Saint George's Sermons & Media: Recent Episodes
Saint George's Episcopal Church, Arlington
The Rev. Dr. Karin J. Ekholm, June 15, 2025
I am immensely grateful for the call to serve at St. George’s as your Associate Rector, particularly during these sorely troubled times.
We are inundated these days with news of violence, especially toward people who have long been deprived of dignity and the freedom to live and work in peace. This continual flood of assaults occurring globally, nationally, and locally can feel overwhelming, and more and more, I hear despair that there is anything we can do to counter these powers that corrupt and destroy.
In our baptismal covenant, we vow to strive for justice and peace among all people, but what might this look like in our daily lives? In times like these, where do we turn for wisdom, strength, and endurance? Where do we find hope?
Our second reading today comes from St. Paul’s epistle to the church in Rome during times of great political flux and social unrest. The Apostle penned the letter in the mid-50s when Emperor Claudius—who had expelled the Jewish people from Rome—was succeeded by Nero, who allowed them back and later persecuted them. Among these ethnically Jewish people, some were followers of Christ.
In addition to pressures from the outside, the early church contended with internal strife. As a new community made up of people from different ethnic and religious backgrounds, they struggled acutely with questions of what it means to serve as Christ’s body and how the Spirit might work through them to restore all people into right relationship with God and each other. Much of St. Paul’s correspondence deals with conflicts and factions within the fledgling church, particularly questions about the extent to which Gentiles needed to assimilate to Jewish traditions and law.
Today’s reading comes from the very center of the epistle, and serves as a hinge between what has been and where God is calling his people to follow. The upshot of this passage is a promise of hope to those who are oppressed and hurting. The hope to which St. Paul bears witness is no naïve sentiment or Pollyannaish optimism, but rather derives from recognizing God’s loving presence in times of suffering.
Understanding what such hope looks like requires us to follow several steps of an argument. While at first it might seem unclear where St. Paul is heading, it all comes together to offer a promise of genuine hope.
In the first half of the letter, he contends that all humans—those who followed the law and those who did not—have fallen short. God’s merciful response was to send Christ to lead humanity back into right relationship. Being justified by faith means that we are brought back into right relationship through Christ reaching out to us in love.
In today’s passage, St. Paul delineates the fruits of right relationship, including our hope that we share in the glory of God. Throughout Hebrew Scripture, God’s glory is synonymous with his presence. Our hope therefore lies in the recognition that God dwells among us. Our hope is based not in striving, but in the promise of God’s abiding love.
St. Paul’s language of boasting in hope may sound odd to modern ears—after all, he has just affirmed that we are redeemed through grace, not merit. But phrases like these are a pointed reminder that St. Paul and members of the early church were persecuted people whom society continually sought to degrade and eliminate. In exhorting the oppressed to boast in what God has bestowed on them St. Paul affirms their dignity. Boasting in hope and suffering strikes me as a profoundly countercultural action, a form of resistance to more conventional objects of vaunting, like status, belongings, and achievements.
To be clear, in charging the church to boast in suffering, St. Paul never claims that God causes suffering. Rather his point is that suffering is redeemed and transformed through Christ. The word that is translated ‘suffering’ comes from the Greek term for a pressure that holds down, hems in, and restricts. The recognition that God abides with the oppressed and afflicted, is what leads us to grow in hope. This is a hope that does not disappoint, St. Paul observes, because it is rooted in God's love that has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.
We read this passage today—on Trinity Sunday—because it conveys something of the threefold manifestation of God in relation to humanity. St. Paul is not presenting a doctrine—that came three centuries later--but rather he is contending with practical questions of how our understanding of ourselves and our relationship to God and one another is transformed by the mission of Christ and the Spirit.
In recent months, as I visited, interviewed, and talked with members of St. George’s, I have been deeply encouraged and filled with hope by what you’ve shared of your experiences of worship, formation, social justice, outreach, and fellowship. The Spirit is clearly at work through this community, and I can’t wait to get to know each of you and to learn how to accompany you on your journey and support you in your ministry. My sense of call to the priesthood was in large part motivated by my experience of God’s presence in a special way when people share their stories and insights into what they hear in the stories of others.
Before seminary, I spent two decades as a cultural historian with a focus in history of science and medicine, teaching undergraduates and graduate students. Though I loved my research and teaching, I could not shake the sense that I was being drawn in another direction. Five years ago this month, during the protests that followed the brutal killing of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and Rayshard Brooks, I entered a period of discernment that led to my ordination a year ago today. In seminary, an especially formative time was the summer that I spent as a chaplain at Washington Hospital Center in the trauma unit and neonatal intensive care, where are large portion of the patients I saw came from economically and socially oppressed communities. It was here I came to a real understanding of St Paul’s claim that we grow in character and hope through God dwelling in the midst of adversity.
Striving for justice and peace for all people and finding hope in troubled times begins with listening to each other’s stories and recognizing God in them.
Juneteenth this Thursday marks the 160th anniversary since the last of enslaved people were finally freed, and yet, the legacy of Jim Crow and systemic racism continue to oppress and deprive their descendants of dignity.
I encourage you to observe this holiday by listening to stories that can be hard to hear. I commend the current exhibit at the Renwick Gallery of narrative quilts by black women artists that tell stories through images, words, and artifacts stitched in fabric. Closer to home, I encourage you to watch—or rewatch—members of this church courageously sharing their stories at a forum hosted by our Racial Reconciliation Committee five years ago (Linked here). Or you could start reading for the summer book club on racial oppression.
These are troubled times, and though things feel overwhelming and uncertain, do not despair for God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. As Christ’s living body, let us continue to listen to one another, and to our communities beyond church, with an ear to discern how God is calling us to participate in his work of striving for justice and peace among all people and respecting the dignity of every human being.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, The Day of Pentecost: Whitsunday, June 8th, 2025
When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting…” Acts 2:1
Today is the Day of Pentecost. Pentecost is such an awesome feast day! It falls 50 days after Easter Day and is the culmination of the Easter season. And we hear this wild story from the Acts of the Apostles about a violent wind and flames dancing on the heads of the disciples. They were suddenly able to understand each other, even though they were speaking different languages.
Prior to this, the disciples had been waiting. Jesus had told them after his resurrection and before he ascended to heaven, that they would receive power from the Holy Spirit to continue his ministry in the world. They could have all just gone home to their private reflections about everything that had happened. And a lot had happened. They had been with Jesus during his ministry, they had grieved his death and marveled at his post-resurrection appearances to them. They had watched in amazement as he ascended into the clouds. But the disciples didn’t disperse to go back to the life they had before Jesus. Instead, they did what he had told them to do. They stayed together to make sense of things in community. They didn’t lose heart. They went to an upper room in Jerusalem and prayed and waited. And they waited and prayed. Not wringing their hands, locked in fear. No, they prayed expectantly, hopefully. They trusted and believed that Jesus would send his Holy Spirit. And suddenly, in the blink of an eye, the Spirit filled the room, and they received a vision of a new heaven and a new earth. And in that instant, Peter realized that the ancient words of the prophet Joel had been fulfilled:
“I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.”
Just as Joel had prophesied, hundreds of years before, Peter foresees a day when all things will be brought to their fullness. That last great day, when God’s purposes for the world will finally be realized. When all things will be brought to fruition. Where all of humankind is brought into God’s very presence. When everyone is made whole. When all of creation is healed. When human potential has been realized. When all people are united and God is all in all.
What a beautiful vision! What a wonderous hope! And not only that, but Peter sees that they are getting a glimpse of that in the here and now. Just as God brought Jesus into the world to change everything, God is now sending the Holy Spirit to inspire them, to empower them, to carry on Jesus’ radical work of loving the world that killed Jesus, of loving the world that doesn’t always love back, of loving a world that resists love, that tries to stamp out love, but that so desperately needs love, a world that hungers and thirsts for the healing that love brings. That’s what the Holy Spirit rained down on everyone in the upper room that day. This group included Jesus’ mother Mary, his brothers, Peter, and all the many other disciples that day in the upper room on Pentecost. And they went forth after that ecstatic spiritual experience to found the Church.
Today, we too are longing for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. We yearn for inspiration, we hunger for empowerment, we thirst for unity, and we cry out for a transformed world. The disruption, chaos and confusion in our public life have left so many people dispirited and hopeless. The loss of jobs, the shameful treatment of many immigrants and refugees, the erosion of our sense of the common good, the divisiveness and strife.
As challenging as this time is in so many ways, it also provides an opportunity to see visions and dream dreams of a transformed world where everyone is valued as a beloved child of God.
When the Holy Spirit came upon the disciples in the upper room, there was such a commotion that people from all over Jerusalem came to see what was happening. Many of the people who came lived there and others had traveled from far and wide to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Pentecost. Pentecost was originally observed 50 days after Passover and it’s purpose was to give thanks for the spring barley harvest. It was also a commemoration of the giving of the law to Moses.
The Acts of the Apostles describes the first Christian Pentecost as a universal event. It is the beginning of the spreading of the Good News of Jesus to the four corners of the earth. The beautiful Jerusalem cross on the altar is a visual way to communicate that – the large cross in the middle- with the four smaller crosses in the quadrants representing the reach of the Gospel around the globe.
So Pentecost, as Acts describes it, is a reinterpretation of what had come before. Christianity coming forth from the rich tradition of Judaism. As Christianity developed, many practices evolved that were rooted in Jewish practice. Just as the Jewish faithful celebrated Pentecost 50 days after Passover, Christians began celebrating Pentecost 50 days after Easter. Easter is our Christian Passover, when Jesus passed from death to new life. And our celebration of Pentecost each year reminds us that we are empowered to carry on Jesus’ work. And his work, the work of preaching and teaching and social justice and pastoral care and outreach, never changes – that work is HIS work and the Spirit empowers us to continue it in our own day and time, just in different ways. The Holy Spirit is always, always calling us to innovation and creativity.
The Spirit is teaching us new ways of taking Jesus’ message to the four corners of the earth. Here at Saint George’s, the Spirit has inspired incredible growth and vitality and we are looking toward the future with great expectation. You should have received an email last Sunday afternoon outlining the new strategic plan, a plan for implementing our communal vision for the future, and we are doing that during a very turbulent time in our nation. Our last strategic plan was also completed during a very challenging time. It was May 2020 and we were in the thick of the pandemic. And that is significant, the fact that both of these hopeful, aspirational plans were forged during a time of great angst. When things are hard, it helps us to see what is most important, to clarify our values. And right now, especially now, we see the importance of being an inclusive, loving, joyful, justice-seeking community of faith. Our life together in Christ is more important than ever, offering us an alternative narrative for our lives and for the world that Jesus came to save. Our 2025 plan is about making God’s new dream for us a reality. We all had an opportunity provide input, the vestry, ministry leaders and congregation.
Themes the committee heard during this process included people’s eagerness to get more involved at Saint George’s, to engage in fellowship and small group faith formation, to minister to the world through outreach and social justice opportunities, and deep appreciation for Saint George’s liturgy, music, and children and youth. I encourage you to review it. Like any good plan, it is both aspirational and actionable.
The Holy Spirit is at work in the world and here at Saint George’s. God’s Spirit has always been at work. In the beginning of creation, the Spirit moved over the deep and brought forth all kinds of new life. That same Spirit came upon Mary when she was a young girl, and through her, sent Jesus into the world to show us the way of life. The Holy Spirit came upon the first Christians and brought forth the Church. And the Spirit is alive and well today, inspiring us to live the rich tradition we have inherited in new ways, sharing God’s all-embracing love with the world. Here in June 2025, in the context of political and social upheaval, a new thing is coming into being through us. We are dreaming dreams and seeing a new vision for the hopeful future that God is calling us to.
“I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions and your old men shall dream dreams.”
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Easter 7, June 1st, 2025
This week-end marks the beginning of Pride month and the Episcopal Church is celebrating it in a variety of ways, all across the country. Yesterday, the Episcopal churches here in Arlington joined together to sponsor a table at Arlington Pride, with a lot of support from Saint Georgians, and this afternoon we’ll host a Pride Evensong, highlighting LGBTQ+ composers and offering prayers that speak to God’s all-embracing love for humankind. Expressing our affirmation, support and love for our LGBTQ+ siblings is so important, especially right now, when there are so many attempts to roll back the progress that has been made over the last many years in our country toward full inclusion.
The Episcopal Church has been formally welcoming and affirming LGBTQ+ people since 1976, when General Convention adopted two resolutions stating that (and remember this is the language of 1976) “homosexual persons are children of God who have a full and equal claim with all other persons upon the love, acceptance, and pastoral concern and care of the Church, and that they “are entitled to equal protection of the laws with all other citizens. So affirmation both as Christians and as citizens of our country.
Today, almost 50 years later, the Episcopal Church continues to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, and LGBTQ+ people now serve as lay leaders and as clergy; deacons, priests and bishops. God’s work is the work of justice, both inside and outside the church. In today’s Gospel Jesus prays that “ we all may be one.” And in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles we see one example of what that looks like.
The Acts of the Apostles is such an interesting book. It is actually a continuation of the Gospel of Luke. In the Gospel of Luke, we hear about Jesus life, death, resurrection and ascension, just like the other Gospels, but in Luke, there is a particular emphasis on Jesus’ ministry to the poor and marginalized. The writer of Luke also wrote the Acts of the Apostles. So scholars today refer to Luke-Acts, as one book with two parts, the first about Jesus’ ministry of reconciliation, and the second about the early evangelists, who continued Jesus’ mission to the marginalized and oppressed.
In today’s story, we hear about the healing of a slave girl who was being doubly abused by the people who thought of themselves as her owners. First because she was enslaved and second because she was being used to make a lot of money for her owners with her fortune-telling. The girl’s owners are angry when their lucrative money-making scheme is interrupted, so they take Paul and Silas before the civil authorities and accuse them of disrupting the peace. It was unlawful for Jews to make converts of Romans. They are flogged and then thrown into jail, but even in jail they continue to witness to their faith with prayers and hymn singing. They are in prison, their bodies battered and bleeding, but their spirits are free and unharmed. It’s hard to imagine singing songs of thanksgiving to God after being beaten, locked up and shackled, but they knew that they had a choice about how to respond, and their response was to trust in God as they endured this horrible injustice. But they didn’t let this injustice go unchallenged. Immediately after our reading, the magistrates send word that Paul and Silas should be released, apparently thinking that they had probably learned their lesson, but Paul tells them that he is a Roman citizen, which meant that he had been unlawfully treated, because Roman citizens were protected under the law from being flogged. One of the themes throughout the Acts of the Apostles is trying to establish that Christian faith should be tolerated in Roman culture. And that one could be both a faithful Christian and a Roman citizen, seeking justice within the Roman legal system, knowing that God’s perfect justice would one day come to fullness.
As we celebrate Pride this week-end, we are reminded that we too are called to pray and to trust in God’s provision, while also speaking out against injustice in the world. One of the little-known but hugely important pioneers in helping us understand the importance of activism outside and inside the church was Pauli Murray. The Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray lived from 1910 to 1985 and was one of those people who seemed to have lived more fully in one life than is possible, and suffered so much hardship and persecution that is difficult for us to imagine. Murray was a human rights activist, legal scholar, author, labor organizer, poet, multiracial Black, and was also most likely transgender before that language for her/his experience existed. She/he was the first Black person to earn a law degree from Yale, a founder of the National Organization for Women and the first Black person perceived as a woman to become an Episcopal priest. Murray was ordained to the priesthood at the National Cathedral when she/he was in her/his 60s and lived here in Arlington during that time. Murray had this to say in her/ his autobiography about ordination.
“All the strands of my life had come together. Descendant of slave and of slave owner, I had already been called poet, lawyer, teacher, and friend. Now I was empowered to minister the sacrament of One in whom there is no north or south, no black or white, no male or female – only the spirit of love and reconciliation drawing us all toward the goal of human wholeness.”
Murray was echoing our Lord’s prayer today when he prayed that “we may all be one”. The slave girl in the story from Acts was freed, even though she may not have known that she needed to be freed. The jailer almost killed himself because he knew he was responsible if Paul and Silas escaped, and yet he was healed after they shared their faith with him and he saw that he no longer had to be afraid once he chose to follow Jesus too. And they, both the prisoners and the jailer, were reconciled, the jailer washing their wounds, and Paul and Silas washing him in the water of baptism. And then they shared a meal together, a eucharistic celebration, rejoicing in the freedom that only God can give.
I leave you with the collect for the Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray’s feast day, which is July 1st.
Liberating God, we thank you for the steadfast courage of your servant Pauli Murray, who fought long and well: Unshackle us from the chains of prejudice and fear, that we may show forth the reconciling love and true freedom which you revealed in your Son our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
Sources: https://episcopalnewsservice.org/2025/05/30/episcopal-churches-to-celebrate-pride-month-throughout-june-to-affirm-support-lgbtq-people/
https://trinitychurchnyc.org/stories-news/episcopal-saint-remembering-pauli-murrays-life-and-work
https://www.paulimurraycenter.com/who-is-pauli
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Easter 5C – Youth Sunday & Last Day, 5/18/25
Readings: Acts 11:1-18 (Salvation offered to all), Revelation 21:1-6 (New Heaven and New Earth, John 13:31-35 (Farewell Discourse and New Commandment)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
“Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, 'Where I am going, you cannot come.'”
I mean, c’mon, really God? Not only on Youth Sunday, but my last Sunday with you, this is the Gospel lesson appointed? If you had any doubts that God has a poetic sense of humor, let them be dispelled.
Let me be clear, this is not my farewell discourse, it is Jesus’s, and unlike some of us, I promise you that Jesus is not leaving you for Raleigh. But seeing as how I too am with you only a little longer, there are a few things I would like to tell you, St. George’s, and I’m not going to give a farewell speech, I am going to do the thing you called me here to do – which is to preach and proclaim the Gospel. You know, one of my deepest joys of being a priest with you has been the opportunity to spend time with people at every season of life, from the tiniest infants just days old to people who have been on this earthly journey for two and even three times longer than I have.
And one of the most beautiful and tender things that I have noticed in these visits is that the beginning and the end of this life are often very similar. Specifically, the things that we are taught as children tend to be the things we remember with greatest clarity in our old age. During a recent visit to a retirement home, I stopped in the rec room where a group of residents from memory care sat gathered around a piano singing the words to the familiar childhood song, Jesus Loves Me.
Jesus loves me this I know, for the bible tells me so,
little ones to Him belong, they are weak but he is strong.
Yes, Jesus loves me, yes Jesus loves me,
yes Jesus loves me, the bible tells me so.
Here was a room full of people, eighty, ninety, and even one hundred years old; people who had lived lives marked by both joy and struggle, people who had seen the world change and challenge them in ways they couldn’t imagine; people who had had impressive careers and people who had lived quiet modest lives; people who had raised children of their own; children whose names they now struggled to remember, and yet they had not forgotten this one thing: Jesus loves them. Jesus loves them. This they knew.
That room full of people, just like every single child in this church, became my Sunday School teachers in that moment. And in that moment it became incredibly clear to me that the most important thing we are to do for one another, the most important job we have in this life, is to let others know every chance we get how much God loves them.
Jesus’s final command to his disciples was to love one another. It’s the simplest and most difficult thing in the world. And in order to do this, we have to remember for ourselves, how much God loves us. Jesus says “just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” In order to show others how much they are loved, we must first understand how much we are loved.
This part of knowing God’s love for us can be the hardest, especially for us adults, especially if we have not been told enough, maybe by our parents, certainly by the world, the God loves us. And this where God gives us an incredible and paradoxical gift. Children are often the ones who show us how to love as Jesus does with the greatest purity. Children show us how to embrace God’s love like no other group of people.
The child who runs into the room and hugs the first person they see. The child who shares a tearful apology when they know they’ve done wrong. The child who forgives without hesitation, without a shred of resentment. The child who fiercely defends the ones whom they love.
The love that us adults spend a lifetime trying, failing, and trying again to perfect, is the love that comes so naturally to a child. They are our teachers, with Christ, of God’s unshakeable love. They are God’s way of reminding us of our belovedness.
Every morning when I see my six-month-old daughter smile at me when she wakes up, it’s as if God himself is telling me again that he loves me. The girl doesn’t know anything. She hardly knows who I am, and yet her smile says I love you, just as Jesus is saying he loves each and every one of you, every moment of your lives. And when you are struggling to remember this, I want you to look to a child.
Look to a child and remember that in Gods eyes, you are like that child. Loved beyond words by a parent who held you at your birth, holds you in your life, and will hold you again, even when only thing you can remember is the thing that matters most – Jesus loves you.
And as he has loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are his disciples. Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Fourth Sunday of Easter: Good Shepherd Sunday, May 11th
This past Thursday, the world watched expectantly as white smoke billowed from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel. A new pope was announced and there was great excitement all around, from Roman Catholics, from other Christians, from people of various faith traditions, as well as people with no religious affiliation. And this fairly universal exaltation had a lot to do with the context we are living in. With the rise of authoritarian, nationalistic leaders across the world, it was so wonderful to see a significant world leader who embodies another way. Cardinal Robert Prevost, now Pope Leo 14th, is widely heralded as a humble, intelligent, deeply faithful man, who brings a global perspective and is profoundly devoted to the needs of the poor, the displaced and the marginalized. He is an American, who also chose to become a citizen of Peru, demonstrating his solidarity with the people he ministered to for two decades. He sees that we are all one human family and that everybody matters. He is a good shepherd. He is also a symbol of hope, peace, mercy and compassion. And the world needs these things, hungers and thirsts for them, especially right now. The pope brings tremendous moral authority to the world affairs, an authority that is rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ and has implications for all people.
Today is Good Shepherd Sunday, which always falls on the Fourth Sunday of the Easter season, the season when we reflect on Jesus’ resurrection in various ways, a tradition we share with our Roman Catholic siblings and many other Protestants. And it is always good to celebrate what we have in common with other Christians, while also acknowledging our differences. We can all gather around this ancient image of Jesus as our Good Shepherd, an enduring metaphor for God that is rooted in our Jewish heritage, and that is cause for rejoicing.
Our hymnody and readings today coalesce around the Good Shepherd, in anticipation of that last day that the Revelation to John describes, when “a great multitude, from every nation, tribe, people and language” will be gathered around the holy one who “guides them to springs of the water of life and will wipe away every tear from our eyes.” So we live this life rejoicing that one day we will be with God in fullness and that all people will finally be united in all of their diversity in a God who is pure love.
Our processional hymn today was “The King of Love My Shepherd Is”. It is a hymn that is such a wonderful part of our Anglican tradition. I often tell Ben that I want it sung at my funeral, that and about 12 other hymns. He’s probably tired of hearing me say it, but it really is one of the best of the best of Christian hymnody. It was written by Father Henry Williams Baker, a priest in the Church of England in the early 1800s, who was the Editor in Chief of “Hymns Ancient and Modern,” which is the most popular hymnal ever complied. A lot of our hymnody comes from it. When I was researching the background of the hymn, I discovered that In addition to his hymn-writing, Father Baker also wrote a collection of prayers called “Daily Prayers for the Use of those who have to work hard”. I found that title pretty funny, but when you think about it, it all goes together, themes of life being hard and our need for a Good Shepherd to lead us through. The last thing that Father Baker said before he died, according to his best friend, were the words from the third verse of “The King of Love my Shepherd is.”
Perverse and foolish, oft I strayed,
but yet in love he sought me;
and on his shoulder gently laid,
and home, rejoicing, brought me.
That really tells us all we need to know about the Good Shepherd. He loves us no matter how often we wander off looking for greener pastures or an easier life, he brings us back home and claims us as his own, overjoyed that he has found us. That is how God sees us and how God sees everyone. Imagine my friends, what a world it would be, if we could understand how much God loves us and loves every person on this good earth that God created.
In the Episcopal Church, our understanding is that that truly does mean everyone., without exception. That all of us are equally in need of forgiveness. That we all reflect God’s goodness and love, in varied ways. Diversity is woven into the very fabric of creation. We are created in love FOR love, we are created to love God and to love those whom God loves, the human family. That is the journey that Jesus shepherds us through in this life and brings to fulfillment in the next. Deepening our love for him, deepening our love for others who look and think like us and those who do not, and taking a posture of humility on the journey, recognizing that there is so much we still have to learn about how to love. We learn to love by emulating the one who leads us to green pastures and comes looking for us when we are lost. Jesus.
So this week, as we face our various trials, we can also rejoice that we are not alone as we face them. I pray that you will have a song on your lips as you do.
The King of Love my shepherd is.
His mercy faileth never.
I nothing lack if I am his.
And he is mine forever.
Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Easter 3, Year C , 5/4/25
Readings: Acts 9:1-6, (7-20), Revelation 5:11-14, John 21:1-19
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Happy Easter! It is indeed still the season of Eastertide, which we will continue to celebrate until the Feast of Pentecost. We celebrate Easter for so long not just because we need some extra cheer after the forty days of Lent, although this is certainly true, but we celebrate it because scripturally speaking, Jesus is still with us! Jesus is always with us of course, but we also tend to forget that the resurrection is not the conclusion of Jesus’s time on earth, after rising victorious from the empty tomb, Jesus stuck around awhile, forty days, to be precise, before ascending into heaven. This has always been a curious notion to me, that Jesus would linger for that long after his principal work was finished. Why was that?
We get some clues by taking a look at what he spent his time doing while he was here. For one, he continued to teach his disciples about the Kingdom of God while giving them specific instructions as to how they are to carry out his work, saying feed my lambs, tend my sheep, and follow me. In essence, he stayed to commission them to act as he did for the benefit of the rest of the world, particularly those who never knew him during his earthly sojourn. When I lived in Germany I remember being particularly struck when I learned that the noun for Christian is ‘ein Christ,’ literally a Christ. Not a follower of Christ, but a Christ. I love this idea that each of us, by virtue of our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, therefore become a little Christ in the world, and this was the message that Jesus was imparting to his disciples. He would no longer be here physically, and thus would depend on his disciples to act as Christ in the world so that others may know him.
But in order to do that, Jesus had to make certain that his disciples really understood that he had risen, and so the other reason for why he lingered was so that they, and us thousands of years later, could be sure of this. And scripture today recounts two very different and miraculous ways in which Jesus chose to appear to the apostles which I think are illustrative of how we also come to know the resurrected Christ in our own spiritual journeys. These encounters represent two poles on a spectrum of how we encounter Jesus.
Jesus’s first appearance is described in Paul’s bombastic road to Damascus experience. Paul, then known as Saul, a pharisee and persecutor of the fledgling Christian community was traveling to deliver letters to the synagogues, instructing that any followers of Jesus be bound and brought to Jerusalem, likely to meet a similar fate as Jesus himself. And as he did so, Jesus appeared to him out of nowhere, asked him why he was persecuting the Church, struck him blind, and then restored his sight after commissioning him to be an apostle in His name. Now as terrifying as this event might be, it’s also a type of encounter with Jesus that many of us would be grateful for. For how could there be any room for doubt if Jesus appeared to us like that? And of course, Jesus certainly does to some.
During my time in seminary, I remember feeling envious of my classmates who described similar experiences of having been slapped in the face by a divine encounter. By having physically seen or heard something which they understood as God, calling out to them with utmost clarity. Because that simply has never been my experience of encountering God.
And for this reason, I absolutely love the second account of Jesus’s appearance, which we hear in John. The disciples find themselves out fishing on a boat when they spot a vaguely familiar man watching them from the shore. He calls out to them “children, you have no fish, have you?” And the disciples, not knowing who this strange man could be, reply “no,” they have not. Then, Jesus pulls a familiar trick, he tells them to cast their net off the other side of the boat, and as they do so, the net is miraculously filled, and so are their hearts and minds with the knowledge that their Lord has returned to them.
The reason why I love this story so much is because of the contraposition of Jesus’s familiarity and unfamiliarity. Unlike Paul’s harrowing encounter with Jesus, in which Jesus’s identity is unquestionably clear, it takes the disciples a while to catch on that Jesus is really there. We can imagine them squinting and straining to see this man, perhaps hoping it is him, but in the back of their minds telling themselves that they really shouldn’t get their hopes up. [After Jesus’s crucifixion perhaps they were wondering if Jesus ever really was with them, or if this whole encounter was just a fever dream that they woke up from and went back to their familiar posts, fishing.]
Isn’t that so often the case for us? We hope and squint and pray that God would reveal himself to us. We hear stories of God miraculously appearing to others, but there’s a lingering doubt that perhaps this resurrection business is just a lovely story.
But if we take time to reflect back on times of need in our own lives, I think we could easily identify moments when we were like the disciples in the boat. When Jesus showed up for us, was present with us, even helped us during our struggle, even if his presence went unrecognized in the moment.
In a few moments we are going to witness the birth of a new ‘little Christ’ coming into the world through the sacrament of baptism. And what baptism reminds us of is two things. First [Beckham], God is promising to always show up for you. To help you and to love you as one of God’s own children forever. And second, all of us gathered here are promising to help you seek Jesus and to recognize his love for you no matter how clearly or how quietly he appears. And you, Beckham, will forever be a beloved partaker of the resurrected life in him. Amen.
Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Easter 3, Year C , 5/4/25
Readings: Acts 9:1-6, (7-20), Revelation 5:11-14, John 21:1-19
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Happy Easter! It is indeed still the season of Eastertide, which we will continue to celebrate until the Feast of Pentecost. We celebrate Easter for so long not just because we need some extra cheer after the forty days of Lent, although this is certainly true, but we celebrate it because scripturally speaking, Jesus is still with us! Jesus is always with us of course, but we also tend to forget that the resurrection is not the conclusion of Jesus’s time on earth, after rising victorious from the empty tomb, Jesus stuck around awhile, forty days, to be precise, before ascending into heaven. This has always been a curious notion to me, that Jesus would linger for that long after his principal work was finished. Why was that?
We get some clues by taking a look at what he spent his time doing while he was here. For one, he continued to teach his disciples about the Kingdom of God while giving them specific instructions as to how they are to carry out his work, saying feed my lambs, tend my sheep, and follow me. In essence, he stayed to commission them to act as he did for the benefit of the rest of the world, particularly those who never knew him during his earthly sojourn. When I lived in Germany I remember being particularly struck when I learned that the noun for Christian is ‘ein Christ,’ literally a Christ. Not a follower of Christ, but a Christ. I love this idea that each of us, by virtue of our baptism into Christ’s death and resurrection, therefore become a little Christ in the world, and this was the message that Jesus was imparting to his disciples. He would no longer be here physically, and thus would depend on his disciples to act as Christ in the world so that others may know him.
But in order to do that, Jesus had to make certain that his disciples really understood that he had risen, and so the other reason for why he lingered was so that they, and us thousands of years later, could be sure of this. And scripture today recounts two very different and miraculous ways in which Jesus chose to appear to the apostles which I think are illustrative of how we also come to know the resurrected Christ in our own spiritual journeys. These encounters represent two poles on a spectrum of how we encounter Jesus.
Jesus’s first appearance is described in Paul’s bombastic road to Damascus experience. Paul, then known as Saul, a pharisee and persecutor of the fledgling Christian community was traveling to deliver letters to the synagogues, instructing that any followers of Jesus be bound and brought to Jerusalem, likely to meet a similar fate as Jesus himself. And as he did so, Jesus appeared to him out of nowhere, asked him why he was persecuting the Church, struck him blind, and then restored his sight after commissioning him to be an apostle in His name. Now as terrifying as this event might be, it’s also a type of encounter with Jesus that many of us would be grateful for. For how could there be any room for doubt if Jesus appeared to us like that? And of course, Jesus certainly does to some.
During my time in seminary, I remember feeling envious of my classmates who described similar experiences of having been slapped in the face by a divine encounter. By having physically seen or heard something which they understood as God, calling out to them with utmost clarity. Because that simply has never been my experience of encountering God.
And for this reason, I absolutely love the second account of Jesus’s appearance, which we hear in John. The disciples find themselves out fishing on a boat when they spot a vaguely familiar man watching them from the shore. He calls out to them “children, you have no fish, have you?” And the disciples, not knowing who this strange man could be, reply “no,” they have not. Then, Jesus pulls a familiar trick, he tells them to cast their net off the other side of the boat, and as they do so, the net is miraculously filled, and so are their hearts and minds with the knowledge that their Lord has returned to them.
The reason why I love this story so much is because of the contraposition of Jesus’s familiarity and unfamiliarity. Unlike Paul’s harrowing encounter with Jesus, in which Jesus’s identity is unquestionably clear, it takes the disciples a while to catch on that Jesus is really there. We can imagine them squinting and straining to see this man, perhaps hoping it is him, but in the back of their minds telling themselves that they really shouldn’t get their hopes up. [After Jesus’s crucifixion perhaps they were wondering if Jesus ever really was with them, or if this whole encounter was just a fever dream that they woke up from and went back to their familiar posts, fishing.]
Isn’t that so often the case for us? We hope and squint and pray that God would reveal himself to us. We hear stories of God miraculously appearing to others, but there’s a lingering doubt that perhaps this resurrection business is just a lovely story.
But if we take time to reflect back on times of need in our own lives, I think we could easily identify moments when we were like the disciples in the boat. When Jesus showed up for us, was present with us, even helped us during our struggle, even if his presence went unrecognized in the moment.
In a few moments we are going to witness the birth of a new ‘little Christ’ coming into the world through the sacrament of baptism. And what baptism reminds us of is two things. First [Beckham], God is promising to always show up for you. To help you and to love you as one of God’s own children forever. And second, all of us gathered here are promising to help you seek Jesus and to recognize his love for you no matter how clearly or how quietly he appears. And you, Beckham, will forever be a beloved partaker of the resurrected life in him. Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, The Sunday of the Resurrection: Easter Day,April 20th, 2025
“…I have seen the Lord….” John 20:1 -18
Alleluia! Christ is risen. (The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia! ) These are the words of Easter, the joyful, hopeful, beautiful words of Easter. We come together today to hear those words anew. They were first uttered by the earliest Christians 2,000 years ago, and we hear them afresh every Easter morning. And this Easter we are especially eager to hear them. We see Good Friday everywhere we look. So how are we to be Easter people in this Good Friday world? How can we give voice to Christ’s resurrection and all that it means, love and compassion, peace and forgiveness, courage and justice? How do we live as people of the Resurrection when the counter forces of evil are very much at work, the voices of hatred and violence, lies and vengeance, injustice and cruelty?
The very first Christians became followers of Jesus because of the resurrection. That was it, pure and simple. It is often said that the Gospels are long prologues to the resurrection. They tell the story of Jesus’ life and ministry, his healing, his teaching, his preaching, and all of these things are very important, but they are shared through the lens of the resurrection. And the Church is here, 2,000 years later, still proclaiming, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.”
The Gospels were written years after the first Easter. They came about in the context of worshipping communities, gathered to remember Jesus and to celebrate his resurrected presence with them through the bread and wine, through reading Scripture, through the physical things that helped them to experience him, together. They understood themselves as the beloved community, gathered in Jesus’ name, to recall his words to them about how to live as people of justice, mercy, compassion, and love. All of the death-dealing ways of the world, all of the forces that had conspired to kill Jesus, no longer had power over them, because the life-giving ways of God had brought forth Jesus from the dead.
Yesterday morning, I was typing away on my sermon for today, and my son Andrew walked in and asked if I was looking forward to having more people than usual at church on Easter, to which I replied, “yes, of course, you know I live for a packed-out church, my son.” He said, “Well, I know a way to get EVEN MORE people there than usual.” “How’s that?”, I inquired. “I could pitch a tent in front of the church tonight, with a sign on a pole outside the tent that says “the line starts here”, and I could stand there in a suit so people would think they might not get in tomorrow.” I told him I thought he had been watching too many episodes of Portlandia, but the thought that people would be cuing up ahead of time because they wanted to celebrate Easter together so much, that they would camp out overnight to make sure they got in, is a pretty cool one, I have to admit!
We have awesome news to share, my friends! It really is that good. And it is news that our world, our country, and everyone we know needs to hear, especially now. The news that all people are created in the image of God and called to live in beloved community. The news that Jesus taught, preached, healed and proclaimed the good news to the poor and oppressed. The news that Jesus died at the hands of a vicious regime, the Roman Empire, desperately trying to stamp out all possible threat to their power and exert military control over their subjects, but that earthly power did not have the last word. And the biggest news of all, that God raised Jesus from the dead and inaugurated a new way of being in this world. The way of mercy and compassion, the way of love and forgiveness, the way of courage and truth-telling.
One of the things that struck me during the Good Friday Passion reading this year, was the poignant exchange between Jesus and Pilate, just before Pilate condemns Jesus to death. Jesus tells Pilate that “Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice”. And Pilate asks, “what is truth?” These cynical words are some of the saddest in Scripture. Pilate saw truth as something that was malleable, something that could be changed to suit his need to stay in power and reinforce the might of the Roman Empire. But Jesus gives voice to God’s eternal, changeless truth, the truth of his kingdom that is not from this world, a truth that we come to know by listening for his voice and learning to distinguish it from opposing voices. As his followers today, we do that by developing a relationship with him, through being a part of the beloved community, through worship, prayer and service to others. And Jesus meets us exactly as we are and invites us to be more than we think we can be.
The risen Lord invited the first witnesses to the empty tomb to become more. Mary Magdalene came to the tomb on that first Easter morning, while it was still dark, and ran to tell Peter and the beloved disciple that the stone had been removed from Jesus’ tomb. The two men run to the tomb and the Gospel says that Peter sees, and that the beloved disciples sees and believes, but does not fully comprehend, and then they return home, understandably overwhelmed and not knowing how to process everything. And there was a lot to come to terms with. Peter really loved Jesus, he had been such a faithful disciple throughout Jesus’ ministry, but he ended up denying Jesus on the night of his arrest, not once, not twice, but three times. He knew that as one of Jesus’ disciples he could get rounded up too. He was not there for Jesus in his darkest hour and the weight of that, the shame of it, was a lot to bear. The beloved disciple was particularly close to Jesus and had laid his head on Jesus’ chest at the last supper. He had been faithful to Jesus to the end. He was there at the cross as Jesus died a gruesome death. Jesus even entrusted his mother to him as he was dying. He had, it seems, understood Jesus’ teachings more fully than the others, but even he didn’t fully comprehend the enormity of what had happened when he and Peter saw the empty tomb and burial clothes. Mary Magdalene didn’t understand at first either, thinking that grave robbers had taken Jesus away. But she stays at the tomb, grieving the loss of her dear teacher. Mary Magdalene also stood with Jesus as he was crucified, the only other time that she appears in John’s Gospel. Outside of the resurrection accounts, she is only referred to in the Gospel of Luke as one of the women healed by Jesus who becomes his follower and contributes to his support. And yet Mary Magdalene has the privilege of encountering our Risen Lord first. And that perhaps is simply because she is present. She is there to see him after the others have gone home, but it takes a while for reality to dawn, for darkness to turn to light. She sees him but doesn’t know it is Jesus until he calls her name. That is the moment when she knows who Jesus is. Earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus is pictured as the good shepherd, the one who knows each of his sheep. He calls them by name and they recognize his voice. He knows his own and his own know him.
Being seen and known by God is a wonderful and scary thing. We long to be known, to be seen, to be loved. We all do. And we are known and seen and loved by God. But love makes us vulnerable and that is why being known by God can also be scary. Can we really trust that God loves us, even those hidden parts of ourselves that we work so hard to disguise or ignore or deny, those aspects of our lives that we would rather not have exposed, the places of shame and despair? But God shines light on it all, the noble things about us and the deepest, darkest things. Bringing it all into the light, is how the healing happens. Peter was hot-headed and impetuous, but he really loved Jesus and wanted to do the right thing, even though his courage failed him. Mary Magdalene was caught up in grief and confusion, but she stayed the course. And Jesus loved them all. They each went forward forgiven, healed and renewed, as they and others formed the early Church. They shared the good news of Christ crucified and risen far and wide and we are here today because they saw, believed and eventually came to comprehend the enormity of what had happened. They became people of the Resurrection over time.
We too are called to be Easter people. We are a beloved community, gathered in Jesus name, week after week, Sunday after Sunday, listening for the good shepherd’s voice. We gather to seek the truth, we gather to experience Jesus’ love and forgiveness together and then go out to continue his work in the world, treating everyone with dignity and respect, welcoming the outcast and the stranger, and advocating for the common good. Jesus died FOR US. Jesus rose FOR US. And Jesus lives IN US. That truth is what enables us to live as resurrected people in a Good Friday world. Standing with the marginalized, the oppressed and the persecuted. And asking Christ to help us see his image in everyone we meet, in friend and stranger, in those in whom he is easy to see, and in those whom it is very hard to see.
“Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord.” And that, my friends, is the good news that we are called to proclaim this day and forever more. Alleluia! Christ is risen. (The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!)
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Palm Sunday, 4/13/25
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
There is no doubt that Palm Sunday, also known as Passion Sunday, is one of the most paradoxical liturgies in the Church year. We begin with the jubilant liturgy of the palms, rendering all glory, laud, and honor unto Jesus at his triumphal entry into Jerusalem. But then, before we have had a chance to settle into the joy of the occasion, Jesus is crucified.
Now there is a good and practical reason for this abrupt liturgical transition from triumph to sacrifice, but this was never actually the original intent of Palm Sunday. Historically, Palm Sunday, which is our entryway to Holy Week, was a day to dwell in the triumph of Christ our king and messiah and the telling of his Passion and death was not to come until Good Friday. However, as social norms changed and our schedules became busier, the clergy began to look around the pews and realize that not everyone was making it to Good Friday – and I ascribe no shame here, only gentle invitation. But this created a theological conundrum, because as we know you cannot have resurrection without passing through crucifixion. Without Christ’s death on the cross, the empty tomb is not only missing a body, it’s missing its meaning. And so to remedy this problem, churches gradually began to squeeze the Passion Gospel into Palm Sunday, leaving preachers, such as myself, scrambling to make sense of these two powerful images of Jesus’s triumphal arrival and gut-wrenching departure all in one fell swoop.
However practical this solution may have been, it also shortchanges us from basking in the theological richness of Christ’s arrival at the start of Holy Week. So today I would like to remedy that, by not preaching on the Passion. For that, I’d like to invite you to do one of two things. First, is to come to the service of Good Friday if you can. It will be right here at noon. But if you cannot do that, then I invite you to take home today’s bulletin, and carve out some time on Friday to read through the account of Jesus’s passion again. Make time to dwell with Jesus at the foot of the cross. I promise, that if you do this, your experience of Christ’s resurrection on Easter Sunday will be all the more glorious.
So, back to these palms. What does Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem mean and why is it worth celebrating all these centuries later? The key to understanding Jesus’s triumphal entry is in the refrain of the crowd as he rides into town on a donkey:
"Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!
Peace in heaven, and glory in the highest heaven!"
Now what this proclamation is, is essentially a paraphrase of Psalm 118. And Psalm 118 is a prophetic psalm heralding the arrival of three things a king, a messiah, and a priest. These are the three titles that the crowd is thus conferring upon Jesus at his arrival. With the benefit of historical hindsight, this may seem obvious; Christians have been proclaiming Jesus as king, Messiah, and great high priest for centuries now, but it’s important to remember that at the time, to call someone, especially someone like Jesus, even one of those titles, was deeply scandalous. Scandalous even to the point of death, which we know is what happened. Why was that?
Let’s start with Jesus’s kingship. Well for one, crowning Jesus as king was a problem because there already was a king, King Herod who was deputized by an even higher ruler, the Roman Emperor, to oversee the region of Judea. So to welcome Jesus as a king and hail him with royal fanfare and palm fronds, the symbols of victory, was tantamount to insurrection. Not only that, the strangeness of this king Jesus would have been perceived as a mockery of Herod and of Caesar. And frankly, it was. The fact that Jesus was riding a lowly draft animal, a symbol of peace, and looking like a common shepherd signified God’s total inversion of what it meant to be powerful. It was a repudiation of violence and domination and a proclamation of humility and servanthood that were to be the instruments of Christ’s royal reign.
But what about Christ’s priesthood. In psalm 118 after the hailing of a heavenly king-figure, the text goes on to describe one who would “bind the festal procession with branches up to the horns of the altar” (v. 27). Now to contemporary listeners this would have been understood as a reference to only one altar – the altar in the holy temple in Jerusalem at which only one priest, the hereditary high priest of the house of Levi, had the privilege of offering sacrifice on behalf of the people before God. So to claim that this obscure, rabble rousing rabbi from the provincial region of Galilee (think Virginia Beach or Radford County) was going to assume the highest religious office of the land, was akin to heresy. And reversing expectations yet again, not only would Jesus become high priest, he would also become the sacrifice. The offering before God that would wipe the slate clean and open for us the gateway to heaven.
So at this point, Jesus, with the support of the people, has dethroned the king and defrocked the high priest and if all that were not enough, they have one more title to bestow upon him – the most dangerous and incredible one of all. Jesus is proclaimed as the Messiah. In Matthew’s Gospel the crowd cries out “Hosanna to the Son of David,” a title which could only mean one thing – the long-awaited anointed one of Israel (21:9). However, this time, instead of the emperor, instead of the high priest, it’s the people’s turn, even our turn, to be shocked.
You see, the common expectation was that the Messiah was the one whom God would send to liberate the Israelites from hundreds of years of dominating powers. The Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Greeks, and most recently, the Romans had all occupied Israel and her people and the Messiah was expected to be the one who would finally turn her shame to glory. But what the people of Jerusalem did not know that day, was that God had even loftier plans. For this Messiah had come not just to liberate the Israelites from their oppressors, but Christ Jesus had come to liberate each of us from sin and death. A messiah for the entire world.
The drama of Holy Week concludes in the way it begins today, with triumph. First a triumphal procession into Jerusalem, and finally, a triumphal resurrection of Christ our king, our high priest, and our Messiah, who wins for us redemption from death by his own death on the cross. And that is the story to be continued this week. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Lent 5C, 4/6/25
Readings: Isaiah 43:16-21, Philippians 3:4b-14, John 12:1-8
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
As we go marching, marching, in the beauty of the day,
A million darkened kitchens, a thousand mill lofts gray,
Are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses,
For the people hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses!
This is the opening stanza of a poem by James Oppenheim, penned at the height of the labor movement and women’s suffrage movement at the turn of the 20th century. This famous slogan “bread and roses” had become a rallying cry for women and workers and it encapsulates a particular philosophy, a theology even, of what is necessary for human flourishing. Daily bread, or food and water, is of course, the bare minimum required to sustain human life, and each day that we have food on the table is a blessing from God indeed, which we know is not afforded to every human being in this world. However, it is also true that even when this lowest common denominator of being fed is satisfied, living hand-to-mouth is a far cry from life in abundance.
Rather, to live the abundant life which God wills for us also involves some roses. That is to say, God desires a standard of human dignity beyond the satisfaction of our base levels of need. To have opportunities for such things as leisure, beauty, education, and the ability to offer something back of what we have been given, is far from extravagance – it is a target of human community worthy of God.
In today’s Gospel we find Jesus at the house of Lazarus some days after Jesus had raised him from death to life. And once more we find Lazarus’s sisters at their familiar places; Mary at Christ’s feet and Martha preparing a meal in the kitchen. But this time, rather than receiving the words of the good teacher, Mary is doing something incredibly tender and intimate on Christ’s behalf. She gingerly anoints Jesus’s feet with nard; a costly oil traditionally used for the preparation of a body for burial, perhaps oil left over from Lazarus’s death some days prior.
Whether she knew it or not, Mary’s act of compassion was both a foreshadowing of Christ’s own death and a loving act of defiance; a countering of death’s stench with the sweetness of resurrection anticipated. And yet even the most selfless acts of mercy are not without their detractors. Judas, the disciple who would later betray Jesus, raises the ostensibly reasonable objection that Mary’s compassionate gesture is a lavish waste. This oil, worth a whole year’s wages, could be sold and the money given to the poor. Now, even if Judas’s objection was motivated by his own self-interest, the argument is worth considering. To turn the question to ourselves, why not sell this organ, these windows, our silver Communion vessels, and offer them to the poor? Is this not the same commandment our Lord gave to the rich young man who sought the Kingdom, yet placed a higher value on his riches?
To this question, Jesus issues the scandalous reply “leave her alone… you always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” At first, it shocks the ears. It sounds callous, flippant even. Could our Lord really mean this? I think he could. And if we recall the poem by Oppenheim, it suddenly sounds less scandalous. Remember those necessities for human flourishing? Bread and roses. Food for the body and nourishment for the soul. I’d like to tell you what I think Jesus is gesturing towards in a story that happened to me.
I was once a member at an historic parish in downtown Boston that was world-renowned for its music ministry. For half of the year and at great expense, they employed a professional chamber orchestra and a choir of staff singers to perform Bach cantatas during the liturgy. After receiving Communion, parishioners would file back to their pews and the ensemble would gather in the chancel to play some of the most arrestingly beautiful music that the Western world has ever produced before the priest gave the dismissal.
And just like Mary’s lavish anointing of Jesus, this ministry was controversial; one bishop had even attempted to stop the music, arguing that the congregation spent Sunday mornings worshipping Bach, rather than the Risen Lord. And in my early days of attendance, I too found myself wondering whether these cantatas were the most Christlike means of stewardship, when one often had to walk through encampments of the homeless to reach the church’s doors.
That is, until one day, I took a look around to really notice my fellow companions in the pews. To my left I spotted a man who I knew was a professional music critic and a regular at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and there seated next to him was another familiar face – an unhoused woman, surrounded by her bags of worldly belongings, who I’d often see shaking her cup outside of the local metro stop. People whose realities were worlds apart, and yet here, both of them were, shoulder to shoulder, eyes closed, heads tilted upward, as heavenly choruses washed over them, lost in wonder, love, and praise. The sight nearly brought me to tears. Here sat the disinherited and the highly favored – and I’ll let you decide who was which – bound by a common human need – for bread and roses. It was a vision of what I imagine heaven must look like.
And this was a common sight on any given Sunday. The rector, who ensured that the parish also hosted the most robust outreach ministry in the neighborhood, advocated beautifully for the necessity of both of these ministries – Bach and bread. It was the only place in the city where someone like that unhoused woman and many others like her who worshipped with us could receive a warm meal and experience this variety of lavish, soul-nourishing beauty, free of charge.
It is easy to perceive the resources we spend on offering beauty to God and the resources we spend on meeting the physical needs of our brothers and sisters as being at odds with one another. And it is true that we must always be mindful of the balance between the two. But after worshipping at that parish in Boston and hearing the words of our Lord to Judas and Mary, I am all the more convinced that offering our first fruits to God and to the poor is part of a common cause which makes us worthy of the promises of Christ.
Our rector, like Mary at Jesus’s feet, understood the benefit of smashing open that jar of oil. She understood that our offerings to God should be befitting of the poor, and our offerings to the poor should be befitting of God. That is why Jesus permitted Mary this extravagant gesture. That is a picture of the abundant life which God wills for us to share in.
So as we go marching, marching to the cross and empty tomb.
And are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses.
Let our Good Lord hear us singing: Bread and Roses! Bread and Roses! Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 30th, 2025
Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32
“…So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him…”. Luke 15: 1-3, 11b-32
If there is one story that communicates the essence of the Gospel, it is the Parable of the Prodigal Son. This story is absolutely stunning in it’s beauty, it’s poignancy, it’s power, and most importantly, it’s truth. It’s deep truth about us and about God.
This parable is particular to the Gospel of Luke. Luke has been called the portrait painter of the Gospel, and for good reason. His storytelling creates clear images in our minds. And not only clear images but images that evoke powerful emotions. It is little wonder that Rembrandt, the Dutch master who was perhaps more effective than any other painter in history at expressing the depth and complexity of human experience, chose to portray today’s story in breath-taking splendor. Rembrandt was a master of color and light. In his painting of the Return of the Prodigal Son, he shows a repentant son, kneeling at his elderly father’s feet. The son’s clothes are tattered, his head is shaved like a slave and he is barefoot. The father looks upon his son with absolute love and forgiveness, and he lays his large, gentle hands on his son’s shoulders. The father and son are bathed in a warm, glowing light, a light that shines not just ON them, but comes from deep WITHIN them. The painting captures a moment of stillness, grace, and profound gratitude. This son was LOST but now is FOUND.
There is no greater joy in life than finding someone whom we deeply love after they have become lost to us. I imagine the father in this story praying for his youngest son to return to him, LONGING for him, physically ACHING for him-perhaps begging that he be given the opportunity to see him one more time before he dies. And yet, in his darker moments, despairing that that day might never come. I can imagine the father going back to that horrible day when his son came to him and demanded his inheritance as if his father was already dead. That painful day, when out of love, out of respect for his son’s freedom, as hard as it was, he gave it to him, knowing that his son’s arrogance and sense of entitlement was going to take him far away. And the father’s worst fears were realized. His son did go far away. He became completely lost, lost to his family, lost to his community, and lost to himself. But no matter how lost he became, the father never forgot about him, never stopped longing for him, never stopped loving him. The light that shines in and around them at this moment of reunion is the light of reconciliation. But even as joyful as the father is when the younger son finally returns, the reconciliation is not complete.
For in the shadows, in shades of darkness, there lurks another figure, the father’s older son, looking in on this scene in absolute disbelief and disdain. How could this possibly be? How could his father take his good-for-nothing brother back after what he had done? How could he treat him like royalty when his brother had disowned them? How could his father have anything to do with him much less treat him like the crown prince? A ring, a robe, a kiss and even a fatted calf! This whole time he had been the loyal one, HE had worked his father’s land, he had done everything that was expected of him. This ridiculous old man had lost all sense of justice, all sense of propriety, RUNNING out to meet his no-load brother. He was consumed with rage. But beneath his anger was a deep hurt. Watching his father shower his brother with love absolutely pierced him to the core. Didn’t his father love him more than this reckless brother of his? Why hadn’t his father ever treated him this way?
This story begs the question, “which brother is the prodigal?” We always think of the younger son as the prodigal. Prodigal means “wasteful” and tradition has long referred to the younger son that way. He did do something truly heinous. There is no getting around it. He wasted his inheritance. He was disrespectful. He was deeply hurtful. There is a big, long list of his transgressions. But he also came to himself. He realized his wrongdoing and committed to do something about it. The older brother was a prodigal in a different way. He had never forsaken his father outwardly. He had been dutiful. He had done what was expected of him. But he wasted another inheritance. He squandered his father’s love for him. He had stayed, he had worked, but he had not loved his father in the unconditional way that his father loved him. There was no joy for him, only duty. That perhaps is an even greater tragedy, not realizing how deeply someone loves us and being unable to return that love.
All of us see ourselves reflected in this parable, whether as the impulsive younger brother or the indignant older brother. Many of us think about our siblings. These dynamics are fairly universal. Jesus told parables because they can be interpreted on many levels. We come in at the self-recognition level, the level of the siblings, and then we are invited to go deeper-going deeper by asking who the main character of the story is. The main character of the parable is not the younger brother. It is not the older brother. The main character is the father.
And it is important to remember who Jesus is speaking to when he tells the parable. He is addressing it to the Pharisees, the judgmental, dutiful adherents of the law. Jesus tells them this story in response to their grumblings, their indignation at Jesus for welcoming the sinners and outcasts and eating with them. He tells them this parable to help them to understand that grace far outweighs judgment, and that sin takes a lot of different forms. Both the younger and the older son had been sinful. They had cut himself off from the father. But the father loves them and wants to be reconciled with him and with each other. Jesus told this story, to paint a picture for the Pharisees- to help them see what the Kingdom of God looks like. They are invited to walk into the picture and God gives them the freedom to choose how they will respond. Each of us is given that freedom. We can choose to stay in a place of alienation, either clinging to our self-righteousness, or staying locked up in our self-centerdness, OR we can make the courageous decision to start the long journey home, knowing that when we arrive, the father does not ask us to grovel at his feet. No, the father runs to greet us with a warm, loving embrace, a kiss, a ring and a robe. For all of us become lost to our true selves, but we are never, ever lost to God. And once we have experienced that kind of all encompassing, soul deep love, the love born of forgiveness, that love that only God can perfectly offer us, we are invited to share that merciful love with others, and in the process, become more and more like the father. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Lent 3C, 3/23/25
Readings: Exodus 3:1-15 (Moses and the Burning Bush 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, Luke 13:1-9
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
How do we respond when tragedy befalls us? The answer Jesus gives is to repent. What in the world could our good Lord mean? I do think our initial shock at this answer comes from a misunderstanding of what it means to repent, which is what I’d like to explore with you today, because I think repentance is really a remarkable gift, not a punishment.
In today’s Gospel Jesus tells of two contemporary instances of tragedy which would have been familiar news stories to his disciples. In the first instance, Pontius Pilate, the same Roman governor who would go on to crucify Jesus, orders the execution of a number of Galileans for an unspecified charge. In the second instance, eighteen people were killed after an unsteady tower collapsed on them. One is an example of disaster effected by human hands and the other is simply a freak accident.
In both cases, Jesus poses the question “do you think these people perished because they were worse sinners than anybody else?” And the answer is definitively – no, they were not. This part, I believe, is straightforward enough. Jesus is effectively overturning a theology of transactional grace in which God is imagined as a divine Santa Claus, keeping a tally of good deeds, to be rewarded with presents and treats; and bad deeds, to be rewarded with persecution and natural disaster. Bad things happen to good people and we ought not blame others or ourselves for previous misdeeds when such instances occur.
We are all sinners after all, and God’s deepest desire is not to punish us, but to save us from the punishment we so often inflict on ourselves and our neighbors through our sin. We know this because in the Old Testament, God, in the burning bush tells Moses of his plan to liberate the Israelites from the cruelty of the Egyptians. God does not blame the Israelites for being enslaved, but promises to enact their liberation.
But then, after overturning this theology of transactional grace, Jesus says something perplexing which seems to contradict his previous contradiction: “but unless you repent, you will all perish just as they did” (Lk. 13:3). Hmm. So which one is it Jesus – is tragedy not a punishment for our sins or must we repent to avoid tragedy? If the answer is the latter, that tragedy will befall us if we do not repent, then I think we are all in big trouble and it’s also an incredibly unpastoral answer.
Unless, Jesus is inviting us to reconsider our understanding of repentance. You see, there are two commonly held meanings of what it means to repent. The first comes from the Latin verb repentere, which means literally, to turn away. To turn ourselves, body, mind, and soul, away from that which is sinful and towards the love of God. This, I believe is a very lovely and useful understanding of repentance, but not at all in this instance. I can’t imagine a situation in which someone came to me for pastoral care in the midst of a crisis and I told them “well, have you considered turning away from your sinfulness?” No! Absolutely not.
And this is not what Jesus is talking about either. Rather, the Greek work Jesus uses when he calls on us to repent is metanoia. And metanoia is a difficult word to translate into English but can be understood as meaning ‘to change ones mind,’ or even better, ‘to put on a new mind.’ This is what Jesus is telling us to do when we repent, to put on a new mind; to reorient our understanding of our relationship to God and the world around us. To believe and act as if we are beloved children of God and so are those around us. That is the repentance Jesus is inviting us into.
So what exactly does this new mind look like? For one, we know it is not a mind in which God is actively out to get us for falling short. Jesus has already refuted that understanding of God. Instead, Jesus invites us to set aside a mind which asks “what is God doing to punish us” and put on a mind which asks “what is God doing to save us?”
And to answer this question, what is God doing to save us, Jesus offers a beautiful parable. A man grows angry at his fig tree for not producing figs and orders the gardener to cut it down. The gardener responds by challenging the man, saying “Sir, let it alone for one more year, until I dig around it and put manure on it. If it bears fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down” (Lk 13:19).
Now who is who in this parable? In light of Jesus’s words about putting on a new mind, I’m inclined to believe that we are the fig tree which is struggling to bear fruit. And we struggle to bear fruit either because of our own sins or the sins around us which have made the soil hostile to growth. The man who wants to cut the fig tree down can be seen as the worldview, the mind, which sees only punishment without opportunity for grace, which is perhaps the mind we hold about ourselves at times. And the gardener, the wise and patient gardener, is of course our good Lord, who wants more than anything else, to save the already struggling fig tree from perishing entirely, which he does by pouring nutrient rich soil – grace upon grace – at its roots so that the tree may live.
If this is what repentance looks like. If this is what putting on a new mind about what God is trying to do in our lives, then I will be first in line to repent. Our Lenten repentance is about opening ourselves to receiving the grace which our Lord is heaping at our feet. And to do this, we also need to pull up a few weeds, to remove a few stubborn stones that are blocking our root systems from receiving God’s grace in its fullness. And in doing this, we are able shed the old leaves, the old mind, and put on a new one that is marked by the fruit of grace. That, thank God, is gift of we have in repentance. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Lent 2, Year C, 3/16/25
Readings; Genesis 15:1-12,17-18 (God’s Covenant with Abram), Philippians 3:17-4:1 (Citizens of Heaven), Luke 13:31-35 (Blessed is the One who Comes)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
One day God asked the Archangel Michael to give a report on the state of things on earth. After conducting his research, St. Michael sheepishly shared that things were not going very well. 90% of the people on earth were behaving very badly and seemed to have little confidence that God could do anything about it. The other 10% were doing pretty well. They were trying their best to live a godly, righteous and sober life but were feeling discouraged and unsure of what God’s will for them was. So God, in His infinite wisdom, came up with a plan. He told St. Michael to send a group text message to the righteous 10% with instructions on what to do so that the other 90% would have a chance to amend their ways and follow him. And do you know what that text message said? I don’t know, I didn’t get it either.
In today’s Old Testament lesson, we find Abram, the great forefather of our faith, in a very similar situation of awaiting clear instructions from God. It’s a circumstance I think all of us are familiar with; one of wanting to do God’s will and wanting some assurance that God actually has a plan, but not being sure what that will or plan really is. And so we turn to God for some assurance, some clarity and guidance.
At this point, Abram is early on in his journey of following God. A few chapters earlier, God had called Abram away from his familiar, native land, and promised that if he followed Him, God would give Abram three things: land, offspring, and a blessing on his household to the end of the ages. Now it’s important to know that what these three things represented was far more than material assets, a better Ancient Near Eastern stock portfolio, if you will. In ancient times, much as now, where you belonged, who you belonged to, and which God you worshipped were essential things that made up the core of who you were as a person. So what God was essentially offering Abram was a new identity in Him. To use the words of St. Paul in today’s epistle, God is offering to make Abram a “citizen of heaven” (Phil. 3:20).
And more than that, God wanted Abram to share in this new mission of making God’s name known to the world, which we know Abram accepted because we are all here worshipping God’s Holy Name as citizens of heaven today.
However, at some point in Abram’s journey, doubts began to creep in about whether this God was trustworthy. After giving up everything he ever knew to follow this God on this new mission, Abram still hadn’t received any of the things God had promised him and we can imagine that he was wondering if he too had missed a text message. It was at this crucial moment of uncertainty that God came to Abram in the most peculiar way, in a vision. And in that vision, God first reassured Abram, saying “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great” (Gen. 15:1). God then reminds Abram of His promise by saying “look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them… so shall your descendants be” (15:5).
However, this verbal assurance is not enough for Abram, and he asks God how he is to know that these promises are true? And God tells Abram to go gather five animals and make a sacrifice to Him, which Abram does. Then, after this sacrifice, Abram falls into a deep sleep and God appears to him again, and this time a peculiar ritual takes place. A smoking fire pot and a flaming torch, symbols of the presence of God, pass between the animals and God tells Abram that he has entered into a sacred covenant with him. A covenant which shall be inherited by his descendants forever.
Friends, let me tell you, we are inheritors of this covenant to this day. And a covenant is made up of two parts: the first part is God’s promise and the second part human responsibility. And our responsibility in this covenant is faithfulness to God. We show this faithfulness through our prayers; through our repeated act of showing up for God in worship, in devotion, and in the actions which proclaim God’s holiness to others.
However, as we know by the naughty 90% in St. Michael’s report, humans are notoriously bad at upholding our end of the covenant. God knows this. God also knows that we are prone to doubt and need regular assurance that we have not been abandoned. And so God’s ultimate act of assurance to us was to send His only son to become the final covenant sacrifice for the redemption of the world. Rather than asking for repeated sacrifice to pay our dues as heavenly citizens, God became the sacrifice, thereby securing a place in heaven for all the faithful.
