should talk if you are curious about what God might be needing you to do next in this place. If my math is correct, though I’m sure my count is incomplete, we are blessed with over 26 ministries at St. Paul’s led by over 30 members of the community.

As I read your name, please stand and wave. Let’s hold our thunderous applause until the end.

Personnel Committee Ouida Foster

Altar Guild Sharlene Wing and John Ferguson

Chalice Bearers Maryann Kurkjian

Flower Guild Maureen Carter

Healing Prayer Steve Morrissey

Lectors Michael Scheffler

Ushers Sam Scott

Eucharistic Visitors Maryann Kurkjian

Pastoral Care Team Maryann Kurkjian and Kate Kelley

Stewardship Stephen Morrissey and Leah Rugen

Yard Sale Steve Estes-Smargiassi

Be an Angel Paul Daigneault

B-Safe/B-Ready Piper Trelstad and Kate Kelley

Ministry Outside the Parish Matshai Motimele and Tim Hintz

Mission Sundays Melissa Dulla

Prison Ministry Leahanne Sarlo

Gardens Julie Starr

Archives Pat Dunbar

Education for Ministry Leah Rugen and Linda Sanches

Scripture Group Leah Rugen

Church School Teachers Julie Starr, Janet Rankin,

Andrea Brue, Jason Fairchild,

Chris Dulla, Maria O’Meara

Hospitality Alan Fried

Knitting Group Maureen Carter

Greeters and Newcomers Melissa Dulla, Leah Rugen, and Ayanna McPhail

Yoga Martha Curtis

Centering Prayer Ann Colageo

Thank you to our ministry leaders.

And our Vestry, led this past year by our Wardens Julie House and Brett Foster. If you were on the Vestry this past year, please stand and accept our gratitude.

And, finally, our staff. This group of people we ask to work miracles each and every day. Our nursery staff, our section leaders, our finance administrator Christine, our sexton James, our Parish Administrator Jill, our Director of Music and Organist Andy, and the best clergy team a rector could ask for; our Deacon Pat, our Curate Isaac and our Associate Rector Elise. Let’s hear it for our staff.

So many people to thank, and so many more of you who showed up and made 2019 at St. Paul’s another year to remember.

2019 was yet another year in which God stretched us, stretched me, in new and unexpected ways.

The budget certainly captured our attention. Three years ago we made the decision to use a chunk of our endowment to match funds raised from the congregation for the renovation of the lower level, parish offices and backyard. This might just be the year that work is completed!

This decision was made carefully and with the understanding that the increased income from a lower level tenant would exceed the draw we would have taken on that amount. And then our grand tower proved jealous of the attention our lower level was getting and required urgent repair to the tune of $700k. Rather than shrinking before the challenge, we decided to meet it; and meet it we have.

Over the past three years, our deficit at the end of the year has ranged from 48K in 2017, to 72K in 2018 and 33K in 2019. This year, we are projecting to cut that by 2/3rds with a projected deficit of about 10K.

I am so proud of the work the budget committee has done to get us here, under Brett Foster’s rigorous leadership. It hasn’t been easy and tough conversations needed to be had, but I stand before you this morning feeling like I can look each one of you in the eye and promise you that each and every dollar you have entrusted to us for the work of God in this place is being stretched to its limits and not a penny is wasted.

Transparency and trust has always been at the core of our financial leadership. If you want to know more about how your finances are being managed, please speak to Brett. He’d be more than happy to talk with you. I mean, way more than happy to talk with you.

And the even better news in all of this is that we have the power and the opportunity to erase that projected 10K budget gap before we’ve even closed the books on February. If you haven’t yet submitted a pledge card, I ask you to seriously consider it. More than a financial commitment to the work of the parish, it is one way of saying “I’m in” to the values we hold and the ministry we share. No pledge amount is too small or not needed. And if you have submitted a pledge form, I ask you to have a real conversation and spend time in real prayer about whether there might be room to stretch your pledge.

Why would I ask you to do such a thing? Because I believe we are making a difference. I have proof. And because I believe there has never been a better time to be the church, or to be St. Paul’s Brookline.

There is a scripture passage that has been on my mind and in my heart these past few months, and it keeps popping up, which is usually God’s way of getting my attention.

It comes from the book of Esther. It’s a great story, and tells the story behind the Jewish festival of Purim. But, in brief, Esther is queen and secretly Jewish. Her uncle Mordacai discovers a plan made by the king’s right hand man to kill anyone who is Jewish and begs Esther to intercede on her people’s behalf.

Esther is afraid. She is not supposed to take audience with the king unless summoned, an offense punishable by death, and she is afraid to tell the king that she is Jewish.

Her uncle Mordacai pleads with her and asks her this question:

Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for a time such as this?

That’s a great question for the church. Maybe it is exactly a time such as this that the church is needed most.

And it’s a great question for St. Paul’s. I have every reason to believe it is for a time exactly like the times in which we live for which St. Paul’s might exist.

And it’s a great question for each one of you. Maybe this is exactly the time in our community’s life for which you are needed the most, maybe now is the time for which God brought you here.

This is the time. As Jesus reminds us in this morning’s Gospel, we have a calling to be salt and light in a world losing both its flavor and its vision.

St. Paul’s continues to be salt and light.

As racism and oppression continue to stain our national life, our Anti-Racism Group is choosing to go deeper in unpacking racism and white supremacy through their participation in Sacred Ground. Salt.

This fall, Elise, Pat, Jocelyn Collen and Leahanne Sarlo brought the sacrament of the body of Christ to women at the South Bay correctional facility. It was the first time most of them had seen a woman preside at the altar. Light.

As anti-semitic and anti-muslim rhetoric and violence feels increasingly common, we invited our Muslim neighbors to come and share their story with us. Light.

We participated in the first ever Brookline Interfaith Service in celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Temple Sinai. Salt.

These are not small things. As individual acts they might not change the world, but they go along way to make sure the world does not change us.

