Proper 7C – 6/21/2025
The Gerasene Demoniac.
That’s our Gospel reading for today. It’s a wild story. Jesus steps out of the boat that just crossed the Sea of Galilee and is immediately met by a man possessed by enough demons that a whole herd of pigs is then possessed when they come out of the man. Legion, is the response when Jesus asks the demon its name, because there’s just so many in him. And Jesus casts them out, instead of torturing them, sends them to a herd of pigs, and they drive the swine off the cliff and they drown. The people of the town come out and beg Jesus to leave in fear of him for what he had done.
As I said, it’s wild.
And likely, one of the first things that you all, we all, do as Episcopalians is to try and explain what really happened here. We don’t believe, rationally, that the story could have happened just as it did, so what really happened, if it happened at all?
Because we like to be rational, don’t we? You’ve likely heard, and maybe even said, you don’t check your mind at the door when you come into church.
So the inclination is to try and make sense of it all. Was the man REALLY demon-possessed, or was something else more reasonable and rational going on? Something more in line with our 21st century understanding of the world around us – a world where demon possession is clearly not real, a world where something like mental illness makes a lot more sense. Therefore, what is the rational explanation for what may have happened?
But I submit that this isn’t the way to go about making sense of the text in situations like this. This isn’t the right way to negotiate with the writings before us. Instead, it’s more helpful to ask “What were the goals of the author in writing about this, and writing about it in the way that they did?”
More succinctly, what is it that they want us to take away from the stories we read?
I find that to be much more valuable, because there was indeed a purpose for why the authors of the Gospels, or of other parts of the Bible, why they wrote what they did, and why they presented it in the way that they did. To miss this, to only ask “What happened?” and to not ask “Why this was included in the Gospel?” is to miss out on the point of it all. More than discerning what really happened, more so why did the author want to include this story in their writings? What do they want us to take away from it?
So, when Matthew, Mark, and Luke write that Jesus cast demons out of the man that were sent into the herd of pigs, what is it that Matthew, Mark, and Luke want us to take away from the story?
For Luke’s telling of the story, I believe that it comes out in the very end of the narrative. The last paragraph here is the point of it all; that which comes before is simply to set up the conclusion.
To paraphrase, those who lived in the area and saw what happened were afraid and told others about it, and they too were afraid, so they came to Jesus and pleaded for him to leave. The freed man wanted to stay with Jesus, but Jesus told him to go home and tell others about how much God had done for him, so he went home and told them about how much Jesus had done for him.
There are a few things to take away from this.
The people respond in two ways: fear or love, rejection or longing. The majority of the people were filled with fear because of what happened, and pleaded for Jesus to go away. They wanted no more of it, and they wanted Jesus to leave so that it would stop.
The freed man, however, wanted to stay with Jesus. He longed to continue with the man who had helped him in the time of his greatest need.
So in the presence of God, we have the choice to go the path of fear and rejection, or of love and longing. Be like those of the town, and stay stuck in fear, or be like the freed man and be filled with wonder and awe, because of the power and presence of God in your midst.
Second, the narrative ends with the most curious juxtaposition. Here and in Mark’s account of this story, the man wishes to go with Jesus, but he tells him to go and tell others about what God had done for him. So he goes and tells the people what JESUS had done for him.
Go tell what God had done, so he goes and tells what Jesus had done.
This is also the way Mark concludes his story. Go tell what God did, so he goes and tells what Jesus did. (Matthew doesn’t include this detail in his version of the story).
But I find that interesting. Curious. Fascinating. He’s instructed to tell others what God had done for him, so he tells others what Jesus had done for him.
The power and working and nearness of God is juxtaposed with the power and working of Jesus.
Had we stayed with asking “What actually happened?” to try and make sense of a story about a horde of demons that possessed pigs that were driven mad to the point of plunging off a cliff to their death in the raging waters below… had we stayed there we would miss the point that Luke is trying to make – that God is here with us, that God’s presence is with us, that God cares about us, that we can be comforted and relieved by God’s love for us, and that God’s love has been shown to us through Jesus of Nazareth.
And that is our call as well: that in our daily life, to declare to others how much God has done for us.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we be liberated from all that ails us and lays us up in bondage. May we see and recognize how much God has done for us as well, in these days that we walk in the way of Jesus. And may we declare to all through words and deed the good things that God has done for us in Jesus Christ.
Proper 9C – 7/6/2025
This 4th of July weekend has me reflecting on the intersection of the Church and politics and our place in the matter as the people of God. Technically, it’s been longer than that, but particularly recently. So that’s what I want to spend our time here focusing on in sermon today.
Now, I’m going to be intentional to not be partisan. I heard long ago and still believe that, in part, the teaching of Jesus was political, but it is not partisan. It has no loyalties to political party in today’s day and age, and it doesn’t take sides on matters. However, it does speak about things that have been taken up in the public space, in civic matters, so it is in that sense political. Jesus’ teachings were often addressed at different factions in his society of the time, and was often directed at what could have been considered political matters. For example, is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar? Very political.
But, in today’s day and age, his teachings are not derived from, nor do they promote, any modern political party against another. In Jesus’ day our modern political parties and their ideaologies didn’t exist. The teachings are Jesus, in today’s day and age, are simply what they are, without adherence to party. Different parties may claim that Jesus is on their side, but that is a fallacy. Jesus’ teachings are apart from modern party.
That said, I think it is of first importance to ask, what is the relationship between the Christian faith and the United States?
People are prone to calling this a Christian nation, and the notion has been put out there that we were founded as a Christian nation, or would be best served if we were officially, legally a Christian nation.
The challenge to that being the first amendment of the Bill of Rights sets forward that there will be no official state religion – much unlike the nation that had formerly ruled over the colonies. And that is incredibly ironic for us as Episcopalians, because the founders of this country were directly renouncing the Church of England in doing so. The Church of England has been the national church for the English people going back to the 1500s under Henry XIII, and even today King Charles the Third holds the title of Supreme Governor of the Church of England.
Here’s what Charles the First wrote in the preface to the 30 Articles of Religion in the Church of England: “BEING by God’s Ordinance, according to Our just Title, Defender of the Faith, and Supreme Governor of the Church, within these Our Dominions, We hold it most agreeable to this Our Kingly Office, and Our own religious Zeal, to conserve and maintain the Church committed to Our Charge, in Unity of true Religion, and in the Bond of Peace; and not to suffer unnecessary Disputations, Altercations, or Questions to be raised, which may nourish Faction both in the Church and Commonwealth.”
So the founders of this country were very intentional not to follow in the footsteps of Mother England, and not only did they not establish a national religion, the first amendment prohibits that very act: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” So Congress cannot establish a national religion, and they can’t prohibit people from exercising their own private religion. They can’t favor one religion over another, and they can’t promote one religion over another.
I think that’s a smart thing. I know others will disagree with me, but I think that’s smart.
In my lifetime, I’ve been part of several different expressions of the Christian faith. I started out Roman Catholic. I was born to Roman Catholic parents, went to Catholic services every Sunday, was baptized in a Roman Catholic church, received the sacraments of confession and holy communion.
But today I am not a Roman Catholic.
Just before I turned 10 years old, my family switched denominations and started attending services at a nondenominational evangelical church. I went to Sunday School, Bible studies, summer camps, an evangelical Bible College and an evangelical seminary before I went to work for an evangelical presbyterian church.
But today I am not an evangelical.
At around 30 years of age, I moved to Farmington, New Mexico, where I attended services at St. John’s Episcopal Church. In many ways, the services and the community and the teachings of the Episcopal Church met me where I was in my faith and practice. The liturgy reflected the holiness I felt in services as a child in the Catholic faith, but the doctrines and discipline of the Episcopal Church were quite distinct, in ways that match my needs and understandings of the world that we inhabit.
Today I am an Episcopalian.
And if we had a national church, I am 100 percent confident that I would not find a home there, and that it would not reflect what I believe about God and our place in the world as those who follow in the ways of Jesus.
