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Proper 28A, 11/19/2023: If you look at the front of your bulletins you will see something that appears on all of our bulletins between Pentecost and Advent, every single week, and which you have never noticed nor paid attention to. That is, that the collect and lectionary readings are those of Proper 28. Last week was 27, next week is 29. You get the picture.
And the reason why you haven’t noticed or paid attention to this fact is because it is relatively meaningless and not terribly helpful for you. Perhaps if it said the first Sunday of Advent, or the Third Sunday in Lent, or Pentecost Sunday, you might pay attention. But which is proper? That’s something most significant to those planning for the service, but it’s not terribly relevant to you.
But here’s a special reason why it is extra relevant for me today. Proper 28, six years ago, was the first baptism that had ever performed as an Episcopal priest. And how wonderful that we come together today in our worship to witness the baptisms of Rees, Lia, and Scott.
In that spirit of anniversaries, and looking back at my words I preached six years ago, I think it’s still prescient, what I said back then, and which I would like to bring forward my thoughts from when I heard these readings at the first baptism I had performed. At that service, we had just returned from the Annual Convention in the Diocese of Virginia, and in the midst of one of the resolutions passed was discussion of one of the finer points of theology in one of the resolutions. In it, it read: We believe that all people are created in the image of God and that all people are beloved
children of God. (Repeat) Which then led to debate, are all people children of God. Again this is relevant because today (at the 10:15 service) we are celebrating the sacrament of baptism. And, as I will highlight today, in our baptism in Christ, there is a call to be — as in to be children of God, part of God’s household — and a call to act.
First we will look at our call to be. There are many things in our Prayer Book that we say about those who have been baptized, and it starts with something material to the point of it all found in our Prayer Books.In the description of the service, the page begins in reading that “Holy Baptism is full initiation by water and the Holy Spirit into Christ’s Body the Church. The bond which God establishes in Baptism is indissoluble.” So baptism is 1) Full initiation 2) By water and the Holy Spirit 3) Into Christ’s Body, which is the Church. 4) The Bond is indissoluble — it cannot be broken.
This reminds me of when I was in Bible college, and I had asked a professor of mine to mentor me. We scheduled a regular time to get together, and he suggested that we read through John MacArthur’s commentary on Ephesians. I don’t remember much of what we talked about, and I probably don’t still hold too much of what we discussed, but I do vividly remember learning that there are 14 descriptors in the first chapter of what it means to be in Christ. I’m going to give you a start. It reads: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ.” There it is, that in this theological concept of adoption, we as the Church are the children of God. Which is why in our baptismal liturgy, at the very end of things and immediately before the peace, when the children with us today and others are baptized, we pray together “We receive you into the household of Christ…” We acknowledge that you are now part of Christ’s Body the Church. We proclaim that you are a beloved child of God. So in baptism, this is one of the things that we are called to be — children of God.
So we are the audience to whom the author of Thessalonians is writing, the beloved children of God, those who are children of the light and children of the day, whom God has destined to receive salvation through Jesus Christ our Lord.
But it’s not enough that we be Children of God, and receive all the blessings that come from being God’s Children. As children, God desires so much more for us, which is made clear in our Gospel reading. Here, we see that we have been entrusted with work that is to be done. The Kingdom of God is like a man who went on a journey, and before doing so entrusted his employees with massive amounts of money, expecting that on his return they would have done something with them to grow his wealth.
For reference, a talent in bible speak is about 75 pounds, which if this was Gold, one talent would be almost $2.2 million. The one given 5 talents of gold would have had almost $11 million dollars worth. And when the man returned, those who gained their boss more wealth were praised: “Well done, good and faithful servant.” The one who gave back the one talent after burying it in the sand was not greeted with the same warmth and kindness. He was expected to do SOMETHING with what he was given, more so than just burying it. So baptism is not just a call to be, but also a call to act.
In 1979, the Baptismal Covenant was introduced into our liturgy, and in it two things are done: We affirm our faith as stated in the Apostle’s creed, and make five promises of what we will do. One probably won’t go long in an Episcopal church without hearing some provisions of the promises made, and usually the last one about striving for justice and peace and respecting the dignity of every human being. But what about the others? There are some significant things that, even if we weren’t baptized using our current Prayer Book, we have likely all affirmed to be true for us.
In it, we commit to be present with one another, continuing in the apostles’ teaching as passed down to us through Scripture, to breaking bread in communion together, and to praying together. In it we commit to live a morally and ethically good life, and when we fall short of that standard that we will turn back to the Lord again. In it we commit to proclaiming to the world the Gospel of Christ by what we do and what we say. In it we commit to serving Christ by serving all people, loving our neighbors as we love ourselves. And in it we commit to strive for justice and peace for all people, and to uphold the dignity of all people.
Like our Gospel demonstrates, You can’t just sit there. Those who have been baptized have been given a call to be, as children of God, and a call to act, and to spread the love that originates in God throughout the world.
So may you live as children of the light and children of the day. May you live a life of faith, hope, and love, and may you rejoice that God has destined you not for wrath but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Proper 27A, 11/12/2023: Growing up, my family attended a Roman Catholic Church 4th grade for me, at which point we switched to an Evangelical mega-church. This process was precipitated because my mother got super into watching Christian television on channel 30, WVCY–the Voice of Christian Youth, which I assumed that the youth referred to on the show came of age in the 50’s after which they failed to effectively reach youth. Anyway, WVCY brought such things in our lives running the gamut from Bible study through Dispensational end-times theology. I still have images in my mind of paintings of the various Beasts of Revelation and fears of Russia invading Israel from the North, guided by one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.
Thankfully, we’re not going to get too deep into the weeds this morning with such silliness, but in our Gospel reading for this morning, we have a parable from our Lord Jesus about the coming of the Kingdom at the end of this age.
Back in Chapter 24, Jesus and his disciples are leaving the Temple when he says to them that the temple will one day be destroyed, completely and utterly annihilated. Then, arriving at the Mount of Olives, the disciples ask him when this will happen, to which Jesus begins an extended explanation of the terrible things which are to come, including some cryptic and odd descriptions about events that are part of the end of the age. There are wars, and rumors of wars. Nation will rise up against nation. There will be famines and earthquakes. Persecutions, apostasies, false prophets, and the “Abomination that causes Desolation.” If it’s not immediately obvious, this is some pretty serious stuff.
This is the context in which we find our parable about the 10 Bridesmaids, or the Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins, that it is a parable of warning about the coming end times.
In Jesus’ lifetime, a wedding would begin with a procession of the groom (or as Bible translations like to call him, the “bridegroom”) and others from the town. In the parable that Jesus tells his disciples, the groom is expected to arrive during the evening, and so the bridesmaids prepare for his arrival–which is where the story gets weird. Of the 10 bridesmaids, half don’t bring enough oil for their lamps. I mean, who would bring a lantern and no oil? Or a flashlight with dead batteries? And lo and behold, when the bridegroom comes and is on his way, they are unable to light their lamps to participate in the procession. They ask those who have prepared, who say that they are unable to share their oil, but maybe they can go buy some. While they are away the Bridegroom arrives, goes into the wedding, and the door is shut behind them. When the underprepared bridesmaids finally make it to the wedding, the door is shut and they are unable to enter or to participate in the wedding. And Jesus sums up the parable saying, “Keep awake, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour.
In the narrative, it’s fairly obvious that the Bridegroom is Jesus who will (or as we know it, has) ascended to heaven and is expected to return at an unknown day and time. The Bridesmaids are less obvious–they could be any and everybody, or they could be Christians. The Revelation of John at least indicates that those who are invited to the wedding feast are those that have followed Christ and are part of the community of faith known as the Church. But, in reality it doesn’t matter whether the bridesmaids are Christians or not–what we can take away from it is the same no matter who we identify the bridesmaids to be. And, as the Revelation of John shows, the wedding feast is the union of the Church with God in Christ Jesus in the next age.
I think that’s a good example of the danger of parables like ours today. We can get so lost in the details of the finer theological points of such things that we lose sight of the point. In our parable, who are the bridesmaids? Why didn’t the “wise” ones share their oil with the “foolish?” Why weren’t the “foolish” allowed to enter the feast once they did arrive? Why are we admonished to stay awake when the “wise” and the “foolish” both fell asleep, and it wasn’t sleeping that was the problem in the parable. And so on and so forth.
But what’s the point of the parable? What is the message that Jesus is conveying to his disciples, and how does that still have meaning for us in our lives?
The foolish bridesmaids lacked something that they needed to be part of the wedding procession. And because they didn’t have that thing, when the bridegroom came they were found unprepared and in turn they were excluded from the feast. Certainly, the Scriptures call on us to turn to God through faith–for the righteous will live by faith, as Abraham was told, and which St. Paul takes up in his letter to the Romans, and in another place that grace a gift of God received through our faith. But if you look at what follows in the Gospel, Jesus seems to also put a lot of emphasis on what we do in this life as well. After this parable he gives one about a wealthy man who gives his servants part of his wealth while he goes on a journey, expecting his servants to put it to use so that his wealth grows. And after that is the parable of the Great Judgment seat where the sheep and the goats are separated from one another based on doing acts of mercy toward others.
So what is the message that Jesus is making to his disciples? To always be doing what we are called to do in this life. After all, the wise and the foolish both were invited, but only the wise were prepared, only the wise brought oil. Only the wise did all that was expected of them as part of the wedding banquet. Therefore the foolish missed out on the joys of being at the wedding feast.
Or perhaps more succinctly: If you know what you need to do, and there are no barriers to doing it, the right time to do it is now. Don’t put it off. Don’t wait until the time is right. Don’t wait until someone else comes along. Do it now. And keep doing it. Don’t lose heart or grow weary in doing good. Keep doing it, whenever the opportunity presents itself.
If there’s someone you know that needs a friend to reach out to them, do it now. If there’s someone who needs to hear a kind word, do it now. If you see someone who lacks food or is in need of shelter, help them out today. If you get an impulse within yourself that there is anything you could do to help another person, do it right away. Don’t miss the chance to honor our life in Christ when the opportunity presents itself.
So, it follows that we should all be asking ourselves, what gets in the way for me? What makes me lose sight of doing what is right? What makes it hard to live a life of love? What makes me fail to love my neighbor as myself? And through asking these questions of ourselves, to find renewed strength to love fully, to love deeply, to love continually. To love when it’s easy, and when it’s hard. And through love, to be like a light shining brightly in a dark world.
So may you be filled with the love of God so that you may always do what is right. May your love be renewed, filled, and deepened, to strengthen you to walk in the way of Jesus. And may your life be a light shining in the darkness.
Proper 24A, 10/23/2023: “Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s” (KJV).
That’s a little better than “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (NRSV). Don’t you think?
There are a few moments that I recall from working as an assistant under the rector of a parish that I thought to myself, I could have done that better. OK, maybe more than a few, but in particular, when it comes to giving the sermon on a particular reading, this one stands out to me. There were surely some things that conceptually were great, but I would have gone a different direction.
This happens to be one of those Sundays. So what a thrill this is to be before you this morning to have my chance to share my interpretation of these familiar words.
Matthew’s telling of this story reveals how much more there is going on to the initial question than meets the eyes as we read it or hear it. The supposed compliments and the question itself were not sincere. It was all delivered with malice. These Herodians, as they are called, didn’t mean it when they say Jesus teaches with sincerity and in full accord with the truth about God’s ways. Neither is their question sincere, but it is a trap from which they thought they could corner Jesus into saying something that would discredit him or get him in legal trouble. And I think we all can see the brilliance in the answer, even if we may not be fully aware of the nuance of what is going on here.
But it is brilliant, and I would like to explore together just how brilliant it is.
The question put to Jesus: “Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”
If Jesus says “Yes”, then he will be seen as a supporter of the Roman Empire, that evil occupying force in power over the nation of Israel. If he says “No”, then he is guilty of sedition and encouraging people to not pay the Roman taxes.
So he asks if someone in the crowd had one of the coins, a denarius, that was used to pay the tax. And one is brought forward, and Jesus asks whose image is on the coin, and whose name is on it, and they answer “Caesar”. The NRSV translates it “the emperor”, but the actual Greek is Caesar. Kaisaros.
The coin brought forward is a denarius. The principle silver coin of the Roman Empire, which according to the parable of the workers in the vineyard was the equivalent of a day’s wages. And if it was indeed the “tribute penny” minted in 14 – 37 CE, it would have emperor Tiberius’ head on one side, with the inscription “Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus” on one side, and a seated female figure on the other side.
So when asked whose head is this, it’s Tiberius. Caesar Augustus Tiberius, son of the Divine Augustus.
Besides being anti-taxation, there’s also a strain of thought that the coin represented a graven image, the likeness of a man who claimed divine patronage, son of the divine Augustus. So not only was there the problem of taxation, there was also the problem of idolatry. The priests in the temple, the Essenes, refused to touch or to look at these coins, and they were not legal tender within the Temple. Even bringing one into the temple, as the owner of the coin had, was potentially problematic from a religious perspective.
And Jesus works his magic on the crowd. Not only does she respond to the question wisely, he adds his own teaching moment into it. If Tiberius Caesar made it and put his face and his name on it, give it back to him. The word translated “give” here and “render” in the King James is apoDIdomi, which can mean to pay taxes or tribute, as well as to give back or restore something owned by another. Perhaps both are meant. Pay your taxes and give back to Caesar this thing which is obviously his.
“Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”
Give Caesar back his money, but worship, adoration, and obedience belong to the true God. It is a rejection of the divine claims made by Tiberius’s father Agustus and ascribed to him as the son of the so-called divine. But they are not God, they are men. The Holy One alone is God, and it is this one we are to worship.
Now, I can’t help but to wonder if this reading doesn’t occur at this point in our lectionary because it is October and a time for discussing stewardship and financial support of our parishes. That’s probably ascribing too much to the purpose here, especially given that the same lectionary is used by denominations that don’t follow the model of the Episcopal Church as we do. But it does allow me to turn to something that I have been thinking about lately.
In Christian Churches, following our Jewish roots, we occasionally talk about tithing–the idea of giving a tenth of one’s income to the church. We don’t talk about it much here, mainly because I don’t talk about it here, but plenty of churches do. One place that does pop up here at St. Bede’s is in the resolutions we pass at each organizational meeting for vestry members following our annual meeting in January. The text of that resolution reads (in full):
“Whereas General Convention, Diocesan Convention, and St. Bede’s Parish have repeatedly upheld the tithe as the standard of giving, we the Vestry of St. Bede’s affirm the tithe as the biblical standard of giving toward which we as Christians are striving. We recognize that articulating such a standard raises issues of interpretation as well as personal stewardship for all of us (before or after taxes, forced choices among worthy causes, conflicts within individuals and families). We believe that working out an honest and loving response to God’s faithfulness is the way to acknowledge and exercise our need to grow toward the fullness of spiritual maturity we want for ourselves and for each other.”
I’ll repeat: “We the vestry of St. Bede’s affirm the tithe as the biblical standard of giving toward which we as Christians are striving.”
That raises the question: is that a striving of tithing to St. Bede’s? Because I’m certain that very few of us are doing that now. In fact, for churches across the United States, the average is that 5% of church members tithe regularly, 37% give nothing, and of those who give 50% around 2% of their income.
That used to strike me as terrible. We should be aiming to tithe, right? And most people are giving 2% or less of their income to the churches they attend?
Like I said, it used to strike me as terrible. Then I got to thinking, the command for the Jews to tithe in the Scriptures, and the idea for the early church to tithe made sense when the temple and the church was the only game in town. But as the resolution I read states, we recognize that there are other worthy causes out there to which we should be supporting charitably. And we recognize that having 10% to give means having enough excess income to be able to sustain that while also paying the bills at the same time.
But I support the wording of the resolution: to affirm the tithe as the biblical standard of giving to which we as Christians are striving. And I encourage you all, to strive to live so charitably that you are supporting this parish and other worthy causes with the excess of your wealth with your tithing, and to consider how St. Bede’s fits in alongside the causes that you support. We’re not the only game in town, but we are a worthy one. And thank you all for your support in time, talent, and treasure of this parish.
“Render therefore unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”
So may you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, be charitable in your hearts, sharing from your excess to those who are in need this day. May you give generously of yourselves to support that which is worthy of being accomplished in this life. And may you render unto God the things that are God’s.
Proper 23A, 10/15/2023: I’ve shared this with you before, a little more than a year ago, but it bears repeating as an introduction to what is on my mind this morning.
When I was living in Virginia and serving as a priest at an Episcopal church in Arlington, I met a priest named Bruce McPherson. He had been the interim priest at the parish I served before they called it’s current rector. At that time, Bruce was serving as the interim at St. John’s, Lafayette Square in Washington D.C.. Lafayette Square is the plaza or park that is across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, and St. John’s is a deeply historic church. They have a pew that is permanently reserved for the President, who historically has almost never sat in it, and they have numerous members who have high-ranking jobs in the federal government. For example, Robert Mueller who served as special counsel for the investigation that resulted in the Mueller Report on potential collusion between the Russian Government and the Trump Campaign.
That is not to comment on the report or claims, only that he is indicative of who some of the parish’s members are.
When Bruce told me that many of their members work for the top levels of the federal government, I was a bit in awe of that, and asked him how does he lead a parish like that, I greatly appreciated his reply: The members of that congregation are seeking the moral authority of the church to inform them how to live their lives and to serve the people of this nation in the work that they do.
The moral authority of the church… a grandiose way to talk about what we learn from others who have gone before us in the faith and how they have applied the teachings, values, and practices taught by Jesus, the apostles, and the prophets as they called us to discipleship and a life following after Christ.
That’s on my mind this morning as we are now once again immersed in news of the suffering of others who find themselves caught up in the violence being perpetrated around them. What are we, as those walking in the way of Christ, to do or to think about what is happening in the land of Palestine, and what does that moral authority of the Church have to say about it?
I would imagine that most people attending Episcopal Churches today will hear a message denouncing the violence, calling for peace and an end to hostilities, and calling for better treatment and living conditions for the Palestinians. From the moral perspective of the Church, this seems like a no-brainer. The violence, perpetrated by both sides, has been horrifying. The numbers of innocents who were killed in the initial attack and in the Gaza Strip since then has been appalling. And taking heed from the teachings of Jesus as I’ve studied them and come to understand them, this should not be.
Neither should the conditions that have led to this situation in the first place. The history is long and complicated, where both Palestinian and Jew have suffered and died simply for the sake of existing and living where they do. And with so much history and nuance to the events and actions that have happened in the past, you can’t simply pin down the problem to one cause, and therefore come up with a straightforward solution. But I think it safe to say that the dirty, ugly history of it all neither glorifies God nor aligns with the ultimate desire of the Almighty.
If, as I believe wholeheartedly, God desires for humanity to live in love and to be at peace with all people, then the conditions that lead to death, pain, sickness, and oppression are not good and do not align with God’s will for humanity. This is how I have come to understand that part of the Lord’s prayer, where we pray that God’s Kingdom would come and God’s will would be done, on earth as it is in heaven. God’s Kingdom exists where God’s will is done. And I don’t believe that God’s will is being done.
What’s the solution? Apart from a wholescale softening of our hearts for one another in this life, I don’t know.
But let’s look at our Gospel for a moment. The parable is difficult to understand, without question. The first portion is straightforward–God called people to obey and follow him, but they refused, like wedding guests who were invited but didn’t come. So God called others to join the feast, and they did.
And then it becomes problematic – one in attendance was found not wearing the proper garment, and so he was kicked out. There was something wrong about the man and his clothing, so he was excluded from the party that he had been enjoying, bound and cast out to the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.
I truly don’t know how to interpret this. But here’s what I make of it, practically speaking. In the later parts of the New Testament, we have dozens of verses that describe the Godward life as though a person has or should clothe themselves. Galatians 3:27 describes putting on Christ like a garment that is worn at baptism. 1 Peter 5:5 tells us to clothe ourselves with humility and mercy toward one another. And perhaps most significantly, Colossians 3:12-14 reads, “Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.”
This is the Godward life, walking in the path of Jesus. Compassion. Kindness. Humility. Meekness. Patience. Forgiveness. Love. This is God’s Kingdom appearing in our midst. Not in violence, hate, and oppression, but in love.