And if you still have doubts about that, about whether Christ has really made good on the covenant for us, then let your doubts be your Lenten offering to God, like Abram did. God so desires a relationship with you and is always delighted to hear from you in prayer, no matter what you lay before Him. And I truly believe that if you take time to bear your heart to God, especially in doubt, then God will reveal Himself to you in the way you need it. God may not text you directly, though I’d never rule it out, but God will find a way to reach out to you and make His assurance known. Maybe in visions and dreams, maybe in nature or in worship, and maybe through the places and people He has given you. One way or another, God is reaching out his arms of love to assure you that His promise is forever.
So send your messages to God this Lent, and don’t forget to check yours. Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, First Sunday in Lent, March 9th, 2025
“Enduring in the Wilderness of Chaos and Confusion”
“After his baptism, Jesus, full of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit in the wilderness, where for forty days he was tempted by the devil…”. Luke 4: 1-13
Every year, on the First Sunday in Lent, we hear the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, from either the Gospel of Matthew, Mark or Luke. And in all three, Jesus is led by the Spirit of God into the wilderness immediately after his baptism. As he comes up out of the water, Jesus hears the Voice of God, saying, “This is my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well-pleased.” In that moment of profound grace, Jesus knows who he is and what he has been called to do. He knows that he is one with God and that God’s love for him is everlasting and that God has a mission for him to share that love with the world. Jesus’ baptism is a moment of ecstasy, a transcendent experience, a spiritual high. But Jesus is not allowed the luxury of dwelling there. The Spirit immediately leads him into the wilderness to be tested. All three gospels make the explicit connection between Jesus’ baptism and his time in the wilderness. Jesus’ clarity about his purpose and mission at his baptism is immediately put to the test before he begins his ministry.
Jesus’ 40 days in the desert recalls Israel’s 40 years of wilderness wandering in the Old Testament, when God frees the Israelites from bondage in Egypt in a most dramatic way. Moses holds his hands up and God parts the Red Sea, allowing the Israelites to escape and they rejoice as Miriam and the other women lead them in praise and dance for all that God has done for them. Moses leads the way, toward the land that God has promised them, a land flowing with milk and honey. But then the hardship and testing begins and it lasts for 40 years. (Forty in Bible speak means a really long time.) And the Israelites complain. They doubt that God will provide for them. They start worshipping false gods, thinking that if God is going to allow them to suffer, they will find another god who will offer comfort and an easier life. They rail against Moses, whom God has commissioned to lead them and to remind them that God is faithful. And despite the Israelites’ waywardness, their looking for answers in all the wrong places, their trying to take matters into their own hands, their failure to trust in the one true God, God still provides for them. Not in the way that they wanted, but in the way that they needed. Every day God rains down manna from heaven, just enough to feed them that day, no more, no less. In fact, if they take more than enough for one day, it spoils. They learn to trust that God will give them enough tomorrow, just as God has given them enough for today. And they go forward, day by day, step by step.
In the story of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, he too is tried and tempted, just as his ancestors had been tested, but unlike them, Jesus does not lose his faith. He does not look for an easy way out. Remembering his baptism, remembering his connection with God, he stays the course and does not give into temptation. He does not lose faith that God would provide for him. He trusts that the Spirit has not abandoned him in the wilderness. God has not left him to bear everything alone. The Spirit leads him there and is with him, guiding him, and giving him strength to endure.
We all need the gift of endurance right now. We are in a wilderness of chaos and confusion. This is a collective time of trial, as we wonder what each new day will bring, stress from the news, stress for those of you in the federal workforce, fear of losing your own jobs, concern for those whom you work with or are responsible for. People do not deal well with uncertainty and instability. So it is especially important to stay rooted in our faith. The “peace that passes all understanding” is the only thing that is going to get us through. Trusting that God’s Spirit is with us right now is key. The Spirit didn’t just drop Jesus off in the desert and abandon him. The Spirit gave him strength and sustenance and God’s Spirit will do the same for us. Like the Israelites, we will be given manna. We need to ask God for just enough grace for each day. Just enough for each day. This is not the time to be thinking too far ahead. Today’s trials are enough for today.
When Jesus was tempted by Satan he had passages of Scripture that came to mind that enabled him to withstand the particular temptation he was faced with. (Interestingly, all of his responses were from Deuteronomy, one of the books that describes the wilderness journey of his ancestors.) Jesus was absolutely starving after so long without eating, and Satan told him that since he was the Son of God, all he had to do was to command a stone to turn to bread and it would, but Jesus refused saying, “One does not live by bread alone.” When Satan tempted him with worldly power, he replied “Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.” When the devil tempted him to throw himself off the pinnacle of the temple to prove that he had the power to call down angels to protect him from harm, Jesus replied, “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.”
Temptation is all around us right now. Fear and insecurity about the future provide fertile soil for the seeds of temptation. And we need very practical ways of staying centered and focused and faithful. Just as Jesus had passages of Scripture that helped him withstand the wiles of the devil, memorizing key Bible verses is a primary way for us to resist despair, cynicism and hopelessness.
One of the oldest prayer forms in Christianity, which has even older roots in Judaism, is Lectio Divina, divine reading. It was given this name by Saint Benedict over 1500 years ago. He said we are to pray with Scripture as a cow chews its cud. As we meditate on a biblical passage, we chew on it, getting spiritual nutrients from it. The words of Scripture become part of us, as they work their way down from our heads to the center of our beings. It’s simple. You just pick a passage and read it slowly and meditatively three times, narrowing it down each time until you have a mantra, a few words or lines that you come back to throughout the day, when a new, unsettling thing is reported in the news or happens at work. Today’s psalm is great for that, repeating throughout the day, “Lord, you are my refuge and strength.” “Lord, you are my refuge and my strength.” “Lord, you are my refuge and my strength.”
Times of trial can either weaken our faith or strengthen it. My prayer for all of us today is that we will be strengthened, just as Jesus was strengthened. That during these 40 days of Lent we will find sustenance in coming to church and meditating on passages that can give us the grace we need to meet each day. Amen.
Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Last Sunday after Epiphany, Year C, 3/2/25
Readings: Exodus 34:29-35 (Moses on Mt. Sinai), 2 Corinthians 3:12-4:2 (Removing the Veil), Luke 9:28-36, [37-43a] (The Transfiguration)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Today is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany, which is a season focused on helping us see the ways that God shows up for us tangibly in the world. It begins with the first Epiphany experience, when the Magi visit the Blessed Virgin Mary and the Christ child after His birth and it ends with this mysterious event known as the Transfiguration, which we hear of today. Now before I get into the Transfiguration, I want to say that it’s always been fascinating to me to think about sacred geography; that is, where spatially God shows up for us. Throughout scripture you’ll notice a common pattern of God revealing Himself to us in two specific places – deserts and mountaintops.
Now, in a theological sense, deserts and mountaintops are really opposite extremes when you think about it. Deserts are harsh, low places of isolation, scarcity, and solitude. In scripture deserts are often employed as a literary device to mirror outwardly the inner landscape of those who find themselves wandering there. Take for example the Israelites, who wander in the desert for forty years, wondering if God has abandoned them, or Jesus who is tempted by Satan in the desert before he enters Jerusalem to be crucified.
Then, on the other end of the spectrum, we have mountaintops. These are high places which convey a sense of awesome closeness to God. Literally and figuratively, they change our perspective of the world by drawing us up and away from the commonplace smallness of daily life and reorient our view to a horizon that is vaster and more majestic than life as we know it on the ground. Thus, it’s no surprise that a mountaintop is the setting in which the disciples Peter and John see Jesus for the first time, transfigured as who he truly is – the Son of God. It is a moment of awe and exaltation.
Now for most of us, the majority of our lives are spent somewhere between deserts and mountaintops. Between the extremes of desolation and exaltation. And don’t get me wrong, God is no less present to us in our quotidian life. However, it’s been my experience that humans are more inclined to either seek or to see God in during those high highs or low lows of life, than we are when things are simply normal.
So whether you find yourself in a desert, or on a mountaintop, or somewhere in between this morning, I have good news for you. God is eager to meet you in this very moment. And in fact, sometimes the desert and the mountaintop moments are closer than they might appear.
Our Old and New Testament lessons are both prime examples of this. In Exodus, the Israelites have been wandering in the desert for decades now and have been wondering for some time if God is ever going to lead them out of this terrible place and into the Promised Land. In their desperation, some have abandoned the faith and turned to other gods to save them. Then, in that critical moment when hope is in the balance, God calls their leader Moses up to this mountaintop to renew His covenant with them. After communing with God directly, Moses’s once ashen face becomes shining with God’s glory, which is then reflected upon the people, restoring their hope that God never faltered from His plan to save them.
Then, in Luke’s Gospel, in the passage immediately preceding another mountaintop moment, Jesus foretells of his suffering and death to his disciples. It’s important to remember that at this point, the disciples had already given up everything familiar to follow Jesus, and now, they are told by the man whom they believe to be the Messiah that he is going to be executed like a common criminal. Surely, like the Israelites in the desert, this caused some of the disciples to wonder if they have been led astray, for what kind of a Messiah dies? And if he does, does that mean that they are risking the same fate by following him? As if anticipating these fears, Jesus then takes Peter and John up Mount Sinai where He is revealed in the Transfiguration as who he truly is. More than a kindly teacher or a prophet, Jesus is the Son of God. And if Jesus is then Son of God, then surely there is something better in store for his followers than deserts and death.
These two passages are mirror images of one another, and they both speak to the power of Transfiguration – of God’s ability to reorient our sight from a low place of desperation to a high place of confident hope, where we can see a horizon which leads to victory.
Now truthfully, there are times when that mountaintop seems out of reach. Or even if we can see the mountain, perhaps we have been walking in the desert for so long that our legs don’t have the strength to carry us up. When that’s the case, I can tell you that we always have a darn good hill. And that hill is right here. This altar is a holy hill at which transfiguration happens reliably for us at every single Eucharist.
And every single time Rev. Shearon and I celebrate the Eucharist from behind it, our gaze is fixated upward and outward at that window right behind you. Turn around for a moment and take a look at it. Do you see what that is? That’s the Transfiguration. And when we are celebrating the Eucharist, I often imagine an invisible golden string connecting what’s happening in this bread and wine to what the disciples are witnessing happen in Jesus. These elements are transfigured into the real presence of the Son of God before us. We might not always perceive it in the way that the Moses and the disciples did when they saw God face-to-face, but if we open our eyes and our hearts wide enough, we might just catch a glimpse of that mountaintop from this hill.
And if we can climb up this hill to catch a glimpse of Jesus, then we can make it to the next hill. And if we can make it to the next hill, then we might just find ourselves a little closer to that mountaintop, and from that mountaintop we can then see that at the periphery of the desert which once seemed so vast and consuming, there is a lush and verdant garden, where streams of living water will wash away the dust from our tired bodies, and Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is waiting to receive us with radiant love.
So come, climb this hill with me another day and rest in God’s glory. Amen.
Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Epiphany 7, Year C, 2/23/25
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Love your enemies and turn the other cheek. This is perhaps one of the most difficult teachings of Christ presented to us in all of the Gospel. When I first read these words last week I thought that this is either the worst possible timing for this Gospel lesson to appear, when country, and neighbor, and even household is so bitterly divided, or it is the Gospel we need desperately to hear now more than ever. Love your enemies and turn the other cheek.
What does this even mean and how can we be expected to respond in a way which seems so passive when we encounter flagrant violations of human dignity? How can the same God who repeatedly liberates His people from the Egyptians, the Philistines, and the Babylonians, now appear to tell us to accept the injustices we receive with meekness, and while we’re at it, go ahead and love the person who is slighting you. How does this make sense?
Truthfully, it does not make sense at all. At least not according to any conventional meaning of ‘common sense’. For if Christ came to share common sense with us, a common ethics which the culture of the world already teaches us, well we could all pack our bags and call it a day. But instead of common sense, Jesus is inviting us, asking us, begging us, to see the uncommon sense which will liberate us from a commonplace way of living that traps us in cycles of retribution, violence, and embitterment.
So let’s first take a look at what common ethics Jesus is calling us away from. In first century Roman Palestine the common ethics were a two-tiered ethics of retribution, justice, and hierarchy. If you were a Roman citizen, the rule was an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If a person of equal standing to you committed a crime against you, that person was to be punished in a way equal to the crime. This is essentially the law and ethics we still operate under today. It’s an ethics of retribution, tit for tat. However, in ancient Rome, not even this baseline ethic of retribution was equally applied – there was an even lower moral standard of treatment for those who were not Roman citizens.
For instance, the law allowed for a Roman citizen to strike a non-citizen on the cheek with legal impunity. And if the non-citizen were to try to reciprocate the blow to the Roman, well then, the punishment would be imprisonment or even death. So it would seem then, that for Jesus and his mostly Jewish disciples who were not Roman citizens, the only two options were to a) try to fight back against the Romans using the same commonplace logic of retribution, which would likely lead to them losing their lives, or b) accept the injustice and move on with the status quo while their hatred for the Romans continued to consume them.
According to common sense, these appeared to be their options, that is, until Jesus presented to them a third and uncommon option. An option which really is an entirely different ethical worldview. One predicated on love and mercy for your oppressor rather than retribution. This is the option to turn the other cheek. Now in spite of how it sounds, loving your enemy and turning the other cheek is actually far from passive acceptance. Christ is not asking us to turn a blind eye to the slight, he is asking us to turn a mirror to it.
Just imagine for a moment what such an encounter might look like and let’s imagine we’re the ones doing the striking. We strike someone on the cheek and, instead of responding in the way we might expect, with outrage or further violence, they instead, turn and present the other side of their face to be struck.
Even if we were incredibly angry, how might that make us feel? For most of us, it would cause a deep feeling of shame to see our hostility exposed in such a measured way.
Now imagine if the person being struck went a step further and then told us that they loved us, even though they did not approve of the way they were being treated. This is the most uncommon and astounding part. And let me be clear, loving someone in a scriptural sense has nothing to do with rosy feelings of affection. Jesus does not say we must feel fondly for our enemies. Rather, loving an enemy is about seeing them the way that God sees them, as beloved children, even when their anger and hatred is directed towards us. Loving our enemies as God does, does not mean passively approving of what they do, it means being proactively compassionate to their own sources of hurt and anger so that we are better equipped to stop them from destroying us and themselves in the process.
What loving our enemy and turning the other cheek is really about, is turning the mirror of God’s love towards the source of the harm. Because if we’re turning harm back towards harm, we know that only further harm will come. This is not something any of us can easily do alone and so we must call on God’s grace, the grace of a Lord who forgave his persecutors, even on the cross.
And let me be honest with you, the most difficult part about this practice of turning the other cheek, of turning the mirror of God’s love upon violence, is that it does not guarantee that the other party will stop. We know, and God knows, that sometimes the wound is so deep in our enemies, that even seeing the face of Christ reflected to them is not enough to keep them from trying to harm us. Jesus was still crucified.
However, this does not mean that Jesus is calling us to a fruitless practice, because loving and forgiving and praying for our enemies is as much for the benefit of our own souls as it is for the souls of our enemies. Any form of hatred which we allow to infect our hearts will eat us up. And God knows that the only effective way we can safeguard ourselves from hatred is to let our hearts become so filled with love that it pours out onto the cheeks of our enemies even as they strike ours. So if you cannot love someone you hate for their sake, then please, I implore you, to love them for yours. This is the uncommon sense Christ is calling us to.
And if you’re like the many of us struggling with this practice of loving your enemy right now, that’s okay, it simply means you are human. A human who is loved beyond measure by a God of uncommon grace, and you have at least an entire church full of people who are here to support you in receiving that grace – for yourself, and even for your enemy. Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 16th, 2025
“Thank-you for your Service”
“…Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
In the year of the drought it is not anxious,
and does not cease to bear fruit….” Jeremiah 17: 5-10
When we were traveling around the country with my husband Robbie’s naval career, people would often stop him and say “thank-you for your service.” I was always really touched by that because it demonstrated that he was seen, valued and appreciated for his dedication to our country and peace-keeping around the world. People still tell him thanks to this day and it is always a blessing when they do. People in the military are often away from home for long periods of time, they work long hours and their lives are sometimes at risk. Our family went through a lot of times being concerned for Robbie’s safety and missing him when he had to be away, but we knew that what he did was important. It was for a larger purpose.
I was very interested to learn this week that our federal government employs 2 ¼ million military personnel and it employs an equal number of civilians, another 2 ¼ million. Over half of the civilians work for Veterans Affairs, the Department of Defense and Homeland Security. Civil servants are so important, but the general population of our country does not always realize what vitally, important roles civil servants perform. Many of you are civil servants and contractors supporting our government and have given years of excellent, dedicated, sacrificial service. You could have chosen a more lucrative career, but you did not because you wanted to serve our country. You are lawyers, scientists, administrators, policy-makers, national security professionals, and foreign aid workers, to name a few. Your work affects the farmers who grow our food, the development of life-saving drugs, the safety of the roads we drive on, the support of veterans, the protection of vulnerable groups, the feeding of people around the world, and so much more. Thank-you. Thank-you for your service. Thank-you for all that you have done for so many people, most of whom will never know that you are the ones behind the benefits that we all receive that we so often take for granted. Thank-you. I am very grateful for you and your commitment to serving others. Please know that we see and value and honor your service.
Some of you have lost your job, some of you are anticipating losing your job, and some of you are responsible for a lot of other people in your workplace whom you are trying to support, even in the midst of concerns about your own future. Thankfully there will be many of you who do not lose your job but whose workplaces will be still be vastly changed. That is a lot of trauma. There is so much suffering right now. So much pain, fear, anger, disillusionment and a sense of abandonment. Our whole region is so focused on the federal government. It is the center of gravity, even for non-government employees, and a lot of people feel like everything is falling apart around them.
What we have to remember is that as Christians, our TRUE center of gravity is God. The Lord is the center of gravity. He holds all things together. He holds us together, individually and collectively, through thick and thin, and especially during times of extreme stress. In our reading from the prophet Jeremiah today, we hear this.
“…Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
In the year of the drought it is not anxious,
and does not cease to bear fruit….” Jeremiah 17: 5-10
Blessed are those who trust in the Lord, whose trust IS the Lord. When everything seems to be falling apart around us, we trust that God is with us and will show us the way, even when all seems dark. Jeremiah was writing during a time of tremendous suffering for he and his people. The beautiful city of Jerusalem was their beloved home and it was suddenly destroyed by Babylonian invaders. Exile and alienation is their new reality. All of their points of reference for everyday life are gone. And Jeremiah asks them, “How will you respond ? Will you respond as people who live in the desert, where everything is desolate and barren and without hope, or will you respond as though you are trees, trees planted beside a flowing river rooted and grounded in trust in God’s provision? “
Trusting that God will provide is the absolute hardest thing to do when everything around us looks so bleak. When we feel the wolves circling us and when we feel the wolves circling the people we love, whether they are in our family, our circle of friends, or our co-workers. Human beings are social creatures. What affects one, affects us all, whether we are aware of it or not.
A few years ago I read the Pulitzer prize winning book, the Overstory, by Richard Powers. Being a major tree lover, I was fascinated to read about the interconnection between human beings and trees, and also the nature of relationships between trees in a forest. I learned that trees live in communities and communicate with each other through their root systems. If there is a threat, one tree sends out warning signals to the other trees. And if one tree is sick, other trees send out nutrients to restore it to health. There is a sense that what affects one affects all.
This scientific understanding of interrelatedness really helps to give Jeremiah’s tree metaphor more depth and breath. God created the earth and all its creatures to be interconnected and mutually supportive.
“…Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
In the year of the drought it is not anxious,
and does not cease to bear fruit….” Jeremiah 17: 5-10
Trees are a lot more resilient when their root system are well-developed and they are not alone. We need to put our faith in God and in this community right now. Whatever happens with the government, we are going to be alright. And we have a choice about how we respond. Things are hard, but God is with us and will show us a way forward. And we have to remember that no one can do this alone. During times of upheaval, we need support, especially the support of our church friends who will hold out hope for us when we are not feeling hopeful, people who will be with us in our struggles and reminding us that all will ultimately be well.
One way that we put meat on those bones is through our small groups. If you are not already in a small group, think about joining one, even if you don’t consider yourself much of a joiner, especially if you don’t consider yourself much of a joiner. Our house churches are one of our small group ministries. We have 9 house churches now. They were formed during the pandemic when we were all isolated and afraid. And people are isolated and afraid now. These groups meet each week, either on Zoom or in-person, for one hour. They share joys and challenges, study Scripture and pray together. The format is simple, but the connections are powerful, like trees sending out nutrients to each other. The idea for these groups comes from the early Church, when people met in homes, during a time of persecution, worshipping together, praying together, and supporting one another. Our house churches help to keep the root system of Saint George’s strong and resilient as we weather storms together. (We are forming new ones specifically for federal workers right now and our existing ones are always open to new members.) The house churches, along with all of our other small groups, are providing much need support and spiritual grounding. They are a way of putting on our own oxygen mask to take care of ourselves so that we can take care of others. If you want to know more about our house churches or other small groups, please email Father Paddy or myself, and we’d be glad to connect you. Both of us are also only an email away if you want to talk and pray, one-on-one.
Saint George’s is also mindful of other groups, in addition to federal workers, who are at risk right now. Our social justice and outreach ministries are always hard at work, responding to the needs of our larger community , and they are attuned to groups of people who are especially at risk right, so be on the look-out for this Thursday’s Dragon Bytes for ways that you can sign-up to support refugees and immigrants, particularly San Jose, our Spanish-speaking sister congregation. Volunteering with our food pantry is also a great, hands-on way to minister to others, and honor the face of Christ in everyone we meet. We are called to take care of ourselves and take care of one another, trusting in God’s provision for all of us.
“…Blessed are those who trust in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
They shall be like a tree planted by water,
sending out its roots by the stream.
It shall not fear when heat comes,
and its leaves shall stay green;
In the year of the drought it is not anxious,
and does not cease to bear fruit….” Jeremiah 17: 5-10
Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Epiphany 3, Year C, 1/26/25
Readings: Nehemiah 8:1-3, 5-6, 8-10 (The gift of the Law), 1 Corinthians 12:12-31a (One body, many parts), Luke 4:14-21 (Proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Friends, I can’t tell you how good it is to be back with you today, and if you are visiting or new, then welcome. In case you have forgotten, my name is Paddy Cavanaugh, the associate rector at St. George’s, and for the past three months I have been on paternity leave with my wife Winnie, who gave birth to our first daughter, Mary Winston, in October. Since then I have been wrapped in a blanket of wonder, love, and praise, at the miracle which new life promises.
I believe this new arrival of joy is timely because I realize that I am rejoining you at a very precarious time in our national life. There is anxiety in the system. And if I’ve learned anything about anxiety, it’s that it does nothing beneficial for our physical, mental, or spiritual wellbeing. It does not help us to change circumstances for the better. So let’s try, as best as we can, to let go of whatever is troubling us this morning, and just set it right there before the altar and let God handle it.
Now. Let me tell you, there’s little else in this world than the arrival of a brand new human being to remind us of our human obligation to one another. For each of our bodies are given life by the bodies of our parents which, were in turn given life from the God of all creation. And at heaven’s gates we will all be recognized as nothing less, and nothing more than God’s children. Neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, Republican nor Democrat, nor anything else in this world, other than what we truly are – which is beloved children of God.
And more than that, we as Christians, have been made members of the one body of Jesus Christ our Lord, who was crucified, died, and risen for the salvation of this world. And as members of Christ’s body, St. Paul eloquently reminds us that “if one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.” (1 Cor. 12:26). This means that we are to love and care for one another and each other’s children, as if they were our own. Both the neighbor we love and the neighbor we struggle to love. For if we are not praying for the salvation of our enemies, whomever we believe them to be, then we are not praying for our own salvation, and we become trapped in a bitter cycle of enmity against our own body.
This is the difficult vocation to which we have been called. And in the coming years we will call on God’s strength and the love of one another to live it out. And remember that you do not have to bear the burdens of this world on your own. You have everyone down here and up there to bear them with you.
And so, Rev. Shearon and I decided that we wanted to read to you the pastoral letter sent by our Bishop, Mark Stevenson, this week, to remind us of the support and unity we have in Christ’s body. Bishop Stevenson says:
My Dear Siblings in Christ in the Diocese of Virginia:
I sit at my desk at the end of a momentous day; a day in which The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was remembered and celebrated across this nation and around the world, and a day in which this nation once again transferred authority from one democratically elected president to another.
Like many of you, I have watched and listened to speech after speech today, and public prayer after public prayer. I have been listening not just with the ears of an American citizen, but also with those of a disciple of Jesus, the Son of God. And while I am thankful for the safe and clear practices of democracy, I must say that I am troubled by much of what I heard in respect to how I am called to live as a follower of the One who defined power as love for others, and love as sacrifice of self-interest.
As Bishop and chief pastor of the Diocese of Virginia, I feel led to be direct about a couple of things in the days before us: First, every human being will be respected in our churches, regardless of race, creed, gender expression, nationality, or in any other category or classification of humanity. Every human being will be respected from our pulpits, in our pews, and through our ministries. Rhetoric in the public square that dehumanizes any person or group of people, or is designed to strike fear in people’s hearts, is contrary to the gospel and is to be called out as such.
Further, we are to remember that Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were themselves refugees, fleeing for their lives for a season. And, as Jesus points out without equivocation in Matthew 25, how we treat the stranger and those in need has a direct bearing on our relationship with God in heaven. Given these things, we must provide safety to the fearful and stand boldly against tyranny of speech or action.
And, I must say that the use of Christian language, or of any scriptural language, to advance a case that God values one nation in this day and time more than another is contrary to the gospel. For God so loved the world, not one people, that he sent Jesus to bring salvation.
My friends, Jesus is Lord – no one else. The Holy Spirit is the source of wisdom and comfort – not any political affiliation. Our Father in heaven is love and life – not any earthly ruler. We are the beloved of this God. All of us. And while none of us is worthy of that love, my prayer is that we do our best to honor it by our very lives.
Love Jesus. Embody justice. Be disciples. For we are the Diocese of Virginia.
Yours in Christ,
Bishop Stevenson
Friends, we are one body, one body in Christ. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Second Sunday after the Epiphany, January 19th, 2025
“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.” Isaiah 62: 1-5
Today we remember the legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. MLK was a prophet, very much in keeping with the Old Testament prophetic tradition. In our reading from Isaiah today, the prophet speaks to a people who had been in captivity in Babylon for many years and are now experiencing a kind of PTSD. They are divided, disillusioned, and lack a common vision. Some have stayed in Babylon. Some have returned from exile to their homeland. And a new generation has been born after their return that do no share that earlier experience of captivity with their parents and grandparents.
“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.”
Isaiah has been called by God to be God’s mouthpiece, reminding the Israelites that God is with them and that God liberated them from oppression and will continue to be with them as they establish their new identity. Throughout Isaiah, the prophet reminds his people of God’s deliverance in the distant past when their ancestors were led out of bondage in Egypt to the Promised Land, and that because of God’s salvation in the past, they can trust in God’s deliverance in the future. Their suffering now will not last forever.
“You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall be no more termed desolate; but you shall be called My Delight is in (you)... for the Lord delights in you.”
Isaiah describes a covenantal relationship between God and God’s people, an everlasting bond, and God promises to restore their dignity, which is their birthright. Isaiah brings them this word of hope, this word of expectant justice, when their name will be changed from “Forsaken” to “God’s Delight.”
Martin Luther King Jr would have been 96 years old on Jan 15th. He was martyred when he was 39 years old, after being the primary face and voice of the Civil Rights Movement in this country during the 1960s, a movement that very much understood itself to be a continuation of God’s everlasting commitment to God’s oppressed people. Martin Luther King and the many brave women and men of the civil rights movement would not keep silent. And faithful people of every generation are called to stand up for justice and to work for equality through non-violent means.
Today we too are called to stand up for justice and peace. The Episcopal Church has long advocated for the rights of those who are marginalized because it is one way we live out our baptismal promises to “strive for justice and peace among all people and promote the dignity of every human being. When we reaffirm our baptismal covenant, as we did last Sunday, we are reminded that it is important to put our faith in action, just as the ancient prophets called people to do in their day and time. The particular social context is different from age to age, but the timeless, covenantal love of God and our call to love our neighbor as ourselves never, ever changes.
Many in our country are lamenting the erosion of empathy in our culture and that is one of the many reasons that the Church is so very important. We are reminded every Sunday, in a myriad of ways, that it’s not all about us. Every person is precious in God’s sight.
“You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall be no more termed desolate; but you shall be called My Delight .. for the Lord delights (in each of us).”
As Christians, we are called to minister to the oppressed and lift up the down-trodden because God is particularly and peculiarly interested in the marginalized, the oppressed, those that our society often sees as “less than”. People of color, people who identify as LGBTQ+, people who are poor, people who have mental health challenges. We are all especially aware of the threat to undocumented immigrants right now. In God’s eyes, there are no “less-than” people, only God’s beloved ones. Martin Luther King Jr understood this. Our faith is not only about our own private salvation, although it is most certainly that as well. It is primarily about the salvation of the world. And God’s kingdom starts now. It is not just something that we are rewarded with when we die. It is also about bringing the kingdom now, being God’s agents in the world and working to make the world look more as God intended, a world that Jesus came to show us, a world where we love God and love our neighbors as ourselves, a world where we see ourselves and everyone we meet as the apple of God’s eye.
“You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall be no more termed desolate; but you shall be called My Delight.. for the Lord delights in you.”
Like the prophet Isaiah, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr saw a day when God would bring everything and everyone to fullness, where everyone would be seen as a precious child of God in whom God delights. On August 28th, 1968, King gave the speech that captured our nation’s imagination in an indelible way, filled with scriptural images of the journey to freedom fueled by God’s vision for all people. And a call to remember our founding principles as a nation that have yet to be fulfilled for everyone. As he stood at the Lincoln Memorial and looked out into a crowd of 250,000, King gave one of the most memorable and enduring speeches in our nation’s history, a speech that would reverberate around the world.
But this part of the speech, the key line that is etched in people’s consciouses, was not part of his prepared remarks. We have Mahalia Jackson, the Gospel singer, to thank for the “I have a dream” portion. She stood up from behind the podium where MLK was speaking and said,
“Tell them about the dream, Martin. Tell then about the dream.”
And in that moment, he left his manuscript behind and improvised the most powerful and memorable section of all.
…”Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”
So this week-end as we remember MLK’s legacy, we are all reminded that the work he called us to is the same work today. The journey is long and arduous, and the work will never be finished this side of heaven, but continue it we must. Our responsibility as people of faith has not changed. God’s call for justice is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow. That clarion call was issued by the prophet Isaiah thousands of years ago and it still resounds today.
“For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest.”
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Second Sunday after Christmas, January 8th, 2025
In their book, “The Christmas Journey,” author Sally Fisher and illustrator Douglas Sardo, offer an imaginative retelling of the story of the three kings from today’s Gospel. Fisher’s inspiration for the tale was her visits to see her grandmother in New York City at Christmastime. Every year, as she was growing up, they would go the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the famous Christmas tree and creche. The 20 foot tree is magnificently lit and looms over a gorgeous nativity scene with a multitude of life-like figures and glorious angels hovering above on the tree. The figures depict Naples’ multi-cultural population in the 18th century. After Fisher and her grandmother shared this annual ritual, they would go back to her grandmother’s apartment and she would tell her granddaughter her own story of the journey of the tree, the angels, and all of the people and animals beneath the tree. Fisher’s book is her remembrance of the tale that enchanted her so much, a story that sparked her own curiosity and wonder about how to make meaning of today’s Gospel. What follows is my retelling of her story. I shared it with you for the first time several years ago. Wonderful stories are worthy of being told over and over again. They invite us to come along and learn something new every time we hear them.
The first of the three kings is Jaspar, a handsome young man who rules a kingdom in Africa. Jaspar is a man of action. He dreams of heroic deeds, and he longs for a chance to prove himself. He wants to make his mark on the world. Melchior is the oldest of the three kings. His kingdom is somewhere beyond the Red Sea. He is completely focused on the life of the mind. His favorite intellectual pursuit is astronomy. He is so consumed with his scientific studies that he spends very little time with other people. In fact, he thinks of people as a distraction. And the last of the three kings is Balthasar, ruler of a land called Godolia. He is in the mid-years of life and he is busy, busy, busy. His passion is the pursuit of beauty, so a lot of his activity revolves around acquiring beautiful things for his palace. He also loves his wife and daughter dearly and his favorite thing is showering them with lavish gifts.
The one thing that all of these men have in common, other than being kings, is that they love to gaze at the night sky. Jaspar, the youngest one, looks at the sky and wonders how he will be able to make an indelible mark on the world and become famous. Melchior, the eldest, wants to understand the universe; he is determined to solve the mystery of the movement of the sun, moon and stars. Balthasar, the man in the middle, ponders the stars as a way of relaxing after his endless days of frenetic activity. Each of them sees a new star one night and they are so captivated by it that they each suddenly decide, for some reason that they cannot fully explain, that they have to embark upon a journey, to discover where the star leads. Jaspar wonders if it could lead him to his heroic destiny. Melchior thinks that he might be able to find another scholar who can explain the star to him. Balthasar looks at the star and suddenly thinks that he needs to change his life, but he doesn’t know how, and this thought fills him with a strange combination of hope and confusion. They each set out on their journey, for their different reasons, with their royal entourages, their families, and servants and provisions, and after many individual adventures, they discover each other when their three routes converge one day. And their initial suspension and alarm upon meeting one another turns into a decision to go forward together, after they realize that they all saw the new star on the same night and all have the same goal to discover it’s source.
Together they realize that the world is so much bigger than any had ever imagined and make all kinds of discoveries, some good and some not so good. They go to Jerusalem and enter the court of a Herod, a king more powerful than all three of them put together. They realize that he is conniving, and fearful that the star might mean a king destined to become even more powerful than he has been born. They go forth from there, and just as their provisions are about to run out, they come upon some shepherds who offer them hospitality and a sumptuous peasant’s feast of olives, cheese, bread, wine and fellowship. They sleep on the ground for the first time in their lives, the kings next to the shepherds. And suddenly angels fill the sky, shedding a beautiful, soft light on the earth, singing, “A child has been born who has been sent from heaven to bring peace and goodwill into the world. This child can be found in the village of Bethlehem, in a poor, broken-down place in the ruins, lying in straw, surrounded by animals.” The shepherds and the kings get up and set off immediately, the shepherds leading the way. When they reach the place that the angels had told them about, Melchior removes his crown and places his box of gold in the straw and thinks “From the first night I saw the new star, I began to realize that I have been mistaken my whole life. I have tried to live apart from others. I thought the world was full of evil, while the starry night was perfect. Since then I have met people who can teach me so much…And look at this infant; he will not even learn to walk without the help of adults! Human beings must help each other.” He even decides to share his love of astronomy with his grandchild. Young King Jaspar walks up and presents a jar of myrrh. He suddenly realizes that his desire to become a hero in other people’s eyes was a selfish goal. “A whole life of small kindnesses would be a very great thing.. even if it would never make him famous.” Balthasar lays his jewel-covered chest at the baby’s feet. He thinks the mother, father and child “look so beautiful that they seem to glow from within.” He now understands that “the beauty of that moment can only be beheld, and then remembered.” He no longer has the need to fill every moment of every day with busi-ness and sees that the purpose of beauty is to lead us to the sacred.
The three kings talked for many days as they began their trip home, knowing their lives had been changed forever, and yet understanding that they would be changed even more as they pondered all that had happened. Something very old, something older than time itself, had been revealed to them in the face of the little child, something universal and yet very particular and personal, a gift specific to each of them, an enduring treasure to be savored and shared. And today, they offer that gift to us anew.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, The Nativity of Our Lord: Christmas Day 2024
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined…For a child has been born for us, a son given to us…”. Isaiah 9: 2-7
Poetry, beauty and wonder. That is what this morning is about. Our souls long for the profound mystery at the heart of Christmas, the gloriously impossible reality that God’s power and God’s love came to us as a little child. God’s ways are clearly not our ways. We come together today as people who walk in a land of deep darkness. There is so much right now that threatens our sense of well-being. But into that deep darkness, a light has shined, “for a child has been born for us, a son given to us.”
There is nothing more poetic, more beautiful and wonder-filled than the birth of a child. But what precedes that glorious moment when a new life comes into the world is pain and suffering. Luke tells us that Jesus was born in the usual way. Mary and Joseph weren’t spared anything--the pain or the joy. They were given an unspeakably precious gift, the gift of raising an extraordinary child in an ordinary world. A child who would teach them that every moment of this life is shot through with glory—if only we have eyes to see and hearts to perceive it. God’s wonder is present in these two impoverished, oppressed Roman subjects, giving birth to their son in a stable far from home—and God’s beauty radiates from the face of the little one whom they call Jesus, and we will call Emanuel, “God with us”.
One of my greatest joys as a parish priest is to welcome children into this world and to bless them after their birth. There is a freshness, a newness, a particular kind of beauty that pervades everything when a child is born. God is present in a very palpable way, just as God is very present when we are about to transition to eternal life. These times of birth and death are times when everything comes into perspective if we are present to God’s purposes in this world. We become aware of fundamental truths that we are often blind to in the hustle and bustle of everyday life. We suddenly know how very precious life is, the sacredness of relationships, the transforming power of love and the deep mystery at the heart of the universe. We become aware of the holy.
Our remembrance of Christ’s birth this morning puts us in mind of these things, those things that are worthy and good and true. And we not only remember, but re-enter that moment in history and know in the depths of our beings that everything that went before and everything that is to be, is changed because of the birth of an extraordinary child who grew up to be an extraordinary man who changed the world forever.
This morning reminds us of the potential that we all have to embrace what Madeleine L’Engle calls the “gloriously impossible” wonder of God and to use that power to transform the world.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.”
We need this morning. We need to know that there is hope for this world—because there is. Jesus came to us to be our light in the darkness and to help us be his light in the world until all things are one day brought to perfection. That is part of the glorious impossible—that we can be agents for God’s redemption of this world. Mary and Jospeh could have refused their divine commission, but they did not. Instead, they embraced it, letting their fear be transformed by God’s power working in them. This world can be a very hostile environment for God’s work. That was true when Jesus was born, and it is true today. But God continues to be born. God came to us in vulnerability and tenderness that first Christmas and God comes to us this morning to bring us peace and strength. Mary and Joseph were infused with courage to bring light and life to the world, and we are too. Birthing God into this world is hard work but it is vitally important work, a creative process that gives our lives meaning and purpose.
Like stars against a midwinter night sky, the light shines brightest when the darkness is deepest. A sense of disquiet surrounds us—concerns about our world and our country, concerns particularly for the vulnerable among us. But this disquiet cannot pierce our core, our center where God dwells. Throughout the ages God has worked in and through desperate circumstances with a mysterious combination of strength and tenderness. We look into the face of the Christ child this bright Christmas morning and see hope for ourselves and hope for our world. And if we have the eyes to see it and the hearts to perceive it, we can envision a world transformed by the power of divine love.
“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who lived in a land of deep darkness—on them light has shined…For a child has been born for us…and his is named Wonderful Counselor…, Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9: 2-7
Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Christmas Eve Service, Year C – Christmas I, 12/24/24
Readings: Isaiah 9:2-7, Titus 2:11-14, Luke 2:1-14(15-20)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Good evening St. George’s and merry Christmas! It is a joy to be back with you on this night. For those of you who are new or visiting – welcome. I’ve been away for the past few weeks celebrating a small nativity of my own with my wife Winnie. In October we welcomed the arrival of our first child, Mary Winston, who is right here in the pews with us tonight. There is nothing like a fresh new baby to bring the miracle of Christmas to life, is there?
Though, as we know, giving birth to a child in modern America is a far cry from the rustic nativity scene described by St. Luke. Instead of riding a donkey to a dingy stable, we took our CR-V to Inova Fairfax Hospital. There we were greeted not by shepherds, the lowliest of the low, but by highly skilled nurses and doctors. Instead of the grunts and snorts of pack animals, we were lulled by the truly incessant beeping of an EKG machine. And finally, rather than an angel bringing “good news of great joy for all the people,” we received quite an impressive medical bill from a claims adjuster.
However, there is one part of the modern nativity experience that remains totally unchanged across millennia. After the haze and frenzy of labor subsides, for just a moment, time stands still. As I gazed down at my newborn child, swaddled under a heat lamp like a baby chic at the county fair, that ancient feeling known to Mary and to every parent from the beginning of time descended upon me. It is a feeling of most profound wonder at a life yet unlived coming into being. A life I hope and pray will be filled with joy and purpose; fulfillment, and connection; wonder and awe.
And interspersed in the elation of that moment of wondrous possibility, comes also the anxiety of knowing that life will bring heartache and pain. Struggle which I know I cannot spare her from, as much as I might try.
In the few minutes that this little girl had existed, it felt like I had caught a glimpse of a lifetime – of her life, and of every life. And before the nurse whisked her away to the nursery, I thought to myself. This must be a glimpse of what God feels in every moment He looks down at us.
Now, why am I telling you this? It’s a lovely story but I know you all came here to hear about Jesus’s birth, not Mary Winston’s, and as wonderful as I think she is, I’m under no illusion that Mary Winston is Jesus. However, I do believe that the experience of her birth, and the birth of every child, does speak volumes about why God chose to come to us in such a peculiar way on that first Christmas. Why instead of coming in power and great might, did God come to us as the fragile infant Jesus? When you think about it, it’s odd isn’t it?
Well let’s start with what we know about God. If it’s true that God is our loving parent, as I believe He is, then I believe it’s also true that God experiences an even fuller and more perfect version of the love and heartache that I did when God looks down at us. Therefore there can be no doubt that God desires even more strongly that we experience all of the richness and be spared all of the pain that this life brings us. So what is an all-powerful and all-loving parent like that to do to bring us both fullness and safety?
One option would have been for God to simply remove the possibility of sin and suffering from us in the first place. In the primordial nursery, the Garden of Eden, God could have child-proofed every sharp object, removed that meddlesome serpent and that seductive fruit so that His first children, Adam and Eve, never had the option of becoming estranged from His love in the first place. But God, being no divine dictator, knew that to remove the possibility of making choices that lead to pain, would also mean to remove our agency to choose love. God’s first gift to us, after life, was freedom.
Another option to spare us from our worst impulses would be to set up rules and guidelines to steer us more closely towards the life of love intended for us – and God of course did that. The Ten Commandments, the teachings of the prophets, and our conscience are those guidelines for us. But as any parent who has caught their child with their hand in the cookie jar knows, rules will be disregarded, and we will come up with the most inventive reasons for disregarding them.
So what was God to do? I’ll tell you; this is what God did. God, knowing that what we needed far more than a heavenly helicopter parent, decided to run down from heaven towards us, not in strength and power to discipline us, but in the weakness of the Child Jesus. To give us himself, as us. Not as an abstraction, but as something – someone – we could have a relationship with on human terms. God, in the birth of his Son, Jesus Christ, came to share a life with us, living as fully human, and fully divine.
God became human, not in the flawed sense that we are, but in the sense that were made to be, so that through Jesus’s life we might know how to love each other as God does. And God in Jesus remained divine so that when we fell short of that love, God would be so fully united us as to cure us from all sickness and sinfulness through his sacrifice. A sacrifice to cure us even from death.
The infant Jesus, whose wondrous birth we celebrate today, is the hinge between heaven and earth – the ultimate reconciliation of us children with our loving parent. At Jesus’s birth all time stood still. As the angels shouted their cries of glory, the yoke of our burdens, the bar across our shoulders, and the yoke of our oppressors had already broken.
And as that ancient feeling of love and wonder descended upon Mary as she gazed down at her child, that same look of love shown forth upon her; upon all of us from a little child. Tonight we celebrate the birth of that little child who is both God and human. A God who looks down on each of you, right now, with more love than you can imagine. Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Fourth Sunday of Advent, December 22nd, 2024
“When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and exclaimed.. ”Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb….And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” Luke 1: 39-55
`Today’s Gospel is the beautiful story of two women caught up in the mystery and wonder of God. Both are carrying sons who are divinely commissioned by God to bring about God’s purposes for the world.
Elizabeth is carrying John the Baptist, the one who will prepare the way for Jesus. And her cousin Mary, is pregnant with Jesus, the Savior and Redeemer of the world. Both are miraculous pregnancies. Elizabeth was thought to be beyond child-bearing years, and yet she and her husband are expecting a son. And Mary, her much younger, unmarried cousin, is carrying a child that she conceived after an angel announced that she would be bear God’s Son. Mary and Elizabeth are participants in God’s work of salvation, and when they meet, they are immediately aware that their lives are intertwined in a way that goes beyond their understanding.
After learning that she will bear Jesus, Mary travels 80 miles from her home in Galilee to the Judean hill town where Elizabeth lives. Mary was no doubt overwhelmed and afraid and needed support from Elizabeth. And Elizabeth’s joy at seeing her and her recognition of the significance of the child Mary is carrying, is the confirmation that Mary needs.
There is nothing like the support of an older, wiser spiritual guide when we are discerning what God is doing in our lives. I often think of my spiritual director as my Elizabeth. I have met with her once a month for the last 24 years, ever since my first year of seminary. She has supported me, prayed with me, challenged me, and often confirmed that a certain direction that I felt called to was correct. We all need people to sure us up when we are seeking to be faithful but feeling uncertain about whether we are on the right path or not. God sometimes calls us to do hard things and we need courage and encouragement to stay the course. Mary had said yes to the angel when he had announced that she would bear God’s Son, but there was no way of knowing how things were going to unfold, but she certainly knew that it was not going to be easy. Mary is the very finest example we have in Christan tradition of courageous, costly discipleship.
Very early on in Christian tradition, Mary was envisioned as the new Ark of the Covenant. The ark carried the presence of God in the Old Testament and Mary was seen as the new ark because she held God in her body for nine months and her child would give us the new covenant, God’s very self. That is an incredible thought, that Mary, an imperfect human being, housed God in her womb. Elizabeth recognized this and marveled at this joyfully. And Mary’s response to Elizabeth’s epiphany is the song that Luke puts on her lips, expressing the profound wonder and majesty of God and foreshadows Jesus’ redemptive work in the world.
“My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me and holy is his name… He has brought down the powerful form their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things.”
In addition to being understood as the new Ark of the Covenant, Mary also came to represent the universal Church. Like Mary, the Church is an imperfect creation, but our call is to embody God and to continually bring Christ into the world. The advent of Jesus coming as a baby 2,000 years ago was a one-time historical event, but the Church’s vocation, our purpose, is to bear God over and over again. That happens as we hear Scripture, as we celebrate the Eucharist, as we pray for the world. Mary was no doubt in continual prayer with and for her son from the time he was in her womb until his death. God chose her, in her imperfection, for her faithfulness, her righteousness, her strength and courage. God chooses us, the Church, for the same reasons. And God chooses us as individuals as well.
In the Orthodox Church, Mary is known as Theotokos, Mother of God. She is represented with arms outstretched in continual prayer, with Christ at the center of her being and his hands raised in blessing. She is the model of the church. Her vocation is our vocation. The 13th century German theologian and mystic Meister Eckhart took this thinking to the next level. He said this.
“We are all meant to be mothers of God…for God is always needing to be born.”
He said that there was an empty place inside of us where we can access God, but we have to clear away distractions in order to hear God’s incarnate Word speaking to us in that secret place deep inside of us, but that when we do, Christ is born again. He said this at the beginning of one of his Christmas sermons.
Here, in time, we are celebrating the eternal birth which God the Father bore and bears unceasingly in eternity, because this same birth is now born in time, in human nature. St. Augustine says, “What does it avail me that this birth is always happening, if it does not happen in me? That it should happen in me is what matters.” We shall therefore speak of this birth, of how it may take place in us. —Meister Eckhart (1260–1327)
Meister Eckhart is speaking to us across the ages. As we look forward to celebrating the Feast of the Nativity in two days, we ask God to prepare a place inside each of us, a quiet, holy space to birth Christ and to bear him to others.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Third Sunday of Advent, December 15th, 2024
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord
is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will
guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Philippians 4: 4-7
On this Third Sunday in Advent, there are no more fitting words than “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say , Rejoice.” Christmas is just two weeks away and we look forward to gathering on Christmas Eve for beautiful worship services, either here or with family and friends elsewhere, to celebrate the Feast of the Nativity, and the coming of Christ to be with us in the flesh. There is no greater joy than that. And this afternoon, we will get a sneak preview of Christmas with our Lessons and Carols service, where we will be together with fellow Saint Georgians and with people from the larger community to experience this lovely treasure from our Anglican tradition. If you didn’t get a chance to see our Minister of Music, Dr. Ben Keseley’s, Dragon Bytes article in video form this past Thursday, I highly recommend watching it when you get home today. Ben recorded it inside the organ chamber and it’s both educational and funny. I was especially interested to learn that the first Lessons and Carols service was held in 1880 on Christmas Eve at 10 pm and was intended to keep people “out of the teeming public houses,” a.k.a. rowdy, crowded bars.
This Third Sunday of Advent is traditionally called Gaudete Sunday. Gaudete is the Latin word for “rejoice”. Advent was originally thought of as a “mini Lent” back in the day, and this third Sunday was meant to give people a short break from their penitential practices in order to focus on the joy of anticipating Christmas.
Today we hear Paul’s words from his Letter to the Philippians, reminding us of the joy that is always available to us, whatever our circumstances. Paul wrote these words in chains from a dank, cold, unforgiving Roman prison cell. And they were meant for Christians in Philippi who were not exactly having a jolly time. There were divisions among the leadership of this house church in Macedonia and there were divisions about whether following Jesus was primarily about grace and love or about the strict adherence to the law. These internal threats, along with the ever-present external threats to people trying to live a Christian life in a brutal Roman culture, made Paul’s words especially important, and also ironic. How could Paul talk about “rejoicing” when there wasn’t a lot to be joyful about given the facts on the ground?
In an essay by theologian James Evans, Evans talks about how the Christian apologist C.S. Lewis describes joy using the German concept of “Sehnsucht”, which is translated as “longing” or “yearning”. Theologian Barbara Holmes picks up on this same idea when she talks about the “common presumption that black church worship practices are characterized by enthusiasm, adoration and praise.” She points out that what people outside that tradition may not realize is that what is at the heart of the joy in much of the African American worship experience is a “deep longing”, an unshakeable trust, an unspeakable joy that defies expression.
The joy that Paul talks about is rooted and grounded in our faith in Christ, and celebrating ahead of time the realization of God’s promises of justice and peace. Joy comes from within us and has nothing to do with the specifics of our circumstances. It expresses the longing and conviction that all things will be made right and that conviction allows us to claim joy in the here and now.
Oftentimes during this season of Advent, people are feeling at odds with our culture’s emphasis on being festive. People who are grieving the loss of someone near and dear to them, have an especially hard time. Our family is grieving right now, after the death of my father-in-law this past Tuesday. He lived a long, loving and faithful life and yet we feel his death acutely. We were with him in his last few hours, praying and telling him how much we loved him, until he was finally released into the fullness of God. When we walked out of his room a little while later, we were met with the sound of a newborn baby crying, and I was struck by the poignancy of that particular moment in time. This new baby, fresh from God, and my father-in-law, having just returned to God. Both were longing and yearning for life in its fullness. My father in law’s joy is now complete, and knowing that is a great comfort, in the midst of our grief.
We cannot fully live into the joy that God intends for all of us unless we acknowledge the things that work against it, namely the anxiety we all experience in its various forms. Paul tells the Philippians “not to worry about anything”, but rather to pray about everything and give thanks. If we trust that God will provide for us, if we pray about everything that is burdening us, it helps to alleviate our worries and to be able to claim the joy that God intends for us. Sometimes it feels as though we are actually being assaulted by the cares and concerns of the world, and that is when it is particularly helpful to remember Paul’s final words of wisdom about “the peace of God which passes all understanding, guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” There are times when we feel so vulnerable, that it helps to picture Jesus literally standing guard, standing between us and the things that are threatening to rob us of joy and protecting us from harm. It may be a doubt or a fear, worrying about something in the future, or a regret from the past.
My prayer for all of us this day is that we will rejoice in the Lord always and remember that joy is something to be shared. Rejoicing in the Lord is a communal enterprise. We need each other. We need to put ourselves in spaces where we can connect with the peace that passes all understanding. Today we gather in the joy of anticipating Christ at Christmas and in the joy of Christ at work in us every day.
Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to everyone. The Lord
is near. Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving
let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will
guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
This summer my husband Nick and I traveled through West Virginia for a week-long summer vacation. We entered West Virginia on highway 55 (US 48) headed toward Blackwater Falls State Park. As we drove on Rt 55, I was in awe at how flat and smooth the road was as we headed across the mountain range. The highway led us over tree covered valleys with beautiful rushing streams and rivers. As we gazed up at the mountaintops we saw hundreds of windmills that I am told power Northern Virginia. This highway through these rugged mountains, forests and streams was awe inspiring. It reminded me of the Isaiah 40 passage in our gospel reading that speaks of making a level, straight and smooth path so the glory of the Lord will be revealed.
When we arrived at the various State Parks in West Virginia, we found these gigantic swings in picturesque places with the words “Almost Heaven” engraved above them. It was a take on a verse of a song sung by John Denver, “Almost heaven, West Virginia, Blue Ridge Mountains, Shenandoah River.”
As I thought about all this, I recognized that the wilderness, in places like the West Virginia mountains, the Boundary Waters of Minnesota, or dark skies wilderness areas where you can see the brilliant stars of the Milky Way are places where we encounter the awesome grandness of God’s creation and our place in this universe.
Let me return now to Luke. In chapter 1, verse 80, we learn that John grew and became strong in spirit in the wilderness, until the day he appeared publicly near the Jordan River. His time in the wilderness helped form John to become God’s messenger to prepare the way for Jesus, as was mentioned in our readings from Malachi and Luke.
Our gospel text today describes the beginning of John the Baptist’s ministry. It is interesting that Luke begins his account by the naming of Roman and religious leaders of the day. Herod, who was actually Herod Antipas, who later beheaded John the Baptist, is in this list of leaders. Caiaphas, who turned Jesus over to Pontius Pilate to be crucified, is in this list along with Pilate. While this list provides a historical context for John’s ministry; it also clearly demonstrates that John and Jesus were conducting their ministries at a time when they were opposed by powerful, adversarial leaders.
John’s message in these first 6 verses was pretty straightforward. He was proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins as the way of preparing a way for the Lord to come, so “all flesh shall see the salvation of God.”
Now some might wonder why we are talking about sin, just a few weeks before we celebrate the birth of the holy child. Sin is a word we don’t speak of much in this day and age, especially at this most festive time of year, when we are stringing lights, decorating our homes, and buying gifts.
When we do think of sin, many of us imagine behaviors such as stealing things that do not belong to us, lying, cheating on our taxes, or having an extramarital affair. In our secular culture, sin is thought of as something bad that we did. But, we rarely speak of sin being part of our fallen human nature. Years ago, I was talking with my step-father-in-law Del Anderson, who was a national director of social work for the Veterans Administration Hospitals, about an individual I was dealing with whom I suspected had a narcissistic personality disorder.
Del said to me, “You mean you're dealing with someone who is selfish and self-centered, and spends the bulk of his time focusing on himself.” I responded, “Yes, that’s the problem.” Del shook his head and said, “It is simply amazing how many people struggle with that SIN.”
I could hardly get over how I, the clergy, had named the problem as a mental health issue, while Del, who spent his life working with mental health issues, named the problem as SIN. Yet, sin had been part of Del’s vocabulary since he was a young boy, growing up in the 1920s as the son of a Lutheran clergy. Del understood how to talk about sin.
However, today we rarely speak of sin. Most of us have lost the original and theological meaning of sin, which involves allowing the power of darkness to separate us from God and our neighbor. Sin is not only a set of behaviors to be avoided. Sin can also be a way of life, often inspired by our insecurities, fears, and our crazy need to feel in control. Sin stands in opposition to faith and trust that God loves us, and will provide for us. Sin is that force that causes us to grasp at the reigns of control, ceasing to let God be God, and the Lord of our lives. Sin creates distance between us and others. Sin is able to destroy entire nations, communities, churches, and families as it erodes away our trust in God and our trust in one another.
Some sins are so embedded in our culture that we hardly recognize them as sins. These include things like racism, sexism, scapegoating groups of people like immigrants, certain religious groups, or people with disabilities. Sin is a major problem for all human beings.
The reason we talk about sin in Advent is because SIN is the reason we need a SAVIOR. If we lose the language of SIN we lose the language of SALVATION. The good news is Jesus, God in flesh, came and lived among us to save us from our sins and death and to restore our relationship with God. Without an awareness of sin, who needs the good news that Jesus came to forgive our sins and unite us with God and one another?
John the Baptist’s job was to prepare the way of the Lord. John knew that to prepare the way of the Lord, he must help people recognize their sins and call them to repent.
The word REPENT is more clearly understood when we examine the original Hebrew and Greek meanings of the word. In Hebrew the word for repent is shub. Shub means to turn around, to turn back or to return to the right way. When teaching children about the word repent, I often used a big U-turn sign as a visual aid. In Greek the word for repent is metanoein. Metanoein also means to turn back, but adds the concept of changing one’s mind, or coming to a new way of thinking.
Of course changing our way of thinking is not possible if we have an inflated view of ourselves, and we blame others for our troubles. In order to change our thinking we must have some humility and an honest understanding of ourselves and our role in the affairs of the people and the world around us. We can gain this understanding of ourselves through prayer and through interacting and listening to others around us. Hopefully we will not need to go through a change in our thinking and actions like Ebenizer Scrooge did in Charles Dickens' “Christmas Carol,” but you get my drift.
Repentance involves more than simply saying I’m sorry. Repentance includes placing God at the center of our lives and trying to love God and our neighbor in the same way that God has loved us. Repentance means allowing the Holy Spirit to reshape our thinking and doing, so that we become holy instruments revealing God’s love to the world.
This reshaping of our thinking and doing can involve things like feeding the poor, housing the homeless, and loving and caring for all those around us.
John sealed peoples’ repentance for the forgiveness of their sins, by baptizing them with water. In essence John was cleaning them up to be ready to meet their Lord and to experience the salvation of God.
As you prepare to receive Christ this Advent, carve out some time every day to spend in prayerful conversation with God. We have daily devotional books at the back of the sanctuary that you can pick up on your way out. When I began a practice of daily prayer I found this sort of aid very helpful. I would read it while I drank my morning tea and then pray.
The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer has devotions for different times each day and scripture readings at the back for every day of the week. If you google The Book of Common Prayer, you will find this wonderful resource online and you can use it on your smartphone.
I also love Brother Lawrence’s short book, The Practice of the Presence of God. Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite monk during the 1600s.
Brother Lawrence liked to pray and converse with God throughout the day as he went about his daily routines and work. Being someone who loves to walk and pray at the same time, Brother Lawrence provides me with significant insights in how to experience God’s presence throughout my day.
Blessings to you as you prepare to receive Christ in your heart this Advent.
Amen.
Inspired by my personal experiences and the book Speaking of Sin: The Lost Language of Salvation by Barbara Brown Taylor, Cowley Publications, copyright 2000.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, 26th Sunday after Pentecost, November 17th, 2024
Wow, this has been quite the last couple of weeks! The aftermath of the presidential election has left some of our fellow Americans feeling completely elated and triumphant, and others altogether bereft and discouraged about our future as a nation. And most people in Arlington and here at Saint George’s are in the latter group. Roughly 80% of voters registered in Arlington voted for Vice-President Kamala Harris and roughly 20% voted for President-elect Trump. But whomever we voted for, whether we voted with the majority of Americans overall or whether we voted with the majority of people in Arlington, we can all agree that this is the most consequential election of our lifetimes to date. When people are having a hard time agreeing on much of anything right now, we can all generally agree about that, whichever political perspective we are speaking from, that this election signals a major shift in direction. There will be a lot of changes and yet we do not know for sure what initiatives will come to fruition. There is so much uncertainty right now and human beings do not deal very well with uncertainty. So it is especially important for us to be reminded of how we are called to live as Christians during this time. And our reading from Hebrews today has a lot of wisdom to offer us.
“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10: 23-25
The writer of Hebrews sees a problem. A lot of people in their congregation are beginning to think that Jesus’ death and resurrection doesn’t make any difference in the world. They look around and see that not much has changed post-Easter. Sin is still a thing. Evil is persistent. Corrupt power structures remain in tact. This community of early Christians is also being persecuted for their faith. The world they live in does not support them, in fact actively thwarts them, in living as the Gospel calls them to live. They are tired, worn out, discouraged and beginning to lose hope. And losing hope is the absolute worst thing that can happen to a follower of Jesus. So the writer of Hebrews,, the pastor of this congregation, offers them a sermon on the nature of Christian hope and encouragement to hold onto hope at all costs and to keep coming to church. Hope is everything. It drives us forward. It helps us to persevere when nothing around us is giving us a reason to be hopeful. Christian hope is not the same as a blind, sunny optimism. It is not dependent upon our external circumstances. It is a gift from God, rooted, grounded and grown in the soil of the death and resurrection of Jesus. The writer of Hebrews describes Jesus as “our great high priest”. He is the one who perfected the ritual sacrifices of the temple offered to atone for sin. By entering into the messiness of human existence, and giving himself over to be killed at the hands of a corrupt and evil system propagated by the civil and religious authorities of his day, Jesus judged that system to be null and void. He is the great high priest who ends the need for temple sacrifice once and for all because he IS the sacrifice. The sacrifice OF love, FOR love. Not because God wanted his own Son to be a sacrifice, but because the evil powers of this world demanded that sacrifice, and by offering it, Jesus freed us from it. The death dealing ways of this world no longer have dominion over us. He is risen. Jesus liberated us and we stand WITH him, loved, forgiven, and precious in God’s sight. And therein lies our hope. It is a hope that does not come from this world. It is a hope that lives in our heart and sings in our spirit, even in the darkest of times. Good Friday and Easter Day inaugurated a new era of liberation. And yet we live in this liminal time between Jesus’ resurrection and the final realization of God’s perfection of the world on the last day, that day that is approaching, but we do not know when it will come. So we wait- eagerly, expectantly. And until that day, we strive to live as Jesus lived, loving God, loving each other, witnessing to our faith, and coming together as the church to be strengthened and encouraged in our work for justice and peace in this world. And God is with us, empowering us through the gift of hope.
In the immortal words of poet Emily Dickenson,
“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -
Hope is what will keep our spirits alive, whatever the future holds. Hope is what will help us to keep our hearts open. Hope will enable us to be gracious to others, even and especially when we disagree with them. It helps us to believe that things can change as we work to find even the smallest patch of common ground to stand on. We have to find ways to connect with people who think differently than we do and who have different life experiences from us. We must continue to work for justice and peace for all people, rising each morning to greet the day and asking God to renew our hope, the source of which is within us and beyond us. Our lives are rooted in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and in expectation of the day that he will finally come again to bring all things to perfection, to make all things right. Coming together in worship every Sunday, the very act of gathering in Jesus’ name, is such a powerful thing. When we gather, we remind each other of what God has called us to and our time together reinvigorates us for our ministry in the world. And week in and week out, we hold out the vision of a new heaven and a new earth that will finally, one day, be realized.
“Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful. And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together…but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day approaching. Hebrews 10: 23-25
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, All Saints Sunday, November 2nd, 2024
Today is All Saints Sunday, the day in the church year when we focus on what it means to be knit together in the communion of saints. We are reminded today that we live our lives in the here and now mindful of all the faithful people who have gone before us. Those people are still with us as our heavenly cheerleaders, encouraging us and helping us onward. Today I am mindful of faithful Saint Georgians who have died. I remember seeing them at church every Sunday and hearing what was going on in their lives. I can still see where they sat, and recall the ministries they served in. I remember visiting them and sharing communion when they weren’t able to be in church anymore. I really miss them but take comfort in knowing that they are with us still. I am also aware of family members, my grandparents, my father, my mother-in-law, my brother-in-law. You may be mindful of people in your own life who have died. Even if it has been a while, their memory is still alive, and not only that, they are very much alive in a spiritual sense. Every Sunday in the Eucharistic Prayer we praise God with the angels, archangels and all the company of heaven. They are the company of heaven , all those who we love but see no longer, and that is a comforting and empowering thought.