To put this into deeply practical terms, I think about the controversy about prayer in schools. Many Christian people lament that public prayer was taken out of schools. That no longer is public prayer a part of the daily rhythms of school children. I, however, if I were a parent would be deeply skeptical that the things their teacher was saying in prayer lined up with what I would be teaching my children about God and the world at home. I’m not part of the mainstream in Christianity in this country. I am on the fringes theologically of those who call themselves Christians. I believe differently, and I would want my kids to likewise believe differently.
And that’s just for me. What about those who don’t even espouse the Christian faith. Would we do violence to those of another faith when we force their children to pray to a god that they don’t believe in? Imagine that we were not fortunate to be part of the majority religion. Imagine that rather than Christianity, that this nation was founded with Islam as the national religion, and Christian children were forced to pray daily in accordance with Muslim teachings and belief?
Thus I believe that living in nation with a secular government is good for two reasons.
First, it gives me the ability to live out my faith the way that I see best. I am not constrained or forced to be part of a denomination or set or structure of beliefs that I don’t identify with or agree with. In the system we have, I have the ability to worship God as I understand God and think best. I have the ability to choose. And if I have that ability, I believe that all who live in the land should have the same right.
Second, it gives me the ability to speak out against what the government does when it does wrong. Because I, in my faith – the faith that shapes my values and principles – I am set apart from the government in my religion, I have the ability to denounce what the government does when it is immoral or evil. As a follower of Jesus, I take seriously the sentiment that I am in the world but not part of the world, and as such I have the ability to call out the government and those in positions of power and to tell them that they are wrong. In this way, the church can stand apart and in opposition to the machinations of power and oppression.
I am struck by the words of St. Paul in the letter to the Galatians: “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.” That for Paul, being a disciple of Christ and being called to follow in the path of the cross was of utmost importance, and all else has become subservient to it, including this world. The tone in his writing gives this impression, that there has been a separation between the follower of Christ and the world, that we have been freed from it and its paradigms and values, and free to live into the values and priorities of the Kingdom of God.
That is, I believe, the role of Christianity in this nation. To influence our government to do that which is moral and just, and to call it out when it’s not. Because our citizenship is in the heavenly realms, where God’s will is that of love, mercy, peace, and justice.
Yes, it’s a good thing, being a citizen of the United States, but it’s nothing compared to being a citizen of the Kingdom in Heaven. That is where our hope and joy lie. And yes, we are called that as long as we are citizens here in this life, to seek to spread the love of God and all that this entails, we are also reminded that our allegiance now lies with the Kingdom that is above, where God is, and where Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father. No kingdom on earth can ever compare to the greater joy of being citizens of the City of God.
In the Name of the Father…
Proper 14C – 8/8/2025
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
These are the words that open the 11th chapter of Hebrews, which I have heard called the “Hall of Faith” of the Bible. 18 times the phrase “by faith” appears in this chapter to describe the things that people in the biblical story believed or accomplished, because they believed God to be faithful or following God to be valuable. In the selection for today, we have 4 of those:
By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God.
By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.
By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents.
By faith he received power of procreation, even though he was too old and Sarah herself was barren.
There are additional instances of the fath of the biblical ancients that are given as examples to follow, to learn from, and to inspire us to believe in the face of absurdity and adversity. Lets look at them too:
“By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain’s. Through this he received approval as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts; he died, but through his faith he still speaks. By faith Enoch was taken so that he did not experience death, and “he was not found, because God had taken him.” For it was attested before he was taken away that “he had pleased God.” And without faith it is impossible to please God, for whoever would approach God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him. By faith Noah, warned by God about events as yet unseen, respected the warning and built an ark to save his household; by this he condemned the world and became an heir to the righteousness that is in accordance with faith.”
Again, remember that first definition of faith from this chapter: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
The assurance of things hoped for. The conviction of things not seen.
I wonder if the audience of the Book of Hebrews, whoever they were, had an easier time believing these things and taking them to be true because they were living in a pre-modern time?
No doubt, the world that the author of Hebrews inhabited was a different world than ours. Theirs was a pre-Renaissance and pre-Enlightenment world. The cultural and scientific expansion of the world during these eras in Western civilization deeply changed the world and our understanding of it all.
Take as a basic example the very first of the things done by faith in our reading today: By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible.
Which leads to a bit of a crisis point: Were all things created by the word of God, spoken into the formless void so that all things came to be in 6 days time, or is the existence of our universe the result of purely natural causes? Or is it something in-between? A classic example of this is from the possibly apocryphal but still illustrative conversation between astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace and Napoleon. When Laplace’s work on studying the movement of the planets and the sun was presented to Napoleon, a former student of Laplace, he was shocked to find no mention of God, unlike in the work or Isaac Newton. To that, Laplace replied, “I had no need of that hypothesis.”
God was not vital to understanding the universe. Nor was Christianity any longer the primary game in town. The hegemony of Christianity in Europe was breaking up, and its hold on the nations was weakened. Now people were able to question the narrative they had been raised on and told all their lives, and to doubt and to question and to explore other possibilities.
So much for “ the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”
I hope this is all accurate in my retelling of history, because it’s basically the story of my life.
I was raised in a Christian home – first Roman Catholic, then in an evangelical home. Not quite fundamentalist in its current usage at the time, but close enough. I went to a college seen as prestigious in those circles, notable because of its theology to take the Bible “literal,” believing that the very words within it were inspired to be written by an unchanging God, which meant that everything could be taken literally at face value. The world was created in 6 days, and was made by the voice of God 6,000-10,000 years ago. The Flood of Noah was a worldwide flood that covered the tallest mountains. Dinosaurs, like Leviathan in the Book of Job, lived at the same time as Noah. And Jesus rose again from the dead after the crucifixion.
Part of living in that world is having an explanation for everything, to make use of the God-hypothesis that we saw as vital to the story. The world was made in 6 days, 10,000 years ago. It was made to look old, just as Adam and Eve were not newborns when God made them but they were full grown adults at the instant of their creation from the dust of the earth. Before the Flood, the atmosphere was different, which allowed dinosaurs to grow big and for humans to live for several centuries. God worked wonders, showed His might through the plagues of Egypt, parted the Red Sea so the people could cross on dry land, sent manna in the wilderness, and raised a dead man to new life again as was foretold in the Old Testament prophets and their writings.
But I couldn’t hold it all together. Cracks formed, and questions arose that broke through the explanations that I had been given. Assurance and conviction of these things faded. The world, I feel I can safely say, was not created in 6 days, which happened 10,000 years ago. A worldwide flood like in the story of Noah didn’t happen. There wasn’t a mass exodus of people from Egypt as presented in the Bible.
What a crisis of faith that caused me! If these things aren’t literally true, then what is true? What remains that is true? And if these parts aren’t true, then what do we make of the book that says that they are and the conclusions that were drawn and the development of the story after them? What does that make of Jesus and the community that spread his teachings after him?
Fortunately, I am in good company, amidst a collection of people with questions and doubts. Both here and in history, there have been plenty of others who have had questions about God and how God’s interactions with humanity have been recorded and presented in the collection of writings that we call the Bible.
Augustine of Hippo, for all his flaws and faults and influence of questionable value, had at least one brilliant thought on these matters: crede ut intellegas. Believe so that you can understand. That in the mystery of God, we can’t always grasp the full meaning or have a full understanding, but that’s OK. Faith doesn’t require a full understanding. Faith is the embrace of the mystery.
But not only that, it is the living out of that which is believed to be good. By faith, Abraham believed that God was with him and working with him, so he set out to do right and to that which he believed God wanted for him and his family, looking for that blessed city that he was to inhabit, and therefore God approved him and blessed him.
Crede ut intellegas. Believe so that you can understand. Do the best you can, that the world will be blessed because of you, and that God will approve you and say “well done, my good and faithful servant.”
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we…
Find hope amidst the questions, doubts, and uncertainties of this life as we live out the teaching of Jesus.
Find faith amidst the mystery of who this God is and what God is truly like.