And as an appeal to the moral authority of the Church, in principle, and in general, everyone – Jew, Palestinian, and other, created in the divine image – deserves to live in peace with security, without oppression or fear for their safety and well-being.
So may you…
Proper 21A, 10/1/2023: The challenge before me this morning is to consider how to tie together two themes that don’t seem to want to go together, on the surface at least: one, the question about where the authority that gave Jesus the ability to act and to do all that he did came from, and two, stewardship–it is October after all, and we’re in the midst of our Stewardship campaign here at St. Bede’s. Let’s see where the journey takes us, shall we?
The problem begins with the challenge of seeing that the episode from the Gospel is more than a question about authority–in just a few short lines, it has all the intrigue of a drama or a play where the players are trying to maneuver around the each other, trying to corner one another into admitting something that will discredit them.
Which is not to say that the question of authority isn’t important. The Gospels main point, their main reason for having been written, is to understand who Jesus is. It is all about the identity of Jesus, who he is, and what we should do about that. So in today’s Gospel, we have a group of people in positions of leadership who want to make sure that Jesus is the real deal. And they’re skeptical at best, opposed at worst. They see all that he’s doing, but he doesn’t fit their paradigm. Maybe they don’t expect that God would work in their midst in the way that Jesus is doing. Maybe his activity and message is a threat to those in control.
And so, in order to check him out, they ask him where he received the authority to do what he is doing? In other words, “What gives you the right to do what you do?”
To which he responds that he also has a question: Where did John get the authority to do what he did?
John, who was said to have baptized people at the Jordan River, preaching a message of repentance from sin and turning your heart Godward.
Verses Jesus, who was said to have given the blind their sight, told the lame to walk, healed and cleansed lepers, gave the deaf the ability to hear, raised the dead, and preached good news to the poor, welcoming sinners and tax collectors.
If anyone is to be regarded as a prophet, it would be Jesus. Not to discredit John – his whole message was to repent, because God was sending a prophet even greater than himself, who would do even greater things. And if the people regarded John as a prophet, how could the chief priests and the elders not see the hand of God at work in Jesus?
Which is the point! It’s not about authority–at least not only about that–but it’s about seeing the hand of God in your midst. Seeing the work of God around you. The chief priests and elders were so concerned about the question of authority that they missed out on the joy that was before them. They were distracted by the minor points in front of them that they missed out on the joy of following Christ.
To which Jesus sets up the scenario: A man had two sons, and asked both of them to go to the field. One said yes, but he didn’t go. The other said no, but later he went. And of course, no-brainer, it was the one who went that “did” the will of their father.
So it is here that we find the point, the conclusion of the story–that all along, while it was the reprobates of society, the repugnant and detestable, forgotten and abused, marginalized and oppressed who turned to God through John’s baptism, those in power and “authority” were not so moved that they themselves went to John in repentance, or to Jesus in faith. Instead, they looked on from a distance, sneering at the good work that was before them, trying to hold on to their control of the population.
Which brings us to the question: What difference does it make for us? Aren’t we the people, aren’t we gathered here this morning, because we do believe that Jesus was a prophet, whose authority came from God, and we have turned our hearts Godward through the message Jesus preached? Isn’t that why we’re here this morning, because we believe it, or are seeking to believe it?
What we can take away for today’s purposes, I believe, is to practice good stewardship.
(See what I did there?) How does that make sense? How do they tie together? Because Jesus said that we are to be like the son, who when asked by his father to work in the vineyard, went and did the work. And what are we being asked to do? To do the work of God here in Menlo Park, in the Bay Area, and in the world. At home, in our neighborhoods, and everywhere.In Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.
Now, stewardship is a loaded word. For some people, all it is, is about focusing on money. For others, it has this concept of being stingy, or it’s just downright boring or lame. Stewardship. But if we unpack it, the concept is anything but–it is the idea that God wants us to do something. God wants you to do something. And if God wants you to do something, it’s probably important to do it. And what is it that God calls us to do?
To give the blind their sight, tell the lame to walk, heal and cleanse lepers, give the deaf the ability to hear, raise the dead, and preach good news to the poor. Which we do by being here today, where we are in the presence of God and receive God’s blessings as a community, and then go out these doors to go forth in peace to love and serve the Lord.
The things that we do and wish to do very much require our time, talent, and treasure, as Episcopalians like to say. The things we do here – our worship, adult education, and Sunday school program, preparing the altar and the items necessary for worship, ushering and Zoom Chapel, arranging the flowers to beautify our worship, choir, book group and youth gatherings, various committees, charitable collections and dinners for Ecumenical Hunger, our support of Lifemoves and los Ayudantes, it all takes time and some god-given talent. Note that these groups would love more hands to make the load lighter for everyone involved, and to bless the people who benefit from all that we do even more.
Which of course points us to our treasure. It’s probably the last of the three on the list because we don’t want to seem greedy, or worry about the stereotype that churches are only about money. But it’s an important thing to consider–how do we at a minimum survive and, God-willing, thrive as a community? All these things take money. Keeping the lights on, paying salaries, buying supplies – that’s surviving, which can be hard enough at times. But how do we do more? How do we thrive as a community at St. Bede’s? How do we continue to support the organizations we partner with, grow our programs here, and bless us and those around us even more? By contributing your time, talent, and treasure. By considering what you’re willing to give to support these things. My hope is that we can all get excited about the things we do and want to do as a church, which will motivate us to be generous with time, talent, and treasure, so we as a community can not only survive but to thrive as a parish and as a witness to the goodness of God in our lives and in our world.
So may you, my brothers and sisters, give the blind their sight, make the lame to walk, heal and cleanse lepers, give the deaf the ability to hear, and even raise the dead to new life. May we be enlivened to give to God and to one another of our time, talent, and treasure, and may we always preach good news to the poor.
Proper 17A, 9/3/2023: Have you ever had a person tell you a story, and not just any kind of story, but one so fantastic, so incredible, you say, wow, that’s incredible!
And then they share another fantastic, incredible story, and you think, OK, wow again.
And then they share another fantastic, incredible story, and you think, now I just think you’re lying to me.
True story, I had one of those days where multiple fantastic, incredible things happened to me, and I want to share one of those with you:
I was sitting with a friend at a campfire where we were camping out to go rock climbing the next day. As we were sitting there, a few of our friends came and sat with us….
(ad lib the story: Drugs… school…dreams are fuel for an empty fire… satanist…beat up a lot… kill you in your sleep.)
So I thought, I should be ready in case he attacks me, so I put a folding knife in my pocket so I could grab it if I needed it.
And as I lay there thinking about the evening, my mind kept turning with anger at how awful this guy had been to me and my friends. He was rude, mean, and antagonizing. He threatened to kill me in my sleep, which got me thinking of how I would annihilate him if he came after me. But then I thought, so this drunk Satanist wishes to do me harm? Shouldn’t the children of light be different from the children of darkness? Shouldn’t I as a follower of Christ be different than this Satanist? Perhaps the thing to do is that if he attacks me, to not seek to harm him in return. To defend myself against him, yes, but to minimize the harm done to him.
Well, nothing happened throughout the night, and the Drunken Satanist didn’t kill me as I slept. But the power of those thoughts that might have stayed with me – that to follow Christ, to walk in the way of Jesus, means a radical departure from the norms of this world. That we are called to a higher calling of how we are to conduct ourselves than we otherwise would without the example Jesus has given us to follow.
Shouldn’t the children of light be different from the children of darkness?
That is a picture of what we see from St. Paul in his letter to the Romans. Throughout the selected reading for this morning, we are given repeated examples of the high standard that is laid out for the children of light. It is a continuous call that in every way, we are to exude the qualities modeled to us by Christ such as love, patience, and kindness, in all that we do.
In particular, one message that is prominent in Paul’s writing here is summed up in this way: “Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.”
Shouldn’t the children of light be different from the children of darkness?
Do not allow yourselves to be turned by the evil around you, that you then do the very same acts and therefore do evil yourself. Rather, through your commitment to loving all people, even to those who do you wrong, you will overcome evil with good. Do not act in kind, and therefore become just like the evil that you are to resist and turn away from.
But here’s the kicker–it’s not a call to even simply tolerate it when people mistreat you. Even more, when someone mistreats you, respond in loving-kindness. We are not simply called to tolerate, to take it without responding when people wrong us, but we are to respond positively toward them. Paul doesn’t just say to tolerate it, and accept it when people persecute you without retaliating.
No, he goes even further–bless them. Do good toward those who do wrong to you. If your enemy is hungry, feed them. If they are thirsty, give them something to drink. If they slander you, speak positively about them. If they take from you, offer more.
Don’t repay evil with evil, but respond in such a way that others would think it noble what you’ve done. After all, wasn’t it Jesus who told us to turn the other cheek, give your cloak as well as your tunic, and go the extra mile? Wasn’t it Jesus who called for the Father to forgive those who crucified him? Wasn’t it Jesus who forgave you all your sins in the waters of your baptism?
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
So may you learn to love those who do wrong to you. May your love be genuine, hating what is evil and holding fast to what is good, and through your actions, may you always do what is noble in the sight of all.
Proper 16A, 8/27/2023: When you were a child, did your parents ever prevent you from being friends with certain kids because they thought those kids would be a bad influence on you? Or, have you ever been a parent and done the same for your children? Now, I don’t think that had ever happened to me, that my parents actually told me that I wasn’t allowed to be friends with anyone because they thought they would be a bad influence on me, but somewhere along the way I came to realize the influence that people around me had on how I conducted myself – and largely for the worse, leading me to do things that I wouldn’t have otherwise! Therefore, I needed to be mindful about who or what I was allowing to influence me so that I could be the kind of person I wanted to be, and continue to grow into the person I wanted to become. And in my life, at the time, it was largely the church that was calling me to be a better person – kinder, more caring and considerate, and dedicated to doing what was right.
I say this because the writings of Paul in our Epistle reading today remind me of a principle that has found its way into my thinking over the past years – that there are a great many things that are competing to influence how we act, think, and speak; and therefore it has been my opinion that the greatest influence over these things ought to come from our faith commitment to Jesus, because I believe that the way of Jesus is the best possible way to live.
Think about it: When asked what the most important thing is in life, Jesus replied to his questioners with the answer, “Love.” That love is the most important thing, the greatest thing to do. That we are to love the God who created us, and to love our fellow human beings. Love those who love you, and love those who hate you. Love those who do good to you, and love those who do evil to you. Love when it’s easy, and love when it’s hard. Turn the other cheek, go the extra mile, give all that you have to offer to those who ask of you.
This is likely in stark contrast to how we have learned to go about things by other influences in our lives. Our instincts tend to incline us to hold back love, at least from those who we don’t think deserve our love, or haven’t earned it. Throughout our lives, we’ve met people who have hurt us or harmed us, and we learned to withhold love to protect ourselves from being hurt again. We’ve been shown that we live in a world of limited resources, and we learned to withhold love to protect the things we’ve worked so hard to get for ourselves. We’ve learned not to love, when loving means that we risk suffering because of it, because people are unsafe, and so we only extend love, many times, when we feel it is safe to do so, or the risk small enough.
But I still believe that the way of Jesus is the best possible way to live.
His is the way that says don’t allow anything to get in the way of love. Don’t let the place a person was born get in the way of love, like with the Canaanite woman who wanted her daughter healed. Don’t let the person’s religion get in the way of love, like with the Samaritan man in the parable who was the true neighbor. Don’t let the person’s gender get in the way of love, like with the woman who reached out to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment to be healed. Don’t let the person’s lifestyle get in the way of love, like the woman who was caught in adultery. Don’t let what people do to you get in the way of love, like those who crucified Jesus and regarding whom he said “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
In St. Paul’s message to the Romans, he pleads with the Christians living in Rome, the capital of the evil Roman Empire, to be different than the people around them in the way they live their lives because of their faith commitment to Jesus Christ. He says it unequivocally–”Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”
Like a child whose behavior is influenced by the other children around her, or around him, you and I today are still subject to forces that seek to influence us. We are still affected and shaped and molded by influences around us that seek prominence in our lives. Advertising, news, and corporations, all want you to buy their product. But it’s not just a product they’re selling–it’s a way of life. It’s an appeal to values so you feel that by buying that product, you’ll be living into those values and have a better life for it. Advertising knows that you and I are susceptible to changing what we do by playing on our values and hopes. You and I are not static, but are shaped by the influences around us. Which is why it is prescient to hear the words of St Paul: Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.
Do not be conformed to the values, the cares, and the concerns, the expectations and desires and pressures, of this world; but be transformed to love, to consider others better than yourself, to go the extra mile, to turn the other cheek, to sell all that you have and give to the poor, to do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
There are a great many, many things in this world that are competing for our attention, support, or commitment. Let the way of Jesus lead the way. Let the way of Jesus shape your life, your values, your cares and concerns. Let the way of Jesus shape your goals and sense of self. Let the way of Jesus shape your life’s direction. And all so that we would continue to grow in the greatest of virtues that we can exhibit – love. Loving God, and loving our fellow humans.
So may you learn what it means that the way of Jesus is the best possible way to live. May you love the Lord your God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as yourselves. And may you not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds in Christ.
Proper 15A, 8/20/2023: When considering our Gospel reading for this morning, there are a number of things that are written that ought to shock us. There are three characters or groups of characters, and in a bit of a twist on what we would expect, it’s not who we would think that are presented as being mistaken about their attitudes. The Gospels are not shy about pointing out the shortcomings of the disciples, presenting them oftentimes as blundering, foolish young men who need to be shaped and corrected along the way. We get that here. But it’s not hard not to see a bit of error in Jesus in the way that he responds to the woman. In the end, it’s only the Canaanite woman who comes out untainted. Canaanite! Gentile, idolater.
The scene begins with a woman of Canaanite origin, a Gentile, shouting out to Jesus about her daughter who needed his help. And she is on top of things. She calls him Lord, Son of David – all pointing toward messianic titles of Jewish identity. And, for whatever reason, Jesus does not reply to her but lets her continue shouting. So enter the disciples, who are translated as saying to send her away because of how annoying she is! Well, the Greek here actually seems to present them telling Jesus to do as she is asking for and to care for her… with a little bit of “please end this”. While the English sounds a bit harsh to us, the original language is a bit softer.
That brings us to the real challenge: Jesus sets up the story as a conflict of interests between the Jews and Gentiles. Jews good, Gentiles bad.
She comes before him, even though he’s rebuffed her attempts in front of the disciples, and she says “Lord help me.” Which leads to real trouble. He says to her, “It is not fitting to take the children’s food and give it to the dogs.”
Throughout the Gospels, Jesus immediately responds to anyone who cries out to him for mercy or salvation or healing. His initial silence toward the woman is stunning–Jesus’ response here is the only instance in the Gospels where he refuses a person who approaches him in need.
There are different ways we can interpret Jesus’s words and actions to this point. One is that he’s testing the woman to see if her faith is genuine, and how far she will go to have her daughter healed. Will she keep coming even when at first she is rebuffed? That is the common interpretation of those who wish to believe that Jesus must always do what is right, in his divine nature of the incarnation. As God in the flesh, Jesus cannot do what is not perfect, all the time.
While that’s potentially the kinder interpretation than the alternative, it still comes off as harsh. No other person coming to Jesus for help is put through a test to see if their faith is strong enough to warrant help. Others are given aid immediately upon request when asked, and commended for their faith straight away.
The other interpretation is that Jesus means what he says to her. He really believes what he is saying, that this outsider, this Gentile, is not to be helped because he was not sent to help those outside of Israel. But, in their exchange, he is bested by the woman when she replies that even the dogs get the crumbs that the children have dropped. If this is the case, we see a Jesus who realizes that he needs to be more open to the woman’s plea and therefore heals her daughter.
I lean toward the latter–that in this interaction with the Gentile woman, we see an expansion in the understanding that Jesus has on his mission as Messiah–that there is mercy for the outsider in the expansive love of God. In the woman’s persistence, Jesus comes to affirm the importance and power of faith in this outsider to the Jewish community, and that there are not groups that are in and out in the Kingdom of God. All are welcome and worthy to participate in the love and mercy from God.
And what we learn in this episode, just as Jesus learned,is that in the end, distinctions made about people based on race or nationality have no place in the Kingdom of God. All are equally welcome in God’s Kingdom, and God loves and is compassionate toward all people.
And how does that touch on our lives today?
If you were to take the red prayer book and open it to the baptismal service, in it you will find the section titled the Baptismal Covenant. This is the section which, during a baptism, you and I will all stand and read the words here, reaffirming our baptism and all that we believe goes with it. As followers of Christ, you and I don’t believe that being baptized is all it takes to be doing it right in the kingdom of God. We also believe that God wants us to act and conduct ourselves in a certain way. And in particular, there is a section where the priest or deacon leading the service will say to you,
“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”
And you will say, “I will, with God’s help.”
When you say these words, you are committing yourself to just this: respecting the dignity of every human alive. You are saying that in the Kingdom of God, all people have equal dignity, are worthy of equal respect, regardless of things like being born or where they live. Regardless of the color of their skin. Regardless of their beliefs, politics, or religion. Regardless of their gender, or their sexual orientation, and regardless of your views on these things, they still are human beings, created in the image of God, and whom God loves just as much as God loves you.
It doesn’t say with qualification who is in and who is out in terms of respecting their dignity. It simply says “of every human being.”
And in the model that Jesus gives us in the Gospel this morning, it is incumbent on us to expand and enlarge what the means for us. To root out prejudice and the hardness of our hearts to the outsider, to the other, and to recognize that they too are loved by God, who cares about them and their well-being just as God does for us. Inclusion is at the heart of the Gospel message this morning. It’s not just the Jews who are loved by God. All of us are.
And to think that this is the easier part of what you’re committing yourself to?!
The harder part is at the front end: “Will you strive for justice and peace among all people?” Whereas respecting other’s dignity could simply mean your attitude or the way that you carry yourself and interact with others differently than you, here we say that we will “strive” for justice and peace. Strive, an active word, implying that we are actively going to do something about the injustices and lack of peace that infect our world. That we won’t tolerate a world where people are oppressed, attacked, or killed for the differences between us. That we won’t let a fellow human being suffer for the things that they don’t share in common like us, but that, because we believe all are worthy of dignity and respect, that we will do something about it. That we won’t exclude others because they are different, but that we will love and support and assist those who are different from us, because God loves all people, everywhere.
“Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?”
And you will say, “I will, with God’s help.”
So may you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, live lives of inclusion, affirming God’s love for all of humankind. May we come to respect the dignity of all whom we encounter in this life. And may we actively work to bring out justice and peace for all people in this life, and in the one yet to come. Amen.
Proper 14A, 8/13/2023: When preparing for our message this morning, the question that I am confronted with is: What kind of a savior is Jesus?
Encountering this passage and the questions around it will always remind me of a conversation I had back in 2011, while I was living in northwest New Mexico and only days away from moving back to Wisconsin. I was at dinner with a friend, Jack, who was the organist of the Episcopal Church in that small town, and the church that drew me to the Anglican tradition. While we were at dinner, Jack and I were debating if Jesus’ life was truly supernatural or not – did Jesus do the miraculous, or is it just myths that early Christians told each other? Did Jesus heal the sick and the lame, or did he not? Did Jesus walk on water, or did he not? Did Jesus rise from the dead, or did he not?
The conversation typifies those that have been repeated over and over again, and at the core has the same basic foundation: we don’t see the miraculous happen in our day, so what do we make of the stories of the miraculous that supposedly happened in the days of Jesus? Theories taught at Moody Bible Institute, where I went to college, include the following: Is it that this is a way that God used to work, that two millennia ago God did work like that, and that the miraculous was possible, but that God, for whatever reason, has chosen to not do that anymore? Or was Jesus and the early Church an exception, and God gave them special abilities to heal the sick and raise the dead, but that this died out with them? Or were people back then more open to the miraculous and seeing it as the hand of God, and therefore God did the miraculous, but doesn’t do so any longer?
Or, as many have concluded, the miraculous never happened in the first place, but the things recorded in the Bible were fabrications, embellishments, misunderstandings, or myths of a more simple and less informed age?