We are all going through a lot right now, as a country, and as individuals, and the faithful departed went through a lot of trials and tribulations too. They persevered in the midst of world wars, economic hardship, social inequities, loss and disappointment, relationship issues, crises of faith. You name it. The particulars are different, but they made it through and we can too. When I think about my maternal grandmother, growing up dirt poor, with an 8th grade education, which was actually pretty good for girls in rural areas in the south in the early 1900s. I think about her marrying my grandfather, raising children and subsisting on the proceeds from their small, yearly crop. I’m amazed that she was the generous, loving, and joyful person that she was. She had a lot of reasons not to be. But the bedrock of her life was her faith. She knew that Jesus was with her every day, helping her to get through. She talked about it sometimes, but mostly she showed it. And her trust in him was everything, which is why she always fed anybody who showed up at her door, and was always grateful for her blessings. She knew she was rich even though she was poor. And when I went to visit her every summer, we would go to Red Bud Baptist Church. She was there every Sunday. And even though she could not carry a tune, she did not care. I remember as a little girl standing beside her as she belted out the hymns like nobody’s business. That’s when her faith really sang out, from her head to toes. She has long since been in the communion of saints and it gives me a lot of comfort to know that she is singing away (although she probably sounds a lot better) and that she is still with me today. You probably have people in your own life who influenced your faith who have died. Today we give thanks for your person and my person, your people and my people. And if you didn’t have people who gave you models of faithful living, we give thanks for the people who have gone before who are there for all of us. Each of us has their support, every single one of us, every day of our lives.
One of the great things about All Saints Sunday, among the many, is getting to sing For All the Saints. It was written especially for All Saints Day, so we only normally sing it once a year on this feast day and sometimes at funerals. It was written by William Walsham How. He lived in the 1800s and was an Oxford graduate who eventually became a bishop in the Church of England, but he definitely did not think of himself more highly than he ought. He turned down a lot of prestigious appointments, but finally accepted the position of Suffragan Bishop of Bedford, which gave him responsibility for the very poor in the East End of London. He was apparently exceptionally down-to-earth and the people he worked with loved him dearly. Children were especially drawn to him. People called him “the children’s bishop” or the “the bishop of the poor”. He wrote a lot of hymns as a means of infusing more joy and vitality into worship. For All the Saints is his greatest hit.
For all the saints who from their labors rest,
who Thee by faith before the world confessed;
Thy name, O Jesus, be forever blest.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Thou wast their Rock, their Fortress and their Might;
Thou, Lord, their Captain in the well-fought fight;
Thou, in the darkness drear, their one true Light.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
All Saints Sunday puts our hopes, our fears, and our dreams in a larger context of faith. It reminds us of our destination when we die, when we will experience a new heaven and a new earth. It also reminds us that we are part of that new heaven and new earth right now. As Christians we are called to live as if it is already a reality, knowing that we will only fully know it when we see Jesus face-to-face. We are called to witness to our faith. We are called to resist evil and make a conscious decision to follow Jesus every day. We are to work for justice and peace. We are called to honor the dignity of every human being: People who look like us and don’t look like us. People who are poor and people who are rich. People who believe in Jesus and do not believe in Jesus. People who are loving and people who are hateful. That is what we are all reminded of today as we prepare to baptize little Joseph Aplin Mathai and renew our own baptismal covenant. Joseph is being brought into the fellowship of faith and marked as Christ’s own forever, and that is a wondrous and powerful thing. So today we pray for Jospeh and his baptism and we pray for ourselves, that we will always remember that we too are marked as Christ’s own forever, and we are never, ever alone, in our joys or in our struggles.
O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!
Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Pentecost 23, Year B, Track 1,10/27/24
Lessons: Job 42:1-6, 10-17, Hebrews 7:23-28, Mark 10:46-52
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
While reading Mark, I sometimes wonder if sight is overrated. Generally we regard sight as the most valuable of the senses. Some 2,400 years ago, the philosopher Aristotle ranked the five senses in hierarchical order, and praised sight as the most noble of them all. No doubt he was influenced by his teacher, Plato, who wrote that sight was the foundation of all knowledge in a work called Timaeus, which some biblical scholars associate with our Bartimaeus, the blind beggar in today’s Gospel lesson, whose name literally means ‘Son of Timaeus.’ This is possibly an ironic head nod to the wisdom of an unsighted man overturning the wisdom of a man praising sight.
Whatever the case may be, sight is often afforded a nearly divine status. We say that “seeing is believing,” right? But what about when our sight fails us? Not physically, as in becoming blind, but when sight actually obscures the truth from us. Artificial Intelligence is a prime example of this. We can see all manner of things on the internet, particularly in the lead up to this election, which seem to depict reality, but are actually engineered to do the opposite; to manipulate our vision to confirm the version of reality we or others want to believe.
And the truth is, we’ve already been rather good at using sight to confirm our biases for thousands of years. Take for example the crowd in today’s Gospel reading. As Jesus arrives into town, they see this man, Bartimaeus, physically. They know that he is there, and yet they fail to actually see him. To see his worthiness of Jesus’s attention. Their value system has told them that people who are blind and poor are not worth being seen, especially by people like Jesus, who they believe to be a king, and so they shush Bartimaeus as he cries out “Jesus, Son of David, have mercy on me!” For what kind of king has time for a blind beggar?
Then we have Bartimaeus himself, who is the archetypal inversion of the crowd. He is a blind man who does not see Jesus, physically, and yet believes he is worth being seen by him. And we know, that Bartimaeus, like the crowd, also believes Jesus to be a king because of the way that he addresses Jesus. He calls him Jesus, “son of David;” David being the heroic king of Hebrew Scripture who saved Israel from the Philistines and established a famous monarchy. Now what kind of king do we think Bartimaeus might have believed Jesus to be? We can’t know for sure, but we do know that before his death and resurrection, Jesus was often, even by his own disciples, regarded as a king who would raise up armies and triumph with force over their Roman political enemies. A king who would be very much like Caesar himself, only stronger and Jewish.
If Bartimaeus believed Jesus to be a king like that, it’s doubtful that he would have cried out to him as he did, for why would a king like Caesar have time for a beggar like Bartimaeus? But for whatever reason, perhaps having heard of Jesus’s miraculous healings in other villages, Bartimaeus believes that here is a king who has both the power and interest in healing him. And thank God – literally thank God, Jesus the Son of God, that he was right. And because of his faith, he is healed.
So to recap, we have a crowd who can see but does not believe in this blind beggar’s worth. We have a man who cannot see but believes this king Jesus can heal him, and we have Jesus, who both sees the blind man and believes him worthy of healing.
Let’s pause for a minute and ask ourselves – in which of these camps are we?
I’ll be honest, I am usually among the physically sighted yet spiritually blind crowd. The one whom Helen Keller may have been referring to when she purportedly wrote that “the only thing worse than being blind is having sight, but no vision.” And in defense of the crowd, I think there is a way of reading this where they are too preoccupied with excitement about seeing a new political savior who can possibly deliver them from the intractable mess than they in, than are believing that this savior could be different than the types of candidates they are used to. Their sight obscures their vision. And as they strive to see what kind of king Jesus is, what Jesus essentially does is turn the mirror on their sight and to show them what they really needed to see: a blind beggar reaching out in faith. The one who was regarded as least is the one who reveals the truth for us all. The truth of who Jesus is and the truth of what our faith is about.
Yes, the miracle Jesus performed for Bartimaeus is certainly remarkable, but what I think is far more remarkable is the miracle he did for the crowd. This story is as much about Jesus restoring sight to a believing blind man as it is about Jesus restoring belief those with sight but no vision. And through Bartimaeus, we too are invited to share in that vision of faith. A vision in which the lowly are exalted, in which leadership looks like servanthood, and in which we can see with greater clarity than we ever imagined, the love which God has for us.
So whatever happens next week at the polls, I want you to remember that we still have our king who sees us, who loves us, and who longs for us to keep our eyes fixed, with steadfast faith, on the glory of his loving reign. Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Twenty Second Sunday after Pentecost, October 20th, 2024
This past Friday, the sports world was shocked to hear the announcement that UVA basketball coach Tony Bennett was retiring. Bennett is one of the “winningest” coaches of all time. He has had a stunningly successful career. He is also widely regarded as a person of deep integrity. He said that he could longer continue because he did not believe in the direction that college sports were going and feared for the well-being of his athletes within a system that was becoming more and more like professional sports. Coach Bennett said that he knew it was time to acknowledge that he was not equipped to take the program forward in this new environment, describing himself as a square peg in a round hole. Bennett had 5 pillars that he based his program on. Humility, passion, unity, servanthood and thankfulness. Bennett said this in an interview with UVA News when he first started. “The first principle is humility. Don’t think too highly of yourself. The second is passion. Don’t be lukewarm. Our third is unity. Basketball is one of the greatest team games there is because there can be individual talent, but boy, if (we) come together, (we) can be so good together... And we can overcome more tough situations. The fourth is servanthood. Whatever your role is, be a servant to the team and make your teammates better. The last one is thankfulness. Be thankful certainly when there’s great success, but also be thankful for what you’ve learned through the hard times, because there’s great wisdom in those experiences.” Humility, passion, unity, servanthood and thankfulness.
Coach Bennett is channeling Jesus in today’s Gospel. James and John want glory and honor, prestige and power. And Jesus tells them,
“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Mark 10: 35-45
Jesus has just finished telling his disciples that he is about to suffer and die. In fact, he has told them not one, not two, but three times. And yet they have not heard him. Being his disciple is about servanthood, not glory, not honor, not prestige and not power. Servanthood.
Coach Bennett is a person of deep Christian faith, faith that he by all accounts, does not force onto other people, but when asked about, he shares. He works with a very diverse group of people, religiously and otherwise, and he is widely admired for having a strong moral compass and respect for everyone, whatever their creed or life experience. And he has been open about the fact that his five pillars come from his faith. They are also values that can be universalized. And these values are hard to live out because we are all so egocentric and we live in an egocentric, polarized culture. Rather than being focused on seeking the good of all, we are very “me-focused”, “us and them” focused. That is why Bennett and others who believe in working for the good of all with humility, passion, a spirit of unity, servanthood and thankfulness, really stand out. That is what Jesus calls us to and it is hard to do. It’s hard because it involves sacrifice. It means making room for others, rather than taking over the room.
“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Mark 10: 35-45
As we approach this highly consequential presidential election, we are all thinking about what we want in our leaders. And as Christians, we discern how we are going to vote based on the level of integrity that we perceive the candidates to have, as well as how their positions on issues best reflect our values. Which candidate best demonstrates humility, passion, unity, servanthood and thankfulness? Which candidate is most committed to respecting the dignity of every human being and working for the common good? No human being models these qualities or these intentions perfectly. No one. And yet we are called, as people of faith, to make a choice based on our understanding of how Jesus wants us to live, making the best choice we can as imperfect people living in an imperfect world. An imperfect world that Jesus calls us to love with a sacrificial love. An imperfect world in which he calls us to work for justice and peace. An imperfect world in which we are called to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves.
The election is two weeks away and anxiety is very high, so it is important to remember to breath. To spend time each day in prayer and thanksgiving. It is so easy to get focused on our fears and everything that is wrong in our world. But we can’t let fear rule our lives and we need to ask God to help us to live hopefully. Focusing on what we are grateful for reorients our hearts and minds and improves our spiritual, emotional and physical health. It also helps us to work for change out of a healthy place, rather than an angry, fearful place. Gratitude is the key to the kingdom of God.
Gratitude is a spiritual practice. When we can look at the world and see all of its broken places, when we can look at our own lives and see all the things that are wrong, and still be grateful for all that God has done for us and all the work that God is going to do through us, we know that we are making progress on our spiritual journey..
Having an attitude of gratitude is everything. And that is why we make our financial pledges to Saint George’s every year. When we make our pledge to support God’s work in this place, it is an act of faith, hope and love. Making our pledges is a spiritual practice. Jesus talked about money a lot in the Gospels. He knew that money can have too much power over us, and if we learn to give a portion of it away, it has less power over us and more power to effectuate good in this world. A number of years ago, we started sending stewardship letters that thank each person or family for their generosity in the past and ask them to take the next step in growing in generosity in the coming year, and the response has been so wonderful. Saint Georgians are exceptionally generous. A few weeks ago, I was visiting a parishioner who isn’t able to come to church very often anymore, and this person shared how they were amazed that they were now giving far more than they ever thought possible, just by giving a little more each year, and how grateful they were for that. Giving is so good for us. Giving helps us to stay humble. Giving helps us to express our passion for the work God is doing in and through Saint George’s. Giving helps us to work for the unity God calls us to. Giving helps us to model servanthood. Giving expresses our thankfulness. And thankfulness is everything.
“You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” Mark 10: 35-45
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The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Pentecost 21, Year B, Track 1, 10/13/24
Lessons: Job 23:1-9, 16-17 (Job’s Complaint); Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Last Sunday Reverend Shearon preached an excellent sermon on the faithful Christian response to suffering, and today I’d like to continue that thread by exploring the question of what, then, is God’s response to suffering?
Or to put it quite frankly, where is God when we need him? It’s the question we have all surely asked at some point in life. Perhaps when turning on the news and seeing play by play coverage of the tragedy du jour. Hurricanes, the Holy Land, Ukraine. Or perhaps it arises when we encounter the depths of despair in our own life. Job loss, illness, anxiety and depression. In those moments, where is God? How could a God who is both perfectly loving and all-powerful not intervene to alleviate suffering? This question is perhaps the biggest obstacle to faith that humankind has encountered and it’s a question as old as time. In the book of Job, written some twenty-five hundred years ago, Job expresses this sentiment of divine abandonment with bitter clarity:
Oh, that I knew where I might find him,
that I might come even to his dwelling! (Job 23:3)
"If I go forward, he is not there;
or backward, I cannot perceive him;
on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;
I turn to the right, but I cannot see him. (Job 23:8-10).
Where is God? We could spend far more time than any of us have this morning, or in this lifetime, pondering the myriad responses to this question that have been offered throughout human history. But in the few minutes we have I’ll try to tell you what I have found in my own searching to be the most hopeful and assuring answer to the question of where is God. And that answer, I believe is Jesus.
Now before you tune out and say of course if I come to church the preacher is going to tell me that Jesus is the answer. In seminary we had a running joke that if you were ever stumped by a question on a test, the answer is always Jesus. It sounds trite, I know, but let me tell you why I believe that Jesus Christ, crucified and risen, really is God’s response to the problem of suffering.
You know, one of the unique claims of Christianity that distinguishes it from other world religions is the incarnation. The belief that God, through Jesus Christ, actually became human. And not only did God become human in Jesus Christ, God therefore experienced the fullness of what it means to be human. The joy, the struggle, and through the cross, the depths of abandonment and suffering. St. Paul stakes this claim when he writes:
For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who in every respect has been tested as we are (Heb. 4:15).
Theologian Jurgen Moltmann describes the incarnation and suffering of Christ as God’s act of divine solidarity with human need. Now let me tell you, this is a radical and controversial idea. For years, Western theology had taken for granted the notion of God’s impassibility – that God, being God, is immune to suffering. Yet Moltmann, in the wake of the Holocaust and WWII, was one of the first to challenge this idea by proposing that God could only be the good and loving God we believe him to be if he shared in the anguish and estrangement that we, God’s children, experience.
Through Jesus, we can imagine that God, rather than being some kind of divine manager, is crossing the picket lines to stand in solidarity with oppressed workers. God, rather than being just the physician of sick bodies and souls, is also the suffering cancer patient, lying in the hospital, hoping that the next infusion will save them.
God’s full and unconditional identification with human suffering is also laid bare in the parable of the rich young man, when Jesus scandalously declares that “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” And then, in the very next sentence, Jesus replies to his disciples’ astonished cry of “who then, can be saved” by saying that “For mortals it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.’ Even God can drag that stubborn, self-serving, billionaire camel through that needle’s eye, and perhaps in the process liberating it of its gilded shackles. (Mk 10:25-27).
In the same breath, Jesus expresses solidarity with the poor while extending the possibility of salvation to the oppressor.
So if the answer to the question of ‘where is God in suffering?’ is indeed that God, through the incarnation of Christ Jesus, fully shares our suffering, where does that leave us? Because it only partially satisfies the problem. Even if God is in solidarity with us, we’re still suffering.
The answer here, I believe, is that through suffering itself, God liberates us. Moltmann puts the Cross of Christ at the center of human history, and as we know, there are two parts to the cross of Jesus. The first part is Jesus’s full sharing in the pain and abandonment that we as humans experience. That bitter cry of dereliction “my God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Ps 22:1) is Jesus’s divine solidarity with every moment of anguish this life brings us. But the second part – the remarkable and impossible part of this story – is the resurrection.
In the resurrection Jesus gathers up all of the soreness, anxiety, depression, heartache, and physical pain that we carry, and transforms it into glory. In the resurrection Jesus points us to a reality where suffering, and even death, is shared by God and overcome. The death and glorious resurrection of Jesus Christ our Savior is the response to suffering God offers us. In this sense, suffering is merely a prelude to hope in God’s triumph through divine solidarity. And, therefore, the Christian response to suffering, is not despair, but hope in God’s ultimate victory won for us.
So, the next time you find yourself crying out like Job “Oh, that I knew where I might find [God], oh that I might come even to his dwelling,” I want you to remember this. God has come to dwell with you. Jesus is crying out with you, and Jesus will turn those cries into shouts of glory, glory, glory. And if you don’t have it in you to believe that right now, then I and others who love you will believe it for you. Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, October 6th, 2024
“Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.” Job 1:1; 2: 1-10
How can we profess that God is good in the face of all the human suffering we witness every day? Wars rage around the world, people die from starvation, and hurricanes wipe out whole communities. The list goes on and on. Some suffering that we experience in life is the result of our own actions. And that requires us to take responsibility, asking for God’s forgiveness and the forgiveness of those we have hurt and asking God to help us live differently going forward. But so much suffering in this life just happens to us. It has nothing to do with anything we have done and is totally undeserved. That is the central dilemma that he Book of Job explores.
Job is an upright and righteous man. And God has blessed him. He is wealthy, heathy and happy with his life. He has a large family, and lots of land and livestock. He is well respected in his community and widely regarded as a deeply faithful man. But then one day, a heavenly council comes before the Lord and Satan, or more precisely, the Satan, meaning the prosecutor or the adversary, takes on the challenge of testing Job, this upright, righteous and blameless man. And it will be a big challenge. Immediately before today’s reading, Job’s children have been killed, and his lands destroyed. And what is Job’s response? He falls to the ground and worships, saying “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” So Satan knows he has a big task ahead if he is to entice Job to turn away from God. Satan proceeds to cover Job in horrible, painful sores from head to foot. And still Job persists in his faithfulness. “Shall we receive the good at the hand of God and not receive the bad?”
I don’t know about you, but I cannot honestly say that I always have that response. The normal human response to extreme hardship is to ask “why”? Why is this happening to me? Why is this happening to someone I love? Why is this happening in the world?
We are generally programmed to operate within a reward and punishment paradigm. If we do the right things, we expect to be rewarded. If we do the wrong things, we expect to be punished. So, when things happen that are not cause and effect, it throws us into a tailspin. But when we can stop living out of that angry place of “I don’t deserve this, why is this happening” and move into a place of “Lord, I don’t understand why this is happening, but please be with me in my turmoil and help me to get through”, we know we are making progress. Sometimes it takes a while to make that transition, but if keep our connection with God and other faithful people, it can happen. It’s not easy, but it is the way that we find meaning, support and a path forward.
Back in 1981, Rabbi Harold Kushner wrote “When Bad Things Happen to Good People.” It was an immediate bestseller and quickly become a classic because of how difficult that path is. And it came out of his own intense suffering. Rabbi Kushner wrote this book in the aftermath of his son’s death. His son was diagnosed with a degenerative disease when he was 3 years old and died at age 14, after years of suffering for both he and his family. And it’s important to note that Rabbi Kushner did not name the book “WHY Bad Things Happen to Good People” but when. Even though it is completely natural to ask “why” during times, it is wasted energy to spend too much time in that head and heart space. The title “WHEN Bad Things Happen to Good People” suggests that we know suffering is going to happen. We can expect it because it is part of the reality of human existence. The more fruitful question to ask when undeserved suffering comes our way is “how can I respond to this horrible circumstance in a way that is lifegiving?”
There was a parishioner some years ago that I visited in the months before his death and he suffered horribly during that time. And every time I came to visit and we shared communion, he had a big smile on his face and told me how much he was looking forward to being with God when he died. He wasn’t being pious or self-righteous. He was just being genuine. He would also tell me how terrible his pain was and how much he was going to miss this life, but he didn’t spend time wondering why he couldn’t just die a peaceful, painless death. He was accepting of his situation and hopeful at the same time.
There is a difference between acceptance and fatalism. When we accept, we are in a trusting place with God and others, a hopeful place that we will get through and find meaning in time. Fatalism is about being resigned and hopeless. It cuts us off from God and others, whereas acceptance connects us to others and allows them to support us.
When we sit in the ashes with Job, holding our situation with open hands, we become attuned to the mystery of God and of the vast universe of which we are a part. It takes us out of our self-centeredness. And our dualistic, black and white thinking. It helps us to see that we trust in a loving God and recognize that our loving God also allows suffering.
Some of the suffering we endure is because of the effects of the poor decisions of other human beings. God allows for that. God does not control us like puppets. We have choices in this life. And some of our suffering is a result of the freedom of creation. The universe was given life by our Creator and that life continues to evolve. Volcanoes suddenly erupt and as a result they sometimes kill people, but that doesn’t mean that God desired that to happen. And that is a lot to get our heads and hearts around.
That is one of the main reasons we come together in Christian community every Sunday. When one of us is suffering, we offer hope. When we hear the story of salvation in the Eucharistic prayer, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again.” It puts our trials, tribulations and joys in a much larger context and it helps us get through. When we worship each Sunday, we are aware that people have worshipped in this nave since 1958, and the first Saint Georgians started worshipping in our chapel in 1907. People have been bringing their hurts and sorrows, their hopes and dreams, into this sacred place for 117 years. That’s a long time. That’s two world wars, a major economic depression, vast social change and a lot of sickness and death. It also represents an incredible amount of faithfulness, love and joy. Shared faithfulness. Shared love. Shared joy. Shared meaning.
That is an aspect of stewardship that we often don’t think about. When we hear stewardship, we usually first think about money, and money is certainly important. We want to support our ongoing life for years and years to come, and financial support is a foundational part of that. But it is also vitally important to care for our life together in other ways, by developing relationships with others and really listening to their joys and sorrows and sharing our own. That happens in our small group ministries, our house churches, our 20s 30s group, our men’s group, our LGBTQ+ group. It happens on special trips where people are spending a lot of time together, like during the choir’s Gloucester Cathedral residency and the youth service trip this past summer. It happens when people work together in our food pantry, bringing sustenance and hope to others while also feeding our own souls. It happens in our race and reconciliation ministry as we work to create the Beloved Community God intends for us. When we make our pledges each year, on All Saints Sundays, Nov 3rd, we are supporting that life, our life of worshipping God, upholding one another through thick and thin, exploring the big questions of human existence, and offering life to the world beyond our doors. And that, my friends, is a beautiful, hopeful, wondrous thing.
Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Pentecost 19, Year B, 9/29/24
Readings: Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22, James 5:13-20, Mark 9:38-50
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
The dean of Virginia Seminary has a habit of opening his sermons with a joke, and he even wrote a book about Episcopal humor, which I’d highly recommend, so I thought I’d take a proverbial page out of his book today.
How many Episcopalians does it take to change a lightbulb?
It takes three – one to look up the prayer for the changing of a lightbulb, one to contact the vestry liaison for lightbulb transitions, and one to write a thank you note to the donor of the previous lightbulb.
I like this silly joke very much because of how well it captures some of our Episcopal idiosyncrasies, and also because it provides a perfect starting point for exploring our scripture lessons at the start of stewardship season, when we turn our attention to how all of us can sustain our common ministry and mission in the coming year and beyond. So I’m going to let the joke guide the theology of this sermon.
Let’s start with the person finding the prayer for the changing of the lightbulb. I believe that if he were alive and a member of this parish today, this person would be St. James. In today’s epistle James offers delightfully precise instructions as to what one can do should they find themselves in a variety of different spiritual circumstances. For instance, if you are suffering, pray; if you are not suffering, give praise; if you have sinned, confess; if someone is sick, intercede for healing. I love when scripture presents us with these rare moments of total clarity as to what we can do to live out our faith in daily life, and the Episcopal Church seems to have taken this passage seriously too, because if you turn page 810 of the Book of Common Prayer, you can find a list of 81 unique prayers for nearly any occasion – prayers for guidance, for our country, for healing, for families, and even a prayer for rain. If you ever find yourself at a loss for words and in need of prayer, I’d highly commend what our tradition has to offer us by way of prayer, and in fact it’s the focus of the Sunday School lesson crafted by Bernie Piper today.
And I think prayer, in the many different forms it takes, is at the heart of what it means to be good stewards of the Church. Prayer is in fact the primary privilege and responsibility of the Church. Gathering to offer our thanks and praise to God each Sunday and then supporting one another and ourselves through prayer and devotion throughout the week is our reason for existing as a community. St. James understands that prayer is at the core of the Church’s ministry, which is why he sought to provide guidance on the various ways we can strengthen our communal commitment to God and one another through it. So as we enter into stewardship season, the first thing that we ask of you is your prayer. Prayer that all of us here would continue to pursue the Church’s mission this year with, courage, joy, and creativity.
Next, we have the person to contact the vestry liaison for lightbulb transitions. It’s no secret that Episcopalians are fond of upholding the governance and good order of the Church through our myriad of committees, subcommittees, lay ministries, delegates and liaisons. While to some this may seem an overly bureaucratic way of organizing the Kingdom of God, the truth is that I think we’ve all found ourselves in groups that lack a sense of organizational clarity, where no one seems to know who is responsible for what. And this lack of organization both impedes the effectiveness of a group’s mission and adds a layer of unnecessary anxiety and frustration among those who belong to it. A wise mentor once told me that one of the keys to good ministry is good structure, and I couldn’t agree more.
And this is where the second lesson for stewardship season lies. As I sat down to write this sermon I counted at least thirty-five distinctly organized opportunities to engage in a ministry at Saint George’s. From choir, to worship, to children & youth, to social justice & outreach, to formation, administration, and opportunities we don’t even know about yet; there are an untold number of ways for you to offer your unique gifts in service of God and neighbor.
And if you feel that you aren’t the right person for the job, that someone else, someone more learned or devout or capable should be leading the ministry of the church, I’d like to remind you of Jesus’s words in the Gospel today. When the disciples come to him complaining that someone they don’t know is exercising ministry in his name, he rebukes them. He tells them not to impose arbitrary stumbling blocks in the way of one another or themselves which impede our calling to minister in Jesus’ name.
As you may know by now, one of my soapbox talking points in life is that every single person is called to ministry. You, by virtue of your baptism, are licensed for ministry in the Church. You may not be ordained ministers, but you are ministers no less, and this world depends on all of us to continue the ministry hope, healing, and teaching, which we inherited from Jesus Christ himself. So friends, this stewardship season I invite you to claim your call to ministry, or renew that claim, wherever that may be, because in doing so I think you will find a new dimension of purpose and fulfilment in living out that call.
And finally, we have the person to write the thank you note to the donor of the lightbulb. And this one really touches me actually because the reality is that every single thing in this building – the cross over this altar, the roof over our head, the crayons in Sunday School, the cup of noodles handed out at the food pantry, even the screws in our chairs can be traced back to specific faithful people.
Everything here that helps us to better give glory to God was given first, through God’s grace, and second by someone who allowed God’s grace to work through them. And while sometimes we can feel awkward about speaking candidly about the necessity of money to pursue God’s mission in this world, I don’t think we really need to. For money is simply another tool at our disposal to accomplish the work of justice, mercy, and love that God is calling us to. It’s a tool just like this microphone, just like that lightbulb that needs changing. And friends, if we can use all the tools at our disposal – our prayers, our ministry, and, our treasure – then we can keep that light burning for another thousand years. Because that old parish hall lightbulb shines light of Christ. Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 22nd, 2024
When I was in seminary, I had a professor who always said that when you are trying to decide which reading to preach on to “find the passage that begs a lot of questions and preach on that.” And our reading from Proverbs today certainly does that. “A capable wife who can find?... She is far more precious than jewels. She girds herself with strength, and makes her arms strong…She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue….”
There is no doubt that this passage from Proverbs is based on patriarchal assumptions of biblical cultures 3,000 years ago. One of the aims of Proverbs is to teach young men how to live wisely within a social order where choosing a capable wife was very important. And the woman described is strong, resilient, resourceful, industrious, loving, and generous. She is a good wife, a good mother, managing the household as well as business affairs beyond the household, while caring for the needs of the poor. So, on one level, this portion of Proverbs instructs young men to be careful in choosing a wife and gives them the qualities to look for, qualities that will endure.
Our cultural assumptions today are quite different from that of Proverbs. We don’t believe that women have to be wives and mothers to be valued. Gender roles are not so defined. And we recognize that women’s lives have meaning and purpose beyond the domestic sphere and that married women are not solely defined by their husbands and children.
Proverbs does not envision a world where people have the freedom to choose whomever they want to share their life with. There was no understanding of sexual orientation or gender identity. So the question for us today becomes, is there any wisdom in this passage for progressive, inclusive Christians who celebrate the dignity of every human being, the equality of women and the variety of families that we feel called to create? I believe the answer is yes. Because the ultimate aim of Scripture as a whole, and Proverbs in particular, is to show us how to live faithfully, how to live wisely, how to live in deep mutuality with others and especially how to live a life that is productive, kind and giving. It is important for partners to support one another, for parents to support children, and it's important to have a stable household, whatever our household may look like. So, on one level of interpretation, Proverbs gives us relationship guidance, and on another level, it gives us an image of Divine Wisdom. And this I think is where things get especially interesting.
In the earlier parts of Proverbs, Divine Wisdom is personified as a woman who invites people to a feast so that they may learn how to lead godly lives by coming to the table to seek God’s guidance. Early on in Christian tradition, theologians saw this as an image of the heavenly banquet and a foreshadowing of the Eucharist . The female figure of Wisdom who invites everyone to the feast was identified with Christ, who came into the world to show us the way to God. In the beginning of John’s Gospel, he picks up on this idea and tells us that Jesus is the Word, the Logos, through whom God both created the world and redeemed the world. So we have both a male and female image for Jesus, Word and Wisdom. Listen to the words of our Eucharistic Prayer today. The prayer is relatively new, but it is based on this ancient understanding of Jesus as both Wisdom and Word, female and male. And this is important because we need a variety of metaphors for God. God is the God of many names and yet no name we can ever give God is enough because God is beyond all names. No language can ever capture the majesty and mystery of the Triune God we worship.
The passage we have today about the capable wife falls at the end of Proverbs and refers back to the image of the wise woman who invites everyone to a feast to learn how to live a godly life. The woman in today’s reading provides an example for all of us of how to live a faithful life, seeking God’s will in humility and being faithful to our closest relationships. She summarizes the virtues of wise living discussed throughout Proverbs and encourages us to follow her call. Ultimately, this woman is much more than a normal person. She points us to God. She encourages us to choose a lifelong commitment to seeking wisdom, a choice we have to reaffirm every day. As theologian Kathleen O’Connor observes, the husband in today’s reading is a stand-in for all of us, everyone who is devoted to finding Wisdom. This wife embodies the right attitude at the heart of a life lived in faith, the “fear the Lord’ which does not mean to live in worry and anxiety but live in awe, wonder, gratitude and humility before God. And when we have that posture toward life, it benefits all of the communities that we are a part of. We come together today to seek wisdom in all things, and to ask God to show us the path of life.
“ …She is far more precious than jewels. She girds herself with strength, and makes her arms strong…She opens her mouth with wisdom, and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue….”
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 8th, 2024
“Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Mark 7: 24-36
In today’s Gospel, Jesus has just had a dust-up with the Pharisees, the religious authorities who were always challenging his teachings. Jesus has just called them hypocrites and chastised them for failing to “love thy neighbor as thyself,” as the law of Moses demands. Then Jesus leaves the predominately Jewish region where he has been preaching and teaching and heads to a mostly Gentile, or non-Jewish area. He wants to keep a low profile, according to Mark, but the news of his healing ministry has preceded him, and a Gentile woman approaches him and throws herself at his feet. She is desperate because her little girl has an “unclean spirit”. This could have been a physical illness, a mental health issue or something else. We just know that the little girl was seriously unwell in some way and that her mother is beside herself with worry. She has heard that this wandering preacher heals people.
Anyone who has ever loved someone who was extremely ill, be it a child, a partner, a parent, a friend, anyone who has ever felt desperate to get help, can relate to this mother’s plea. When we love someone so completely, so wholeheartedly, we would do anything for that person that we can possibly do. And we are vulnerable in those moments, looking for kindness and understanding from the people we seek out who might be able to help. That, I think, is why we find Jesus’ response to the woman in the Gospel today so jarring, and shocking. We worship a compassionate and loving God, and we have a Savior who shows us the depths of God’s mercy. And yet, today Jesus tells this heartsick, anguished mother, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”
There have been various interpretations of this passage over the years. Many scholars have said that at this point in Jesus’ ministry he understood his mission to only be to his own people, the people of Israel. And those outside of Judaism were considered unclean because they were not included in the covenant that God made with the Israelites. But as Jesus’ ministry evolved, he came to understand that his mission was to all people, and this woman helped him to see this. Other theologians have focused on the extraordinary response that the mother gives Jesus, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Mark’s Gospel doesn’t say, but when Jesus decides to help her, he seems to be rewarding her for her faith and humility, even though he first rejected her as being “other”. I believe that both are true. Today’s Gospel speaks to a mutuality between this unnamed woman and Jesus. They need each other. She calls forth a deeper self-understanding in him, that his vocation is so much bigger than even he had understood it to be at first. And she desperately needs him to heal her little girl whom she loves more than life itself. He calls forth strength in her. This woman has faith in Jesus and she represents the spread of the Gospel to people beyond Israel. The Pharisees challenged and rejected Jesus because of their arrogance and pride, but this woman challenged him while also expressing faith in him. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” I am always bowled over by her response. To have the presence of mind and the boldness to say this. She is challenging him in a very humble way. She has no pretense or pride, but she also won’t take no for an answer because Jesus is her last and greatest hope for her daughter.
The Syrophoenician woman is a great model for us. In our moments of desperation, turning to God in prayer is the best thing we can do for ourselves and for our loved ones. Sometimes we don’t feel like God is listening and that our prayers are not being answered, but this woman reminds us to persist, to ask God for what we need and our prayers will be answered. The answer just may not be as we expected or on our timeline. We don’t control the outcome, God does. Sometimes things turn out exactly as we had hoped, as in today’s Gospel. Other times they turn out differently. But healing always happens in some way, whatever the answer and whenever it comes. Often healing occurs in the form of a deep peace that settles in us, an unexplainable knowing that all will be well, no matter what, because God is with us. Sometimes God gives us the courage to face a difficult path forward. And even when death does come, we know that we face the darkness befriended, that Jesus is there with us. We are never, ever alone in our struggles, whatever they may be. Sometimes we don’t know what kind of faith we really have, until we are broken open by grief or hardship.
I have been extraordinarily blessed over the years to walk with people in challenging times. And I am always amazed when we can pray together and have a palpable experience of Jesus there with us. It is a mysterious and wondrous thing. God is with us in joys and challenges, but we often know Christ in a visceral way when we are at our wits end and we feel profoundly grateful for every morsel of grace that he gives us. “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, August 25th, 2024
How dear to me is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! Psalm 84
Hello, my friends! It is so good to see all of you! I am very happy to be back with you after my sabbatical. My time away was wonderful, refreshing in so many ways. We had time for travel, time with family and friends, time in creation, and time at home. I came back on Tuesday and wow, what a lot of great happenings to get caught up on! The top hits of the summer seemed to have been the preaching series, the youth service trip and the choir residency in Gloucester. So much life, so much joy, so much for which to give thanks. And speaking of thanks, I am grateful to all of our lay leaders who ensured that our various ministries thrived this summer, as always. One of the hallmarks of Saint George’s is our strong lay leadership. People really “own” their ministries and understand that God’s work in this place and beyond is important. That commitment is really what makes things happen around here. If you are on the newer side, you would be amazed at all of the things that go on every day of the week, large and small, and all of the people who work so tirelessly to live out our call as God’s people in this place. I am especially grateful to our staff and vestry, and particularly our wardens, Karla Walter and Liza Lowe, who continued to exhibit such steadfast leadership this summer. And I am beyond thankful to and for the Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, our Associate Rector. I knew before that Father Paddy is wonderful, but we all know, on an even deeper level now, that we are exceedingly blessed to have such a loving, committed and exceptionally capable priest in Father Paddy. And knowing that I was leaving you in such good hands enabled me to relax into my sabbatical and not worry about things here.
There were many blessings of the summer for me. I was able to sink into God’s goodness in a variety of ways. One of my favorite ways to experience God (outside of church of course) is to be in the mountains. And Robbie and I were blessed to be able to go to the French Alps, taking the Aguille du Midi lift 12,000 feet up to see summit of Mont Blanc. It was absolutely breath-taking and I had a profound sense of the wonder and majesty of God’s creation. There were so many moments throughout the summer of finding God in different experiences. And about a week ago, I woke up one morning, and heard the words of the Eucharistic prayer singing in me, calling me back to the altar and calling me back to you. The psalm for today speaks to that longing for God that we all have.
How dear to me is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.”
Psalm 84 is a pilgrimage hymn. It expresses the joy of a faithful person on their way to the temple in Jerusalem. The psalmist loves God so much that they imagine living there, like a bird who has found her home at the altar and has made a nest there.
Psalm 84 has been important in both Jewish and Christian liturgy through the centuries. It is appointed for use in the dedication of churches and is a regular part of the Sunday lectionary. So it serves an important formal liturgical function. Psalm 84 also serves a pastoral function. It has given faithful people throughout the centuries hope and solace in difficult times. On October 1, 1944, 602 men, almost the entire male population of Putten a town in the Netherlands, were rounded up by the Nazis and taken to concentration camps in Germany. They knew they were going to almost certain death. Only 48 of them returned at the end of the war. As they were being taken away, they sang Psalm 84. A memorial is held every year on the anniversary of what came to be known as the Putten raid,, but no speeches are made. A crowd simply gathers at the appointed time and a choir sings Psalm 84 as wreaths are being laid, recalling the witness of those men so long ago.
“How dear to me is you dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!”
Why did these men sing Psalm 84? Maybe some of them were in their church choir and were used to signing it. Maybe some of them had memorized it at home or in Sunday school. Singing it as they were led away wasn’t planned of course. Noone knew that they were going to be taken away that night. But as these things go, one person felt it rising from their soul and they gave voice to it. And as they did, others joined in, and it grew and grew, reminding them that God was with them always, and that even if they died, God was with them and they would be in God’s presence forever, singing God’s praises with all the company of heaven.
How dear to me is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.”
Stories about people being courageous and faith-filled as they are being led into the darkness, are inspiring because they remind us of how we want to be when the chips are down for us. Where do we turn when things get really hard- when death is close at hand or when we experience disappointment and defeat? What rises from our spirits? Anger, fatalism, fear? Or do we go to that deeper place, under all of those very understandable emotions, to that internal temple where God dwells in each of us. Faithful responses come forth from us in crisis moments when we have spent year after year in church, worshipping with others, and carrying on the tradition of saying/chanting psalms that began centuries ago. Faithful responses come from spending time in prayer and giving voice to our longing for God, that longing that surpasses all other desires in this life.
On the Sundays that we were home this summer, I visited different Episcopal churches. And it was wonderful to experience other faith communities and give thanks for their gifts and their particular way of being, and it made me even more thankful for you, the people of Saint George’s. We are blessed with a wonderful charism, a beautiful spirit of authenticity, joy, and commitment to the pilgrim way, and giving voice to our longing for what is really real in this life.
How dear to me is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts!
My soul has a desire and longing for the courts of the Lord;
my heart and my flesh rejoice in the living God.”
The sparrow has found her a house and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young;
by the side of your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God.
Happy are they who dwell in your house!
They will always be praising you.
Happy are the people whose strength is in you!
whose hearts are set on the pilgrims ’way.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Pentecost 12, Year B – Track 1
8/11/24
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
I’d like to tell you a story today. It was written in 1897 and the title of the story is The Happy Hypocrite: A Fairy Tale for Tired Men, which I think is a hilarious title. The story goes like this. There was a man named George Hell (which is also very funny) and George was a selfish man of many appetites. He was a gambler, a flirt, and he loved nothing more than a raucous all-night party. Then one day he met an incredible woman named Jenny and became enraptured with her. Now Jenny was everything that George was not. She was selfless and kind, generous and humble, and she loved God far more than any worldly delight. Hopelessly smitten by her goodness, the scoundrel George confessed his love and asked for Jenny’s hand in marriage, but Jenny playfully replied that she would only marry a man with the face of a saint.
Knowing that there was nothing saintlike about himself, George was heartbroken. Yet as he was walking home, he passed a mask shop and a devilish idea popped into his head. He went in and asked the mask maker to make for him the most convincing mask of a saint that he could. Then, while wearing the mask, George would spend the next year acting as saintly as possible in the hope that he could win Jenny’s heart.
While wearing the mask George began to slowly undo all of his selfish habits. He returned money that he had won from trickery, he supported charities and community efforts, and he even moved into a modest cottage in the woods where he lived humbly and prayerfully, treating those whom he encountered with the same kindness and compassion he saw modeled in Jenny.
While George’s project was difficult at first and required exercising moral muscles that had grown weak from years of self-centeredness, he eventually found it easier and easier to be compassionate, sometimes even forgetting that his newfound altruism was part of his trick to win Jenny’s heart. But eventually he did catch Jenny’s eye, and we she saw his saintly face and saintly life, she was overjoyed to take him as her husband. They were married and George signed his name on the wedding registry as “George Heaven.” However, George’s happiness was short lived because as the happy couple was going home, an old friend recognized George and demanded that he take off his mask and reveal his true face. George knew that he was caught and prepared to take off his mask, knowing that it would cost him his true love. Yet as he removed the mask, he was astonished to find that his face had taken on the appearance of the saint whom he pretended to be. And at this sight, Jenny recognized the transformation that had taken place within him and fell all the more in love with George, and the two live happily ever after.
Now this is a fairy tale of course but I think it well-illustrates a spiritual practice and truth that is at heart of the Christian life. Something which St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians today calls the imitation of Christ – something that we are all called to do. One of the most common concerns that I hear from people who are new or returning to Christianity is that they feel that they are unable to do what it takes to live what they perceive as a holy life. They desire to do so, but have this perception that Christians are somehow naturally more pious, more prayerful, or more compassionate than the average person and that perception keeps them away from participating in the life of faith.
However, St. Paul, in his letter to the church in Ephesus, assures us that that is not actually the case. He does not say explicitly that Christians are naturally better or worse people than anyone else, however he does call on the Ephesian Christians to put away falsehood and sin, to work honestly with their own hands, to share with the needy, and to build one another up in Christ (Ephesians 4:25ff). And I’ll let you in on a secret of Biblical interpretation, if St. Paul ever tells a community something specific that they should be doing, you can best believe that the opposite of that thing is likely happening, or else he wouldn’t have had reason to write those words in the first place.
So St. Paul’s exhortation to the Ephesians to live a godly, righteous, and sober life is evidence that us Christians, from the very start, are the same as flawed human beings anywhere. The difference being that we are called to live a new and holy life modeled on the one who loves us and the one whom we have fallen in love with, like George’s Jenny. And if we feel overwhelmed by the burden of holiness, then Paul offers a helpful suggestion: begin by imitating Christ, begin by putting on the mask of Christ. Even if our hearts don’t always feel like they’re in the right place, we always have the choice to act as if they are. And through that repeated action; that repeated moral and spiritual exercise, we can actually become the thing that we were practicing to be.
And of course like any exercise, the exercise of imitating Christ does not yield results overnight. It requires patience, dedication, and feeding ourselves with a steady diet of things that are good for us so that this goodness can do its work within us. In the Gospel, Jesus continues on the theme of feeding, this time making an explicit move from the importance of feeding bodies to the importance of feeding our souls. Jesus offers us the bread of life for our souls through his own body and blood each week, and our practice of receiving it is central to our practice of imitating the one whose life is offered for us. St. Augustine famously wrote that “if we receive the Eucharist worthily, then we become what we receive” (Easter Sermon, 277). Not only do we receive Jesus in the Eucharist, we become more like Him through our receiving.
So today we all are given the chance to make a new start in our imitation of Christ. We begin by receiving Christ and continue by making those small changes towards a life that proclaims Christ. And eventually, just like our friend George, we just might find that what started out as imitation has become the true witness of our lives. Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Ruthanna B. Hooke, Professor of Homiletics, Virginia Theological Seminary
Proper 13: 2 Samuel 11:26-12:13a; Psalm 51:1-13; Ephesians 4:1-16; John 6:24-35
August 4, 2024
I have a dog who is what dog trainers call “food-motivated.” I gather that not all dogs are like this—I have friends who have a dog who, when they put food down for her, will eat a few bites and then walk away. Not our dog—when we put her food down, she eats it in approximately 15 seconds and then looks up at us, expectantly, as if to say: “is there any more?”
Whether or not all dogs are food-motivated, I’d venture to say that all of us humans are, at one level or another, food-motivated. We are hungry beings. We are bodies that need to be fed, and this is why Jesus meets us through giving us food and drink. This is why the only one of Jesus’ miracles to be recounted in all four Gospels (and twice in Mark and Matthew) is the feeding of the multitudes. This is also why the feeding of the 5000 in John’s Gospel unfolds into Jesus’ longest discourse in John, and also, in the church’s lectionary, is spread over five weeks. We began hearing the story last week, and the implications of this miraculous feeding continue to unfold, in our Gospel readings, this week and for the next three weeks after that—because this feeding story speaks to our most basic physical need.
The crowd following Jesus is hungry, and so Jesus meets them in that place of primal need, by feeding them, miraculously and abundantly, giving them “as much as they want.” One commentator points out that most of this crowd would have been very poor peasants, living on the edge of hunger at all times, and so to have “as much as they want” would have been a rare experience for them. No wonder they exclaim over the miracle that has been done, and say that Jesus is a prophet, and they want to make him king. And no wonder that, when he withdraws from them, they follow him across the Sea of Galilee. After all, they are food-motivated, and, on one level, quite rightly so. Jesus names this when they catch up with him, saying: “you are looking for me not because you saw signs but because you ate your fill of the loaves.” Jesus accuses them of following him for the wrong reason, but he does not stop with this criticism. Instead, he uses their hunger, their food motivation, to teach them and to lead them deeper. He has fed them with the loaves not only out of compassion for their physical hunger, but to tell them that what they are really hungry for is something beyond food: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life.”
What is it that we hunger for? Certainly we hunger for food, for water, for shelter, for clothing. These are our most basic needs. Beyond this, we hunger for love, for friendship, and for purpose, for a sense that our lives have meaning. But our hunger goes deeper than this, for most fundamentally what we long for is God, because that is how God the Creator made us. St. Augustine puts it best: “God, thou hast made us for thyself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in thee.” We are made for relationship with God, to love God with our whole heart and soul and mind and strength, and in the end, nothing else will satisfy us but God. This is why Jesus meets the crowd’s physical hunger so as to point them toward this deeper hunger, urging them to work for the food that endures for eternal life, the true food that God gives them from heaven. “For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” Even without fully understanding him, the crowd seems to realize that this bread is what they have been seeking all along, and it was this bread that made them get in boats and go looking for Jesus across the sea, for they say, “Sir, give us this bread always.” They recognize a spiritual longing in themselves that goes deeper even than physical hunger.
Where is our hunger for God to be filled? Jesus’ next words provide the answer: “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” It is not only that Jesus is the giver of bread; he IS the bread. He IS the one in whom our deepest hungers are satisfied. He is all of this because he is the divine Word made flesh, he is God incarnate, as we are told right at the beginning of John’s Gospel. What we long for most profoundly is God, and that longing is satisfied by God coming among us, dwelling among us as one of us in Jesus Christ, Immanuel (God with us).
We might think we have to DO Something to find this bread of life. The crowd asks: “What must we do to perform the works of God?” We often think that we have to work so hard to solve our problems, to meet our needs, to fill the emptiness within. We can drive ourselves so hard to do all of this, but Jesus says, the work you need to do is simply to believe in me. When it comes to our deepest need, which is for God, meeting this need is not about our working really hard and proving ourselves worthy of that love. It is more about receiving, allowing ourselves to be fed, letting go into God’s presence, which in Christ is so very near us.
If we find it hard to locate this bread of life, this presence of God in our lives, it can be helpful to look back to see God’s presence in our past. The crowd remembered the manna Moses gave their ancestors in the wilderness, and then Jesus tells them, that wasn’t Moses who gave you the bread, it was God. As we were living through our days we may not have been able to perceive how God was with us and providing for us, but as we look back, through the eyes of faith and with Jesus’ guidance, we can see that God’s provision, God’s nourishment and love, were with us all along, that truly, “twas grace that brought us safe thus far.”
And finally, if we seek the bread from heaven that gives life to us and to the world, we don’t need to look any further than this table, to which we come every Sunday, to this meal that is the center of our lives as Christians. This meal offers us Christ’s very presence and invites us take it into ourselves. In this most intimate act we become one with him, so that he may abide in us and we in him. Just as Jesus did with the crowd by the Sea of Galilee, so with us, he meets us in a meal because we are hungry, we are food-motivated. But it is through this feeding that we come to know our spiritual hunger and have it satisfied. That is why the Eucharist is only a morsel of bread and a sip of wine, to remind us that our physical hunger is only a sign of a deeper need, a need for God, and that only God incarnate among us can meet that need.
It is through the very ordinariness of this meal that Jesus teaches us to seek him in our ordinary lives, in our everyday meals, our relationships, our joys and sufferings, because he is there, in the midst of all of this, longing to feed us with the bread of heaven. Once we allow ourselves to be fed by him, we are able to be his people in the world. We are able to bring nourishment to a desperately hungry world. We are able to love one another because he first loved us, because he has fed us with the bread of life.
“Lord, give us this bread always.”
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Pentecost 10, Year B – Track 1,
7/28/24
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Alright, I’m gonna just jump right into the Gospel today. The feeding of the five thousand. This is one of Jesus’s most iconic miracles, so iconic, in fact, that it’s the only one of his miracles to appear in all four Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, so it’s clearly important. Now, there are two common interpretations of this miracle and I’d like to lay them both out for you and then we’ll work on figuring out what we should take from this event. The first interpretation is that this is truly a miracle, a miracle of bread being physically multiplied by Jesus. The second is that it’s more of a miracle of people sharing what they already have. I’ll start with the first interpretation, the miracle of multiplication.
After a long day of teaching and healing the sick, Jesus and his disciples gather to a mountaintop. As dinnertime approaches, the disciples sense that stomachs are beginning to rumble and they start to panic about how in the world they are going to feed five thousand people. If you’ve ever planned a barbecue, you have a glimpse of what they must have felt. At our annual parish picnic on September 15th, we’re far fewer than 5000 people and the organizers of that picnic – bless their hearts – have already started planning for it and it’s over a month away! So you can imagine the anxiety of the disciples, so much so that Andrew sees a little boy who has a couple loaves of bread and some fish in his lunchbox and says “hey y’all, let’s start by grabbing that kids lunch, that should be a good start.” I’m kidding, hopefully they asked the young boy and presumably he was grateful to share what he had, which is where the miracle of multiplication begins.
Jesus gratefully receives this young boy’s generous offering and begins by giving thanks to God in heaven for the gifts they are about to receive. Here Jesus essentially says grace before the meal, and the Greek word used to describe his act of giving thanks is eucharistesas. Sounds familiar right? It shares the same root word as Eucharist, which is the Mass, the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion. And the very word Eucharist itself, simply means, thanksgiving. Thanksgiving for the gifts of Jesus offering himself to us in the elements of bread and wine. Thus, many scholars have pointed to this feeding of the multitude as a foreshadowing of the Eucharist itself.
Then after giving thanks, Jesus breaks the bread. And breaks the bread. And breaks the bread. Presumably breaking the bread until there is enough to fill enough baskets to feed five thousand people – and there’s enough to have some leftover! This is where we can read the text in the first and traditional interpretation, as truly a miracle of multiplication. Jesus miraculously makes something out of nothing so that all are fed. And more than that, this miracle also casts Jesus in a particular, prophetic light. For the Gospel says that “when the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” (John 6:14)
Why would they say that? They say that because the miracle of feeding multitudes of people on a mountaintop would have obviously triggered some memories in their mind of a parallel miraculous feeding involving another prophet – the prophet Moses, who called upon God to feed the Israelites with manna, bread from heaven, as they wandered in the desert beneath Mt. Sinai after being liberated from Egypt. So in this way, Jesus is doing something more than just feeding people, he is in a way confirming that some of the suspicions about him are true – he is a prophet like Moses, which was one way of describing the long awaited Messiah who would come to fulfill the promises of the Old Testament.
So in essence, this interpretation, that the passage indeed recounts a miracle of multiplication, also does two other critical things. It foreshadows the sacrament of Holy Eucharist, the way in which we are perpetually fed by the body of the living God, and it casts Jesus as the true Messiah.
Now here’s the other, more modern interpretation that arose sometime in the 19th century, when German Protestant scholars were trying to reconcile scripture with a scientific understanding of the world. This interpretation we can call a ‘miracle of sharing.’ Scholars who are persuaded by this reading posit that at the time, people would set out for the day with provisions of bread and other snacks hidden under their cloaks to nibble on throughout the day. And Jesus, knowing this, used the generous example of the young boy who was willing to share from his provisions, to compel others to take the bread that they had been squirreling away under their tunics, and share it so that all could be fed. Thus, demonstrating that the scarcity that the disciples were fretting about was not really a concern at all if people just radically reoriented their perspective from caring for their individual needs to caring for the needs of the community.
And I do like the moral of this story. It rings true on many levels even today. Many of our needs as a community, and throughout the world, could be met much more easily than we imagine if we all adopted the same spirit of cooperation and mutual aid, this is true.
However, I’m ultimately not convinced that the miracle of sharing is actually what happened. For one, it’s simply not in the text, and as I’ve said before, I think that we owe it to ourselves and to the Gospel writers to take seriously passages of scripture that confound our scientific understanding of the world, and not try to accommodate them to a worldview that makes more sense to us.
Second, if do this, we turn the story into a type of humanist Gospel, where human kindness and generosity is at the center, rather than God’s radical generosity. And then we miss out on the earlier points that this miracle is not just about people feeding people, it’s about Jesus, the long-awaited Messiah, doing for us what we are unable to do for ourselves. And I don’t know about you, but right now I need a messiah who can do for us those things we cannot do for ourselves, because I don’t have a lot of confidence that we’d be able to pull off the miracle of sharing right now. Maybe we in our community could, but throughout our nation? Throughout the whole world? I’m not so certain.
For me, taking seriously the thought that Jesus performed an actual miracle on that mountain by feeding an impossible number of people helps me to take seriously the belief that Jesus also feeds us in ways far deeper than meeting our physical needs. It helps me take seriously that we have a Messiah who comes to us and will ultimately save us from the discord and disunity that we see playing out again and again in our common life. And that is worth giving thanks for, my friends. So as we ourselves prepare to receive the spiritual food of the Sacrament of his Body and Blood, let us give thanks – give thanks that we have such a Savior to feed us. Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Linda M. Kapurch
Pntcst 9/Proper 11, RCL/Year B, (MK: 6:30 – 34; 53-56)
I get it.
He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest awhile. (v, 31.) Curious as to just what had so upset Jesus to make Him want to withdraw, I remembered further back in Mark’s Gospel—to where we had left off last Sunday (MK: 6: 14 – 29.) Seeing what that was, well…I can understand it.
Jesus had just received the heart-breaking news that His closest kin, His cousin, John, was dead. The head of John the Baptist had just been brought out on a platter, and given to Herod’s wife at her bidding. And John’s disciples had come and taken the body away and buried it; then (they) gathered around Jesus, and told them all they had done and taught (v. 30.) I get it. All Jesus wanted to do was to slink away…to just fly away…if only the earth could open up and just swallow Him whole. I get it. Maybe you’ve also felt this way, when such a devastating experience has happened to you?
In her Commentary for the July issue of The Christian Century, (July 2024, p.26),
The Mennonite Pastor and author, Joanna Harader, has another take on this desire of ours: ‘for a little bit of a break.’ Only, she turns the focus in on herself: as a Pastor saying, once people find out she is a Pastor, she can never get out of role: ‘as someone who will listen, help, guide, teach, comfort, and heal…’ This is what she wants/needs a break from! Do you ever feel this way: just wishing you could stop being a parent/caregiver/supervisor…even for just a moment or two?
So, which is it for you today: wishing you could escape from it all, because of a devastating experience? Or, because of everything: that generalized, homogenized, vanilla reality of needing to be all things to all people—which never seems to go away?
At times like this—esp. when time or circumstances don’t allow us to retreat to our go-to Bon Secours in MD.), or Shrinemont, or Roslyn—we yearn for some…comfort food: of the kind we find in much of the narrative ‘left out’ of today’s Gospel…the story line that we perhaps know so well, and return to again and again: Jesus’ miraculous feeding and subsequent, equally miraculous walking on water. But no.
Jumping back to v. 34 we read how Jesus was roused back to reality, to the real world—to the stampede of sick and hungry people, clamoring for His attention. As He went ashore, He saw a great crowd; and He had compassion for them… (v.34.) That always seems to be the way of the story: no rest for Jesus, no rest for His weary disciples. Jesus’ invitation to a withdrawal proved to be very short-lived, indeed.
No comfort food for us today. As if to underscore that today’s Gospel Challenge is not meant to be nice and comforting, we’re left in the end with this message: …people at once recognizes Him, and rushed about…to bring the sick on mats to wherever they hear He was. And wherever He went, they laid the sick…(at his feet.) No. No Retreat-ing today…We are to remember something else:
He had compassion for them…
Those disciples—as per usual—didn’t get it. But, as Jesus disciples, we DO…get it. In our life of faith—tried and tested as it has been these past few weeks—we still know that we are the recipients of a far greater compassion. And it is this compassion: Jesus’ abiding Presence with us, which we are to go out and multiply—and bring to this bruised and aching world.
Surrounded as we have been, with all of our own pre-occupations & problems, we may feel exactly as Jesus did: that we just want to withdraw to ourselves. Jesus does get it—about us. He does ‘get’ that we are tired…cranky…lonely…and starved—And He’ll swoop in: as He always does.
But, likewise, He doesn’t leave us there: Instead, we are to go out from this place, and spread that over-flowing, richly abundant, always available
Compassion…that we know we’ll always receive—from Him.
Got it?
Thanks Be to God! Amen!!
Homily for Proper 7, Year B, June 23, 2024
Gospel Reading: Mark 4:35-41
The Rev. M. Chanta Bhan
Good Morning! Thank you for allowing me to be with you! I am the Rev. Chanta Bhan and I come to you from fair Richmond where I live and provide sacramental ministry to an historically black church, Calvary Episcopal Church in Hanover, VA, one of the most racially conflicted counties and towns in Virginia, as you may well know. I have found great joy in serving the community there and learning from them. The parishioners started the church during segregation. It was founded in 1919. They hosted church suppers and other fellowship events to help them raise the money to build the sanctuary; and, later, they raised more money to add a parish hall. As I listen to their stories, I am impressed by their love for Jesus, their courage, and their resilience! And, of course, I am delighted that you gave me a reason to come to northern Virginia, a place that feels quite familiar to me after my time at Virginia Theological Seminary during the pandemic.
This summer, I have been learning to swim as a personal goal. Many of you probably already know how to swim. This is, indeed, an important survival skill and I regret that it has taken me so long. And yet, this has been perfect timing! As I am sure that you can relate, I have had to overcome a lot of fear. At first, I felt claustrophobic surrounded by water, then I had to put my head under water and learn how to breath, then I was finally able to make it to the deep end and feel comfortable treading water without touching the ground, then I was in lanes with my other training team members who have all completed races and left me in their wake, then I was able to complete a lap; and now we are being introduced to open water, to currents, and to the mystery of what lies beneath the murky depths of the James River..
As I ponder this journey of learning and growing and overcoming fear, the Gospel passage for today is a rich invitation to discipleship, a deeper relationship with Jesus! We find the disciples in a boat with Jesus in the evening. There were also other boats and, perhaps, the people continued to follow Jesus as the storm arose. After a long day of ministry and teaching parables, Jesus is asleep in the back of the boat when the fierce storm rises and water fills the boat. These images emerge in literature and film. Perhaps, we imagine Titanic, The Life of Pi, Castaway, Robinson Crusoe, and other stories. Surviving storms at sea, becoming a lone survivor or castaway on a desert island for years at a time, succumbing to a storm and being tossed to and fro in the ocean waiting for rescue . . .these are real fears that have become a reality for some!
St. Augustine, in his commentary on this passage, talks about Christ asleep within us during the challenges to our faith. He encourages us to rouse Christ in our hearts, to remember that he is at work within us, and that he might be awake within us when we are facing calamity and when our faith is tested by all that surrounds us:
With the Lord's help I want to speak to you about today's reading from the holy gospel, and to urge you in his name not to let your faith lie dormant in your hearts when you are buffeted by the winds and waves of this world. The Lord Christ's power is by no means dead, nor is it asleep. Do you think the Almighty was overcome by sleep in the boat against his will? If you do, then Christ is asleep in your hearts. If he were indeed keeping watch within you, then your faith too would be vigilant. The Apostle, remember, speaks of Christ dwelling in your hearts through faith.
This sleep of Christ has a symbolic meaning. . .
. . . . When your heart is in this troubled state, do not let the waves overwhelm you. If, since we are only human, the driving wind should stir up in us a tumult of emotions, let us not despair but awaken Christ, so that we may sail in quiet waters, and at last reach our heavenly homeland.
(Sermon 63, 1-3: PL 38, 424-25)
Any one of us might be confronting certain fears: a diagnosis, a child who is about to start college in the fall, a child who is graduating, a job search and transition, a financial situation, Pride month as a reminder of a time when one could not speak about who one loves, uncertainty about the future. There are no easy answers. Fear is a natural response to the unknown or what we can not control.
And yet, the disciples set an example for us though the text does not make this obvious. While Jesus seems to challenge them in their fear, asking them why they lack faith, we see that he is with them and addresses their concerns. In calming the wind and the waves, he is not only addressing their fears, he is revealing himself as the one who has mastery over the elements. He has already shown himself as Lord over illness, death, and spirits; and he is revealing more of himself to them. He has already been explaining the deeper message of parables to this select company so we know that they have had many spiritual conversations.
What we see in this passage is the intimate friendship between Jesus and his disciples. The ones closest to him share the same boat. In their moment of need, they know where to go and they expect that Jesus can do something about the storm. They read Jesus’ sleeping in the back of the boat as a sign that he does not care about them; but, perhaps, he was waiting for them to come to him so that he could reveal himself not just as their friend and teacher but as God himself who came to be present with them. Jesus, God incarnate, the very icon of God on earth cares and is near to them; and, deep within their hearts, they know that he is able to care for them. This same Jesus is here with us, awake within our hearts, present to our fears and concerns, beckoning us to learn more about him as we walk alongside him. Jesus seeks to be our friend and walk alongside us.
I close with wisdom from St. John of the Cross, one of our early church mystics who knew fear, anxiety, distress, and despair:
Live in faith and hope, though it be in darkness, for in the darkness God protects the soul. Cast your care upon God for you are his and He will not forget you. Do not think that He is leaving you alone, [for he is always with you].
Works Consulted:
Adels, Jill Haak. Editor. The Wisdom of the Saints : An Anthology. New York, New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Barnecut, Edith. Editor. Journey with the Fathers: Commentaries on the Sunday Gospels, Year B. New Rochelle, New York: New City Press, 1992-1994.
Interpretation. “Feasting on the Gospels--Mark: A Feasting on the Word Commentary”. London, United Kingdom: Sage Publications Ltd., 2015.
Reid, Robert Stephen. Preaching Mark. St. Louis, Missouri.: Chalice Press, 1999.
Riley, Harold. The Making of Mark : an Exploration. Macon, Georgia: Mercer University Press, 1989.
Samuel, Simon. 2007. A Postcolonial Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus. New York, New York: T & T Clark, 2007.