Continue to walk in faith, hope, and love each and every day as we look to the heavenly city that God has promised to us all.
Proper 15C – 8/17/2025
We continue our look at the 11th chapter of Hebrews, that “Hall of Faith” that lists all sorts of accomplishments that the ancient ones in the Hebrew Scriptures saw come about because they believed God.
Last week we heard of our faith that we believe that the world was created by the hand of God, and that Cain offered a better sacrifice in faith, that Enoch was spared from death because he had faith in God, that Noah and his family constructed the ark that saved them from the flood waters. Then Abraham moved his family to a land promised to his descendants in faith, and in faith believed that God would give him and Sarah a child in their old age.
Between then and today, we hear of the faith of Isaac, Abraham’s son, and that of Jacob, renamed Israel after he wrestled with the angel. He and his family moved to Egypt, where in their enslavement cried out for the god of their ancestors to save them, and who led them out of bondage following the plagues that befell the Egyptians.
That brings us to today. By faith, the people passed through the Red Sea as though it were dry ground. By faith the people marched around the city of Jericho and at the sound of their trumpets the walls fell. By faith Rahab hid the spies as they were scouting out her city and helped the people of Israel to find victory, becoming the ancestor of King David and thus of Jesus.
And not only them, but we are given additional names, of those who freed the people from servitude to the nations around them, led them in battle to overcome their adversaries, called the people to covenant faithfulness again from their faithlessness, and ruled over the people as king after God’s own heart.
All of these saw the goodness of God in their time, and enjoyed the blessings of their God who rewarded them for their faith and obedience to what God had called them to do. Their families grew and became numerous, their wealth abounded, they ruled over their neighbors, they were delivered from battle and slavery, and they acquired their own homeland promised to them. “Through faith [they] conquered kingdoms, administered justice, obtained promises, shut the mouths of lions, quenched raging fire, escaped the edge of the sword, won strength out of weakness, became mighty in war, put foreign armies to flight. Women received their dead by resurrection.”
Others… others were tortured. Others were mocked and flogged, were enchained and imprisoned. Others were stoned to death, sawn in two, & killed by the sword. Others were destitute, persecuted, tormented.
That “others” hits hard. It takes it from the honor and the glory of obedience and faith in God before it to suffering and misery and even death, all on account of doing that which was done in faith of following God. By faith… others suffered torture. By faith… others were mocked and flogged, enchained and imprisoned. By faith… others were stoned to death, sawn in two, & killed by the sword. By faith… others were destitute, persecuted, tormented.
Two thoughts on that. (prosperity gospel & the world was not worthy of them)
The “others” in this chapter demonstrate the flaw that we are often prone to in our thinking, that if we do good and if we are good people that good will come. “I’m a good person, I don’t deserve to suffer.” I’m a good person, I don’t deserve to struggle. I’m a good person, I deserve to be happy, for life to be easy, to have everything that I see others have and that I want.”
In current speak, this would be called the prosperity Gospel – be faithful to God, and God will bless you in this life. Be faithful, and God will reward us for our faithfulness. A prime example of this is the teaching of people like Joel Osteen, the preacher from Houston. His message to his listeners consistently is that God rewards faithfulness in this life, and that the faithful will be blessed financially, in their work, in their families, in their relationships and in their families, and so on. Here, the mark of a life of faith is a blessed life.
Sometimes life works that way, but probably just as often it doesn’t. Sometimes the natural consequence of doing the right thing is suffering. Sometimes the right thing isn’t popular, isn’t tolerated by others, isn’t seen as being good by others. And so sometimes doing the right thing leads directly to suffering.
This chapter of Hebrews is the Hall of Faith, after all, and it is the faithful that were destitute, persecuted, and tormented.
Here’s a prime example of this theology: Jesus of Nazareth. For doing the right thing, he was betrayed by his friend, mocked, accused, flogged, and crucified.
So much for prosperity as a mark of doing the right thing.
This takes us to the next thought I have on that. In spite of the suffering that came for the others, it was worth it, because the world was not worthy of them. They were the giants of the faith, those for whom obedience to God and standing up for that which is right is worth the suffering that comes, because it is the will of God. They remained stedfast in obedience, and for it they persisted in the midst of suffering, and God has rewarded their faith in the life to come.
This remains true for us today. In the midst of evil in the world around us, and the suffering that may come from standing up for that which is right, it is still imperative upon us to continue to stand and to work for that which is good and just and right.
Sometimes the easiest path is to go with the flow, to not cause a stir, to not cause a ripple, and to just be. But if there is opportunity to go against the current because Gospel values and Christian virtue call us to speak out, that is the role of the Church in society. To call the culture and the world to do that which is good and right, and to turn from evil. As we say in our Baptismal Covenant, to seek and to serve Christ in all persons, and to strive for justice and peace among all people.
OK, I’ve said enough. It seems like I’ve been beating the point and I’ve done enough there.
But to sum it up: The way of Jesus is the best possible way to live.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we…
Proper 16C – 8/24/2025
What we have in our reading from the book to the Hebrews is a contrast of mountaintop experiences.
Mountaintop experiences are, in a slightly different but still relevant way, a metaphor in our language about encounters with God or moments of divine rapture in our souls – something that happens rarely, but is profound and changes who you are because of them.
Colorado has 53 mountains that summit above 14,000 feet, and I’ve summited 33 of them. When I was living there, it was a goal of mine to do all, but I didn’t live there long enough to get to the ones further away from Denver where I was living. And occasionally friends from church would say something like “You must have the most amazing encounters with God on top of those mountains.” Which, no, I was mostly glad that I hadn’t died on the way up and hoped that I could keep that up on the way down.
Mountaintop experiences are at the forefront of our reading from the book to the Hebrews, as it is called in our Bibles. And it’s called that because it was written to a clearly Jewish audience to call them to faith in Jesus. The whole book structure and focus is on comparing and contrasting the life and work of Jesus to the covenant God made with the people of Israel at Mt. Sinai under Moses.
Sinai was the mountain that Moses brought the people of Israel to after leaving slavery in Egypt and crossing the Red Sea. The people are led by the pillar of cloud to the foot of Sinai, where the mountaintop is covered in thick clouds, with lightning, and there is said to be the roar of a trumpet. From the cloud comes the voice of God, who mades a covenant with the people that God will be their God, and the people will be God’s people, and that if they do the commands that God teaches them, God will bless them and make them prosperous and numerous. This is where the 10 Commandments are given, where the Golden Calf is made, and where the basis for worship and communal life as the people of God begins.
But in our reading today, Sinai is contrasted with Zion. This Zion is the mountain on which Jerusalem was built. It was the center of Jewish politics and worship, and crucially for us becomes a metaphor in the Christian community for the renewed life and renewed order that comes through the death and resurrection of Jesus. This is apparent in readings like the Revelation according to John, where the author writes that he saw “a new Jerusalem” coming from the clouds, a place of a new order under the reign and power of God, where evil has been vanquished and only good remains.
So that is at work here. Sinai was the mountain that could be touched, that was ablaze with tempest, gloom, the sound of a trumpet, and the fearful voice. Zion is the place of redemption, of the goodness of God, of new life in Christ that has been sprinkled with Jesus’ blood.
The point of it all being: That what Jesus accomplished is superior to what preceded it. Hebrews makes the point regularly that what God has accomplished in Jesus is greater than what was accomplished under the covenant made at Sinai. One point in the letter to the Hebrews that illustrates that point is the system of sacrifices found in the Hebrew writings. There, animal sacrifices had to be made regularly, at least every year on the Day of Atonement, where bulls and goats and sheep would be slaughtered and their blood used to make peace and forgiveness between God and the people. But Jesus, he died once, and that one death is good for all people for all time and does not need to be repeated over and over again.
So what is the point here. Let’s start with what the point is not. The point is not to invalidate the worship and beliefs of others. We are all trying to make sense out of what God has revealed to us about the nature of the Holy One, and none of us have it all correct and right and tied up neatly in a box with a little bow on it. So it is not to invalidate the worship and beliefs of others.