Did Jesus really walk on water?
It is of course a question that cannot really be answered. No one can go back to observe it happening in the first place, to get us further proof, nor can the experiment be repeated and our hypotheses tested. Its historicity cannot be tested. But the question itself and the answer we are inclined to give have this important aspect to them: They reveal more about ourselves than they do about God.
In the Bible, the episode of Jesus walking on the water comes in the midst of Jesus still trying to teach his disciples who he really is, in part to prepare them for when they must go on without him. In this episode, he and the disciples have parted, as he has sent them to go across the Sea of Galilee without him. But they’re having a heck of a time at it: the wind has kicked up and they are being beaten up by rough seas. They must have been at it all night, because Matthew tells us that it is in the early morning that Jesus comes to them, walking on the water. And with the wind and the waves, he must have been doing this kind of surfer thing (put hands out like riding a surfboard) to maintain his balance.
We normally picture Jesus walking calmly across the water, but the sea was angry that day, my friend, like an old man trying to send back soup at a deli.
So Jesus is out there, surfing the waves, and the disciples see him. It must be a ghost. Tip number one is that we’re dealing with pre-modern thinking – they see something that doesn’t make sense, so they say it must be a ghost. But, Jesus, hearing their terrified cries, he calls out to them, “Do not be afraid.”
Peter, then, does the most curious thing. He says Jesus, if it’s really you, have me come out of the boat and walk to you. “Command me to come out to you on the water.” Well, Jesus says come, and Peter walks out – until he becomes afraid of the waves and starts to sink. Jesus, who must have been close to him at this point, “immediately” grabs his hand, pulls him up and back into the boat, and says “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”.
In the world of the Scriptures, faith and the miraculous are tied together. If you have faith, miracles will happen. If you doubt it, it won’t.
And for a brief excursion here, you’ve heard that phrase, “The world of the Scriptures,” or similar phrases before. The mindset, the values, the cares, the reasoning of the people that we encounter in our Bible, are quite different than today. Not bad, just different, and to honor those differences, and to highlight that we need to do some work to understand where they were coming from, I use that phrase. In the world of the Scriptures, humankind were created on the sixth day of God’s creative work; God called a nation to be a chosen people, and delivered them from slavery in Egypt, leading them through the parted waters of the Red Sea; called judges and kings to lead them, sent prophets to call them back to faithful observance of the covenant made with them, and send them a savior to redeem them from their sins and save them from the curse of death and the grave.
So we read this narrative in the Gospel and we think, “Did that really happen?” Which as I said, says more about us than it does about God.
If experience bears itself out, you and I will never walk on water, like Jesus and Peter were supposed to have done so as the Bible presents it to us. I had joked about bringing in a kiddie pool with some water this morning and having people step in to see if they would float on top (ad lib). But, you won’t. It doesn’t happen that way. You and I will never walk on water. The people in our lives will not get better from their illnesses. We will never feed the multitudes, or still the seas, or turn water into wine, as much as we pray and as much as we have faith.
It takes us back to the first question I asked: What kind of a savior is Jesus?
Is he one that can heal our infirmities, raise our dead, and walk on water? Is he one that can bring life, and hope, and joy into the hardship and anxieties of our lives? Or is he simply the stuff of myth and legend?
As I said, it is a question that reveals more about us than it does about God. Ironically, it also smacks right at Jesus’ words to Peter: “Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
For Peter, it was because he was afraid of the wind and the waves. For us, it’s because the world of the Bible seems so far from our world today. But it begs the question: Is God present and with us to this very day, and is the power of God great enough to do such a thing as walk on water? Can we still have faith that God is with us, and that this makes a difference for us today?
What kind of Savior is Jesus? Even for you and me today?
So may you, my brothers and sisters in Christ, have faith to believe without fear. May we experience the salvation of our God, in this life and in the one yet to come. And may we see the presence of God in our lives, even in the normal, the mundane, and the commonplace aspects of our lives.
Proper 10A, 7/16/2023: The parables of Jesus have often been described as “earthly stories with a heavenly meaning.” Earthly stories, with a heavenly meaning.
I suppose nothing is more earthly than talking about dirt, the earth beneath our feet. And in the story, there are four types of soil/four results
What to do with the parable?
Reflecting upon this parable, I am struck by the seed that grew up among the thorns. The seed that was prevented from growing up to its fullness, because the cares of this world and the lure of wealth got in the way.
That strikes a chord with me because I have often reflected on the lives that we live as Christians in the Western world.
In the biblical picture of what it means to be a person of faith, the life of a follower of Jesus required a radical turn in life–that to follow Christ meant a total change of being and one’s orientation toward the world. A person’s whole life was changed–their relationships with family, their values, the ways that they shopped, the ways they spent money–everything in life was affected because of this Jesus they professed as Christ.
Jesus told those who wished to follow them that they needed to deny themselves and take up their crosses. That they were to follow him, and let the dead bury their dead. That they were to sell all that they had and to give it to the poor, then follow him. That they were to leave their nets and that he would make them fishers of men. That they were to wash each other’s feet, and to break bread together. St. Paul told the churches that he planted that they were to seat the poor among the wealthy and to share the table together. That they were to abstain from foods sacrificed to idols, and to consider the needs of others above their own.
But somehow, along the way things changed, and today the lives we lead as Christians isn’t that different from the way anyone else lives. Today, Christians in society aren’t all that different from those who do not profess Jesus as Lord, who do not hope in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection.
We’re just kind of like everybody else.
That is, unless you’re the kind of Christian who protests at abortion clinics, or who won’t create wedding websites for gay couples.
Somehow, we’ve come to the point that being a Christian is a rather bland thing. Our lives aren’t all-encompassed by our faith in a holy God. Instead, our altar on Sundays is one of the few places that we experience the holiness of God, or where we are consciously aware of the presence of God.
How have we lost the holiness of God? How has the presence of the divine in our lives been choked out by the cares of this life?
How can we hear things like Paul’s writing in today’s epistle, that “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace,” and our hearts not be stirred? Are you and I so earthly, so far from our God, that these things don’t move us anymore?
Truth is, there was a day when these things moved me, when there was a fire and a passion in my soul to completely orient my life Godward and to live a deeply spiritual life. One of regular prayer, reading and meditation on Scripture daily, and the desire and effort to examine every thought and word and deed to ensure that I am living a life worthy of the love of God shown to us on the cross.
But somewhere along the way, in the disillusionment of life and the shifts in my faith from my childhood to where I am today, that road became harder to stick to.
Talk about the cares of this life choking out the power of God in life!
For me, it all comes back to the question, “What does God want?” What is the life that God is calling us to live? And how is that life different than for those who don’t share in the same hope in Jesus Christ?
The simple answer to that question is this: That God wants all of you. Each and every part of your existence. At the cross of Christ God gave everything for you, and he wants everything in return.
The more difficult answer is what that looks like, practically, today. That is for each and every one of us to discern through prayer and a long obedience after God. Through a faithful commitment living as though we owe our entire existence to a holy God, who has called us to be holy, and to a higher standard than the values of this world has given us. To love God with our whole heart and soul and mind and strength. To love one another as ourselves. To pray continually. To continue in the Apostle’s teaching, in the breaking of bread, and in the prayers. To persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord. To proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ. To seek and serve Christ in all persons. And to strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.
To live a life totally transformed by the love of God.
Proper 8A, 6/28/2020: As you may have noticed or be aware, in this season after Pentecost our first reading each Sunday, from the Hebrew Scriptures, follows a more-or-less chronological timeline. And since Pentecost this year, our readings have come to us from the book of Genesis, focusing on Abraham and God’s calling upon him and his wife Sarah. A month ago, we read Genesis 12, the Calling of Abraham, where God appeared to him while he was living in northern Syria, and told him to go to the land of the Canaanites, and there God would bless him, give him children, and give that land to his descendants.
This is all the more challenging because Abraham is already 75 at this time, his wife Sarah is 65 and is unable to have children (or at least has been so far in their marriage). But God again appears to Abraham, on a couple of occasions actually, and reaffirms the promise to Abraham, that he would be the ancestor to a great nation, and that Sarah will bear them a son in her old age. And after 25 years of hearing these promises from God, she gives birth to Isaac. Lots – LOTS – happened in the midst of all that, but that’s the gist of what’s happened to get us to this point.
And now God wants him to kill his son, Isaac. The one child that he has with him since he already drove out the child born to the enslaved Egyptian woman, Hagar. And now God has told Abraham to kill him and offer him as a burnt offering to God.
Why would God command Abraham to murder his son? Why would God command Abraham to do a thing that would later be prohibited to his descendants as a detestable thing that should not be tolerated?
So why would God do this, and why should this story be included in the Scriptures in the first place, and what do we learn from it at the end of it all? Much of this is conjecture, as is much of the theologizing around this story, both in Jewish and in Christian scholarship that I’ve read to prepare for today. But I do think there are important things to take away from this.
Let’s start with: Why would God do this?
What we’re presented with in the text is that God wanted to test Abraham to see if he “feared” God, a phrase that means something like he trusted, revered, or believed. Not to be afraid of, but to place trust in. That is at its core, that on the surface it reads that God wanted to know if Abraham trusted God. Which, if that’s the point of it, then Abraham comes through shining. He doesn’t hesitate to go with Isaac. He doesn’t hesitate when Isaac asks “where is the animal?”. He doesn’t hesitate when Isaac is bound and he is at the moment of killing him. God intervenes and tells him to stop, and that God now knows that Abraham does indeed trust God.
Of course, the question then comes, why would God do that in the first place? Why would God tell Abraham to go through with all of this? It’s quite extreme to set up this as the test as to whether Abraham actually does trust God, that there has to be a simpler way.
The answer is, we don’t know. We have ideas, and several, including one prominent answer from Jewish scholarship, that this was to show that the God of Abraham does not endorse child sacrifice. Though the story takes us right up to the edge, in the end it is not the child who is killed, but the ram caught in the thicket is the one that is offered to God when God holds back the hand of Abraham and the child is spared.
And as God later reveals God’s-self to the Israelites, they are commanded to not engage in the practices of child sacrifice like the nations around them. Commands in Leviticus chapters 18 and 20, and Deuteronomy 18 forbid the people from engaging in child sacrifice. And so because of this, the majority opinion from Jewish scholarship is that this story of the Binding of Isaac serves to show that God is opposed to child sacrifice.
I don’t know if I’m convinced by this. It seems a hard way to get there, and particularly unkind to Abraham. But then again, can anything be done to make this less kind to Abraham, that God was testing his faith by telling him to murder the child of the promise, the only son that he and Sarah had together?
That’s why I think that this reveals something different about God: That our understanding of God and concept of the Holy One is always incomplete but growing. The more we encounter God, the more we know what God is actually like. Less the creation of our imaginations and more the reality of what God is truly like. And in the case of this story that we have here, it is an example of what God was said to be like, that isn’t necessarily true to what God is actually like. And may it be that this is an example of an early story that people told about how God had spoken to and tested their ancestor Abraham, but that the details of the story have been embellished, modified, or in other ways altered to fit their understanding of God, but that as we’ve come to know God better, and in particular through the life of Christ, recognize that God is actually quite different from what God was conceived to be like in the past?
And isn’t our experience of God always like that? That as you and I individually encounter God in our lives, that our understanding of God grows and changes? Hopefully for the better, though not always so, because we are always trying to peer into the unknowingness of God and to understand that which is inscrutable? We’re always trying to answer the question of what God is like. May it be that the answer that was given through the life of Abraham is one that has changed as we’ve come to know God more?
But one thing that we do know for sure in this story: That by the time God commands Abraham to do this in the narrative of his life, he is a changed man because he trusted God. In previous encounters with Abraham, some of which we have read together in the past month, Abraham was not the same man that we find in this chapter. When we first meet him, he responds to God’s appearance with great faith. God tells him to leave his father’s household and to move, and he does. But in other ways, he surprises us in his failings. Twice, for fear of the people around him, he passes off his wife as his sister, afraid that he will be killed so that she may become another man’s wife. When years pass that the promised son doesn’t come, he takes his wife’s enslaved woman Hagar and has a son with him. When God again promises a son, Abraham tells God that it’s not necessary and that Hagar’s son can be his heir. But now, Abraham responds in faith when God asks him to do the unfathomable.
Abraham is a transformed man, because as he has encountered God throughout his life, his faith has grown and his trust in the Almighty has been strengthened.
That’s an example we all can benefit from. That as we encounter God more in our lives, that we will be changed people, growing in faithfulness and righteousness. And where do we encounter God? Well, each moment of our lives is an opportunity to encounter God. In the milestones and the high points, in adversity and the low points, to see God at work in our lives to bring us through along the way. And everywhere in between, through prayer and contemplation of the divine, to make space in our thoughts and in our souls for God’s presence among us to slip into each moment of every day. And in doing so, like our ancestor of the faith, Abraham, that our faith will be reckoned to us as righteousness by the God of love.
Proper 5A, 6/11/2023: There is one central theme that comes to us from our readings this morning: That there is power and virtue in faith. Abraham believed God, when God appeared to him and told him to pick up and move to an unknown land. Jesus preached repentance and acceptance to those who believed him and listened to his message, healed the sick, and raised the dead because of the faith of those seeking him. And the psalmist praises those who have the Lord as their God and do what is holy and good–examples of what those who have faith should do.
This has me reflecting on what it means to have faith, and what role faith plays in our lives. What is the purpose of it, and what is the benefit to us that we do have faith?
In the past, I would have answered that faith was critical to having a right relationship with God, and therefore having hope beyond this life that we would find eternal life–aka heaven. Faith in the work of Christ and in the saving power of God, according to what I had believed in the past, was that which made us right with God. It is this faith that saves a person from the wrath or punishment of God, and therefore was of the utmost importance in life, because that was the deciding factor between being right with God or being subject to God’s judgment.
Today, however, and if you were present with us for Bob Wood’s funeral on Friday, you’d know that this is no longer true for me and for how I have come to understand how God relates to humankind, and that the grace of God can extend to all, because it’s solely dependant on the love of God and not us.
That then begs the question, what it means for us to have faith, and what role faith plays in our lives.
To that, I believe that the answer is quite a bit more temporal, for us in this life and at this time. That it’s less about what it does for us on the other side of death, and much more about what it does for us now, and here, and that it transforms our lives today so that these days go better for us on this side of death.
And I don’t believe that this is too far from the world of the Scriptures. It is in contrast to how I was raised, and some interpretations of the New Testament, and particularly in St. Paul’s writings, but not at all from the life of Abraham and the message of how faith transformed his life.
See, when we meet the man, he is with his family who have migrated from their home, which would have been somewhere around Baghdad. They were going to go to Canaan, in modern Israel, but they stopped for some reason and settled in what is now northern Syria. And it’s there that he encounters Yahweh for the first time.
The story picks up abruptly in our reading, that Yahweh simply speaks to Abraham and tells him to go – “Go to the land I will show you.” And there are a couple of promises attached to this: God will make his ancestors a great nation of people, and that all the nations of the world will be blessed because of him. Somewhat present here, but added more clearly later, is also the promise of the land that the descendants of Abraham will possess and inhabit.
People, land, and blessings to all the nations.
That is what would come about as a result of Abraham’s going, leaving his country, kindred, and father’s house.
As we hear later in Romans, all this was accomplished: The descendants of Abraham became numerous and inhabited the land, and it was a descendant of Abraham that would become the savior of the world, so that all people everywhere would be blessed through the descendants of Abraham. All of this was possible because of Abraham’s faith.
And this is such a simplification or a broad look at how this came about. But Abraham and his descendants had to do a lot of waiting and faced a great deal of adversity to get to seeing these promises fulfilled. God did not complete them all at once, nor even in Abraham’s lifetime. He had a few children–hardly a great nation as they would eventually become. He never possessed more than a small plot of land to bury his wife, hardly the fulfilment of that promise to him later to possess all the land. And according to this timeline, it would be around two millennia before the one who would bless all the nations would be born. And in that time, there was slavery, servitude, wars, strife, famine, hunger, sickness, and all manner of difficulties the people endured.
And in each of those moments, we find the role that faith plays in one’s daily life. Looking through the Scriptures, we find that faith has the power to shape and improve one’s mood and outlook on life, lending hope and joy where others experience distress and fear. Faith helps to face adversity and to believe that the Almighty is present with us in times of danger, trouble, and hardship. Faith lends strength from the strong to the weak, and from the hopeful to the fearful, like it’s contagious and spreads between friends. Faith gives courage to do that which needs to be done, and to do that which is right when it’s not easy to do. Faith helps to overcome anxiety, fear, and stress, believing that there is one that is more powerful than us who is on our side and working to be good into our lives. And faith gives us purpose and meaning in all that we do, believing that all that we do is seen by God and that God is working through us to change the world as we spread the message of love, mercy, and peace that Jesus’ shared with his friends, who then spread the message all throughout the world.
In my work in the ministry, I’ve seen first hand how one’s faith can affect their lives, both for the better and for the worse. I’ve met people who believed that God was on their side, that God was present with them in the midst of disease and decline, and they had tremendous peace in their hearts which then led to better health and happiness. I’ve also met those who thought that God was against them, angry, punishing, or abandoned them, and they suffered even more for it as their health continued to decline. And while my experience is totally anecdotal, studies have shown that this is true on a broader scale–that those whose faith and religious beliefs lead them to believe that God is with them and for them, they have better physical and emotional health outcomes than those who don’t. Not that God is more for or against anyone–I think that’s a bad understanding of where God is in our lives–but it shows how such positive faith benefits us in this life. Knowing that God is with us and for us is a powerful thing indeed, not only in our health, but in all that we do.
So may we be like the woman we meet in the Gospel, who in the midst of the crowd, thought to herself, if only I reach out and touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, I will be made well, and who heard the words spoken to her, “Go in peace, your faith has made you well!”
Easter 7A, 5/21/2023: Sunday after the Ascension
In early 2011, there were billboards plastered all across the country warning of Judgment Day on May 21, 2011 (12 years ago to the date!), with the words, “The Bible guarantees it.” This was the day that had been predicted as Christ’s second coming by Pastor Harold Camping of Family Radio. Pastor Camping was so convinced of the date from his reading of the Bible, and he had attracted so many followers to this belief, that over $100 million dollars was spent on a nationwide advertising campaign for it. Clearly, he was wrong, as he was the previous three times he said the world would end on various dates in 1994. Pastor Camping later claimed a spiritual judgment had actually taken place that day – which is a solid cover, because how could you prove otherwise?
The campaign was a rather strange one on the face of it, given that the Scriptures are quite clear that no one can know the day or hour of Christ’s expected return. In today’s text, we read the disciples asking Jesus about the end times, and Jesus tells them, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.” Still, many religious groups continue to try and predict “Judgment Day.” In fact, one Biblical scholar named Ian Gurney believes that Armageddon began in 1999 and so Judgment Day will happen sometime in 2023.
It seems clear that we humans deeply desire to know what is going to happen and when it is going to happen. Rather than living in trust and faith in God about an open and unknown future, we frequently focus on what we think we know and can control. And in doing so, may find ourselves getting stuck on the wrong thing.
On Thursday of this past week, on our church calendars, we commemorated the Ascension of Jesus into heaven. This is believed to have occurred 40 days following Jesus’ resurrection. At that time, on the mountain with his disciples, Jesus told them It was necessary for him to go so that the Holy Spirit could descend upon Jesus’ followers at Pentecost. Yet even as soon as the Ascension occurred, we read that Jesus’ followers immediately seemed to forget his words and instead focused on the wrong thing. Notice that after Jesus ascended, his disciples remained there, standing in place, looking, and staring up into heaven. Two angels had to come and intervene according to the text, and asked them, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?” and told them to go on their way back to Jerusalem.
It is ironic to note, then, that we humans are still stuck on that spot where Jesus ascended, despite the message of the angels. In fact, if you visit the Holy Land today, you can go to the place where it is believed that Jesus actually ascended on the Mount of Olives. There is a chapel that has been built around the imprint of a foot: and it is deeply held by many that it is the footprint of Jesus’ right foot, his last point of physical contact with the earth. This spot has been fought over by Christians, Christian groups, and Muslims over the centuries. The chapel that was built and surrounds the footprint has been destroyed and erected time and time again. Today it is called the Chapel of the Ascension, and it’s a spot that both Christian and Muslim pilgrims travel to see and revere as a holy place by offering their worship and prayers.