Our longing to be in closer relationship with God continues to grow. This past year we started three new ministries meant to feed our Spirits; to keep us salty and burning bright.

We experimented with “Eat, Pray, Work” during lent, offering a daytime monastic-like co-working space.

Our first Education for Ministry class began in the fall with 11 participants and two co-mentors. Ann Colageo and Isaac began our new Wednesday morning Contemplative Prayer Group.

2019 was a year that St. Paul’s continued to live into Frederick Buechner’s concept of vocation, or calling. He writes, “Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need.”

How blessed are we that our greatest joys as a community is exactly what the world needs right now.

When we committed to repairing the tower, one of the most convincing arguments I heard was from a long time parishioner who reminded me, reminded us, that this place; the buildings, the ministries, the spirit of this place, we are the stewards of all of it.

Those who have come before us, those whose names surround us etched in granite, they have passed it on to us for a time. And we will, one day, pass it on to those who will come after us. It is our job to care for it and all it represents with all the love and courage that it demands.

But we are not meant to leave it just as we found it. God needs us to leave this place better than we found it; healthier than we found it, more robust than it was when it was given to us. We are meant to leave it saltier and more filled with light than it ever has been.

God needs us to push this place and the people in it to be no less than a glimpse of Kingdom that God dreams for us to be.

And that is what this next year is for. Each year, a new gift, a new opportunity for us to ask, as a community and individuals where God needs us next, where God needs you next.

This will be a year that tries the fabric of our country. This will be a year that demands we remember who we are, whose we are and who God needs us to be. We will not all vote for the same candidate, we will not all vote for the same party.

We can, however, show the world, show each other that we can love one another as fiercely as we disagree with each other. We can show the world, in ways big and small, what it means to be a people who can most easily be described for the love we have for one another, and for the ways we love and care for the least, the lost and the lonely.

We can be salt in a world losing its flavor and we can be light in a world losing its vision.

People of St. Paul’s, may 2020 be exactly the time for which we were made.

AMEN.

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Isaiah 42:1-9; Acts 10:34-43; Matthew 3:13-17

On Monday evening of this past week, on the Feast of the Epiphany, this sanctuary was filled with Isaac’s friends, family and members of this community. We were here to witness and celebrate Isaac’s ordination to the Sacred Order of Priests. What a joyful and poignant evening it was. This coming Saturday, I leave, with 25 others, for a 10 day pilgrimage to the Holy Land. 11 days from today, I will gather with them on the banks of the Jordan River to renew our Baptismal Vows. And today, between Isaac’s ordination and stepping into the Jordan River, I delight, with you all, to celebrate the Holy Baptism of Hugo. And if that weren’t enough stars in alignment, today I celebrate the twelfth anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood.

And so I have been thinking alot lately about priest-making.

12 years ago, a bishop laid his hands on me and made me a priest. 6 days ago, a bishop did the same to Isaac, and made him one. And this morning, Isaac will pour water over Hugo’s infant head and make him one, too. Of course, it is God who does this. We bishops and priests, through the sacraments, make visible what God in the Holy Spirit is already doing.

But you heard me correctly; this morning, Hugo is made a priest, too. For in our baptism, we are, all of us, made priests. Elise, and I and Isaac belong to the Order of Priests. Pat belongs to the Order of Deacons. And those who are not bishop, priest or deacon belong to the Order of the Laity. But you are, through your baptism, also a member of what is called “the priesthood of all believers.” And that is a real thing. With real obligations. And real authority. And real sacrifice.

The etymological origins of the word priest are fascinating. Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation made clear differences between “priest” as an ordained Order in the Roman Church, “presbyter” as an elder in the church, and “priest” as in the “priesthood of all believers.” The term “priest” comes to us most directly from the Hebrew Scripture, recalling the role of the temple priests in offering sacrifices at the altar. As a priest in the church, one role I serve is to preside at the Eucharist, our sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, at this altar. But my role is also elder. Not older -- elder. I’m someone who has had training and intentional formation. I commit to studying scripture and maintaining a prayer life. The church has given me, through my ordination, authority to bless and forgive in the name of the church, to preside at this table, to baptize, marry and bury through the sacraments of the church. And you have been made a priest. Inasmuch as you strive to live into your baptismal covenant, you are making your whole life a living sacrifice to God, offered at the altar of the world.

I have been an ordained priest for twelve years. I have been a member of the priesthood of all believers for fifty-one. And let me tell you, being a priest as in presbyter is a heck of a lot easier than being a priest as in baptized member of the body of Christ. My work as your priest and presbyter is hard; it is often unclear and far reaching. But our jobs as the Baptized are so much more vast, so much more demanding, so much less clear.

I have been thinking and praying for Isaac a lot this week. I have been praying for him because it was the week after I was ordained to the Priesthood that I felt the furthest from God. I was the least hopeful. I was the most full of despair. I remember riding the red line to work at Christ Church Cambridge, staring at the front page of the Metro and feeling completely inadequate to the work I thought I had just been ordained to do. And what I have learned in the twelve years since the bishop laid his hands on me is that the work I was ordained to do in the church is hard, but it is nothing compared to the work I was ordained to do in the world at my baptism. And my ordination didn’t give me anything more to do that work than I was given at my baptism. I was no more equipped for the work God needed me to do as a follower of Christ than I had been the day water was poured over my head.

My ordination gave me what I needed to be a sacramental priest and presbyter in the church. My baptism gave me what I needed to be God’s hands and feet and voice in the world. And this morning, Hugo will get everything he needs to do the same.

On Monday night, listening to the promises Isaac made and the questions the bishop asked him, I felt my ordination vows confirmed and renewed. I watched as the church laid 2,000 years of authority on this young man. This morning, gathered at the font, this new priest Isaac will welcome another new priest Hugo and pour over him 2,000 years of experience as the Body of Christ. And I hope, as Isaac asks questions and Hugo’s parents and godparents make promises, you will feel your own baptism confirmed, and your own priesthood renewed.