The Rev. Ross Kane
Proper 5 Year B, June 9, 2024, St. George’s Arlington
2 Corinthians 4:13-5:1
“For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure.” -2 Corinthians 4:17
“An eternal weight of glory,” Paul says; quite a phrase. Paul juxtaposes images such that the phrase seems both heavy and light at the same time. An “eternal weight” feels overwhelming. “Glory”, however, Glory feels uplifting, even freeing.
This mixture reminds me of the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being by the Czech novelist Milan Kundera, with its contrast between heaviness and lightness. Kundera portrays human life as caught between a sense of heaviness and importance on the one hand, and fleeting lightness on the other. He poignantly portrays this tension in all his characters, but most especially in his main character Tomas, a talented surgeon working in Prague during the Cold War.
Tomas knows heaviness, the sense that life carries profound importance, yet this heaviness east of the Iron Curtain becomes too much to bear. Amid the brutal state politics, Tomas publishes a letter in the newspaper challenging the Communists, only to then get arrested and ultimately silenced. Amid this turmoil Tomas embrace’s life’s lightness through his perpetual adultery, finding a new--if fleeting--significance from each encounter.
For Kundera, humans sense that we must choose between lightness or heaviness. Heaviness represents a sense that humans seek some larger significance--something eternal--beyond the humdrum of everyday life. Lightness, on the other hand, reflects life’s transitory nature. If life is simply one event after another, lacking any wider meaning, then “everything is pardoned in advance,” Kundera writes, and “therefore everything [is] cynically permitted”. The ultimate irony for Kundera is that whether we choose heaviness or lightness, both prove unbearable. Heaviness is unbearable because eternity is an illusion; lightness is unbearable because life becomes fleeting, robbed of moral responsibility and meaning.
Enough on Kundera for now; you came to church to hear good news, right?! Paul, I think, would have no qualm per se with Kundera’s paradox of lightness and heaviness in human life--humans carry “an eternal weight of glory” Paul says, after all. In Christian terms, we could put the tension this way: the fact that our lives carry eternal consequence, that we are made in God's image and made to participate in God's divine life - this gives a weightiness to life. To that body that one day will again become dust, surely eternity is greater and seemingly heavier than anything we can experience. How can mortality carry immortality? How can human beings, in all our frailties and imperfections and weaknesses, carry with us a sense of the divine without being overwhelmed by the glory of God’s beauty and love? The glory of God is weighty because we human beings carry our mortal bodies with us while also somehow carrying the eternal. The mortal and the eternal both dwell within us. Kundera is right, at least in his diagnosis: the idea of eternity feels weighty and even, at times, unbearable.
For Paul the same contrast is there but it plays out differently. It’s not that we choose between lightness and heaviness; it’s rather that they’re already mingled together in this life. Paul does not see us stuck between lightness and heaviness, neither of which gives any meaning. Paul does not see us destined for Kundera’s modern malaise.
Instead, Paul sees human beings traversing through our heaviness in order to achieve glory. And the more we traverse through the heaviness, the more light and glory we can see and experience.
However burdensome the life of faith may seem, however hard and tedious it might feel to follow the path of doing what’s right over and again every day--loving neighbors and nurturing a spiritual life--it leads somewhere. It leads to what our scriptures call “fullness of joy”, “radiant light”, “the glory of God”. It leads to a life that is more satisfying than living for what is fleeting or what is petty.
We grow as we traverse through the heaviness. Growth is an unappreciated theme in Paul’s letters. Elsewhere he beckons us to “grow into the full stature of Christ.” (What an image, right? It’s like he’s saying “You there--become Jesus”!) Here in 2 Corinthians he asks us to anticipate the weight of glory that is on its way to us. While we are amid heaviness and lightness, we are ever moving toward greater lightness and greater light. And so we can journey forward amid the heaviness of life knowing that the glory of eternal love can slowly and persistently grow in us.
A problem with lots of 20th century European philosophers and novelists, I admit, is that they’re better at diagnosing a problem than giving us a way through. If Kundera is spot on in the diagnosis, Paul is spot on in the response. It is not that lightness is fleeting and the heaviness of eternity is an illusion. Rather, our sense of lightness comes from the limitations of mortality which cannot bear, cannot contain, the fullness of love that is divinity. Our heaviness is only the temporary heaviness of carrying eternal love with us without yet seeing its fullness. And each day, when we strive for it, we can see a bit more of that eternal love. When we live that way - ever growing in love, each day getting closer and God’s vision of love and justice and becoming a little more like Jesus - the lightness of being becomes not unbearable but glorious. AMEN.
Sermon by the Rev. Dr. Francis H. Wade
Saint George’s Episcopal Church, Arlington VA
Trinity Sunday, May 26, 2024
Isaiah 6:1-8. Romans 8:12-17, John 3:1-17
If I said we would talk about uncertainty this morning, you might reasonably wonder “Uncertainty about what?” And with that question a very wide door opens to all sorts of possibilities. This is Trinity Sunday when we think about the nature of God— always a straight path to ambiguity. But this is also an election year, a time that is unpredictable by definition since we do not know the outcomes. Then there are undecided wars in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East; angry divisions in our country; immigrants on the border; oceans on our doorsteps; greenhouse gasses over our heads; and around us there are children growing up, adults juggling careers, and seniors aging. These are all full of unknowns that can make us nervous if we let them. Uncertainty is ubiquitous. It is found everywhere, including in the lessons for this morning. Come with me for a few minutes, bring along the particular form of anxiety that unsettles your mind these days, and let’s see what these lessons say about how living with uncertainty.
In the first lesson, the prophet Isaiah was overwhelmed by mystery. A vision of the great unknowable God that is literally earth-shaking. It is the way we feel when death comes too close to be ignored or when we see our country against the backdrop of history’s list of great nations that have fallen. It is like leaving your child in the care of others for first time, praying when frightened, or realizing an opportunity is gone forever. Mystery always lurks behind the thin veneer of certainty. Isaiah’s response to that kind of experience was despair. “Woe is me! I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips, and live among a people of unclean lips….” Despair is one of things people do in the face of uncertainty.
In the Gospel, Nicodemus faced a different kind of uncertainty. He had heard some new ideas, different ways of thinking that challenged the tried-and-true. We often stumble and mumble over little ideas like cultural norms in dress and behavior. And we are required to ponder bigger ideas like ways of thinking about gender, race, or politics. Then there is technology that mocks our ways and threatens to replicate our minds artificially. And there are theories that question capitalism, or democracy, or religion itself. Strange ideas abound. Nicodemus’s response was to place an unreasonable faith in reason. He wanted to figure the pieces out. He knew that if he got up earlier or stayed up later or went to ask Jesus or Siri or Wikipedia, he could tame the ways of ideas. He could cage them in his head like zoo animals so he could safely visit them at his leisure. That is one of the things people do in the face of uncertainty.
Uncertainty is always at hand. Neither despair nor rationalization changes that fact. But today’s lessons also give us two positive responses to life’s uncertainties. One is an idea. The other is an action.
The idea is in the epistle, Paul’s Letter to the Romans—
“For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God….”
Children! We are children of God. We are not running the world, God is. God loves us as a parent loves a child. That love is not meant to leave us frightened as Isaiah was. We don’t have to understand it all as Nicodemus wanted to. We do not have to grab the world’s steering wheel. Worry is a waste of time. Instead we can take the place that is rightfully ours, the place of beloved children in the hands of a loving God. That is the idea behind a healthy response to uncertainty.
The action is in the example ultimately set by the depressed prophet and the curious Pharisee. Isaiah was overwhelmed by his vision but finished by saying, “Here am I. Send me.” The mystery he beheld was still well beyond his grasp, but he was ready to take the steps he could. He did not unravel the Trinity or tame the seraphs, but he spoke the truth he knew and took his place in our faith story. And as far as we know, Nicodemus never quite figured out what Jesus was all about, but on Good Friday he knew what he could do in the face of a great wrong. He took the dead body of Jesus off the cross and took it to what would become the focal point of our faith story, the Easter tomb.
Uncertainty in its myriad of forms is always close at hand. That can scare us as it did Isiah or confuse us as it did Nicodemus. But uncertainty in any form can never erase the fact that this is God’s world, not ours. Worry is a waste of time. And while we may never grasp it all, we always know enough to take one more step in faithful living. Amen.
Sam Arny
Pentecost/Youth Sunday
5/19/24
Good morning everyone. My name is Sam Arny, a senior from McLean High School. I normally attend the 8:00am service, so this is a slightly bigger crowd than I’m used to. I started attending St. George’s in 2013 but left for 3 years as I moved to France until 2017.
When we came back, we were welcomed back into the church and have been here ever since, even during COVID when we had those online services. But as a member of St. George’s for all of these years I’ve heard countless sermons, maybe zoned out during a couple of them more times than I’d like to admit, and I didn’t want to add my sermon to that list for you. I had a couple ideas on how to avoid that, such as getting everyone standing up and singing, doing call and response, or even walking through the aisle with Paddy and splashing some Holy Water on everybody. However, after some long talks with Paddy and Shearon about St. George’s customs and rules, and a lot of self-restraint, I’ve decided to stick to the script. So bear with me for a couple minutes.
So I wanted to come up here and discuss what it’s been like growing up in the church and how much of an impact St. George’s and this community has had on my life, and then I wanted to tie in the readings of today so that everyone can try and take something away from the long and lengthy speech I’m about to give.
Although I’ve been attending St. George’s for the past 7 years now, it wasn’t really until the past few when I really opened myself up to God, and this church was the main reason for that. It really started almost 3 years ago, when I joined 7 others and attended the first church service project we did out in Appalachia, led by Crystal Hardin, Reverend at the time. Before then I hadn’t really had much connection to the church in terms of the people. I knew a lot of people but I didn’t really connect to them on a spiritual level. I remember I was very skeptical about the trip before going, and to be honest I wasn’t very excited. I mean I was going into my junior year, thought my high school career was coming to an end, and wanted to spend my summer at the beach and with friends, not on a service trip of all things. But boy was I wrong. That trip really opened my eyes to the magnitude of the Holy Spirit, and how God is everywhere. It made me so much more grateful for the life that I live and I really wanted to embrace it to the fullest and give back more. So that following fall I went through the classes and lessons to confirm my faith. And ever since then my connection to God has only grown and become a much more important part of my life and who I am.
Another big part of St. George’s, if not the biggest, is the community. I would not be so involved and eager to come to church if it wasn’t for the people. First I’d like to acknowledge Reverend Paddy and Reverend Shearon. Shearon, who is currently on sabbatical, has always been really the rock of St. George’s, as she’s been here since day 1 and has been a statue of unwavering faith and discipline with God. And then of course, Reverend Paddy. What is there not to say about Paddy? Over the years as I’ve been a member of the church, we’ve gotten a good amount of seminarians, many of which, if not all of them, move on to their own churches as they look to become deacons. But not Paddy. Ever since Reverend Crystal stepped down a little over a year ago, Paddy has become such an important part of not only the church, but my life, and the lives of everyone here. Paddy, I’d like to thank you for everything you’ve done for me, not only as a mentor but as a friend. Your support and kindness have truly transformed my life and helped me to strengthen my relationship with God. I’m looking forward to this next chapter in my life and I’m heading into it with confidence thanks to the lessons I’ve learned from you and Reverend Shearon, but I know that no reverend will be able to come close to both of you and the impact that you’ve had on me, so thank you both.
Lastly I really wanted to give a big thank you to the youth leaders that I’ve had throughout the years. Ms Liza Lowe, Darren, and Jimmy and Sarah. I never really stopped to say thank you for all that you guys did, not just for me but for all the youth. Taking the time out of your busy schedules and time with your families to come and try and guide the youth like me, it was really remarkable. You have all made such a big impact on me and the EYC program, and I know that it's in great hands with Ariel, Nick and Rebecca. But thank you to all of you, especially for changing coming to church as an obligation to a choice that I was excited and proud to make.
Today’s reading was about Pentecost. Pentecost is described as the celebration when the Holy Spirit descended upon the disciples after Jeus’s ascension - when Jesus ascended into heaven to join God at his right hand. But why is it celebrated? Because it was much more than an ascension. Jesus is physically leaving the disciples - but he isn’t leaving them spiritually. He will never leave them because he has left them with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus does not forsake them, but gives them a calling. Pentecost is a calling to his disciples. Today’s gospel read; “Jesus said to his disciples, “When the advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You are also to testify because you have been with me from the beginning.” This is Jesus calling upon his disciples to become more than followers, but advocates for him. It’s the same with us. Before I looked into Pentecost, I didn’t really understand its significance, besides the fact that Jesus ascended into heaven. But Pentecost may be one of the most important parts of Jesus’s life, as it was foretold for hundreds of years before. The Old Testament prophesied Pentecost. Numbers 11:29 with Moses states; “Would that all the Lord’s people might be prophets when the Lord would put His Spirit upon them.” That’s the message of Pentecost. Jesus is calling us to become more than followers, but advocates for the Holy Spirit. That doesn’t mean we have to go door-to-door preaching the Gospel, but to spread the Holy Spirit through love and kindness towards others, strangers and friends alike. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as themselves.
Now this calling might seem a little nerve racking, maybe there's a little bit of doubt. When I was younger I would see people like Reverend Shearon or Paddy, and wonder how they had so much faith - especially in something they couldn’t see. But after the years I’ve spent with the church and with all you amazing people, it makes sense now. The Holy Spirit. It lives in all of us - Jesus lives in all of us. He might not be standing physically next to you, but he is always there, always listening. And that alone might bring some doubt itself. Maybe you’ve said a prayer and it wasn’t answered how you thought it would be. Maybe you’re studying for a test, finishing a report for work, maybe there's someone in your life that is really pushing you. “God please, give me patience with this person.” Now, does God give you patience, or does he give you the opportunity to be patient? If God snapped his fingers and made all your test choices correct, finished your report, gave you patience with that person, would you grow? Would you change for the better? Pentecost is the calling to become more than followers. We can never stop being students and servants of God, because God is always teaching us how to grow with the Holy Spirit. And that takes patience. And a whole lot of faith. But in the end, it's all worth it. Because God answers all prayers.
I asked for strength and God gave me difficulties to make me stronger. I asked for wisdom and God gave me problems to solve. I asked for courage and God gave me dangers to overcome. I asked for love and God gave me troubled people to help. My prayers were answered. Amen.
Paddy Cavanaugh
St. George’s, Arlington
5th Sunday of Easter, Year B (Shrine Mont)
5/5/24
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Good morning St. George’s, it is so good to be back with you after being away for our Shrine Mont retreat and a few weeks of vacation this past month. Now it is Rev. Shearon’s turn to take some well-deserved time off for her sabbatical which began this week. She will be back with us at the end of the summer on August 20th and I hope you’ll join me in lifting her up in prayer while she’s away resting, traveling, and re-grounding herself in God’s love.
That’s also to say, you’re stuck with me this summer! And what a summer it will be! Friends we have so much to look forward to together in the coming months. From Youth Sunday on May 19th, to our fantastic preaching series, to the start of our outdoor services on Memorial Day weekend, to a parish dance, to our Youth Service Trip to the beach in June. I can tell you we are going to have an absolute ball together this summer. I like to think that during Rev. Shearon’s sabbatical, us here at St. George’s will be able to take a mini-sabbatical in our own way. That’s not to say we won’t continue the important work of worshipping God and carrying out the various ministries we have been called to, but in the midst of this I also want us to have fun and simply be together. In our culture summer is a season of fellowship, rest, and restoration for a reason and I don’t think any of this is frivolous or self-indulgent.
As a matter of fact I take having fun together very seriously. In a culture that is so hyper-focused on deadlines and productivity, it’s easy for us to get caught up in the current of over-working ourselves, even, and especially, when it’s for good causes. It’s easy for us to neglect God’s commandment for us to pause and rest and enjoy the fellowship we share together. In fact, I personally believe that sharing in rest and joy together is an act of worship in itself that glorifies God. Jesus reminds us in the Gospel this Sunday that abiding in the love of God together is a critical part of keeping God’s commandments – God’s guidelines for living in right relationship.
Jesus says that he wills for his joy to be in us so that our joy may be complete (John 15:11). So this summer my hope for us is that we may claim what it means to have and to practice a theology of joy together. Because joy is one of the fruits of any healthy Christian community.
I first learned about joy as a spiritual practice from my time as a social worker with the formerly homeless and working poor in Boston before I entered the priesthood. My job was to go and visit people who had recently transitioned into public housing after living in shelters or on the streets. Unsurprisingly many of them were still struggling to overcome the circumstances, either personal or systemic – often both – which led to them becoming unhoused in the first place. Circumstances such as addiction, mental health struggles, and the general lack of affordable housing in our country. As their caseworker, I was tasked with the job of helping them try to overcome these seemingly insurmountable barriers to living what many of us, who have been dealt a more favorable hand, would consider a joyful and fulfilling life.
It was the kind of work that when you shared with others during customary small talk, would often elicit well-meaning responses of concern or pity, directed either towards my clients for their difficult circumstances, or towards me, for my lack of career savvy.
And I certainly don’t want to sugarcoat the immense difficulty, pain, and sorrow that so many of my clients had courageously endured; but to reduce their lives to their hardships would paint a wholly incomplete picture of their full humanity.
The reality was that I expected to encounter the hardship of their lives, that was no surprise to me. But what did surprise me, was the tremendous and uncommon capacity for joy that many of my clients possessed and understood in ways that were foreign to me.
Let me tell you that I heard far more raucous laughter in the waiting room of the housing office than I ever heard in the break room of my office. Day after day I would meet clients in their humble public housing units or in court or in rehabs and hospitals, bracing myself for yet another difficult conversation. And as often as not, I would leave these visits shaking with laughter from the jokes and stories my clients had shared with me, often times about the same difficult circumstances they found themselves in on that given week. With other clients I’d have to budget extra time in our visits because I knew I’d been in for at least thirty minutes of them sharing stories of their faith journey and their assuredness that God was there for them and that they could rejoice in the goodness of God’s blessings, even when it was difficult to see those blessings in the present moment.
And to be perfectly honest, it took me a long time to understand the reason for this abundance of joy coming from people who had every reason to feel the opposite of joy in this life. For them, joy was no laughing matter, no frivolous thing. In fact, joy was an act of grounding and an act of resistance. Grounding in the hope that the force of goodness, the force of God, was more powerful than the forces which kept them down in this life. And joy was an act of resistance to the forces of sorrow, self-pity, and hopelessness which sought to overcome them.
Whether they were aware if it or not, and believe me many of them were very aware, their habit of joy was an active fulfilment of God’s will that the joy of Christ be within us, so that our joy may be complete. The poor were my teachers in this spiritual lesson.
And I share this story with you because God invites all of us, regardless of our lot in life, to share in this habit of joy. Practicing the joy of Christ as a community is not a naïve joy; it does not mean we are to turn a blind eye to the hardships of this world. How can we? Christ certainly didn’t, for even in the joy of the resurrection he still bore the wounds of the crucifixion in his body.
Rather, practicing the joy of Christ means living together in such a way as to give others contagious hope that the hardship and difficulties of our broken world do not have the final say. God does.
And our God is a God of life-giving liberation and joy.
So friends, my prayer for us this summer is that we can worship together with joy, serve together with joy, eat together with joy, and yes, dance together with joy! So that the joy of Christ may be in us, and our joy may be complete.
Because the joy of Christ is an act of grounding, it’s an act of worship, and an act of resistance. Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams
Saint George’s Episcopal Church, Arlington, Virginia
Fourth Sunday of Easter
April 21st, 2024
The Fourth Sunday of the Easter season is Good Shepherd Sunday. On the first three Sundays of Easter, we hear accounts of Jesus’ post- resurrection appearances to his disciples. And today, instead of hearing about Jesus showing his hands and feet to astonished disciples, Jesus talks about what kind of relationship he wants with his followers going forward. He describes himself as the Good Shepherd who cares for the sheep, who even lays down his life for the sheep. And, as Jesus says this, we hear psalm 23 in the background.
“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake.”
Psalm 23 is the most beloved psalm of all time. If there is only one that people know or have heard snippets of, it is this one. This image of the shepherd leading, guiding, comforting and protecting us is a core part of Christian liturgy and experience, inherited from thousands of years of Jewish tradition. One theologian tells the story of being in the sauna with a group of much older men many years ago, at the Jewish Community Center where he belonged. He had always wondered whether Psalm 23 was as important to Jewish people as it is to Christians, so he asked these men, and they immediately started reciting psalm 23 in Yiddish and they showed him the numbers tattooed on their arms. They talked about how repeating the 23rd psalm had helped them survive the concentration camps and it was obviously still very important to them in their old age.
“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me.”
All of us need a “go to” passages of Scripture. They center us. They ground us in what is real, what is good and true. We don’t tend to talk too much about memorizing Scripture in the Episcopal Church, but it is a really good spiritual practice to commit passages to memory. You just never know when you might need them. Words from the psalms are especially powerful. In the monastic tradition, they pray through the entire psalter, all 150 psalms, every few months. They recite them together during the liturgy of the hours that they pray throughout the day. The psalms are woven into their consciences, written on their hearts, as a result of chanting them together, over and over and over again. The psalms never grow old. Jesus most likely had the entire psalter memorized. That was a well-established part of Hebrew tradition when he walked the earth. The psalms were his prayer book. And the psalms are very much a part of our tradition today, still giving us life, still sustaining us through thick and thin. Through them, we come to know Jesus more deeply.
Singer, composer, ten- time Grammy award winner and overall musical genius Bobby McFerrin is a huge fan of the psalms. He has written his own Book of Psalms and today (at the 10:30 service) the choir will sing his interpretation of Psalm 23. In an interview with Krista Tippet a few years ago, McFerrin talked about the importance of the psalms in his own spirituality. He is a very committed follower of Jesus and talks about it quite openly. He reads Scripture every day and has a lot of passages memorized. His favorite part of the Bible is the psalter. And when McFerrin writes settings for the psalms, they become his own. As he sings them, they become a part of him. He sang in the choir every Sunday in his Episcopal Church growing up and became familiar with the ancient tradition of chanting the psalms and wanted to become a monk until he realized during his mid-twenties that his true vocation was to be a singer. This imminently talented man is also extremely humble. He was heavily influenced by the example of his father and mother, who were good shepherds for him. They were very faithful people themselves. McFerrin said that his mother was the one who most guided him, day in and day out, and taught him the importance of developing his prayer life. And his father taught him humility, not by telling him that he needed to be humble, but by showing him what it looked like and talking about how he thought of his own amazing musical gifts. His father was Robert McFerrin and he was an operatic baritone who was the first Black man to sing at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City in 1955. He always told Bobby that his talent was not his own, but that God had given it to him to be a good steward of, so that is what he tried to do.
All of us need good examples in our life. Some of us are blessed to have them in our daily lives. But even if we have excellent mentors, we sometimes lose our way. And all of us need a guide who will never forsake us, who will always lead us back, who is ultimately loving, and will even come looking for us when we are lost, who will not rest until we are found.
“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in want. He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads med in right paths for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff—they comfort me. You prepare a table for me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord my whole life long.”
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Easter Vigil, Year B
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church there is one sermon preached at the Easter Vigil and that is the paschal homily of St. John Chrysostom, written in 4th century. And as far as I’m concerned, it is the best sermon ever written. So when I sat down this week to write my own paschal homily, I swiftly realized that there is no point in trying to imitate perfection, when perfection is already before us. So I’d like for us to be Orthodox for the next ten minutes and I’ll preach it for you. Chrysostom captures so perfectly the theology of Easter, which is the theology of Christ Jesus himself. And the theology of Easter is that Christ, through his death and glorious resurrection conquered once and for all any power which sin and evil holds over us. Christ conquered death and we are free. Full stop.
Christ liberated life by breaking down the doors of hell and freeing its captives. There’s a magnificent image of this scene, known as the Harrowing of Hell, on the front cover of your bulletin. You’ll notice one the delightful detail in the bottom left corner of a little devil scampering away as Christ the victor breaks down hell’s doors.
You see, in our Western Church, we tend to think of hell as a place of fire and brimstone and eternal torment, but that’s actually a more recent, medieval invention. In the Eastern Churches, hell, or hades as it is called, is more like a temporary abode for the dead. And according to one theological tradition in orthodoxy, hell very much exists, but hell is empty. Christ liberated it.
And Christ, through his death and resurrection continues to liberate us from any and all alienation from God, forever. Whether you were born in church or whether this is the first time you’ve heard the name of Jesus, you can rejoice that Christ is risen, he is risen indeed.
So. Chrysostom. As I preach his sermon I’m going to need your help. Because this sermon is not just to be preached, it’s a dialogue. For the Orthodox there is traditional audience participation that I’ll explain. When I say certain key words, I need you to respond with certain key actions, and I need you to respond as if Christ is truly risen. Because he is. There are three things I’ll call on you to do.
First, whenever I say the word risen, as in Christ is risen, I need you to repeat risen. Let’s give it a try: Christ is Risen (Risen!) Again, like you mean it!
Next, when I say the word ‘embittered,’ as in death was embittered, I need you to repeat embittered. Let’s practice this. Death was Embittered. (Embittered!)
And finally, every time I say death, I need you to stomp your feet just like this (stomp), just like Jesus trampling down the doors in the picture. Let’s give it a go. Ready? Death where is thy sting? Alright I think we’re ready for resurrection. Let’s start from the top.
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In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Are there any who are devout lovers of God?
Let them enjoy this beautiful bright festival!
Are there any who are grateful servants?
Let them rejoice and enter into the joy of their Lord!
Are there any weary with fasting?
Let them now receive their wages!
If any have toiled from the first hour,
let them receive their due reward;
if any have come after the third hour,
let them with gratitude join in the Feast!
And the one that arrived after the sixth hour,
let them not doubt; for they too shall sustain no loss.
And if any delayed until the ninth hour,
let them not hesitate; but let them come too.
And the one who arrived only at the eleventh hour,
let them not be afraid by reason of their delay.
For the Lord is gracious and receives the last even as the first.
He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour,
as well as to him that toiled from the first.
To this one he gives, and upon another he bestows.
He accepts the works as he greets the endeavor.
The deed he honors and the intention he commends.
Wherefore, you all, enter into the joy of the Lord!
First and last alike receive your reward;
rich and poor, rejoice together!
Sober and slothful, celebrate the day!
You that have kept the fast, and you that have not,
rejoice today for the table is richly laden!
Feast royally on it, the calf is a fatted one. Let no one go away hungry.
Partake, all, of the cup of faith.
Enjoy all the riches of his goodness!
Let no one bewail their poverty,
for the universal kingdom has been revealed.
Let no one mourn if they have fallen again and again;
for forgiveness has risen from the grave.
Let no one fear death, for the death of our Savior has set us free.
He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it.
By descending into hell, he made hell captive.
He embittered it, even as it tasted of his flesh.
And Isaiah, foretelling this, did cry:
“You, O Hell, have been embittered by encountering him below.”
Hell was embittered, because it was done away with.
It was embittered, because it is mocked.
It was embittered, for it is destroyed.
It is embittered, for it is annihilated.
It is embittered, for it is now made captive.
Hell took a body, and discovered God.
It took earth, and encountered Heaven.
It took what it saw, and was overcome by what it did not see.
O death, where is thy sting? O Hell, where is thy victory?
Christ is Risen, and you, O death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having triumphed over death, is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
To him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Palm Sunday, Year B, 3/24/24
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Today, Palm Sunday, we are thrust directly into the drama of Holy Week. There is no soft peddling or easing into things. We begin this liturgy in the exact manner we know this story will end – with triumph. Jesus’s triumphal entry to Jerusalem is a foreshadowing of what is to come on Easter Day with Jesus’s triumphal resurrection, and on the last day, with Jesus’s triumphal return.
But triumph is not where this service of Palm Sunday leaves us. Before the fanfare and excitement of Jesus’s kingly arrival has faded, we are launched directly into the account of Jesus’s trial and Passion, because our Lord’s triumph is a peculiar one. It is a triumph won through the way of the cross, which we walk with him during this Holy Week.
But why? Why would the Lord of all Creation, who sent his only son to be the savior of the world choose to submit himself to such a heartbreaking and brutal way of winning this work of salvation we so dearly need? Surely our Lord could have swooped down from on high and cast down the works of darkness forever, like God did to Pharaoh’s army by casting them in the Red Sea. Surely Christ could have installed himself on a throne like Caesar’s and ruled over all creation as a powerful emperor. Why wouldn’t our God of power and might choose one of those options to win the decisive victory over sin and death? An option which unambiguously demonstrated God’s ultimate dominion? An option we could understand?
Well, I think it’s precisely the ease with which we understand that way of victory through domination that Jesus chose instead victory by way of the cross. Humanity is so accustomed to leaders, saviors, and kings who promise to deliver us through demonstrations of strength, bravado, and power. Pick any chapter of any history book and you will find examples of leaders and kings who give assurances that salvation will come to us through conquest of our enemies with military, economic, and political might. These are promises we are well familiar with, promises that are enticing to us insofar as they appeal to our own personal desire for strength, security, and the upper hand ourselves. The promises of these kingly figures often speak to a human desire for personal kingship in our own right.
Christ is our king and we are subject to him, but Christ does not come as yet another human king. Pilate himself recognizes this. He asks Jesus, “are you the King of the Jews?” I think more than simple mockery, there is some earnestness to Pilate’s question. That morning Jesus arrived in Jerusalem with all the pageantry and fanfare expected of a king’s arrival, yet instead of a mighty warhorse and columns of soldiers and generals, he rode in on a draft animal with a ragtag following of tax collectors, women, and fisherman. Pilate, like us, is perplexed and curious as to what kind of king would make such an entrance and it catches him off guard.
Then, Pilate gives Jesus an opportunity to defend or explain himself in a way that is understandable to the logic of power that he and the religious leaders are used to dealing in. Yet Jesus offers no reply. He appears to submit defenselessly to the forces of domination that are about to crash down on him. And scripture says, Pilate is amazed.
The pageantry of Christ’s kingship continues and this time there is no question whether it is mockery. Soldiers clothe Jesus in a purple garment, the color of royalty. They hold a mock coronation by placing a crown of thorns on his head. They pretend to pay homage to him, then strike him and whip him, before leading him out for the finale of this awful travesty. Christ the king is enthroned. His throne is the cross.
Why must his throne be the cross. The awful, brutal, cross?
The cross is the throne of our king because Christ is a king who offers everything he has – even his own life – at our feet. Christ our king pays homage, with his life, to us.
While the powers of sin and darkness were making a mockery of God incarnate, God incarnate was making a mockery of this mockery through love. Christ’s enthronement on the cross for us is a compassionate reversal of every expectation we hold about what it means to be kingly and powerful.
Where the world’s kings send others out to kill and be slain, God is slain for us.
Where the world’s kings condemn and punish, God forgives the punishers.
Where the world’s kings demand tribute and offerings, God offers himself for us.
The Cross is the throne of our Lord Jesus Christ because the cross, the way of perfect humility, servanthood, and reconciliation, is the power of God almighty.
The cross is the throne of Christ because it is the thing we least expect the power of love to look like. And while the forces of sin and evil did everything in their power to dismantle the power of God’s love, Christ through his loving sacrifice was dismantling the power of sin and death. Christ on the cross neutralized it and transformed it so that the cross, the very thing which once represented the power of death and domination most vividly, becomes instead our most powerful symbol of life and God’s love for us.
As we prepare to walk the way of the cross with our peculiar King this Holy Week, let us not for one moment lose sight of that. The triumph of God is the triumph of Christ our king, with arms outstretched in love, upon the hard wood of the cross. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Lent 4, Year B, 3/10/24
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
This Sunday we are deep in the season of Lent, equally far from the celebration of Shrove Tuesday and the rejoicing of Easter. The midway points of our journey through the Lenten wilderness often bring the toughest trials as we struggle to maintain our enthusiasm for the discipline and repentance that the season calls for. We might find ourselves grumbling at the thought of several more weeks of sober liturgy, we might find ourselves getting lax in our prayers and our Lenten commitments. We might just be getting tired of the color purple.
This week in scripture we have companions in these Lenten doldrums. The Israelites are in the midst of their own season of Lent. It’s been quite some time since God delivered them from their bondage in Egypt and the initial excitement about their liberation has waned. They now find themselves wandering through the barren desert with no clue as to their destination and are starting to wonder if God is really leading them to Promised Land at all.
But out of all their trials, the thing that’s really getting to them in this moment, is the bland food. If we recall, early in the Israelites’ journey when their provisions were running low, God made a miracle by which manna – mysterious food from heaven – appeared each day to sustain them. Now, months and years later, they’re thoroughly sick of the lack of menu options and they complain to their leader Moses, saying “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food” (Num. 21:5). If you’re a parent you can probably commiserate with God in finding this line particularly irritating. It’s as if God, after a long day’s work, has put the last of his effort into preparing a meal for his children, only to be met with ungrateful pleas to go to Wendy’s.
And in response to the Israelites’ utter lack of gratitude, God does something else that exhausted parents can likely commiserate with – God sends snakes to go bite and torment the stubborn children!
There’s certainly an element of humorous relatability to this story, but it’s also rather troubling. Even though we know that a few lines later, God makes a provision to heal those who have been bitten by the snakes, it’s hard to spin this story so that God comes out as a loving parent when God also is the one responsible for the snakebites in the first place.
So what are we to make of the character of God who is compassionate to suffering, but also appears to be the cause of suffering in this story? Let’s take a moment to review some basic biblical scholarship that can help us make sense of this.
First, the bible is not really one book at all, it’s a library of books comprised of the 39 books of the Old Testament and 27 books of the New Testament. And each of these books is comprised of various genres, ranging from the poetry of the psalms, the theology of John, the history of Deuteronomy, and the legal code of Leviticus, etc. And one prominent genre which we encounter in the Old Testament is myth – particularly the origin myths of the Israelites.
Now when we talk about myth as a genre of biblical literature, let me be clear we’re not insinuating that God’s word is untrue or fictional, rather, we’re saying that it’s not necessarily literal history. Scripture is replete with creative literary devices that help us to better understand the timeless truths God is speaking to us, and it does a disservice to us and to scripture to take all of scripture at face value. For instance, just because Jesus is the Lamb of God does not mean Mary had a little Lamb. We all understand that this is a metaphor.
Similarly, the genre of myth we find in the Bible refers to passages which seek to reveal essential truths about God, ourselves, and the divine relationship between God and humanity. So the task for us in reading this account of the snakes and miraculous healing as divine myth is to discern what truth is being revealed to us about our relationship with God, and God’s relationship with us.
And this particular story about the snakes hearkens back to another account of devious snakes in scripture. Namely, the serpent which tempted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. We find many parallels between the account of the temptation of the first humans, and the temptation of the Israelites in the desert. In both instances the presence of ruinous serpents points towards something innate in our own human nature, which is our tendency towards dissatisfaction with what God has given us and our desire to enthrone ourselves the masters of own existence.
In the garden, despite God providing Adam and Eve with everything they would ever need, they still felt compelled to ignore God’s advice to trust in him and they took instead the advice of the serpent who promised them godlike status. And as we know, this did not turn out well for them. Though Adam and Eve did acquire the knowledge of good and evil which they sought, it also brought them pain, misery, and alienation from God’s loving provision.
Then, many generations later, the descendants of Adam and Eve find themselves grappling with the consequences of this misstep as the Israelites themselves wrestle between the same two choices: to trust the God who made them, loves them, and provides for them, or to trust in their own ability to pull themselves out of the mess that they are in.
And God, sensing that the Israelites are starting to slide back into the old, familiar pattern of trusting in their own ability to liberate themselves, does something to remind them early on of where that path will lead them. God says okay, if you want to listen to the snake again, here are snakes. Here are all the snakes you could ever ask for. At no point does God hold the Israelites captive as Pharaoh did, God allows them – and us – to choose between dependence on God or ourselves, and God also allows us to experience the outcomes of that choice. God lets us consort with snakes.
And we know that God of course also never backs away from the Israelites. After they are swiftly reminded that life in loving relationship with God and countercultural dependence on God’s support is far preferable to snakes, God is quick to offer up a remedy for the snake-bitten Israelites. God has Moses make a serpent on a pole so that all who look upon it will be healed and saved from worst consequences of their decision. And this part – the saving staff which God provides that will heal them from their existential wounds – is where the truth of this mythic story lies.
The moral of this story is that God never ceases to lovingly, and faithfully provide exit ramps for us back into relationship with God. God never abandons us to our own devices, no matter how stubborn we are and no matter how much we might take God’s love for granted.
This reality of God’s loving faithfulness to us is at the heart of the cross. St. John draws a direct parallel between Jesus’s saving sacrifice and God’s saving action in the wilderness by saying “just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14-15).
Jesus’s saving sacrifice for us on the cross is God’s definitive act of love for us. Christ crucified is God saying “yes there are still snakes in this world, and yes you will still listen to them and be bitten by them, but I have sent my son to take away the sting of their poison and turn it into the balm of salvation.”
God did not send Jesus to condemn us, we’re good enough at doing that on our own. God sent Jesus to so that we might have a permanent way out of our confused wandering in the desert. God sent Jesus so that when we inevitably fall into error and out of the truth of God’s love for us, we might find our way back. Back into the promised land – the land that is our home. A home of perfect, loving wholeness in God’s eternal embrace. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Lent 3, Year B, 3/3/24
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
As we approach the halfway point of Lent, there’s a particular spiritual discipline that I’d like to commend for your consideration: foolishness. And not just the variety you may or may not have partaken of on Mardi Gras.
But before you tell your friends that your priest told you to go out and ‘act a fool,’ as they say where I’m from, hear me out. Foolishness is baked into our theological tradition from the very start. We hear St. Paul gesture towards the notion of holy foolishness. In his letter to the Corinthians as he writes: “God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe… for God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, God’s weakness is greater than human strength” (1 Cor. 1:21ff).
What in the world is Paul on about here? Let’s zoom out a bit to understand how he came to settle on these words and what he means by them. First, in referring to his foolish proclamation, he is of course referring to Jesus, the incarnate Word of God and revelation of God’s will for the world. But what’s so foolish about Jesus? To understand this, we need to review some history. You see, if you take out the part about the resurrection, the story of Jesus is really not very unique, historically speaking.
In first century Roman Palestine, messiah figures like Jesus were a dime a dozen. The people of ancient Israel were suffering under Roman occupation and were thirsting for someone to come and deliver them. And history shows that there were countless prophets, magicians, rebel leaders, and faith healers who were eager to meet the market demand for a messiah.
These lesser known messianic figures had their own disciples who also gave reports of their miraculous teachings and deeds, and many of these so-called messiahs met a violent end. The Roman Empire did not take kindly to rabble rousing Jews of any variety and some of them were even crucified, exactly like Christ.
Now when the leader of one of these Messianic groups was inevitably executed by the state, one of two things usually happened. The first outcome was that the movement ended, either because the leader’s followers concluded that their movement had failed or they were afraid of meeting the same end themselves, so they gave up. The other outcome was that a successor was identified to replace the leader, usually the leader’s son or a close disciple, until the movement either lost momentum or was stamped out entirely.
This pattern plays out again and again throughout Jewish history under Rome, and it’s the predictability of this pattern than makes the story of Jesus unique. The story of Jesus is unique because we know that after Jesus died, no successor was chosen, because who can succeed the Son of God, and his movement did not die out, it exploded.
And, more incredible than that, was that Jesus’s disciples claimed that after Jesus’s death, he had been resurrected from the dead, seen by hundreds, and then ascended into heaven where he will be until his coming again in glory.
I’ve preached before that I believe that the audacity of this claim is one of the most compelling pieces of evidence for believing that the story of Jesus is true and worthy of our belief today. Unless they had actually seen and believed it, I can’t think of any other good reason why so many of Jesus’s disciples would have embraced a death similar to Jesus, and gone to their graves joyfully proclaiming the good news of Jesus Christ crucified and risen.
And this is where St. Paul’s notion of foolishness comes in. Because, to any rational observer who had not seen Christ risen or been compelled by the witness of those who did, this must have seemed utter foolishness. Why give up your life for a movement which by all conventional measures of success had failed. Why commit yourself to a movement which appeared to be built on weakness, not crushing strength. And those who felt that way would be absolutely right, if it were not for one thing. If it were not the resurrection.
Paul understood this argument better than anyone. As someone who had not witnessed the resurrection firsthand and was formerly a persecutor of Christians until his miraculous conversion epiphany, Paul knew from both sides how foolish it sounded to believe in a God who died.
Yet instead of arguing against these allegations of foolishness, he did a very clever thing. He embraced them and wore them as a badge of honor. He embraced the audacity of the notion that God became human, died like a human, and was raised into heaven for the salvation of all humans. And he continued to live the rest of his life proclaiming the beautiful foolishness of Jesus’s teachings, which defy the wisdom of the world. The wisdom which tells us to care for others, but only to the extent that it is expedient for us. To forgive others, but keep a record of who you’ve forgiven. To go change the world, but don’t get too carried away with it.
The foolishness of Christ that Paul is talking about is to do all those things but without the conditional statements. To really and truly follow Jesus to the point of foolishness. Because being a fool for Christ is not really about being naïve or overly idealistic. Remember Jesus also tells us to be wise as serpents and innocent as doves, meaning we shouldn’t abandon strategy or common sense. Foolishness in Paul’s sense is about living your life as a mirror against the harsh realism of worldly wisdom which says that love is practical only to extent. It’s about living and believing in the love of God to its full, foolish extent, and lovingly inviting others to be so foolish with us.
In the Eastern Orthodox Church holy fools who were exemplary in this calling were even given a title, they were called blessed and were revered for their fidelity to following the path of Jesus.
In an address to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 2012, our own Presiding Bishop Michael Curry echoed a similar sentiment by calling for more quote “crazy Christians.” In this address he said:
“We need some Christians who are as crazy as the Lord. Crazy enough to love like Jesus, to give like Jesus, to forgive like Jesus, to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God like Jesus.” He said “it might come as a shock, but [we] are called to craziness.”
And this is not just a bombastic statement from our presiding Bishop, it’s scriptural. We, as followers of Christ, are called to something that seems utterly crazy.
And we know it’s crazy because think about the answers we give – or don’t give – to our secular friends when they ask why we go to church. Raise your hand if you’ve ever said you go to church because you believe in a God who loved so much that he was crucified for it, died for it, and was resurrected so that we would never be estranged from love again? I know that I haven’t! But I long to be that kind of a fool for Christ. And we’re all called to that kind of foolish love, in our words and in our deeds.
I know it’s already mid-Lent and we’ve all hopefully taken on our Lenten practices, but if you’re still looking for one. Or if you have one and you’re looking to breathe some life into it. Consider taking on the practice of holy foolishness. Consider practicing a foolishness that is wiser than human wisdom, consider adopting a spirit of humble weakness that is stronger than human strength. Consider following the path of a Messiah who used brokenness and failure as tools for glory.
For St. Paul reminds us, “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” (1 Cor. 1:18). Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Last Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, 2/5/24
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Today is the last Sunday of the season of Epiphany. Sandwiched between Advent and Lent, Epiphany is sometimes one of those seasons whose purpose can be unclear, so before we enter into Lent next week, I wanted us to take a look back on Epiphany to understand how it fits into our understanding of who Jesus is. First of all, the seasons of Advent, Epiphany, and Lent all go together in that order. They each walk us through three distinct periods in Jesus’s life. Advent of course is about preparing for Jesus’s birth and arrival in the world. Lent is about preparing for Jesus’s death and resurrection. And Epiphany is about everything in Jesus’s life in between. His public ministry, his teaching, his casting out of demons – lest we forget that – and most importantly, the small and large epiphanies his followers discover along the way about who exactly Jesus is, and how he shows up for them.
And just like Christmas is the grand finale of Advent, and Easter is the grand finale of Lent; Epiphany culminates in the incredible event known as the Transfiguration.
Today I thought about telling you about the Transfiguration, but seeing as how I’m a failed art historian, and seeing as how we have a gigantic stained glass window on the subject, I thought it’d much be better if I showed you. So I invite you to turn around in your seat for just a moment and direct your gaze upward.
What we notice first is Jesus, robed in dazzling white with his arms upraised as the disciples Peter, James, and John lay in awe before him. Slightly behind Jesus, to his left and right, are Moses the lawgiver and Elijah the prophet, who reveal that Jesus is the fulfilment of both the law of the Old Testament and the one of whom the prophets foretold.
At the bottom of the window, God the Father gingerly cradles Jesus’s crucified body while Jesus’s much larger, transfigured body towers above, revealing that the transfiguration is in some ways a sneak peak of the resurrection. Finally, at the very top we see the Holy Spirit, represented as a dove, descending upon Jesus as angels sing and the words “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased” are written above. (Matt. 3:17)
This concludes the visual analysis portion of the sermon, you may turn around.
Everything in this image we have seen points towards one thing, and that is the words at the very top. The words of God the Father saying “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” That is the epiphany of epiphanies that leaves the disciples and us in awe two millennia later. This is God’s definitive response to the disciples growing suspicion that Jesus is more than the average prophet or teacher. What they see for the first time beneath ordinary flesh and blood is something extraordinary.
I’d like to tell you the story about my own transfiguration moment, when I first came to see the extraordinary reality of God beneath the ordinary. Years ago, when I was working at a nonprofit in Boston, I came across a Franciscan monastery. It was an unassuming building in the heart of the city nestled between an office building and a sandwich shop. I’d walk by it every day on the way to my subway stop, rarely paying it any mind. Then one afternoon, during my early ponderings about the priesthood, curiosity compelled me to wander into the chapel.
It wasn’t a particularly beautiful chapel; it was one of those 1960s experiments in modern architecture that can feel a bit like a government building. A place where holy bureaucrats go about managing the internal affairs of Kingdom of Heaven.
As I looked down the nave, the pews were nearly empty except for a handful of elderly women who were kneeling around the altar, enraptured by a strange metal object on top of it that looked like the sun. I slowly realized what was happening in this unassuming place and it was something I had only read about in my art history books in the chapters on the Middle Ages.
These women were practicing a very old and peculiar devotion found in some Catholic and a few Episcopal churches known as Eucharistic adoration, which is exactly what it sounds like. It’s sitting in adoration of Christ’s true body made present in the consecrated Communion bread which is displayed in this odd, beautiful object called a monstrance.
And let me tell you these women were lost in adoration. The looks on their faces were more captivating to me than the bread in the object before them. They looked as if they were utterly and hopelessly in awe. Really, they looked like they were in love. There was no doubt that they felt that God was truly before them in a way that I had never quite experienced myself.
Now I grew up a good Episcopalian boy and was taught in my confirmation class by a kindly priest about the Real Presence. Our belief that Jesus, in some mysterious way, not really understood by anyone except maybe Mother Theresa, becomes truly and extraordinarily present in the ordinary things of bread and wine during the Eucharist.
For most of my life I held onto this thought lightly, receiving the body and blood of Christ with reverence but not really feeling in my heart what was said to be true about what I was consuming.
But let me tell you, when I saw the looks on these women’s faces, I felt for the first time that what I was taught could actually be true. The way that they looked in utter awe reminds me of how Peter, James, and John look in that window as they see Jesus transfigured as the Son of God for the first time. It was as if light shining from the wafer had been hidden from me and was now reflected from their faces and onto mine. Their belief that Jesus really shows up for us helped my unbelief and I have never approached the Holy Eucharist in the same way since.
Now, like my confirmation priest, I’m not telling you what you should or shouldn’t believe about how Jesus shows up in the Eucharist. Whether you believe in transubstantiation, consubstantiation, transignification, the Pneumatic presence, or if you’re like most of us and you don’t really know what’s happening but you’re still showing up for Jesus anyway… then all you need to know is this: Jesus is also showing up for you. Reliably.
And if we take seriously that possibility that God’s son, Jesus has the power to transfigure ordinary things like bread and wine, then there’s hope that God can transfigure ordinary folks like us to look more like Jesus.
These Franciscans in Boston surely did. You see, they had a reputation in town. Like Jesus, they did things that didn’t sit well with the religious authorities. They were a minor institution in the gay community because they were known as one of the only Catholic churches where folks could show up as God had created them. And they could stay that way, even while been transfigured more and more into the image of Christ.
They ran one of the largest outreach ministries to the unhoused in the neighborhood because they saw the presence of God in the person sleeping in on their doorstep as much as they saw God on the altar.
They embraced the fullness of what it meant to be transfigured by the love of God who turns the ordinary into something extraordinary.
And that’s what the Transfiguration is about. It’s about us showing up for Jesus, and Jesus really and truly showing up for us, and transforming us. And because we are transformed by that experience we don’t just stay in that moment, though Jesus’s disciples were tempted! They were lost in wonder, love, and praise, like those women I saw, and they wanted to set up tents and stick around a while on the mountain where Jesus was transfigured. But Jesus said no. Jesus told them to go down from that mountaintop so that the light which had shined upon them could be reflected in all the world.
The lesson for us in Epiphany is that Jesus shows up in ordinary things so that ordinary people like you and me can get caught up in something extraordinary. That’s transfiguration. That’s real presence. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Fourth Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, 1/28/24
Readings: Deuteronomy 18:15-20, 1 Corinthians 8:1-13, Mark 1:21-28
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
St. George’s let’s talk about demons. There comes a time in every liturgical year, when the lectionary turns to Jesus’s extraordinary public ministry, that the awkward topic of Jesus casting out demons arises. We all know and love the stories about Jesus the healer, Jesus the teacher, and Jesus the miracle worker, but when it comes to Jesus the exorcist… we’re often left feeling a little itchy and scratchy. The reality is we just don’t have a cultural and theological hook on which to hang this talk about demons anymore. Demons are just not something most of us really think about or know how to deal with when they come up in scripture.
Yet contrary to our modern-day experience, forces of spiritual darkness appear to be a topic of great importance in scripture. The story we hear today of Jesus casting out an unclean spirit from a possessed man is not a quirky, isolated incident. In fact, there are at least seven major accounts of Jesus casting out an untold number of demons in the New Testament, and many more instances of his disciples doing the same.
What in the world are we to make of this in the 21st century, when our primary frame of reference for exorcism comes from Hollywood movies and fantasy novels?
The most common response we have is to rationalize and contextualize these stories. Since the time of the Enlightenment in the 18th century, prevailing wisdom has told us that science and reason can explain any experience inconsistent with our modern understanding of the natural world. Thus, if you were to go to a library and look up books written about the accounts of Jesus’s numerous exorcisms, you’d find many of them making an anthropological argument that demonic possession was simply a primitive misunderstanding of mental illness, or that we can read these stories as ancient allegories about the darkness that exists in the world, but is ultimately human, and not spiritual, in origin.
I think that these attempts to explain these stories in terms of our known experience are admirable and represent a very human desire to make sense of an incredibly confusing world.
I also think that if we truly believe in the spiritual reality of a relational God who makes himself known to us in the material world of creation, as God did in Jesus, then it’s not an unreasonable step to take seriously the possibility that there are spiritual forces that may try to distract us and draw us away from the all-embracing love of God.
C.S. Lewis wrote emphatically on this topic in a hilarious and poignant novel called The Screwtape Letters. In it, a comically inexperienced demon tries to trick a human subject, identified in the book only as “the patient,” into the range of vices, temptations, and missteps that human beings commonly fall victim to, in order to distract him from the reality of God’s power and love. In one humorous instance, the demon tries to coax the patient into attending a church that is more like a nice social club where, quote “the vicar is a man who has been so long engaged in watering down the faith to make it easier for his supposedly incredulous and hard-headed congregation that it is now he who shocks his parishioners with his unbelief, not vice versa.”
To make a personal confession, this line was the impetus for this sermon today. Earlier this week, I too found myself tempted, perhaps by this same little demon, to preach on one of the easier lessons, and leave all this tricky demon business for Rev. Shearon to deal with next week when it comes around again. However, I was compelled by Lewis and a famous line attributed to the French poet Baudelaire, that “the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was to make humans believe he does not exist.”
So wherever you fall on the spectrum of belief about its origins, I think we can agree that evil is unfortunately a real presence in the world that cannot go ignored. Certainly in recent years there has been a cloud over our civic and political life that has extended into many of our personal lives, pitting us against our friends, family, and neighbors. Certainly in the broader world, geopolitically, right now there is ample evidence of the evil that enslaves us and the evil done on our behalf.
As people of faith who believe in the power of an infinitely loving God who is interested in making right what is wrong in the world. I think it benefits us in our understanding of this evil, and more importantly our faith in God’s power to overcome it, to try to perceive evil from spiritual lens, in addition to our scientific lens.
As Christians, our spiritual understanding of evil in the world begins with its end, at the foot of the cross. The gospel tells us that through the work of salvation accomplished on the cross, our Lord Jesus Christ took on all the works of darkness of every origin, human and otherwise, and not only neutralized them, but transformed them into the glory of God. The residual evil, sin, and death that continues to burden us is only a shell of its former self and in the final tally, it is ultimately powerless over us on account of the redemptive love which God has poured out on us.
Therefore, let me tell you first and finally that we have no need to fear any evil in this world so long as we have the love of God within us. St. Paul reminds us that “neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities… nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:38-39). However, we do still have to deal with it.
And how? Last Sunday evening we held a prayer vigil right here in this nave, in which we prayed for an end to the conflict in Palestine and Israel and called upon God to help us put an end to all the works of violence and evil in the world. It was a beautiful lofty prayer which from a purely scientific perspective might have seemed overly ambitious and empirically dubious as an effective strategy. However, as Katie Wenger, one of the co-organizers of the vigil wisely reminded us in an early planning meeting, “prayer is a form of action.” We believe in the effectiveness of prayer to change circumstances in our lives and in the world for the better.
First, prayer transforms individuals. Not just spiritually, but also clinically. Studies have indicated that intercessory prayer can have a positive effect on recovery outcomes in persons suffering from chronic and acute health problems.
Second, prayer transforms the social order. As the witness of countless heroic saints like Dorothy Day, Desmond Tutu, and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King attest, engaging in corporate and personal prayer strengthens our capacity to take communal action against the forces of darkness in our world. These saints would be the first to tell us that the success of their movements was directly tied to their faith in the power of a crucified God whose love liberates us from the bonds of evil.
And third, and I need y’all to stick with me on this one, prayer transforms the cosmic order. If we did not believe this, there would be no need for us to be here at all. We could join Greenpeace, or the Rotary Club, or any benevolent social organization of our choosing and get the same thing out of belonging to those admirable institutions.
But no, the thing that keeps us coming back, again and again, to experience the love of God made real for us in our prayer and in this Holy Eucharist, is the faith that something actual is happening here. Even if we can’t always put our finger on it, and even if we don’t feel it strongly in our hearts every single time, our direct, physical encounter with God in the Holy Eucharist is a cosmological event. In it, the boundary between space and time, between the material and spiritual world collapses, and we are drawn into a mysterious transformation of reality as we know it as we are made one with God, in body, mind, and spirit.
And if God has the power to draw us into a world-shaking love of this magnitude, then God surely has the power cast out a few trifling demons. They are merely distractions from the reality of this love. You see, in the cosmic scheme of things, we really have no need to fear any of the evil that afflicts us, but we do need to take it seriously. And the way we do that is by taking seriously the far greater power of Jesus who delivers us from evil and empowers us to cast out the demons afflicting us in our own time.
Christ Jesus is our advocate and mediator in this struggle, and by the work of salvation wrought on the cross, recalled in the Mass, and continued in the work of human hands, God’s love is victorious. God’s love transforms evil into glory. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Third Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, 1/21/24
Readings: Jonah 3:1-5, 10, Corinthians 7:29-31, Mark 1:14-20 (Fishers of People)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
“I will make you fish for people,” Jesus said to Simon and Andrew. This is one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite passages in all of scripture. It’s playful, it’s creative, it’s poignant, and for me it’s personal. Whenever I hear the passage of the calling of the fisherman, I cannot help but connect it to my own family history. For generations, since they arrived off the boats from the shores of Ireland at the turn of the century, the men in my family did two things. They were either commercial fishermen and oystermen along the coast of the American South and mid-Atlantic, or, if they were clever and did well in parochial school, they went to seminary and became priests. I was fortunate enough to fall into the latter category, though if I had not become a priest, I like to think, perhaps with a degree of romantic naivete, that the life of a fisherman would have also suited me just fine. After all, the Gospel today reminds us that ministry and fishing are not so different after all. In many ways they draw on a similar set of skills, at least metaphorically.
So to do the metaphor of fishing and ministry justice, let’s think through some of the parallels between these two endeavors. First of all, fishing, carried out at the scale done by Simon and Andrew in the Gospel, and my own predecessors, required a great deal of preparation long before their boats even set out on the water. Nets needed to be mended, bait needed to be prepared, lunch needed to packed, boats needed to repaired, and sails needed to be set. All of this, of course, is a tremendous undertaking before the actual work of catching fish can be done. In fact, the careful work of preparation is so important that it can make or break a fishing expedition and there is no way it can all be done by one person. In order to fish well, you need an entire community of people, each playing their own integral role in concert with one another in order to make the operation successful.
I’m sure you can see where I am going with this. Christ’s one, holy, catholic, and apostolic church is in many ways like a ship. Many, in fact, I’d say all of you, already know this is true because you each play the important roles, even right now, in making our ministry happen. Take this worship service for example. In the week before we got here bulletins were constructed, the choir rehearsed, the altar was prepared, ushers and liturgical ministers volunteered, this sermon was written, and a quantity of emails known only to God was exchanged. And that’s all before any of us even got here! And even if you were not directly involved in those tasks this week, you too, are still playing an incredibly important role in making this ministry of worship happen simply by being here. All that work would have been for nought had you not walked through the doors this morning to give glory to God.
Yes, the Church is like a ship. There are captains and quartermasters who take the helm to chart a course together in our various ministries. There are cooks, surgeons, and craftspeople who undertake specialized roles in making our work of teaching, praising, and healing possible. And perhaps most importantly of all, there are everyday members of the crew who show up with willing hearts to do whatever is necessary keep God’s ship afloat by living out the Gospel in their lives.
Sure, anyone with a rod and reel could walk out onto a dock, cast their line, and catch a few fish here and there like the solitary street preachers and evangelists we occasionally see on street corners.
But this is not the model of ministry we see being lifted up in the Gospel today. At the start of his public ministry, Jesus, our gentle captain, sets out to find a seaworthy crew. Though none of the disciples, especially Simon and Andrew, felt like they were particularly well-equipped for ministry, Jesus recognized that the gifts and skills that they did bring were more than enough. They likely felt intimidated by the calling at first. Afterall, they were just common fisherman. They probably felt that they didn’t know enough about scripture to be disciples of this peculiar rabbi; they might have felt insufficiently pious or prayerful; they might have felt embarrassed about how they might be perceived by their secular comrades on the high seas. Sailors are a notoriously worldly lot, as we know.
But these worldly folks were exactly who Jesus wanted as his crew; as his disciples. He would give them a new identity and teach and empower them to repurpose their abilities in service of a catch of infinitely greater value than what they were used to hauling in.
And though they don’t verbalize it yet in this passage, we know that these disciples carried this sense of lingering suspicion about whether Jesus had really chosen the right people for the job. Even as they set about following Jesus and taking part in this new ministerial fishing expedition, they were constantly asking him why, how, and who is going to accomplish the miracles that are performed throughout their ministry. Disbelief, doubt, and feelings of inadequacy are in fact hallmarks of almost every successful call narrative throughout scripture. And I think this is actually of great help to us as we learn to balance our own feelings of disbelief at the seemingly impossible mission that God has set us out on.
Our catechism states very clearly that the mission of the Church is to “restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (BCP, 855). That’s the catch that we’re after. Unity with God and Christ together.
It’s a daunting task that causes us to ask ourselves, how can we ever expect to do this on our own? What if our equipment, our nets, sails, and skills aren’t enough to accomplish the job that the Gospel calls us to?
Well, if I’m honest, if it was entirely up to us as individuals to haul in this catch, we wouldn’t be able to do it ourselves. And even as a community, we are dependent on the grace of God to accomplish anything at all. Though when we come together, our various gifts, skills, and strategies become magnified, they are only part of the equation in our ministry expedition. We as individuals, or as a community, are not solely responsible for bringing in the catch. And thank God we’re not!
Our job is to set our sails and cast out our net as best as we can. Beyond that, we cannot bring the fish into the net. This is where faith and trust in God comes in. God is our partner and leader in our ministry who makes everything possible. God guides us into waters that are ripest for ministry and equips us to do the work, even when we doubt ourselves or grow worried that our efforts will not be enough.
God is a gentle and capable captain, who wants us to set down our anxieties, especially when they’re caused by an overdeveloped sense of self-reliance. After all it’s God, not us, who makes anything at all possible. So have faith that God is in control, it’s not all up to us.
God has given us tremendous tools for this work that we can trust in.
Trust in the winsomeness of the Gospel. Trust in the wiliness of the Holy Spirit. And trust in the exuberance of God’s love.
At the end of the day, all we can ever do is set our nets and have faith that if we have done our work well, if we have heeded God’s call, and if we have given our best efforts to the tasks God has set us to, then God will fill our nets abundantly. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Christmas I, Year B, 12/31/23
Readings: Isaiah 61:10-62:3 (Clothed with the garments of Salvation), Galatians 3:23-25; 4:4-7 (Adopted by God), John 1:1-18 (In the beginning was the Word)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Where is God?
When you think of him where does God reside?
Hold onto that first image that comes into your mind.
For me it is the cosmos. In 1977, NASA launched a probe known as Voyager 1 to study the outer reaches of space beyond our solar system. As the probe traveled further and further out into the abyss of space, its camera was turned around to take one final picture of our solar system before it faded into darkness. The image that resulted is a famous photograph known as The Pale Blue Dot. In this image, the sun’s rays can be seen beaming down through the great expanse of interstellar space, and caught shimmering in one of those rays, is us. A pale blue dot barely the size of a single pixel. This miniscule dot is the smallest self-portrait of all humankind in our earthly habitation ever recorded. The scale of the portrait is staggering. It’s truly impossible to wrap our mind around how small our worldly existence is compared to the vastness of the universe, of which this picture itself is only a minute fraction.
Somewhere, perhaps everywhere, in the darkness surrounding this pale blue dot of ours is where I imagine God residing. I, like many, imagine the vast expanse of heavens beyond our planet to be the dwelling place of God for a number of reasons. First, because frankly, it can be hard to imagine that God is truly here with us on earth at times. And second, because of passages from scripture such as today’s Gospel known as the prologue to John. The prologue to the entire Gospel of John begins with these truly cosmic words:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
How John chooses to begin his Gospel is a far cry from the small and cozy nativity stories in Bethlehem that we have heard told in Matthew and Luke’s Gospels throughout the past month. It’s a fascinating literary and theological choice that John made to begin the good news of God’s arrival on earth by zooming way out to set the scene in the context of a world far bigger than the small one we are most familiar with.
And what John reminds us of is true. God is far bigger, larger, and more expansive than even our most sophisticated technology is capable of capturing. God may even exist entirely outside of the material world as we know it.
But the Gospels also tell us that something else is true about where God resides. The God of the cosmos, who created heaven and earth, and who dwells in some otherworldly realm where he is praised eternally by cherubim, seraphim, and the whole company of saints departed – also dwells with us. Not just in a vague and metaphorical sense, but literally, in the flesh. This is the paradox and miracle of the incarnation of God in the person of Jesus Christ.
Jesus, the incarnate Word, dwelt with God at the dawn of creation, even before time itself existed. Long before this pale blue dot of ours existed, another far brighter light shined in the darkness. And this light was, Jesus Christ, who was God, and was with God.
Then, this light, being born of the Blessed Virgin Mary, took on human flesh and dwelt with us, so that we might know that God had not left us alone in a great expanse of mystery.
John’s Gospel of a Christ that is cosmic and Mathew and Luke’s Gospels of a Christ that is earthly are two sides of the same coin. These two understandings of God as being infinitely close and infinitely far are not antithetical, but are a perfect compliment to one another, which is why John’s cosmic prologue prefaces his version of the incarnation.
Because of John’s prologue we can understand with greater clarity what actually took place in the incarnation of God in Jesus. You see, the incarnation is a pivotal point in an unfolding story of humanity’s relationship with God that began long before we were even conscious that God had a relationship with us.
This story of relationships mirrors the trajectory of human life itself and begins in holy darkness before the dawn of creation. In the beginning everything was in perfect harmony and wholeness within God. We can imagine this as a state of being that is similar to being in our mother’s womb, where all of our lives began. In the womb we were perfectly content and utterly surrounded by a love we didn’t even know existed. That love held us, fed us, and nurtured every part of our being.