While it sounds like an interesting place to visit, even if this were the actual footprint of Jesus, do any of us really believe that Jesus would want us to spend so much time focused on his footprint, fighting over and about it, and fighting for control over that little spot of dirt? That sounds more like material for a Monty Python skit than a spiritual experience, especially in light of the angel’s original message.
But while this shrine to a footprint and Pastor Harold Camping’s predictions about the return of Jesus may be extreme examples, they clearly reveal something that is true about us in general as humans: we really do spend our time – way too much of our time – stuck, focusing on the wrong things, looking in the wrong direction, instead of doing what God’s Holy Spirit is calling us to do. We can probably all think of times and ways in which the churches we know and love have spent weeks, months, or even years fighting about trivial things from the kind of music, to who or what groups will have access to our buildings, to how exactly to administer baptism. We can so easily get stuck on rather trivial things and invest our time, energy, focus, and money on those things that matter comparatively little.
We do this in the church, and also in our own personal lives as well. We can allow ourselves to be drawn into unnecessary distractions so easily, whether it’s social media or some drama occurring among our friends or family, or simply our own attempts to control and manage the challenges we face. Rather than focusing and living out the Spirit’s call to live by faith as followers of Christ, sharing God’s love and compassion with all, we stand in place, gazing in the wrong direction.
If the Ascension isn’t about worshipping around a footprint or trying to predict the future, then what is it about? The Catechism in the Book of Common Prayer states: “What do we mean when we say that he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father?” Answer: “We mean that Jesus took our human nature into heaven where he now reigns with the Father and intercedes for us.”
This aligns with the theology of the Orthodox Church, which holds that the Ascension is the very culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation. It is precisely because Jesus’ body is no longer here, confined to earth, that his body can be mystically located in us, as the Church, the “Body of Christ.”
The Ascension teaches us that the Incarnation continues in each one of us, as members of Christ’s Body who have been filled with the Holy Spirit. While on earth, Jesus could only be in one place at a time; now, Jesus is present everywhere both in heaven, interceding for us, and in all of his followers, throughout the entire world.
By ascending, the disciples of Jesus were enabled to take up Christ’s call to receive the power of the Holy Spirit and to become witnesses of Christ’s love and saving power to the very ends of the earth. As followers of Jesus, we lead lives full of meaning and importance and we can abandon ourselves in faith to what God is doing in and among us by God’s Spirit. We have been given the chance to be Christ’s Body here on earth and to bring the love of God in Jesus to all people, wherever we go, in every moment of every day: in the grocery store, in traffic, at home, at work, while serving the hungry, while tucking a child into bed, hugging an old friend, visiting the sick, sewing a quilt, laughing with a neighbor, or comforting one who suffers. Jesus is present in all of it. Even when we get stuck for a time, even when we start staring in the wrong direction, even when we lose our way or purpose, Christ is present to draw us back onto the path, so that we can step boldly into an unknown and open future with God by our side.
So if our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him. Listen to the words of the Apostle: If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth. Ascend and lift up your hearts to the Lord. We are the Body of Christ here on earth and we can do great things when we live by faith focused on Jesus.
Today our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven; let our hearts ascend with him. Listen to the words of the Apostle: If you have risen with Christ, set your hearts on the things that are above where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; seek the things that are above, not the things that are on earth.
For just as he remained with us even after his ascension, so we too are already in heaven with him, even though what is promised us has not yet been fulfilled in our bodies.
Christ is now exalted above the heavens, but he still suffers on earth all the pain that we, the members of his body, have to bear. He showed this when he cried out from above: Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? and when he said: I was hungry and you gave me food.
Why do we on earth not strive to find rest with him in heaven even now, through the faith, hope and love that unites us to him? While in heaven he is also with us; and we while on earth are with him. He is here with us by his divinity, his power and his love. We cannot be in heaven, as he is on earth, by divinity, but in him, we can be there by love.
He did not leave heaven when he came down to us; nor did he withdraw from us when he went up again into heaven. The fact that he was in heaven even while he was on earth is borne out by his own statement: No one has ever ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven.
These words are explained by our oneness with Christ, for he is our head and we are his body. No one ascended into heaven except Christ because we also are Christ: he is the Son of Man by his union with us, and we by our union with him are the sons of God. So the Apostle says: Just as the human body, which has many members, is a unity, because all the different members make one body, so is it also with Christ. He too has many members, but one body.
Out of compassion for us he descended from heaven, and although he ascended alone, we also ascend, because we are in him by grace. Thus, no one but Christ descended and no one but Christ ascended; not because there is no distinction between the head and the body, but because the body as a unity cannot be separated from the head.
Easter 6A, 5/14/2023: St. Augustine, in his autobiographical book, Confessions, wrote: our hearts are restless until they rest in God. We’ll come back to that, but keep that in mind as I retell the reading from Acts, which we just heard read to us.
Our reading from Acts is, perhaps, one of the most prominent moments of St. Paul’s ministry and work in the book of the Acts of the Apostles. In this reading, Paul has just left the cities of Thessalonica and Beroea, and the text from Acts tells us that in those cities he focused on going to the synagogues and teach about Jesus and the Scriptures while he were there. However, his teaching wasn’t well-received in Thessalonica, and he was essentially chased away by the elders of Thessalonica from those two cities.
Leaving Beroea, he goes to Athens. In Athens, he wanders around the city, and the text says that he is “deeply distressed” to see that it was a city full of idols. That makes sense, given that as a Jewish man and a Pharisee (as we learn in other texts), Paul believed that there was only one God, and that this God told the people of Israel that they were not to represent their God with any material, physical thing. No idols, no statues, no art. Nothing.
It’s from this place that Paul is asked by the Stoic and Epicurean philosophers to teach them more about Jesus.
And in front of the Aeropagus, the Hill of the Greek god of war, Ares, Paul addresses the crowd. He starts out by complimenting them, telling them that they are a deeply spiritual people, and points out that amount the many altars and temples in the city, there’s even an altar dedicated “to an unknown God.”
In the midst of all the pantheon of gods in Athens—gods of wind and air, of light, the sky, and heaven, of family feuds and avenger of evil deeds, of music, poetry, art, oracles, archery, plague, medicine, sun, light and knowledge, of war, of bee-keeping and fruit trees, of health and healing, of vegetation and rebirth, and of the “silver-swirling” Acheolous River — and that’s just the gods whose names start with the letter ‘A’. But in the midst of temples and altars to all the pantheon of gods in Athens, there was one altar dedicated to an unknown god… just in case anyone was left out, in case any god had gone unnoticed or remained unknown, there was an altar to not offend and to not forget that god.
And Paul goes on to tell the crowd that had gathered all about this unknown God. This God isn’t anything like gold, or silver, or stone, or the idols and statues created by human hands; this God is the creator of the cosmos, the one who gives life and breath to all, who doesn’t inhabit shrines and isn’t served by human hands as though God is lacking anything. This God doesn’t need temples or sacrifices or gifts. Rather, this God caused us to be, caused our lives to be, so that we would search for God in our hearts, because this God has come near to us, and wishes for us to draw near to them.
It’s precisely to this notion that St. Augustine orients his Confessions, his testimony to God’s calling upon his life, and how, try as he might, he couldn’t resist the draw that the God of Jesus of Nazareth had on his life. In the first paragraph of his work, he writes, “You stir us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”
Our hearts are restless, until they rest in God.
And I think the image of the altar to an unknown god is still worth learning from today, because the more we experience our God, the more we ought to realize that our God is beyond our comprehension. That just as we start to believe that we understand what God is like, to remember that we are deeply limited in our ability to fathom what God is like.
The altar to an unknown god was built by Greeks who recognized that they very easily may have missed some aspect of the divine world out there, that there was something they hadn’t fully understood about the divine ones. But where the Greeks believed that the divine was made up of a multitude of entities, we believe that there is one, and that this one God contains all that which is divine. And like the Greeks, we acknowledge that our God is knowable to an extent, but not entirely. It’s not that there’s an unknown God, but that there is that which we have yet to discover about our God
How much can we truly know about God’s love for us? How much can we truly comprehend what Jesus taught his disciples, and master the lessons that he shared with his friends? How much can we truly grasp what happened in the stories of the death and resurrection of Jesus?
This is a beautiful thing. That we need not ever tire of what we know about God, and that there is always more to know and experience in our love for the divine. As Paul writes, that we may grope and grasp for God.
Who do you know God as? The God we know is fair and just, generous and good. Our God is a loving, healing God. A forgiving, gracious God, Redeemer, Reconciler, Restorer and Resurrector, just to name a few.
That is who we know God as. And the God we serve proves this over and over again. The God we serve places the right people in the right places to make things happen at the right time. And the God we serve makes a way when there seems to be no way.
And therein lies our responsibility as Christians. We are called as disciples of Jesus today to bear witness to the God we know. In the person and work of Jesus, the unknown-ness God is slowly stripped away. God is not a distant, uncaring God. God has drawn near to us, and is with us to this day.
So who do you know God as? Who do we know God as? Do we live, move and have our being in God?! Are we growing in awe and in grace and in wisdom from our God? Are we orienting our lives more and more with the mission and priorities of God each day? And are our hearts burning with love for the almighty?
May that be our prayer, that we may love God in greater measure, each day.
Easter 5A, 5/7/2023: Between our services on Sunday mornings, we gather in the parish hall for coffee hour and SoulWork. Most of you will be familiar with SoulWork, that it is what we call our weekly adult education program here at St. Bede’s. And at SoulWork in this Easter Season, we have been looking at the lives of the Apostles; of what the Bible says about them, and what tradition tells us that they did after the resurrection or outside of the Scriptures.
One motif that has struck me in all of this while looking at the lives of the Apostles, is that almost all of them were martyred for their faith. With one exception, John, all the rest are said to have been killed for their faith. Six were crucified, while others were stabbed, speared, beheaded, shot with arrows, stoned, or, in the case of Judas, committed suicide.
In the time of our Scriptures, two people are recorded to have been killed for their faith: Stephen, the deacon, and Phillip the Apostle. It’s in our Gospel that we see the stoning of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, who was stoned to death after responding to charges that he was speaking against the temple and the Torah, or the Jewish Law as Christians tend to call it today.
And Stephen’s words are a succinct retelling of one of the main problems that are encountered in the Jewish Scriptures: That God is revealed to the people, tells them how they should live their lives, and in time find their way of rejecting that revelation and going about things their own way. In the time of the Patriarchs, Jacob’s son Joseph is sold into slavery in Egypt. Then Moses, who comes as the deliverer to rescue the people from slavery in Egypt is initially rejected, after which he flees to the desert where he lives for 40 years before he encounters God at the bush which burned but was not consumed. Then, when Moses was on the mountain receiving the commandments from God, the people fashioned a Golden Calf to lead them back to slavery in Egypt. And finally, in the time of the prophets, the people traded worship of the one God for that of the gods of the nations around them, and so God sent them into exile.
Concluding all this, he tells the people that they have all along resisted the one whom God sent, and most recently in the crucifixion of Jesus, the one promised by the prophets. And enraged, the people kill him, stoning him to his death.
This makes Stephen the first of many who would die for their faith in Jesus. And again and again, as the followers of Jesus were persecuted and killed for their faith, they consistently refused to fight back, consistently refused to return violence for violence, but submitted themselves to the anger of the crowd and accepted their fate. They consistently chose peace in the face of a violent world.
Refusing to return violence for violence, the earliest followers of Jesus saw virtue in being the victim, and not in being the one perpetrating violence. Curious, too, that in our reading there is another man present. As the people prepare to stone Stephen, they remove their coats and put them at the feet of a young man named Saul.
This Saul then becomes one of the greatest persecutors and perpetrators of violence and suffering against the followers of Jesus. And later in the Book of Acts, we see him on his way to Damascus, to further imprison and persecute followers of Jesus, when he encounters the risen Jesus on the road. And when God tells Ananias, a follower of Jesus, to pray that Saul would regain his sight, being blinded in that encounter, Jesus tells Ananias that Saul has been chosen by God to share the knowledge of Jesus, and that Saul will learn how much he must suffer for the sake of Christ.
And suffer he did. Saul, later known as Saint Paul, was beaten, flogged, stoned almost to death, and nearly died several times before finally being beheaded for the sake of the Gospel and the message of Jesus. But never did he strike back at those who perpetrated violence against him.
In all of this, I am struck by the image that we are given of the earliest followers of Jesus, and that there was no violence or hatred among them. They were not perpetrators of violence, but they were often victims of it. They consistently chose peace in the face of a violent world.
That is the example that they give us. To choose peace, even if it means suffering for it, because that was the example that Jesus gave to his followers. That when he stood before Pilate, Herod, and the Sanhedrin, Jesus chose to remain a man of peace and of truth, and that the consequences for it were better than compromise. That peace is better than violence.
You and I are very much living in a violent world. It’s not even been 24 hours now that another major shooting has occurred, this time in Allen, Texas, where eight people have died and another 7 are wounded. It was also the 200th mass shooting this year, according to USA today, in 126 days since January 1st.
This, likewise, has me concerned for the church. Because not only is violence in our society a problem, so is violence in the Christian Church today a problem.
It’s a terrible witness to the life that Jesus led, the example he gave in his lifetime, and how his earliest followers lived out that example in their own lives, that so many who use his name and say that they love him, also choose violence over peace. That their lives are not marked by love and humility, but too often present themselves as angry, mean, and selfish. And violent. We have a sitting US congressperson, who identifies publicly as a Christian, who last year spoke at a Christian family camp and said if Jesus had an AR-15 he could have kept the government from killing him. And lest you think this is a fluke, that statement got cheered when it was made. Same as when that same person held up a t-shirt earlier this week calling an AR-15 a cordless hole puncher.
It’s not a good look for the Church, and attitudes like this are why we will continue to see the Christian church decline in the future as people in this country more and more reject the Christian faith because its members do not live like Jesus. They don’t follow the command to love one another as Christ loved us, and their words and deeds are far, far from that standard. People want to see Jesus’ words lived out, like in the lives of Stephen and the Apostles, whose message of love, compassion, and mercy was at the front of their lives and deeds. People want to be part of a community that feeds the hungry and helps the unhoused, and supports one another through difficult times, not one that celebrates violence and cruelty.
And while it may feel that I am preaching to the choir, that we, as many others in the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement, have chosen the better way, rejecting violence, and cruelty we should take heed. Episcopalians make up .5% of Americans. We’re a small denomination, and what makes us distinct from that isn’t enough to make the news when there are many, many more out there tarnishing the name of Christ.
These are the ones that in our modern-day Stephen would be speaking against, and for which he would be stoned. For those who reject God’s message, reject God’s chosen one, and have turned to worship a false god. It has the same name, and they say the same stories about their god as ours, but theirs is vastly different from the God you and I worship.
This is why it is so important for us to live into the promises made in our Baptismal Covenant. To love and serve others, to strive for justice and peace, and to seek and serve Christ in all persons. To do unto others as we would have them do unto us. To love your enemies and to pray for those who persecute. This is the kind of life that is pleasing to God, for those who choose peace in the face of a violent world.
Easter 4A, 4/30/2023: Today is Good Shepherd Sunday. That on this, the fourth Sunday of Easter each year, we stop to reflect on those places in our Scriptures that describe Jesus as shepherd over the Church, and the followers of Christ. And within that imagery, Our Scripture readings on this day, Good Shepherd Sunday, weave together a portrait of Jesus’ love for us and how we are to respond to such a great love.
Shepherding was in the lifeblood of Israel – The patriarchs Abraham and Isaac, and Jacob all kept flocks of sheep. The Israelites who migrated to Egypt all kept sheep. Moses herded sheep for his father-in-law Jethro, and David for his father. So shepherding was a well known occupation for the nation of Israel, and continued to Jesus time. It was the shepherds in the fields around Bethlehem to whom the angels appeared with “good news of great joy” for all people.
And so being a shepherd was a familiar metaphor for Israel, and in particular for its leaders. The prophet Michaiah said that the people of Israel were like sheep without a shepherd, under its evil kings. Jeremiah writes that the shepherds, the rulers of the people, are senseless, and therefore the flock is scattered. But most significantly, Ezekiel 34 speaks about the sorry state of the Jewish people, who will have the Lord as their shepherd. Strikingly, verses 23-24 read, “I will place over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he will tend them; he will tend them and be their shepherd. I the Lord will be their God, and my servant David will be prince among them. I the Lord have spoken.”
In our Gospel this morning, we hear that Jesus tries to describe to the people, using a metaphor about the shepherd, that the people of God will know God when they see God and when God draws near because they know God’s voice, and God knows them.
This is apparently met by a resounding “Huh?” as the Gospel author says that the people didn’t understand. So Jesus tries again, quickly leaving them with a few significant points:
And the more that I reflect on these, the more I see in this something that I have found to be true in my own experience of the Almighty in my life and in my understanding of God. That is that God is better that I had imagined. More loving. More compassionate. More merciful. And in particular to that point, that where others have tried to teach me that God’s mercy has its limits, that I find God’s mercy to be more expansive.
And what of our readings, and how that connects?
Let’s reflect on that juxtaposition of the thief and of the shepherd. The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but the shepherd comes so that we may have life, and have it abundantly.
Whatever brings death, whatever brings destruction, this is not of God. The things of God bring abundant life, and joy, and hope, and peace, and justice, and mercy. And if it doesn’t bring life, and joy, and hope, and peace, and justice, and mercy, how can that thing be of God? How can that line up with what our God is like, and what our God wants for us and for all people?
This should be a call for each of us to examine our hearts, to discern how our values, commitments, actions, words, and thoughts affect us and others around us. Where is there death, that there needs to be life? Where is there destruction, that there needs to be hope, and peace, and justice?
God knows that our world has a lot of death and destruction happening in front of our eyes. Where can you and I be involved in bringing about life?
It seems, we have been walking in the valley of the shadow of death for a while now. But not just in these latest years. All throughout our lives, there’s been trouble and turmoil in the world and in our communities, where death and destruction has threatened us and others among us.
Which turns my attention to our Psalm, that familiar Psalm 23. And within the psalm, we hear this:
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil; for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.
How is it that a shepherd’s rod or a shepherd’s staff is a comforting thing? It’s a stick, and sticks are used for hitting. You know, fending off wolves or things like that.
But there’s the answer–the shepherd’s staff is used to drive off things that threaten the sheep. It protects the sheep. It drives away that which comes to steal, kill, and destroy. It drives away injustice and fear.
And of course, if Jesus is the Good Shepherd as the Bible describes, that means that God is for us. Watching over us as a shepherd watches over their sheep. And even though we are living in difficult times, we are not left helpless, or hopeless, because he knows us and calls us by name, and has laid down his life for the sheep.
This is a comfort to use in times of adversity, today and all throughout our lives. In the midst of the problems we face today, just as we have in years past in our lives. And it’s a comfort to know that our God loves us, and cares for us. Watches over us and protects us.
Not that we will never be harmed, or never go through pain and suffering in life. We are all suffering right now. But we have a God who knows what it means to suffer, and because of that knows how to comfort us and to care for us in our times of need.
And being recipients of that life, we as the followers of Christ ought to extend these same blessings to everyone, everywhere. So let that spirit be in you, to seek out ways that you may share this abundant life with everyone you meet.
Easter 3A, 4/23/2023: The Emmaus Road must have been a tough one to walk that morning, full of disappointment and confusion.
These two, walking to the town of Emmaus, a seven mile’s journey from Jerusalem, were walking that path of disappointment and confusion. They had put their hopes into Jesus of Nazareth, that he was going to do great and wonderful things for the people. But their hopes had been misplaced, and he was executed by the leaders of the people and by the Romans. He was not the savior that they had hoped that he would be. He was not the one who would free the people from the occupation of their land from the Roman Empire and restore the throne of David to the land. Instead, he was crucified three days ago among the bandits who were killed on either side of him.