Isaac, Elise, Pat, the bishop and I, we have been set aside for particular work in the church for which we have been prepared and formed and called. But you have been called, you have been set aside, and you have been prepared and formed to do the work where the rubber meets the road, as they say.

Jesus was never ordained. But he was baptized. His baptism marked the beginning of his public ministry as he walked down the bank into the river with the rest of humanity. God got in the river with us. And walking back out, assured of his belovedness, he began to forgive, and to heal and to bless; to make his whole life a sacrifice to God. But now it is you who are to forgive where there is brokenness, it is you who is to heal where there is pain, and it is you who are to bless where grace is woefully absent. It is you who is to make your life a living sacrifice to God. Hugo is already who God needs him to be. This morning, we witness him joining Jesus in the River Jordan. This morning we watch for the clouds to open, for the spirit to descend on him and we listen in as God whispers into his ear, “you are my beloved child.” And then we promise to stand with him and support him as we send him out into a world that needs to be reminded of its belovedness and to be called back to its core identity as God’s own creation.

And that is your job. Isaac, and Elise, Pat and I are here to assist you in whatever way we can. But it is your job, it is our job to do together as the priests we are meant to be. With God’s help.

Amen.

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BU journalism student Colby Lucas interviewed me about the history of the solar panels at St. Paul’s. Here is her interview.

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Greetings, St. Paul's, on this Feast of the Holy Name.

January 1 is remembered in the church calendar as the day Jesus would have been brought to the temple for naming and circumcision. As devout Jews, Mary and Joseph would have been eagerly awaiting the eighth day after his birth for this rite and ritual.

As the angel had instructed Joseph in his dream, they name him Jesus. The name Jesus comes to us from the same Hebrew name that gives us Joshua. It means "to deliver" or "to rescue".

I grew up in a church where the letters above, “IHS”, were stitched into the front of the altar hangings. As I child, I never knew what it meant. I heard "In His Service" and "I have suffered" as possibilities. (I must also confess, growing up outside Providence, I thought "INRI" over Jesus on the cross had something to do with the location.)

Turns out, the letters IHS are the first three letters of the Latinized Greek name for Jesus. For much of my childhood, the central symbol in our worship space, along with the cross (and sometimes on the cross), was the name of Jesus.

There is power in a name. When people in our scripture stories receive their names, we are meant to understand that they are a new creation. Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai become Sarah, Jacob becomes Israel.

The name we translate Jesus was a very common name for the Jewish people of the first century common era. It was a very Jewish name. The name at the center our our faith as Christians was a very Jewish name, for his parents and he were Jewish.

This may seem obvious to most of you, new to some of you, though it remains shocking to far too many. Or at least that is what the news leads me to believe.

The rise of hate crimes committed against our Jewish siblings is an abomination. To commit an act of anti-antisemitism against a neighbor is to do so to someone who our Lord and Savior would have called family, neighbor, or he himself.

I don't know how our beloved siblings in Christ don't get this, and it both saddens and angers me.

Our Jewish and Muslim neighbors are longing to feel as close to God as we long to feel. They are faithful in their practice and they make our lives richer for their very being. I can't imagine what my ministry in Brookline would be like if I didn't get to do it alongside the diverse and faithful colleagues in the Brookline Interfaith Clergy Association.

Yesterday morning I read an article about the fear many in the Jewish community understandably have and they need many are feeling to "go underground". One of the great delights of living in Brookline is the public reminders that we are surrounded by people at prayer at all times; walking down the street, at the market or bookstore, women and men wearing kippahs on their heads, children running with the tassels from their prayer shawls peeping out from under winter coats, families walking to Shabbat services.

Yesterday afternoon, I stopped at the market to buy last minute dinner fare. In front of me was a set of parents with a young child in the midst of a classic meltdown. The child had gone limp as mom tried to get him off the floor and into her arms. Dad was balancing mom's bag and son's scooter. I felt for them. Been there. Done that.

Through it all, though, the kippahs never moved from their heads. In the middle of the meltdown was a visible reminder that God was there, with them, in the mess. And I wondered if they felt any different putting their kippahs on before going out shopping given the news of the day. Did they feel less safe? Was the thought of being attacked, verbally or physically, one more pressure on this family just trying to get dinner and get home?

It is easy think that we are removed from the stories of the attacks, whether the graffitti in a Jewish cemetary, the slap on a New York sidewalk, the intentional running-over of a young latina girl, preceded by the running over of a young african-american boy. But we are not.

And I don't want us to wait until something so atrocious happens here that we are shamed in acting. There is much to be done right now.

And maybe what we can do right now will not change the world overnight, but we can do whatever we can to make sure the world does not change us. (1)

Perhaps you've seen the letter circulating on social media. It is from the Massachusetts Council of Churches. It is entitled, "Letter From Christian Leaders Decrying Violence Against Jews" You can find it here, and I encourage you to sign it. You are a Christian leader, too.

On Friday night, January 17th at 7:30pm, we will join Temple Sinai for an Interfaith MLK Shabbat Service. You can find more information here. Please plan to be with us.

On Sunday morning, January 19th, from 9-10, we will gather at St. Paul's in the Great Hall to write letters of solidarity and love to the worshiping communities of Brookline.

At the center of our faith is a Jewish name, borne by a Jewish man, raised by Jewish parents. Today we celebrate that name given to him during the Jewish rite of Circumcision. May that name inspire us always to remember how it was that Jesus came to be the Savior and Redeemer of the World.

In this New Year, may the name Jesus remain at the center of our attention and be the guiding heartbeat behind every word spoken every deed done.

In Jesus' name.

Jeff+

(1) Thanks to peace activist A.J. Muste, for this idea.

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Christmas Eve Children’s Service 2019

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

A video came out from New Zealand in 2012. It is the inspiration for this Children’s Christmas sermon. You can see the video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TM1XusYVqNY

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Isaiah 35:1-10; Luke 1:47-55; James 5:7-10; Matthew 11:2-11

There is a line in a favorite hymn of mine that causes me to stumble a bit. The hymn “The Angel Gabriel from heaven came” tells the story of Mary’s discovery that she is to be God-bearer for the world.