Then, when we were born, our mothers continued to care for us, guide us, and be with us, just as God cared for and accompanied Adam and Eve in the garden when our world was birthed into existence.
Eventually, however, as we grew and learned and became more conscious of the agency we were given to choose between good and evil, those choices complicated our lives. It’s a paradox that the very free will which allows us to choose to love God and one another is the thing that also allows us to make choices that alienate us from the love that once held us so fully.
This chapter in the human relationship with God is akin to the growing pains of adolescence that follow us into adulthood and cause us great distress and isolation.
As our awareness of the world and its difficult choices grow larger, our awareness of God’s presence with us can grow smaller and smaller, even sometimes to the point of feeling utterly abandoned by God.
This is the point of the story where the incarnation becomes everything. God, like human parents, wanted us to have the freedom to choose the life that was best for us, but also knew that we would fall short of that life through our choosings.
And so what God did to remedy the pain and loneliness that would inevitably come from our choices, was to find the most beautiful way to show us that that primordial love of the mother’s womb still encompassed us.
John reminds us that God did this from before the very dawn of creation, even before we had the opportunity to feel the pain of existence in the first place. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
As we reached a pinnacle of our heartache and despair and alienation from love, God then sent the Word to dwell among us. God sent his Son, who was with Him from the beginning, to “take for himself the garment of our mortal flesh,” as Isaiah poignantly writes, in order that we might know that God was there to rescue us from our isolation. (Is. 51:6)
Just as we, like the Voyager probe, were fading further and further away from our habitation in God, the Son of God was drawing closer and closer to pull us back to safety.
The incarnation is about us being rescued and gradually drawn closer to that state of prenatal belovedness in the womb of a God who is infinitely far and infinitely near. You see, I don’t see that darkness that surrounds our pale blue dot as emptiness at all. I see it as like that womb which holds and protects us as we are reborn into the primordial love that held us from the beginning.
God sent His son to live and die, with and for us, so that we could be reminded that God had adopted us too as beloved children. You see, we were never alone on that pale blue dot, and we never will be. God resides on that dot. God resides outside of that dot. And the love of God’s incarnate Word, Christ Jesus, will be with us on this dot, from the beginning til’ the end of creation.
For in the beginning was the word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Christmas Eve – Christmas 1, 12/24/23
Readings: Isaiah 62:6-12, Titus 3:4-7, Luke 2:(1-7)8-20,
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Dear friends and newcomers alike, today is finally the Eve of Christmas and we are gathered this evening to hear tell of the story that you have no doubt heard told countless times by now, in your life, and during this season of Advent. It’s the story of the fulfilment of a long-awaited promise. It’s the story of the light of hope breaking into the darkness in the least likely places. It is the story of the incarnation of God through the birth of Jesus Christ in the manger.
At the beginning of Advent I preached a sermon about how the Christmas story expands our sense of time. We tell the story of Jesus’s arrival on earth again and again and again, not just as a nostalgic recollection of an event taking place long ago, but as a story that is real for us now. As a story of Jesus’s light being born in our hearts each new day and shining on us again in his coming on the last day when all earthly sorrow will be turned to joy.
So as we wait with expectant hearts this night for Jesus’s arrival with us now, I wonder what this old, beloved Christmas story is telling us about how Jesus might be born, if he were indeed born again tomorrow. Let’s start with how inconspicuous this whole story is. That sounds like an absurd thing to say right? Considering that the story of Christmas is the least inconspicuous thing in the world for us right now. We can’t leave our neighborhoods or enter a grocery store without being reminded by lights, and advertisements and carols that it’s Christmas! But this was far from the case during that first Christmas. And perhaps the most inconspicuous thing about that first Christmas is Bethlehem.
A few weeks ago my wife and I actually took a day trip to Bethlehem. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, I should clarify… lest you think my life is more exciting than it actually is. Bethlehem, Pennsylvania is in many ways like Bethlehem in Israel, which is precisely why it was named so. It’s a small town about an hour away from the big city of Philadelphia, which like Jerusalem, is the capital and the center of politics, finance, and I daresay sports. If you are from Pittsburg, I do apologize and look forward to hearing about the Steelers in the receiving line.
Now Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and Bethlehem, Israel were both founded as provincial outposts by shepherds and farmers whose humble lives were far removed from what anyone in the capital cities would have deemed important. With the rise of industrialization at the turn of the century, the community of Bethlehem, PA became home to one of the largest steel mills in the country. And even though the workers at that mill toiled to produce the raw materials that built Manhattan, they and their families remained seen as a members of a working-class outpost, whose existence seemed only important to those in the capital cities insofar as their labor allowed everyone else to continue with their normal lives. The same was true of shepherding communities like Bethlehem in ancient Israel, and it was even true for Jesus’s own family. The Gospels tell us that Jesus’s earthly father, Joseph, was a ‘tekton’ – a Greek word meaning something like craftsman or manufacturer.
As my wife, Winnie, and I strolled beneath the now closed steel mill in Bethlehem, PA, which was transformed into a community arts center that was hosting a Christmas market, I couldn’t help reimagining what the Christmas story would be like if it was told today.
If we tried to recreate the Christmas story in our own times, Jesus very well may have been born to a blue collar family. He may have worked alongside his father in the steel mill or at an Amazon warehouse that produced the materials and products that make Christmas morning possible for other families around the world.
Perhaps he would have been born to a young unwed mother who lived in a boarding house or affordable housing unit while working day shifts and taking night classes to complete her GED. And who, I imagined, might have visited them when her child was born? Maybe his father’s friends; burly union men, like the shepherds, still wearing their work hats and overalls as they clocked out early from their shifts to celebrate this joyous new arrival.
You see, the way we tell and remember and imagine the Christmas story, in its time and in our own, has a powerful way of reminding us what God is trying to tell us in this miraculous, inconspicuous story.
The promise of a new life comes out of the periphery. You see, God could have chosen to become incarnate and dwell with us in any number of ways. Jesus could have been born to a powerful family in Jerusalem, Philadelphia, or Washington, DC. But instead, the Lord of Lords and King of Kings; the long-awaited Holy One of Israel who was to come and establish his eternal kingdom so that all of creation which, through sin and death had fallen away, might be reconciled into the marvelous love of God the Father…
Was born to a poor, lowly, and humble peasant girl, with absolutely no worldly power or estate to speak of.
God’s profound poetry here is that our new life of redemption and resurrection came to all of us through the lowly. God did this in order to show us that he came not to give us more of the life we already knew, but to give new life. Life in which the spiritual and material deficits of worldly life might be filled by wholeness and love of life in heaven.
God loved the shepherds and came to be with them, and they did the same.
But if you are not a shepherd or a steelworker and if you do not live in Bethlehem, then do not distress! The Christmas story of the incarnation of God’s son is just as much for the sake of us, living and working in the Jerusalems of our day.
You see, we ought not forget that the in Matthew’s Gospel, the wise men – the strategy consultants, federal employees, and middle managers of their day – also came to pay homage to the newborn king that day.
A star shining bright in the darkness cast its light onto them, and they saw it and recognized that they needed what it was pointing to, even though they hadn’t the faintest clue of what it was that they needed. Isn’t it funny that that’s so often the case? We’re aware of our need but aren’t sure of where or what will satisfy it? So these wise folks set themselves out in search of an answer.
They sensed that the hope that they, like the shepherds, also so desperately needed, had come to them – and they ran to that hope in the manger! I would have loved to see the looks on their faces when they found it, because we know what they saw. It probably sure wasn’t the kind of king they were expecting. What they found was a child laid in a feeding trough, surrounded by a ragtag crowd of shepherds who were “glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen” (Lk 2:20).
And what did these wise men do at this sight? They gathered around that rickety manger, unburdened themselves from the riches they had brought, and knelt side-by-side, with their unlikely companions, in awe of the gift that God had brought to them.
That gift that they needed as much as the shepherds and steelworkers and unwed mothers. That gift which we all seek so sorely in a world wrought with struggle, dissatisfaction, and confusion was the consolation that God had not abandoned them. In fact, God had done just the opposite.
God knew that the new life they sought came not from the promises of worldly riches in Jerusalem, but from the promise of a poverty that was truly rich. God called them to witness what poverty to sin and alienation looked like. God called them to experience the wholeness that fills all of our own worldly anxieties about not doing, making, or being enough.
God loved the wise men and came to be with them, and they did the same.
On that first Christmas Eve, people from every walk of life set out in search of God and God ran down from heaven to meet them. To be born for them, to die and rise for them so that there might never be any question that we are as beloved to God as his own Son in that trough. His Son who feeds and sustains us with the promise of a new life renewed by immaculate love. A life in which our relationships with God and neighbor can be restored to the harmony which God intended.
God loves us too much to leave us to leave us alone and wondering, and so he sent his Son to share his life with us.
So friends, now it’s our turn to experience the Christmas story in our own time. God loves us and comes to be with us. May do the same. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Advent IV, Year B, 12/24/23
Readings: 2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16 (God dwelling in a Tent), Romans 16:25-27 (God strengthens us), Canticle 15 (The Magnificat), Luke 1:26-38 (The Annunciation)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
We have been thrown a delightful curveball this liturgical year in that Advent IV and Christmas Eve are coinciding, and so to do justice to these two theologically distinct observances, I invite you to suspend your ordinary sense of time with me during this service. Let’s try as best as we can to set down our thoughts about all of the wrapping that has yet to be done, the meals that need to be prepared, and the cookies that will get set out for Santa this evening. For now, let’s simply take this hour or so of calm before the storm to dwell in peace, in God’s time, which we share this morning with a most special guest. A guest whose humility, courage, and incredible faith are why we are able to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus at all. Today we have the great honor of spending time with God in the presence of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The Gospel lesson takes us back nine months to remember the miraculous event known as the Annunciation. In it, the Archangel Gabriel announces to Mary God’s invitation to bear the child who is to be God’s only son, the Messiah and Redeemer of the world. The astounding and poetic exchange between Mary and Gabriel has long fascinated us and is the subject of countless artistic images, poems, and songs. We even have our own stained glass Annunciation window over here in our nave. Art has a way of communicating profound realities to us in new ways when language falls short, and this past week in preparation for this day I sat down to reflect before several different visual interpretations of the Annunciation. In most of them, we find Mary in the middle of the most crucial moment of the passage.
After the Archangel greets her with the iconic words, “Hail Mary, full of grace,” and proclaims the news that she is to bear the Son of God, Mary responds with her own words of great humility, and I daresay even fear: “How can this be,” she says. “for I am a virgin.” (Lk 1:34). I want us to imagine for a moment, in your mind’s eye, the scene narrated before us.
Imagine you are in the home of a peasant family in first century Palestine. Probably a modest home with mud brick walls. There sits a young teenage girl, betrothed but not yet married to her worker husband, Joseph. Then suddenly, out of nowhere appears an angel. The Gospel does not go into details about the physical appearance of the Archangel Gabriel, but we have some clues about the likeness of angels elsewhere in scripture. The prophet Isaiah describes angels, known as Seraphim, as six-winged creatures covering their feet and eyes from the Glory of God (Is. 6:2). Ezekiel depicts other angels as four-faced beings with eyes looking in all directions (Ez.1:15-17). However the Archangel Gabriel may have appeared to Mary, there’s no indication that he came as the white robed, blonde haired celestial being in human form that we are accustomed to seeing this time of year. Rather, angels, whose name means ‘messenger from God’ were awesome and fearful creatures whose presence spoke of God’s own mighty presence. A presence so powerful that to even look upon the face of God was forbidden in Jewish tradition.
And then, as Mary beheld the sight of a divine creature, that was a stand in for God himself, the angel spoke the impossible news that Mary was to miraculously bear the Son of the Most High, who will take up the throne of David and establish a new kingdom on earth.
This crucial moment between the angel’s shocking invitation and her own acceptance of the special calling is where we often find Mary in artistic renderings of the Annunciation. The outward posture of her body reveals the storm of emotions rising up in her soul. Often she is portrayed as making herself small and bowing forward, with her arms crossed on her breast in a sign of humility before God’s emissary. Sometimes her face appears calm and sometimes it honestly shows her perplexity and distress with a knit brow or troubled eyes.
She knows the stakes are high. If she is found with child out of wedlock, at best, she is risks experiencing the social death of being abandoned by Joseph, and at worst, she risks being put to death physically, as was permitted under religious law at the time.
However, something deep within her persists. Something in Mary’s soul told her that if she were to decline the God’s favor upon her, then something even greater than her own life might be put at risk. Something about how God wished to disclose the savior would not be right. Surely the almighty God of her forbears could accomplish the mighty task of bringing the Messiah into the world through any number of ways. The Son of God could have been born to a great earthly king, to a powerful priestly family, or even to a Roman emperor, whose realm stretched vastly across the world.
But no, God sent his messenger to lowly Mary, an unwed peasant girl sitting in her house with mud-brick walls. There is something unspeakably profound in God’s poetry here. The Lord of Lords and King of Kings, the Son of the Most High and long-awaited Holy One, who was to come and establish his eternal kingdom, so that all of creation which, through sin and death had fallen away, might be reconciled into the marvelous love of God the Father…
Was to be born to a poor and lowly peasant girl, with absolutely no worldly power or estate to speak of.
You see I think somewhere in this exchange with the angel Mary must have realized some of God’s intention in choosing her. Perhaps in a long pregnant pause it dawned on her, in her soul, what God was seeking to accomplish, and how. Lowly Mary, meek and mild, must have recognized, as she later proclaimed in the words of the Magnificat that God had finally come to cast down the mighty from their thrones and to lift up the lowly. God had come to fill the hungry with good things. God had come to the help of his servant Israel for he had remembered his promise of mercy.
And as this dawned upon her, her spirit rejoiced in God her savior and Mary said “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her (Lk 1:46-55).
From the moment that Mary said yes to becoming the Mother of God, the course of history changed forever. The Son of God comes to us through Mary, not for us to have more of the life we already know, but to give us new life. Life in which the spiritual and material deficits of worldly life might be filled by the wholeness and love of life in heaven. So here we are, two thousand years later. Basking in the grace of her Son who died, was risen, and will come again to fulfill this ongoing promise of redemption for the world.
Emmanuel, who is God-with-us, took on human flesh because of Mary’s faithful courage to put her life on the line so that all of our lives might be brought into fullness. Mary’s faith, her humility, and her prophetic bravery to accept God’s call on her life to be the God-bearer are why we gather this day, on the eve of our commemoration of Christ’s birth, and on every day henceforth.
So as we go out after this service back to the bustle of our Christmas preparations, let us give thanks for the prophetic witness of this hero of our faith, Blessed Mary, the favored peasant girl, by saying:
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord now comes to us. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Advent I, Year B, 12/3/23
Readings: Isaiah 64:1-9 (Repentance), 1 Cor. 1:3-9 (Thanksgiving for Grace), Mark 13:24-37 (Watchfulness)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Today is the first Sunday in Advent and we mark the beginning of a new liturgical year by entering a season of preparation for the arrival of our Lord, Christ Jesus, into the world. But how, exactly? And why? Didn’t Jesus already come to us through his miraculous birth to the Blessed Virgin Mary in a manger two thousand years ago? Even in our world where the Feast of the Incarnation, also known as Christmas, has become thoroughly commercialized, we still hear carols on the radio proclaiming the wonder of the nativity story in shopping malls, advertisements, and on the radio. As ubiquitous as Christmas is this time of year, it’s easy to take for granted the story of God’s arrival on earth as just that – a cozy story of a possible historic event that is a nice aesthetic embellishment to a season filled with so many other mixed symbols of ambiguous origin.
Let’s take a quick inventory of some of these other stories that make up the American Christmas season. We have a jolly bearded man who benevolently invades our homes to spread goodwill and cheer; a red-nosed flying ungulate with a charming underdog story; and my personal favorite, a magical snowman in Victorian headgear who teaches us about seasons and melting points. At this time of year we parade out a menagerie of colorful folk stories that in several thousand years will make for a fantastic anthropology dissertation, and like everyone else, I love these stories. They introduce a sense of wonder in a world where the miraculous seems increasingly improbable. However, with so many other whimsical fables layered on top of one another also comes the real risk that the story of Jesus’ arrival the world becomes just like any other of them. Another rosy tale that brings nostalgic warmth, like the stuffing in a turkey.
And so, as we enter into the season of Advent – which is not yet Christmas – but looks towards it, I think it’s worthwhile to try to reclaim an understanding and sense of awe about the most peculiar, awesome, and world-changing story of all of them – the story of the incarnation of God himself.
Let’s begin by revisiting the question posed at the start. Didn’t this already happen? Didn’t Jesus already come to us through his miraculous birth to the Blessed Virgin Mary in a manger two thousand years ago? Well, yes, it did. But our sense of time during Advent is more nuanced than that. In fact during Advent we look at time going in three directions: past, present, and future. Looking backward, we will hear in the coming weeks scripture proclaiming the first coming of the child Messiah in the string of astounding events that led to his humble birth in Bethlehem on that first Christmas. Looking forward we will hear passages from scripture, as we do in today’s Gospel, that point to his mystical second coming at the end of time, to reconcile a fallen creation with God’s extravagant love. And looking at the present, we will hear stories that teach us how we, in our own time between these two incredible events, are to prepare ourselves for Jesus’ arrival in our hearts each new day. Advent is a season to encounter the life altering love of Jesus yesterday, today, and tomorrow.
So how does this threefold way of understanding time make the story of God’s incarnation of greater value to us? It does so by reminding us that the story of the incarnation is both story told and untold. You see, the point of Advent is not just to commemorate a far-off historical event that has been passed down through the ages. The point of Advent is to recall how the event of God’s incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ is real for us now and we have a real part to play in an unfolding relationship of redemption.
The prophet Isaiah sensed that this story of humanity’s relationship with a personal God, was unfinished. He knew it was an imperfect relationship, one that God had established with us when he created us, and one we had violated through our repeated transgressions against God and neighbor. Isaiah addresses God with great remorse about this. Speaking in the past and present tense he said “you were angry, and we sinned… you hid yourself [and] we transgressed… we all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away” (Is. 64:5-6). You can sense the anxiety dripping from his words as he recalls our imperfection and pleads forgiveness on behalf of all humanity in the future, saying “do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember our iniquity forever” (Is. 64:9).
Isaiah anticipates God’s future action with fear and trembling, knowing that if the all-powerful God dealt with us the way we dealt with one another, we are in deep trouble. But knowing all that we had done to violate the commandments given to us as a blueprint for love, what does God do instead? God comes to us, as one of us, not in anger, but in love to show us what true love looks like. To demonstrate that no matter how far we tried to run from it, God’s love would find us and embrace us. This is the moral of the Advent story. It’s not just about spreading Christmas cheer, underdog reindeer, or melting points, it’s about what St. Paul calls “the grace of God that has been given [us] in Christ Jesus” (1 Cor. 1:4). Grace that calls us into deeper fellowship with the Son of God, who is God, incarnate.
Advent in the past tense is about recalling God’s work of redemption by sending his son to forgive us and invite us into that deeper relationship. Advent in the present tense is about us accepting that love which God extends to us daily and choosing to extend it to others through prayer, repentance, and living in right relationship together. So what about Advent in the future tense?
This is where Advent begins to get spooky. Jesus, in Mark’s Gospel, paints a harrowing picture of what we can expect in his future arrival.
Jesus says that on that day “the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will be falling from heaven, and the powers in the heavens will be shaken. Then they will see ‘the Son of Man coming in clouds’ with great power and glory. Then he will send out the angels, and gather his elect from the four winds, from the ends of the earth to the ends of heaven” (Mk 13:24-26). Try writing a cheery carol about this apocalyptic vision!
Jesus does not say he will come like Santa Claus, bringing mirth and presents and laughter. The love of God is far more potent than tidings of comfort and joy. Instead, God’s love shakes the heavens and the earth. It scoops us up and enfolds us, and yes, Jesus is clear, there is an element of judgment. As much as I would like to, it would be misleading to whitewash this part of Advent away.
However, if the Advent of Jesus in the manger in the past tense tells us anything about the Advent of Jesus in the future tense, which I believe it does, then we can be assured of this: God’s judgment will be unjust. You heard that correctly, God’s judgment in the second coming will be unjust, at least by earthly standards. You see, justice by earthly standards is about getting what we deserve according to our actions. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But God’s justice is about getting what we deserve in spite of our actions. That’s grace. God’s justice is about God stooping down, dwelling with us, breaking bread with us, and inviting us into relationship with a love so prodigal that it shakes away everything we knew or thought we knew about how the world works, until there is nothing left to do but sit in awe of that love.
The story of God’s love which comes down to us to restore us to fullness through the one who was fully God and fully human is what we look to in all directions during Advent. Our role in this ongoing story is to remember the ways Christ’s redeeming love has been with us in the past, to be awake and watchful to how that love comes to us in the future, and to prepare a manger in our hearts each new day to receive and share that love as broadly as we are able.
Advent is about preparing for the incarnation of the love of God in all three tenses, past, present, and future. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, 11/12/23
Readings: Joshua 24:1-3a, 14-25 (Stop worshipping old gods), 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18 (On the resurrection of the dead), Matthew 25:1-13 (Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids)
Last week I prepared an activity on contemplative prayer for the youth in our EYC group. My idea was to have all of us gather here in the nave on the eve of All Saints week, dim the lights, put on Gregorian chant, to invite our youth into a space of quiet contemplation in the hope that we might carve out time in our chaotic lives to simply be still, listen, and be present to God’s loving presence in our midst. The coup de grace of this contemplative moment was that we were going to light the thurible – our liturgical incense burner – and experience how the smoke, rising up like our prayers, can help prepare us for a bodily encounter with the divine.
I was very excited to share with our youth how, in our tradition, we experience God not just as some transcendent and remote being, but as a God who comes to us in the present moment, through our senses. The Anglican tradition is replete with this theology of embodied encounter. At any given worship service, we are likely to encounter holiness through all five senses. We hear God’s praises sung through organ and song, we see the beauty of God in this space, in stained glass windows, we feel the tenderness of God in a handshake or embrace with our neighbor, we smell God’s sweetness in the candles and incense, and finally we taste God’s love in the broken body and blood of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
With fifteen minutes before the youth’s arrival, I excitedly buttoned up my cassock and went to light the thurible. However, when I arrived in the sacristy, I realized that despite several days of planning this exercise, I had overlooked one critical detail: the coals were nowhere to be found. And as we all know, there can be no smoke without fire. So after a brief moment of panic, I remembered the sage liturgical advice of one of my seminary professors who told us that if you ever find yourself in such a bind, the same charcoal brickettes that we use for the thurible can typically be found at your local tobacco shop. With just moments to go, I rushed to my car and hurried over to a tobacconist that I passed every day on my morning commute. As I pulled into the seedy parking lot beneath garish neon lights, I tried to reassure myself by thinking that this was the kind of place that Jesus would hang out, right? So I took a deep breath, and walked through the doors, still wearing, mind you, a full length cassock and collar.
As I walked up to the register, the clerk and a customer who had been engaged in a lighthearted conversation, quickly fell silent and stared, probably wondering which of us should feel more embarrassed. Generously, he broke the silence and said with a grin and said: “Need a pack of smokes, father?” To which I replied, “well, kind of.” He graciously assisted me with my purchase and I scurried back over to the church with my coals and our contemplative exercise that evening was a stunning success. The youth learned how to be more fully present to God’s presence, and I learned that adequate preparation is everything, and that from time to time, even vice can be a means of providence.
In today’s Gospel lesson Jesus tells his disciples a similar story in the parable of the bridesmaids. In this parable, ten bridesmaids, or wedding attendants, are excitedly preparing for the arrival of the bridegroom and the commencement of a joyous wedding celebration. Five of these bridesmaids have come prepared. They brought their lamps and flasks of oil to keep them lighted throughout the nighttime vigil. The other five bridesmaids, much like myself, had brought ample enthusiasm for the momentous encounter that was to come, but had been less scrupulous in their planning. They brought their lamps, but in their excitement had completely forgotten that lamps need oil to fulfil their intended function. And with no late-night convenience store available to remedy their predicament, these bridesmaids found themselves unprepared and so were unable to experience the full poignancy of the occasion that they had been so eager to attend.
In Christian tradition this parable has long been interpreted as a cautionary tale about the importance of cultivating spiritual readiness to encounter our Lord at any given moment. This is a lesson that I believe this community understands well. First of all, because you are here. You set your alarms this morning, set your clocks forward last week, dressed yourselves, and made it from your homes to gather together in the presence of God as we celebrate His real presence with us in this Holy Eucharist. Second of all, many of you, in fact all of you, have had some role in preparation for God’s presence with us, either through altar guild, singing in choir, serving as an usher, lector, or acolyte, or even just being present to God’s presence here with us. Whatever you are doing this morning, even if it is simply showing up with a willing heart, you have played a critical role in our preparation to receive God in this heavenly banquet.
So rather than lecturing to you about the importance of preparation and readiness to encounter God, I would like to draw our attention to the ways that preparation itself can be a spiritual practice and an opportunity to encounter God who is ever with us.
The reality is that the majority of our lives are spent in preparation. Whether in school or at work or at home, we are often busying ourselves for something that feels more significant on the horizon. Perhaps it’s getting into the best college, or getting the best job, or preparing for a trip, wedding, retirement, or the birth of a child. Regardless of what it is that we are preparing for, it can be hard to escape the feeling that what we are doing now is simply a holding pattern until we reach whatever horizon we are working towards. Then, once we reach it, we can finally be fully content.
But friends, as I’m sure you already know, once you do reach whatever goal you are currently working towards, there is bound to be another one waiting for you, and the cycle of preparation repeats itself. If we were to read the parable of the bridesmaids at face value, even the bridesmaids who came prepared for the wedding banquet would have to find something else to do once the wedding was over.
But this parable is not merely about accomplishing an endless and changing sequence of tasks until we can finally rest in the eternal changelessness of God. There is more that we can do until that time to cultivate a sense of God’s presence with us during the seemingly mundane passages of our life’s journey.
An 18th century Jesuit priest named Jean Pierre de Caussade wrote beautifully about what he described as the Sacrament of the Present Moment. He presciently sensed that early modern society was moving towards an unhealthy obsession with busyness and sought to remedy our spiritual restlessness by drawing us back to an awareness that God is the center and ground of our being. And there is no better time or place to return to that center in God than in the midst of our busy lives. Caussade wrote that if we are to successfully counter the forces seek to distract us from the truth of our belovedness by God, we must begin by “embrac[ing] the present moment as an ever-flowing source of holiness.” Rather than looking to some far-off horizon for hope and contentment, we can begin our experience of contentment in God in the here and now, no matter what we are doing.
The very fact that Jesus came to his disciples outside of the synagogue and accompanied them as they worked, prepared, and rested is a testament to God’s desire to make holy the things that are mundane. Caussade wished to remind us that our daily routines can themselves become acts of devotion if we can just manage to cultivate an awareness of God’s presence with us as we undertake them. We can begin to do this through simple things, such as giving thanks to God for the new day that is given to us when we wake. Then, throughout the day, we can take moments to pause and remember that God is present with us no matter what you are doing. You can even set reminders on your phone to do this if you need to!
Each moment given to us is sacramental, it is an opportunity to open ourselves up to the presence of God’s loving presence alongside us. This week I invite you into this practice of becoming more attuned to the Sacrament of the Present moment, even while you set yourselves to tasks that do not feel particularly prayerful. Whether you are preparing a meal, entering numbers on a spreadsheet, or scurrying off to complete some task that you forgot to do earlier, each of these moments is an opportunity to remember that God is with us in all that we do, and in all that we do we are blessed with the Sacrament of God’s abiding love, should we just take the time to recognize and receive it. Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, November 5, 2023
Readings; Acts 1:15-26, Psalm 15, Phillipians 3:13b-21, John 15:1,6-16
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen.
On this Feast of All Saints, something incredible is about to happen. We are going to welcome someone special as the newest member of the Communion of Saints, which is the whole household of faith, past, present, and future. And we are going to do this by baptizing her in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. But first, what is baptism, exactly? What is going on when we do it? Let’s start with a simple definition:
Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God. Page 858 of the Catechism, in the Book of Common Prayer. Are y’all with me?
That’s okay, because we’ll get there. But first, you should know that today we are going to baptize Dagny Sofia House, the beautiful new daughter of Lauren DeCorte and Josh House. I suspect that this is not everyone’s first baptismal service. I happen to know that many of you yourselves have been baptized. I also happen to know that many of you have had your children baptized. But having done something is not always a guarantee that we know what we are doing. Anyone who’s ever been married will tell you that. So what exactly are we doing here. What is going to happen in a few minutes when we wash baby Dagny in that water? What about her will be different? What about us will be different? What is baptism? Let’s take a look, because the catechism says three simple, incredible things.
Number one: Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children.
We are adopted as God’s children in baptism because like the parents of a child, God made us and God loves us, and love is a physical act. Love is physically hardwired into our bodies. Anytime a parent shares a physical embrace with their children, the bodies of the parent and child are flooded with what is called the love hormone, oxytocin. This hormone then leads to the creation of a biological, emotional, and spiritual bond that is the absolute strongest that we humans are capable of. It’s possibly the closest we can come to replicating God’s love, and this bond of parental love is first sealed not through any conscious effort or willful decision of our own, but through the body. Baptism – water, oil, words, and hands – is that first, physical embrace we receive from God that cements the bond of love and marks us as Christ’s own forever. Like a parent’s embrace, baptism is a physical act that creates an unbreakable spiritual bond as we become God’s children.
Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children.
Number two: Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church.
Because we are not the first to be baptized, to be adopted as one of God’s children, when we are baptized, we are born into a whole family with whom we now share the same spiritual DNA. A family who shares a common likeness, a family resemblance if you will, with Jesus Christ himself. Just as none of us chose our physical features, our quirks, our natural strengths and weaknesses, but rather received them from our parents and then learned to grow into them as we mature, so too in baptism do we receive a certain character, like a gene or imprint, that we share our brothers and sisters in Christ. This spiritual gene or imprint is given from God in baptism and it’s called grace. Grace given freely to us and grace that we gradually learn, and fail at, and then relearn through a lifetime of practice with one another, with our spiritual family, also known as the Church, or the Communion of Saints.
Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church.
Number three: Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God makes us inheritors of the kingdom of God.
Now this one requires us to answer another question; what is the kingdom of God that Dagny is inheriting? The prophet Daniel describes the kingdom of God (Dan. 7:27) as a heavenly habitation – a house – spanning from heaven to earth in which God’s perfect love and perfect justice reign over all who inhabit it. And all who live in God’s house will strive to glorify God in all that they do. What Dagny will inherit is room in our heavenly Father’s house, where she, along with all of us, her new brothers and sisters in the family of God, will get to build more rooms, and guest rooms, and kitchens, and classrooms, and doors, and windows so that there is even more space to welcome others whom God adopts as His own. Our pledges that we will soon place on this altar are part of our commitment to shoring up this inheritance of grace here on earth. Our love, our prayers, and our resources all play a part in the building of God’s kingdom, to which Dagny will belong.
Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God makes us inheritors of the kingdom of God.
In a few minutes Dagny will be claimed as God’s beloved child, she will be given a new family and we will receive a new sister. And as her family we will promise to help her live into the grace that makes her a beloved inheritor of the kingdom of God.
Because friends, Holy Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children,
Makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church,
And inheritors of the kingdom of God. Page 858, the Catechism, in the Book of Common Prayer.
Are you all with me? Amen.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, October 22, 2023
Readings: Ex. 33:12-23 (Moses wants to see God’s glory), 1 Thess. 1:1-10, Matt. 22:15-22 (Render unto Caesar)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
If you had been contemplating tax evasion – or pledge evasion – this morning, the Gospel lesson may have complicated these plans for you. Today we hear the famous ‘render unto Caesar’ passage in Matthew, as it is translated in the King James Bible. The situation presented to us is this: the Pharisees come to Jesus and pose a question to him in bad faith. The question is whether it is lawful for faithful Jews such as themselves to pay taxes to the Roman emperor. Now, why is paying taxes for them a problem? Their problem is not the obvious financial inconvenience of taxes. Observant Jews at the time had no issue with the notion of taxes in general. Every adult Jewish male was expected to pay a modest tax for the work, worship, and upkeep of the Temple, that functioned much like our pledge to support the ministries of our parish today. Rather, the issue with paying Roman taxes was the moral dilemma of whether or not it was in their interest, as a colonized people, to pay taxes to their colonizers. Because the Roman empire had taken over the region of Palestine in the 1st century by use of military force, which, in a sadly familiar situation, resulted in much religious and political conflict.
So in essence, the Pharisees pose the question to Jesus of whether or not to pay Roman taxes in order to force him into two possible wrong answers. The first wrong answer would be to say yes, we as Roman subjects ought to obey the law of the land and pay our taxes to Caesar. This answer would have rendered him a traitor to his own people. The Jewish tax collectors who levied exorbitant fees from their own people on behalf of Rome were reviled as betrayers of the highest degree.
The second wrong answer would be to say no, we as a colonized people ought not to willfully participate in our own economic exploitation by our colonizers. While this answer would have been popular with many in the Jewish community, it would have rendered him an insurgent in the eyes of the Roman state, which would have landed him, well, where he ended up eventually anyway – crucified on a cross.
But Jesus did not come to die for us to deliver us from taxes. Instead, Jesus gives one of his most clever and profound responses in all of the Gospels. Jesus first asks the Pharisees for a denarius, the standard coin used to pay taxes (Matt. 22:19). Now the Roman denarius was much like our coins today, like this quarter. On its side was the face of the reigning emperor, Tiberius, who was the son of the famous emperor Caesar Augustus, and Caesar Augustus had been officially deified – or declared Godlike – by the Roman empire for his exploits. So to say that the current emperor, Tiberius, was the son of the divine Augustus, as the coins did, was essentially equivalent to saying that Emperor Tiberius was the son of god. And this, of course, is blasphemy – hubris in the highest degree. Ironically it is the same charge of blasphemy that would be leveraged to have Jesus – the true Son of God – to be crucified later on.
So Jesus directs the Pharisees’ attention to the likeness of Tiberius, the supposed son of god, on the coin to make his poignant case that we are to “give therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s.” (Matt. 22:21) In this one simple line Jesus, both avoids incriminating himself, and makes a sophisticated political and theological statement about how we are to order our obligations to the state and to God.
You see, this language of likeness, which he uses in regard to the coin, is the key to understanding what Jesus is saying when he says render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and God what is God’s. When asking the Pharisees whose likeness is on the coin, Jesus uses the Greek word eikon, which means image, or likeness. It is the same word we still use for the holy icons of Jesus, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the saints that we see in churches today. Icons, or images, are not the actual thing depicted, but they are likenesses which point us to the essential nature of the thing they represent. But more importantly, Jesus uses this word eikon, or likeness, to draw a parallel between the things created in the image of Caesar, namely his money, used to facilitate the economy of a false God – and things created in the image of the true, living God. The Greek translation of the Old Testament uses the same word eikon, likeness, when describing the creation of humankind. The first chapter of Genesis states that “God created humans in his image, in the image of God he created them.” (1:26-27)
We – you and I – are icons of God. We bear God’s likeness and, despite our faults, our very being points to the goodness and love of God in creation. And so in light of this, Jesus is telling us that we are to give back to God that very thing that is given to us, our lives and all that they contain. We give back to God what is given to us because we are made in the image of a God who is giving. A God who gave us our lives and who gave us his only son to die for the sake of our lives. It is our nature to give because giving is inherent to God’s nature, and we are made in the image of God. Our bodies, lives, and livelihoods are the currency by which God’s holy economy of love is made real.
Our lifelong practice of giving our all to God also frees us from the self-serving desire to enthrone ourselves as God, as Caesar did. Because Caesar’s economy is still thriving and mesmerizing us today. It is the economy of unfettered accumulation, self-interest, and the exploitation of labor and natural resources. The currency of Caesar’s economy, the thing that bears his likeness, is… coins. Shiny, pretty objects, that are useful – but are valued only their use, for their ability to get us the things that we want. So give them, Jesus says. Give the things that Caesar, or the IRS, wants, and do not miss them. Some will be used well, for the welfare of the people, and some will be misused, for the hungry wants of empire.
But God’s want, God’s hunger, is for us, not because we are useful objects, but because we bear God’s loving image. This message of God’s unqualified love for us, regardless of accomplishments and merits is a bedrock of our children and youth ministry – from the toddler atrium to EYC – because we know the world will be selling a much different message.
The currency of God’s economy is the mutual giving and sharing of love in whole human lives, modeled most purely in Jesus’s self-emptying act of dying to give us life.
When Jesus says we are to render unto God what is God’s, he means giving up all that we are – and I promise this is not just a sneaky stewardship appeal. Though our material resources are important for supporting mission of God’s church, what God really wants is us. God desires our hearts and minds, our fears and prayers, our pains and joys, and our time, and our love. Why? Because God loves us, and wants us to love him and love one another. Our acceptance of God’s love and our practice of giving it up in imitation of Christ reorients us to the reality that God’s love, engrained in our image, is the currency of the true kingdom. The one where God’s true son reigns in glory.
So as we prepare to receive Him into our hearts this day, may his love prepare us to give up our hearts. For they too, belong to God. Amen.
Anna Wiley, Seminarian, October 8, 2023
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.”
In the name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Episcopal Church is not known for having a lot of easy, straightforward answers to difficult questions, so you might be surprised to learn that in the back of the Book of Common Prayer, we actually do have a catechism, a helpful teaching tool with simple questions and answers explaining the basics of our faith. There’s a section explaining the Ten Commandments—it offers useful paraphrases that boil down the central teachings of the commandments: our duties to God, and our duties to our neighbor. But it’s the last question of the commandments that really interests me: “Since we do not fully obey them, are they useful to us at all?”
It’s a good question, and not one that I think has an obvious answer. We live in a culture that’s justifiably suspicious of rules and authority. We know that laws are often unjust, and that religious rules can be used to hurt and manipulate. Our cautious perspective on legalism even shows up in our Prayer Book. One of my favorite collects from the Evening Prayer service has us ask God, in the traditional language, to give us peace so that “that our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments.” But the modern language changes the phrasing, so that we ask God for “our minds may be fixed on the doing of your will.” It’s a significant difference. The new wording suggests that doing God’s will is more of an organic process of discernment, rather than a matter of obedience to fixed rules.
But in my own practice, I’ve actually tried to embrace rules. There’s a reason that Old Testament law governs every aspect of Israel’s life, from how they act to what they wear to what they eat. Structuring life according to rules, even ones that we may not understand, can be a way of remembering God even in the mundane aspects of our lives, of growing in our awareness that God is with us in everything that we do. I do my best to live by a Rule of Life, a set of guidelines structuring how I pray, how I relate to others, how I take care of myself. That kind of Rule is borrowed from monastic communities, who needed common guidelines to shape their life together. At its best, a Rule of Life provides a comforting rhythm to guide me in my relationship with God and other people. But there have also been times, particularly during seasons of grief and hardship, when trying to keep a rule has felt oppressive and anxiety-inducing, less like a helpful tool and more like a list of all the ways I’m failing. Are rules any use to us when we can’t keep them?
Some of the commandments are certainly straightforward enough, self-evidently true. It’s easy to see the wisdom in refraining from lying about our neighbors, or from stealing, and not terribly burdensome to obey those proscriptions. But others are less clear. Should Christians follow Jews in setting aside a full day of Sabbath to rest, pray, be with family, and even refrain from using technology? Or does coming to church on Sunday fulfill our Sabbath obligation? Or is the important thing not really about any particular rule, but about the underlying principle, the idea that rest is holy and we weren’t made to be constantly hustling and producing and achieving?
And then there are the commandments that seem impossible to keep. God tells us not to covet, and surely we can see that purging ourselves of envy is a worthy goal, but our whole society is structured to make us covetous. We live with a near-constant barrage of advertising, with images of people who are better looking, happier, thinner, calmer, and just generally better than we are, and we could be like them if only we had this one product that would make us complete. We can’t open a social media app to see our friend’s baby pictures without scrolling past a seemingly-infinite stream of ads targeted directly at us, sometimes eerily personal, often playing on our very worst impulses and desires. Sin isn’t just something we can deal with in ourselves as individuals—it infects all the systems and structures in our society, making it far too easy to long for things that hurt us and other people.
And it gets worse. If we think, maybe we don’t always honor our parents, but at least we’re off the hook when it comes to murder, Jesus disabuses us of that notion, too. “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not kill,” Jesus says in the Gospel of Matthew, “but I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother or sister shall be liable to judgment.” And perhaps some of you remember Jimmy Carter’s unfortunate Playboy interview, when he confessed to committing adultery in his heart many times.” A strange comment for a president to make, but there’s no denying that what he saying was right on as far as Jesus’ ethical teachings go. No one is without sin.
Which brings us back to the question from our catechism. “Since we do not fully obey them, are the commandments useful to us at all?” I’ve withheld the answer for quite awhile now, and I hope you’ll bear with me just a little longer, because I think to understand why our church still sees values in these commandments, we need to be attentive to the fact that God did not just give us a list of rules; God gave us a story.
When God begins to speak to Moses on the top of Mt. Sinai, the first thing God says is not a commandment at all. “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” We can’t understand anything that follows without first meditating on that statement. The invisible, infinite God, beyond all human understanding, has revealed himself, come down in fire and smoke and the music of trumpets. And that God is not just the high deity who created the heavens and the earth. He is your God, God who chooses to be with us and for us. And that same God is a liberator, a God who rescues his people, topples oppressors, frees them from bondage. God is speaking to this people because he has already saved them, redeemed them, and freed them. They could not save themselves, any more than they will be able to keep God’s commandments by themselves. But God’s voice cuts through all their fear, all their unwillingness, the chains with which the Egyptians bound them and the chains with which they bind themselves. It’s no wonder the people tell Moses that they are afraid to hear God’s voice. They can shut their eyes to the lightnings, the fire and the smoke, but there is something more fearful about the voice of God laying a claim on their lives, telling them that they are to be a new kind of people. But that same claim on their lives means that they are not alone. God redeemed them before they learned a single commandment, not because they were good, or special, or because they deserved it, but because God heard them crying out.
Which brings us back to the catechism. “Since we do not fully obey them, are they useful at all?” And the answer: “Since we do not fully obey them, we see more clearly our sin and our need for redemption.”
And because this is a story, not a list of rules, we know what happens next, that for the Israelites, “not fully obeying” the commandments sounds like a bit of an understatement. We know that before Moses has even come down from the mountain, the people have already rejected the gift of redemption that God has given them, that they’ve made a golden calf to worship and that Moses smashes the tablets in his rage. And we know that God gives them the commandments again, that He is still their God when they turn away from Him and reject Him. We know that the entire Bible is a story of God’s people turning away again and again, of failing to understand and failing to do the right thing even when they do understand. And God turns back to them again and again and again.
That is the free gift of grace that God offers us. It’s the gift that little babies receive when they’re baptised, marked as beloved before they’ve learned anything about who God is or how to serve him. It’s the free gift we receive every time we realize we’ve made a mistake, and God welcomes us back before we’ve even begun to figure out how we can make amends.
The commandments teach us our part in the story. They teach us how we can respond to God’s goodness toward us. They teach us that redemption doesn’t just free us from something, but frees us for something, frees us to follow Jesus, not with fear, but with humility and gratitude and love. And above all, the commandments teach us that God’s grace always precedes and follows us, that we’re called and redeemed long before we’ve done anything to deserve it, and called back no matter how many times we stray.
Amen.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams, The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 24th, 2023
“Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to this last one the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” Matthew 20: 1-6
Last Sunday we heard the dramatic Exodus story of God delivering the Israelites from captivity in Egypt. Moses raises his arms, staff in hand, a fierce wind blowing, commanding the Red Sea to open, and it opens. The Israelites walk through on dry ground and just as they are on the other side, the water comes crashing down on their Egyptian oppressors. There is rejoicing all around. Moses’ sister Miriam, tambourine in hand, leads her people as they sing and dance, giving thanks to God for everything God has done for them. But almost before the last note is sung, all that exultation and joy turns to frustration and anger. God had wrought an incredible miracle in leading them out of Egypt, but then they enter the wilderness. They start a long journey to a new land of their own that God had promised them, an abundant land, a land “flowing with milk and honey”. But the people quickly discover that getting there is going to be hard work. They want to trust in God, but their anxiety about survival is choking their faith. They have forgotten all that God did for them to get them out of captivity. What they remember is the really good food in Egypt. They forget the part about being were slaves, they forget that they weren’t free. They used to have plenty of food, but here in the wilderness, they are free, but they are worried about where their next meal is coming from. God gives them bread, plenty of bread in fact, it meets their needs, but it is strange and not very tasty. There is more than enough for everyone each day, but they aren’t allowed to save any for the next day, so that they will learn to trust in God’s provision, day by day by day. Even the wilderness is a place of abundance because God is there, but they just can’t see it that way.
The Exodus story is an interesting backdrop for our Gospel today. Both are stories about God’s generosity and our inability to recognize it. Jesus tells us that the Kingdom of God is like a landowner who goes out into the marketplace early in the morning and agrees with workers on the standard daily wage. He goes out twice more, later in the day, and invites others to work in his vineyard. At the end of the day, he has his manager pay all of them the same, the one who worked one hour receiving the same as the ones who worked all day. The laborers who had worked all day start grumbling, just like the Israelites, and understandably so. Shouldn’t people who work longer be paid more? Isn’t that justice? But Jesus seems to be telling us that God’s generosity is much bigger than human notions of justice, as very important as that is. In fact, God’s justice is just one part of the bigger picture of God’s generosity. God’s generosity is beyond our capacity to understand. God’s generosity freed the Israelites. God’s generosity sent Jesus into the world to help us to show us how to live a life of thanksgiving. God’s generosity is at the very heart of the universe. God’s generosity leads us into abundant life and allows us to see plenty where we are tempted to see scarcity. It is all about the lens through which we view things and the posture that we bring to each day. If we bring an attitude of entitlement, it closes us off from God and sets us apart from others. If we bring an attitude of gratitude, it helps to draw us closer to others. It not about “hey look at me and everything I have achieved, now give me what I deserve”. It is about “thank-you Lord for all the blessings of this life, all that you have done for me, and help me be a blessing to others.”
Once when our son was a preschooler, I remember having a conversation with a neighbor who was the mother of two teenagers. She told me that she had just enrolled the younger of her two daughters in an expensive private school because she really needed the one-on-one attention that they could provide. I asked her how her older daughter felt about that, given that she was remaining in a public high school. Wouldn’t that make her jealous of her sister and cause resentment later on? She told me that she and her husband couldn’t really even afford to send the younger daughter and they were only doing it because they believed that she wouldn’t do well continuing in her current school. It was a great school, but it just wasn’t working for her, and she was spiraling downward. The older daughter was doing exceptionally well, both academically and socially, and didn’t need a new school. She said she had explained everything to both of them and they understood.
We moved not long after this and when we came back for a visit many years later, my friend told me that her older daughter had recently admitted that she had been jealous that more family resources were being spent on her younger sister, but now that she was a mother, she realized why her parents had made that decision all those years ago and she recognized that it really had helped her younger sister to get on a much better path. She loved her sister and she was grateful, even though she hadn’t been at the time. And the older daughter recognized that she had gotten an outstanding education staying exactly where she was. She realized that her parents knew that she already had everything she needed to thrive. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?”
God’s generosity doesn’t always look like justice to us. God’s generosity is rooted in mercy and mercy always triumphs over justice. And thanks be to God for that. If we always got what we deserved, that would be a terrible thing indeed. Recognizing God’s mercy in our lives, God’s generosity in our lives, is the beginning of gratitude. And having gratitude is everything. It helps to turn our mourning into dancing and our grumbling into thanksgiving.
Next Sunday begins our stewardship emphasis for the month of October. It’s the time of the year when we focus on God’s generosity and how we respond to it. We will be hearing stories about how Saint Georgians are living out their call to operate from a place of gratitude and how our various ministries are helping them to express that, through their gifts of time, talent and treasure.
When we see everything we have as a gift, it makes all the difference. We worship a God who is infinitely generous, and who invites us to be generous in return.
The Rev. Paddy Cavanaugh, Proper 19A, Track 1, 9/17/23
Readings: Exodus 14:19-31 (Parting of the Red Sea), Romans 14:1-12 (Do not pass judgment), Matthew 18:21-35 (Parable of the Unforgiving Slave)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Today we hear one of the most iconic stories in all of scripture; the story of God delivering his chosen people, the Israelites, from the pursuit of their enslavers, the Egyptians. As we know, the story goes that God miraculously parts the Red Sea to allow the Israelites to cross to safety, while the Egyptian army is left scrambling in the muck until the sea comes crashing down upon them, swallowing them into the depths.
Depending on your generation, this story might conjure up images of Charlton Heston as a handsome Hollywood Moses, rendered in glorious technicolor in Cecil DeMille’s 1956 epic film, The Ten Commandments. Or, perhaps, if you’re a bit younger, your mind’s eye pictures the story from the perspective of the charming 1998 animated musical drama, The Prince of Egypt. Or perhaps you imagine the scene in another way.
There are hundreds of musical, artistic, and cinematic retellings of the Crossing of the Red Sea and the fact that it remains such an iconic Biblical story, even in the mainstream, is a testament to the power that the story holds over our popular imagination. I think that part of our enduring fascination with this story is because of how excitingly dramatic and also straightforward it appears to be, which we know is not always the case in Biblical narratives. Scripture is so often narratively confusing and theologically muddy. Not so in this event. There are clear protagonists, the underdog Israelites, who are led by the charismatic prophet Moses; and there is a clear villain – Pharaoh, the perfect Hollywood bad guy. There is rising action as Pharaoh’s army hunts down the Israelites in a high speed chariot chase and there is a tremendous climax as God delivers the good guys while the bad guys are left thwarted and utterly defeated in a definitive triumph for God. A happy and tidy ending, if we would like to leave it that way.
The way that we often retell this iconic story leaves little room for ambiguity, which makes for excellent storytelling, however, as I’m sure you’ve found, stories that reduce reality to neat categories of absolute good and evil, while entertaining, are typically limited in their usefulness to us in the real world, where good individuals often find themselves enmeshed in structures that create evil; and real world evil often looks much more mundane than sinister, as Hollywood archetypes would lead us to believe. Now I believe that this story actually allows for more a more nuanced interpretation than popular retellings give it credit for, so please humor me as we look at the story of the parting of the Red Sea from various perspectives to see what we can glean.
Let’s begin by revisiting the bad guys, the Egyptians. As a child in Sunday school, I often pitied the evil Egyptians, which I think was less of a reflection of my compassionate character and more of a subconscious admission of my own guilt as a fellow tormenter. As a tyrannical little Pharaoh, I often treated my poor younger sister as an Israelite. Nonetheless, it’s worth considering whether all the Egyptians deserved the severe punishment of drowning fearfully in the Red Sea. Surely there were some bad actors, such as Pharaoh himself, who God gave multiple opportunities to turn from his wickedness, and yet he would not relent. But what about all of the contractors, foot soldiers, bureaucrats, and non-military personnel whose livelihood was enmeshed in the will of a government that they had little say over? Surely they were as much victims of Pharaoh’s authoritarianism as they were perpetrators of what theologians and ethicists call structural evil.
You see, this idea of structural evil suggests that evil is so often manifest most potently in largescale social systems rather than in individuals, and then the pervasiveness of these systems and structures allows individuals to easily rationalize their participation in them by asking the questions: What other options do I really have? If not me, won’t someone else just do it? And, I have to earn a living to take care of my family don’t I? It’s a brutal cycle. And so, I believe that a nuanced understanding of the story allows for us to imagine God’s compassion for those who are mired deeply in these systems of evil that trap us like thick, constricting mud on the ocean floor. In Rabbinic tradition, Jewish scholars imagined that God stopped the angels from rejoicing at the demise of the Egyptians, whom He regarded as “the works of his hands” whom he pitied to see, drowning in the sea (B. Sanhedrin 39b).
And it’s also helpful to remind ourselves at this point that scripture is not merely about retelling God’s actions as literal historical events. Scripture is about helping us to see God’s consistent character of steadfast faithfulness and love. If we leave the story to a strict literal interpretation, this would be a story about God killing thousands of people in order to save others whom He was more partial towards. But this isn’t what the story is about. At a spiritual level, the story is about God’s conquest, not over individual humans behaving badly, but it is about God’s victory over the very forces of evil themselves, which Pharaoh and his army came to embody. Frankly I’m not as interested in the historical plausibility of this event, as I am about what it teaches us about the nature of God and God’s will for us. While I’m not saying that the parting of the Red Sea is just an outdated myth, I am suggesting that stories don’t need to have literally happened for them to be true. And the truth of this story is that God loves us too much to let evil overtake us.
So what about our valiant heroes, the Israelites? It’s their upstanding moral fortitude and unwavering faith in God that saves them isn’t it? Let’s take a closer look. In the verses just preceding where we find them cornered between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea, the Israelites cry out cynically to God, saying “was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness?” (Ex. 14:11), which is a pretty clever retort if you ask me. Then, in the next verse, they tell God that “it would have been better to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness” (14:12). And who can blame them? They believed in this moment, as most of us have at some point, that God had abandoned them. We find them not as heroic beacons of faith, but as fragile human beings who act as humans do when we are scared and cornered.
You see, there’s a curious thing that can easily go overlooked in this story. The way that God led the Israelites out of Egypt in the first place was by appearing as a giant pillar of clouds and fire that they could see with their eyes as a clear sign of God’s presence leading them to safety. Then, the text tells us that when they reached the Red Sea – the pinnacle of their crisis – the cloud of the Lord then moved “from in front of them and took its place behind them,” where they could presumably no longer see or feel God’s presence with them (14:19). Moments of deep crisis in our lives have a tendency to obscure our sense of God being truly with us.
But little did the Israelites know, the cloud representing God protecting them had moved between them and Pharaoh’s army – the threat of evil and destruction that loomed behind them. God never ceased to remain with them and to protect them, even though God’s presence was obscured from their eyes. So too with each of you. If you believe, as I do, that this story is not actually about the Israelites, or about the Egyptians, or about us, but it is about God’s unrelenting faithfulness to us to protect and deliver us from the powers of darkness, then we too can and should find assurance that God is with us in every trial that befalls us.
God is with us most strongly when we ourselves are not strong enough to sense His presence. The story of God’s deliverance of the Israelites from the Egyptians hearkens to God’s deliverance of the whole world from the grip of evil, which was overcome once and for all by the cross of Christ and the empty tomb. Christ Jesus took the consequences of sin and evil for the oppressed, for the oppressor, and for all of us who stand somewhere in between. God is faithful to us even when our faith is greatly shaken, and as we pass through darkness to move into light, God is behind us, and in front of us, and within us.
So as we gather to celebrate God’s faithfulness to us in the Eucharist and at our joyful parish picnic today, let us sing to the Lord as Moses did, for God is with us and “God has greatly triumphed” (15:1). Amen.
Last Saturday, thousands of people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. They came together to pay tribute to the landmark civil rights event in 1963 where the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King gave his “I Have a Dream” speech. They also came to stand against all of the current threats to the racial progress that we have made in this country over the last 60 years. Just as last Saturday’s March on Washington was ending, a young white man walked into a Dollar General store in a predominately Black neighborhood in Jacksonville, Florida and killed 3 African Americans, 19 year old "AJ" Laguerre Jr., 29 year old Jerrald Gallion, and 52 year old Angela Carr. How utterly heartbreaking. The chasm between God’s dream for us and how things really are is so very great.
Good morning. For those who don’t know me, my name is Josh House, and I’ve been at Saint George’s for about 8 years. I’m also honored to say that I’m the most recent member of Saint George’s to be sponsored for ordination as a priest and to be sent to seminary.
This week I have been busy preparing so that everything is in order once I return from my wedding in two weeks. As I sat down to begin working on my sermon for this Sunday, I was hoping that the lectionary would throw me a soft ball that would help me in this task. Something nice and pleasant that I could maybe tie into love or nuptials, or going back to school, or these lovely days of late summer.
However, as we have just heard from the lips of our Lord, this optimistic wish of mine was not granted. Instead we receive today one of the most difficult and baffling passages in all of the Gospels. Let’s quickly revisit what was just proclaimed.
t has been heartbreaking to see and hear about the devastation in Maui this week in the aftermath of the wildfires that were sparked on Tuesday night. One man described the scene as a huge blowtorch blazing through his neighborhood at unimaginable speed. The beautiful, historic town of Lahaina, which was the capitol of the Kingdom of Hawai’i, is a wasteland. The remains of over 93 people have been found as of this morning and approximately 1,200 buildings have been burned to the ground. One of those buildings was Holy Innocents Episcopal Church, which had been there since 1927. It had a gorgeous painting of a Native Hawaiian Kanaka Madonna holding the Christchild. The Anglican Church, of which we are a part, has an interesting history in Hawai’i. Hawaiian King Kamehameha IV and his wife, Queen Emma, were Anglican. They invited the Church of England to establish the Church of Hawaiʻi, which was the state and national church of the Kingdom of Hawaiʻi from 1862 until 1893, when the Hawaiian monarchy was overthrown.
’m still getting used to the range of responses one gets while wearing a clerical collar in public. The other day while meeting a parishioner at a coffee shop I met a young woman working behind the cash register. As I gave her my order, I could tell that she was eyeballing me with the semi-perplexed look which I have come to recognize as the precursor to a question or exclamation about my clerical status. I simply smiled back and handed her my credit card, and after she returned it she beamed back at me and said: “that’s a really cool uniform; which restaurant do you work at?”
Our passage from Romans today is one of my absolute favorites. I have preached on it a number of times, usually at funerals, most memorably, my father’s. It seemed especially fitting for his service since I had heard him preach on it so often. He was a Baptist pastor and I still have a vivid picture in my mind’s eye of him standing in the pulpit, holding his Bible in his right hand, and giving witness to his faith in a very impassioned way. He never met a passage from one of Paul’s letters that he didn’t love.
Many of you probably know by now that I am hopelessly in love. Sure, with my wonderful fiancée Winnie, she is lovely and perfectly winsome and if I’m honest, probably not quite as lucky to be marrying me as I am to be marrying her. But that’s not what I am talking about. In addition to her, there’s something else that is wholly enrapturing to me and always has been. Something magnificent and arresting, something beautiful and fearsome, something strange and serene that compels me to drive three to five hours away nearly every weekend this time of year, just to catch a glimpse of it. I am in love with the ocean. Far more than leisure or the chance to work on my tan, being in that place where the land meets the sea is the closest I have found to the boundary between heaven and earth.
God said to Abraham: “Take your son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains that I shall show you.”
Let’s just pause for a moment to take in the gravity of these words we have heard. The words we have just proclaimed “Thanks be to God” after hearing. God – the God of love; the God who granted Abraham and Sarah a miraculous son, Isaac, in their old age; the God who promised to make a great nation of Abraham, whose children will be “as numerous as the stars in heaven,” has now commanded Abraham to commit filicide, to kill his promised son.
This past week I had the real joy of spending time with four remarkable young men from our parish, JS Wilson, Nicholas Lowe, Sam Arny, and Nick West – and two multitalented chaperone-extraordinaires, Parks Gilbert and Matt West, on a service trip to Appalachia in a tiny mountain town that was incidentally called Appalachia located the westernmost part of Virginia, but not West Virginia. We were in the mountains. Each day we rose early in the morning and shared a brief devotion with our fellow service trippers before setting off for a shady holler where we spent the day rebuilding a rotted out floor for an incredibly hospitable older couple who had lived nearly their entire lives beneath the coal mine above us where the husband had once worked.
Saint George’s is on the move, out and about in a major way during the month of June. And that is happening in at least three different ways.
Good morning St. George’s! I am so overjoyed to be with you this morning as your new associate rector and I can’t express how grateful I am that you called me. It’s really a tremendous gift to be called to a community that is as vibrant, faithful, and downright fun as this one is, and to be honest it makes me feel a little spoiled, especially after hearing some of the call narratives in today’s lections, which I’ll touch on later. But first, I wanted to give you an update on something remarkable that happened in my life since I last saw you, and that of course is getting ordained as a deacon at the Cathedral in Boston last week. In this ordination ceremony I entered the church as a lay person, the bishop laid hands on me and called down the Holy Spirit, and I left the church, ordained as a deacon. So what exactly does that mean, being a deacon?
“Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness”…
So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them.”
It is wonderful to be back with you this morning! All sorts of great things went on while I was away this past month, thanks to RevMo Crystal, our amazing staff and our extraordinary lay leaders. We really are especially blessed that everyone at Saint George’s is so invested in their ministries. God has graced us with a special charism, a particular gift for people working together for the good of the whole. And it all comes down to relationships.
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on the Day of Pentecost (A), May 28, 2023.
Acts 2:1-21, 1 Corinthians 12:3b-13; John 20:19-23
The Day of Pentecost places the Holy Spirit front and center. That third person of the Blessed Trinity, alongside the Father and the Son, is, perhaps, the most mysterious, the most provocative, and the most elusive of the three.
And yet, we receive hints as to the Holy Spirit’s whereabouts, movement, and power as we move through Holy Scripture. There is the sense, for those looking, that she is right there behind and a part of the action and yet unable to be fully grasped or articulated.
C.S. Lewis, in his beloved Chronicles of Narnia, [1] respects these aspects of the Spirit, writing her into the narrative in a similar fashion to how she is portrayed in Scripture. The Spirit’s presence is evident, yet she is never named nor addressed. Never in direct communication nor a recipient of the same. She is merely hinted at and, as in Scripture, these hints often come in the form of the elements: particularly air, water, and fire. [2] So, let’s take these in turn.
Air.
First, the Holy Spirit as air.
In Lewis’ the Magician’s Nephew, the creation of Narnia is detailed. As Aslan appoints those creatures selected for rationality and speech, he breathes his warm breath over them as he says: “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters.” [3] In response, the creatures begin to stir. To speak. To claim life.
The very breath of Aslan, the Christ character, has differentiated them from all the rest of creation, giving them reason, free will, and the ability to speak purposefully –to be in relationship with him.
This act of intimacy and immediacy harkens back to the beginning of us all:
Then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being (Gen. 1:26, 2:7).
In the Bible, the words for wind or breath consistently translate as Spirit. In Genesis, the very Spirit of God is breathed into each of us, bringing us to blessed life in a manner consistent with our relationship with God: intimate and intermingled.
“Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.” When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (John 20:21-23).
The Holy Spirit as air, as breath, is life-giving, life-provoking, and life-sustaining. She is gentle, intimate, as close to us as our own breath. And she is powerful, immense, as far from us as the beginning of time itself.
When God began to create the heavens and the earth [we are told that] the earth was complete chaos, and darkness covered the face of the deep, while a wind from God swept over the face of the waters (Gen. 1:1-2).
The Holy Spirit makes the earliest of appearances. Her form here is wind, and her presence is sweeping over the primordial waters at the very moment of creation. As wild and wonderful wind, she participates in the making and the unmaking of the world. She shapes and guides, pushes and pulls. She heralds the coming of all things new even as she participates in their becoming.
And on the day of Pentecost, suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting (Acts 2:1-4).
Violent wind or quiet breath, the impact of the Holy Spirit is adrenaline, anticipation, and abundant life.
Water.
The Holy Spirit is also known in water. Like air, water is essential. Christ speaks of living water time and again, and it is the presence of the Spirit that animates that water and brings it to life.
The Holy Spirit as water flows through us, flows through our veins, flows through our world, cleansing and refreshing, even as it carves a path through this life to the very heart of God. We know this best in Baptism, where we are anointed as God’s own and drawn into the eternal life of the Holy Trinity. And we know this at Pentecost, where the Spirit, like water, is poured out upon all flesh. We are called to drink deeply.
In the words of one author, “just as a glass filled with water leaves room for little else, the water being in full possession of the glass, when we are filled with the Spirit, we give her full possession of our lives.” [4]
For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body . . . and we were all made to drink of one Spirit (1 Cor. 12:13).
Fire.
The Holy Spirit is also known in fire. Perhaps one of the best-known accounts is of Moses and the burning bush: There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up (Ex. 3:2).
The Holy Spirit also descended upon the tabernacle of the Israelites as smoke and fire during their Exodus. For the cloud of the Lord was on the tabernacle by day, and fire was in the cloud by night (Ex. 40:38).