Rather the point is to add a bit of wonder and awe in our lives. Because if you read the selection from the letter to the Hebrews, it presents a God who is truly amazing, and with whom we can have those mountaintop experiences if we sit with this and contemplate these readings. Our God is a consuming fire. Our God is holy. Our God has come to us to show us love, kindness, mercy, and peace. Our God is worthy of reverence and awe.
That is the point. That sometimes we need such an encounter with God, such that we are filled with awe and wonder. That we are left breathless at the beauty of God. And that we have nothing to say in the moment, only to be part of it, to take it in, and to allow it to change our hearts, and for us to be changed because of it.
Proper 17c – 8/31/2022
I’ve been to many, many wedding receptions. Countless, really. Not because I have that many friends, but because I have a lot of catering experience and so I have worked at countless wedding receptions. I first worked in catering in college, then in seminary, and then in Denver when I was out of work and suddenly needed a job, quickly. At one wedding in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during the first run through seminary for me, dinner was over, the DJ was playing music and people were dancing, and I was clearing everything off my tables that I could. That’s when I overheard the people at the table, probably in their late 20’s or so, complaining that they were all seated at this table that was ALLLLLL the way in the back of the room, about as far from the head table as possible before being out in the hallway. So I butt my way into the conversation and say to them, “Looks like you should have been better friends with the bride and groom.”
This story from my life comes up because in our Gospel reading we have Jesus telling his listeners what table to choose, what chair to sit in when invited to a banquet. But, does Jesus care about social manners and status and such things?
That is after all what Jesus told to his listeners at dinner as recorded in Luke’s Gospel. When you’re at a wedding banquet that has open seating, sit yourself at a table far away from the head table, not the closest ones, because if you sit closer up you might be embarrassed by the wedding planner who will ask you to give up your seat for the family of the bride and groom, or better friends of theirs, and all that will be left is the table in the back… next to the restroom… INSTEAD! Sit in the least desirable seat so that way the bride and groom will see you, think “NO NO NO NO NO…” and bring you up to the table right in front of the head table to sit next to Grandma, the matriarch of the family.
But, is Jesus really giving them advice about how to posture yourself in life so that your status or social standing can be put on display for everyone to watch, or that you won’t be embarrassed in front of others because you were told to switch seats with someone of higher status than you? Surely Jesus wasn’t intending to be the Miss Manners of his day, right? Surely it wasn’t the intent of the Gospel writer to give social advice for how to be honored in the sight of others. That goes so far against the grain of all the other things Jesus is recorded to have written. He was about humility, of concern for the well-being of others, and of loving one’s neighbor – not about gaining social standing or bring honored in the sight of others.
That leads us to conclude that Jesus isn’t talking about parties. He’s talking about something much bigger, like life. And it all comes down to this: “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” So don’t concern yourself with status and honor and recognition, but rather pursue lives of humility. Do not concern yourselves with social standing. Concern yourselves with raising up the poor, the oppressed, and the vulnerable. Follow the example of Jesus, who came not to be served but to serve, just as he took on the role of a servant at the Last Supper with his friends before his crucifixion.
But this is only part of the story, because Jesus goes on to critique even the invitations to shared meals, and who you invite and who you exclude. As he tells it, don’t invite into your homes the wealthy, people of high status, or influential people. Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Invite the disenfranchised, those discriminated against, those rejected by society. Invite those who are normally excluded. The addict, the immigrant, the homeless, the stranger, the outcast and estranged. Invite those who are excluded, outside, and cast aside. Because if you do these things, God will see it and be honored by you in the sight of those around you, and all will see the glory of God in this age.
This is the radical inclusiveness of the Gospel. That the things that matter so many times to us about who is deemed acceptable, worthy, likable, and so on, that God doesn’t live by these categories or labels. All are invited to the wedding banquet that God throws, to the meals that God hosts. All are invited to join, because all are created in the image of God, and as such are loved by God.
And if this is what God is like, it would make sense that this is how we should try to live our lives. To welcome all, to show kindness and respect to all, no matter who they are.
And that’s not an easy thing to do, not by a long shot. But it is what we are called to do. To live a life of humility, and to show kindness and respect to those who receive it the least, because in doing so, we might just find that we are serving Jesus himself when we do so to others around us. It may just be that we start serving angels, unawares.
So it continues to be our calling in life to bring about healing and restoration. To join in on the work of Christ in preaching the good news about the kingdom of God, where all are welcome at the table as brothers and sisters of one another, in love and community with one another.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we be generous toward and show great welcome to the outcast, the stranger, and the downtrodden. May we forsake the temptations of seeking attention, honor, and praise. And in doing so, may the Holy One be honored in this age, and in the life to come.
I’ve been to many, many wedding receptions. Countless, really. Not because I have that many friends, but because I have a lot of catering experience and so I have worked at countless wedding receptions. I first worked in catering in college, then in seminary, and then in Denver when I was out of work and suddenly needed a job, quickly. At one wedding in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during the first run through seminary for me, dinner was over, the DJ was playing music and people were dancing, and I was clearing everything off my tables that I could. That’s when I overheard the people at the table, probably in their late 20’s or so, complaining that they were all seated at this table that was ALLLLLL the way in the back of the room, about as far from the head table as possible before being out in the hallway. So I butt my way into the conversation and say to them, “Looks like you should have been better friends with the bride and groom.”
This story from my life comes up because in our Gospel reading we have Jesus telling his listeners what table to choose, what chair to sit in when invited to a banquet. But, does Jesus care about social manners and status and such things?
That is after all what Jesus told to his listeners at dinner as recorded in Luke’s Gospel. When you’re at a wedding banquet that has open seating, sit yourself at a table far away from the head table, not the closest ones, because if you sit closer up you might be embarrassed by the wedding planner who will ask you to give up your seat for the family of the bride and groom, or better friends of theirs, and all that will be left is the table in the back… next to the restroom… INSTEAD! Sit in the least desirable seat so that way the bride and groom will see you, think “NO NO NO NO NO…” and bring you up to the table right in front of the head table to sit next to Grandma, the matriarch of the family.
But, is Jesus really giving them advice about how to posture yourself in life so that your status or social standing can be put on display for everyone to watch, or that you won’t be embarrassed in front of others because you were told to switch seats with someone of higher status than you? Surely Jesus wasn’t intending to be the Miss Manners of his day, right? Surely it wasn’t the intent of the Gospel writer to give social advice for how to be honored in the sight of others. That goes so far against the grain of all the other things Jesus is recorded to have written. He was about humility, of concern for the well-being of others, and of loving one’s neighbor – not about gaining social standing or bring honored in the sight of others.
That leads us to conclude that Jesus isn’t talking about parties. He’s talking about something much bigger, like life. And it all comes down to this: “For all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.” So don’t concern yourself with status and honor and recognition, but rather pursue lives of humility. Do not concern yourselves with social standing. Concern yourselves with raising up the poor, the oppressed, and the vulnerable. Follow the example of Jesus, who came not to be served but to serve, just as he took on the role of a servant at the Last Supper with his friends before his crucifixion.
But this is only part of the story, because Jesus goes on to critique even the invitations to shared meals, and who you invite and who you exclude. As he tells it, don’t invite into your homes the wealthy, people of high status, or influential people. Instead, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. Invite the disenfranchised, those discriminated against, those rejected by society. Invite those who are normally excluded. The addict, the immigrant, the homeless, the stranger, the outcast and estranged. Invite those who are excluded, outside, and cast aside. Because if you do these things, God will see it and be honored by you in the sight of those around you, and all will see the glory of God in this age.
This is the radical inclusiveness of the Gospel. That the things that matter so many times to us about who is deemed acceptable, worthy, likable, and so on, that God doesn’t live by these categories or labels. All are invited to the wedding banquet that God throws, to the meals that God hosts. All are invited to join, because all are created in the image of God, and as such are loved by God.
And if this is what God is like, it would make sense that this is how we should try to live our lives. To welcome all, to show kindness and respect to all, no matter who they are.