But there’s that line “Then gentle Mary meekly bowed her head.’” The problem? Mary has never struck me as anything meek or mild. Even calling her a lady, as in “most highly favored lady” seemed, to me, to be the writing of men, taking this most radical and powerful of biblical characters and domesticating her, making her palatable and non-threatening -- to serve an example to the women in their own lives who they wished to be more palatable and non-threatening.

But, as we know, well-behaved women seldom make history.

And so I did some research, and what I found is what I often find when I take the time to unpack my knee-jerk reactions.

“Meek and mild” has nothing to do with being weak. It is, in fact a showing of great power. Meek and mild means that she wasn’t reactionary. She didn’t yell back at the Gabriel, and who would have blamed her if she did. The angel just gave her the news that her hard and marginalized life was about to become harder and more marginalized.

Instead, she took a deep breath. She sat with God. She considered the task in front of her and then she agreed to partner with God in God’s work in the world, despite what it would mean for her life. If you wonder, “Mary did you know?” the answer is, yes, she did.

She knew. And she said yes anyway.

She didn’t bargain or barter, she didn’t pass on the offer or come up with a million excuses why she was the wrong candidate, like so many of the male prophets do.

Turns out, Mary’s meekness and mildness is an example for all of us and perhaps most especially for the men among us who are often quick to speak before thinking, those who listen only to respond, not to actually hear what the person is saying. Meek and mild is about strength and inner-control.

But Mary’s quiet demeanor doesn’t last very long. In Luke, where the story of the Annunciation is told, Mary is visited by her cousin Elizabeth.

I like to imagine the door shutting, Elizabeth now inside. Mary closes the curtains and makes sure Joseph is out of earshot. They share a knowing look that breaks into a grin and then great laughter.

And then, in the safety of Elizabeth’s company, Mary lets it rip. And out of her mouth pours the Magnificat; The Song of Mary we heard this morning.

God has shown God’s strength in choosing her. God has scattered the proud in God’s choice of this poor peasant girl. In choosing Mary, God has cast down the mighty, lifted up the lowly, filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away. God has come to the help of God’s people in Mary, because God has remembered God’s promise of Mercy.

God has remembered. And so has Mary.

Meek, mild, powerful and revolutionary.

This scene would make no sense to those who passed by on the streets outside Mary’s house.

How could she possibly see this as God’s triumph? How could she see her pregnancy as a bringing about of God’s dream for the world and not a further punishment that would bring her grief and suffering.

It would certainly put her further outside her community and make her the source of whispers in the public square and in the church for centuries.

How could she react the way she did? Because she knew. Because her trust in God was solid. And it would be her faith in God that she would pass on to her son.

Later in Luke, when Jesus is called to read from the scroll, he chooses to read the passage from Isaiah that announces,

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

because he has anointed me

to proclaim good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners

and recovery of sight for the blind,

to set the oppressed free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’” (Luke 4: 17-21)NRSV

Sound familiar?

Like mother, like son.

For six weeks now, as we have been observing our extended Advent, we have, each week, sung two verses from the Canticle of the Turning, a setting of the Magnificat.

And though we have tried, as a church and a culture, to silence women’s voices, to edit them to make them less threatening, to doubt them to make them less trustworthy, or to shame them to make them less of God, Mary’s song tells the truth.

Mary’s song puts the patriarchy on notice. Mary’s song is the shot across the bow that the way things have always been are not the way they will be when God’s work is done on this earth.

Her reaction might not make any more sense to our modern ears than they did to her neighbors. Her response might seem foolish or naive.

Dorothy Day once said, “you should live in a way that wouldn't make sense unless God exists.”

Perhaps she got that idea from Mary.

None of what Mary proclaims makes any sense in her context, or in ours, unless God exists. In which case, they make perfect sense.

I want you to imagine a young woman, no older than 15, who chooses to believe enough in the hope she has for the world that she makes a choice to do something that no one truly understands.

She has been ostracized and told by the world around her that, because of who she is, she would have nothing to offer the world.

But she turns all that upside down, and uses the very things that she is told are her greatest liabilities to do the turning.

Her courage frightens the powers that be, and those powers come after her, because that’s what challenging the status quo will get you.

I’m talking, of course, about Greta Thunberg.

Greta was just 15 years old when she started a school strike for climate change all by herself.

The image is quite something. Just Greta and her sign.

So here she is. A girl of 15 with Asperger’s Syndrome living in Sweden who believes enough in the capacity of the world to turn itself upside down to save the climate that she behaves in a way that makes no sense, unless you believe in the possibility of change as much as she does.

And as for her Asperger’s? Her direct speech, ability to focus and courage to move forward are gifts she claims because of it.

Thunberg writes, “I have Aspergers and that means I’m sometimes a bit different from the norm. And - given the right circumstances- being different is a superpower.”

It is, she says, her “superpower.”

And what about her age? She’s now just 16 years old, has 3.6 million followers on twitter and was just named Time Magazine’s Person of the Year.

So, we can no longer believe that age has anything to do with the ability to get things done, to turn the world.

What some would call her liabilities are, in fact, her greatest strengths, because she believes she can make a difference in this world.

Mary’s “liabilities” were her superpowers, too.

For who else could have believed in God’s promises of mercy more than someone whose life was completely dependent on them?

What,I wonder, do you think are your greatest liabilities? Are you too young or too old? Are you differently abled? Do you learn differently? Do you live with a mental health diagnosis?

Are you just the kind of person the world would walk by if you were sitting outside by yourself with a sign proclaiming God’s longing for the world?

Are you just the kind of person the world would write off as undesirable, unhireable, unimportant?

Maybe, if we live our lives in ways that don’t make sense unless God exists, our courageous act of living might just bring God’s existence into view.

Maybe the very thing that we worry stands in our way, that makes us unfit, God knows is our greatest superpower.