That they were disappointed by Jesus, is without a doubt. And perhaps they were disappointed with God as well. They had hoped that Jesus would be their messiah, the one God had promised to come, but he had failed them, and he was not the one that they were waiting for after all.
It’s a bleak spot to be in…
But that’s not the whole of it. At least, not since that morning when others reported going to the tomb and finding it empty, with angels telling your friends that Jesus was dead no longer but had risen to new life.
This is Luke’s Gospel, after all. And in Luke’s telling of the resurrection, no one sees Jesus, until he appears to these two. You may be familiar with John’s gospel, where Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene in the garden. But this isn’t John’s gospel, it’s Luke, and in Luke’s Gospel, no one has seen Jesus. Just an empty tomb with a couple of angels, supposedly.
And that’s confusing. No one expected Jesus to do anything other than to stay dead. His followers and friends certainly didn’t. Now, that’s not completely true: the women who went to the tomb to perfume Jesus’ body-Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them–they remembered Jesus words when the angels in the tomb told them that Jesus had risen from death. But the men didn’t believe them, and thought that it was nonsense. Only Peter, when he heard this, went to see for himself and found the tomb empty and the linen wrappings that were used to wrap Jesus body laying on the ground.
And that’s confusing. The dead don’t rise like that. Jesus may have raised others, including two mentioned in Luke’s Gospel, but who is to raise Jesus back from the dead when he dies?
This is the road to Emmaus, one of disappointment and confusion. We see it in the two, that when they are approached and asked what they are talking about, they stand quietly, looking sad.
Where I relate to this story, is the disappointment and subsequent confusion that I experienced in my first church job out of seminary. In 2007, I had just graduated with my Masters of Divinity from Grand Rapids Theological Seminary (not an Episcopal school). I had gone to college to study to be a pastor, working with youth, I did an internship for a year with a church, and then to seminary. That’s eight years that I spent preparing for the ministry. And after being at that church, my first church job, for six months, I was fired. After eight years of preparation, I was booted after six months.
I felt that I had failed. And worse, I felt betrayed by the church, and how they handled the situation. I fell into a deep and lonely space because of it. I questionned my calling to ministry, and if I had been wrong that this is the things I wanted to do with my life. Maybe I was wrong about my abilities and the skills that I have. Maybe I was wrong about my qualifications and ability to hack it. Maybe I was wrong in thinking that God brought me to this place.
Maybe I wasn’t cut out for this after all, and I should give it up.
And as I said, even worse, was how I was treated by the church, and how I felt betrayed by them. The things that they did to undermine me and my work and my role, and then they way that they painted my firing that insinuated that I was behaving badly, or inappropriately, and that’s why I was fired, was infuriating. And frightening. I wasn’t sure that even if I found my sense of calling to ministry again that I would even want to try it again after what I had been through.
This is the road to Emmaus, one of disappointment and confusion.
And just as it is at it’s bleakest, Jesus shows up. Unrecognized at first, but even though they don’t know it, he’s there with them. In their grief and sadness. When they don’t know what to say. When they are disappointed that he wasn’t who they thought he was, and that he didn’t do what they hoped he was going to do. But he’s there, walking with them in the midst of their disappointment and confusion, slowly opening their eyes.
That was one of my biggest struggles–feeling isolated from God, and that God didn’t do what I had hoped that God would do with my life. I wanted to be a part of people growing in love, kindness, and godliness, not working in catering, serving tables for banquets or dinner parties.
Even though I couldn’t see it at the time, in retrospect I see how God was still with me. And even though my life wasn’t going the way that I wanted it to go, it turns out that my life was going the way it needed to go. Good and wonderful things eventually did come of it, but I needed to let God’s long game play out, it seems.
Those two on the road to Emmaus can probably relate. It takes them a long time to realize what’s going on, and that the person in their midst is actually the resurrected Jesus. It’s not until they are at the table that evening, and Jesus breaks the bread that they finally recognize him as he is–the risen Christ. And it’s only when they realize that it’s Jesus that they look back and understand that it was him all along, that their hearts were burning as he spoke to them.
For me, it was two major factors that lined up together that got be back on my feet, so to speak. At the Episcopal Church I started attending in New Mexico, their priest and parish admin became the friends that I needed to find my place in God’s church and a return to that vision I once had of my calling to do this work again. It was them and their friendship, in a new place to experience the holiness and wonder of God, that my calling to ministry returned. And it was in my chaplaincy program that I experienced the inner healing I needed, not only from that experience at my first church job, but for other aspects of my life that had plagued me and held me back from living into the fullness of life and joy.
It didn’t happen in a flash, but it happened slowly, while I walked the path to my own Emmaus, that I realized God was yet with me, and that I hadn’t gone about it all wrong, and that everything hadn’t gone to pieces, but that it was a hardship that needed to happen in order to bring about my own healing and restoration.
That is something that I’ve found to be true, over and over in life. That slowly, and often only when looking back at the path that has been walked, do we find that God is present with us through the darkest parts of our lives to bring about healing and restoration. But when we do, what joy there is in sharing with others what happened to us on the road, because it just may bring others joy and hope and peace where they need it in their time of great need.
Easter 2A, 4/16/2023: In the aftermath of the crucifixion of Jesus, the Apostles were sent into disarray. The one whom they had given their lives to, spent the last three years following around the Palestinian countryside, listened to every word he spoke, and shared in the hope that he might just be the long-awaited Messiah – this Jesus had been sentenced to death by the Roman prefect Pilate, forsaken by his fellow countrymen, and crucified on a wooden cross. He was forsaken by just about everyone in Jerusalem at his trial, and more importantly by all but a few of his followers. Sadness, grief, fear, disappointment, anger, shame, guilt – the emotions in this room were running rampant. The whole world of the disciples had been thrown into disarray.
It is into this scene that Jesus appears. Though they had locked the doors for fear of reprisal towards them for being followers of Jesus, yet this very Jesus was able to come into their midst, casting off not only the cords of death, but also the fear and the sadness of those in his midst. The one in whom they put their hope had not disappointed them after all. Death had no power over him in the end, and now he stands in their very midst.
All, except for Thomas, that is.
We’ve all probably, at one point or another, heard a sermon about the Apostle Thomas. In one way, that’s pretty special, because for several of the twelve we see and hear nothing more than their names which appear on a list of those who followed Jesus. The fact that Thomas is given more attention than that, appearing in the Gospels in three places, is in itself significant.
Our Gospel reading this morning is the most well-known of these few times where Thomas speaks or acts, and this story is read on the Second Sunday of Easter, every year. And if you’re like me, most every sermon you’ve heard on this passage emphasizes one thing – that Thomas doubted when he should have had faith. Simple faith. Faith that does not require proof, faith that is ready and able to accept the testimony of others without doubting, without questioning, but believing Jesus to be who he is, and to take him at his word that he is the Son of God and is therefore a no-brainer that he would rise again!
But maybe there’s a different way to understand poor, maligned Thomas.
While the others had been pulled from their fear and their sadness driven away at the appearance of Jesus, Thomas received none of that. While he was away, the others had been given the hope of the resurrected Christ. When Jesus appears, he speaks words of peace to them, and shows them the wounds he suffered in the crucifixion. Seeing that this is indeed Jesus in their midst, they rejoice in him, and their grief and sadness are turned to joy. Thomas alone remained in despair. Despair was so great that even the testimony of the other disciples was unable to break through it.
When they tell him of what they had seen and heard, he declares, “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.” Imagine just how much he must have hoped that he could turn his mourning into joy. Even when everyone else around him was pleading with him, begging him, he remained in his grief. For a full week, he remained in his grief, while the others were able to celebrate in their hearts the resurrection of Christ. What a lonely place Thomas finds himself in, shuttered in by his sadness while the others are rejoicing.
Maybe he was the grand pessimist that some have made him out to be. The other times that Thomas speaks, also in John’s Gospel, his words can be understood so as to be gloomy, always looking on the dark side of everything. When Lazarus had died and Jesus told his disciples they were going to Judea, the disciples protested, reminding Jesus that he was almost stoned to death the last time he was there. When Jesus insisted on going, Thomas told the other disciples, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” Then, in the upper room, when Jesus tells the disciples he is going away and that the disciples know the way to be with him when he does, Thomas replies, “Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” John’s Gospel gives plenty of room to see in Thomas’ few words a man who is gripped by negativity, full of anxiety and angst to the world around him.
Or maybe he wasn’t a pessimist, but was too much of a realist. After all, the dead don’t rise from the grave. Once they’re dead, they stay dead. And true, Jesus had raised a few people up from the dead, like Lazarus, but when it is Jesus himself who is dead, who was there who could raise HIM from the dead?
When I read these words of Thomas, I see a man who is afraid to hope again. He had already put tremendous hope in Jesus once, and like everyone else in that room, he was devastated by the crucifixion. Maybe he was afraid that were he to allow hope in a resurrected Christ to sneak in, that he would be setting himself up to get hurt again.
In Thomas, I see a man who believed in Jesus so resolutely that he was willing to follow Jesus all the way to the point of death in Judea, and who wanted desperately to go with Jesus wherever his mission took him. Read this way, we find Thomas who exudes a great deal of passion in his doings, to the point of being impulsive. He is ready to act!
Whatever the cause, whatever the reason for Thomas’ unbelief, that all changes when he finally meets Jesus face-to-face again for the first time. Just like with the others a week earlier, Jesus comes speaking peace to the disciples and shows Thomas the wounds in his hands and his side. Immediately, and without any indication that he actually put his hands in Jesus’ wounds, he declares “My Lord and my God!” In a flash, the doubt, grief, fear, sadness, and all the rest are washed away, replaced by an unwavering faith.
Now, why do we suppose that John put this story in his Gospel? Our cue comes in the last verse of our reading: these [things] are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
It was not simply to malign Thomas, as many have done through the years. No, it is to give credence to how hard it can be to hold on to faith, especially in the midst of such preposterous claims as an incarnate Christ, the God-man, who rose from the dead after being crucified, to bring salvation from sin to all the world. Here, the Gospel’s author is sympathizing with those early Christians who were finding it difficult to believe in the Risen Lord, encouraging them to have faith without seeing, because others have seen and believed, and we can rely on their testimony. Therefore this story serves to validate and to encourage the fledgling faith of those having difficulty accepting the claims of Christians about Jesus. And for many of us, those doubts don’t just go away, but persist in various forms and in different places along our spiritual journey with Christ.
You and I are in good company, standing with such people as the Apostle Thomas, St. Peter, Mary Magdalene, and others who all had their doubts until they saw Christ risen from the dead. They all had the benefit of seeing Jesus appear to them, showing them his wounds, or sharing a meal with them. For us, however, who have not had that benefit, that is where Jesus’ encouragement comes to us – Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.
Easter Vigil Year A, 4/9/2023: This is the night…
Well, that’s not true, but that’s how my sermon from last night’s Easter Vigil started, and got enough feedback on it that I thought I would share it with you this morning. But there are three things that last night’s service had that today’s services don’t, which I’m going to indeed to catch you up on.
First: That the service happened at night. So there are a few references to night that I’m going to need to work around.
Second: That we started the service with a chanting of the Exsultet. I’m going to reference that in a moment, and it’s found on page 286 in the Book of Common Prayer. You may want to pull out the red Prayer Books and turn to page 286 since I’ll be reading from that in a moment.
Third: We had 4 additional readings at the start of the service, including a reading from Exodus of God’s deliverance of the Hebrew people from the Egyptians at the Red Sea.
So first stop on this journey, the Exsultet found on page 286 in the Book of Common Prayer…
Rejoice now, heavenly hosts and choirs of angels,
and let your trumpets shout Salvation
for the victory of our mighty King.
Rejoice and sing now, all the round earth,
bright with a glorious splendor,
for darkness has been vanquished by our eternal King.
Rejoice and be glad now, Mother Church,
and let your holy courts, in radiant light,
resound with the praises of your people.
All you who stand near this marvelous and holy flame, pray with me to God the Almighty for the grace to sing the worthy praise of this great light; through Jesus Christ his Son our Lord, who lives and reigns with him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
And down below that… It is truly right and good, always and everywhere, with our whole heart and mind and voice, to praise you, the invisible,
almighty, and eternal God, and your only-begotten Son,
Jesus Christ our Lord; for he is the true Paschal Lamb, who
at the feast of the Passover paid for us the debt of Adam’s sin,
and by his blood delivered your faithful people.
This is the night, when you brought our fathers, the children
of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the
Red Sea on dry land.
This is the night, when all who believe in Christ are delivered
from the gloom of sin, and are restored to grace and holiness of life.
This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell, and rose victorious from the grave.
This is the night, or day rather, that Christians all throughout the world gather together to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and the life that we have in him. And as we hear in the words of the Exsultet — the Easter Proclamation, sung after the Vigil’s procession into the Church, led by the new fire burning in the Paschal Candle — that this new work of Christ in overcoming the power of death and the grave finds its parallels in the story of the Jewish Exodus from slavery in Egypt and to the blessing and bliss in a land where they are free to worship God the Almighty.
This, then, is why, in the list of readings for us to select that we will hear read this evening, that the story of Israel’s deliverance at the Red Sea is always included. Drawing parallels between the newfound freedom for the Jewish people in the victory of God over the Egyptians at the Red Sea, to the triumph of Christ over sin and death through the cross, is a prominent theme that we hear and a great one for us to reflect on in our worship.
Recall back to the Exsultet, where it is sung:
This is the night, when you brought our fathers, the children of Israel, out of bondage in Egypt, and led them through the Red Sea on dry land.
The Exodus of the Jewish people out of Egypt was the dramatic end to 430 years of slavery. After centuries of hard service to the Egyptians, and after years of the people crying out to God, the almighty heard their cries, and raised up a prophet to deliver the people. This Moses was called by God to confront Pharaoh, and to show signs of great power over the gods of Egypt, and after plagues of rivers turning to blood, of flies and frogs, lice and hail and darkness, there was one more plague: that the firstborn of each household would perish.
But for the Jewish people, God commanded them to spread the blood of a lamb over the doorposts of their houses, as a sign that God should spare that household from death. And for each house that did, death did not come to them. But the Egyptians, in fear of the judgment of the god of the Hebrews, drove them out from the land, and to the freedom they longed for.
That, however, was not the end of it, as once the people had left Egypt, Pharaoh decided to pursue them into the desert. And coming to the people at the bank of the Sea, God delivered them mightily from the wrath of the Egyptians. And after that day, the Jewish people were commanded to celebrate the Passover meal, to remember the hard service of Egypt, how the angel of God passed over their houses because of the lamb’s blood on their doorposts, and how they had to flee in a hurry, before the bread could have risen, to escape from Egypt to the land promised to Abraham, their ancestor.
And now, we see another redemption in the resurrection of Jesus, the true Paschal Lamb, who overcame death and the grave in order to gain the victory over death, and to give life to the world. He is the perfect offering for our sins, not like the blood of bulls and goats which never was able to atone for sin. Rather, Christ, who sacrificed himself for us, has become our life.
In this, we find that God is all about delivering us from bondage.
From slavery to one another.
From slavery to sin.
(And) From slavery to death.
Consider again the pair of lines from the Exsultet that follow what we’ve been reflecting on:
This is the night, when all who believe in Christ, are delivered from the gloom of sin and are restored to grace and holiness of life.
This is the night, when Christ broke the bonds of death and hell,
and rose victorious from the grave.
In Christ we now have found a new deliverance, from death into life. And life is one of my favorite metaphors for all kinds of good in the world and in our own lives. Life is not just the absence of death. It is the presence of joy in our lives. It is the presence of hope. It is the presence of justice, and inclusion, and embrace. It is the healing of wounds, the restoration of relationships, and the growth of loving-kindness.
This is the victory of God over the darkness. It is found whenever the prodigal son returns home. Whenever the repentant finds mercy. Whenever the addict chooses sobriety. Whenever the violent choose peace. Whenever the ostracized find acceptance. Whenever the marginalized find community.
Whenever darkness is turned to light.
We find in all these things, that God is about giving life where there had been decay, both for this life and for the one to come. That the redemption of God is both for the world we inhabit now, and the one that awaits us on the other side of death. It is not only for us to find life after this life, but that this world would be transformed by the love of God revealed to us in Jesus Christ.
And that’s where we come in.
Not only are we heirs of this grace of God, but we are also ambassadors to spread this message of love and life out into our communities and around the world. It’s not enough to be the recipients of this grace, but we are now called to spread this message.
The Jewish people were commanded to teach their children about the work that God did in delivering the people from slavery in Egypt, and their Passover celebrations were meant to educate and perpetuate the knowledge of God’s kindness to them.
And similarly, our gathering here is not only to celebrate, but also to prepare ourselves to be agents of change in the world. And just about each one of you are on the hook for this. I know, because I’ve seen you say the words of the Baptismal Covenant as you’ve renewed your baptismal vows, and committed yourselves that you will proclaim the good news of God, that you will seek and serve Christ in all persons, and that you will strive for justice and peace among all people.
That is an integral part of being an Easter people, which we all are by virtue of our incorporation into the resurrection of Christ. We are now the hands of God in the world, to bring about good and life and light and deliverance.
(Deliverance) From slavery to one another.
From slavery to sin.
From slavery to death.
So may you, the redeemed people of God, rejoice with all the heavenly host, with all the round earth, with our Mother Church, and with all who sit in the presence of this great light. May you be restored to innocence and joy, and experience peace and concord. And may the light of Christ shine in your heart to cast out the darkness of the world.
In the Name…
Lent 3A, 3/12/2023: I had the privilege, and experience, recently of sharing this Gospel reading with the students at Trinity School, of the woman of Samaria that Jesus meets at the well. And I was a bit taken aback from the experience of sharing this story with the children.
One of the issues that this story raises for us, and which I wanted to share with the children that day, is the role that prejudice plays between Jesus and the woman at the well. In this Gospel reading, we have issues of gender and of nationality. The woman is surprised that Jesus would speak to her, a Jewish person talking to a Samaritan, and the disciples are astonished that he would be speaking with a woman like that.
So, the first challenge I faced with sharing this at chapel with the children was how to approach this. I have never raised children, and maybe I’m a bit naive about this, but I was worried so much about spoiling their innocence by talking about prejudice and discrimination. I didn’t want to spoil their blessedly naive minds by exposing them to teaching and talking about the harms that others have gone through because of differences between people, and how that has been used to divide and to discriminate against people. So first, how to talk about this in an age-appropriate way?
The second challenge, how to make it applicable to them, today? And to do that, I started by asking them about what types of people–what categories or classes of people–might one think that a person is a bad person? Without ever meeting someone, what might be something about a person that one could think they were a bad person?
And I wanted to go this route with them, because we have, in this story of the women of Samaria meeting Jesus at Jacob’s well, an example of Jesus breaking multiple social norms to extend a message of the great love of God for all people, everywhere. And that regardless of the ways that humankind may try to create divisions and to treat people differently based on the differences between us, Jesus did no such thing when he met the woman at the well.
It begins even before our reading from the lectionary this morning, where in John’s Gospel it reads: “Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John—although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee. Now he had to go through Samaria.”
Summary of that: Jesus is in Judea, in the south of Israel, and wants to go to Galilee, in the north of Israel. And he had to go through Samaria.
Which isn’t totally true. He could, like the Pharisees apparently did, go the long way around to avoid going through Samaria. See, Samaria was the area that basically made up the middle of the nation of Israel. Galilee was in the north, Judea was in the south, and Samaria was in the middle.
But the problem with Samaria was that it was full of Samaritans. They were the descendants of the Jewish people who had intermarried with Gentiles during the exile, and they had polluted the bloodline by marrying foreigners. And thus, even the children of these illicit unions were looked down upon. Thus the Samaritans were generally disliked and excluded from the civil life of the Jewish people.
We see this likewise in the other setting that a Samaritan is included in Jesus’ teaching, and that of the parable of the good Samaritan. In that parable, when Jesus asked his questioners who was the one who acted like a neighbor to the man who was robbed and beaten, the answer came: “The one who showed him mercy.” They couldn’t even say the word Samaritan, they were so full of disdain.