And that’s not an easy thing to do, not by a long shot. But it is what we are called to do. To live a life of humility, and to show kindness and respect to those who receive it the least, because in doing so, we might just find that we are serving Jesus himself when we do so to others around us. It may just be that we start serving angels, unawares.
So it continues to be our calling in life to bring about healing and restoration. To join in on the work of Christ in preaching the good news about the kingdom of God, where all are welcome at the table as brothers and sisters of one another, in love and community with one another.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we be generous toward and show great welcome to the outcast, the stranger, and the downtrodden. May we forsake the temptations of seeking attention, honor, and praise. And in doing so, may the Holy One be honored in this age, and in the life to come.
Proper 19C – 9/14/2025
I’m going to do something quite different today. I’m going to do a meta-analysis with you of why I preach the way that I do, and what my intentions and goals are in the way that I speak before you all in my sermons.
I’m actually quite moved and motivated by some recent feedback that I received from a parishioner. After the service some weeks ago, I was told to preach to the lessons. I alluded to that last week, that I don’t need to rehash the lessons, but to preach to the lessons. That was some wise feedback, and I take that to heart in how I approach my preparations for our time together here on Sundays.
So I’m going to do that. But not today.
Instead, today I’m going to preach about preaching. I’m going to sermonize about sermonizing. Meaning, I want to talk through my motivations or philosophy, or both, on how I preach, especially with the question of what it means to be relevant for what goes on in the world around us.
That question about relevance is important to me. What we do here, and the role that our faith in God has for us, I think ought to be deeply relevant for us outside these walls. It ought to affect how we treat the people we encounter – our families, our spouses, our children, our siblings, and our extended family. It ought to affect how we treat others beyond our families too – our coworkers, our neighbors, the people we pass on the street, the people we pass on 280. And our faith ought to affect not only how we treat others, but how we want others to treat others, and how we want our society and the systems we create to affect others. Not only others like us, but others who aren’t like us. Our faith ought to permeate all these things, and to inform how we want all people to live.
Where my preaching comes in then, when preaching to the lessons, is to use these lessons from the Scriptures to take what Jesus said all those 2000 years ago, or others before or after him, to connect the teachings or actions of these people of faith and to connect them to our lives today. It’s not always the easiest thing, either because the meaning can be quite opaque, or they can be so familiar that we gloss over their meaning.
Take today’s reading from the Gospel – the shepherd who leaves the 99 to go after the one, or the woman searching for her lost coin. The stories are familiar, so how do we keep them relevant for us in our lives without the exposition being redundant or irrelevant. And maybe even more so, what does one do when world events have become serious enough that they need to be addressed (put as asterix on that thought) but the readings don’t line up or help get us where we should go?
These were, essentially, the same readings we had 24 years ago this weekend, the Sunday after 9/11. The terrorist attacks of that day needed to be addressed at services that Sunday. Could you imagine a church that didn’t, and went on with life as normal after that day, and continued to preach on the lost sheep and the lost coins as though nothing happened?
What we do here ought to be relevant to what is happening in our lives, in the major world-changing events, and also in the mundane day-to-day, because if we’re not relevant, when what value is it more than entertainment. And I assure you, there’s much more entertaining stuff out there than listening to me for 8 minutes on a Sunday morning.
But being relevant isn’t easy. I think our reading for today is a great example of that, in the first couple of sentences. What Jesus had to say, or more correctly, what Jesus did, was immediately and readily relevant to some people, but to others it was unacceptable. He welcomed the unwelcome. To some, this was awesome, because they hadn’t experienced this acceptance before. To others, this acceptance was unacceptable.
And being relevant isn’t easy for that exact reason. It’s divisive to be too relevant here. If I start getting directly into specific events of the past week, it’ll get divisive real quick. Some of y’all will be with me, some won’t, and Ann Latta, our Senior Warden, will be getting about 40 phone calls about it.
Which is a little crazy to me, that addressing events or situations of concrete events that happened in the last week would be divisive. Take whatever implications you will from that!
So here’s what I do: I take the example from Jesus, and try to learn from it. If nothing else, and that is a big if, but if nothing else, the deeds and attitudes that Jesus promoted are provocative. They call us to do better, and if we could only live them out the world would be better for it. Frequently enough they are decidedly relevant in principle, and the principle that we can draw from his teachings challenge us to amend our ways that we would better ourselves so that others would be better for it. Our families, our friends, our neighbors, the people we pass on the street and the people we pass on 280.
Jesus welcomed the unwelcome, and gave three parables about the breadth and width and depth of the love of God.
Three parables, Dan? We only read two.
Parable one: The shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep in the wilderness to go after the one that’s missing. Parable two: The woman who searches for her lost coin. Parable three: The father who welcomes his prodigal son back and restores his status after he demanded his inheritance early and squandered it on drugs, alcohol, and cryptocurrency.
Back on point: What Jesus did and taught were provocative, and continue to be so today, and are just as relevant for us today as when they were done and spoken then. So my goal is to tease that out with you, and to leave you with them so that you ponder how to take them with you out these red doors and into your homes and workplaces and grocery stores and to lunch with friends.
What are the implications for you, living in Menlo Park or Atherton or Redwood City that Jesus didn’t turn away the tax collectors and immoral people when the norm was that other religious folk would? What are the implications that God is like a shepherd that searches far and wide for a missing sheep, and who celebrates when it’s found? And how does that change how we think about the marginalized, the outcast, the excluded, the forgotten in our world? How does that affect how we think about those who have been othered, those who have been castigated, and those who have been cast away? How does it affect how we think about those who have been sidelined, demonized, and vilified?
Because it should. Those are the people that Jesus welcomed, and whom the religious of Jesus’ day criticized Jesus for talking to and being kind to them. They were the ones who heard God’s call to them and responded while the “religious” condemned Jesus for showing them compassion.
So where does that leave us today? I don’t have a lot of time left, but if you have been paying attention to the news this week, in light of the gun violence that once again has risen up among us, I have two principles that we can draw from our readings.
First, from 1 Timothy: the author, who may have been St. Paul, lamented that he had been a blasphemer, a persecutor, and a violent man. Nowhere in the New Testament is violence condoned. Violence in the New Testament writings belongs to Rome, it belongs to Pilate and the governors, and it belongs to Herod. Violence is not fitting of the people of God, and it is not approved of anyone. Those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.
Second, that Jesus shocked other by how accepting he was of those deemed unacceptable. He scandalized others by who he welcomed and who he affirmed. When he welcomed tax collectors and “sinners,” he was derided by the religious leaders. Welcoming people who had been labeled by society as unworthy or rejected by God was scandalous, and Jesus did not back down from his affirmation of them. Maybe we should take note of that and go and do likewise.
That’s how the Gospel becomes relevant for us, and that’s my approach to making the readings relevant for us. By learning from Jesus, and taking to heart the example that he gave us for how we should live our lives, in a way that honors God and one another. In this, we can draw out the principles that guide our hearts and our minds, to live out more fully the virtues, morals, and ethics that honor God, and spread the love that comes from God into the world, so that the world would be transformed and grow into the image of Christ.
So together with you, my brothers and sisters, may we …
Proper 20C – 9/21/2025
Three years ago, when we had this same parable of Jesus for our readings, I shared with you that this parable is considered to be the hardest parable of Jesus to understand and interpret. This is one of the most opaque in its meaning and how we are to understand it.
It is a hard, hard parable to understand. The conclusion at the end of it all makes sense, but the parable itself that is used to get to that point doesn’t. A couple of main points of the parable are not at all what we would expect to hear from the mouth of Jesus, in that they don’t line up with what we understand about Jesus or would expect him to believe and want us to understand.
The man in question in this parable is employed as a manager of the business dealings of a wealthy man. The Greek word here is oikonomon, which for those who joined us at Pizza Theology on Thursday, this was brought up in conversation. An oikonomos, translated here as manager, can also be translated as steward. In it’s usage in the Greek and Roman Empire, it could either be the husband or father of a household, or if the household was wealthy enough it would be a hired assistant, or a steward. Which is what we have here, a hired person to oversee the business dealings of a household, a steward or a household manager.