The first hymn of Christmas are words spoken by a poor, unmarried pregnant middle-eastern teenager. And they are revolutionary. They are the words of the oppressed set free. They announce that, through her, the world is about to turn. And they are the truth of what it is we proclaim when we say “Emmanuel, God with us.”

What hymn will you sing to tell the world the very same thing?

Let us live our lives in ways that only make sense if God exists.

It is time to be meek. It is time to be mild. And it is time to turn the world upside down.

AMEN.

MICHAEL CAMPANELLA/Getty Images and REUTERS/Kate Munsch

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At St. Paul’s, we observe an extended advent. So this sermon uses the readings for Advent 1, though at St. Paul’s it was our Advent 4. For more info on extended Advent, check out the Advent Project.

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Advent 4/1 – Year A

December 1, 2019

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

Isaiah 2:1-5; Romans 13:11-14; Matthew 24:36-44; Psalm 122

Just before the passage we heard this morning from Matthew, Jesus is talking with his disciples about what sounds like the end of the world.

In this morning’s reading, Jesus anticipates their question. He certainly anticipates mine. “When, Jesus?” When will all of this happen? They want to be ready. I want to be ready. They want to be prepared. I want to be prepared.

Ready for what, though? Prepared for what?

While many will read these passages and interpret them to mean that Jesus is talking about the physical destruction of the world as we know it; the end-times, what Jesus is really talking about is the turning upside down of the world. Just like we sing each week in Advent.

The world, Jesus predicts, is about to turn. And it won’t be pretty when it does.

But after it turns? Oh, after it turns it will be beautiful. It will be paradise. It will be the Kingdom of God here on earth.

Jesus’ followers want to know when, exactly, this will take place.

But Jesus says that’s just not how it works.

Just like Noah had no warning (though, to be fair, he had time to build the arc), the kingdom of God will break in suddenly even as we are about the most mundane of tasks, working in the field, or grinding grain. One will be taken and one will be left.

Yet, somehow, by the time Saint Paul writes his letter to the church at Rome, the question of when has been decided. “Now,” St. Paul writes. “Now is the moment to wake from sleep.” Now is the time Jesus foretold.

But, how does he define “now?” Now, as in two thousand years ago? Now as in at the time of his writing? Or now, when we are hearing this letter? How could he have known that “now” was going to be sometime “later?”

All Jesus tells his followers is that we are not to fall into the same trap as the homeowner who didn’t let his house be broken into.

But doesn’t that make getting broken into a good thing?

And, wait...doesn’t that make God the thief in the night?

And I think that the point. God is the thief in the night. And, using Jesus’ metaphor and following his logic, God does not want us to know when God might arrive because God is afraid we won’t let God break in.

God knows us well enough to know that we will be too busy trying to make God happen that we won’t be able to let God happen.

We won’t, if we have time to prepare, let God break into our lives, or break into our hearts. And God desperately wants to do just that.

Perhaps the wisdom gained by the early church in the intervening years between Jesus’ ministry on earth and Paul’s letter to the community in Rome is that the key to be reading for the coming of Jesus into the world isn’t to be prepared for some time in the future, but to live every moment expecting it happen in the here and now; to live each moment as though it is happening.

The key to letting God break into our lives isn’t to busy ourselves with behaving in a way we think will make God happen, but to live our lives everyday, in every moment, with our hearts open, unarmed, and vulnerable to a break in by God.

Maybe the way to be suprised by God is to assume the surprise at every turn. To expect it. To look for it. To wonder where God is in the world around me, not if God is in the world around me.

“Maybe this is God,” you might suggest to yourself walking down the street, or waiting on hold, or looking in the mirror. “Maybe this is God.”

Maybe one is taken and one is left because one was expecting God to show up in the mundane details of life and the other was too busy working to notice God had, in fact showed up.

God will show up, but only the one who expects God to be there in the field, or at the grain mill, or in the meeting, or on the street, while raking leaves, or shoveling snow, while grocery shopping or visiting the sick will know it.

Last week Chris Dulla, Andrew Tanis, Art Wing and Melissa Dulla played in a band at a restaraunt who was celebrating their second anniversary. They call their band the “Embers,” because they trace their origins to the campfire at the Parish Retreat.

As I watched them play, I saw the church at its best. “God did this,” I thought. God brought these folks together to create joy and connection. When Sarah Dulla joined Chris for a Lady Gaga duet, I thought my hear was going to burst out of my chest.

In that restaurant, I saw God. I’m sure everyone there saw a “nice group of people” singing in front of them. But I’m not sure they expected God to show up in that restaurant in Dorchester on a Sunday night in November.

I’m not sure how many were left, but this one was definitely taken.

We sing the hymn “Were you there when they crucified my Lord” every year while we say the Stations of the Cross. Were you there when they crucified my Lord? When they nailed him to the tree? When they laid him in the tomb? Sometimes, it causes me to tremble.”

Just as the Coming of God into our lives is not bound by time to some point in the distant future, Christ crucified is not bound by time to some point in the distant past.

Was I there when they crucified my Lord? Well, that depends whether I have spent time looking for Christ in the world around me. But as Jackson Caesar sang this spiritual last night here at Saint Paul’s and asked me the question of whether or not I was there when the sun refused to shine I had to say “yes” I was there.

Yes, I was there when immigrant parents died on the border. Yes, I was there when young men of Color were shot dead in the street. Yes, I was there when wars were raged on my behalf and when creation was stripped for my dependence on fossil fuel. Yes, I was there. Yes, Lord, I am there now. And sometimes it causes me to tremble.

And I was there when God broke into the world at the hospital bed of a parishioner, in the conversation with a colleague over coffee, on retreat at a monastery. Yes, Lord, I was there, too. And sometimes, it causes me to tremble.

I was there when you were born into the world again this morning, and I will be there when you are crucified in the world again tonight.

Don’t miss the ways God is crucified every day in this world by looking to the past for when it happened to Jesus on the cross.

Expect God to be Crucified today.

And please don’t miss the ways God’s love and truth and mercy is already breaking into your life today by looking and planning for the way God might break in sometime in the distant future.