And here we have Jesus, who had to go through Samaria. Which isn’t true. He could have, like many of the Pharisees at the time, chosen to go the long way around, crossing the Jordan river through the land called Peræa to the East of the Jordan River, to avoid going through Samaria. But Jesus didn’t, and he went the shorter route, straight through Samaria.
And when he was there, tired from his journey, sat at Jacob’s well, when a woman from the countryside came to draw water, and he asks her for a drink. She is immediately shocked that he, a Jew, would speak to her. But not only does he ask her for water, but he tells her about a different kind of water, that if she or anyone were to drink it, would never be thirsty again, but would drink from a spring that gives life eternal to all.
And he says all this to a person who faced prejudice and discrimination because of her ancestry. But none of that mattered to Jesus, because in the eyes of God, all are loved and accepted.
We see the same when Jesus’ disciples return and see him talking with her, and they are astonished to see him talking with a woman. But just like his shattering of cultural norms based on ancestry, nationality, or race, the same was true of Jesus’ handling of cultural norms on gender. He had no qualms about speaking with the woman, but did so freely as they spoke about what it means to worship the one God, and to find life and grace from the Almighty.
And that is one of the most important distinctions of what we as the Church should make true about ourselves. That we would be bound to the call of God to love others, and not of the world around us that wishes to divide us based on nationality, race, religion, gender, class, or anything else that has been used to create differences and walls between people. As the example that Jesus gave us demonstrates, the right thing to do at that well that afternoon was to break through cultural norms and to show God’s love that day.
Going back to that chapel, I was touched when one of the children then gave a story about a person her family met that was poor, and probably living on the streets from the description of this woman. And this schoolchild shared how her eyes were opened that day, that stereotypes were broken, and she saw the humanity in the woman they met that day, and felt great pity for the sorry state in which this woman had to live. And this was striking to me, because she was thinking about what I had asked earlier, about classes or categories of people that we can stereotype as being “bad” people. And that took her to thinking about the “homeless” and the variety of negative stereotypes that can conjure up for us–they’re dirty, abuse drugs, have mental health problems, are dangerous, are a burden, and so on. But all of that overlooks the most important thing–that we all are created in the image of God, and are deeply loved by God. Whoever we are, whatever our estate in life, and whatever we have made of our lives or has happened to us, we are all God’s children. And as such, are all worthy of being treated with dignity and respect.
Just like the woman of Samaria that Jesus met at the well that day. Nothing about her life–not her nationality, not her gender, not her marital status–mattered enough to Jesus that day to prevent him from showing kindness to her and to addressing her deepest needs that day.
That should be true of us as well. That we would first and foremost seek to find the humanity in one another, whoever it is that we encounter, and to seek to show kindness and respect to them. And in doing so, so live out the command to love one another as we love ourselves. Not only those who look like us, talk like us, or think like us, or live near us, but everyone. Because in the Kingdom of God, there are more important things than to focus on the differences between us.
If God doesn’t bother to focus on these differences, then we should not either. Our hearts should be open to all, and to make room for all, and to spread love and kindness wherever it is missing, and wherever it is needed, to whomever that may be. And not just to the unhoused, as in the example that the child brought forth to chapel. But who else is in that category of those that we are inclined to look down upon because of our differences, or to whom our hearts are shut up against and need to be opened once again?
May God open our hearts, and reveal to us those whom we can share together from the spring that is welling up to eternal life.
Lent 2A, 3/5/2023: Here we are, the second week of Lent. Last week we had a reading from Genesis 3, where Adam and Eve were tempted to eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil–what we call “the fall of man.” This formed a massive shift in the creation God made according to the biblical narrative. Humanity went from a state of innocence to guilt in a moment
Now, we see another shift happening–the call of Abraham. The moment when God speaks to Abram, who is later renamed Abraham, and tells him to move. Literally, move. Move away from your father, your family, and your home, and go. And because he did so, he became the first in the line of those to whom God revealed himself to bring about the redemption of the world.
Heavy stuff in just these few verses in front of us this morning.
Already, we are starting to see the pattern emerge: Creation, fall, redemption. We start with the initial creation, which was good, and holy, and right. We’re told that God said let there be light, and there was light, and it was good. And God caused the waters to separate, and it was good. And God caused dry land to appear, and plants with it, and it was good. And God put fish and other animals in the sea, and it was good. And God created the birds of the air, and it was good. And God created all kinds of animals to inhabit the dry land, and it was good. And God created humankind in the image of God, and it was good. And God stepped back and looked the whole thing over, all of creation, and it was all very good.
And the man and the woman who were good, and pure, and innocent. were tempted, and they ate, And their eyes were opened, and they were ashamed. They had sinned, and in doing so brought death into the world.
And in the narrative that follows, humanity wanders around, mostly lost, around for a while. There’s all kinds of evil and death in the stories that happen. The very next sins recorded are jealousy and murder, in the story of Cain and Abel. There’s the Flood and Noah, and the tower of Babel. In fact, the Tower of Babel, this story about how people wanted to usurp the role and power of God, is the last story before we meet Abraham, or Abram as he was known when we first encountered him here in Scripture. And, as I said, he marks the next turning point, toward redemption
Creation, Fall, and Redemption.
Let’s look at a little background information on Abraham:
(ad lib) Moved from Ur (in SE Iraq) to Harran (NE Syria) to Canaan, or modern-day Israel. – bought land in Hebron, south of Jerusalem, to bury his wife.
Moved from Ur to Harran with his father, Lot his nephew, and wife Sarai.
It’s in Harran that God appeared to Abraham, and tells Abraham to move – “go to the place that I will show you” – and for doing so, God promises:
I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing
I will bless all those who bless you, and all the people of the world will be blessed through you
In Joshua 24, we hear that Abraham and his relatives did not worship the one God, but that they worshiped many gods where they lived. And that’s what it was like when God called Abraham. There was nothing special about him. He wasn’t particularly good, or holy. He was just… ordinary when God told him to go…
And Abraham goes. Imagine yourself in this situation: God appears, a God you don’t know or worship, and certainly haven’t heard the voice of God ever before. But you hear God who says leave everything–your home, your family, your country–and go to the place that I will show you.
You’d probably think, (Sarcastically) Yeah, I’ll get right on that.
But Abraham goes, and he takes his wife and nephew Lot with him, and he moves from Harrah in NE Syria to Canaan–Israel. The Promised Land. And it’s called the Promised Land because it was promised to Abraham. It wasn’t given to Abraham, but God promised that his descendants would one day live there and possess the land. It was Promised to Abraham, that one day it would belong to his family, several centuries in the future, and following the mistreatment of his descendants in another country. I’ll bet you that you know where that was! And if not, tickets are still available to see the St. Peter’s Players performance of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat.
So Abraham lived in that land most all the rest of his life, never owning more than a field that he bought in Hebron, south of Jerusalem so that he could bury his wife there. Just as Hebrews states of him, he himself never received what was promised to him, but he believed that God would fulfill the promise that was made, even if it wasn’t going to happen in his lifetime. And in doing so, he demonstrated by his faith that he was looking forward to something much greater in the future than he would ever see in his lifetime.
There are two lessons here for all of us. First, of the importance of faith. Of believing God, and choosing to follow God’s leading wherever that will go. Abraham did not get specific and detailed instructions of where God would take him. He didn’t even get a name for the place. He was just told to go. And because he did, he became one of the greatest figures of faith in the Bible, and was commended by St. Paul as the father of faith for all those who believe. He believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness, and became a model of faith for us today. That is the kind of faith that God wants from each of us–to go where God takes us, even if we don’t have all the details in advance, and even if it means that we have to give things up to get there.
Second, of the connection between faith and mercy. Faith and mercy go hand-in-hand. Abraham was not commended by God because of what he had done, but because he did it in faith. And because of his faith, God counted him as righteous. He found redemption because of his faith. That was true then, and it is still true for us. Lent is all about preparing us for Easter, and the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, and the life that we have because of the cross of Christ. But we don’t get there by doing any special rituals, or by praying any special prayers or going to church weekly, or even by being a good person. The life that we have in Christ we have because of Faith. Because Grace and Mercy are gifts of God that we receive through faith, because God is faithful.
Lent 1A, 2/26/2023: It is Lent. That reminds me of one Lenten season, several years back, where I came up with a catchy little song for the season. It goes (said or sung) “It is Lent, it is Lent. No time for joy now. It is Lent, it is Lent. Only time for sorrow.”
That is perhaps why I’ve heard from several people over the years that they don’t like Lent that much. It’s gloomy, dreary, and kind of a drag emotionally. It’s not like the other times of the church year, that are generally joyful and happy times. Advent, Christmas, and Epiphany seasons celebrate the joy of the incarnation and Jesus’ birth and ministry. Easter celebrates the resurrection, and Pentecost and the season after celebrate the work of the Holy Spirit to equip us to live loving and holy lives.
Lent is much the opposite of all that. It’s a season of solemn reflection on our shortcomings and all the things that we call sins: our lack of love for God and one another, the many ways that we have caused harm to others and to the world around us, and the things we do that fall short of what is good and best for us and for everyone.
But that’s also why I love this season. Because it is different, it is unique, and it is our chance to explore within our hearts and our souls what more we can and need to do, as individuals and as a community, to live into the fullness of Jesus’ love for us that we celebrate in the Easter season and beyond. I love that introspection, because I also believe in a God who loves me just as I am, and wants for me to experience that fullness of love more and more, each and every day of my life. Lent is, therefore, a wonderful time to do some of that soul-cleansing work that is inherent to the season.
I want to spend a little time looking at what we do throughout Lent, and why.
First, the length of the season. For us, there are 40 days of Lent. Similar to Irene’s message last week about the importance of numbers like 3 and 7, 40 is also significant. Moses spent 40 days and 40 nights on Mount Sinai, receiving the Law from God. The Israelites spent 40 years wandering in the wilderness after their lack of faith when coming to the Promised Land after their exodus out of Egypt. Elijah walked 40 days to Mount Horeb to meet with God. And finally, Jesus fasted and prayed for 40 days in the wilderness where he was tempted by the Devil (which is our reading for today’s Gospel). It is particularly fashioned after those days Jesus spent in the desert that leads us to marking 40 days of Lent.
But, if you look at a calendar. There are actually 46 days if you start with Ash Wednesday and end with Holy Saturday, the day before Easter, not 40. This is because these 6 Sundays are not part of Lent. They are in Lent, not of Lent. The reason being, because Sundays are a day to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus for perpetuity. And since Sundays are a feast day, always, it is illogical that one would engage in fasting and other acts of self-denial on a Sunday. So Sundays are not actually part of Lent.
Why, then, all the gloom and dreariness on Sundays if they are in Lent and not of Lent? Because that’s the only day during the week that we are together, so we need to add some pageantry into these days that recalls the purpose of the season. It’s the only chance to do so together, since we are not a monastic community that could pray and fast together throughout the week. So we bring a little bit of it into our Sunday worship.
That’s why they suppress the Gloria and the word “Alleluia” in our worship together. These Sundays should be distinct from the other Seasons of the Church year, such as Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, and so on. (Note: That was a mistake in our bulletin at 8:00, so when we get to that Alleluia at the fraction in communion, I will skip over the word and hope that you catch it and do the same. We’ll get it right for next week.) So not saying these words is part of the recognition that the season is different.
And through the rest of the week, there are other things we do as well: Fasting and abstinence, prayer, and acts of charity (or almsgiving).
A word on fasting and abstinence are in order, and to make clear what is meant by these. What is typically referred to as fasting that many people perform is better called abstinence: the complete giving up of a particular thing such as food, alcohol, or activities. Think giving up coffee, chocolate, alcohol, etc. that people sometimes gravitate toward during Lent. That is better called abstaining than fasting. Fasting is the act of eating less, or at times nothing at all. Major days to fast include Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, when one may do a total fast, and the other days of Lent when one may consume less. Traditionally, this meant that one ate one full meal during the day, and two half-meals which in total amounted to no more than two meals worth of food per day – this for each day of the week other than Sundays, when one does not fast, and Fridays, when one would typically make a total fast in history.
And finally, why would one engage in fasting and abstinence at all? What benefit does it serve? For many who do, and for Christian authors in history, it has been a go-to way to intentionally orient our hearts toward God. It’s a way to make the spiritual more present to us physically. As our bodies long for food, it’s an ever-present reminder of our desire to remember the God who loves us, and who came to live among us in the person Jesus Christ. That as our bodies groan for food, our souls would likewise groan for God’s presence and love. That like Jesus’ words in the Gospel this morning, ‘One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’” Our fasting and our abstinence reminds us of that, every time we long for that which we have chosen to go without for a short time.
And that is Lent. As I mentioned at our Ash Wednesday service, this is exactly why I love the season. That in these practices, of almsgiving, prayer, and especially in fasting and abstinence, it wants to be part of our daily lives. That every time we want coffee, chocolate, wine, or whatever we are abstaining from, we remember that we are intentionally going without because it’s Lent, and it’s Lent because of our faith as followers of Jesus. It’s a season of the Church year that more than any other wants to be part of our lives, each day. And in doing so, makes it more present for us, every day.
So, I invite you, therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word, just as we hear in our Prayer Books on Ash Wednesday. And in doing so, may these 40 days be a blessing to your souls.
Epiphany 6A, 2/12/2023
Sirach 15:15-20
“If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given. For great is the wisdom of the Lord; he is mighty in power and sees everything; his eyes are on those who fear him, and he knows every human action. He has not commanded anyone to be wicked, and he has not given anyone permission to sin.”
In the words of today’s Gospel, we hear Jesus teaching the crowd of those who have followed him, continuing into that moment in Matthew’s Gospel, that we call the The Sermon on the Mount. As he teaches, Jesus’ words have a sort of pattern to them:
“You have heard that it was said… but I say to you…”
“It was also said… but I say to you…”
“Again, you have heard… but I say…”
It sounds a lot like, “Not that, but this.”
And even though we may be tempted to hear his words this way at first, getting rid of the old law in order to replace it with a new one, that isn’t quite what Jesus has in mind. It isn’t quite what Jesus is doing here for his listeners. It isn’t Jesus creating a new thing for the people and establishing a new set of commands for them.
Instead, we find that he’s reiterating the Jewish Law given to the people in the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. to draw even deeper meaning from the commands that are found there. It’s not so much, “I am creating a new law for you,” as much as it is, “we are diving further and deeper into the riches of the law that God has already given us.”
There are several examples in this morning’s passage. For example, Jesus says, “You have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, ‘You shall not murder’; and ‘whoever murders shall be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Difficult words, indeed.
Here, as in other places in our Gospel, we see Jesus reiterating a portion of the Jewish Law, and taking us further, expanding upon it. Not only is murder wrong, but so is slander. So is insulting another person. And so is… anger? (That’s a tough one!).
These things — slander, insult, and anger — may not be nearly as bad as murder, but like murder, they devalue human life. To kill is to devalue God’s presence in another. Of course, most people aren’t murderers. Yet pretty much all people have a tendency to devalue human life in some form or another. Even some of the saintliest folks in the world have, in a moment of outrage, uttered hateful, spiteful, or even violent words.
So no, it’s not just murder that’s bad. It’s anything that disparages human life. You see, Jesus is not saying “out with the old law and in with a new.” Instead, we find him taking things further, closer to the heart of God and what God wants for us as followers in the way of Jesus. It’s a fuller, more complete way of understanding and living into the life which God calls us to live out. It’s a more righteous, more just, more loving way to live.
And though Jesus’ words include some harsh consequences for failing to live up to the command, let us keep in front of us that Jesus’ overarching message is one of grace and peace, love and hope; It’s forgiveness and redemption. And yes, there are consequences to the wrong that we bring into the world at times, but the point is to bring healing and restoration to a broken and hurting world.
This is why I treasure the words of Sirach today: If you choose, you can keep the commandments, and to act faithfully is a matter of your own choice. He has placed before you fire and water; stretch out your hand for whichever you choose. Before each person are life and death, and whichever one chooses will be given.
This mirrors the words of Moses at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, which puts before the people a choice: to live a life of holiness, or of evil, of life and death. But then the call: Choose life, that you may live!
And that’s what we see in the words of Jesus. A choice, of murder or life. Of lust or respect. Of broken relationships or repaired relationships.
It’s not an easy road to walk. I’m especially conscious of my own journey in life, and how as much as I’ve tried to not go down the road of broken relationships, I have not been able to avoid it. But that doesn’t change the principle of what Jesus’ words mean for us today. And each and every day, we do our best to choose life. That we may live. Loving one another. Being kind to one another. Living in peace with one another. And above all, loving the Lord our God with all that we are.
Epiphany 5A, 2/5/2023: I’ve told a few of you that I’m eager for February 2nd to fall on a Sunday so I can give one of my favorite sermons. Well, it’s not the 2nd, it’s the 5th, but I want to give it anyway. I don’t really want to wait until 2025, and besides it’s a special day, with Kitty back with us today. So why not?
And if you’ve heard me tell you about my sermon for February 2nd, it’s that sermon.
Today, our Gospel reading is from Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the mount, where, among other things, Jesus says that we are the light of the World. You and I are the light of the World. And that connects to the date that we celebrate in our churches when the infant Jesus was declared to be the light of the world by Simeon, whose words are recounted on the Feast of the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple, observed on February 2nd.
Now, some of you may be more familiar with the modern name for this feast day, which is Groundhog Day
The day that Phil the groundhog, who has been kept alive by the Punxatawny Groundhog Club since 1887, predicts whether the rest of winter will be harsh or mild. But it was not always this way, no-sir-ee. Little did you know how closely related Groundhog Day is to the Feast of the Presentation of Our Lord in the Temple. By working our way backward through history, we will see exactly why this is true.
Groundhog Day began in this country by German settlers who had to adapt their tradition of using an animal to predict how harsh winter would be for the rest of the year. But in Germany, they didn’t use groundhogs to make the prediction–they used badgers, or more rarely hedgehogs.. And, if it was sunny enough of a day that a hedgehog would make a shadow, that was indicative that it was going to be a harsh winter. But the new world didn’t have many hedgehogs. What they had instead was groundhogs. So, Groundhog Day evolved from Hedgehog Day.
Hedgehog day, then — and I haven’t seen anywhere that says there was a name like Hedgehog Day, but I’m going with it because it’s fun to say — Hedgehog day seems to have grown out of the tradition that if February 2nd was a pleasant day the weather would be bad in the future, and if the weather was bad that day the rest of winter would be mild. Kind of like saying that this winter this year has been unseasonably mild, and then getting called out for jinxing the rest of winter. Something like that.
And February 2nd was important because this was the day in history that the Christian Church celebrated Candlemas–the day the churches blessed candles that would be used in homes for the winter, the Candle Mass. People would come to church, bringing candles with them, which were blessed by the priest for use to keep their homes lit through the rest of winter. And cementing the connection between the weather and the feast of Candlemas, there was an old English tradition summed up in the saying, “If Candlemas is fair and clear / There’ll be twa winters in the year.”
But we’re not done just yet. Our last stop in this history lesson is the origin of Candlemas. It is the feast day that happens 40 days after Christmas, the day when Jesus’ parents took him to the temple in Jerusalem to fulfill commands in the Jewish Law that pertained to Mary and to Jesus. 40 days after the birth of a child, the mother was to bring a burnt offering to the temple–a lamb and a pigeon if she could afford it, or 2 pigeons if she could not afford it. And since Jesus was the firstborn of Mary and Joseph, they were to pay 5 shekels of silver to fulfill the commandment of redeeming the firstborn.
That’s why they were there. And when they arrive, things get interesting. They meet Simeon, who, guided into the temple by the Holy Spirit, takes Jesus into his arms, and says:
Lord, you now have set your servant free *
to go in peace as you have promised;
For these eyes of mine have seen the Savior, *
whom you have prepared for all the world to see:
A Light to enlighten the nations, *
and the glory of your people Israel.
Jesus, cradled in the arms of Simeon, is the Light that enlightens the world. Like a candle that brings light to a cold home over a long winter, He is the light of the world, for all the nations. And where Jesus is a light to enlighten the nations, he tells his listeners that you and are the light of the world.
You and I are to bring light to the world. Darkness obscures truth. The truth is hidden in the darkness. But the light reveals that which was hidden, and reveals the truth.