And this manager is accused of squandering the rich man’s property.
This parable comes on the heels of the parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke’s Gospel, another person who was guilty of squandering money, as was the manager. Both are accused of squandering money or property. Whether by theft, misuse of funds, or incompetence, he is not doing a satisfactory job at his work, and so he is about to be fired. But first he has to turn over the books to his boss. So he hatches a scheme, systematically reduces the debts owed to his boss, and when his boss found out about it he commends him for being shrewd.
And that is where the parable falls apart for us. We would expect the wealthy boss to be livid that this manager, this employee, just wiped off 20-50% of the debt owed him. So why would the wealthy man commend his manager, fired for being unfaithful in his responsibilities, for also cooking the books to gain the favor of those who owed his boss various debts?
There are several options here that the commentaries on this parable put forward, none of them that great. The most plausible explanation is that the wealthy man himself was dishonest in his business dealings, and he had been outfoxed, outdone by his manager, and the dishonestly shrewd rich man is complimenting his similarly dishonestly shrewd about-to-be-former manager. That seems most plausible to me. Strange for a parable, but still most plausible.
Whatever it was, presumably it made sense at the time to Jesus’ listeners when he spoke it and to the Gospel author who included it here. It may simply be that it made sense to people living at that time but its meaning has been lost to us, separated by time and space to that world and that culture.
Whatever the case, whatever the meaning, we are left with this that we can work with: Use this filthy lucre, this dishonest wealth, this dirty money, in the here and now, because you can’t take it with you.
Which is also problematic. It seems somewhat out of place for Jesus to teach that we should use money to make friends, when so many other teachings from this very Gospel tell us to use our wealth to serve the needs of those around us, and to feed the poor, the hungry, and the destitute and not only our friends. Case in point from another parable that we heard recently: Do not throw luncheons for your wealthy friends or neighbors, but invite the poor and the destitute who cannot repay you, for your reward will be great in heaven. This teaching, to use your money to make friends, seems so distant from all the other placesJesus encouraged us to be charitable to others around us.
So I buy it, that this is one of the hardest parables of Jesus to understand. What is one to take away from it, or what is the desired outcome? It’s a puzzle, and a confusing one at that.
The best I can do with it is to salvage what we are given at the end: Whoever is faithful with a little will be faithful with much, and whoever is dishonest in a little will also be dishonest in much.
Here, I want to to return to the Oikonomos, the steward, and to do so in the context of our Stewardship campaign this fall. Because those ideas are related theologically.
In this story, the manager was hired as a steward. He was entrusted with things that were not his own to possess, and was expected to use them faithfully to grow his employer’s wealth. He was responsible for things that were entrusted to him.
In many ways, you and I also stand in that role, as stewards for God. The things that we have, we have because God has entrusted them to us. The breath in our lungs was given to us from God. This planet we inhabit was given to us from God. Our selves, our abilities, our capabilities, all come to us from God. The biblical authors make a great deal out of this, that the world and all that is in it is God’s, and we as humans have been given these things to watch over and to be responsible for, though God still is the one who possesses these things.
Psalm 50 reads, I have no need of a bull from your stall or of goats from your pens, for every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills. I know every bird in the mountains, and the insects in the fields are mine. If I were hungry I would not tell you, for the world is mine, and all that is in it.
All the world, and all that is in it belongs to God. The cattle on a thousand hills and all the birds and insects with them. All of it is God’s, and we have been entrusted with the care of it.
This then feeds into the idea in the Hebrew Scriptures of tithing. All that we have comes from God, and we are asked to return a portion of it back to God as an act of faithfulness. We received from God, and we are giving part of it back to show our recognition that these things have come to us from God. Not all is given back, because we need that portion to live, but 10% is contributed as an act of faithfulness, recognizing that these things have been given to us from God and we have been entrusted with it, and releasing the tithe back to God shows that we understand this. And as a brief aside, I think that if it’s in our capability, to be so charitable, or even more so, is a great goal to strive toward.
We ourselves are stewards of what we have in life. We are the oikonomos-es of God’s household, the managers, the stewards, and what we have is not our own, but belongs to God. All these things have been entrusted to our care.
So what do we do with the wealth that we acquire in the management of God’s household? Consistently throughout the New Testament, in the teaching of Jesus, the teachings of those who followed after him, and the example of the actions of the Christian community from the later New Testament, we are to use our wealth to do two things – to meet our own needs, and to help meet the needs of others who cannot do so on their own.
The early Christian community in Jerusalem pooled their resources together to care for all, so that no one would go without, but that the needs of all would be met. Later Christian communities throughout the Roman Empire would take up a collection from the wealthier ones to share with the poorer ones, to meet the needs of all so that no one would have abundance while others were in poverty.. And sometimes it flip-flopped, in that those who had previously been the donors found themselves as the recipients of charity as circumstances and fortunes changed.
This is how the early Christians treated wealth – as something to be used to help others in need.
Now let’s bring it home to St. Bede’s in this season of Stewardship. I look at this place, these buildings, these grounds, even at the money in our operating account and in our endowments, as something entrusted to us. This is our church, but so much of what we see around us and what we possess, we have because of those who went before us. Not many here were here when this building was put up. And even if we were, even if we contributed to these things, and even if we are contributing today for their upkeep, it has been a collective project to make this place possible – a place to worship, to learn, to be transformed, and to serve. There’s been a whole community of people for decades who have made this place what it is and given us what we have. And these things not only benefit us, but they benefit others as well. We are stewards of these things, things that have been entrusted to us, for our benefit and for the benefit of many others.
Being part of St. Bede’s and part of this community is to be a steward of the things which God has entrusted us. My time is short, so let me say this – may we be good stewards of what God has given us, and may this place be a blessing to us so that we may be a blessing to others in return. And may we all be joyful in the many ways that we support the work and mission of God’s church.
May we: be grateful, be generous, and be blessed so that we may be a blessing.
Proper 21C – 9/28/25
Present and describe my cassock:
Fine things can be so wonderful, can’t they? They look great, feel amazing, and sometimes, depending on the item, you can see people checking them out when you wear them, go out in public with them, or invite them over. Not a cassock, that’s such a niche thing unless you’re clergy yourself no one will notice, but a nice suit, jewelry, a fancy car, artwork, a home… the list is endless!
I can be a sucker for that. If I could, I’d get myself a bespoke suit. All black, befitting of a priest, but it would have such touches as working buttons and full canvas all around. If I could I would sport a nice watch – probably not a Rolex, but an Omega or a Patek Philippe. I’d drive an Audi R8, V10 with a Lamborghini Huracan engine, which it’s too bad they stopped making them, because they are sleek and beautiful. For a house, it would be contemporary styled, two storeys, with 10 foot ceilings, two car garage, a closed kitchen, be state-of-the-art in energy efficiency and fully electrified, on a hill with a view down toward the Bay.
I can be a sucker for nice things.
But is that compatible with the call of Christ? Is enjoying nice things in line with the message of the Gospel and the writings of the early Christians?
Jesus gives us a parable about a guy who was being tormented in the afterlife with no reason given other than that we lived large with his wealth but was not generous to the poor man at his gate. We’re not given the impetus in our reading today, but here it is from a few verses earlier: The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard [the parable of the dishonest manager], and they ridiculed him. So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts, for what is prized by humans is an abomination in the sight of God.”
That is quite the sentiment to wrestle with. What we value so much is actually detestable to God. How we see the world and what we value, we need to remember that this is not always the way that God sees the world. The things that we care about are not always the things that God cares about. And occasionally the things that we care about may be exactly the opposite of the will of God in the world that we pray about in the Lord’s prayer.
And it’s not that Jesus or the authors of Scripture condemn wealth or the accumulation of it. Even in our reading from the first letter to Timothy, the author doesn’t condemn the rich for being rich. Being rich in and of itself is not condemned in our readings, either in the Gospel or in the Epistle. But in the Epistle the author does tell Timothy to command that that they are to be generous and ready to share, to be just as rich in good works as they are in money, because with wealth come all kinds of desires that pull us away from the love of God. Not to encourage, but to command them to do so. It’s not an option.