Expect to be surprised by God today.

The breaking in of God into our lives and hearts isn’t meant to be a surprise. It is not a Pop quiz on our behavior. It is not a carrot meant to reward us or a consequence meant to punish us.

God wants to break in, all the time. Is breaking in, every day.

Now is the time. It need not come as a surprise.

AMEN.

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Advent 2 (extended) Proper 28 (Year C)

November 15, 2019

Preached at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Brookline, MA

The Reverend Jeffrey W. Mello

Malachi 4:1-2a; Psalm 98; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19

Few plot points in movies and plays get to me emotionally like those in which the persecuted stand up and say “no.”

The strength and courage that comes from their desperation and hope connects to something deep in the core of my soul.

This week I went to see the movie “Harriet.” Based on the story of Harriet Tubman and her heroic work as a conductor for the underground railroad, this movie was full of moments of fierce desperation and hope.

When Harriet, for fear of being sold, decides to run off the plantation, on her own, dogs and guns mere feet behind her.

When she, who was born Araminta Ross and called “Minty” claims her new name, her free name, Harriet Tubman.

When the Fugitive Slaves Act is passed and escaped slaves in free states are no longer safe, the conductors of the Underground Railway meet to discuss the end of their work as they knew it.

Moving slaves on foot to freedom in Canada was a 600 mile journey no one thought possible. Their only hope now was to wait for a war to settle the matter.

Harriet snaps. And she says “no.”

“I ain’t givin’ up rescuing slaves because it’s far! Many a you don’t know slavery first hand. You were born free, or maybe you been free so long, you forget what it’s like. You got comfortable and important... ...You got beautiful homes, and beautiful wives.... But I remember [...] Tryin’ not to think a what dey went through... What those still enslaved are goin’ through right now! I have heard their groans and sighs, and seen their tears, and I would give every drop of blood in my veins to free ‘em! So I ain’t givin’ up! I’ma do whatever I got to, go wherever I got to, however I got to do it - to rescue as many slaves as possible, til dis beast, dis monster call slavery is slain dead!”

Heroic strength and courage, born of deep desperation and abiding hope.

In this morning’s Gospel, Jesus, walking with his followers, knows desperation. And he knows hope.

In this moment, however, it seems his followers have forgotten. or they’ve grown complacent. Or they have given up.

In the midst of Jesus’ urgent work to reconcile the world to God his followers stop to appreciate the glory of the temple as it stands around them. What an amazing architectural feat. What a sign that there God is back on top. What a testament to the glory of the status quo. What proof that they have arrived and all is right with the world.

Who need be desperate, when the temple looks so pretty? Who needs hope when what you have been hoping for soars around you in exquisite detail?

Jesus knows what the prophet Malachi predicted. “See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; .... But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings.”

Malachai knew it. Jesus knew it. Harriet knew it.

But do you know it? Right here, right now in this moment, is the sin-sick nature of this world propelling you out into the very thick of it that God’s dream for the world might be made known?

Or do you just not think it’s possible?

Are you worn down, worn out? Frustrated that the closer we seem to get to God’s justice, the stronger the forces that rebel against God seem to get?

Or, maybe, the temple looks pretty good from where you stand. Maybe the cries of the oppressed are hard to hear with our ear buds in.

No matter what force of evil you are battling, whether it is the global sin of income disparity and hunger, our national sin of racism, or personal wars of addiction or depression. No matter the battle, we know that things always get worse before they get better.

We know that power is not given up by the powerful without fierce resistance. And we know that “the way things have always been” can be an uncomfortable but predictable balm against the unknown future hope for which God made us.

Have we forgotten? Have we gotten too comfortable?

We all have our pretty temples that distract us, and tempt us to turn away from brutal reality of others’ lives, or of our own.

Did the glory of marriage equality make the world a safe place for transgender women of color?

Did the splendor of the election of our nation’s first black president heal the centuries old sin of racism?

Did the advent of the #metoo movement give women economic parity or safety from human trafficking?

Or maybe the current state of affairs in this world makes it seem to you like the task in front of us, bringing about the Dream of God in this world, is simply impossible? And it just seems to get harder everyday, like a 100 mile escape on foot turning to a six hundred mile journey through the wilderness?

What will we do? Do we, like the committed abolitionists of Harriet’s day, simply wait for some kind of war, some kind of outside force, wait for someone else to solve the problems in the world? How has that worked out in the past?

And do we wait for some kind of epic battle to end the deep pain in our families? How does that end?

Do we wait for a war to solve for us the battle that rages in our hearts? How many victims of those wars do we have to bury before we’re convinced it’s too many? How many guns will be enough? How many overdoses? How many suicides?

Maybe it is time for us to stop running. Maybe it is time to turn, and to look again at whatever monsters are chasing us and say “no?”

This season of Advent is, or at least it can be, about so much more than getting ready for Christmas. It is, or it can be, about getting ready for Christ.

It can be a time to invite Jesus into our lives, time to take an inventory of where we are heading and where the focus of our lives is, and to say “No.” A time to say that we will not give up simply because the work is hard.

We will not give up simply because it looks pretty good from where we sit.

Advent is a time to turn from the forces that chase us, the voices that tell us to give up, to face again the future which God intends for us.

It is a time to turn away from the ways we numb ourselves to the pain in this world, while waiting for someone else to heal it. It is a time to remember again that we are not to be wearied in doing good just because doing good is scary, or because it is hard, or because the results are often generations in the coming.

As Jesus asks his followers to turn from the distraction of the temple, he asks us to turn and look at him again. Seek him again. Follow him again. Don’t be distracted or complacent or hopeless, but turn and face the brokenness in this world because that’s exactly where Jesus waits for us. That is where Christ will be born to us. That is where God will break into our world, into our lives and rise, like the sun of righteousness, with healing in its wings.

Hear the words of the prophet Harriet. “I have heard their groans and sighs, and seen their tears, and I would give every drop of blood in my veins to free ‘em! So I ain’t givin’ up! I’ma do whatever I got to, go wherever I got to, however I got to do it.”