That’s what role you and I play. Not like a magical groundhog that’s been kept alive by some “elixir of life” it’s fed every summer so that it can predict the weather by whether it can see its shadow, but as children of God who have seen and felt and experienced the truth of God’s being and love. And as such, are called by God to share that same love of God with those around us. That like a lamp that brings light to a room at night, we are to be a spot of light in the darkness, making known the goodness of God.
And we do that by how we conduct ourselves. As Jesus says, one thing that light does is reveal the deeds we do so that others would praise God because of what we do in the name of Christ.
To that end, I’m inspired today. On Thursday, the Community Outreach Steering Committee heard from a representative from LifeMoves about all the work that that organization is doing to address the needs of the unhoused and vulnerable, and to get families and individuals into permanent and stable housing. It was remarkable to hear about the mass of people that were being helped, the number of locations being operated, and the magnitude of their work and effort. It was awe inspiring to hear how much is being done to get people off the street and off the road and into real, permanent shelter so that they can rebuild their lives. And not only that, but to provide meals, and toiletries, and basic necessities to the vulnerable and marginalized. We are all aware that food and toothbrushes are needed, but who would have thought that giving nail clippers or a rain poncho would make a difference for a person on the street?
In part, I share this because we will be collecting these goods in the coming weeks. Lent is right around the corner for us, and we are putting together a Lenten drive to collect items like this. More information will be forthcoming, but it’s on the horizon. And the love that we show to others in simple things like this are all part of shining the love of God on others in the world around us.
In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
Epiphany 4A, 1/29/2023: In my preparation for today’s sermon, one of the books I consulted, the International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, called the Beatitudes “exclamations of the messianic bliss of those who have renounced the world and submitted themselves to the divine sovereignty.” Beautiful, isn’t it? I don’t know what it means, but it sure is beautiful, and I want that.
No, I’m kidding. I just wanted to get a rise out of you. But I still want it.
The Beatitudes, these 8 or 9 statements of blessing, are the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel according to Matthew, who places this sermon toward the beginning of Jesus’ ministry. I want to look a little bit at the context in which this appears.
In our Gospel reading from last week, we see Jesus at the start of his public ministry, the three or so years between his baptism and the crucifixion, which began at his baptism by John in the Jordan. In that reading, Matthew writes that Jesus began to proclaim to the people, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” For Matthew, who wrote to a Jewish audience, the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of God, is of utmost importance.
The Messianic hope of the Jews was that the Kingdom would one day be restored to Israel like it had been in the days of King David or King Solomon, but lost due to the covenantal unfaithfulness of the nation after their reign. Ever since those Days, the Jews had been looking for God’s anointed one, the Messiah of God, to overthrow the Gentiles who were oppressing the people and to restore the Davidic king to the throne. The Jews were looking for a political king to rule over them again and for all things to be put to right.
Enter Jesus, who comes preaching, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” It is of him that Matthew writes, “Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.”
Let’s fast forward to the 9th chapter of Matthew, where it is written, “Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.”
Did you catch that? It’s the same thing. Matthew 4, Matthew 9 – Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. Teaching, proclaiming, and curing.
The Sermon on the Mount, then, appears as the content of Jesus’ teaching about the Kingdom. And look at the first Beatitude – Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. And the eight – Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Either Jesus was not too creative and just repeated himself, or there is something intentional going on here.
Perhaps what Jesus was saying is that all these beatitudes, all of these sayings, are not meant to describe different groups of people—the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, etc.—but describe the individual who is a citizen of the Kingdom of God, the person who lives in the realm where God’s will is done on earth, just as it is in heaven; the person who partakes in the messianic bliss of living in the way of Jesus.
That is the idea of the Kingdom, after all—it is the realm where the king’s rule is felt and where that king’s will is carried out. The Jews were looking for an earthly kingdom. They wanted a man to sit on a throne, just like David. What they got was a spiritual kingdom instead, where the king sits on a throne in heaven and whose rule is a revolution of healing and restoration; where the poor in spirit are citizens of the kingdom, those who mourn are comforted, the meek inherit the earth, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be filled, the merciful will receive mercy, the pure in heart will see God, the peacemakers will be called children of God, and those who are persecuted are citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.
That is truly Good News. Not just that there is eternal life in Jesus Christ, the crucified, but that there is hope and healing for today. The Kingdom of God exists as an already/not-yet phenomenon. It has come, it is here… and yet it also awaits us in the next life. The world will go on—kingdoms will rise and kingdoms will fall, there will be joy and there will be pain—but God has come near us to bring healing and restoration in the midst of it all. It is a spiritual kingdom, and so we all have access to the rights that come as citizens of this Kingdom.
So we’ve established that Jesus is the Messiah. We’ve established that Jesus preached the Good News about the Kingdom of Heaven. But what does it all mean for you and for me?
For me, it means that there is a better way. That the way of Jesus is the best possible way to live. The poor, the downtrodden, those who grieve, the persecuted, and those who feel backed up against a wall all have a reason to hope. The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and it is found in the way of Jesus.
The way of Jesus is not eye for an eye; it is mercy.
The way of Jesus is not judgment ; it is comfort.
The way of Jesus is not is not karma; it is grace.
So let’s revisit that first quote: the beatitudes are “exclamations of the messianic bliss of those who have renounced the world and submitted themselves to the divine sovereignty.” There it is! Now it makes sense! These beatitudes are examples of the joy available for those who follow Jesus the Messiah, who do not live like those who do not follow Christ, but who have turned their hearts Godward in order to live as citizens of God’s kingdom.
So may you who are poor in Spirit find joy in the Kingdom of Heaven.
May you who mourn find comfort.
May you who are meek receive the inheritance of all the earth.
May you who hunger and thirst for righteousness be filled.
May you who are merciful find mercy.
May you who are pure in heart see God.
May you who are peacemakers be called children of God.
May you who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake find joy in the kingdom of heaven.
And may you who are persecuted as followers of the Risen Christ rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven.
Epiphany 3A, 1/22/2023: In our Gospel reading, we hear for the first time in Matthew that Jesus’ message was a call to repent. Following the temptation in the wilderness, and at the start of his public ministry as he set himself up in Capernaum and began calling disciples to follow him, we hear his message that he preached as he went about proclaiming the good news of God’s love for the us, summed up as “repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.”
The setting for this in Matthew’s Gospel is perhaps instructive. We’re still early on in the book, and it reads as though Matthew is setting the stage and preparing us for what this person Jesus was all about. So far we’ve had his birth, his baptism, and the episode of the temptation in the wilderness. And, immediately after this as we will hear next week, we come to the Sermon on the Mount. So what we read and hear this morning is, in a way, one more and final part of preparing us for the teachings and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth. And what are these last bits that Matthew wants us to know before we get into Jesus’ ministry: That he went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. And that the message he proclaimed to the people was “repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.
Repentance. It’s a word that we bandy about as Christians, but what do we mean when we use that word.
The word Matthew uses is the Greek word Μετανοέω. It’s literally to change one’s mind, Μετα indicating the turn or change, and νοέω from “neos” meaning mind. To turn one’s mind.
And for further understanding of how it would have been understood in the Jewish context and culture in which Jesus lived, it’s helpful to see what words this corresponds to in the Hebrew scriptures. This Greek word Μετανοώ is frequently used to translate the Hebrew word shuv – “turn,” as in turn to the Lord, turn to God and be saved, and experience the blessings of God once again. Hear it in the context of Isaiah 59:20: “And God will come to Zion as Redeemer, to those in Jacob who turn from transgression, says the Lord.”
That’s the sense, then, of the meaning of this word, repent. To turn to God, and to turn away from those things which are not God or not pleasing to God. And to draw this out more fully, we can think about the ways that this affects us as it touches out intellect, emotions, and will – our thoughts, feelings, and deeds.
As to intellect, that we acknowledge that we have things in our life that we need to turn away from. Whether it is in thought, word, or deed as we pray at the confession, the things we have done and the things done on our behalf, that we make a repentance of the things we have done that are not in alignment with what God wills for us and for our lives. It is the recognition of wrongdoing, and that there is a better way for us and that we want for the way in which we live and treat others, ourselves, and the world around us.
So we have intellect, the acknowledgement of wrongs. And second we have emotions, and the contrition of the heart. That in addition to the mental assent in our response to wrongdoing, that what we have done ought not to be done, that we feel an appropriate response of remorse when we recognize the ways that we have acted that falls short of God’s will for our lives. That when we recognize the wrong, that our consciences kick in and inspire us to make it right, and to do better in the future. And not only a feeling of regret, but of contrition, of being genuinely sorry that our deeds caused harm, or were otherwise not in alignment with our calling as followers of Christ.
And finally we have our will, and the commitment to an amendment of life. It’s not sufficient to recognize that we have done wrong, and to feel bad about it, but in making a full repentance we must also commit to a change in our life and to align our thoughts, words, and deeds with our beliefs and our values. That if we recognize ways that we are not living in full accord with the will of God for our lives, that we commit to getting there. The one who murders shall no longer murder. The one who steals shall no longer steal. And when we have come to the place of making a full repentance, we set our intention to live more fully into the life and love that God has called for us to live in.
At the heart of all of this is the recognition that there is something, some values or principles, that we believe God desires for us. That there are things that ought to be done, and things that ought not to be done. That there are things to turn away from, and things to turn toward. So repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand.
Epiphany 2A, 1/15/2023: Are any of you feeling like, “John the Baptist, AGAIN!?!”
This is now the fourth Sunday since December 8th that we’ve had Gospel readings about John baptizing Jesus in the Jordan river:
Now, the most interesting thing about this account of Jesus’ baptism is not necessarily what John has to say about it… OK, well, that’s interesting too!… but for our purposes today, what’s MOST interesting is not what John says about it, but what John DOESN’T say about it. In this Gospel, Jesus comes to John at the Jordan, goes down into the water to be baptized, comes up and the Spirit of God descends like a dove, but what’s missing? There’s no voice from heaven.
In Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus comes up out of the water, the voice comes from heaven–”This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” And in Mark and in Luke, the same voice–“You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.”
But in the Saint John’s Gospel, there is no voice from heaven, no miraculous thundering of God, but only the lowly voice calling out, “Here is the Lamb of God.” It’s not the proclamation from heaven, but the voice of John who testifies about Jesus. Two days in a row, John sees Jesus and cries out these words. The first time, the first day, is just before he baptizes Jesus, where he cries out, “Here is the Lamb of God!” And then, on the following day, while John is standing with two of his disciples, sees Jesus and again exclaims, “Here is the Lamb of God!”
And when John’s two disciples hear this, they follow after Jesus, who, when they ask where he is staying, he says to them, “Come and see.”
“Come and see” is the savior’s invitation to them. “Come and see” is what I am all about. “Come and see” what it means to follow after me, Jesus says to them. “Come and see…”
And after seeing, and spending that afternoon with Jesus, one of the two, Andrew, goes to get his brother Simon, and tells him to come and see the Messiah, the Anointed One of God. And which, after encountering Christ for the first time, their lives were never to be the same again.
In John’s Gospel, it’s not the voice of the Holy One that proclaims Jesus to be the savior, but it’s the voice of John, and of Andrew, and later Peter and the other apostles. It’s the voices of those who went to see Jesus who then tell others, “come and see” what we have found in Jesus.
The last time I encountered this reading for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, back in 2020, it was immediately after a Vestry retreat. And at this retreat, a question common to congregations came up: How do we grow the church?
As we discussed this in the large group setting, for a few minutes I sat there listening and thinking that we never discussed the WHY of church growth. Why do we want to grow, and perhaps, does it matter what our reason is, for what purpose we desire to grow? And I’m being a little cynical here, I admit it, but what is our motivation to want more people in the church? Is it so that we can feel proud of ourselves that we’re bigger, that we have more people here for our common worship on Sunday? Is it to have more friends, more energy, more life that comes with more individuals? Or, are we motivated to have more money–more people equals more giving—more noses in the pews equates to more nickels in the plate?
As I said, it is a common concern that many churches express, the desire to see their churches grow and be vibrant and lively places of worship and fellowship. And it’s not necessarily a bad concern—as I said, I was being a bit cynical just now with my questions. But I think it’s worthwhile to ask the question, why do we exist? What is our purpose? Why are we here, and what do we hope to accomplish?
We’ll start with me answering the question. Seems like a logical place to start, since we’re in that part of our service where I’m kind of expected to be the one talking to all of you. I’m here to experience the love of God as shown and shared by those who have committed themselves to following Christ. Just like Andrew, who heard John’s proclamation that Jesus was the lamb of God, and to whom Jesus invited him with the words “come and see,” and whose life was transformed by meeting Jesus that day, I’m here to experience that same life transforming love of God with all of you here.
That’s what I’ve found here at St. Bede’s Episcopal Church in Menlo Park. We are a loving, supportive community of those who are following in the way of Jesus?
I believe that the health and the future of our church here at St. Bede’s is directly related to how well we are functioning as a loving, supportive community of those who are following in the way of Jesus.
This place is a blessing to us, so that we can be a blessing to others.
And if being here is a blessing to us, why wouldn’t we want to share that with others? If we are becoming more compassionate, more kind, more generous and giving, more supportive, more loving people, why wouldn’t we want to share that? Why wouldn’t we want our friends and neighbors and everyone to experience that? Why wouldn’t we want that to spread to our neighborhood, our cities, our and everywhere that others may experience the life-transforming love of God? And if we are doing this well, our parish will be a vibrant, thriving place for all who are blessed by it.
And how do we accomplish that? To start, by allowing yourself to be transformed by God’s grace. By opening yourself to the love of God and giving your life in ever-increasing ways to the One who called us to “come and see.” By turning over your hopes, and fears, your joys and your aches to God. By finding healing and restoration in your life in the fellowship of all of us around you. And by showing love and compassion to others around you, here in this church, in the highs and in the lows, in the joys and in the struggles of this life.
That’s the first thing, and the second is like unto it, by spreading that message, “come and see.” To go out into all the world, to heal the broken-hearted, binding up their wounds, and putting on display the love of God to a world that is dying to hear that message. And when you’re asked why you do what you do, in binding up the wounds of the broken-hearted of this world, to say, “we have found the savior. Come and see.”
Epiphany 1A, 1/8/2023: In the ordination process that I underwent in the Diocese of Milwaukee, after doing my initial interviewing work with my parish committee, I went to a weekend retreat with the diocesan Commission on Ministry, or the COM as it is frequently called. There would be several sessions with different teams made up of COM members that were tasked with exploring different aspects of the aspirant’s sense of calling and fit-ness for ordained ministry. These sessions were fairly well spelled out in the packet of materials that the diocese published for the discernment process for Holy Orders, including a list of questions that could or would be used to help assess one’s calling to ministry.
Most of the questions that would be put before me would be a breeze to respond to, given that I had already gone through seminary in my non-Episcopal past. Anything biblical, theological, or historical would be relatively easy for me. However, there was one particular question that I struggled to come up with an adequate answer: “How do you see the difference between ordained and lay ministry? Why is ordination required to fulfill your Baptismal Covenant?”
Again, “Why is ordination required to fulfill your Baptismal Covenant?”
It was a tough question to answer, because in our Baptismal Covenant, we believe that God has put a calling on each and every one of us, that we are a part of God’s work in the world of bringing healing and restoration. That as those who have been baptized and been sealed with the Holy Spirit, we are God’s ambassadors to the world around us. That just as Jesus was the incarnation of God, we now incarnate Jesus into the world.
And if all this is true from our baptism, why is anything else necessary to live out the promises made at our baptism, and which we reaffirm each year that we are together here at St. Bede’s?
Our baptism is a special and powerful thing, indeed. The catechism in our Prayer Books tells us that it is our union with Christ, in his death and resurrection, our birth into the Church, the family of God, the forgiveness of sins, and new life in the Holy Spirit. That is the inward and spiritual grace of the sacrament. And it’s that new life in the Holy Spirit that is most important to me as I contemplate the day, celebrating and remembering the baptism of Jesus in the Jordan River.
There is something unique happening in Matthew’s account of Jesus’ baptism. Each of the Gospels include at least a mention of Jesus’ baptism, and include certain elements. First, that Jesus went to John at the Jordan River to be baptized. Second, that John indeed baptized him. Third, that the Holy Spirit descended as a dove and in all but John that there was a voice from heaven that declared Jesus to be God’s Son, and that we should listen to him.
But as I said, there is something unique in Matthew’s Gospel, and it is this: “Jesus came from Galilee to John at the Jordan, to be baptized by him. John would have prevented him, saying, ‘I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?’ But Jesus answered him, ‘Let it be so now; for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.’ Then he consented.”
See, John’s baptism was a baptism for repentance, and he believed that Jesus was not the one who needed to repent, but that John did, and thus he should have been the one being baptized, not Jesus. But what does Jesus say? “It is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness.” Then he is baptized, and the Holy Spirit descends as a dove as the voice calls out “This is my Son.”
A lot of speculation has been made about why Jesus would need to be baptized, for the same reason that John protests. If Jesus is the holy one from God, why should he have to be baptized?
To that, I believe that we have our answer in the reading from Acts. Consider what Peter said about Jesus’ baptism. Peter told the crowd gathered at the Gentile centurion Cornelius’ house that the message that Jesus spread and the works that he did, came after he was baptized by John in the Jordan, and after God anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power, and that is how he did what he did. His ministry–his teachings, his message, his example, and his deeds and miracles–were all possible through the Holy Spirit which had been given to him at his baptism. And because of that connection between the anointing of the Holy Spirit and the works and message of peace that he brought with his baptism, that is why Jesus needed to be baptized by John at the Jordan River. That is why Jesus’ baptism was proper to fulfill – to accomplish, to bring to realization – all righteousness.
And that is why I believe that our own baptism is a powerful thing. In baptism not only are we united with Christ in his death and resurrection, but we also receive the Holy Spirit, and marked as God’s own forever. We now have the anointing of God to be the hands and feet and mouth and ears of the body of Christ.
It enables us to be part of God’s will and work for the world, spreading the message of God’s love for all, and to work for justice and peace for everyone, everywhere. These are the promises that we make in our Baptismal Covenant, after all. That we believe certain things about God, and in response, there are things that we will do, such as turning from evil, turning to God in Christ, continuing in our common worship and prayer, and sharing God’s loving concern for all people as we love and care for others.
Returning to the beginning, I’ve probably piqued the interest of at least a few of you, about how I answered the question about why ordination was required to fulfill my Baptismal Covenant. When asked, I was frank with the COM members, that I struggled with this question, because in our baptism we all have a calling to serve God’s church and people everywhere. But there were things that I believed God was calling me to do, such as being a priest serving in a parish, celebrating our sacramental and communal life together, in a way that could only be obtained through ordination as a priest. And that seemed to satisfy those in the room who asked this question of me.
But it doesn’t negate the premise behind the question: the idea of ministry is not limited to those who have been ordained, but it extends to each and every one of you, especially those who have been baptized, because in that act we all share in the work of God in the world, and we all are called to get involved and go to work. It’s not limited to those who are deacons, priests, or bishops, but is for all of us in the church.
Don’t underestimate the power of your baptism in your calling to get involved in the work of God, bringing healing and restoration to the world around us.
Christmas 1A, 1/1/2023: Words are important, right? For example, anytime anyone here has ever had to deal with a contract, or a written agreement, or even had to scroll to the bottom of a long list of terms of agreement before being able to proceed when signing up for something online, you know words are important (sometimes even depending upon what the meaning of “is” is).
And in our Gospel reading from John’s first chapter, there is one particular word that stands out to me, and that is “lived.” That the Word became flesh and lived among us.
Now, as far as words used to move from the original language into English, that is probably about the most bland and boring word that could have been chosen. Like, really, really bad. That whoever choose that word for this translation of John’s Gospel deserved coal for Christmas that year. And probably the next one too.
Why? Because the word read as lived this morning is the same word that earlier translators had used when writing about the Tabernacle built by Moses and carried by the people through the desert, when the translated from Hebrew to Greek in the Septuagint. The Tabernacle was the place that God dwelt among the people, it was God’s tent among the tents of the people.