And, of course, wind and fire join one another spectacularly in Acts at the descent of the Holy Spirit: as the sound of the rush of a mighty wind filled the house there then appeared among them divided tongues, as of fire, resting on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:3).
Again, C.S. Lewis calls to attention the essence of this event in The Magician’s Nephew. After Aslan, the Lion, breathed on those creatures chosen by God, it reads, “There came a swift flash like fire (but it burnt nobody) either from the sky or from the Lion itself.” [5]
In the words of Cathy Michell:
The elemental power, glory, and beauty of fire –yes and its holy danger too –is one with the nature of God himself. The Spirit is not only God’s breath upon us, God’s living water pouring down into our hearts, it’s the fire of his energies, passion, love and desire, burning within us. [6]
Breath and fire. Wind and water. Through these familiar elements the Holy Spirit is seen and realized. Through these familiar elements the Holy Spirit is gifted to us. Bearing this Spirit is the purpose for which we were created.
Air. Wind. Fire.
And Earth. We are that final element. Earth. Made of dust and becoming living beings, fully alive, only when the Holy Spirit, clothed in air, wind, and fire rests upon us, settles within us, and fills us with life eternal.
C.S. Lewis imbibed his Narnia with this Spirit, not just in The Magician’s Nephew, but throughout his acclaimed series. In Narnia, the Spirit strengthens, gives courage, protects, reinvigorates, motivates, and brings new life. Just as the Holy Spirit, working in this world, does the same.
And yet, the Spirit in Narnia remains mysterious, glimpsed only in metaphor, felt only in action before eluding us once again. Why? Because C.S. Lewis believed that the nature of the Holy Spirit was to remain invisible and mysterious. For the Holy Spirit is the aspect of God,” [7] the Christ.
Scripture tells us that the Holy Spirit lives in us, just as Christ lives in us. The Holy Spirit points to Christ, glorying and magnifying, even as it overwhelms, invades, animates, soothes, and succors our own spirits. As air, wind, and water she is made familiar to us and yet cannot be fully grasped by us.
So, if you still have trouble characterizing this Holy Spirit, pinning her down, naming her once and for all, well, perhaps that’s as it should be.
Thomas Williams, a Lewis scholar, writes:
Just as a sentient, two-dimensional paper doll would be unable to visualize existence in three dimensions, we three-dimensional creatures are unable to visualize existence in the multiple dimensions of God. No doubt that is why he simplifies his nature for us by presenting himself in the singular as the one, true God. It’s as if he’s saying, “Don’t waste mental energy trying to figure out the complexities of my triune nature. Just address me as God.” We need not worry about how God works in us as long as we recognize that he works in us. God is to us as the sea is to fish. Just as the sea is not only outside but also inside the fish, God’s Holy Spirit both surrounds us and permeates us. She is our environment and our life. As the Apostle Paul told the Athenians, in him we live and move and have our being.
So, come, Holy Spirit. Come like breath in the lungs raising us to life. Come like a rush of wind silencing our distractions. Come like water, washing us clean, filling us with life eternal. Come like fire, convicting, converting, and consecrating the hearts of your people, dust made living, to our great good and to your great glory. Amen.
[1] Grateful for Thomas Williams’ reflections on C.S. Lewis, Narnia, and the Holy Spirit which inspired parts of this sermon and can be found here: https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=32-06-042-f&readcode=&readtherest=true#therest.
[2] Grateful for Malcom Guite’s lovely book, Sounding the Seasons (sonnets for the church year), and his exploration of Pentecost and the elements, which influenced this sermon: https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/tag/pentecost-poem/
[3] C.S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew (New York: HarperTrophy, 1983).
[4] Thomas A. Tarrants, “Finding Power to Live a New Life: Discipleship and the Holy Spirit,” C.S. Lewis Institute, 4 March 2012, link here.
[5] Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew.
[6] Cathy Michell, “Meditation on Malcolm’s Poem: Pentecost,” https://malcolmguite.wordpress.com/2021/05/22/our-mother-tongue-is-love-a-sonnet-for-pentecost-9/
[7] Thomas Williams, “The Breath of the Lion,” Touchstone Magazine, November/December 2019, https://www.touchstonemag.com/archives/article.php?id=32-06-042-f&readcode=&readtherest=true.
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Seventh Sunday of Easter (A), May 21, 2023, Youth Sunday.
Acts 1:6-14; 1 Peter 4:12-14; 5:6-11; John 17:1-11
This is the last Sunday in the Easter Season. We have come to that point in the Book of Acts where our Lord is lifted up and out of sight, leaving the apostles standing, necks craned back, and eyes trained on the heavens. We have come to that point in First Peter where final words are offered. And, we have come to that point in Saint John’s Gospel where Jesus, speaking to the Father, reflects, that the hour has come.
Next Sunday is Pentecost, a new liturgical season, and yet we remain aware that something significant is happening now –a changing landscape, tender farewells, and a sense of the unknown waiting for us right around the corner.
We are also at that point together, as a society and as a parish community, where our lives reflect the patterns of our lectionary and our liturgical calendar. Spring is still springing, but summer quickly approaches. Baby birds are leaving their nests. School is wrapping up. Graduations are celebrated. And here, within our parish community, we mark the last Sunday of Sunday school, celebrate our high school graduates, and approach the end of our program year.
Unlike other notable Spring happenings, like graduations, the Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord can often pass without much notice since it falls on a Thursday. In fact, it just happened.
For forty days after his resurrection, Jesus continued to teach his disciples and carried on his work here on earth. And then, one day, he was done, and he returned to the Father.
Jesus leaves his disciples to continue his work, to embody and proclaim the Gospel without Jesus in the flesh. They have been guided and they have been taught. Now, the disciples are apostles. They must guide. They must teach. In the words of Dr. Suess, “Today is their day, they are off and away.”
But, for a minute, they weren’t. They just stood there, looking up into the heavens, frozen.
Maybe it’s the parent in me that imagines they were gripped by that certain kind of panic that comes with feeling alone and out of your depth. Like when it’s time to leave the hospital with your new baby, this precious thing, and you realize that you’re on your own now. I remember thinking, “What am I supposed to do with this thing?”
Or maybe like when it’s time to drop that same new baby off at college, and you are left wondering how all this happened so fast and what even are you meant to do now, just drive away, and live your life?
It doesn’t take being a parent, of course, to know this feeling of being completely out of your depth, unfamiliar with life’s landscape and yet called to move forward anyway. I imagine that many people have felt this kind of panic. So, we can sympathize with the apostles at this moment. Their lives have changed. The world as they once knew it has ended. And yet, we know that an end is nothing more than a new beginning, particularly for those who follow the Risen Lord.
As some of you know, I am an avid reader of commencement addresses. I guess I’m curious as to what people want and need to hear at these times in their lives. Commencement ceremonies are, of course, the culmination of a journey. And yet, commencement literally means, “to begin.” Good commencement addresses speak into this robust middle space –looking back and honoring an accomplishment, while also offering forward-looking advice and words of wisdom.
The best of them seem to grasp that these transitional moments require speaking the truth – speaking to what is and what will always be. They remind us of who we are and who we can be; what the world can be with us in it. These, truly, bless us. They don’t hesitate to speak of what may befall us. They don’t ring of platitudes. They don’t promise us fame, or fortune, or other trappings of worldly success. Instead, they gather the human experience into their hands and bestow upon it a blessing.
Margaret Renkl, an author of the Southern persuasion and a fellow Alabamian, recently delivered such an address at the University of the South, which was adapted and shared as an essay in the New York Times this week.
She begins by speaking of her own graduation and her attempts to skip it, which her grandmother, a retired schoolteacher, refused to allow. She writes:
What my grandmother knew, and I did not, is that it’s right to celebrate a hard-won achievement. It’s right to drink in the pride of family and friends. It is always right to give yourself over to joy every single time joy is on offer.
[Renkl continues] It is also right in this liminal moment, this time of looking both before and beyond, to ponder what it all means. What did the year of study and camaraderie really add up to? What new challenges will you be obliged to face in the years to come?
I can’t tell you what it all meant, [she goes on] but I think I understand some of the difficulties that lie ahead [1].
She then acknowledges the various ills that plague us and, frankly, that we ourselves perpetuate –climate change, the isolating impact of social media, political polarization, attacks on civil rights, economic instability, gun violence, and the like. Things that we’d love to shield our children from, and yet things that our children must face head-on. Things that are, unfortunately, the legacy left to them by former generations, mine included.
Renkl writes:
I wouldn’t blame you if you’re wondering how somebody of my generation, which wrecked so much that is precious, could dare to offer you advice. My only response is that age has exactly one advantage over the energy and brilliance of youth: Age teaches a person how to survive despair.
The years have shown me that hardship is only one part of life, not remotely the largest part. Hardship always lives side by side with happiness. Pain always finds its fullest partner in joy. Love takes many forms, some of them surprising, and people are almost always kinder than we expect. The world is beautiful. And most people are good [2].
Her words are not just for graduates of course, but for us all. Because we are always presented with the chance to begin again; to shed our skin, to go a new way, or to re-commit to our present path. And what we choose, or do not choose, has everything to do with how we move through the trials and tribulations of this life.
Last week I preached on hope. How do we claim a certain hope, defend a sure hope, when things are so very wrong in the world? The answer has a lot to do with perspective, sure. We can look at things with more optimism, put on rosier glasses. Or we can look the world straight in the eye, see rightly all the beauty and all the ugliness, so that we might claim what is good and fall in love with it, while rejecting what is not. And, because we have fallen in love with what is good, we can then work with our whole hearts to make change where it is needed –knowing always that our Lord, Jesus Christ, goes ahead of us. And that where he goes, redemption follows.
The world is beautiful. Most people are good.
Remembering this is not only an antidote to despair, but also fuel for the journey. Very little comes from despair; everything comes from good people, in love with the world, banding together to create change where change is needed and to preserve beauty where it should be preserved [3].
Jesus, in his last act before his ascension and with his last words on the eve of his passion, bestowed a blessing and said a prayer. It was, if you will, the culmination of his commencement speech.
You have everything you need in this moment, he seems to say. And what you don’t have but will need in the future will be provided. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, he promises. So, keep your eyes open. Keep your heads up. Keep your hearts faithful. And don’t be fooled into thinking you are any less than this: my beloved.
That’s the thing to remember, isn’t it? That’s worth a bit of a pause. That’s where, as Christians, our own commencement must always begin and end and begin again.
Beloved child of God, this is the only grace I know to be true, a grace that cannot be taken from us: that we, each and every one of us, sit in the very palm of God, born for a time such as this.
We can accomplish much or little by this world’s standards. We can graduate or not from reputable institutions. We may be loved or rejected by friends and family. But we are, now and forevermore, God’s own.
The world is beautiful. Most people are good.
On this the last Sunday of Easter, the Sunday between the Ascension of our Lord and Pentecost, let us pause and make room for the Holy Spirit, taking stock of who we are, and whose we are, before we begin again.
Amen.
[1 -3] Margaret Renal, “Graduates, My Generation Wrecked So Much That’s Precious. How Can I Offer You Advice?,” New York Times, 15 May 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/opinion/letter-to-graduates-hope-despair.html?searchResultPosition=1.
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Sixth Sunday of Easter (A), May 14, 2023.
Acts 17:22-31; 1 Peter 3:13-22; John 14:15-21
Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence (1 Peter 3:16)
This Sunday, we are called to a very specific task by Peter: that we always be ready to defend the hope that is within us.
The hope that is within us.
So, without further ado, I ask you this: are you ready? Are you ready to defend the hope that is in you?
If I were still a Baptist, and a Baptist preacher at that, I’d let that question sit for a minute –they can do that, you see, because they have a lot longer in the pulpit before people start getting antsy.
But really, are you ready?
As Christians, we should have a certain hope –a sure hope- one that depends not upon circumstance but upon our faith in a resurrected Lord. And we should, at all times and in all places, be ready to witness to that hope in word and in deed.
And so, I ask, are you ready?
Perhaps the first thing to do is to define this hope of which Peter speaks. Because hope is an oft-used word in our society, and yet not all hope is created equal.
We often use the word hope to express our desire that something happen in the way we wish it would –even if we don’t have much certainty that it will.
I hope this train leaves on time.
I hope that I get this job.
I hope it isn’t cancer.
All reasonable desires, of course, but not the Christian hope that I believe Peter speaks of. Desire is not necessarily hope.
Hope is often conflated with optimism. Also, not the same thing.
I don’t know if any of you read the New York Times “Modern Love” column, but there was a story several years ago that stuck with me. It was an article by Jenny Dolan about her diagnosis and her parents’ reaction.
Dolan writes, “Raised on Stephen Covey’s ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Successful People’ and ‘The Secret,’ I thought anything was possible. Becoming a child star, finding true love, even finishing Ulysses. Then, when I was 26, I couldn’t stop coughing.”
For years, doctors searched for an answer. Finally, after Dolan coughed up blood, a CT scan revealed that she had Cystic Fibrosis, an incurable lung disease.
At first, I didn’t make a big deal about my disease, she writes, because I didn’t want to scare my parents. As I learned more about it, though, I began to think they weren't scared enough. My parents were like balloons that wouldn’t pop.
“They’ll be a cure,” my mother told me over the phone.
“You don’t know that” I said.
“Yes, I do.”
To get my parents to face reality, I started quoting passages from a book about Cystic Fibrosis that said 85 percent of patients eventually acquire a bacteria and die.
“But maybe you’ll be the 15 percent who doesn’t get it,” my father said.
“Why worry about something that hasn’t happened yet?” my mother said.
“We just want you to have hope,” they said.
Their relentless hopefulness wasn’t inspiring. It was annoying, she continues. When I couldn’t get a job after graduate school, my mother said, “Why don’t you ask the universe for a job?”
“The universe gave me Cystic Fibrosis,” I said. [1]
Hope is not optimism. Hope is a different thing entirely. When things are at their darkest and most desperate, optimism on its own just will not do. It relies too much on our own resources, our own ability to save ourselves (which, ultimately, we just cannot do –and trust me, I’m as upset about this as anyone).
Optimism may look like hope or even speak of hope, but to speak of hope while refusing to meet squarely the reality of a situation –however hopeless it may seem –can be intolerable. Understandable, certainly, but intolerable just the same. Under these circumstances, optimism can rob us of the opportunity for something deeper and something far more powerful: a hope that connects us and sustains us –no matter what trials and tribulations we, or those we love, may face.
So, if not desire nor optimism, what is this hope of which Peter speaks?
Our Catechism –or Outline of the Faith- as found in the Book of Common Prayer beginning at page 845, defines the Christian hope in this way:
The Christian hope is to live with confidence in newness and fullness of life, and to await the coming of Christ in glory, and the completion of God’s purpose for the world (BCP 861).
Or put more simply: God has each of us, now and always.
And it reminds us that the sacraments –among those the bread and the wine that we share – sustain our present hope and anticipate its future fulfillment.
To look to Scripture is to see a similar definition of hope, one rooted in God’s promises and relationship with us.
And this hope is the food that we so desperately hunger for –the reason for all our false hopes, misguided hopes, misplaced hopes. Human beings desperately hope for and yet often do not hope with a certain assurance of God’s provision.
And yet Scripture meets our anxiety over what is unknown and our desperation for meaning beyond our present circumstances head on.
For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope. This from the prophet Jeremiah (21:11).
Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints. Ephesians. (1:18).
For to this end we toil and strive, because we have our hope set on the living God, who is the savior of all people. First Timothy (4:10).
And one of my favorites: I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word, I hope. Psalm 130 (verse 5).
This is the hope of which Peter speaks, Peter who writes to a community going through tremendous trials –a people at risk of losing hope altogether. Not only does Peter assure them that their hope is rightly placed in Jesus, but he calls them to rejoice in this hope –even amid their present hardship. Because this hope to which they are called is a living hope –one that is true and always worth our defense.
And so, I ask, are you ready? Are you ready to defend the hope that is within you?
Barbara Kingsolver, in her novel Animal Dreams, writes:
The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.
The Christian hope is not one of passive optimism, no matter how well-meaning. The Christian hope is and should be a motive force for right relationship and rightful action. We are meant to live under its roof.
For Jenny Dolan, the diagnosis of Cystic Fibrosis was devastating; and the gap between that devastation and her parents’ optimism deeply grieved her. Their connection, their ability to find common ground in the love they shared, suffered.
Dolan thought constantly about how to pierce her parent’s shield of optimism. She writes:
One day, I broke: “Why is the present moment never good enough,’ I asked my mother. Why do things always have to be better? Why can’t you accept how things are now?”
Dolan reports, “Months later, in an act not of defeat but of love, my mother threw away her affirmation cards. They had said things like: “All is well in my world.” And, now they were trash, with the moldy fruit and remnants from a tuna can.
In the end, the facts remained the same. Dolan had cystic fibrosis, and the severity of the diagnosis, one commentator writes, “was no match for the optimism needed to deny her sadness. Finally, Jenny was able to confront the [pain] of her parents’ optimism, and it was only then that a new perspective could be heard. The shield of positive thinking fell. And something [more promising] —hope—came in its place.”
My friends, hope has a name. This we know. And that name is Jesus. Jesus whose life births hope, whose death secured hope, and in whose resurrection a sure and certain hope is claimed once and for all.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus leaves us with these words: I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you (John 14:18).
This promise is the grounding of our hope. It is what allows us to move through this world, one faithful step at a time, not in reliance on ourselves or on our present circumstances, but on God. And it is what deeply connects us, in love, to one another –fellow sojourners in our lives of faith –come what may.
Of course, this is not a hope that promises that our desires will be met, nor does it allow us the type of control our optimism might. But it is a certain hope, one worthy of defense. Because it rests in the knowledge that nothing, not even death, shall separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord (BCP 862).
So, what say you? Are you ready to defend the hope that is in you?
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/22/style/modern-love-face-it-im-not-special.html.[2]
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Fifth Sunday of Easter (A), May 7, 2023.
Acts 7:55-60; Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16; 1 Peter 2:2-10; John 14:1-14
This morning, we are treated to a small part of what is commonly referred to as “the farewell discourse” in the Gospel of John. Context is always important, and it is especially important here. The cross is looming, and the time has come for last words and last things.
Jesus draws those around him close, those faithful disciples who have struggled, followed, loved, risked, lived with Jesus. He draws them close, knowing that he is going to be arrested and put to death, and he says to them, in a few different ways: Soon I won’t be with you anymore. Soon you’ll look for me but won’t see me. Soon you’ll reach for me but won’t find me. Not in the ways that you’ve come to expect.
He seems to say, soon you may be angry. Disappointed. Confused. Discouraged. Isolated. Disbelieving. Afraid. Despairing. Hopeless.
Soon, you will grieve.
Jesus seems to acknowledge all of this –the complexity of emotions that will stir in the disciples’ hearts, minds, and bodies (that are already stirring) –acknowledging those realities and speaking to them a word of comfort, hope, and certainty:
Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me (John 14:1).
Jesus draws those around him close, those faithful disciples, and us. Me. And you. These words are for our ears –our hearts—too. And with all that is happening in the world around us, we need them desperately.
Reports out of Allen, Texas of another mass shooting. At least nine dead in the second-deadliest shooting of the year. This is the 199-mass shooting of 2023. So many. Tragedy upon tragedy, they’ve become expected –the shock and pain dulled by familiarity. And yet, we know that each individual child of God is loss grieved by our God –grieved as if he, she, they are the one and only.
In our grief, fear, confusion, apathy, outrage, indifference Jesus draws us close and says:
Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
My heart is troubled. I bet some of your hearts are troubled. What are we make of this?
Looking to the disciples’ responses, Jesus’ words raise questions. His directive, Let not your hearts be troubled, made in no uncertain terms, does not, as it turns out, instantly un-trouble any hearts. So we are not alone.
If we look back just a few verses before where this morning’s Gospel begins, we get Simon Peter asking:
Lord, where are you going, and can I come?And Jesus says, Where I am going you cannot follow (John 13:36).
But, Let not your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.
Thomas, dear Thomas, then speaks up:
Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way? And Jesus says, You know the way. I am the way.
And Philip, not long after:
Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.And Jesus says, You have seen the father; I am in him and he is in me (John 14:8-10).
Let not your hearts be troubled.
There are certain times in our lives -both individual and collective- where we are forced to confront the myth of certainty that pervades the human experience.
The myth of certainty:
The idea that we can know what lies ahead of us at any point in our lives.
The idea that we can control what happens next.
The idea that we are in the know about anything and everything.
The myth of certainty is a close cousin, of course, to our obsession with power and our comfort with control.
I was speaking with a parishioner in the very early days of the pandemic. We were talking about this very thing – not knowing what was in store for the next few months. And as so often happens in these conversations, I found myself on the receiving end of a very astute and deeply faithful observation: “Well,” my conversation partner said, “we don’t ever really know what the future holds for us. Do we? We think we know. We want to believe we know. But we don’t know what will happen, even tomorrow, even in so-called normal times.”
The myth of certainty. It is only a myth, after all. The global pandemic certainly pulled back the curtain, so to speak, giving us a glimpse of the truth. And yet, our desperation to shore up what we know, to get more information, to put our anxieties to rest, to predict and to plan and to plead was also on full display.
Incessant acts of gun violence undermine our so-called certainty and self-reliance even further, chipping away at any attempt we may make to hunker down in a safety or serenity of our own making.
Where are you going and can I come?
How do I know the way?
Can I see? Can you show me more?
Thomas Merton’s, The Wisdom of the Desert, is a collection of early monastic stories. There is one story that I’d like to share. It goes like this:
Some elders once came to Abbot Anthony, and there was with them also Abbot Joseph. Wishing to test them, Abbot Anthony brought the conversation around to Holy Scriptures. And he began from the youngest to ask them the meaning of this or that text. Each one replied as best he could, but Abbot Anthony said to them: ‘You have not got it yet.’ After them all he asked Abbot Joseph: ‘What about you? What do you say the text means?’ Abbot Joseph replied: “I know not.” Then Abbot Anthony said, “Truly Abbot Joseph alone has found the way, for he replies that he knows not.” [1]
That is the truth of it, isn’t it: We know not. We want to know. We need to know. But we know not.
Like Peter, Thomas, and Philip, we issue our questions and seek a certainty that makes sense to us – one that we can use to plan and to act. We are, after all, only human. And planning and acting is necessary in this world. And yet, what we crave, what we long for, the source and substance of our true craving, is something else entirely. It is for the presence and healing love of God found in Jesus Christ himself, pure, spiritual milk.
Jesus who knows our human failings and limitations. Jesus who foresees our grief, who tolerates our questions, who loves us to the end. Jesus who first goes to prepare a place for us and then will return, taking us by the hand, so that where he is we may be also.
We are invited in our uncertainty and even our fear to look and to seek in ways we might not have before. To notice how God is always doing a new thing. To recognize how our need for certainty, our sometimes too swift reactions to uncertain situations, can cause us to overlook the many ways God meets us in the in between, in the not yet, in the not now. What can feel like chaos to us can be the raw ingredients of God’s creating.
So while I am very glad indeed that we have moved through the worst of the pandemic, I also call attention to one gift of that time: our confrontation with uncertainty and God’s work within it and within us. And I hope that as we continue to navigate this uncertain world, that we grasp tightly the only thing that can be known with certainty: our Lord Jesus who is the way, the truth, and the life.
Friends, it remains Easter. And yet we are this morning reminded of Jesus’ farewell discourse. Of last words. Last things. Because even where the resurrection truth is known and celebrated, our lives are still marked by human limitation and fragility as we are reminded today by the news out of Texas and everyday by the event of our world. We, a people who know not, will always seek to know it all. But here is the good news. By the Grace of God, we follow a Jesus who knows all and asks only that we know him, taking the next faithful step forward in love –faith in action.
[1] Thomas Merton, “The Wisdom of the Desert: Sayings of the Desert Fathers of the Fourth Century” (New Directions, 1970), LXXXVIII.
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Fourth Sunday of Easter, April 30, 2023.
Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 2:19-25; Psalm 23; John 10:1-10
Bach. Duke Ellington. Mahalia Jackson. Coolio. Schubert. The Grateful Dead. Pink Floyd. Bernstein. Eminem. Megadeth.
Believe it or not, these composers and musicians have something in common beyond being composers and musicians of course. All have alluded to Psalm 23 in their work.
Psalm 23 –sort of big deal: a cultural icon, if you will.
President Bush recited part of Psalm 23 when he addressed the nation after 9/11. In Titanic, the priest recites Psalm 23 as the ship goes down. And we see a slightly amended Psalm 23 prayed by a young woman in the Clint Eastwood classic, “Pale Rider.”
In the movie Pale Rider, impoverished prospectors form a small community that is later attacked by horseman working for a wealthy landowner. In the attack, a young woman’s dog is killed.
Burying her beloved dog, the young woman, Megan, recites a slightly annotated version of Psalm 23.
The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . . But I do want.
He leads me beside still waters . . . But they killed my dog.
I will fear no evil . . . But I am afraid. We need a miracle.
I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever . . . If you exist. But I want to experience this life first. But if you don’t help, we’re all going to die. Please help? Amen.
Megan reminds us that Psalm 23 is, at its roots, prayer. A prayer by us and for us, a prayer that joins a great cloud of witnesses –those who came before us and those who surround us now. All the psalms are an invitation to pray, just as they are an invitation to sing.
Sam Candler, Dean of the Cathedral in Atlanta, notes that:
The psalms have long been the church’s poetry and hymnody. They speak to us in a way that theology and narrative do not. They express, not just cerebral and intellectual matters, but the full breadth of human emotion and spirit . . . love and tenderness, revenge and anger, grief and deep mourning, uncertainty and fear [1].
The psalms operate in a unique space, calling us to embrace our messy humanity even while lifting up our eyes to the hills and asking from whence our help will come.
Psalm 23 is a cultural icon, because it is a doorway into large and profound truths about the nature of the human condition and the nature of God in relation to it.
The Lord is my shepherd;
I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures:
he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul:
he leadeth me into paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil:
for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies:
thou annointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life:
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever (KJV).
Let’s take just a few moments to look closer; to stay with this psalm; and to let it speak to our hearts.
The Lord is my shepherd;
Who is our shepherd? The Lord. The God who knows us, who seeks us, who holds us, who cares deeply for us. God who became flesh and dwelt among us; God who is with us still.
And this God, well, he is willing to get his hands dirty with us –to become intertwined in the human condition, messy and fragile as it may be.
In the words of our collect for this morning: O God, whose Son Jesus is the good shepherd of your people: Grant that when we hear his voice we may know him who calls us each by name, and follow where he leads (BCP 225).
I shall not want.
This could be rendered, “I have no lack.” It is a certain statement, dependent and assured of that which it follows: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. This God of ours, this God is everything. He is really all one needs. We can trust that, in the end, no matter what we face, God is for us. And God is with us.
We are but sheep, and yet the shepherd shows extravagant care.
And if we stray too far away, the shepherd will seek until he finds us. And we will be once again at home.
Amid chaos, when danger looms large and fear threatens to consume us, God offers a haven, he maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
Amid loss, when grief looms large and threatens to consume us, God offers a place of restoration, he maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
Amid our daily lives, when business, consumption, and a need for power and control threaten to overwhelm us, God offers a place of rest, he maketh me to life down in green pastures.
These green pastures are a place of plenty. A place of hope. A place that reminds us of an eternal truth: that God wishes for us all to have life, and to have life abundant.
God longs for us to rest our minds and our bodies; to breathe deeply and surely; to know that we are being held in the arms of the one who calls us beloved; he leadeth me beside still waters. He restoreth my soul.
Friends, our current times can easily lead to soul-weariness. We long for certainty; and are confronted by the unknown. We long for safety and are confronted by a world that often lacks stability. We long for control and are confronted by our own limitations. Our souls rightly grow weary. And yet, there is the promise of restoration.
Theologian Samuel Wells puts the promise like this:
You’ll get worn out, you’ll get worn down, you’ll have nothing left, but God will bring you back to life.
The feeling of coming back to life is really better than the feeling of not getting tired, [he notes.] Think about seeing an old friend after an absence and realizing they’re the person above all who makes you laugh until you’re hollowed out inside, and in the laughter recognizing, "Life is so good with I'm with you." God is that person. God whispers to each of us, “I want to restore your soul.” [2]
And after restoration, what then?
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
God restores us so that we can walk in the world in right relationship with creation, ourselves, our fellow man, and with God. That’s what righteousness means. And that is what God wants for us –right relationship.
And of course, God knows. God knows that we will return to fear and to doubt. That we will return to worldly distractions. That even when we do everything right, we will still suffer loss, fear, grief, and doubt. Because this is what it means to be human.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. I will fear no evil. For thou art with me.
And there it is, a small yet incredibly consequential word: with. Thou art with me. There is no place that we will go that God will not follow. Wells, once again, puts it best:
God created us because he wanted to be with. God called Israel because he wanted to be with. God came among us in Jesus because he wanted to be with. God comes in our midst in the power of the Holy Spirit because he wants to be with. God saves us because he wants to be with us forever.
You are with me. –It’s at the center of this psalm, it’s at the center of God’s joy, it’s at the center of the Bible, it’s at the center of our faith. It’s at the center of God [3].
God who preparest a table before me in the presence of my enemies.
God’s vision for us and for this world is more wonderful than we might ever fully realize. In God there is immeasurable abundance, and God seeks to share than abundance with us.
This verse seems to suggest a time not yet here –seems to speak eschatologically if you will. There is a future, it promises, where is all is not lost. In fact, everything is gained. A future where we will recognize our shared humanity and stand in unity with one another, the church universal, the Body of Christ. This is what God prepares for us through his abundant grace. My cup runneth over indeed. Grace upon grace.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
Goodness and mercy are of God. Immutable qualities of God that we feel, see, and touch every day in a myriad of ways big and small. In joy and sadness, we are invited to discover anew God’s deep goodness and perfect loving-kindness.
Psalm 23 is a psalm of life. It does not suggest that all will be well in the manner of all things being as we might hope they would be –smooth sailing and without tumult. We know that life is not without hardship. And so does Psalm 23.
Meghan’s annotations are honest in that way. The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want . . . but I do want.
And God knows. Psalm 23 is powerful in that it knows and yet still it promises, “There is more for you; more for us.” That behind the ebb and flow of life there are still waters calling us home –not just when we die, but as we live, each and every day. We are invited to make our home in God.
And I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Amen.
[1] Sam Candler, “A Journey Through Psalm 23,” a sermon preached on 21 April 2013 at the Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta, Georgia, https://www.cathedralatl.org/sermons/a-journey-through-psalm-23.
[2] Samuel Wells, “The Ten Joys,” a sermon preached at Duke University Chapel on 25 April 2010, https://chapel-archives.oit.duke.edu/documents/sermons/April25TheTenJoys.pdf.
[3] Ibid.
A Sermon by the Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on the Third Sunday of Easter, April 23, 2023.
“…When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him…Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road ? …”. Luke 24:13-35
Today is such a blessed day! In just a few minutes, we will baptize, Andrew Perry Keydel and Benjamin Everett Glenn. Andrew is just 5 months old. His mother Elena has been a faithful member of Saint George’s for about 15 years. She has held many key leadership positions, including Senior Warden and Renovation Co-Chair and she is now our Director of Communications. Benjamin is three years old and his parents Jennifer and Darren, and sister Lucy have been at Saint George’s just a few months and they have jumped right in with Catechesis of the Good Shepherd . The Glenns are a Foreign Service family and they are leaving next week to serve at the Hague. It has been a gift to have them and we really hope they will return one day.
The Keydel and Glenn families are a microcosm of Saint George’s. We have members who have been with us for years and years, and intend to be here indefinitely, and we have people who join us for a short while for training or work or graduate school and then move on to the next place. The longtime members provide much-needed stability, continuity and hospitality, and the new people provide new energy and fresh perspectives. We welcome newcomers every Sunday and that is a tremendous blessing. We invite whoever walks through our doors to journey with us, some for a lifetime and some for just a season. We all enter as strangers and we quickly become friends.
In our Gospel story today, some of Jesus’ friends are on a long journey when they are joined by a stranger. It is Easter evening and they are walking along trying to process and come to terms with the harrowing week they have been through. They are enroute from Jerusalem where they have been through the worst week of their lives. They have seen Jesus betrayed, condemned, beaten and mocked and then hung on a cross to die the worst death imaginable. Since then, the disciples have been locked away, grieving Jesus’ death, and terrified that they could meet a similar end because they were his followers. And then several of the women had run to tell them that Jesus had appeared to them and that he was alive. They wanted to believe them, but how could they after all they had witnessed with their own two eyes?
The story of the Road to Emmaus is only in the Gospel of Luke and it has as long been understood as Luke’s reflection on how his community experienced Jesus after his Resurrection. It’s about how they came to know Jesus through worship when they gathered each Sunday. Luke was writing about 175 to 100 years after Jesus’ earthly ministry. His community was in a diverse, urban environment. And Luke wrote his account using a variety of stylistic and linguistic techniques so that his readers who were from different religious, ethnic and social backgrounds could find a point of entry into the story of Jesus and his mission to bring universal salvation to humankind. There is a level of sophistication to Luke that is unique to the Gospels. It was possibly written in Antioch or Rome, but it could have been written in any major urban center in the Mediterranean. The people in Luke’s community in their day were a lot like us in 2023. We come from a variety of backgrounds, experiences and cultural reference points, just as they did. Many of us are from other places. Some of us grew up in the Church and some are new to faith. And all of us are trying to navigate a very complex social, economic and political landscape. All of us share a common spiritual longing. We all want to make meaning of our lives and to find what is enduring, what is life-giving, what is foundational.
We are all on the road to Emmaus. We come through the doors each week, having dealt with family challenges, work stress, relationship issues, the chaos of the news, fears about the future of the planet. And we come together to listen for God’s voice in the eye of the storm.
In the road to Emmaus story, the disciples walk along and are so distracted and consumed by their troubles that they can’t even recognize Jesus at first . Sometimes its hard for us to settle into the service when we first get here because of all of the stresses we are dealing with. But we are here. We are seeking connection rather than isolating ourselves. We pray, we sing, we listen to Scripture and we listen for God’s voice to calm us, to bring clarity and to help us find a way forward. Jesus is with us, speaking to us through Scripture, just as he interpreted Scripture for the traumatized, self-absorbed disciples. And when we celebrate the Eucharist , just as Jesus broke bread with the disciples and gather around the Altar to receive his Body and Blood, our eyes are opened. We leave the service and we are different than we were when we came in, whether we are consciously aware of it or not. Our hearts burn within us and we know that God truly is with us and for us through thick and thin.
That is the Eucharistic life. That is what Andrew and Benjamin are being baptized into. They are just beginning their journey with Jesus today. And it is a journey that will continue for a lifetime. Their parents will bring them to church and the story of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection will be the defining narrative of their lives. They will be able to weather the joys and challenges of life because they will know that new life is always coming out of the disappointments we experience. Because Jesus was resurrected from the dead, death no longer has power over us. Faith, hope and love live in us and cannot never be taken away, by virtue of our baptism.
Faith, hope and love were also at the center of the confirmation service last Sunday. We had 14 Saint Georgians, 6 teens and 8 adults, who were presented by RevMo Crystal and confirmed or received from other denominations by Bishop Stevenson at Saint Paul’s in Alexandria. We will recognize them after the baptisms today and celebrate with them during coffee hour. There is a direct link between baptism and confirmation. In baptism, we are brought into the fellowship of faith to begin a lifelong journey with Christ. Baptism is about becoming aware of our belovedness as a child of God. Confirmation and reception are about making an adult profession of faith. The bishop lays hands on each confirmand, asking God to continue the work of the Holy Spirit that was begun in the person’s life when they were baptized. It is also expressing the person’s desire to continue to develop their Christian faith specifically within the Episcopal understanding of our faith. That means that we celebrate the resurrection of Jesus and we celebrate diversity, we strive for the full inclusion of everyone, without exception, because like Luke’s community we see that Jesus’ death and resurrection all happened to bring all of us into the wide embrace of God’s love.
We are one human family. And as Christians, we are called to love others as Christ loved us and strive to see God’s image in everyone we meet. So today, as fellow sojourners on the road with Jesus, we celebrate the Eucharistic life that we share with him and with the soon-to-be newly baptized: Andrew and Benjamin, and with our teens who were confirmed: Sam, Abby, Nick, Elisha, Nicholas J.S., and our adults who were confirmed or received: Victoria, Ariel, Nick, Maccoy, Esther, Victor, Christine and Matt . We are all on the journey of faith together, welcoming the stranger who becomes our friend.
“…When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him… Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road ? …”. Luke 24:13-35
A Sermon by Seminarian Paddy Cavanaugh on the Second Sunday of Easter, Year A, April 16, 2023.
Acts 2:14a,22-32 (Peter testifies to the resurrection): 1 Peter 1:3-9 (Peter exhorts faith in the resurrection: John 20: 19-31 (The incredulity of Thomas)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Alleluia, Christ is risen.
[The Lord is risen indeed, alleluia]
I’m still not tired of hearing that. Christ is risen my friends, the tomb is empty! I believe this Eastertide that Christ, having died and been buried, rose from the dead on the third day. Not just in spirit, not as an allegory, and not just in the hearts of his disciples. But I believe that Christ Jesus truly rose from the dead, body and all. Christ is truly risen. Alleluia.
Now, if you’re still not entirely sure about this resurrection business, or aren’t sure that you fully understand what exactly it means, that’s okay, today is the Sunday for you. And I’ll add that the very fact that you are here is a testament to your faith, or desire to grapple with faith, even if that faith seems utterly incredulous at times. Our Gospel lesson today is all about understanding the incredulity of faith in the resurrection. It’s about Saint Thomas, the doubter, who even as he saw our Lord’s risen body, still needed confirmation that what he saw was real. And thank God for sweet Thomas! Because I happen to believe that his doubt, his incredulity, affirms the credibility of our faith today, and I’ll tell you why. But first, I have to confess to something.
Do I know with verifiable certainty that Christ is risen? No, I do not.
I was not there. The only people who I believe know definitively that Christ has risen, body and all, are the women at the tomb, the disciples who saw the risen Christ, and the departed saints in glory who are with Him now. But I believe it. I believe He has risen, and that through His risen life we are saved.
Let’s think about this for a moment, the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. It’s incredulous. And it’s a scandalous belief that defies all logic and reason. It was scandalous for the disciples then, and it’s sometimes scandalous for us now, to believe that Christ is actually risen.
But let me tell you something friends, knowing is not a requisite for believing. In fact, knowing something usually makes belief unnecessary. For instance, I know that we are all here at St. George’s right now. I know it’s the second Sunday of Easter in the year of our Lord 2023. I know that some of you are wondering where this sermon is going because I see it on your faces. You see, we don’t need to believe in these categories of things, because we already know them to be true. These things are simply facts that are perceptible, and therefore credible to us, because our senses, our physical experience confirms to us that they are true – not just believable, but true.
To suggest otherwise, to propose that something which is completely unverifiable, something which defies our sensory experience and the laws of nature is frankly, incredible. Incredible in the literal sense of the word, meaning not credible. Incredulous. It would be incredible to suggest that this altar linen is not white. Because we see that it is. It would be incredible to suggest that this choir does not belt out beautiful hymns, because we have heard them do so. Do you see where I’m going with this? It would be incredible to suggest that Christ is risen, because, well, it completely defies all that we know to be true about how the world works.
This is where we find that wonderful disciple Thomas, who is known for his incredulity about what happened after that first Easter. The Gospel tells us that Jesus, whose body Thomas saw crucified and buried just days ago, suddenly walk through the door saying “Peace be with you” (John 20:26). Peace be with you?! Jesus, really? Jesus, knowing that Thomas was feeling anything but peaceful in that moment of shock and disbelief, he offered him the wounds in his hands and in his side so that Thomas’s body could confirm the real presence of Jesus’s body, and be at peace. Jesus used Thomas’s doubt to show him – and us – that the incredible is indeed credible and true.
You see, it’s the doubt which then enables faith, for Thomas and for us who “though we do not see him now, believe in him,” as Peter writes to hopeful disciples who want to believe but are not entirely convinced (1 Pet. 1:8). But how does Thomas’s doubt enable our faith? Doesn’t the fact that the earliest disciples themselves were unsure of the resurrection cast doubt on our own belief in the resurrection two millennia later? I actually think it does the opposite, and here’s why.
You see, we often have this misperception as people in the modern world, with the benefit of modern science, that people in the ancient world somehow didn’t understand how things worked. But they really did, they knew the essential things as well as we do. They knew that dead people didn’t miraculously come back to life. They understood nature. C.S. Lewis once quipped that the reason Joseph was initially incredulous about Mary’s pregnancy and the virgin birth wasn’t because he didn’t know the biological realities of life, but because he did. And here, Thomas shares those same doubts at the other end of Jesus’s life. Everything in his experience up until this point had told him that there was no way that Jesus could suddenly be alive again. These things just don’t happen, and he needed hard, touchable proof in his own hands to confirm what he saw, because, Thomas knew that sight can be deceiving.
After what must have been an excruciating and disorienting few days in the wake of Jesus’s horrible death, the disciples were likely sleep deprived, scared, and questioning everything they thought to be true. Thomas did not trust his own eyes in this moment and needed extra sensory confirmation that what was before him was indeed true. And the Gospel said that once he had felt our Lord’s body with his, Thomas believed and exclaimed “My Lord and my God!” (John 20:28). Beyond belief, I believe that Thomas knew in that moment that Jesus was the risen Lord Himself. Jesus was the crucified and risen God. His doubt had enabled his faith.
Peter and John had a similar experience of doubt-affirming faith. When they heard from Mary Magdalene that Jesus had risen, they did not immediately believe it, but ran to the tomb to see that it was empty for themselves. They saw it, and they knew. (John 20:1-8)
And friends, I believe this doubt of the disciples is one of the principle things that makes our faith in Christ’s resurrection credible and worthy of our belief. If the disciples had all unanimously agreed that Christ had risen beyond a shadow of a doubt, then I would be incredulous of the resurrection.
Had the disciples, including St. Thomas, after witnessing Jesus’s resurrection not all gone to their graves as martyrs in a manner similar to Jesus, then I would be incredulous of the resurrection. If the resurrection had not truly happened, it would be far easier, more rational of them, to simply return to their lives before they had met Jesus, sad and embarrassed, yet safe and alive.
But no, something in that first Easter left them utterly convinced that this faith was worth dedicating, and giving, their entire lives to – dedicating their lives to carrying the faith to all the doubtful for generations and generations to come, because their doubt had been overcome by something real. By the reality of the resurrection.
And the reality of their conviction is enough to enable my faith for today. I do not need to know to believe. Thomas’s doubt helps me to believe in something that is utterly incredible – the true miracle of God’s resurrected life.
And what does all this mean for us? What does it mean to believe in the resurrection? I’ll tell you in the words of Serbian Orthodox theologian Justin Popović, who writes that the resurrection means that we are condemned to life. He says:
“People condemned God to death; with his resurrection God condemned them to immortality. For striking Him, God returned embraces; for insults, blessings; for death, immortality. Never did men show more hate to God than when they crucified him; and God never showed His love towards people more than when He was resurrected. Mankind wanted to make God dead, but God, with His resurrection, made people alive. The crucified God resurrected on the third day and thereby killed death! There is no more death. Immortality is surrounding man and his entire world.” [pause]
I think I should start to end now because there’s no way I can top something as beautiful and incredible as that. But I will say that though we may still be impacted by the residual effects of sin and death in this world, death is only like a burnt out star whose last bitter rays will finally cease to reach us on the last day. At a cosmic level we have assurance in the resurrection that death has no sting, no power over us, and life has been liberated by the empty tomb of Christ Jesus.
The doubt of the apostles affirms this. So you of great faith, and you of great doubt, join me in saying once more:
Alleluia, Christ is risen.
[The Lord is risen, indeed] Amen.
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023.
John 20:1-18
I preach in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, him who is, and who was, and who is to come (Rev. 1:4). Amen.
Alleluia! Christ is risen.
The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
From the earliest days of the Christian witness, this proclamation was and is our truest, boldest claim: that Jesus, the Christ, having died on a cross for love of us was raised from the dead by God, the Father; and that through Jesus’ death and resurrection, we can experience, in the words of one great hymn, a “love so deep, so high, so broad” –a love marked by mercy and meant to set us free.
What brought you to church on this blessed Easter morning? Was it the promise of resurrection joy? Was it your spouse? Was it a need for change, a new beginning? Was it family tradition? Was it the love of your parish family? Was it my preaching? Was it your parent? Was it questions or was it answers?
No matter how you found yourself here this morning, welcome. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life. God is making all things new.
Believe it or not. It’s all true.
If, by chance, you’re not sure of that fact -if you find yourself doubting what Christians profess on Easter or wondering whether it even matters at all -well, that’s fine too. You are not alone.
Much of what we profess in here is not readily apparent out there. This too is true. And, although what we profess at Easter, and carry with us throughout the year, is relatively straightforward –Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again –it also happens to be the greatest mystery of Christian faith. It’s meant to cause us a bit of confusion. It’s meant to be wrestled with. After all, it turned the world upside down, or, rather, right side up.
They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him (John 20:2).
You can practically see it on the faces of the disciples on that first Easter morning; hear it in their voices. Confusion. Fear. Skepticism. Hope. Joy. Belief. The first experience of resurrection is not one of confidence but of confusion.
So, take heart. Wherever you are in your faith journey, the resurrection truth will meet you there.
And, here’s some good news, it remains true regardless of how we approach it. Whether we woke up this morning joyful, healthy or hopeful; sick, fearful or weary. Whether we woke up in the Easter frame of mind or unable to shake the dust of Lent from our feet, the resurrection truth has been, is, and will always remain the same:
Alleluia! Christ is risen! Thanks be to God.
Brother Keith Nelson of the Society of St. John the Evangelist remarks that “each of us has undergone, and will yet undergo, countless passions, deaths and resurrections - in churches, yes, but also in hospitals, office buildings, by bedsides and firesides, under the open sky and around kitchen tables. This is the paschal mystery writ small, in lowercase letters, across the individual history of every child of God.”
In other words, the resurrection didn’t just happen to Jesus; it also happens to each one of us.
In the words of the Bishop of the Diocese of Washington, the Right Reverend Mariann Budde:
As we’re able to interpret our experiences of moving through death to life through the lens of Christian witness about Jesus and his resurrection, it feels real to us and for us in ways that give us confidence to place our trust in him. And when that confidence is shaken, we keep on the path, trusting that what matters isn’t the strength of our faith, but the power of God revealed in Jesus.
Let me say that last bit again for those in the back:
“Trusting that what matters isn’t the strength of our faith, but the power of God revealed in Jesus.”
And what is trusting anyway, but letting go?
Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me” (John 20:17).
Mary finally recognized Jesus for who he is –her friend and Lord, not dead as she expected, but very much alive –Mary’s instinct is to reach for him and to hold him as tightly as she can. It’s what any of us would have done. It’s what we all do.
But then Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me.”
There’s a little Greek word that appears again and again in Scripture. Luo (loo -o). It means “to loose.”[1]
When Lazarus comes out of the tomb, Jesus says, Unbind him and let him go. Here, loo-o, to loose, is to unbind.
In his letter to the Ephesians, Saint Paul writes of Jesus, He has broken down the dividing wall of hostility (2:14). To loose is to break down barriers.
In the book of Revelation, Jesus is described as Him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood (1:5). And Peter proclaims that God raised Jesus up, having freed him from death (Acts 2:24). To loose is to set free.
All these instances share something in common –each speaks to resurrection. Lazarus to perfect healing. Ephesians to reconciliation amid hostility. Revelation to the forgiveness of our sins. Peter to Jesus being raised from the tomb.
And Jesus said to her, “Do not hold on to me.” There’s that word – loo-o. Set me loose. Because if resurrection requires anything from us, it requires letting go.
An unclenching of the fist. A softening of the heart. The dissolution of prejudice and of pride. The offer of forgiveness and accepting the same. Allowing what is old to pass away so that what is new may take root.
Because Jesus has loosed us –from the weight of sin and from the finality of death. From the loneliness of exile and the shame of estrangement. Jesus, the Christ, has set us loose, made us free.
This is the Easter truth. And in response we too must learn to set loose - to let go. To let go of our judgments and our shames. Our resentments and fears. To let go of our defenses and to accept the forgiveness on offer to us in Christ. To let go of who we were so that we can become who we were meant to be.
In the words of my people, we are called to “Let go and to let God!” To admit our powerlessness and to trust instead on God’s provision.
I’d like to share a story. One that I have shared before, years ago now, so you may have heard it. An oldie, but a goodie.
During WWII, in addition to the Jewish people, other groups were persecuted by the Nazis including the Roma.
The story is told of a Roma family who was part of a traveling circus in Poland. During one of their acts, the teenage daughter would jump from a high wire with no net below and her father would catch her.
One morning the father had gone out early and the young girl was alone in the apartment building where they were staying. A stranger came to the door and said that he had a message from her father. The message was that the Nazis had come into town, and they had to escape. It was too dangerous for the father to return by daylight, but that at 2:00 in the morning he would stand at the northwest corner of the apartment building. His daughter should jump, and he would be there to catch her so that they could escape.
The young girl was confused, afraid, skeptical. She didn’t recognize the messenger. She wasn’t sure these were the words of her father. She wasn’t even sure which was the northwest corner of the building.
Alone and afraid, she waited as the day grew long. And her father, well, he didn’t return. She also received word that the Nazis had indeed come into the town. Having only the word of her father’s promise and fearing certain death should she be discovered, she went to what she thought was the northwest corner of the building at the time she had been told and whispered into the darkness: “Father, are you there?”
There was no answer.
After a moment, she leapt –jumping into the unknown.
And he caught her.[2]
Yes, Jesus came to set us free. But wait, there’s more, he does not then step away, leaving us to our devices. No. His is a perfect freedom, held within the very heart of God. When we finally take the leap–putting whatever comes next out of our own hands -we find that we are not suddenly in freefall and facing certain death, as we had feared, but that, instead, we are caught within the sweet embrace of the grace of God.
Alleluia. Christ is Risen.
Amen.
[1] Samuel Wells, “Letting Go,” a sermon preached on Easter Sunday at Duke University, https://chapel-archives.oit.duke.edu/documents/sermons/April4LettingGo.pdf.
[2] This story is included in Mary Catherine Hilkert’s Naming Grace: Preaching and the Sacramental Imagination (New York: Continuum, 1997), 89.
The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams for Easter Vigil with Holy Baptism, April 8th, 2023.
“Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia. “
What a joy, what an exquisite and wondrous privilege it is to proclaim these words on this most holy night, the night we celebrate Christ’s passing from death to new life. We began tonight shrouded in darkness, a darkness pierced only by the light of the Paschal candle. When then lit our candles from it as a reminder that our light comes from Christ. We heard the Exultet , sung so beautifully by our Minister of Music, Ben Keseley. This lyrical, mystical chant was written specifically for the Easter Vigil and has been sung on this night for over 1,800 years. It has been chanted in all kinds of situations. It has been sung in wartime as people huddled around the Paschal candle in the darkness, longing for peace. It has been sung by faithful people gathered in the hope of the resurrection to eternal life as loved ones are near death. It has been sung by parents, godparents, family members and the whole church family as children are about to be baptized. Exultet means “rejoice” and rejoicing in the light of Christ transcends and transforms all circumstances. “Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels.” “Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth,” “Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church, and let your holy courts in radiant light, resound with the praises of your people.” It just doesn’t get any better than that .
After the Exultet, we recounted the entire arc of salvation history, from creation, to God’s covenant with the Israelites, to the prophets, and finally, finally we proclaimed the first alleluias of Easter with great fanfare. And if that wasn’t enough, in just a few moments we will baptize Hannah Margaret Lilly Otto into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that we celebrate tonight. What a joy, what a delight.
Hannah is a very precious child, just as all children are precious gifts from God. And Hannah, thanks to her mother, Allison, is already very experienced in what it means to be part of “Mother Church.” Hannah has been attending Saint George’s since she was about 6 weeks old. She has met everybody at our 10:30 Sunday service and beyond. She has her own nametag that is almost as big as she is. She even had her little feet washed at her first Maundy Thursday service two nights ago. Maundy Thursday is when we remember Jesus’ symbolic action as he got up from the table during his last meal with his disciples on the night before he was betrayed and condemned to death and washed their feet . After he had done this he told them, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another. “
Hannah has already begun to experience what it means to serve and to be served, to love and to be loved. She is being baptized on the night that was originally THE night, the ONLY night that people were baptized. So tonight we are part of something very old and at the same time very new. Hannah will learn and grow and be formed in her faith within this community. We will teach her and she will teach all of us. When each new person is baptized, our community is different. Hannah will bring her own gifts, her own insights, her own questions, her own way of being, and we will all be changed as a result. What a blessing it is to love and be loved in a community centered on the death and resurrection of Christ. That means we are with each other through thick and thin, in times of suffering and in times of great joy. We know that death does not have the last word. Resurrection is always close at hand. The story of salvation history wraps around us as we gather, week in and week out, proclaiming over and over and over again, “Christ has died. Christ is risen. Christ will come again. “ That is the defining narrative of our lives. As Hannah goes through the challenges and joys of growing up, we will be there, shining the light for her and with her. We are marking her as “Christ’s own forever” tonight. Think about that. Christ’s own forever!
Saint Paul tells us in his Letter to the Romans, “Do you know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him into death, so that , just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.”
This is the unshakeable foundation that we build our lives upon and gives our lives meaning. Whatever losses we experience, we know that Christ died once and for all so that we would not be overcome by grief and despair. When someone we love dies, Christ is there, offering us life. When a cherished relationship goes through dark times, Jesus is with us, holding the light. When we lose a job, or don’t get into our first choice for college, or go through any disappointment or hardship, Jesus is there reminding us that we belong to him and he belongs to us. We are marked as Christ’s own forever. Through baptism, we have an unbreakable bond with him and with each other. Tonight we join with the heavenly hosts, choirs of angels, and all creation as we proclaim the eternal message of Mother Church. Alleluia! Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia!
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on Good Friday, April 7, 2023.
Isaiah 52:13-53:12; Psalm 22; Philippians 2:5-11; John 18:1-19:42
We gather on this most holy day to enter into the meaning of the passion and death of Christ. That meaning is, in its way, profoundly simple. We’ve heard it before.
“Behold!” says John the Baptist as he sees Jesus coming toward him for the first time. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29-36).
The crucifixion of Jesus, the Christ, the very Lamb of God, redeemed the world from sin. In so doing, it brought the immeasurable love of God to “the farthest and darkest place in which humanity has been trapped in its flight from him . . . death [in all its forms].”[1]
He was wounded for our transgressions,
Crushed for our iniquities;
Upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
And by his bruises we are healed (Isaiah 53:5).
These, of course, are the prophetic words of Isaiah that began the liturgy of the word. They speak of an unknown man despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief (Isaiah 53:3).
The Gospel account that follows makes clear who this unnamed man of sorrows truly is, Jesus of Nazareth:
who, though he existed in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
assuming human likeness (Philippians 2:6-8).
Father Cantalamessa, Preacher to the Pontifical Household, notes both the universality and the specificity of Jesus’ redeeming work.
Through the event of the Incarnation of the Son of God, God made himself man and united himself to all of humanity, but through the manner of his Incarnation he made himself one of the poor and rejected and embraced their cause. He took it upon himself to ensure that when he solemnly affirmed that whatever we do for the hungry, the naked, the incarcerated, the outcast, we do to him, and whatever we omit doing for them, we omit doing for him.[2]
It is significant that Jesus, the Christ, came as one despised, disinherited, and discarded. And it is important that we spend time considering Jesus’ specificity even while honoring his universality.
Jesus is the prototype of the disinherited; he occupies what many consider to be the edges of society, oppressed and marginalized, a victim of state-sanctioned violence and capital punishment.
By a perversion of justice, he was taken away (Isaiah 53:8).
Throughout his life he identified in this way. Born to lowly parents as a vulnerable baby. Presented at the temple where his parents offer “two turtledoves or two young pigeons,” the offering meant for those who could not afford to offer a lamb. During his public life, he had nowhere to lay his head. Unhoused he moved from place to place paying special attention to those on the margins.
When he is brought before Pilate at the time of his Passion he is ridiculed and tortured. Hands bound with rough rope, he stands in solidarity with all prisoners –all who are at the mercy of the privileged and the powerful.
Howard Thurman, in his book Jesus and the Disinherited, speaks of the impact of Jesus’ specificity –his choice to identify in this way –particularly for those enslaved in the South. Thurman writes:
In [Jesus] was life; and the life was the light of men. Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them.[3]
Yes, Jesus is the prototype of the disinherited –those on the edges of society being most specifically reflected in the son of Mary and Joseph, those parents who could not afford a lamb for an offering raising up the Lamb of God for us all.
Jesus offers solidarity in all suffering. He does not observe it from a distance but is somehow in our suffering, with us and for us. After all, he took on our suffering flesh and redeemed it, even as we nailed him to the hard wood of the cross.
Jesus offers solidarity in suffering, of course, but he also goes further, offering the hope and promise of resurrection. The Crucified One is risen. Again, in the words of Cantalamessa:
In him a total reversal of roles has taken place: the vanquished has become the victor; the one judged has become the judge, “the stone which was rejected by the builders has become the cornerstone” (see Acts 4:11). The final word is not and never will be injustice and oppression.[4]
We, the people of God, the church, must act as if we believe this –we must orient ourselves around the cross of Christ, being present to human vulnerability and aware, always, of our call to care for those around us. We must work to make conditions right for deep human flourishing with the understanding that each of us, all of us, is in bondage to sin but that, through God’s great mercy, we have been invited into a world where sin and death no longer has dominion.
Jesus’ passion situates all who are imprisoned at the center of the cross of Christ –in the words of our concluding collect, “setting His passion, cross, and death between judgment and all of our souls.”
Because the message of the cross is not just for the oppressed and the marginalized. It is also for those on the other side of the equation. For we are all bound to the same fate and subject to the same human limitations. As Saint Paul reminds us none is righteous . . . there is no distinction; . . . all have sinned (Rom. 3:22-23).
The universality of Christ addresses this sin once and for all. In the words of the prophet Isaiah: All we like sheep have gone astray; we have all turned to our own way, and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all (Isaiah 53:6).
On the Cross, Jesus, in communion with God the Father, bowed his head willingly under “the power of Sin and the curse of God.” Fleming Rutledge writes:
That is one of the most important reasons –perhaps the most important reason –that Jesus was crucified. No other mode of execution would have been commensurate with the enormity of the dark powers holding us in bondage. Jesus’ situation under the harsh judgment of Rome was analogous to our situation under Sin. He was condemned; he was rendered helpless and powerless; he was stripped of his humanity; he was reduced to the status of a beast, declared unfit to live and deserving of a death proper to slaves –and what were we if not slaves to sin?[5]
“Behold!” says John the Baptist as he sees Jesus coming toward him for the first time. “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29-36).
On the cross he who knew no sin became sin and overcame sin for love of us, not in judgment but in an act of perfect mercy. Because, for whatever reason, God the Father knows us perfectly in our suffering and wills solidarity with sinners like you and me.
Sin and death may have a fierce hold on us, but it is no match for the fierceness of God’s love for us. The cross of Christ has set us free. Does this mean that we are now perfect? Of course not. We all fall short of the glory of God. And yet, in Jesus the Christ, God has come down to show us who we were meant to be and is, even now, working in us, remaking us –despite ourselves—into his very image.
Amen.
[1] This is a quote I’ve had written down for ages but cannot source. If I had to guess, it’s Fleming Rutledge.
[2] Father Raniero Cantalamessa, Preacher to the Pontifical Household, “He Was Despised and Rejected by Men,” a sermon preached for the Solemn Liturgy of the Passion of the Lord, Good Friday, St Peter's Basilica, https://www.vaticannews.va/en/pope/news/2019-04/homily-of-fr-cantalamessa-for-good-friday-full-text.html.
[3] Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (1949; repr., Boston: Beacon Press, 1996).
[4] Cantalamessa, “He Was Despised and Rejected by Men.”
[5] Fleming Rutledge, The Seven Last Words from the Cross (Eerdmans, 2004).
A Sermon by the The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on Maundy Thursday, April 6, 2023.
John 13: 1-17, 31b-35
Tonight we gather to begin a three day journey into the very core of our tradition, a journey that captures the essence of what it means to be a Christian.
As we enter into the Gospel tonight, Jesus’ public ministry is over. He is about to be betrayed and handed over to the authorities and condemned to death. He is alone with his closest disciples for one last meal together, and he does something completely shocking , confounding and embarrassing. “…He got up from the table, took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet. ..”
You can imagine the looks of disbelief on their faces. Peter is the only one brazen enough to say what they were all thinking. “Lord, you will never wash my feet.” Peter and the other disciples loved Jesus. They revered him. They had seen the power of God working through him for the past three years. They had witnessed the throngs of people flock to him. They had been with him as he preached and taught and healed people of terrible infirmities, both physical and spiritual. How could their teacher, their master, their Lord, take the role of a slave and wash their feet? And yet, he does. Jesus tells Peter that “Unless I wash you, you will have no share with me.” These are strong words. “Unless I wash you, you will have no share with me.”
Having our feet washed and washing one another’s feet is an essential part of being a follower of Jesus. In a few minutes, everyone will be invited to come to the center of the circle, to wash and be washed. When we are the one who washes, we are taking the role of Jesus, lowering ourselves, stooping down in humility and service to others. You may not even know the person whose feet you are washing tonight. It doesn’t really matter whether they are your dearest friend or a complete stranger. We serve others, regardless of who they are , whether we like them or not, whether they like us or not, whether we think they are worthy or unworthy. The Gospel of John simply says that Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, so presumably he washed Judas’ feet because he too was one of the disciples. Jesus already knew that Judas would betray him when they gathered that night, and even so, Jesus washed his feet. Think about that. How could Jesus be so kind, so loving toward the one he knew was about to hand him over to be condemned to death? That is costly love.
So when we wash another person’s feet, it is a wondrous and costly thing. When we switch positions and are the one having our feet washed by someone else, it can feel costly in a different way. It makes us feel vulnerable, exposed, needy, like someone coming as a guest to our food pantry instead of someone serving as a volunteer. When the roles are reversed, we have a very different perspective on things. But allowing someone to care for us is important. We all need to love and to be loved. It is an essential part of being human. Love is the greatest gift we can receive, but it requires us to let our defenses down and take the risk that we may be hurt. Jesus made himself completely vulnerable, taking on the form of a slave and emptying himself of worldly power to demonstrate the upside down power of God, the power of love. Love is the strongest force in the universe and the greatest healing agent there is, stronger than death, stronger than suffering, stronger than betrayal, even stronger than our need not to appear needy.
Jesus said, “Unless I wash you, you will have no share with me….I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
A Sermon by Seminarian Paddy Cavanaugh on the Sunday of the Passion: Palm Sunday, Year A, April 2, 2023
Psalm 22:1-21; Philippians 2:5-11; Matthew’s Passion Gospel
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
Happy Palm Sunday, St. George’s. And happy Holy Week. Although wishing us happy anything after hearing Matthew’s vivid account of Our Lord’s suffering and death seems a little odd, doesn’t it? Why is it that on Palm Sunday, the final leg of our Lenten pilgrimage, that our celebration of Christ’s triumphant entrance into Jerusalem is so abruptly cut short with his Passion? It seems we’ve hardly had time to fully settle into the exuberant occasion of Christ’s kingly arrival before we are splashed with cold water in the untimely news of his heartbreaking death.
The liturgy of Palm Sunday is like a birth announcement and an obituary all wrapped in one.
Why is this? Why interrupt our joyful cries of hosanna with something so sobering and harsh? Couldn’t we at least enjoy the moment a little longer? These are the questions I ask myself every year on this day, even though I think I know the answer deep down, because we’ve heard it before. You see, the truth of this day is that Christ’s victory and Christ’s passion are wholly inextricable from one another. We cannot speak of one without speaking of the other. The name, or names, that we call this day gives that away. You’ll see on your bulletin that there are actually two names for today’s feast day. Its first name is the Sunday of the Passion, and its second is Palm Sunday. The Passion of course refers to Christ’s suffering and death on the cross and the palms refer to Christ’s victorious arrival.