Don’t give up.

Do whatever you have to do.

Go wherever you’ve got to go.

You’ve got to do it.

Stop running.

Turn around.

Get desperate.

Claim hope.

Don’t let anyone tell you the limits of what you can do.

And rise. Rise like the sun of righteousness bearing healing on your wings.

AMEN.

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Isaiah 53:4-12; Psalm 91:9-16; Hebrews 5:1-10; Mark 10:35-45

Sometimes the glory of the Kingdom of God looks messy. Sometimes bringing it about is gut-wrenching and it is painful. Sometimes it will mean doing things that kill us, or at least kill a version of ourselves that needs to die, so a version closer to the example we are given in Jesus might be born.

James and John are well-meaning and completely clueless in this morning’s gospel. How immature and petty they seem. Like something ripped from an episode of “Survivor”, they form an alliance, just the two of them, and saddle up to Jesus to ask that the revered places on his right and left be reserved for them.

You want glory? Jesus asks. Can you drink the cup I will need to drink? Will you immerse yourself in the baptism in which I am immersed?

“Sure,” They respond. “How hard could it be,” they must be wondering.

In order to bring about the dream of God, we are asked to drink the cup Jesus drinks and to live into the transformative baptism Jesus models for us. And we wonder, “how hard can it be?”

Well, my friends, take a look at the world around us. That’s how hard it can be. That’s how hard it is. And it seems like it is only getting worse, day by day.

Someone recently commented to me that they didn’t think things were getting worse in the world. They believed things were getting unveiled. Misogyny, racism, xenophobia; There is little in the dis-ease of this world that is new.

What is new is the courage of the prophets of our day to stand up, to speak out and to say “this is not okay.” “This is not how the world should be.” “We can do better.”

But that courage has made a lot of people uncomfortable. For people of privilege, whatever the privilege be, the rules feel like they are changing halfway through the game.

And those whose unearned power is being challenged respond with fear, and dismiss the voices of the disenfranchised as just the latest wave of Politically-correct speak.

And the well-meaning struggle with their own stumbles, hoping against hope that their intent will always translate into the intended impact. And when it doesn’t, it hurts and we respond “That’s not what I meant. You know that, right?”

I am one of those well-meaning people. And Jesus calls to me out of today’s Gospel and says, “So, you want a world that is just, a world that is reconciled, a world that reflects the dream of God?” And like James an John, I reply, “Oh, yes! I sure do!” And while I do not believe it will be easy, I do hope my desire covers my stumbles. But can I drink the cup? Will I share in the baptism?

A few weeks ago, the clergy of the Diocese gathered together for our annual fall clergy day. I am a co-signer of a resolution going before our Diocesan Convention in November asking the Diocese to support ballot initiative 3, which seeks to continue to protect the safety of transgender and gender nonconforming people in public spaces.

As a co-signer, I was asked to make an announcement about it. I spoke passionately about our call to respect the dignity of every human being. I acknowledged that some of the language and discussion points might be new for a lot of folks in the room. And I encouraged them not to let their fear of saying the wrong thing or asking the wrong question silence them. It’s okay to make mistakes, I said. Transformation can be painful. I ended my comments by asking everyone to support the initiative and to support our transgender brothers and sisters.

As I went back to my seat, the words “brothers and sisters” rang loud in my head. Had I just ended an announcement about gender diversity by using the binary construction of gender? I felt my face go red as I sat back down. “I’m so embarrassed” I said to a friend. “I should have known better than to speak in front of colleagues.”

“It was perfect,” my merciful colleague responded. “You gave them a perfect example of not letting the fear of making mistakes get in the way of speaking truth.”

I was hoping for a seat in glory. What I got was the cup Jesus offers and a cold splash in the waters of baptism.

Transformation brings new life, but it can be awfully painful.

Two Sundays ago, our choir offered a piece for the offertory that was based on an indigenous anthem called “Mi’Kmaq.” It involved animal sounds and a gorgeous chant. Like any piece of music we choose, the piece was chosen with care and with the intent to lift up the fact that we were celebrating the feast of St. Francis, known for his love of the animal kingdom.

The readings that day were challenging; the story of Eve coming from Adam’s rib, and Jesus’ teaching on divorce. In my sermon I argued that the way these readings have been interpreted over time has brought pain and oppression to half of humanity.

I left church that Sunday feeling really great, like I had a glimpse of the glory James and John were seeking. We had done it. A complicated and difficult Sunday with hard readings, two baptisms, blessing of the animals and the day after a painful confirmation to the Supreme Court. While the world was getting it wrong, we were getting it right!

It wasn’t until later Sunday evening I discovered why I was feeling so good. Turns out I was feeling good because I could. As a male, my desire to empathize and name the pain of the scripture readings and Supreme Court confirmation was not enough to make the readings not sting.

And as a white person, my enjoyment of a piece of music, and my feeling encouraged that others cultures were being represented in our community in predominantly white Brookline was an enjoyment born of my ignorance of what it might feel like to be an indigenous person who shares in a long history of white immigrants taking one thing after the next from them; their land; their vote; their lives; their music.

Of course, I couldn’t know what it was like to be an indigenous person or a woman in church that morning. But I wanted my desire to do the right thing to be enough. Like James and John, I wanted the glory of a glimpse of the kingdom. In return, I was offered the cup to drink and the baptism to share.

How often do we want the glory, want to arrive at the kingdom of God, without having to share the cup of suffering, or the baptism of painful and ongoing transformation?

Maybe you were hurt that Sunday. If so, I am sorry. Maybe you have no idea what I’m talking about. Maybe you are uncomfortable now. It’s okay, I am too. Talking about making mistakes is hard, conflict is hard, particularly in the church.

But silence is deadly. Pretending everything is okay at the expense of the silenced is oppression.

If we are to be a community dedicated to bringing about the Dream of God in the world, we have got to acknowledge that, along the way, we will make mistakes, however well-meaning and well-intentioned they might be. We need to listen to the pain we unintentionally cause if we desire to be transformed.