That right there is the crux of the matter – we as the people of God are called to be generous, that those who have would be eager to share with those who do not. We’re not called to be poor, but we’re called to share what we have – to be generous and ready to give when opportunity arises. Take the parable that Jesus shares, that one feasting while another is starving is a travesty. It’s no wonder Jesus would say that the things which we so often prize are actually an abomination to God. One person is has an overabundance while another doesn’t have enough.
To share with those in need is the way of the Christian community. To be concerned about the well-being of others is the way of the Christian community.
I saw a post on Facebook this week that said if you’re living at the poverty line you’re wealthier than 80% of people in the world, so congratulations! That coming from a person I know from church growing up. And what a take! Congratulations if you’re living in poverty, because somehow that makes you wealthy on a global scale!
There was no context to the post, so the purpose in writing was unclear. In the end I chose not to ask, but I wanted to, to ask what the intent was of saying such a thing? Was it, as I suspect, to say that assistance programs for the poor should be curtailed? That’s my guess, that his point was that people living in poverty don’t have it that bad and it is wasteful to give them aid.
How incredible is that, coming from the mind of a Christian. Someone who followed Jesus, who taught compassion for the poor, to write such a thing. How that lies in contrast to the message of the authors of the New Testament, who commanded that we should be generous, ready to give, and that we should care about the plight of those in need; that we should care about the well-being of others, and be quick to help when the need arises.
Altruism, giving, and generosity, are all built into who we are and what we do. From the very beginning, and throughout its history, the Church has been a collective of people who both gathered together for worship and sought to attend to the needs of others. Immediately following Pentecost and the giving of the Spirit, the Church quickly organized into a community where the needs of the poor and the hungry were addressed by the whole community. People would even sell land and possessions they owned to give the proceeds to help the poor, all because they wanted to follow the example and teaching that was given to them by Christ, who taught his disciples to love the Lord their God with all their heart, and to love their neighbors as themselves.
This is the Church, the worshiping community of Christ, at her best. It’s been true in the past, and continues to be true to this day.
And that’s why I believe the Church is a special thing. It’s a place to come together to worship God, to grow in godliness and righteousness, and to work together to address the needs of those around us. And it’s worth supporting through our time, talents, and treasure.
So, in this time of stewardship and planning for the next year here at St. Bede’s, may I extend to you the exhortation – nay the command – to be ready to give, and to give generously according to your means, so that we as disciples of Christ can continue to be a parish that gathers together to worship, and goes out to the world to share the love of God in thought, word, and deed.
Two things to wrap this up with: First, is it wrong to have nice things? No, these things are given for our enjoyment, according to the Christian Scriptures. But according to that same book it is wrong that one should live in luxury while another lives in poverty. And I’ll be the first to admit that I struggle with this. To me, it’s a goal we should strive toward, to turn our hearts away from solely focusing on our own desires while forgetting or ignoring the needs of others.
And about Jeremiah – the prophet Jeremiah bought the field as an example to the people about his prophecy that God would send the people into exile in Babylon, but that God was going to bring them back, and so buying the field was a display of confidence that he or his descendants would come back to possess the field after the exile was over in about 70 years or so.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we…
Proper 22C – 10/5/2025
The point that Jesus makes to his listeners in the teaching he gives to his disciples in the 17th chapter of Luke’s Gospel is that we, as children of God, should do what we do, as children of God, because it is the right thing to do, and it is expected of us. It’s not going above and beyond to do the work of god, nor should it be extraordinary. Rather, it’s the bare minimum.
And on the one hand, that makes sense. It’s what we are supposed to do. It’s our job description as followers of Christ to live this way. It’s not special or amazing or extraordinary–on the one hand–it’s what we’re supposed to do. Just as a person’s servant is supposed to work the field, and then is supposed to serve the table, we are supposed to be loving, compassionate, and kind, and so forth. As Jesus says, it’s what we’ve been ordered to do. It’s expected of us. It’s not above and beyond–it’s precisely what we are supposed to do. It’s in the job description.
But on the other hand, it seems a bit… harsh. To be, metaphorically, slaves of God who receive no reward for doing what is right and good, but after working the field then have to come and serve the table. And even more so, when we have done all of this and we are standing before our Lord, to say “We are worthless slaves: We have only done what we were expected to do.” That comes across as a bit heartless, and contradictory to other places where we hear Jesus say things like “Well done, good and faithful servant” to those who were faithful and productive with their master’s wealth that had been entrusted to them (ala Matthew 25).
To have slaves at all seems out of place, especially as casually as Jesus presents here. He says it as an almost foregone conclusion that those to whom he is speaking, who the author of the book describes as “the apostles,” that they have slaves. It’s assumed that they do, as Jesus casually introduces it to them: “Who among you would say to your slave…” Which presents a whole new batch of problems related to the ills and injustices of slavery in general.
The Greek word that Luke uses here is doulos, which translates to servant or slave in English. It’s used literally of those who are bound in servitude to another person, and metaphorically for Christians in relation to God. Literally used, we see examples such as our passage here, or in the book Philemon, whose slave Onesimus ran away and met up with St. Paul, who sent him back to his master. Of this Paul writes, that Onesimus is no longer only a slave, but is now also a brother in Christ. And metaphorically, Paul writes to the church in Rome, introducing himself as a slave of God–paulos, doulos tou theou.
In all this, we find that the New Testament is not shy about slavery, and though it doesn’t explicitly condone it, it also doesn’t condemn it, nor does it hide from it. It’s a fairly neutral thing, mostly silent on the matter in the New Testament, treated as a non-issue, and not presented as contradictory with the values of walking in the way of Jesus.
Which is crazy problematic for us. Who among us would say that slavery isn’t evil? That it isn’t cruel? That it isn’t unjust? And here we have our holy books that talk about it as though it’s perfectly normal and fine, and even that we are to think of the dynamic between us and the the divine as similar to being in a slave-master relationship!
I would imagine that we generally would like to believe that what is in the Bible would be fairly progressive compared to the surrounding cultures–the Egyptians, the Canaanites, the Babylonians and Assyrians, and the Romans–and that the values espoused in the Scriptures are a light in the darkness. We see that it’s sometimes true, but frequently enough there is much left to be desired.
It’s problematic, for sure.
So perhaps it’s worth coming back to my initial thought: The point that Jesus makes to his listeners in the teaching he gives to his disciples in this chapter of Luke’s Gospel is that we, as children of God, should do what we do, as children of God, because it is the right thing to do, and it is expected of us. It’s not going above and beyond to be loving, compassionate, and kind, and so forth–it’s the bare minimum.
It’s a message that should be familiar, as it’s almost identical to what we heard last week–that we have a duty to be concerned about those around us. But now, it’s expanded. It’s about how we conduct ourselves in all that we do. What’s prompted this teaching, and the initial call from the disciples to Jesus to increase their faith, was Jesus’ teaching that we are to forgive those who harm us, even if they do so repeatedly and come back repeatedly seeking forgiveness.
And so we find, once again, that there is something expected of us and the way that we conduct ourselves among those around us–our neighbors as they are referred to in the Gospels. That we are to be compassionate, considerate, loving, and kind. That when we see someone in need, we are to help them, doing such things as feeding the hungry, giving water to the thirsty, clothing the naked, welcoming the foreigner, caring for the sick, and visiting the imprisoned and oppressed.
And not only the words of Christ, but our own Baptismal Covenant reflects this, where we commit to seeking and serving Christ in all persons, and striving for justice and peace among all people. Our faith is not simply lived in the interior of our hearts, but also by our hands and our feet, and our mouths. And that is one of the most amazing and wonderful things to me about our faith–that God cares not only for our worship and our attention and recognition in our lives, but also for how we treat one another. God cares not only about our relationship together, but also our relationships with the people around us, and that is the most astounding thing to me!