The layering of these two theological images – passion and victory – on top of one another is no accident. We’re not just haphazardly trying to cram two unrelated ideas into one liturgy because we’re short on time. Rather, in today’s liturgy of passion and palms, we anticipate Christ’s victory on the cross, and give thanks for the cost he paid to win it. These two realities of Christ’s passion and Christ’s victory are always two sides of the same coin, and today is meant to help us see them as such.
Let’s first look at Christ’s victory. We begin this liturgy by processing into the Church with palm fronds and joyful shouts of hosanna! It’s an exclamation of joy which literally means “pray, save us!” It’s a centuries-old shout of jubilation reserved for God and it outwardly reflects our recognition of Christ Jesus as God incarnate who has come for our salvation. The palm fronds which we wave are ancient symbols of victory that would be handed to kings and military leaders returning from battle or champions of great athletic and artistic feats, much like the laurel wreath that would crown the heads of Olympians and poets in ancient Greece.
The biblical account of Jesus’ triumphal entry to Jerusalem is akin to a victory parade, but it’s a rather peculiar one isn’t it? It’s peculiar for a number of reasons. First, Jesus was not a victor in the traditional sense. He possessed no worldly power, he held no official titles or offices, and he had no command over any army, unless you count the ragtag bunch of working class fisherman and tax collectors who followed him around.
Moreover, it was customary at such victory parades to read a litany of the victor’s mighty accomplishments aloud as a testament to their legendary might. These lists typically included an itemization of the lands and peoples that the victor conquered, as well as the riches and spoils they brought back from their exploits.
In contrast, let’s take a look at some of the highlights of Jesus’ odd curriculum vitae. Up until this point Jesus had:
-Cleansed between one and ten lepers
-Multiplied thousands of fish
-Restored sight and speech to a handful
-Calmed a storm
-Cursed a fig tree
-Cast out countless demons
-And raised at least three people from the dead, all while insisting that people keep these things a secret. I’m still not sure whether Jesus was having fun with us with this last part.
Needless to say, this is quite an impressive C.V., but it’s certainly not the resume you’d expect to hear of the traditional victor, because you’ll notice that in Jesus’ astounding list of miracles, the things which glorify him are the ways he healed and restored the downtrodden to fullness of life, not how he elevated himself by turning those those with full lives into the downtrodden through conquest. Jesus’ victory comes from the way he freed and liberated bodies and souls.
Finally, there is the peculiar, and even comical pageantry of Jesus’ victory parade. Jesus famously arrives through the city gates riding a donkey! Not a majestic war horse, not a gilded chariot, but a draft animal – an animal used for labor with a reputation for being stubbornness. It borders on comedy and at the same time is incredibly profound. People anticipating the messiah surely must have been murmuring between their hosannas, what in the world kind of victor is Jesus? Well, I’m not joking when I say the donkey really tips his hand. It is both a fulfilment of an Old Testament prophecy (Zech. 9:9) that the messiah will come to Zion riding on the back of a donkey, and it is a deliberate inversion of worldly power and domination.
At every step of the way, Jesus is revealing himself and the people are hailing him as the messiah. But not a messiah whose victory is through the worldly power of kings, but as the King and Lord of all creation who emptied himself of his power to take on the kingly robe of humility. Paul reminds us in his letter to the Philippians that “[Christ] being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross (2:7-8).
You see, in Christ’s victory, there is always his passion. The palm frond is a symbol of victory, and it’s also a symbol of martyrdom. Walk into the National Gallery of Art this afternoon and you’ll see rooms filled with images of the holy martyrs of the Church, like a yearbook that spans centuries. And they’re all holding this same leaf as a sign that they followed the one who came in humility, walked the path of his passionate suffering, and shared in his triumphant victory.
Yes in the victory of Christ there is always his passion, his suffering. This is what the very word passion, or passio in Latin, means after all. It means to suffer. And Christ’s passion on the cross which we just heard told is not about suffering for suffering’s sake. It was about com-passion, which literally means suffering with. God, suffering with us, and thereby freeing us from bondage to this suffering. The German theologian Jürgen Moltmann claimed that the unique and defining attribute of God as understood in the Christian tradition is that God suffered. And God’s suffering is the crux – the cross – of our understanding of who God is. And who God is, is a God so passionate that He could not turn his eyes away from our own suffering, and instead ran towards us with open arms.
In Passion Sunday we are reminded that Christ’s victory over the bondage of sin, which is the source of our suffering, came through Christ’s enduring of the same. The Passion and the victory He won for us are connected in such a way that to remove one would be to take the power away from the other.
Yes, in Christ’s victory there is always Christ’s suffering. But this also means the inverse must be true. In Christ’s suffering, there is always Christ’s victory.
I promise I am not spoiling Easter by proclaiming Christ’s victory over death too soon, because Holy Week is not a once a year historical reenactment of Jesus’ last week, it is a commemoration and celebration of our Lord’s victory on the cross alongside his passion. And what is this victory we celebrate? It’s Christ’s victory over the powers of sin and death. They no longer hold sway over us. It’s the same victory we proclaim every single time we celebrate the Eucharist and proclaim Christ’s death, resurrection, and coming in glory, all in one breath.
We do not remake or play-act the Passion in the Eucharist, but Christ’s Passion – Christ’s love for us unto death – is made present for us again in the breaking of the bread. When we receive the bread of heaven and drink his precious blood, his presence and his victorious resurrection is renewed within us, and we are made more whole. Because by his blood he reconciled us, and by his wounds we are healed. It gives me chills just thinking of it and it brings me joy to share it with you. And so I’ll say it again and again until all of us are crowned with these palms in His blessed company – Christ’s victory is his passion, and Christ’s passion is our victory.
So friends, happy Palm Sunday, and happy Sunday of the Passion.
Amen.
A Sermon by the Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on The Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 26, 2023.
“Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me, will never die. Do you believe this? (Martha) said to him, ‘Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world. “ John 11: 1-45
Our Gospel for today is usually referred to as the “raising of Lazarus” and it is indeed a story about Jesus restoring one of his closest friends to life. But the real focus of the story is not Lazarus, but Jesus. The raising of Lazarus foreshadows Jesus’ own death and resurrection. His life was already at great risk when he got word about Lazarus. Jesus had angered the religious authorities by healing the man born blind and then claiming to be the Son of God, which was considered blasphemous and punishable by death. He and his disciples had escaped to the other side of the Jordan River just as Jesus was about to be stoned. When he hears about Lazarus, they return to Bethany, just outside Jerusalem, and when the religious authorities get word that he restored a man to life, it is the last straw. So the pressure is mounting today as the story begins, and when it ends, the temple power brokers have vowed to have Jesus put to death. They even planned to put Lazarus to death since he was a constant reminder of the power of God working through Jesus.
Betrayal is lurking, death is close at hand, and yet Jesus, fully aware of the risks, decides to return to Bethany to demonstrate God’s glory one last time before the ultimate glorification of the cross and resurrection, which for the Gospel of John, go hand-in- hand. Death is the necessary precursor to Resurrection, both for Jesus and for us.
Whenever we come together for a funeral, the service opens with Jesus’ words spoken to Martha, when she goes to him, distraught about her brother’s death. Jesus reminds her and he reminds all of us when we gather in grief to remember someone near and dear to us. “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me, will never die.” During the opening procession of a funeral, instead of having a normal beginning as we do on Sunday mornings, when the choir and altar party come in singing a hymn, along with the congregation, everyone stands quietly while the altar party processes and the celebrant speaks these words into the silence. It always feels like a great privilege to me to give voice to Jesus’ words. There is a rhythm, a cadence to them that is profoundly grounding. It is a summary of Jesus’ entire ministry and the alpha and omega of our life in him that guides us each and every day of this life and takes us into eternity.
I am Resurrection and I am Life, says the Lord.
Whoever has faith in me shall have life,
even though he die.
And everyone who has life, and has committed himself to me in faith,
shall not die for ever.
It just doesn’t get any better than that. When we look at death and see life, what a gift. That is the heart of Christian faith. We need not fear death, when we see death as the door to eternal life. The fear of death no longer controls our lives. I often joke with RevMo Crystal and Ben and our worship leaders, as we prepare for a funeral, that we are all going to end up on “the table of requirement” one day. If any of you is a Harry Potter fan, you know about the “Room of Requirement” that appears to the characters whenever they are in desperate need of something; it contains different things according to each person’s needs. The “table of requirement” here at Saint George’s, is the little table that normally sits by the acolyte seats and holds the offering plates on Sundays. But it serves many other purposes as well. Like the “Room of Requirement”, it gives our community what we need when we need it.
On Ash Wednesday, the day that begins the Lenten season that we are in now, it holds the ashes, which remind us of our mortality. “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” On Palm Sunday, which is next Sunday and the beginning of Holy Week, the table will be outside at the beginning of the service and it will hold the palms that we will bless and then distribute to everyone to remember Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem on a donkey before his betrayal and crucifixion. During the Easter Vigil, the table will be outside again and hold the tray that we will make the fire in and light the Christ candle from. Whenever we have baptisms, it sits by the font and holds the ewer of water and the candles that we give the newly baptized when we welcome them into the life and community of faith. And then when we die, our cremains are put on that same little table in front of the altar, and the words from today’s Gospel will be said for each of us as we are remembered by family and friends. “I am resurrection and I am life says the Lord. Whoever has faith in me shall have life, even though he die.”
As we reflect on Jesus’ raising of Lazarus from the dead today and Jesus’ impending death and resurrection, we remember that life and death go hand-in-hand in our walk with Christ. Our lives are wrapped up in his.
Jesus’ disciples did not want him to return to Bethany because they knew they were all at great risk of being killed. They could not see that something larger was at work. Sometimes we have a hard time seeing that as well. When we look at our lives and feel overwhelmed by our circumstances, Christ is there, helping us to hold on. When we look at our world and see all of the injustice and poverty and violence, we know that Christ is with us and is at work in ways seen and unseen. When we are tempted by cynicism and despair, we claim hope. When we are encompassed by darkness, Christ is there, shining the light, enabling us to say with Martha, “Yes Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.”
A Sermon by Seminarian Paddy Cavanaugh on the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A, March 19, 2023.
1 Samuel 16:1-13; Psalm 23; Ephesians 5:8-14; John 9:1-41
As I read today’s Gospel lesson about Jesus restoring sight to a blind beggar who had recognized him, despite the rebukes of the Pharisees and even Jesus’ own disciples, I was immediately reminded of someone I met nearly a decade ago. Before I came to seminary I was a caseworker in Boston assisting the chronically homeless to transition into housing. One of my clients, who I’ll call Louis, had immigrated to Boston from Haiti in the 1980s, fleeing political violence. One day while walking home from his job as a dishwasher, he became the victim of a crime that left him totally blind. Once he was released from the hospital, he found that not only had he lost his sight but, he had also lost his ability find gainful employment, and could no longer support himself. And so, after exhausting all of his resources, Louis had to leave his apartment and began living in shelters and relying on the kindness of strangers in order to eat. Like the blind beggar in the Gospel, we see that despite two thousand years of progress, disability and poverty far too often go hand in hand.
Now, Louis had been living on the streets for nearly twenty years by the time I met him. His girlfriend, Charlotte, who herself was once unhoused, brought Louis to my office to sign him up for public housing on a bitterly cold February morning. As the three of us sat together in a dingy conference room drinking watery nonprofit coffee, I could immediately tell there was something different about Louis, just from his gentle presence.
At this point in my career I had heard enough heartbreaking stories to become rather skilled at compartmentalizing my emotions so that I could focus on meeting my clients’ immediate material needs. However, as I listened to Louis’s story and the grace with which he told it – the way he emphasized all of the helpers and guardian angels that God had sent him, I found myself struggling to hold back tears. You see, Louis had spent the past several decades on sidewalks, on park benches, in parish hall soup kitchens, and in lobbies of countless social services offices like mine, simply sitting in darkness and waiting to be seen. And while Louis was waiting to be seen, Louis saw everything.
He saw incredible kindness, he saw cruelty, and he saw every human response in between. And yet what was most remarkable about Louis’s story, which to any comfortable person, such as myself, would have been a story of abject tragedy, to Louis was a story of God’s loving faithfulness. Louis told me repeatedly about all of the times God had sustained him by the goodness of countless strangers who had come through for him when he thought all hope was spent. He spoke with conviction when he told me that the world was full of so much goodness and love, that there was no doubt in his mind that God had been with him at every step of his life. Despite my best effort to swallow my emotions, Charlotte and I were both in a puddle by the time Louis finished his story. And somehow, sensing my silent tears, Louis calmly reached out, held my hand, and said in his gentle voice: “Mr. Paddy, God has been so very good to me. He’s kept me safe, he’s brought people like you and Charlotte to help me, and he’s going to take care of everything, just like I know he’s taking care of you.” It was a moment of palpable grace.
Like the blind beggar in the Gospel reading, Louis’ blindness and poverty had not impeded his ability to see Christ’s loving presence in the midst of a world that was largely blind to Louis’s presence. And I don’t think his is merely a story of spiritual perseverance against unfavorable odds. Quite the opposite, I believe, that Louis’s poverty and lack of physical sight are deeply connected to his possession of spiritual sight at a level that can be difficult for many of us when our needs are over-met.
On that note, let me be clear, I am not Jesus in this story. By all measures of education, income, and authority, I was in a position far more similar to the Pharisees in today’s Gospel, who held the social and economic power to transform the blind beggar’s circumstances, and yet chose instead to turn the mirror of responsibility back onto him. The Pharisees’ and the disciples’ attributed the blind man’s poverty and unsightedness to a deficit of moral character. They said his circumstance in life were his own fault. It’s an argument that sounds all too familiar even today, does it not? It’s a version of the classic “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” argument, which Dr. Martin Luther King reminds us is a cruel thing to say to a bootless man.
On the other hand, let me also be clear about something else, lest we fall victim to one of Christianity’s historic blind spots to antisemitism. The problem with the Pharisees in the Gospel lesson was not their Jewishness, or even that they were Pharisees. The Gospel writer John was Jewish, the blind man was Jewish, and of course Jesus was Jewish. And more than that, we know that Jesus was friends with some Pharisees, like Nicodemus, and some biblical scholars have even suggested that Jesus may have been a Pharisee himself, or was at least close to their tradition.
Rather, the problem with these Pharisees in John’s Gospel was their unwillingness to see that which was clear as day to the blind man – to recognize Jesus as the source of love and healing. The story cleverly plays on our expectations of sight and reveals a common paradox about what our vantage point might allow or obstruct us from seeing. The Pharisees at the top of the social hierarchy, possessed physical sight, and yet were spiritually blinded by the power and comfort of their standing. On the other hand, the blind beggar at the bottom of the social hierarchy possessed the spiritual sight which the Pharisees lacked, allowing him to recognize that the love and healing which flowed from Jesus, ultimately flowed from God.
And just like my client Louis, I believe it’s not merely accident or allegory that a poor blind beggar was the one to recognize Jesus when others struggled to see. A friend of mine, James Parker, who runs a writer’s group for the unhoused in Boston wrote an article in the Atlantic in which he said: [the poor have a] “simple X-ray perception of society seen from the bottom up. It’s clinical, it’s prophetic.”
You see, the poor, the disabled, and other classes of marginalized people so often possess crystal clear vision about the balance of love in the world, not for supernatural reasons or because being poor or disabled automatically makes someone more spiritually enlightened. Rather, those on the margins are often more perceptive to where love is or is not distributed throughout society because this distribution of love directly impacts their ability to exist in the world.
God shares this X-ray vision of society and invites us to share it too. This is why the Gospel is so often proclaimed to us from the perspective of the poor; it’s why Jesus said he chose the blind to reveal God’s works (John 9:3). We learn from today’s Gospel that God comes to us not only from a lofty point outside of the world, but from also from below. Not always illuminating us with resplendent light, but whispering wisdom to us from a stranger in the darkness. It’s an invitation to us of means and ability to reorient ourselves to this vantage point so we can see as God sees, and this is a profound blessing of sight for us.
Curiously, the blind beggar recognized Christ for who he was even before his sight was restored. That's the paradoxical vision that God invites us to share. God invites us to see with the sight of the blind. [pause] God invites us to see with the sight of the blind so that like the poor blind man who recognized Christ, we might recognize Christ in the poor and be healed.
This undoubtedly requires faith that something we cannot see, something as incredulous as God’s incredible love is actually there for us. So friends, if ever you find yourself struggling to find the faith to believe, then simply remember that people like Louis, and the blind man. They are carrying the faith for you in these moments. Then keep your eyes open for that glimmer in the darkness.
As I prepared to walk Louis and Charlotte back out into the cold winter streets, Charlotte lovingly put on Louis’ coat, handed him his cane, and began walking him to the door. As she did this, Louis flashed a wry smile in my direction and said “Charlotte’s my eyes, I’d literally have no idea where I’d be without her.” Charlotte quickly interjected and said “No, Louis’s really my eyes. He sees things I could never see.”
Let us pray.
Lord, give us the sight of the blind. Remove those barriers which keep our eyes affixed on darkness; and reveal yourself to us more fully, so that we, like those who see in darkness, may too be brought into the radiant splendor of your love. Through Christ our Lord, amen.
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Third Sunday of Lent (A), March 12, 2023.
Exodus 17:1-7; Romans 5:1-11; Psalm 95; John 4:5-42
Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty (John 4:14).
Water: we think of it all the time [writes Dyana Herron].
Water permeates our lives. We are told to drink eight glasses a day. We cleanse ourselves in it. We are mostly made up of it, lakes posing as people, swimming through each hour. When we are ready to eat, our mouths water. When a woman is ready to give birth, her water breaks.
Water permeates our metaphors. A lake is a body. The sea is a womb. Time is a river. When we die, we cross that river into a land beyond. [1]
Water is a powerful symbol holding sacramental implications. And this morning, it plays a central role in our Gospel passage, as Jesus sits beside a well in the heat of the day. He has journeyed three hundred miles to Jacob’s well in the heart of Samaritan country. On his way to Galilee, he has stopped to quench his thirst.
He sits there –alone and thirsty. Until a woman comes along with a water jar. And the first thing Jesus asks of her is that she give him a drink.
This scene casts strange shadows to be sure. First, consider that Jesus, the very Son of God, sits thirsty –in need and vulnerable –at the mouth of a deep well with no way to draw water to his dry lips.
The wilderness at noon is not for the faint of heart; death by dehydration is a very real threat. But there Jesus sits. And you’ve got to wonder, is he thinking back to his time of temptation in the wilderness.
If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread (Matt. 4:3).
Certainly, he could access the well water himself if he really wanted to. Instead, he waits.
Until someone comes along with a water jar. And not just any someone. A Samaritan! To say that Samaritans and Jews didn’t get along is an understatement. One might even say they were enemies.
And yet Jesus longs for water and requests it from this Samaritan. And not just any Samaritan. A Samaritan woman! Even she recognizes the strangeness of such a request:
How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria? (John 4:9).
In Jesus’ time, women had no place in public life and were not even welcome to worship with men (and might I mention that men’s morning meditations at this time included the prayer, “Thank God I am not a woman”).
And yet Jesus longs for water and requests it from this Samaritan woman. And not just any Samaritan woman. A Samaritan woman divorced five times and currently living in sin!
This is why she is at the well in the heat of the day; why she has likely avoided the earlier, cooler hours when the other women went to the well for water.
There is a common characterization made of the Samaritan woman. It is as a harlot, a prostitute, a fallen woman. Many a preacher has gone on and on about her character and her likely sexual sins. This is maybe an aside, but maybe not. It is important that we question our conceptions (or misconceptions) of Biblical characters, particularly those on the margin, as they influence our theology, our lives of faith, and the lives we live alongside one another.
So, let me take a moment to say that we do not know how this woman came to be divorced and living in a partnership without marriage. But we can probably surmise that it didn’t happen by choice. Different theologians have suggested that perhaps she was married as a teenager, as was a custom, and then widowed, passed along among her dead husband’s brothers, as also was a custom. Maybe her husbands left her because she could not have children. Maybe she was abused. Maybe not.
Whatever the case may have been, we do know that in the first century, the authority to file for divorce was a man’s right alone.
And we know when she arrived at the well. We can then assume that she prefers to distance herself from the women of polite society (hence her trip to the well in the scorching heat of high noon). We can imagine that she hopes to get in and out without a scene –to go undetected and unbothered. Going to the well at the busier hour too painful to bear. Who knows who might be there to see her –the looks they might give her and the ways they might judge her. The distance they might keep from her.
These are the circumstances under which she encounters Jesus, vulnerable, in need, and speaking to her of living water.
The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. And the woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water” (John 4:14-14).
It is curious that, in response, Jesus asks after her husband –going right, it seems, to the source of her insecurities, her pain. Going right after the reason they are meeting this way at this odd time of day.
Go, call your husband, and come back (John 4:16). And the woman answered him, I have no husband (4:17). And Jesus knows. He’s known that all along.
He does not look away, walk away, nor otherwise distance himself. Instead, he seems to draw closer, to lean in just so, and to welcome her into Holy proximity.
He sees the whole of her –all that she was, is, and could ever be –and in his sight she is beloved. He asks after her husband not to shame her, to test her, or to trick her, but to invite her into vulnerability and truth. To invite us all into vulnerability and truth –for what is relationship, really, without these things?
Barbara Brown Taylor writes:
When she steps back, he steps toward her. When she steps out of the light, he steps into it. He will not let her retreat. If she is determined to show him less of herself, then he will show her more of himself. “I know that Messiah is coming,” she says, and he says, “I am he.”
It is the first time he has said that to another living soul. It is a moment of full disclosure, in which [this] outsider and the Messiah of God stand face to face with no pretense about who they are. Both stand fully lit at high noon for one bright moment in time, while all the rules, taboos and history that separate them fall forgotten to the ground. [2]
You see, Jesus isn’t there to simply heal or absolve her –he’s there to see her, know her, love her. To be in relationship with her. He’s there to draw her into the divine life. He wants to share his life with her. To share his life with each of us. A life of living water. A life without thirst.
Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done!” (John 4:28-29).
I don’t know about you, but that is a frightening proposition. That someone could see and tell me everything I’ve ever done. But in God and with God being seen is nothing to fear –because God knows us, has always known us, and loves us still.
And God knows we all find ourselves at a well from time to time, attempting to draw forth water that will never truly quench our thirst.
We find fault. We place blame. We consume and pollute. We tell unhelpful, sometimes hurtful, stories about others and ourselves. We grab when we should give. We keep ourselves busy with all the wrong tasks. We lie where we might otherwise be honest. We dwell on mistakes and forget to extend grace.
Yes, we all find ourselves at a well from time to time. Thirsty.
And yet, here is the Good News.
An indisputable law of physics is that water always finds the lowest point in an incredibly efficient manner. It penetrates any crevice or path that will facilitate its downward flow, steadily meandering and descending in search of lower planes. In our physical world, water is as efficient as gravity is unforgiving. [3]
And thanks be to God for that –because the water offered by the Messiah is living water. A water we might call Grace. And Grace will always find our lowest point and quench our deepest thirst.
G.K Chesterton once wrote, “I have found only one religion that dares to go down with me into the depth of myself.” And it is true. The Grace of God with great efficiency will find our lowest point and in so doing will lift us up into a new beginning. As many times as it takes.
Because Jesus knows. Knows not just us –our entire story-but also knows what it means to thirst. And so, he waits. He waits for us to stumble along with our water jars, seeking in all the wrong places what we can hardly bear and yet desperately want -to be seen and to be known.
Whatever your lowest point, your vilest sin, your deepest shame, you can rest certain that the living water of God’s Grace can find it, will find it, and has found it.
In the words of Taylor:
[For Christ] is the one in whose presence you know who you really are—the good and bad of it, the all of it, the hope in it. The Messiah is the one who shows you who you are by showing you who he is—who crosses all boundaries, breaks all rules, drops all disguises—speaking to you like someone you have known all your life, bubbling up in your life like a well that needs no dipper, so that you go back to face people you thought you could never face again, speaking to them as boldly as he spoke to you. “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done.” [4]
Amen.
[1] Dyana Herron, “Water and Oil,” in Good Letters, The Image Journal, 2023 Center for Religious Humanism: https://imagejournal.org/2010/10/21/water-and-oil.
[2] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Identity Confirmation: John 4:5-42,” The Christian Century, 12 February 2008, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/2008-02/identity-confirmation.
[3] Michael Bowe, Skyscraper of a Man: A Novel (2019).
[4] Taylor, “Identity Confirmation.”
A Sermon by the Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on the Second Sunday in Lent, March 5, 2023.
John 3:1-17.
“…You must be born from above…”. John 3: 1-17
Nicodemus comes to Jesus under the cover of darkness. He is so curious about Jesus that he can’t stay away. He knows that Jesus is from God and he has a deep spiritual hunger for the wisdom that Jesus is offering. Nicodemus has devoted his life to the pursuit of divine wisdom. As a leading Pharisee, he would have been highly proficient in Mosaic law, the oral tradition and its application to everyday life. Pharisees were devoted to helping people extend their religious practices beyond the temple. So, it’s easy to see why he would be so drawn to Jesus. Jesus was always trying to help people see that God is everywhere, in us and in the world around us. Nicodemus senses that there is even more to Jesus than being a wise teacher. He just can’t quite get his head around exactly what it is. He hasn’t yet realized that Jesus is the embodiment of all that the law and the oral tradition that flowed from the law was designed to accomplish.
It’s easy for us to relate to Nicodemus. He would fit right into our Arlington landscape. He is an accomplished, well-educated, “subject matter expert”. He is a man of reason, but he is also spiritually restless. People come to him for answers, but in today’s Gospel he is the one with the questions. Nicodemus shows courage and humility in knocking on Jesus’ door in the middle of the night. He can’t be recognized as one of his followers for fear of risking his reputation and the condemnation of his collegues. He has a lot to lose when he seeks Jesus out, but their nighttime conversation is a major turning point in his life.
Jesus doesn’t ask him what he is doing there when he shows up. Jesus receives him with open arms and responds to his questions by telling him “…You must be born from above…”, a shocking answer indeed. “…You must be born from above…”
Jesus’ use of birth imagery as a metaphor for spiritual awakening is very powerful. The person who perhaps understood this best was Julian of Norwich. Her writings in 1342 are the first works known to be written by a woman in the English language and she is greatly admired and revered in our Episcopal tradition. Julian was gravely ill, and after a priest had performed last rites, she laid there, awaiting death, while she contemplated a crucifix that the priest had put at the foot of her bed. But instead of dying, she received a series of visions that she recorded soon after in her book, Revelations of Divine Love. Julian was given a gift more precious than life it itself when she was close to death. God showed her that God is not only our Father, but also our Mother. And she received a deep knowing that divine love is the beginning, the end and the middle of our life. She wrote this.
“…as truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother….. This fair lovely word 'mother' is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said of anyone or to anyone except of him and to him who is the true Mother of life and of all things.”
Julian’s revelations are widely regarded as one of the most beautiful expressions of God’s all-embracing love that we have in Christian tradition. Her words surprise us and open a new place in our imagination.
Jesus’ conversation with Nicodemus today shows us that Jesus’ invitation to deepening our faith is all about love. “For God so LOVED the world.” God so loved Nicodemus. God so loves you. God so loves all of us that God sent Jesus into the world to pierce our hearts with divine love. Nicodemus is beginning to experience that love when he knocks on Jesus’ door late at night. There is a yearning that draws him. Jesus looks at him and loves him. And he also challenges him, as a loving mother challenges her children. Jesus challenges with the voice of love, the love of a mother who cares for her child more than her own life. A mother who is willing to lay down her life for her child. NIcodemus wants to stay in the warmth, darkness, and safety of the womb and Jesus is encouraging him to come into the world in fullness. We can only grow so much in utero. We have to be born in order to mature. But who does the work of salvation? Is it Nicodemus? Well, yes. It is hard work for a baby to come into this world. It is hard work to grow up. But the mother is the one who labors, sometimes for minutes, sometimes for hours, sometimes for days. And that labor continues throughout the child’s life. So it is with God. God is the one who labors for us. God is the one who gives birth to us. And God is the one who loves us into becoming the faithful person God created us to be. We just have to respond to the maternal nudges that we get. We come from God. We return to God. And God is all around. The words of Julian of Norwich still speak to us today.
“…as truly as God is our Father, so truly is God our Mother….. This fair lovely word 'mother' is so sweet and so kind in itself that it cannot truly be said of anyone or to anyone except of him and to him who is the true Mother of life and of all things.”
And what of Nicodemus? Later in the Gospel of John, he brings his fledgling faith into the light of day. He appears two other times, in very significant ways, once to intercede on Jesus’ behalf during his trial and then again when he prepares Jesus’ body for burial after the Crucifixion. That is all we know about Nicodemus. He appears only in the Gospel of John and he is something of a mystery man. I wonder what his life was like after that. I wonder if he witnessed Jesus’ post- Resurrection appearances. I wonder if he was part of the founding of the Church. I like to think that he became even more courageous and more faithful. His story is a hopeful one. He shows us that our questions are good. Our questions can lead us to places we could never have imagined going.
Lent is about coming into our fullness. It’s about maturing in our faith. It is about coming out of the shadows and bringing our life with God into the light of day.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish by have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The First Sunday in Lent, February 26, 2023.
Genesis 2:15-17; 3:1-7
Is it possible to come across any snake in literature, the arts, or at our feet and not think of that first snake, the serpent . . . more crafty than any other wild animal that the Lord God had made (Gen. 3:1)? I doubt it.
That first snake, only later identified as Satan, made quite the impression, and not for the quality of its bite, but for the precision of its strike.
You will not die, [it tempted]; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:5).
Of course, the implication is that God doesn’t wish Adam and Eve, or us, to be like God at all.
The implication is that God wants less for us than is possible; less for us than we want for ourselves.
Notice, that the snake does not challenge God’s existence or even God’s authority; it is God’s trustworthiness that is called into question.
And the Lord God commanded the man, “You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.” (Gen. 2:16).
And the serpent said, you will not die. You will be like God.
It is God’s very Word that is put in doubt. Will we trust God, or will we take matters into our own hands? That’s the serpent’s move. A precise strike, indeed, because we all know what comes next.
As Emily Dickinson so beautifully reflects, “Sweet is the swamp with its secrets, until we meet a snake” [1].
So, when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked (Gen. 3:6-10).
We all know this story. It is the story of our lives. Our deepest longing is to be one with God, our Creator. And yet, we chase after that longing in a perverse and paradoxical fashion, confusing oneness with God and being God.
It is so natural to wonder why God doesn’t make it easier for us to avoid this pitfall. Why God doesn’t answer our most fervent prayers in a way that is direct and undeniable. Why God allows us and the people we love the most to struggle so much. Why God would set us loose in a garden where Satan slithers and schemes.
Certainly, these things are not best for us. Certainly, we can see a better way. So why can’t (or won’t) God?
If only God would reveal himself to us –answer that question, that prayer, send that sign, grace us with that peace that passeth all understanding in our most desperate and anxious times.
If only God would clear up some of this confusion and make himself known. If only God would align God’s will with mine. If only.
Then all would be well, and belief would be made more possible. And with belief, would come trust. And with trust, peace.
But that isn’t the way of God; that is the way of us. The way of God is less about belief and far more about belonging.
God who formed us from the earth; God who walked alongside us in the garden; God who is with us still –this God that we all so desperately long for is a God who wants us not so much to believe in Him but to belong to Him. To abide in Him. To live in the grace of His eternal love.
We only need to venture a few more verses into the third chapter of Genesis to discover one of the most wonderful lines in Scripture.
Adam and Eve, having discovered their nakedness, hear God walking in the garden at the time of the evening breeze, and they hide. They hide themselves from the one who knows them best and loves them most.
Discovering that they have hidden themselves and hearing that they did so because they were naked, God, our Father, cries: Who told you that you were naked?
Father Mike Schmitz observes that how we hear this line says a lot about our vision of God [2].
Who told you that you were naked!!!?
Do we hear anger? Condemnation? Punishment forthcoming?
Or do we hear sadness? Despair? The sound of a heart breaking?
Who told you that you were naked . . . ?
The love of a parent for a child can be and should be one of the most genuine and profound sources of unconditional love. Imperfect, sure. Unlike no other, certainly. Filled with the capacity for joy, and yet naturally marked by sorrow.
I am certain that every parent in this room has, or will one day soon, wonder either silently or aloud that very question of God in the garden.
Who told you that you were naked?
Who told you that you weren’t smart? That you weren’t good enough? Who told you that you weren’t the right size, shape, or sort? Who told you that you weren’t perfectly imperfect? Who told you this thing that has tainted your view of yourself –the yourself that I have known and loved since the moment you became you? Who told you this thing that now has you distrusting what I am telling you about yourself? Who told you?
As a parent, I hear in the words of God, the truest Parent, heartbreak.
Who told you that you were anything other than beloved?
We do our best to build gardens for our children; gardens where they can grow and flourish; protected, life-giving spaces where they may become the people that God has called them to be. We protect them there. Provide for them there. Love them fiercely there.
And yet at some point, slithering, scheming things will break through the defenses we have so carefully cultivated. Because our children are not captives and, for their own good, we must give them room to figure things out on their own. But that doesn’t make it hurt any less when pain comes, and, God knows (God knows!), we cannot protect them from the pain of this world.
I’d like to share with you a story that I heard many years ago. The story of Frank and his son [3].
Frank, a father in San Diego, knew that his son was somewhere in Colorado, homeless and addicted to heroin. Over the years, he and his wife had tried so many things to help their son. Had gone to great lengths to protect him and keep him close. Despite it all, he was now so far from them.
One day, as he worked in his own garden, an idea came to Frank. He was going to find his son and live alongside him on the street. He recounts:
“I love my son. And if I’m honest, I think his days are numbered. . . . The only thing I could think of was just go there, be with him and love him, show how much his family loves him” [4].
Frank arrives in Denver and finds his son.
He has no idea that I'm walking towards him [he writes]. I can see that he can't stand up without the support of a building. He would appear drunk to most people. To his dad, though, I know from past experience, sadly he's on heroin - heavy. I go up to him, and he starts to turn his back on me. I don't even care. I just grab him and squeeze him as hard as I can [5].
Frank spends a week being his son’s shadow. Wandering the streets in the day and sleeping on the bank of a river at night. His beard grows out and his clothes become stained. He eats brown bag lunches handed out by church volunteers in the park. He swats away rats at night. And he watches his son, the one he loves desperately, deteriorate right before his eyes. And he can do nothing, nothing but be there.
Finally, Frank does return home, but not before telling his son, “I’ll be with you, every minute of the day” [6]. I’ll be with you, he seems to say, so that you don’t forget that you are beloved.
And God said, who told you that you were naked?
This is a parent’s heart breaking. God’s heart breaking. This may be the first time, but it won’t be the last time that God’s heart is broken open for us. Because love involves sacrifice –anyone who loves knows this fact. Love involves sacrifice. And God’s immense love will ultimately beget God’s greatest sacrifice: Jesus the Christ, broken open for us. Jesus, the Christ, the second Adam, making all things new.
My friends, remember the garden. Remember the garden and know that we belong to God. We are beloved by God. And no matter how far we wander, how rough the road, how little we believe it, God will always be with us, every minute of the day. Trustworthy, tender, and true.
Amen.
[1] “A Snake,” CVI, in Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson (Gramercy Books: New York, 1982), 175.
[2] “Day 2: The Fall of Adam and Eve,” The Bible in a Year: Podcast (Ascension Catholic Faith Formation, 2023), 2 Jan. 2022. This episode inspired much of this sermon, and I extend much gratitude to Father Mike Schmitz for his thoughtful and provoking Bible in a Year Podcast.
[3] Andrea Dukakis, “This Father Spent a Week on the Streets with Homeless Son. Now, You Can Hear Their Story,” Colorado Public Radio, 29 May 2018, https://www.cpr.org/show-segment/this-father-spent-a-week-on-the-streets-with-homeless-son-now-you-can-hear-their-story.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Andrea Dukakis, “A Father Feared for His Son’s Life, so He Joined Him on the Street,” 23 June 2018, Weekend Edition Saturday, National Public Radio (courtesy of WAMU), https://www.npr.org/2018/06/23/622795423/a-father-feared-for-his-sons-life-so-he-joined-him-on-the-street.
[6] Dukakis, “This Father Spent a Week.”
A Sermon by Seminarian Paddy Cavanaugh on the Last Sunday after Epiphany (A), February 19, 2023.
Exodus 24:12-18 (Moses receives law on Sinai); 2 Peter 1:16-21 (Prophetic Majesty of Christ on mountain); Matthew 17:1-9 (Transfiguration)
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, amen.
About ten years ago I went on a pilgrimage to the Cathedral in Santiago de Compostela in Spain. It is a centuries old pilgrimage known as the Camino, or the Way, to visit the relics of the Apostle James, who is featured in our Gospel today. You may have heard of it. Now I’ll be the first to tell you that I am not much of a hiker or outdoorsman, unless that outdoors is in a chair on the beach. But fortunately, there are plentiful guides for the underprepared and overenthusiastic pilgrim, like me. They tell you exactly what to pack, which hostels have wifi, and which cafes have the best wine. There may also be a list of a few churches to visit along the way.
However, there’s one piece of advice all of these guides will give you, and that’s to pack less than you think you will need in your backpack because the average daily walking distance is about twelve miles. Now, my average walking distance up unto this point was a few blocks from my house to the city bus stop, but this did not impede me from ignoring this advice and proceeding to pack as much as I could. I found that I possessed the incredible ability of making a justification for every sundry item, no matter how absurd and unnecessary it was. I needed a portable hammock because how lovely would it be to take an outdoor siesta in the fields of Galicia? I needed a few books, or more than a few books, because what if I ended up in one of the hostels that didn’t have wifi? Most ridiculous of all, I needed a pair of penny loafers in addition to my hiking boots, in case I made friends who wanted to go out for wine at one of those cafes.
I’m going to pause this story about my pilgrimage of folly because I would like to talk about today’s lessons, but I promise to pick it up momentarily. This is the last Sunday of Epiphany before we enter into the season of Lent. If the season of Epiphany is about our first encounter with the living God, Jesus Christ, then Lent is about how that encounter brings about Christlike changes in our life in the forty days of penitence, prayer, and fasting leading up to Holy Week and Easter. Today’s lessons are intentionally curated to help prepare for the pilgrimage of Lent, which is likened to climbing a mountain in order to catch a glimpse of something that will leave us utterly transformed.
In the reading from Exodus, Moses, follows God’s command to “come up the mountain and wait” for forty days and forty nights until God gives him the ten commandments of the law on stone tablets (Ex. 24:12). In the Gospel, a parallel event happens, but this time it’s the disciples James and Peter who make the slow trek up the mountaintop where they encounter, again, Moses, with the prophet Elijah, and they’re flanking Jesus who has been gloriously transfigured so that “his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white” (Matt. 17:2). Jesus is shining upon them like the noonday sun. What’s going on here?
First, there is a clear parallel being drawn between what the pilgrims encounter in each of their mountaintop experiences. The pilgrim Moses encounters God as he receives the law, which is the way for God’s chosen community to stay in right relationship with Him and one another.
What the pilgrims James and Peter encounter is a new vision of Jesus. Up until this point the disciples didn’t have a clear idea of who Jesus was exactly, and here, they finally see him for who he really is. They see Jesus not simply as a good moral teacher among many, but as the Son of God. Jesus is then, as he is now, God’s only begotten son who is the dazzling savior of the world. And as the Son of God, scripture tells us that Jesus came not to replace the law that God gave Moses, but to fulfill it (Matt. 5:17). What the disciples encounter on their mountaintop sojourn is Jesus being revealed as the fulfilment of the law, the very embodiment of love.
And what is the purpose of the law that is fulfilled in Jesus Christ? It’s both a trail marker to keep us steadfastly on the path of love and Jesus is our rescuer who braves through the wilderness to save us when we get caught in the thickets of sin and disobedience to love.
And the disciples James and Peter get so excited when they see Jesus transformed in this new way, that they to build dwellings so they can stay there in this moment forever – they want to hang hammocks! But Jesus says to them to “get up and do not be afraid” (Matt. 5:7). The disciples must continue on the journey down the mountain, themselves transfigured and transformed by what they have just seen. Jesus is clear that he does not want them to busy themselves with well-intentioned distractions, but to focus instead on the transfiguration that has occurred and is now occurring within them.
You see, what Jesus’ transfiguration on the mountaintop helped the apostles to see and be transformed by was not necessarily something wholly new, but a new depth and dimension of God’s unchanging love. The law, which is the guidebook that God gave the Israelites to help them follow the path of love, is now revealed in the flesh. In addition to a guidebook, God sends a living, breathing guide to help us better navigate the path together. Our guide Jesus is here show us the things that are essential and the things which we can set down. And this is the purpose of our pilgrimage of prayer, penance, and fasting during Lent – to remove the things that are unnecessary to our journey and to follow our living guide, Christ Jesus, who wants to transform you more into the image of love for God and neighbor. More into the image of Christ.
Now back to the story of the foolish pilgrim, Paddy, with his hammock, books, and penny loafers. How many of these things do you think made it to the town of Santiago? Not a single one. That hammock is being enjoyed by a young Italian boy. Those books are sitting on a shelf in a hostel common room, and those penny loafers are hopefully being worn by a Spaniard who is drinking wine in a cafe somewhere. After a few excruciating days of a straining back and blistering feet, I realized that these worldly indulgences that I thought would bring me comfort; would help to enhance my experience along the journey, were in fact doing just the opposite. The fleeting pleasure they brought was not worth the burden of carrying them.
And perhaps most of all, they were distracting me from the real purpose of my journey, which was a pilgrimage, after all, not a holiday. Holidays are about leisure and recreation, which is very important, but the rest that holidays provide typically fades once they end. Pilgrimage, on the other hand, is about climbing the mountaintop to experience transformation, and transformation is enduring.
My question for you all before we set off on our pilgrimage to the mountaintop this Lent, is what can you take out of your backpack? What things, habits, or thoughts that feel essential are actually burdening you on the pilgrimage of love?
What’s getting in the way of your ability to see and seek the transfiguring presence of Jesus – and to be transformed by it? Friends, I invite you to take those things out of your backpack and leave them at the altar as you come up to receive Holy Communion today. It may be difficult to part with these things at first, but I promise you from my own experience, that the lightness you will feel afterward is worth far more than that which you left. It’s a lightness that is bright, brilliant, and transforming. It’s the transfiguring light of Christ.
Amen.
A Sermon by the Reverend Dr. Robert W. Prichard on the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany, February 12, 2023.
From the Gospel: “You have heard that it was said . . . But I say to you.”
Most of our Gospel lessons in this liturgical year come from Matthew’s Gospel. That is most clear in Epiphany and Pentecost seasons. In Epiphany every Sunday Gospel except for one is from Matthew; in the season after Pentecost, every Gospel is from Matthew. I mention that because the lesson which we have heard today is quintessentially Matthew—part of a key section in Matthew in which he makes clear the way that his understanding is distinguishable from the approach of the other Gospel authors.
I have participated in ritual of college or graduate school visits from three different perspectives: as a potential student, as a faculty member, and as a parent of potential students. Our oldest grandson is now a sophomore in high school, so it may not be long before Marcia and I hear about college visits from a 4th perspective—that of a grandson—but given the speech patterns of teenage boys, we probably will not hear very much. Schools employ a variety of techniques to entice students to seek admission. They send out pamphlets and post materials on the web that depict the diversity they would like to have in their student bodies, though in most cases have not yet attained. They recruit good looking male and female students to serve as student guides. They suggest to the chefs of campus eating facilities that they spruce up the menu on prime occasions for visits. They show off historic buildings and provide a peek at the most up to date classrooms and dormitories. But the idea that I like best is the “master class.” Visitors are given the opportunity to sit in on classes of some of the best and most popular teachers, or mock classes are set up for visitors in order to provide a glimpse of the academic life of the institution.
The authors of the four gospels have their own techniques of attracting potential Christians to a faith in Jesus Christ. Matthew in his gospel chose the master class approach. The Sermon on the Mount is the master class; it is strategically located to serve as a foundation for the Gospel as a whole. In chapter 4, Matthews begins the story of Jesus’ public ministry, with the call of the first four disciples and with a few summary sentences about Jesus’ healing, teaching, and gathering crowds but with no details. Then comes the The Sermon on the Mount in chapters 5 to 7. Jesus chooses a very public place and waits for the crowds to arrive, aware that they are more interested in healing then in his teaching. He assumes the seated posture of a teacher, summons the disciples that he has called, and begins to teach them within the hearing of the crowd.
Of the Gospels, only Matthew sets the scene in this way. Luke 6 does include a shorter discourse with content similar to that in Matthew but arranged very differently. In the preceding chapters in Luke, Jesus has already called all 12 of his disciples, and we are provided details of his healing and teaching. Jesus stands rather than sits. He is on a level place rather than a mountain, and there is no declaration that he is specifically teaching his disciples, though we are that Jesus glance at them before he began to speak.
Matthew’s Gospel was probably written in Syria, in an area where many of the earliest Christians were Jewish Christians who had fled from persecution in Palestine. They were naturally interested in the difference between the followers of Jesus and the supporters of other movements within first-century Judaism. I think that is in response to that interest that Matthew adopted the master class approach; he distinguished Jesus’ teaching from that of others. There were at least four other religious parties in first century Judaism: that of the Scribes and Pharisees, that of the Sadducees, that of the Zealots, and that of the Essenes.
Of these, the Sadducees were preoccupied with the details of Temple worship. They play an important role in the gospels, because it will be members of the Sadducee party that play a leading role in Jesus’ arrest, trial before the Council, and his handing over to the Romans for execution. They do not, however, have much to say about personal religious life outside of the importance of supporting Temple worship. We hear much less about the Zealots, with the only gospel reference to them in Luke. Luke identifies the disciple that other Gospels call Simon the Cananaean as Simon the Zealot [1]. There is no direct reference to the Essenes, who were a monastic community, but some have suggested that the reference in Mark 14:12 and Luke 22:10 to a man carrying a jug of water may be an indirect reference; the work of carrying water was usually done by females, but would necessarily have been done by men in a all-male monastic community. That leaves the Scribes and Pharisees.
Matthew understood them as the major alternative to the Jesus’ teaching on everyday life. The Pharisees (from a work meaning separate) sought to describe obedience to the law in minute detail that was not found in Scripture itself. The Scribes recorded and organized that teaching. The Scribes effort would be preserved in a volume called the Misnah, a collection of teaching about the law from the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD [2]. Because of his concern with distinguishing Jesus’ teaching from that of the Pharisees, Matthew uses their name (31 times to Luke’s 27, John’s 19, Mark’s 11 references) and that of the scribes (27 times to Mark’s 21, Luke 15, and John’s single reference) more times than any other Gospel.
The form Jesus’ master class takes is what is often called the antitheses. There are six of in the Sermon on the Mount, four of which are in today’s lesson: You have heard it said, but I say. There is enough material here to occupy a preacher for weeks. I will focus on just two of the issues—divorce and the taking of oaths.
The Pharisees exercised minute care about the details of a divorce: how the written bill of divorce—called a Gett—was to be phrased, who could serve as a witness to it, how it would be affected if written in another country, and the like. There was relatively little concern for the fact of the divorce. At the end of the chapter in the Misnah about divorce there is a single statement about permissible causes, offering a variety of opinions [3]. The school of Rabbi Shammai says that divorce is only permitted in the case of unchastity, that of Rabbi Hillel says that a wife can be dismissed for spoiling a dish, while Rabbi Akiba allows a divorce so a man can marry a woman that he finds more attractive. Jesus approaches the question in a different way. He does not weigh in on the details of writing a bill of divorce, and he does not offer an array of opinions on when divorce is permissible. In an age in which women had little or no rights and very limited possibility of earning a living in any respectable way, divorce could result in total disaster for a woman. Jesus recognizes that and takes a simple but demanding stance. He tells his disciples that they should never divorce “except on the ground of unchastity.”
In Matthew’s understanding, Jesus is also very interested in the taking of oaths, a subject that Luke omits in his Sermon on the Plain. Oaths were important to the Pharisees. There is a whole section in one of the divisions of the Misnah that deals with them. It is a close examination of the kind of oaths that one might take, according to the subject matter (oaths that one has maintained ritual purity, that one has not had food or drink during a fast, that one has not stolen property of another; that one would do something that was not subsequently done; that one has or lacks not knowledge about a third party, etc.), as to the person making the oath (male or female, Jew or Gentile, free or enslaved person), as to the situation in which the oath is taken (to family member or an unrelated person, in business, before the Council). There are separate sections dealing with oaths taken in relationship to betrothal, marriage and divorce. It can make your head spin. One verse notes an argument of which Jesus seems to be aware: “If a man must take an oath before his fellow, and his fellow said to him, ‘Vow to me by the life of [your] head,” Rabbi Meir says: He may retract. But the Sages say: He cannot retract.” [4] I take that to mean that if one person requires an oath be sworn by another on his or her head, the Sages do not allow imposing some other kind of witness to the oath [5].
Again Jesus cuts to the heart of the matter and says to his disciples: “I say to you, Do not swear at all. . . . Let your word be ‘Yes, Yes’ or ‘No, No’; anything more than this comes from the evil one.” Matthew then illustrates the truth of that insight elsewhere in his Gospel. He tells us twice of the oath to give anything requested that King Herod gave to the daughter of his wife Herodias; the daughter took him at his word and asked for the head of John the Baptist (Matthew 14:7 and 14:9). He tells us of two oaths that Simon Peter took on the night before the crucifixion as part of his denial that he knew Jesus (Matthew 26:72 and 26: 74) [6]. He also includes an a detail to the trial of Jesus before the Jewish Council not found in any other Gospel; in his account the high priest demands an oath of Jesus (Matthew 26:63).
There is a clarity and simplicity to Jesus’ teaching that exceeds that of the Pharisees. Notice, however, what Matthew has done with his story of Peter’s oaths. Peter was one of the early founders of the Church in Syria. He was much revered, and Matthew’s Gospel has more to say about him than do any of the other Gospels. Yet even Peter falls short of following a relatively simply command from Jesus about not taking oaths. I don’t think the conflict between Jesus’ command in the sermon and Peter’s behavior is somehow a slip up on Matthew’s part. I think he is clear: Jesus calls us to follow the law, but Matthew knows that even the disciples will fall short of that goal. That prepares the way for the really good news: Christ will die for us as sinners and rise again, bringing us forgiveness of sin and everlasting life. Jesus will do for us, what we cannot do for ourselves.
In a similar way, we learn from the Epistles that the early church will not be uniform in following Jesus’ clear instruction about divorce. In 1 Corinthians 7, Paul cites the Lord’s teaching against divorce but then provides instructions about what is to be done when there is a divorce. Jesus gives us clear instructions, and yet has compassion for those who fall short.
And Jesus said: “You have heard that it was said . . . But I say to you.”
[1] Compare Luke 6:15 with Mark 3:18 and Matthew 10:4.
[2] For an English translation of the Misnah see Herbert Dabney, The Mishnah, translated from the Hebrew with introduction and brief explanatory notes (London: Oxford University Press, 1933).
[3] Gittim 9:10.
[4] Sanhedrin 3.2.
[5] There does not seem to be a section in the Mishnah about oaths on the Temple or on Jerusalem, about which Jesus had something to say. The absence of that discussion may reflect the fact that Roman soldiers destroyed the Temple and ejected Jews from Jerusalem after Jewish rebellions around the years 70 and 130.
[6] Mark includes a single reference to Herod’s oath and a single oath by Peter (Mark 6:26 and 14:71). The other gospels do not mention either of the oaths.
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, Sunday, February 5, 2023.
Matthew 5:13-20
A few years ago, I became captivated by Salt Fat Acid Heat, [1] the Netflix documentary series adapted from Samin Nosrat’s cookbook of the same name. I highly recommend it. The show is visually stunning and evocative. “In the four episodes spanning four different countries . . . scenes in which each audible slurp and swallow and refrain of ‘It’s so good!’ illustrate the full, rich pleasure the chef finds in eating good food” [2] grown simply, prepared with understanding and care.
Nosrat is never afraid to show genuine excitement or to share her delight with a food. She unapologetically engages all her senses. And, her love of the earth, and of ingredients, and of tradition, and of the preparers of food, and of the food itself is tangible and contagious.
Nosrat promises that whether you’ve never picked up a knife or you’re an accomplished chef, there are only four basic factors that determine how good your food will taste: salt, fat, acid, heat [3]. If you understand how they work, you can make delicious food. It’s that simple.
There are no real recipes; instead, there are principles and an invitation to use your senses, your own judgment. To own the process. To learn through doing. To taste and see. To delight. Hers is a philosophy of simplicity that evokes a certain decadence; that highlights the ordinary while elevating it to something extraordinary.
In many ways, this was also Jesus’ philosophy. Jesus said, you are the salt of the earth (Matt. 5:13). Throughout the Gospels, Jesus uses ordinary things – the simple materials of everyday life – to speak to spiritual realities. Birds, weeds, flowers, seeds, sheep, coins, fruit trees, and, of course, wine and water, bread and vine. I think that, for most of us, life – especially our life of faith – can seem mysterious and complex; full of truths that our words can’t capture fully. As a result, we complicate what might be rather simple, and attenuate what might be held close. Jesus though, Jesus speaks the transcendent into simplicity, reminding us that the connection between the eternal and the transient is less attenuated then we like to think; Jesus hands us the stuff of ordinary life, begs us hold it, turn it over, use it, remember it, know God in it. In today’s Gospel, Jesus calls us salt. You, he says, you are the salt of the earth.
If your instinct is to look around to find who Jesus might be speaking to, then you’re probably not alone. We all know “salt of the earth” people, and most of us don’t put ourselves in that category. When we hear, “you are the salt of the earth,” we distance ourselves, constructing a mental list of the virtues that seem to come naturally to such a person. We then look at our list, our recipe if you will, with the resignation of someone who knows they will never be a master chef. There is no delight; there is frustration, fatigue, resignation, dashed hopes, cynicism, shame. But Jesus does not say, “You will become the salt of the earth.” Or “That person over there, they are the salt of the earth.” He says, “You are the salt of the earth.” What does it mean to be salt? Here are some things I’ve learned about salt from Nosrat.
All salt comes from the ocean, be it the Atlantic or a long-forgotten sea turned salt flat. Many of us, I’m sure, associate salt with the beach. I think of earthly things: hot summer days in the Florida Panhandle by the gulf. I think of seagulls and sunburns and mouthfuls of salty water and brushing dried salt off my skin at the end of a long afternoon. And I think of things heavenly. I think of standing at the water’s edge and noticing how limitless the world seemed, how small I was, how brutal life could be, and how beautiful.
Like salt, our origin story is Creation, when there was water and little else. We too depend on the waters of the earth for our existence, and each of us comes from the salty waters of a womb. Made in the image of God, we are somehow both vast and contained; heavenly and earthly.
Two, salt’s primary role is to amplify flavor. While it affects texture and helps modify other flavors, it’s true vocation is to make our food sing. It enhances, deepens, unlocks already existing flavor. Quite simply, salt makes food taste more like itself. Nosrat writes, “James Beard, the father of modern American cookery, once asked,
‘Where would we be without salt?’ I know the answer: adrift in a sea of blandness. If only one lesson from this book stays with you, let it be this: Salt has a greater impact on flavor than any other ingredient.” [4] Like salt, the potential for our impact is great. The differences among us affect texture, offering the delight of variety. We are meant to make life sing! To enhance, deepen, and unlock the eternal Truths of God; to show others - and to remind ourselves - of a richer way of living and of being. A way truer to what was intended.
Three, salt is fundamentally relational. What I mean by that is this: by itself, it’s fairly useless. Left in the salt shaker, it might serve as a nice table ornament (depending on the shaker; and, really, the thing might as well be empty). But, put into use, it brings its own flavor, its own texture, its own origin story, into partnership with something else; enhancing the flavor of that other ingredient, “minimizing bitterness, balancing out sweetness, and enhancing aromas,” [5] –bringing it to life.
Like salt, we are meant for each other. The people of God are meant to live as a community of faith, working in partnership towards something greater than we could be on our own; preserving rather than destroying, enhancing rather than overpowering, lifting up others, humbling ourselves, and pointing always to the Glory of God.
It is curious that we are hard-wired to crave salt. It’s one of several dozen essential nutrients we need to survive. Because the human body can’t store much salt, we need to consume it regularly so that we can carry out basic biological processes. We need it so desperately that we are hard-wired to crave it to ensure that we get enough of it. Our body is primed to cry out for what it needs.
Human beings crave not only salt; we crave connection with one another and with God. We crave a life of meaning; a life lived in communion with God’s purpose for us. Our hearts were created this way - hungry - so that we might seek out what we truly need: the bread of life. If we fail to respond to that craving, we are like salt that has lost its taste. We are, simply put, living life blandly.
And, Jesus said, you are the salt of the earth.
We have been called - collectively - by name: Salt. Let us delight in that. Let us approach that call with curiosity, eager hearts, and a willingness to learn as we go. Let us allow our craving to guide us, being not resigned to failure, but empowered by the opportunity. Being not cynical, but joyful. Being not afraid, but willing.
Jesus highlights ordinary things, while elevating them to something extraordinary; that’s you. And that’s me. Together. The salt of the earth. Thanks be to God.
[1] www.saltfatacidheat.com
[2] Jenny G. Zhang, “’Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat’ Changes the Rules for Who Gets to Eat on TV: the quiet radicalism of showing Samin Nosrat Eating with Gusto,” Eater, Oct. 24, 2018: https://www.eater.com/2018/10/24/18014782/salt-fat-acid-heat-samin-nosrat-eating-cooking-food-tv-netflix .
[3] Samin Nosrat, “Salt Fat Acid Heat” (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2017), 5.
[4] Nosrat, “Salt Fat Acid Heat,” 21.
[5] Ibid.
A Sermon by The Reverend Dr. Robert W. Prichard on the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, January 29, 2023.
Micah 6:1-8, Psalm 15, 1 Corinthians 1:18-31, Matthew 5:1-12
From the Book of the Prophet Micah: “ What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Three of the four lessons that we have heard this morning have been selected to make a very simple point, but one that is not always entirely understood. The point is this: that a true faith in the living God involves a commitment to justice, kindness, and humility.
The prophet Micah was a rough contemporary of the author of the first portion of the Book of Isaiah. Like Isaiah, he wrote in the final years before the conquest of the Kingdom of Judah by Babylon in about 600 BC. Micah was from the small city of Moresheth. When he came to Jerusalem, the capital city of Judah, he was distressed by what he witnessed there—particularly what he regarded as perfunctory religious observance. His preaching centered on the importance of a faith that touched the heart and the way in which one behaved toward neighbor. “What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
Psalm 15 tells us about the holy life of the faithful person, expanding on the provisions in the last five of the Ten Commandments—those that deal with behavior toward neighbor. The author goes beyond the requirements in the 6th (“Do not murder.”) and the 7th commandments (“Do not commit adultery.”) to declare that a person who leads “a blameless life” should do “no evil [of any kind] to [a] friend.” The psalmist goes beyond the 8th (“Do not stead.”) and 10th commandment (“Do not covet.”) to declared that the person who “[does] what is right” does “not give money in hope of gain.” and does not “take a bribe against the innocent.” Finally, the author goes beyond the 9th commandment (“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.”) to say that the one the one who seeks “a blameless life,” does “not heap contempt upon [the] neighbor,” speaks “the truth from [the] heart,” and does “not take back [one’s] word.”
The Gospel lesson is from the beatitudes in Matthew’s Gospel, the list of blessings with which our Lord begins the Sermon on the Mount. There is a little bit of indirection here. Rather than telling us what believers ought to do, Jesus gives a glimpse from God the Father’s point of view. God blesses those who are “poor in spirit, . . . those who mourn, … the meek, …the pure in heart, …the merciful, … the peacemakers, [and] those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake.”
The three lessons join together in a kind of full court press against any view that reduces religion to perfunctory external performance of religious rites in order to secure God’s blessing. So far so good.
There are, however, some Christians today take this to be a kind of either/or proposition: One either does what is just and kind OR follows the letter of the law. But that is not what the lessons say. They do not declare that all religious rites are abolished or that ethical behavior makes the content of faith itself irrelevant. Nor do they declare that the Jewish adherence to the Law of God is futile and without merit.
If we take a second look at the lessons, it is evident that they do not reject the importance of following the Law of Israel. Take the prophet Micah, for example. The book as a whole alternates between words of condemnation and words of hope. What is condemned is not the religion of Judah but its misuse. Micah describes this problem back in chapter 3:9-12, where he denounces Jerusalem as the place where “rulers give judgment for a bribe; ... priests teach for a price; … prophets give oracles for money; [and] yet they lean upon the Lord and say, ‘Surely the Lord is with us! No harm shall come upon us.’” It is not institutional religion of Judah that is condemned but the corruption that has distorted the institution.
The Psalmist makes the same point. The blameless life that is described is not an end in itself but the deportment for those who “who may dwell in [the Lord’s] tabernacle” and “abide upon [the Lord’s] holy hill.” That is to say, it links that deportment with worship in the Temple in Jerusalem, rather than setting one against the other.
And of course the Gospel lesson from Matthew, which names those who receive God’s blessing, is followed immediately by the strongest statement by Jesus in all of the New Testament about the importance of the law: “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished.
The call of our lessons today is not a call to adopt an internal disposition of justice, kindness and humility as part of a program to reject the Law and the Prophets, but rather an invitation to adopt a changed heart while observing the Law and the Prophets. It is a call to continue in public worship, to live in accordance with the Ten Commandments, to give thanks for God’s Law, and to do so with a converted heart, with humility, and with love of neighbor.
There is a beautiful ivory cross located in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It is alternatively known as the Bury Saint Edmunds Cross (for the location in England from which it came) or the Cloisters Cross (for the place in which it is located at the museum). One-time director of the Museum Thomas Hoving spent a good deal of time puzzling over the inscription above the cross, which unlike the Biblical accounts of the crucifixion read “King of the Confessors” rather than “King of the Jews.” He concluded that the text was a deliberate misquotation, written at a time in which England was involved in its greatest anti-Jewish pogrom, a time when the vast majority of the Jewish population was ejected from England. The creators of the cross wanted to deny Jesus’ Judaism in order to excuse their own misconduct [1].
Two years ago Amy-Jill Levine, a professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Duke University, was invite to preach at the Washington National Cathedral [2]. She focused her attention on the way the arrangement of lessons in the Revised Common Lectionary at time suggests that the Law of Moses has become a bad thing and was made obsolete by the teaching of Jesus. As she rightly pointed out that is not what Jesus has to say about the Law in Matthew’s Gospel and it conflicts with much of what St. Paul has to say.
In part because of her preaching and speaking at the National Cathedral and at other Christian places of worship, the 2022 General Convention of the Episcopal Church considered three different resolutions calling for attention to the way in which Biblical lessons have been used in the church and in society at large to support anti-Semitic views. They came from the Diocese of Washington, the Diocese of New York, and in a resolutely jointly sponsored by deputies from Diocese of Virginia and the Diocese of Southwestern Virginia. The third of these was passed as submitted and the first two were combined into a single resolution. Committees are at work, taking a careful look at the way in which we arrange and preach about lessons related to Judaism.
This is, of course, not a new concern. Some in this church today may remember the only thing that changed in the text of the Book of Common Prayer between its submission for first consideration in 1976 and its adoption on second reading in 1979—a prayer in the Good Friday service directed to the conversion of the Jews was dropped. It does make sense to re-examine the way in which we talk about the Jews—our elder siblings in faith, to whom, as Paul suggested in Romans 11, we related like “a wild olive shoot . . . grafted . . . to . . . the rich root of the olive tree.” This is particularly true nin a time of rising anti-Semitism. This is, however, a problem that calls for continuing vigilance over time, and will not be permanently solved by whatever measures the Church decides upon.
“What does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”
[1] Thomas Hoving,King of the Confessors (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981).
[2] Amy-Jill Levine, National Cathedral Sermon (March 7, 2021), Dr. Amy-Jill Levine - Washington National Cathedral.
A Sermon by The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on The Third Sunday after the Epiphany, January 22, 2023.
“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose…For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1: 10-18.