Because we are church doesn’t mean we won’t stumble along the way to a just and reconciled world. Because we are church means we can love each other enough to desire one another’s transformation; we can hold one another accountable; we can ask forgiveness when we err, we can forgive when we have been hurt, we can break bread when we disagree.

We seek the glory of the God’s dream for the world. In return, Jesus offers us broken bread, a cup and a baptism to help us get there.

AMEN.

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Learn more Jonah 3:1-5, 10; I Corinthians 7:29-31; Mark 1:14-20

I was first in the ordination process in the Diocese of Rhode Island when I was 18 years old. According to the Bishop of the time, I would go to college, followed by seminary and then on to ordination. I would be the Rev. Jeffrey Mello just after my 25th birthday.

At 20, when I was interviewing with the Commission on Ministry for permission to go to seminary, one of the members commented that, to her, it just didn’t seem like I had suffered enough in my life to be considered for ordination. To her, I seemed to have led too easy a life to be of any use in the ministry.

I swiftly left the ordination process, with secret relief. I also believe the church was spared the ministry of 20 year-old me.

Some 15 years later, I would find myself back in the ordination process, and it would be at 39, not 25 that I would be ordained . I don’t know if it was that I had endured sufficient suffering in the intervening years, but there was, I think, one key change in me. The second time I sat before a Commission, I no longer thought I needed to be perfect for ordained ministry. And, equally important, I no longer thought God needed others to be perfect, either. I had come to understand what I call “God’s preferential option for the broken.”

God doesn’t call the perfect. God doesn’t ask those untouched by pain and brokenness to serve God in the world.

For much of my young life, I had been working so hard to present myself as perfect that I didn’t let them see the broken-ness that existed. I didn’t want them to see it. I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t even know my own broken-ness, because it frightened me.

Given God’s abundant and unconditional love for us, I don’t know where the human desire to be perfect comes from. It is contrary to just about every story we are given about those who are called and then able to do God’s work in the world. None of our biblical leading women and men were perfect.

The fishermen called into service in today’s reading from Mark weren’t perfect. St. Paul wasn’t perfect. Neither was Jonah, and the Ninevites certainly weren’t.

The examples scripture gives us to follow as people of faith are icons of the broken. They were, all of them, from Genesis to Revelation, imperfect women and men who were able to do the work of God, not despite their broken places, but because of them.

Being broken is the central, the core image we are given of God. This cross hangs in the sanctuary to remind us that God among us, Emmanuel, was broken before his life would be shared with the world. That Body of Christ was broken so it could be shared.

At the high point of our Eucharistic Prayer, the Presider holds the bread in the air and breaks it. This bread we claim to be the body of Christ must be broken before it can be shared.

And as a community, a church, we make up the Body of Christ in the world, and we are never more faithful to the Gospel than when we have been broken open by suffering and need in the world and we respond to that suffering from the brokenness of our own hearts.

But that’s where our comfort with any talk of brokenness tends to end; with the corporate experience of being broken, or the abstract.

We are reluctant to talk about our own, personal experiences of being broken. Who wants to hear our baggage, after all? What will people think of us if they know we are more than the easy veneer we work so hard to present to the world? What will we think of ourselves?

The Japanese art call Kintsugi takes broken pieces of pottery and puts them back together, sealing the cracks with gold, so the imperfections and broken pieces gleam. In Kintsugi, the beauty is in the brokenness.

In our liturgy, as a central act of our worship together, we lift up the sacredness of brokenness. We participate in the sacrament of the broken.

And yet in our lives, even here in this community, we hide what is broken, we apologize for our need of one another and we fear anything that is less than perfect in ourselves. And at our most fragile, we point out what is broken in others in hopes own imperfections pale in comparison.

The thing is, to pretend we aren’t broken isn’t only dishonest, it is unhealthy. And not only is it unhealthy, but it prevents us from being the hands and heart and voices of God in this world.

If the stories we hear in scripture are tales of the imperfect arguing with God that they are not up to the task, the modern tale might be of a God who is searching for the imperfect to do the work God needs done, and not finding sufficient candidates who are willing to admit they have the proper credentials.

For if we are fine, what need do we have of each other? If we are “all good,” what need do we have of God? If we can put the pieces of our lives together with the super glue of our own self-sufficiency, what need to we have for God to pour the gleaming gold of grace and forgiveness and love into the cracks?

In today’s Gospel, Jesus continues the radical, world turning upside down work of calling imperfect people into the perfect role for them: love-bearers, peace-makers, justice-seekers. And the imperfect whom Jesus calls -- they are ready. The have tried everything. They have little to lose and everything to gain. So they drop their nets and go. They leave their families and they go.

Maybe that’s what the member of the Commission knew on that day 27 years ago. Maybe she heard in my story someone who felt they had everything to lose and nothing to gain following God, and that, perhaps, when God called me into action, I might say, “Nah, I’m good, thanks.”

When the body of Jesus was broken, God needed us to put it back together. When the bread is broken, God needs us to become a new body of Christ. When the world is broken, God needs us to restore it to wholeness. God is pretty okay with admitting when things are broken. God is comfortable needing us.

Perhaps it is time for us to admit we might just need God as much as God needs us. Maybe it’s okay to drop the veneer of perfection in order to see the gift of wholeness.

In my life, everyday is a struggle to exchange the superglue of “I’ve got it together” for the gold of God’s grace and love as it is manifested in the kindness and compassion of others.

Jesus says follow me. He was headed toward brokenness that the world may be whole. That’s where the disciples were headed, though they knew nothing about it.

So, too, Jesus calls us to follow. To broken-ness, through broken-ness, to a new wholeness and fullness of life.

May our broken hearts, our broken spirits, our broken lives glimmer with the gold streaks of God’s love and grace that we might, when God needs us, drop our nets and go.

AMEN.

Leading with Joy: Recent Episodes

The Rev. Jeffrey W. Mello