And this is why “lived” is so bad. Because it loses the grand imagery that John had intended and built into his account of the incarnation of Christ. You can already see that John is no Matthew or Luke, who wrote about Mary and Joseph and their struggles and pains which brought them to Bethlehem when Jesus was born, whose birth was announced by the angels to the shepherds in the fields nearby. John, in contrast to the other Gospel writers, is a mystic, showing us how the eternal Word, the cosmic second person of the Godhead, came into the world, set his dwelling place among us, bringing the light of the knowledge of God.
And when the Word became flesh, God literally “pitched his tent” among us. God tabernacled among us. Made his dwelling among us in the person of Jesus Christ. John began his Gospel with echoes to the creation of the world with the first sentences of his Gospel, and now takes us to the Tabernacle–the mobile structure Moses built, so that the people of Israel would know that God dwells among them and is with them as they journey to the Promised Land. It is the place where heaven meets earth, where God’s presence breaks through into the created order. It is the place where the golden Ark of the Covenant was kept, where sacrifices were made to God on the bronze altar, and where Moses met with God face-to-face. And from the time of the Exodus until the reign of King Solomon when he built the temple in Jerusalem, it was the place where the priests led the people in atoning for their sins and keeping covenant with their God. And when King David wanted to build the temple, listen to the words that God spoke through Nathan the prophet:
Go and tell my servant David: Thus says the Lord: Are you the one to build me a house to live in? I have not lived in a house since the day I brought up the people of Israel from Egypt to this day, but I have been moving about in a tent and a tabernacle.
The picture that John paints for us is that just as the Tabernacle was God’s dwelling place on earth among the Jews as they wandered in the desert and settled in the land, that Jesus is God who has come to dwell among us. Jesus is the Word which had become flesh and made his dwelling among us, and in whom we have seen the glory of God revealed to us all.
See, that’s so much better than “lived.”
And since this is my last sermon before Epiphany and the end of the Christmas season in the church, I want to again share a poem titled “The Work of Christmas,” by Howard Thurman. I’ve shared this poem in the past on Christmas Day, and I love it, so I will share it again:
When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.
This baby Jesus, born of humble estate, grew up to be the same Jesus who called on us to repent, to love God with all our heart, to love our neighbor, and to take up our cross and to follow him. Now the work of Christmas begins.
Sotogether with you, my friends in Christ, may we all see the glory of God which has been revealed to us in the face of Jesus. May we feel the nearness of our God, who has dwelt among us and showed us the will of God for our lives. And may we be filled with the grace of God which was given to us in Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Advent 4A, 12/18/2022: Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. 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. 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 and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:
“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”
which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.
The awkward timing of God’s wonder.
When I was around college age, my mother and I had a conversation about the sarcasm of God found in God’s interactions with Job. She was incredulous that I would call God sarcastic, so to test her, or challenge her on this, I asked her to read a portion of the last few chapters of Job. And I can understand why she wouldn’t think God was sarcastic. Her intonation as she read was flat, emotionless, and monotone. No wonder she missed the sarcasm in God’s message to Job.
It seems to me that we can frequently do the same to the Scriptures, including our Gospel this morning.
(read unemotionally) “Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. 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. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly.”
It’s like reading a textbook, that the human element has been lost and it’s just facts. The human element is largely stripped away and the characters become flat caricatures of things that loosely resemble real life. Read it this way and it seems like a moderately bad situation, but Joseph is a beacon of generosity that he would deal with Mary quietly, so as not to put her to shame.
What I want is, instead of reading this like a textbook, to read it more like a novel, where the characters are real, and have real personalities and real lives and real cares and wants.
When reading this way, one begins to see the humanity in the people, and in our Gospel reading that means about Joseph. And what does it say about Joseph?
We call Joseph a saint, and I think rightly so! In the face of scandal and hurt, that his fiancée would be pregnant when they aren’t yet married and it’s not his child, he decided that he was going to break off things quietly so as not to shame her publicly. At that time, betrothal to a person was essentially equal to being married in some respects, much more so than being engaged. You weren’t living together yet, and the marriage hadn’t been consummated, but to break off the relationship was akin to divorce. To divorce her would have been a public affair, shaming her greatly in the process, and it would have been his right to do so. But Joseph was a righteous man, and he wanted to spare her of that, so he proposed to dissolve things quietly.
So Joseph, putting aside his right for revenge and wishing to save her public disgrace, is called a righteous man.
But if we allow ourselves to think about the passage, there’s a lot more going on than what meets the eye.
It says that Joseph’s fiancée is pregnant, and he’s not the father.What does that imply? Has she been cheating on him with another man? Has she been unfaithful to him? And though we don’t hear it in this passage, Mary very likely told him about her vision of the angel and the baby being conceived by the Holy Spirit. It sounds like Joseph didn’t believe her. After all, he still planned to leave her. That is, until he had his own vision of the angel who told him the same story.
Think about it: How would you react if you found out that the person you were engaged to had cheated on you with another person? Add on top of that, she won’t tell you who did it, but makes up some fantastic story about angels and the Spirit of God impregnating her. While it does not explicitly say so, it’s not hard to imagine the emotions that Joseph must have gone through: Hurt, anger, sorrow, loss, confusion, and so on. The future that he had envisioned with the woman he wanted to marry had fallen apart.
And yet, in the midst of all that, he still wanted to do good to Mary and to spare her from the myriad of ways that society would have treated her by walking away from the relationship quietly.
And that’s where things become awkward: It says “But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.”
Just when he had resolved to put her away, had finally decided that he was going to leave her, when he had come to the place that he was ready to call off the wedding, that’s when God appeared. Not immediately after the angel appeared to Mary, which might have been the easiest thing. Not even after Mary was found out to be pregnant and Joseph was wrestling with what to do. It was only after Joseph “resolved” that he was going to leave Mary did the angel of the Lord appear and tell Joseph not to call things off with Mary. Only after he likely wrestled, and wrangled, and went back and forth on what to do, whether to stay with her or to leave her, that’s when God shows up to set things straight.
Maybe it’s that God was testing Joseph, to see what he would do. Would he stay with Mary, believing that the child is not someone else’s baby? Would he come to believe Mary’s story that it was the result of the Holy Spirit conceiving the child in her? Or, would he call things off with her and leave her, making an intervention necessary?
We clearly don’t know why God waited until when he did to appear to Joseph.
Nor do we know about the times that God waits to show up in our lives. Why does God seem distant, when things are falling apart around us and we wonder where God is in the midst of the deafening silence from heaven. Why, when things are at their darkest, and we long for some light to break through into our lives, are the skies shut up against us? Why do we pray and pray, and there is no answer, and nothing changes?
The irony of it all is the unfathomable wonder that was happening unaware to Joseph right in front of him, and his turmoil and distress in the midst of it. As he was cycling through the range of emotions at hearing Mary was pregnant, and wrestling to decide what to do about it, the second person of the Godhead was taking on flesh before him. Perhaps the greatest thing that has ever happened in the history of the Earth, of Christ being made man—or at least in the top three—was going on in his midst, and he didn’t even know it.
Taking my life experience as normative, which I know is a dangerous thing to do, it has often been in the midst of the darkest, most difficult times, that the greatest good has happened to me. The most wonderful has often only come after the most terrible. After the hurt, anger, sorrow, loss, confusion, and so on, then healing and restoration come, and it is wonderful.
To lay out a model, at times my life has gone forward like this: I make a plan, something happens to get in the way of that plan, I pray to God, God has a different plan, my plan doesn’t happen the way I wanted it to. Live on as faithfully as I can and hopefully at some point recognize the good things that God has from his plan.
Joseph’s plan was likely to marry this wonderful woman, have kids the normal way, and live happily ever after. Sounds like a good plan. He surely wasn’t planning to marry a woman pregnant with a child that wasn’t his own.
After Joseph has a vision, and the angel of the Lord confirms that the child is of the Holy Spirit, and that the boy is to be named Jesus, for he will save the people from their sins, then Joseph responds in faith and continues on with Mary, takes her to be his wife, and raises the boy Jesus as his own. His response in faith leads in part to the healing and restoration of the world.
Which ought to be our response. In the midst of the darkness, there is a light, shining brightly, full of hope and joy and victory and peace. That when we least expect it, God is here, ready to come to our aid. In the midst of pain, sorrow, fear, depression, addiction, sickness, and hopelessness, God is here. God is with us, and God will journey with us in the darkest parts of our lives. And perhaps in places where we least expect it, like a feeding trough in a small town in Palestine, God will come to us.
So have hope, because your salvation is nearer to you than when you first believed.
Advent 3A, 12/11/2022: Did John the Baptist doubt that Jesus was the one to come?
Why would John have reason to doubt in the first place?
If you consider the life of John, he faced adversity because he did the right thing. Not in spite of doing the right thing, but precisely because he was doing right. He had called out the ruler, Herod Antipas for the sin of marrying his half-brother Phillip’s wife after their divorce, and he was imprisoned for it. He had no freedom of speech guaranteed to him, and for calling out the impropriety of their ruler’s behavior, he was in prison.
Shouldn’t God have preserved those who do right from suffering and adversity?
Now, there are a variety of interpretations going on here. Perhaps it wasn’t John who doubted that Jesus was the anointed one, whose way in the wilderness it was his privilege to prepare the way, turning the hearts of the people to God. Perhaps John himself stayed faithful, but it was his disciples that doubted, so this was an exercise to reassure their faith in Jesus as the one to come. This is the majority opinion of the Roman Catholic Church. But it smacks of trying to preserve John’s reputation at the expense of the text itself.
Another interpretation is that this narrative was included to more fully flesh out what John said, when Jesus appeared to him at the Jordan River, saying “he must increase, I must decrease.” Jesus must grow in stature among the people, John must step aside to make room for him, to transition the people to becoming disciples of Jesus and not disciples of John. And so John sent his disciples to hear the message that Jesus is performing these miraculous acts to demonstrate God’s anointing of Jesus as the Christ, and so that all hearers of Matthew’s Gospel would likewise see the superiority of Jesus over John.
Well and good, but I am of the opinion that something more pertinent to the hearers of Matthew’s Gospel is at stake here.
Why should John, or anyone, have reason to doubt that Jesus was the one whose way he was born to make ready?
If we take this narrative on its face, that it was John who was seeking answers, consider his circumstances. He thought he was doing the right thing. He had baptized the people in the Jordan River, including Jesus, the one of whom he said that he was unworthy to untie the sandals from his feet. The promised one had come, he was here, whose winnowing fork was in his hand and who whose righteous judgment would separate the wheat from the chaff, and John was doing all that he knew to do in order to usher in the new Kingdom that would follow as the anointed one appeared.
But rather than the glorious happening, the kingdom seemingly hadn’t come. Jesus was a gentle teacher and a worker of signs, not a king, not a judge, and John was unjustly imprisoned for his work at being a prophet to the people, calling them to repentance and toward faith in God.
Facing adversity, facing dashed expectations, and all because he was faithfully executing God’s calling on his life, I believe that’s why John doubted. Assessing his circumstances and what got him there, as well as the different kind of savior that Jesus was turning out to be, John’s faith wavered.
And that’s precisely why, I believe, that Matthew includes this narrative in this Gospel.
In a post-resurrection world, the followers of Christ faced great persecution for following in the way of Jesus. This is the world that Matthew and those who would read and hear these words were living in. John, likewise, was imprisoned and later executed for leading the way to Jesus. So if John, the greatest of those born among women (as Jesus says), was encouraged to remain faithful and reassured of Jesus’ work and power, so can we all be encouraged to remain faithful to our God when we face adversity and persecution.
And what adversities do we face today? Thankfully, you and I generally don’t suffer more than a little social or emotional discomfort for our faith. We may get sideways glances, or people tell us they disagree with us, but no one is losing their lives for being Christian, having their houses burned, being exiled from their hometowns, as were those early followers of Jesus to whom Matthew wrote about Jesus’ life.
To this, I have three main thoughts of how we respond to our Gospel reading before us;
Advent 2A, 12/4/2022: If John, known as the Baptist, or Baptizer to distinguish him from the modern day Baptist Church, were to appear in our day and age today, what would he call us to repent of?
It’s a common trope to believe that if the prophets of old, or even Jesus himself, were to live among us today, that they wouldn’t be too happy with Christians in our modern society. So what would be the things that they would call us to repent of?
That is a tough question to answer, but I think it worthy to explore what it was that he called his contemporaries to repent of in that day and age, to start with.
In both Matthew’s Gospel before us, and in Luke’s Gospel, we hear that John exhorted the people to bear fruit worthy of repentance. That is, that their conduct should be in keeping with the faith in the one God. If they are genuinely turning their hearts to the Lord, their lives should show it in what they do. This is similar to what James wrote, that one’s faith is made apparent, made obvious, because of what a person does.
John is asked this in Luke’s Gospel, “What then should we do?” To which John gives three replies: First, whoever has two coats must share with the person who has none, and whoever has food must do likewise. Second, to the tax collectors, that they should take no more than the amount prescribed to them. And third, to the soldiers, to be content with their pay and not to extort money from anyone.
Be generous and charitable, be honest in your business, and be content with what you have. And in each of these, there is a repudiation of materialism and greed.
If there is one common thread that brings these together in Luke’s Gospel, it’s a repudiation of materialism and greed. Not against wealth in and of itself, but of the cruel or dishonest gain of wealth, and that those who have more than their basic needs being met are to address the needs of those for whom they are going without.
This is the preparation of the way of the Lord, for the coming of Jesus, that John’s birth was to bring about, whose birth was foretold by the angel, who told his father Zecheriah, “he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”
And what do we see: A call to compassion for the destitute, the poor and the powerless. After all, who is the one who has no coat and no food, than the poor person. Or the one whom the tax collector would demand more, or the soldier extort, if not one without power to resist.
That sounds like a message that would work in our world and in our lives today. A call of repentance and a turn toward compassion, dealing honestly with others, and contentment with our wages and the things that we possess.
We hear, frequently, that we are living in one of the most affluent times in human history, and yet it strikes me as more than a little curious, or perhaps even problematic, that so many around us continue to struggle to have their basic needs met. More than 11% of people in this country, one of the wealthiest today, are living in poverty. A similar percentage of households have faced food insecurity in the last year, meaning that it’s not guaranteed that all members of the household will eat enough to sustain their nutritional needs each day.
This ought to stir our hearts with concern for the well-being of our fellow human, does it not? That seems especially appropriate in this season of giving, and in hearing the words of the Baptizer calling us to turn toward compassion, dealing honestly with others, and contentment with our wages and the things that we possess.
It’s in this spirit that I’m glad we are partnering with organizations like Ecumenical Hunger, for whom we are preparing stockings for the children they serve, stuffed with good things that they would go without, and that we are living out our concern for those in need this Advent season. And not only this, but that we partner with Life Moves, we support Los Ayudantes, and other organizations in the Peninsula and the Episcopal Church to address the needs of those who must go without on a regular basis. To reiterate the point, John’s way of preparing the way for the Lord was to call the people to holy living, which included a repudiation of materialism and greed.
That’s a tough calling. We’ve become so accustomed to skimming off some of the excess of what we have and what we have accumulated and what we produce to give charitably. And I will be one of the first to admit, I live that life too, of skimming off some of the excess, while enjoying the bounty of the bulk of what I have and receive. But I’m reminded of the words we’ve heard on occasion, what if we didn’t give until it hurt, but until it felt good, and to experience the joy of giving. And not just of our wealth, but of our time and talents as well. That we would make it a priority in our lives and of this parish to seek out ways to live compassionately and charitably toward all around us, and particularly those in need, not only in this season of giving, but all year round and always?
And in doing so, to find that the way prepared by John the Baptizer is the best possible way to live.
Advent 1A, 11/27/2022: Today is the first Sunday of Advent, in the church calendar. It is the season in our calendar that begins four Sundays out from Christmas, and is a time of preparation for Jesus’ coming. Indeed, the name comes from the Latin, Adventus, which itself is a translation from the Greek parousia, which means appearing or a return from an absence. It’s the idea that Christ has and will appear to us, that Christ’s first Advent happened in the Incarnation, and that he will once again appear to us when he returns at the end of the age.
It is this returning at the end of the Age that was the initial concern for the season of Advent, rather than a remembrance of Jesus’ birth and his first coming–the things that we celebrate on Christmas. It’s for this reason that the liturgical color for Advent was initially purple or even black–because it was a season of penitence and fasting, the kinds of things that grew out of the Church in the middle ages whenever the threat of God’s judgment loomed over us lowly humans. The turn for Advent to be seen as a season of hope and joy in the church is, surprisingly, a somewhat modern invention.
If we pay attention to our Sunday readings and the collect and prayers we say at the beginning of the service, we see that this is where we start, with the focus on Jesus’ return. And it is pictured as a troubling day indeed when that shall happen, as we see in the reading from Matthew’s Gospel, compared with the days of Noah before the floodwaters swept over the Earth. The people were carrying on as if nothing was afoot, and then they were suddenly overtaken by God’s judgment. So, the author of our Gospel, thought that the same would happen when Jesus returns, riding on the clouds in glory.
For those who lived in the first decades after Jesus’ resurrection, they very much seemed to believe that Jesus would quite literally appear in the skies, to where he ascended soon after the resurrection, and that he would come soon. In their minds, it was only a matter of time before Jesus would come back to institute God’s Kingdom on Earth, and that it was likely to happen in their lifetimes. That God’s return was imminent, and that at any moment it could happen.
But… What happens when God tarries?
What happens when God doesn’t intervene? What happens when God doesn’t show up?
What happens when we need God to help, when we need God to come to our rescue, and to fix our situation… but God doesn’t appear?
The audience of Matthew’s Gospel were faced with ever increasing persecution for remaining faithful to the carpenter from Nazareth, and endured greater and greater hardships for their persistence. It’s no wonder they wanted God to intervene on their behalf, and to put an end to those who opposed the will of God in the world and in their lives. It’s no wonder they wanted God’s help in the midst of struggle…
But what happens when God tarries? What happens when God doesn’t show up?
It’s a question that I’ve had to wrestle with many times in life. In particular, when my father was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, a disease for which there is no cure, and at the time treatment options to even control the disease were often unreliable, I wrestled with where God was, and why God didn’t intervene. As he continued to decline, and his health worsened, where was God? Why didn’t God intervene? Why didn’t God help, and to heal him and to make him whole? After all, it should be nothing for the Almighty God to do so, to snap those anthropomorphic fingers and for my father to be healthy again. What a miracle that would have been?!
But it never came. God tarried.
A few things I believe are instructive as to what we can learn from our Gospel reading as a response to this conundrum we find ourselves in.
First, that it may be that our assumptions about how God will act are wrong. The same followers of Christ who were awaiting Jesus’ return any day now overlooked the first statement from our Gospel – regarding when these things will happen, it’s unknown. Who knows when it will happen? It’s not guaranteed to happen when we expect that it will, or want it to happen. It will happen when it happens. And I think the same is true about much about God: it’s easy to assume that we know exactly what God will and must do. Like God is a cosmic gumball machine, that we can pop in a quarter and get a prize. But it may be that our assumptions are wrong in the first place about what God will or must do. Maybe it’s more true that God actually does move in mysterious ways, whose ways are oftentimes beyond our comprehension. And though we may expect or desire God to operate in certain ways, perhaps it’s more our understanding of God that is flawed than God’s actions.
Second, we read that precisely because Jesus is returning, we must persist in doing what is good and right and holy at all times. Continue in the things that God wishes for us, such as in the Apostle’s teaching, the breaking of bread, and the prayers. To persevere in resisting evil, and when we fall into sin to repent and return to the Lord. In proclaiming by word and example the good news of God in Jesus Christ. By seeking and serving Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves. And by striving for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of all people. If that sounds familiar, those are the promises made during the baptismal covenant.
I can tell you from my experience it’s not always easy, to trust and remain faithful when adversity strikes, but it is the path of righteousness, to not be dismayed in disaster, but to continue in the path of obedience, even when it’s difficult.
Even though God tarries, it is incumbent on us to persist, and to continue doing that which is good and right, and with joyful expectation to look for God’s advent in our lives and in our world each day. And in doing so, may we be found faithful to the calling God has given us in Christ Jesus, to live lives of righteousness, and to show God’s love to all the world.