Saint Paul knew a thing or two about human nature and he definitely knew that churches could become fraught with the same divisiveness that separates people from each other in the culture they are a part of each day. Paul went all over the first century Roman world planting church after church after church. And after he had moved on to the next one, he would write letters back to address issues that had arisen since he left. The church in Corinth was one of the most diverse churches that he planted. Corinth was a busy hub of east-west trade and it was the center of Roman imperial culture in Greece. Everyone was there, from the very wealthy to recently freed slaves. And every rung of the Roman social ladder was represented in the church. Paul was there for 18 months, along with a team of co-workers, Priscilla and her husband Aquila, Phoebe, Timothy and Silvanus. Together they organized a group of house churches that came together periodically as a larger church to celebrate the Eucharist and have fellowship with one another. They came together to proclaim Jesus’ death and resurrection and to be the Body of Christ, a new people, no longer separated by distinctions of class, wealth or education.
But people being people, and sin being sin, divisions started creeping in. Some reverted to treating each other according to their social rank. And there were disagreements among them. Paul isn’t exactly clear about what those divisions were, but factions were starting to form, and people were identifying themselves with the leaders of the various factions. There is a suggestion that there may have been some doctrinal differences between the groups. But Paul is not primarily concerned about right belief in this instance. He is concerned about right action. He has a laser focus on how people are treating one another. This whole passage could be summed up in two words: “Act right”. The wealthy business person and the low level worker are the same when they come to church. And they are meant to relate to others outside of church in the same way. They come together to be transformed and then to be agents of transformation in the culture. Why? Because, he says, “the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
The cross of Jesus is the great equalizer. And when we follow Jesus, we claim God’s power and not our own. And that gets lived out through Christian ethics. Treating one another with kindness. Speaking the truth in love. Showing humility. Being gracious with one another. Holding our opinions lightly. There is so much wisdom in Paul’s exhortation to “act right” today. The social context was very different in first century Corinth, but the dynamics are timeless.
And this passage is a good reminder for us on the day we have our annual meeting. This is a day to take stock of our communal life. When we meet at 9:00 in the parish hall, we will look back on 2022, with all of its joys and challenges, and look forward to all that God has in store for us in 2023. We are extraordinarily blessed, exceptionally blessed here at Saint George’s. I thank God every day for each of you and the life we share together in Jesus’ name. We are remarkably free of division and discord and Paul’s words are a good reminder about how to keep it that way. We can’t take it for granted. We have to keep working at it. For the life of our church community and for the life of this world, which is so bitterly divided in a myriad of ways.
Saint George’s is a training ground for each of us. We come together first and foremost to worship, to claim the foolishness of the cross and the power of God. We also come together to learn how to become the beloved community. Treating one another with kindness. Speaking the truth in love. Showing humility. Being gracious with one another. Holding our opinions lightly. We are a diverse community is so many ways. And we want to celebrate our diversity while remaining one unified whole because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Saint George’s is a multi-faceted community. Some of us love worship support and are ushers or Altar Guild members. Some of us are passionate about our social justice or outreach ministries. Others really love small groups and are all about adult forum or our house churches or one of our affinity groups. Still others are committed to finance or buildings and grounds. Each of our ministries is important in and of themselves, and they also support and strengthen each other and help us to live out our mission of “Growing in God’s love to promote justice, healing and reconciliation.” Many ministries, one Saint George’s.
Today we will elect 6 new vestry members who will join 6 continuing vestry members who are all representative of the diversity and vitality of our church. The vestry works with me to make decisions affecting our life together at Saint George’s. One of the things that we will talk about during our vestry retreat this coming Friday and Saturday is group discernment. Discernment is prayer decision-making. Whenever we have a big decision to make, we will try to discern what God is calling us to do. We will pray, asking the Holy Spirit’s guidance, and then go around one by one, while each person says what they believe we are being led to do and what is best for our faith community as a whole. We are each asked to “speak the truth in love” and to hold our opinions lightly. And that is easier said than done! Each of us sometimes has strong opinions, and that is a good thing. We Saint Georgians are a passionate people. We ask God to help us voice our own thoughts and feelings clearly and then to listen, really listen to each person in the group very intentionally to hear them speak the truth as it has been revealed to them and to honor them as a fellow sibling in Christ. It requires humility and forbearance. It opens our hearts and minds to God and to one another. After each person speaks, we take a vote and then go forward as one, unified group to support the discernments we have made for the good of Saint George’s as a whole. Treating one another with kindness. Speaking the truth in love. Showing humility. Being gracious with one another. Holding our opinions lightly. Taking Saint Paul’s sage wisdom to heart.
“Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you be in agreement and that there be no divisions among you, but that you be united in the same mind and the same purpose…For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” 1 Corinthians 1: 10-18
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Second Sunday after the Epiphany (A), January 15, 2023.
Isaiah 49:1-7; Psalm 40:1-12; 1 Corinthians 1:1-9; John 1:29-42
The winter months tend to call my attention to the poetry of the late Mary Oliver. At this time of year, her instructions for living a life are particularly welcome:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
What if we lived this way? Patient. Observant. Expectant. Wandering and wondering. Delighted. Seeing the grace in all things.
The season of Epiphany is a time for Oliver’s words; a time to watch for, and to witness to, God’s faithfulness. Epiphany, from the Greek word meaning “intense appearance,” in the words of Bishop Robert Barron, is not about “just getting our attention but revealing something of enormous significance” [1].
To the magi, a star appeared -an extraordinary appearance to be sure; and yet, had they not been watching and had they not then been moved to action by their astonishment, they would have missed the real epiphany: the Christ child.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Epiphanies await.
In Frances Hodgson Burnett’s beloved novel, “The Secret Garden,” Mary Lennox, a stubborn, somewhat sour, and emotionally neglected 10-year-old, moves to her uncle’s estate in Yorkshire, England, after her parents die from cholera. Her uncle, still grieving the death of his wife, leaves her to her own devices, and she spends much of her time exploring the grounds of the estate.
On one of these outings, she discovers a hidden garden (a garden that her uncle locked after her aunt died). It appears dead, completely uncared for and left in ruin. With the help of friends, Mary begins to spend time in the garden, tending and nurturing it back to life with attentiveness –from root to bud to flower.
“And the secret garden bloomed and bloomed, and every morning revealed new miracles [2].”
As the garden is slowly resurrected, the lonely, grief-filled hearts of those who experience it grow warmer, more open, and less alone.
“If you look the right way,” writes Burnett, “you can see that the whole world is a garden.”
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Epiphanies await.
Listen closely, as the prophet Isaiah shouts into the wind, “Pay attention, you peoples from far away! . . . Because of the Lord, who is faithful” (49:1, 7).
Pay attention; the Lord is faithful.
Isaiah understands that attentiveness is the appropriate posture when walking through a world created by a faithful God.
Because God is faithful. As Christians, we are called to believe in, and to rely upon, the faithfulness of the one true God, a faithfulness that does not falter, even if our own belief wanes. In the psalms, God’s faithfulness is spoken of twice as often as our own. We need only look to today’s appointed psalm, Psalm 40.
I have spoken of your faithfulness and your deliverance, promises the psalmist,
I have not concealed your love and faithfulness from the great congregation.
Let your love and your faithfulness keep me safe for ever (Psalm 40:11-12).
Even where we have not been faithful, God is faithful. Even where we have misplaced our trust, God trusts in us. Even when we have attempted to go our own way, to have faith in and to trust only our own devices, God stoops to meet us in the person of Jesus the Christ.
God is faithful; by him you have been called (1 Cor. 1:9), writes Saint Paul.
In response to God’s faithfulness, we in turn are called to be faithful. Because we are people of faith due only to the grace of God; his faithfulness begets our faith; his faithfulness is the soil from which all other faithfulness blooms.
In the Gospel, we see God’s faithfulness at work. It is God’s faithfulness that brings Jesus to the River Jordan. God’s faithfulness that descends on the newly baptized Jesus in the form of a dove. God’s faithfulness that rings out in John’s cry: “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” (John 1:29). For to be sure, God’s faithfulness will be on stunning and terrifying display on the Cross.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Let us look to John the Baptist this morning. The Gospel is drenched in the language of attention; astonishment; and testimony. And it begins with John:
John saw Jesus coming toward him and declared: Here is the Lamb of God (John 1:29).
And later he proclaims, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven. I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God (John 1:32, 34).
Look, here is the Lamb of God! John tells the disciples. John is paying attention, shining a light on the Word made flesh (John 1:36).
Jesus [then] turned and saw them (those same disciples) and asks, What are you looking for? (John 1:38).
Because attentiveness is the appropriate posture when walking through a world created by a faithful God.
So, what are we looking for?
This question is at the heart of our lives of faith. It is a question assuming an active wandering and wondering. A desire, no a need, to commune with the source of all that is good and true.
Looking. Seeing. Testifying. In the words of Debie Thomas:
These are the things we are called to do, not once, but over and over again as Christians. This is the heart of discipleship –not to hasten to end our search, but to pursue it ever more deeply and intentionally. To cultivate a willingness to look. A willingness to see and be seen. A willingness to tell the truth about what we have found. A willingness to venture forth again and again [3].
Jesus beckons us, “Come and see.” Epiphanies await.
God is faithful; evidenced in the manner that Jesus pays attention; sees; is astonished; testifies. Jesus with his way of looking that pierces the veil. He looks at the disciples and recognizes their deep hunger, curiosity, hope, and trust. In the words of Thomas, “He looks at Simon and sees Peter, the Rock. He looks at us and sees what lies beneath the fumbling, the fear, the mixed motives, and the doubts” [4].
God is faithful; always extending another look and endlessly seeking after us, the true us. –no matter how far we wander; no matter how dire things may look. All we need do is pay attention.
One morning, in the hidden garden, Mary and friends look out upon the abundant new life revealing itself to them in all directions: “buds which were opening . . . bits of twig whose leaves were just showing green, . . . the empty shell of some bird just hatched,” [5] and one of the faithful friends cries out, “It’s magic!” and then bursts into song: “Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly host, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost” [6].
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
Epiphanies await.
How could they not, when God’s grace permeates all things. In the words of Madeline L’Engle:
Everything is contained in the mind of God, all that we can see, all that we cannot see, all that is visible . . . and all that is invisible. All the laughter, all the pain, all the birthing and living and dying and glory, all our stories, without exception, are given dignity by God’s awareness and concern [7].
Even where we cannot quite see it, God’s redemptive love is present. And because of God’s faithfulness, we can trust that we are in God’s hands, forevermore, empowering us to go forward into the world to look for Epiphanies. To be aware of God’s hand in all that we see; to look closely and then to look again. What may at first seem small and devoid of significance may very well be what saves us.
After all, what is of more enormous significance than the incarnation of Christ; and yet he came not as a king, but a baby, small and vulnerable. Epiphany!
Every life made precious through the grace of God; every moment made possible through God’s faithfulness.
Amen.
[1] Bishop Robert Barron, sermon, “Be Attentive to Epiphanies,” 8 January 2023, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAYaf60pIUA.
[2] Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden, (Phillip’s Pub., 1910),328
[3] Debie Thomas, “What Are You Looking For?” Journey With Jesus, 12 January 2020, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2503-what-are-you-looking-for.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Burnett, The Secret Garden, 270.
[6] Ibid., 344.
[7] Madeleine L’Engle, Sold into Egypt: Journeys into Human Being (Convergent Reprint Edition 2017).
A Sermon by The Reverend Shearon Sykes Williams on The Feast of the Epiphany (transferred), January 8, 2022.
“Arise, shine; for your light has come.” Isaiah 60:1
In their book, “The Christmas Journey,” author Sally Fisher and illustrator Douglas Sardo, offer an imaginative retelling of the story of the three kings from today’s Gospel. Fisher’s inspiration for the tale was her visits to see her grandmother in New York City at Christmastime. Every year, as she was growing up, they would go the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see the famous Christmas tree and creche. The 20 foot tree is magnificently lit and looms over a gorgeous nativity scene with a multitude of life-like figures and glorious angels hovering above on the tree. The figures depict Naples’ multi-cultural population in the 18th century.
After Fisher and her grandmother shared this annual ritual, they would go back to her grandmother’s apartment and she would tell her granddaughter her own story of the journey of the tree, the angels, and all of the people and animals beneath the tree. Fisher’s book is her remembrance of the tale that enchanted her so much, a story that sparked her own curiosity and wonder about how to make meaning of today’s Gospel. What follows is my retelling of her story.
The first of the three kings is Jaspar, a handsome young man who rules a kingdom in Africa. Jaspar is a man of action. He dreams of heroic deeds and he longs for a chance to prove himself. He wants to make his mark on the world.
Melchior is the oldest of the three kings. His kingdom is somewhere beyond the Red Sea. He is completely focused on the life of the mind. His favorite intellectual pursuit is astronomy. He is so consumed with his scientific studies that he spends very little time with other people. In fact, he thinks of people as a distraction.
And the last of the three kings is Balthasar, ruler of a land called Godolia. He is in the mid-years of life and he is busy, busy, busy. His passion is the pursuit of beauty, so a lot of his activity revolves around acquiring beautiful things for his palace. He also loves his wife and daughter dearly and his favorite thing is showering them with lavish gifts.
The one thing that all of these men have in common, other than being kings, is that they love to gaze at the night sky. Jaspar, the youngest one, looks at the sky and wonders how he will be able to make an indelible mark on the world and become famous. Melchior, the eldest, wants to understand the universe; he is determined to solve the mystery of the movement of the sun, moon and stars. Balthasar, the man in the middle, ponders the stars as a way of relaxing after his endless days of frenetic activity.
Each of them sees a new star one night and they are so captivated by it that they each suddenly decide, for some reason that they cannot fully explain, that they have to embark upon a journey, to discover where the star leads. Jaspar wonders if it could lead him to his heroic destiny. Melchior thinks that he might be able to find another scholar who can explain the star to him. Balthasar looks at the star and suddenly thinks that he needs to change his life, but he doesn’t know how, and this thought fills him with a strange combination of hope and confusion. They each set out on their journey, for their different reasons, with their royal entourages, their families, and servants and provisions, and after many individual adventures, they discover each other when their three routes converge one day. And their initial suspension and alarm upon meeting one another turns into a decision to go forward together, after they realize that they all saw the new star on the same night and all have the same goal to discover it’s source.
Together they realize that the world is so much bigger than any had ever imagined and make all kinds of discoveries, some good and some not so good. They go to Jerusalem and enter the court of a Herod, a king more powerful than all three of them put together. They realize that he is conniving and fearful that the star might mean a king destined to become even more powerful than he has been born.
They go forth from there, and just as their provisions are about to run out, they come upon some shepherds who offer them hospitality and a sumptuous peasant’s feast of olives, cheese, bread, wine and fellowship. They sleep on the ground for the first time in their lives, the kings next to the shepherds. And suddenly angels fill the sky, shedding a beautiful, soft light on the earth, singing, “A child has been born who has been sent from heaven to bring peace and goodwill into the world. This child can be found in the village of Bethlehem, in a poor, broken-down place in the ruins, lying in straw, surrounded by animals.” The shepherds and the kings get up and set off immediately, the shepherds leading the way.
When they reach the place that the angels had told them about, Melchior removes his crown and places his box of gold in the straw and thinks “From the first night I saw the new star, I began to realize that I have been mistaken my whole life. I have tried to live apart from others. I thought the world was full of evil, while the starry night was perfect. Since then I have met people who can teach me so much…And look at this infant; it will not even learn to walk without the help of adults! Human beings must help each other.” He even decides to share his love of astronomy with his grandchild. Young King Jaspar walks up and presents a jar of myrrh. He suddenly realizes that his desire to become a hero in other people’s eyes was a selfish goal. “A whole life of small kindnesses would be a very great thing..even if it would never make him famous.” Balthasar lays his jewel-covered chest at the baby’s feet. He thinks the mother, father and child “look so beautiful that they seem to glow from within.” He now understands that “the beauty of that moment can only be beheld, and then remembered.” He no longer has the need to fill every moment of every day with busi-ness and sees that the purpose of beauty is to lead us to the sacred.
The three kings talked for many days as they began their trip home, knowing their lives had been changed forever, and yet understanding that they would be changed even more as they pondered all that had happened. Something very old, something older than time itself, had been revealed to them in the face of the little child, something universal and yet very particular and personal, a gift specific to each of them, an enduring treasure to be savored and shared. And today, on this Feast of the Epiphany, they offer that gift to us.
“Arise, shine; for your light has come.”
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin for The Feast of the Holy Name, January 1, 2023.
Luke 2:15-21
At some point, you have probably seen an image called “a Rubin vase.” It presents as a simple black vase on a white background. But, if you look more closely, you discover that it is not a vase at all, but a pair of faces looking at one another. But wait, somehow, it’s also still a vase.
The idea behind a Rubin vase (and others of its kind) is that it demonstrates the way in which the brain attempts to make sense of the world. It’s a bi-stable image, meaning it creates two different, but stable, perceptions: a vase and a pair of faces.
A Rubin vase is one example, but there are others. Some are quite complex and far more difficult to discern. But, once our brains recognize and register both perceptions, we cannot look at the image in the same way as before. It has changed. Or, rather, our perspective has changed, opened, and allowed for the possibility of more than what we at first perceived. This has been deemed the Gestalt Switch.
Venezuelan born artist Jesus Rafael Soto was one of the leading exponents of Kinetic art –art that moves or appears to move. The intrigue and glory of his work is in the way it heightens viewer awareness of the roles played by perspective in the experience of art and the world at large. As one biographer notes:
Soto’s lesson is that [so much] depends on perspective. What from here seems to be one thing might from there appear to be something else. To know the absolute truth of a given state of affairs would be God-like. But it is possible to see something from multiple directions. You can walk around it, and further certify its reality by touching and grabbing — if it’s the sort of thing that can be touched and grabbed. However uncertain one or another perspective may be, a lot of them tend to add up in memory to convincing pictures of reality. Yet even so, another observer’s points of view might add up differently.[1]
I’d like to suggest this morning that the Bible (or, if you’d like to church it up, Holy Scripture) can and perhaps even should be approached in this vein.
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us.’ So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger (Luke 2:15-16).
This well-known and beloved telling of the birth of the Christ child is a pageant favorite. Our own children and youth brought this telling to life here at Saint George’s on Christmas Eve. Reading this passage from the Gospel of Saint Luke, our minds begin to paint a familiar picture. Perhaps our nativity scenes are different, but I have little doubt that you have one (and that it probably involves a manger, barn animals, and hay of some sort).
May I suggest you consider two others.
Kelly Latimore is an artist and iconographer who knows something about perspective and, in particular, how to encourage an exploration of perspectives in her works. In one of her most recent icons, entitled “Tent City Nativity,” we can look upon the Holy Family as they might appear in modern times. Mary cradles Jesus as Joseph gazes at him in his smallness. They are huddled close to one another inside a small tent that sits among many other tents in the shadow of a cityscape. They are not alone. Unhoused persons move around them, making a fire and preparing for a cold night ahead. Snow covers the ground, and a dog is the only animal attending the family on this most holy night.
Accompanying “Tent City Nativity” are words from the artist:
Christ was born in a makeshift shelter in a stable, and . . . the holy family is forced to flee their homeland for fear of persecution. This is the classic modern-day definition of a refugee. The Holy Family is still among us here and now, in the faces of the refugee, the immigrant, the poor and the oppressed.[2]
A strong reading of the Gospel of Luke and a captivating image to meditate upon.
So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.
Here’s another perspective.
Padraig O Tuama, Irish poet and theologian, is author of “What Were You Arguing About Along the Way?”, which is a compilation of reflections drawn from his Spirituality of Conflict Project. He notes the typical Christmas Eve pageant setup of Luke’s familiar Gospel narrative and then urges us to look again:
Luke’s Gospel . . . records no stable, no animals, and, most importantly, no inhospitality [he writes]. Luke, normally so kind and gracious, giving so much time to stories of the marginalized, rushes through the birth of Jesus as if it were of little importance. Joseph and Mary had gone to Bethlehem for the census and [finding no room at the inn, after Jesus was born he was laid in a manger].
See? No animals, no inhospitality, no stable. Sorry/not sorry. There is a deeper story here, despite what our traditions might suggest.[3]
He goes on to remind us that the word Luke uses for inn, kataluma, is quite different than how many of us may perceive it.
Most people of the time lived in a one-room structure. In that room there was space for living, sleeping and a fireplace. Additionally, the animals were brought in for the night to that same space – for their protection and because of the warmth they gave. Those houses lucky enough to have a kataluma had an additional upper room. This room, the kataluma, the upper room, could be rented out, like the ancient world’s equivalent of Airbnb.
Sidenote: the last supper took place in such an upper room.
Joseph and Mary, arriving in Bethlehem, could not find a kataluma. [But we know] they were in Bethlehem because that’s where Joseph’s kinsfolk were. So they had the baby and laid him in the manger. The manger would have been where mangers always were: in the living space of a family, a family who made room for Joseph, Mary and Jesus in their own home. Presumably they were relatives of Joseph.
This reading of Luke is much more ordinary, much less dramatic. And, importantly, this reading is much less offensive to the good people of the Holy Land who are aghast at Western tellings of the nativity story that imply that anyone would turn away any woman – whether kinsfolk or not – in the last moments of pregnancy.
In this image of the familiar tale:
[The Holy family] found shelter in the kindness of people, presumably Joseph’s kin. This kindness was so ordinary, so expected, so taken for granted that Luke, the gentle evangelist, did not even make mention of the family whose home was used for what we consider to be the birthing of the God-child to confused parents.
This too is a strong reading of the Gospel of Luke and a captivating image.
So they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the child lying in the manger.
One of these readings may strike you as more dominant than the other and the Gospel may now look a little bit different as well. But, in truth, both exist firmly in their own right, thoughtful and rather orthodox readings of Scripture alongside tradition and reason –it is your perspective that accepts one and rejects the other or is affected by one and is less convinced by the other. Both may now shape how you see Luke’s telling of the Christmas story, and yet the Gospel remains the same. It is we who have changed.
The Bible is meant to be held, read, considered, wrestled with, and explored. At different times in our lives, as different matters weigh on our hearts, our perspectives change, open, and allow for the possibility of more than what we at first perceived. The Gospel truth of it will not change, but the way we embody that truth may.
Latimore’s icon works in and on us, calling our attention to the plight of the oppressed, the immigrant, the refugee, and the impoverished. It speaks to the incarnational truth, even 2000 years later, Christ is still being born in our midst, most especially on the edges of our comfort.
O Tuama’s reading too works in and on us, calling our attention to the everyday graces of hospitality that acknowledge that same incarnational truth. Where simple acts of love exist, there Christ is also.
Through grace, these multiple mangers change our hearts and minds, stretching us onwards and outwards. This is meet and right, because we know that our faith is meant to be lived and thus our perspective never stationary.
Scripture, Soto’s art, and the principle behind the infamous Rubin Vase, suggest to us that always there is another perspective to be had: a way to see ourselves, one another, and the world in a different, fuller way. We need not be afraid of what we may find, because we were created for the tale of the many mangers: the great Gestalt Switch.
After all, the human child born to Mary and laid in a manger is also the very Son of God who will give his life for each one of us and alter the course of the world once and for all. Come let us adore him, the little baby Jesus who is also Christ our Lord.
Amen.
[1] Ken Johnson, “The Mechanics Behind Perspective,” The New York Times, 13 January 2012, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/13/arts/design/soto-paris-and-beyond-1950-1970-at-nyu-review.html?searchResultPosition=1.
[2] Kelly Latimore, “Tent City Nativity,” 29 December 2022, https://kellylatimoreicons.com/blogs/news/tent-city-nativity.
[3] Pádraig Ó Tuama, excerpt from “What Were You Arguing About Along The Way,” featured in Heartedge Mailer Christmas New Year 2022.
A Sermon by the Reverend Mother Crystal J. Hardin on The Fourth Sunday of Advent (A), December 18, 2022.
Matthew 1:18-25
The poet W.H. Auden once wrote, “Nothing that is possible can save us; We who must die demand a miracle.” Or, in other words, only what is impossible will flip the script and make all things right.
In Advent, we prepare for an impossible intervention.
This may seem a kind of magical speak, a longing for enchantment in a world full of what is expected and ordinary. After all, many of the problems and situations we face in our everyday lives are of the sort that we can fix. Whether we can make it happen, well, that’s a different matter, but we often have a solution for our problems in mind.
Auden’s miracle is not needed for what is ordinary. What he is speaking to are those problems so complicated and deeply rooted that no solution is readily apparent. You know these situations –they’re the ones that keep us up at night [1].
Complexities within our family systems that turn our stomachs to knots. Relationships so fraught and tangled that they feel irreparable despite our desire that they be anything but.
Nothing that is possible can save us
From those plagues which haunt and horrify us: addiction, mental health struggles, despair, gun violence.
Just last week, we marked the tenth anniversary of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. I remember standing as a parishioner at the back of this nave and listening to Shearon read the names of those lost one by one. Certainly, this will drive change, I thought. (I think we all thought). Who could look away? But then, at some point, we all did. It just keeps happening.
I’m certain we all have opinions about the necessary solutions, and many of us believe this is a problem solvable by human means. And yet, something lies beneath the plague of gun violence. An anger, a despair –a problem so complicated and deeply rooted that no solution is apparent. And without question the loss of life and the grief that forever marks those who survive knows no solution this side of heaven.
We who must die demand a miracle.
Christmas is close. A season of magic that often falls victim to a busy sort of predictability. And yet, the birth of Jesus the Messiah is as far from predictable as one might imagine.
When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit (Matt. 1:18).
What a statement!
Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall name him Emmanuel (Matt. 1:23).
A few things are happening here. We are being told the story of a birth. That is believable and quite ordinary. Babies are born all the time. Babies are born all the time even to unexpecting and inexperienced and ill prepared parents. Babies are even born out of wedlock to be sure. Every day and predictably.
But look again. A virgin shall conceive. There is nothing ordinary about that. Nor about what happens next.
Her husband, Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream (Matt. 1:19).
A virgin birth and the appearance of an angel. Impossible.
This morning, we gather around an impossible story. In the words of Fleming Rutledge:
An angel, and a virgin. A heavenly messenger, an obscure young woman, a child who will be the Son of God. A beautiful story, an inspiration for hundreds of Old Master paintings, the centerpiece for a zillion manger scenes; but it could not possibly be true [2].
And thank God for that –because nothing that is possible can save us.
Recently, I found myself in Target surrounded by all the trappings of Christmas (which, to be clear, I love), and I noticed the following quote written in fancy script on a decoration:
“Christmas waves a magic wand over this world, and behold, everything is softer and more beautiful.”
Christmas magic. That’s what we all long for. It’s certainly what retailers, advertisers, restaurants, and entertainers sell us at this most wonderful time of the year. A magic wand –waved so that we might forget the realities of the world as it is right now.
This is why I cling to Advent so fiercely –a time of preparation in which we look clearly at the world, the evil and the good, even as we anticipate a yet more glorious day. Advent does not shy away from the realities of this world and wants nothing to do with a “magic wand.” I have been called many things for my devotion to Advent: a scrooge, a member of the Advent or liturgical police, a purveyor of a theology of sorrow (that’s a good one, and not incorrect), and, my personal favorite, a poop in the Christmas punchbowl.
But I believe fiercely in the impossible intervention of a Savior, born of the Spirit one otherwise normal day in Bethlehem, who is come to defeat evil conclusively and forever. Anything made softer and more beautiful in this season is down to that –an echo of the original impossible incarnation.
And for those for whom this season is anything but soft and beautiful –those walking the way of grief, for example—well, Advent is a season for you, a journey, if you will, into an ever-deeper awareness of our shared situation, of the pain of this world, and of the reality of sin and death. Advent begs the question, what is our world without a Savior?
The ways of sin and death are complicated and deeply rooted to say the least. Nothing can save us from them that is possible.
In confirmation class recently with a group of our youth, we had a rich conversation about Holy Scripture. What it is, what it is not, and what it can be for those who spend time with it. The topic of miracles came up, as it so often does in these conversations. And a question was asked of me that can be simply paraphrased: RevMo, do you really believe this stuff? Like, all of it?
Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel.
The virgin birth is one such thing that shows up in Scripture this time of year. The question becomes: did it really happen or not? Or, perhaps a different question is at play: is it important or not? In my conversations with people, the virgin birth seems of little consequence –a take or leave it sort of thing – except for those deeply polarized on the subject, of course. In the Episcopal tradition, I’ve never heard much made of it either way, which always led me to believe it wasn’t vital to the story of Christ and his coming. Except that we do acknowledge the virgin birth every Sunday in the following words from the Nicene Creed.
I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God . . .
Who for us and for our salvation, came down from heaven,
By the power of the Holy Spirit, he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, and was made man.
We make this same proclamation often in the Eucharist:
For in these last days, you sent him to be incarnate from the Virgin Mary, to be the Savior and Redeemer of the World.
And in Advent and Christmas, we raise our voice in song, announcing:
God of God
Light of Light,
Lo! He abhors not the Virgin’s womb
Very God
Begotten, not created;
O come, let us adore him, Christ the Lord [3].
Wesley’s “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” also affirms the virgin birth, as do numerous other carols and hymns.
This is just a taste of the many affirmations of the Virgin Birth we make throughout the year and particularly at this time of year.
The question is, do you believe it? Do I believe it?
Seems impossible.
And thanks be to God, because nothing that is possible can save us.
Two thousand years of Christian tradition testify to this truth: we are not dealing with a run of the mill human birth. We are dealing with something else entirely. Jesus, the Messiah, born fully human, yes, but begotten directly of the endless power and incredible love of God. It is beyond human capacity to produce such a child. You and I cannot bring forth Jesus. Only God can and will produce a Savior –this is what the Virgin birth testifies to:
In God, human impossibility is overcome by irresistible power and love.
We who must die demand a miracle.
And that is just what God provided: a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. Come, let us adore Him.
I don’t know about you. But I really believe this stuff. Honestly, I can stand here and talk to you about theology until Christ comes again. I can read all the books, listen to all the theologians, spend my life dedicated to the study of the Bible, and it won’t be any of those things that convince you or me that the impossible has come to pass. What I can do is share with you the reason for my belief and it is this:
I cannot fathom a world where this thing, the birth of the Christ child, did not take place. What is this world without a Savior?
And I know in my bones and have seen in the world around me this truth: our redemption will not come through us but must come from somewhere else entirely. We cannot save ourselves.
Is the Virgin Birth impossible? Certainly.
And yet nothing that is possible can save us.
We who must die demand a miracle.
And that is just what God has provided. Impossibly, God has intervened. We have not gone towards God, God has come to us, delivering a Son who is our hope and our comfort. Jesus, the Messiah, in whom that which plagues us, that which haunts and horrifies, that which deeply grieves us, is redeemed finally and for all time.
This is the real magic of the season. This is what the virgin birth signifies. This is where our truest hope lies, it is, as we sang earlier “of the father’s love begotten”.
O that birth forever blessed, when the Virgin, full of grace, by the Holy Ghost conceiving, bore the Savior of our race; and the Babe, the world’s Redeemer, first revealed his sacred face, evermore and evermore [4].
Amen.
[1] David Zahl, “Nothing that Is Possible Can Save Us: An Advent Devotional,” Mockingbird, 5 Dec. 2011, https://mbird.com/bible/hopelessly-devoted-matthew-chapter-one-verse-twenty-one/.
[2] Fleming Rutledge, “Advent: The Once and Future Coming of Jesus Christ” (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 2018), 386.
[3] John Francis Wade, O come, all ye faithful, The Hymnal 1982 #83.
[4] Marcus Aurelius Clemens Prudentius, Of the Father’s love begotten, The Hymnal 1982 #82.
Jesus cares about each and every one of us. When we feel like everything is falling apart in our lives, he is there, giving us strength. When someone we love has died and the weight of grief feels too heavy to bear, Jesus is there, helping us to get through. When we feel anxious about the turmoil in our public life, he is with us. When we have doubts, when we struggle with our faith, Jesus is there.
We are made in the image of a creative God who labored so hard in the creation of the cosmos that he decided to to institute a day for rest and appreciation of this work that is right, good, and holy. Who has ever poured their effort into something so wholeheartedly that you could not help yourself but look upon the fruit of your labor and think: this is good. Maybe it was a hobby, maybe it was something you did at your school or job, maybe it was your child, and maybe it was simply doing whatever you had to do to make it through the day. This work that you have done is holy. This. This church, these windows, this organ, this altar, these children, this community, this worship, this work that you have done by the grace of God, St. George’s, is holy, and it is your prayer. It is your work in faithful response to the work that God has wrought for us in salvation.
As today’s Collect announces, we have already been knit together in one communion, a communion containing saintly sinners and sinful saints, the named and the unnamed, the known and the unknown alike; whether still this side of heaven or having already gone home into the eternal embrace of a loving God.
O blest communion, fellowship divine.
The risk really is that the Feast of All Saints becomes about a celebration of a story that is not ours, not with our faults and our fears and our fragility. And that can feed the fear that we are not enough; do not matter; are not worthy of remembering or of love.
Jesus looking at him with such love was what made Zacchaeus want to change. He recognized that repentance required something of him. He decided to give away half of his possessions to the poor and repay anyone he had defrauded four times what he had taken from them. Jesus’ generosity of spirit toward Zacchaeus caused him to want to be generous in return. He knew what he had been doing was wrong, but Jesus didn’t chastise him. He let his love speak for itself. And Zacchaeus was so moved, that it changed his life.
‘God, I thank you [the Pharisee prays] that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income’ (Luke 18:11).
And, it goes without saying, that our friend the Pharisee goes to temple. is where he thanks God for his goodness in the face of such an unwanted, undesirable companion: the tax collector.
And what we noticed in the pilgrim is obvious in the Pharisee: self-righteousness and a lack of humility. An inability to see in the other, some thing, not to mention someone, of value.
The next day, Jacob was finally reunited with his brother. He and his whole family bowed before Esau repeatedly as they saw Esau and his household approaching in the distance, and Esau ran to meet him, embraced him and wept as he was reconciled with his brother. God answered Jacob’s prayer and perhaps God had answered Esau’s prayer too. God longs for our human relationships to be healed. And God longs for our relationship with God to go to the next level. And sometimes struggle is the necessary precursor to both.
It is such a blessing for me to be with people at the end of their lives, right before they die, to pray the Litany at the Time of Death. That is the Episcopal name for last rites. It is such a sacred time, in those hours when someone is transitioning to life in all its fullness with God. And what is so amazing to me is when deeply faithful people, people who have come to church every Sunday for their entire lives, sometimes in the midst of great suffering, express how grateful they are for their life and grateful for their connection to God. It makes me appreciate just how effective the liturgy is, transforming us little by little, week by week, into people who know how to give thanks and to whom to offer it.
Stewardship is the spiritual practice of gratitude. It is the acknowledgement that we have been entrusted with something precious. Something bigger than ourselves. Something calling us to place our trust in God and God’s work in this community.
If you are sitting here today, you have been called into the life of Saint George’s as a participant. You will be accounted for in her books. You will feed at her altar. You are her.
The prophet Amos’ fiery condemnation, or ‘naming and shaming’ of those in Israel who live lives of gross overabundance while neglecting the needs of the poor among them is one of the most common themes spoken about by all the prophets. Amos happens to be the most prominent example of this. His concern with rampant economic inequality is not just a concern about a disordered earthly economy, but it is concern about a breach of covenant with God and God’s divine economy.
So often, what comes between us and truth is us. The truth is, after all, dangerous. It confronts us. Convicts us. Destroys the worlds we build for ourselves, the lies we tell ourselves, the reliance we place in ourselves, in favor of submission to something beyond ourselves.
We stubbornly and all too often believe we know the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help us God.And we hold tightly to what we think we know, when really the pathway to truth is one of surrender. You see, it’s hard to see the truth with a closed heart and a clenched fist. To journey towards truth requires a letting go.
How do Jesus’ words today help us to see God at work in all of these events?
“Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.”
The shepherd in the parable today knows each and every one of his sheep, the ones who stick with the herd and the ones who wander off to do their own thing. The shepherd is so attentive, so watchful, that he notices immediately when one goes missing. And he will not rest until he finds the one lost sheep.
All of us can relate to this story on some level, whether as a sheep or a shepherd.
Moses sets before us this morning a choice: life or death; blessings or curses. The Common English Bible translation suggests that we are meant to choose between “life and what’s good versus death and what’s wrong.”
This doesn’t seem to be a particularly difficult choice. It seems most people would choose life. In fact, the will to live, to survive, is quite strong –both in us, as human beings, and in our fellow creatures, big and small. We are hard-wired to survive.
And yet living, not merely surviving, is something different.
The Letter to the Hebrews is one, small book in the New Testament, but it has had a disportionately large impact on the Christian imagination over the millennia. Some of the most beautiful and enduring images that we have of Jesus come from the Letter to the Hebrews. Hebrews tell us that Christ is the “exact imprint of God’s very being ” and later, that Jesus is “our great high priest who has passed through the heavens”, and still later we are told that we are surrounded by a “great cloud of witnesses,” faithful followers of Christ who have gone before us to show us the way.
God, in both the Old Testament and the New, is said to be a consuming fire.
So, we must get clear about what that means.
For many, it sounds like punishment; provokes fear. For many, it calls to mind wrath and judgment and has little to nothing to do with grace and mercy. And yet, the Biblical authors, theologians of many stripes, and, perhaps, Jesus himself would gently suggest that these notions are mistaken. Fire is not punishment; is not torture. Instead, it is purification [1].
Everything about Jesus challenged the status quo. He invited women to learn from him, he invited poor people to join him, he called outcasts to eat with him. He recognized their dignity as children of God. He brought healing in so many ways. And he also spoke truth to power, which resulted in his death. God’s way is often in direct opposition to the way of the world.
When Jesus says that he has come to “set father against son” and “mother against daughter”, he is not advocating family discord. Jesus came to bring God’s peace and yet the rejection of that peace brings discord.
I’d like to spend some time this morning considering the difference between belief and faith.
Belief. And Faith.
Throughout Scripture, there is little if any difference between the two. Consider the Gospel of John, written so that “you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (John 20:31). Faith goes without mention because belief just about covers it.
And yet, common usage these days suggests that there is a difference between the words belief and faith.
Here is a man on a planet all his own. Or so it seems. It is his land, this land of the rich man. And, he thinks to himself, what should I do? I will do this. I will pull down. I will store. I will say to MY soul.
He is singularly focused on himself. On seeking purpose and security through counting and claiming.
The Rich Fool from today’s Gospel and the Businessman are not too distant of cousins it would seem.
The Businessman believes he owns the stars. The Rich Man believes he owns the land, and all that comes from it. And even more troubling, and yet not that far removed, he believes he owns his soul.
I take some solace in my shortcomings as a parent when I reflect on today’s Gospel. Jesus tells a story with God cast as the reluctant, sleepy one. A friend knocks on his friend’s door long after he has gone to bed. He asks for bread, not for himself, but in order to provide hospitality for someone who has shown up unexpectedly. And the man in bed really doesn’t want to get up, even though it is the right thing to do to respond to a friend in need. In biblical times, there was a social expectation and a religious requirement to offer hospitality, so this seems like a strange story for Jesus to tell. But the point, he explains, is not about the failure of the man in bed to respond on the first knock, but about the persistence of the friend trying to rouse him. Persistence.
Consider the relationship between doing for and being with [1]. Both can look quite similar in outward appearance. Both can be facets of faithful service. Both can be rooted in good intentions.
But, at the end of the day, doing for another and being with another are fundamentally different in one key respect – where the focus lies.
The lawyer in today’s Gospel recites the Summary of Mosaic Law when Jesus asks him what it says about inheriting eternal life. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and all your strength, and with all your soul, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself.” And then being the persnickety lawyer that he is, he asks “and just exactly, who is my neighbor?” But instead of giving him a direct answer, Jesus tells him a story, as he so often did, a story that shocks him and challenges him to think more deeply. Far from being a tale with one, simple point, the Parable of the Good Shepherd has many perspectives for us to ponder today.
These past 2+ years have been the hardest that most of us have ever lived through. The pandemic kept us apart from one another for so long. And everything going on in our culture from the erosion of women’s rights, to concerns about other freedoms potentially being at risk, to challenges to our beloved democracy, all of these things have created so much instability and uncertainty for everyone. Forces are still at work that threaten to pull us apart. We know that as members of the Jesus Movement, we have to resist those forces, we have to make a conscious decision to come together for worship, to be strengthened and empowered to go back out into the world to work for justice and peace.
Anger is not an evil in and of itself; there are many things in this world that provoke anger in us that is justified, but unbridled anger is a very dangerous thing indeed. And that is where the work of the Holy Spirit comes in. That happens in two ways. First, through prayer and meditation, getting quiet, allowing ourselves to feel our feelings, but then asking God to transform them to help us not to be devoured by them. Breathing in, breathing out, breathing in the fruit of the Spirit and breathing out. You may even want to slowly repeat Paul’s list; love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Second, by taking a purposeful step that will put our prayer into action.
And yet we didn’t stop there, she says. We built upon it, creating a practice where the contradiction became so prevalent and happened so often that people begin to think it normal. “This is what systems can do. They can lead us to believe that what is wrong is actually right.” [8]
We may have not built this system. Our parents may have not built this system. And we all have varying degrees of power and privilege within the system. And yet, we cannot afford to deny the existence of the system or to see the very real impact of the system on our common life.
Slavery in one form may be over, but there are many ways to enslave and to be enslaved.
At the risk of putting myself out of a job, I’ll say this: it’s not religion or any of its extensions that makes you okay with God. It’s God who makes you okay with God. God does it. The Sacrament of Baptism will not cause Miles, Louisa, or Anna (or any of us) to be okay in the eyes of God. It will not dispense the love of God where before it was not. It will not perfect them, insulate them, or save them from the trials and tribulations of a life well-lived (even though I wish it would with all my heart). But it will act as a road map home.
It is such a blessing to gather today to celebrate Connie McAdam’s life and witness. Connie was a force in the absolute best sense of the word. She knew how to make things happen. Her leadership skills were truly remarkable and she was a trailblazer if there ever was one. It was no small feat to become the first woman to be the Arlington County Chief of Recreation and one of the first female county executives in the country. She knew how to create a vision and work with people to inspire them, challenge them and encourage them to realize a dream.
God really does give us the power to change the world. We have to believe that. We have to claim that. The Pentecost story is not just locked in the pages of Scripture. It is alive and real today and every day. We can never give up hope and we can never, ever give up on this world that Jesus came to save. And we have to lean on each other when the going gets tough. Jesus never said that his way of healing, peace, justice and reconciliation was going to be easy or convenient or comfortable.
On Tuesday, a lost, broken soul senselessly and violently ended the lives of 19 defenseless, innocent children and two vibrant and committed teachers before being killed by officers himself. Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, now joins an ever-lengthening list of schools assaulted by gun violence.
Let everyone who hears say, “Come.” Come, Lord Jesus!” (Rev. 22:17).
Places where we send our children to learn and to grow, to play and to befriend, places that should be safe and life-giving, these places should never fall victim to violence of any kind and particularly of this kind –preventable, senseless, soul-wrenching.
And yet here we are. Again.
So often we wait for clarity, for God to dramatically intervene, pointing us toward the one true call of our lives. And then we are dismayed by the silence that meets us, the heavenly chuckle, the suggestion that to follow Christ you must follow Christ wherever and whenever He leads you –even if the path is a winding one and the destination unclear.
We want a clean intervention where only a messy and sometimes slow coming conversion awaits. We want to get to it, to get on with our good works, when sometimes we’re asked to wait, and to trust, and to simple abide in God.
In God
Death is vanquished True solidarity is achieved And trust, trust in a power and love greater than we ourselves could hope to attain alone, is secured.
After all, it is the Lord who is our shepherd. The Lord is the Lamb who sits at the center of the throne. The one who is all powerful and the one in whom we place our faith and are thus empowered. In a world that suggests to us that power and love cannot walk hand in hand, it is the Lord who walks with us in power and in love and in Him we shall not want.
In Him we are home.
Peter didn’t need a redo of Easter.
Not because Good Friday didn’t happen. Not because he hadn’t made plenty of mistakes. Not because everything was back to normal. And not because the future was going to be easy.
He didn’t need a redo of Easter because Easter wasn’t a one-time thing that Peter missed because of his fear and his denials. Easter was a continual, repeated invitation to love and to follow that Peter would spend the rest of his life living into. Easter was another chance, and another, and another – as many chances as Peter needed – to let go of the burden he’d been carrying.
The Reverend Dr. Mark Jefferson serves as the Assistant Professor of Homiletics (Preaching) and the Associate Director of the Deep Calls to Deep Preaching Program at Virginia Theological Seminary. He holds a Ph.D. in Religion with a focus on Homiletics from Emory University and a Master of Divinity degree from the Candler School of Theology at Emory University, where he concentrated his coursework in homiletics, completed a certificate in Black Church Studies, and served as President of the Black Student Caucus. Mark is an internationally respected preacher and teacher of preachers. His preaching, scholarship, and engagement with popular culture outline his commitment to be a public theologian.
Today is a new beginning. And Jesus is calling each of us by name. Jesus is calling my name and your name just as surely as he called Mary’s. Sometimes we hear Jesus calling our name in joyful times, but often we can hear it most clearly when we are going through a difficult time, when Jesus comes to us in our very darkest moments and gives us the precious gift of his presence.
It has been said that on Good Friday “the Christian gospel decisively defines itself.” [1] I believe this to be true, with my whole heart I believe it to be true, and yet, when all is said and done, I’m not confident that I can, in this moment, do Good Friday justice –define it, make it clear, make it all connect. In fact, I know I cannot.
And yet, stopping here would make the service shorter, but it would not quite be holding up my end of the bargain, so to speak.
Often, it’s easier to say what something is not than what something is, and so I’d like to offer a few thoughts on what Good Friday is not.
Instead of the how, it’s the that which is important to us – that Christ is truly present with us and in us as a transfiguring promise of God’s sacrificial love for us when we gather as one body to remember and receive the one body offered up for the world’s salvation. In the memorial of Christ’s death and resurrection in the Eucharist it is as if time and space are compressed and Jesus is as much with us in our Eucharist as he was with the disciples at that very first Eucharist. Again, remembrance is a physical act. Remembrance is presence.
Hosanna in the Highest! Crucify Him!
Our ears may well ring and our heads may hurt in considering how these two cries could ever be in relationship, and yet in it is the full spectrum of human experience, the full witness of the Christian life: stubborn hope and hopeless sin met with lavish grace again and again.
Accept your propensity for sin, for betrayal; but do not do it and not also accept God’s love and forgiveness. The reverse, of course, is also true. There is not one without the other. It is our unworthiness that makes God’s grace so extravagant.
We believe that Jesus died to save our sins, and Judas is the biggest sinner of all time. Is there redemption for Judas? We proclaim that Jesus came to draw the whole world unto himself. Did he finally draw Judas back to himself, even in death? Scripture doesn’t answer that question, but I believe the answer is yes.
Mary is the saint in today’s Gospel. She is he model disciple. Judas is a sinner. But is it really that simple? I don’t think it is. We are all some combination of both. The love of Jesus comes to us in a myriad of forms each day and yet it is sometimes hard to see. We are sometimes believing and sometimes rejecting. So our constant prayer must be “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”
Sin can happen at an interpersonal level when we hurt those around us with our words and deeds and it can happen at a collective, or structural level when we systematically fail to respect the dignity of every human being; when our political and economic systems contribute to the violence of poverty or the degradation of the earth. Moreover sin occurs not only in the things that we do, but in the things we have left undone. One of our prayers of confession in Enriching our Worship eloquently states “We repent of the evil that enslaves us, the evil we have done, and the evil done on our behalf.” The common denominator of all of this sin is spiritual and literal estrangement from the goodness of God’s love that is present in the world and in all those who inhabit it.
In a world that is broken and hurting, full of uncertainty and suffering, God likewise appears to us. We, who have worthwhile jobs to do, paths to take, duties to tend to. Where are the burning bushes here and now? What are we being called to turn towards so that we might see, hear, and know the call of God?
The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning reminds us:
“Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God: But only he who sees, takes off his shoes, The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries . . . unaware.”
That’s why the psalms are so great. They are great because they are real. They cover every human emotion possible- from fear, lonliness, and even hate, to love, connection and exhuberant joy. They express a profound and deep, abiding relationship with God, not a “pie in the sky, everything is perfect” statement of belief, but an authentic relationship between the psalmist and God, a God who can handle questions, a God who can handle doubts, a God who can handle the deepest questions of human life.
The Season of Lent refuses to allow our tempter to remain an outsider. Lenten penitence instead redirects us, engaging the harmful places in our lives and in our very souls; for surely that is where our greatest temptations and most severe demons lie. [5] In Lent, we are to become aware of the road we travel, reconsidering our landmarks, considering how truly far we are from home.
If there are two things I hope we would all remember this Lent it’s that first, we are incredibly beloved dust that is destined from birth for temporary death and eternal life, and that today’s remembrance of the impermanence of our earthly life is what paradoxically can liberate us from the fear of permanent death. And second, that our dusty lives are not lived alone. We are all connected by a web of divine love and common toil, and the purpose of our repentance and spiritual discipline this season is to shed bonds of injustice and strengthen the bonds of love.
When Jesus took his closest disciples up on the mountain to pray, they weren’t trying to escape reality, they were seeking to see reality at its deepest level. They were getting in touch with the Source of life itself. That is, I imagine, what the 7 Ukranians, kneeling in the town square were trying to do, connecting with the source of the “peace that passes all understanding” as the world as they knew it was falling apart. Jesus left a hurting world and he went back to a hurting world to bring healing. The Ukranians prayed with shelling going on in the distance and they went back to their homes to a long day and night of more shelling. We can go to the mountaintop anytime, even when we are in the bowels of hell.
In this way, forgiveness is not passive. It is not unexamined. It is not a mind at rest or emotions perfectly in check. It may very well be accompanied by lamentation, righteous anger, and calls for change. There are enemies out there. And these enemies have the power to hurt us and do us harm. Sometimes, these enemies would even call us friends, or, in Joseph’s case, family. And yet, we are called to forgive, because we are called to love. And if we, like Joseph, have the courage to say, “Come closer,” we may very well glimpse not only our own faces in our enemies but the very face of God.
The people in our Gospel story came seeking Jesus. They wanted to be with him, to touch him, because when they touched him they felt the power of God. People came to be healed, healed of their physical and mental illnesses. They were hungry for what Jesus had to offer. They knew if they just touched him, that power would come out of him and their spirits would be restored. “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.” We need Jesus to fill us with good things. Our world is hurting, deeply, deeply hurting. We come together, Sunday after Sunday, to be filled, to touch Jesus, to be restored, and to claim hope for ourselves, for the people we love and for the world. Each of us needs the healing that only Jesus can give. And we come together to receive it so that we can offer it to others.
Contrary to popular belief, in the Church, being a lay person is not simply what you are by default if you don’t wear a collar. Being a lay person is a calling, just as true and just as vitally important to the Church’s mission as any other calling. By your baptism you have been commissioned, by the sacraments you are strengthened, and in this community and in the world you are called to be faithful ministers of Christ’s reconciling love, each according to the gifts given to you. The Church quite literally could not exist without you because you are the Church. I know it’s cliché but it’s worth being reminded of.
I think that Paul is doing something very clever here from a theological and pastoral point of view. Rather than simply criticizing those whom he regards as involved in quarreling, he portrays the divisions of the congregation at Corinth as a result of their effort to respond seriously to the gifts that God has given them. They have not fallen into problems because of lack of faith or of disregard of the word of God, rather they have fallen in division precisely because they have taken faith seriously and are trying to be good Christians, but they have to remember not to elbow one another out of the way in their effort to exercise the gifts they have been given..
I’d reframe the question like this: As we stand in the crowded public square, how do we remain attentive to the Word of God when it is spoken amid destruction, oppression, sickness, grief, anger, or fear? How can we remain present to a hurting world while appropriately tending to the Christian hope in our own hurting hearts?
Our Baptismal Covenant calls us to attention, perseverance, proclamation, service, and a commitment to striving for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being (BCP 305).
How are we meant to do this and not to also weep over the state of the world? And yet, our first lesson brings with it a word from God: Do not be grieved (Neh. 8:10).
As Christians, we are called to minister to the oppressed and lift up the down-trodden because God is particularly and peculiarly interested in the marginalized, the oppressed, those that our society often sees as “less than”. People of color, people who identify as LGBTQ+, people who are poor, people who have mental health challenges. In God’s eyes, there are no “less-than” people, only God’s beloved ones. Martin Luther King Jr understood this. Our faith is not only about our own private salvation, although it is most certainly that as well. It is primarily about the salvation of the world. And God’s kingdom starts now.
I think that the four evangelists took care with the presentation of this story because of their conviction that where Jesus leads we will follow. Our baptisms bear all of these elements that are used to portray the baptism of Jesus. Baptism is a token of the life of repentance into which we enter. It is a reorientation from a preoccupation with self to a following of Christ; it calls us to discipleship; and it joins to a family of faith.
When all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened."
We are all weary, bone-tired, there is no doubt about it. But holding on to hope and channeling our inner “Ted Lasso Wise Man” is key to our spiritual health as we go forward. God led the wise men with a star in the sky and a light in their hearts and that same light has burned throughout the ages leading faithful people forward and it still lights our way forward today, step by step by step. We will get through this, together, and our faith will continue to keep us strong, flexible and resilient. The Christ Star is within us and beyond us and it never burns out.
Beginning, end, or somewhere in between, wherever you find yourself in time’s contemplation today, take a moment to rest in the knowledge and love of God, and his Son, Jesus Christ, who did truly, as T.S. Eliot so beautifully puts it, allow for “grace dissolved in place.” [2]
For what is grace but those sometimes rare, always unbidden, and ultimately fleeting moments of transcendence – still points in the midst of our busy, scattered lives, where we connect to God and to whom we truly are: God’s beloved children. Where we, in our temporal lives, brush against something gloriously timeless. Truly, all things have been filled with the knowledge of God. [3]
“This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.” Luke 2: 1-20
These simple words are powerfully understated and deeply mysterious. “This will be a sign for you.” When the shepherds responded to these words and went to the manger, what did they see? A newborn child born to poor parents, just like so many others, or a holy child who held the hopes and dreams of years and years of prophesy and longing? What we see depends upon our capacity for wonder.
Do not be afraid; for see—I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
At Christmas, we are reminded that to love is to be vulnerable. And that the same is true for God. For God is love. And when God decided that to be God without us was unacceptable, he became God with us in a very specific way: as a “little baby, all red and wrinkled, olive skinned, thick dark curly hair, but a face that looks like Winston Churchill, as all babies do.”
A baby, placed in our hands. Vulnerability incarnate.
I love what follows next. When Mary hears these words from Elizabeth, she does not claim her own worthiness or come up with a first century version of Maria’s “I feel Pretty” of Westside Story. Instead she confesses her own unworthiness, thanks God for what God has done, and views her own experience as a sign of God’s compassion to the lowly and the hungry.
My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant.
Come, Lord Jesus.
Come in might, and yet bearing the marks of utmost humiliation. Come in glory while stooping to wipe the tears from our eyes. Come bearing judgment, yes, and yet also bearing the very scars of our deliverance. For only you can turn us all into your people again. And so we hope against hope.
Come, Lord Jesus, come.
With great might come among us and, because we are sorely hindered by our sins, let your bountiful grace and mercy speedily help and deliver us (BCP 212).
The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
And we are invited to seek a different perspective, so that we might recognize it as a reality and live as if it were so.
This is what it means to repent, to go deeper –to seek the very roots of our sorrows and afflictions and to upturn them, to take them off, so that we might see with new eyes the wonders of His love. So that we might know that we are not separate individuals running the rat race of life, playing our own individual games, but that we are one with all, connected to the true vine, Jesus Christ. And so that we might abide, in our deepest and most vulnerable places, in this truth: we are seen, loved, and forgiven.
Repent, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
What signs of our redemption will we experience this Advent? Advent invites us to rachet it down a few notches just as our culture is kicking it up. But just like the paradox of Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel and the both/and of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, we can live with an Advent mindset during this time of holiday glitz, looking expectantly for signs of God’s inbreaking everywhere.
If Jesus is truly our Lord, he belongs in the room when we encounter a neighbor in need, when we enter the polling place or the board room, balance our check books, or enter the work place. We need to acknowledge Christ’s Lordship, not in an ostentatious way—for Jesus has something to say about that—but as a fixed part of our lives.
Apocalypse is about revealing; revealing that which our current judgment impairs us from seeing and understanding. Revealing the ways in which our social, personal, and political realities are undergirded by a divine, spiritual action of God. It’s a perspectival realignment from earthly existential anxiety to cosmic hope in God’s providence. It’s about heaven being made real on earth even as we speak, even when it is obscured from our eyes and our better judgment rightly tells us that for many there is hell on earth.
If we draw close to God, we need not accept the horrors of this world, even death itself, as passive actors, but are welcome and invited to push back against them, against God even, with our hearts and minds and bodies. But we must be prepared for God to push back, to take our open, hurting, and maybe even indigent hearts, and resurrect them into glory, in ways that might be painful and unexpected and yet nevertheless, always redemptive.
So the deep existential question I pose this morning is this, “what if the Hokey Pokey really is what it’s all about?” What if? The Hokey Pokey goes body part by body part, “You put your right hand in, your left hand in, your right foot, your left foot, you head, until finally your whole self.” And that of course is the aim of the Christian spiritual journey. To put our whole self in. To be all about what God is about, justice, peace, love, healing for ourselves and for the world. And to follow Jesus whole-heartedly, without reservation into the very heart of God.
Faith, as it turns out, is not a requirement for healing, just as healing is not a product of, nor evidence of, our faith or of God’s favor.
Frustrating, I know. It really takes it out of our hands, doesn’t it?
It would be far simpler if our broken bodies, broken minds, broken hearts, could be mended through our own striving after this thing called faith. If we then could bring about our own healing.
In God’s economy, our individual value is not based on anything we’ve ever accomplished or failed to accomplish, you are valued first and finally because you are a beloved child of God. End stop. It’s one of the few things I can promise you confidently because it’s God’s promise. You are valuable because you are a beloved child of God. And because that is also true of our neighbors, the true measure of glory is the measure of how well we serve those around us who are also God’s beloved.
Jesus looks into his eyes and straight into his heart. He sees that what is holding him back is his attachment to his wealth, his comfort, his security. And most importantly, Jesus sees that at the root of it all is pride. His pride is the biggest obstacle to his spiritual growth. It is evident in his question to Jesus. What do “I” need to “DO.” He thinks it’s all about him. He wants to know how he can achieve his eternal reward, how he can earn his salvation. And Jesus tells him that it’s not all about him. It’s about being emptied so that he can be filled. Jesus invites him to follow him on a path of relinquishment in order to receive everything. And he cannot do it alone. That is why Jesus later tells his disciples, “For mortals, it is impossible, but not for God; for God all things are possible.” That is the paradox of the Kingdom of God. We cannot save ourselves. God alone can save us.
In the first creation story in Genesis, we hear how God spoke creation into existence. “God said, let there be light. And there was light.” With the sound of God’s voice, everything came into being. When we come together each Sunday, we listen for God’s voice so that we can participate in God’s continual re-creation of the world. We lift our voices in praise and thanksgiving in order to worship God and to put ourselves in a space where we can be reminded of our role as co-creators with God. And beautiful sounds are an important part of that experience. The aesthetics of worship matter. Genesis describes how God came over the formless void, and created beauty out of nothingness, and soon the formless void of the organ chamber will have a beautiful organ in it. We will see it taking shape over the next few weeks.
His way is a way of service, not power and prestige. And the whole social order in Jesus’ day, as in our day, was and is about power, prestige and privilege. When Jesus talks about attaining greatness by being a servant, it sounds shocking and non-sensical.
There is but one true Cross, and that is the Cross of Christ. It is why we can sing, “All my hope on God is founded” even “as tower and temple turns to dust” (The Hymnal 1982, #665).
Because the Cross bears a truth like no other: that even in our deepest sorrow, we are not alone. God never forsakes us. That even where evil lurks, Christ has ultimately prevailed. That neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, Almighty.
Mercy costs something, sometimes, it costs everything, because to hold both mercy and justice in your heart and mind is to follow the way of the cross. It is to truly see your neighbor, to seek to know your neighbor, and to love your neighbor, not so that you might change them, but so that you might be changed. So that the world might be changed.
Life is a gift and recognizing the source of the gift is really important. That is the alpha and omega of faith. We come from God when we are born, we return to God when we die, and God is with us as the Giver of Life and Sustainer of Life every single day that we walk this earth. Every day, all day, 24/7. But it so challenging to stay in touch with that, especially when things get stressful, and things are very stressful right now.
“Choose this day whom you will serve” reminds them of the first of the 10 commandments given to the earlier generation. “You shall have no other gods before me.” So they have to renew the covenant for themselves that their ancestors made with God. They have to make it their own. And their story is our story. Each new generation of faithful people has to decide. And it’s a decision that we have to make each day.
Since the beginning of time, people have contemplated the mysteries of life, the vastness of the cosmos, and how we are meant to live this life in relationship with others. Where do we fit in the order of things? Who are we in relationship to God? What’s the right way to live? How am I supposed to treat others? In short, how do I gain wisdom?
At the root of Paul’s impossible asks of us is a desire that we put away our masks, tear down our walls, and empty ourselves of all apprehensions, pretensions, and selfish intentions.
Not all at once, forevermore, but as we can, as we go and with God’s help.
Because imitation is a lifelong pursuit; as Baldwin suggests, a tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth, but one that is made for us and worth everything.
Are you hungry? Am I? What are we hungry for? When was the last time we were blessedly, contentedly full? Was there a time? Can you remember? In what ways do we seek to quell our hunger? In what ways do we seek to ignore it?
And even if we recognize our hunger, allow ourselves to go there, to remember it, and to feel it, what then?
Where to get bread?
God is in the business of multiplication, not division. When Jesus takes our lives and blesses them, the blessings grow and grow and grow. Our lives become more than they were, God’s abundance lives in us so that we can share that abundance with others. Our life becomes one of those barley loaves that feeds others. Our life becomes the bread that is shared. As we seek peace, as we work for justice, as we practice compassion, as we love people who are difficult to love.
This week’s Gospel is a study in both the necessity of rest and the promise inherent in Holy desperation.
Rest. And Holy Desperation. Perhaps these seem a strange pairing, and yet they have much in common.
We begin in baptism and then travel through this life, waiting and searching for clarity that may never come, yet we still find comfort and hope in our faith.
Baptism then, is not anywhere near the end of our journey. It’s a place much closer to the beginning. As it was with Jesus. After he was baptized, his ministry grew, He taught, he healed, he preached, he loved.
It wasn’t an end; it was a beginning.
Where do we go when we have nowhere else to go? When the bottom falls out, when all is lost. When a relationship suddenly dissolves. When we get a scary diagnosis. When a building crumbles. Where do we turn?
That is the question at the very heart of our faith.
There is no shortage of charity, grace or abundance in the economy of the Divine. In the human economy, we have shortages of all three. That means we must strive harder for fair balance.
Just as Paul asked the Corinthians, we can certainly ask ourselves, who needs a blessing? Who needs a gift that I can give today?
Lazlo was afraid of the dark.
So begins an inspired and suspenseful children’s book in which a young boy, utterly alone in a cavernous house, will be forced to confront a common childhood fear.
We were created to live with God, to belong to God, in wholeness and fullness – without shame. This is who we were made to be: God’s very own.
That’s the thing to remember isn’t it. That’s worth a bit of a pause. That’s where, as Christians, our own commencement must always begin and end and begin again.
Ralph Wood, professor of theology and literature at Baylor, tells a story about being issued an invitation by a Baptist pastor-friend: Would Ralph accompany him to the local minimum-security prison for a baptism?
The Rev. Dr. Bob Prichard speaks about that effort and the role that religious and political figures on both sides of the Atlantic played in abolition efforts from 1776-1833, which ended slavery in states above the Mason-Dixon line and only narrowly missed ending slavery in Virginia. Bob is a a professor emeritus in church history at the Virginia Theological Seminary, and a priest associate and a former assistant rector of St. George's (1974-77).
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Introductory music from The Mystery of Christmas recorded by the St. John’s Choir of Elora, Canada. Used with permission. Onelicense.net #A-717214.
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We welcome our former Seminarian (2014 and 2015) the Rev. Grace Pratt back to preach today. Grace was the Assistant Rector at Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church in Alexandria from 2015-2017 and is currently taking a break from full time ministry to care for her family. She serves as a supply priest in the area and mostly preaches at Emmanuel Episcopal Church where she worships with her family. Grace is very excited to have a chance to come back and preach at St. George’s this summer!