That’s why being part of a community like St. Bede’s is so valuable to me. It’s a place not only to worship and to grow in faithfulness and holiness, but also to be among others who support one another and seek how we all can help others in need. This is what it means to be the Body of Christ, the Church, and to be a member of this parish. And hopefully to do it all with great joy, knowing that this is what is pleasing not only to us but also to our God, who has called us not to be slaves of one another, but to be servants – and even moreso, to be friends – of the most high God.
Proper 23C – 10/12/2025
In the days of Jesus’ life and ministry,being diagnosed with leprosy was a terrible thing. Now, there are any number of skin diseases that would have fallen under the category of leprosy as it was known at the time. Medical knowledge was not terribly advanced at the time, so leprosy was the catch-all category for contagious skin diseases.
It was a serious condition. There was no cure, it would have had to heal up on its own, and there are a great many directions given in the Old Testament book of Leviticus of how to deal with it, 2 whole chapters work of instructions. And in it, there are very detailed directions on how the person suspected to have leprosy is to go to the priest who will examine the person over several days and determine if it is indeed leprosy, if it is continuing to spread, and how to respond if its growing and spreading on your body.
If a person indeed had leprosy, or the other skin diseases associated with it, the implications meant that one had to quarantine themselves from others to prevent the spread of contagious diseases, for which there were no cures, and they had to mark themselves and conduct themselves to make it obvious to others and to strangers that they were infected and quarantined.
Here’s what quarantining oneself according to Jewish law meant: the infected person is to tear their clothing, let their hair grow wild, move outside the camp or village, and whenever someone comes near they are to cover their face with their hands and to yell “Unclean!” It would be the equivalent of yelling “Sick.” “Infected.” “Diseased”. A generous take is that they were providing for the well-being of the community by not exposing others to disease. A difficult take is that they were forced to engage in the making of their own misery being separated from their family, friends, and the community.
Leprosy was an isolating disease. No one would touch you nor come near to you so that they would not contract the disease. You only had others who had been diagnosed with the same condition to associate with. You couldn’t be around friends or family, couldn’t work, couldn’t participate in religious life of the community. Your survival depended on the mercy and compassion of others who were healthy but were limited in their ability to come into contact with you. You were an outsider.
This was the life of the 10 men who met Jesus that day. Sick, friendless, and needy, just as we pray in form 6 of the prayers of the people.
When Jesus comes near to them, there they are, on the outskirts of the city, with only each other for companionship. They approach Jesus, but they keep their distance. They know full well that they are not to come near anyone, including him. But this time, instead of covering their faces and yelling “unclean,” they yelled out something far different:
“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”
And mercy they receive when Jesus simply tells them to show themselves to the priest, the one who would be able to declare that they were clean and permitted to return to a normal life. And as they go, they are healed along the way. Not before they go, but as they are going. They go in faith that they will be well when they get there.
And as we heard in the reading of the Gospel, the one, a Samaritan, turns back to praise God and give thanks to Jesus, and to him Jesus says, “Get up and go your way; your faith has made you well.”
He says more to be sure, making a point that the only one who returned to thank Jesus was a Samaritan, but that is further than the scope of what I would like to focus on. What I think is important for our purposes this morning is from what Jesus says at the end: Your faith has made you well.
The Greek word used here by Luke is the word σῴζω. It is the word for “saved,” as in Acts when St Peter tells the crowd at Pentecost, that everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. And when Jesus said to the man healed of his leprosy, your faith has saved you, he uses that word. Σῴζω can mean to be made physically healthy again as with the lepers, and to be at peace with God as in Peter’s words in Acts.
Essentially, it means to be made whole, which is the preference of the King James to translate the word σῴζω as “saved” when used to talk about the work of God in redemption, our eternal salvation, and to translate it as “whole” in reference to healings. The woman who reached out to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment as he passed said, “If I may but touch his clothes, I will be made whole.” Bartimaeus, the blind begger, received his sight and was made whole. The man, whose withered hand Jesus healed on the Sabbath, was made whole that morning.
And the leper, who was healed and could at last return to a normal life, was made whole again.
That’s the part that we overlook in the reading. Yeah, he was healed, but he was also able to leave quarantine, to stop yelling “unclean, infected,” and to hug and to hold his family and friends again. He could return to a normal life, no longer an outcast, but someone fully welcome into the community. He was made whole.
I think God does a lot of making whole again for us, in all the many ways that we need to be made whole again.
To read the Scriptures this way goes beyond what we normally think about the healings in Scripture. We normally think in very basic terms–the person was sick, and they are not sick any longer. Praise the Lord! But considering that many of the diseases that people were healed from had significant social consequences for them, it is not a far stretch to see that God is doing much more for people like this man healed from leprosy than simply curing the disease. He and the other 9 men can return to their families. They can live in the same house as their parents or their wives and their children. They can go to synagogue again, and to engage in the religious and social life of the village or town.
There is a lot more that is healed than simply the disease when God makes them well.
Coming to this realization for me was a mind-blowing experience. There are many people who read this Gospel and think of it this way: That God healed the sick man because it shows Jesus’ glory to the world, and more people will believe in Jesus because of it. I was one of those people a long time ago. But if healing for that person was more than being not sick, but also the chance to have a normal and happy life, maybe God cares about more than just the disease. I know, it sounds basic–I was not as advanced in my thinking as all you Episcopalians are–but this realization meant that God must care for the well-being of every part, of me. That God wants me to find happiness in life. That God wants me to find healing of my spirit, of my soul, in this life. And if so, how much more incredible is the love of God toward us?
That God cares for every part of us, and wants every part of us to be healed, restored, and to be made whole. For us as individuals, and of the world around us. That our bodies would be made whole again. That our inner selves and our innate human needs would be made whole. That our families would be made whole. That our communities would be made whole again. That all that we are and experience and touch would be made whole again.
God is in the business of saving, so may we be a part of that work ourselves.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we:
Proper 25C – 10/23/2025
Y’alls know that that I went to Bible College, and should I be one to point out that the experience was a bit different than for those who go to college at a place like, say, Stanford. The things that we did for fun, the things we couldn’t do for fun, our priorities, values, the things that we found important, how we interacted with each other, all vastly different than if I had gone someplace more normal.
For example, when I was a student in college, at a Christian school full of people eager to train for ministry, I noticed a strange phenomenon at work among the students there, myself included – no one ever wanted to look less than perfect, no one wanted their “sins” to be known, the growing edges of their character to be seen. Just about everyone wanted others to think they were flawless individuals, all the time. Never getting too angry, never doing wrong, never letting loose, never slipping into “sins”–at least not the big ones–and being just the kind of person that would be fit to lead a church or be a missionary and to carry the Gospel of Christ to the masses.
You know, normal college stuff.
There were some, though, that didn’t do so, that didn’t want to play the game the rest of us were playing. To the rest of us, they were seen as outcasts, or misfits, but even worse than that really, because to us they weren’t taking seriously the call the rest of us felt from God on our lives, because the vast majority of us were trying to be as wonderful and impeccable in character as possible. Sure, maybe their antics were amusing at times, annoying at others, but how could they possibly be serious about serving God and act the way that they did? In my estimation at the time, they would have to do a lot of growing up if they were ever going to make it in ministry, if they even intended to do such a thing. For those that I knew did not intend to go into the ministry, I wondered why they were wasting their time in college for nothing.
It’s ironic to remember that in light of today’s Gospel reading, where Jesus sets up a parable comparing the self-righteous attitude of the Pharisee and the self-deprecating posture of the tax collector.
I’m not sure when I noticed it, but it started with realizing the tremendous pressure that came with maintaining the appearance of being perfect, when I knew that I was painfully imperfect. In fact, the more I found myself trying to keep up the facade, the more painful it was to feel the distance between how I was trying to appear and how I felt inside. It’s a frightening thing to be afraid of being found out for your failings and shortcomings. But that’s where I found myself, part of the game and trying to hide in fear of being found out for who I truly am.
That was the turning point for me, recognizing that I was being like the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable Jesus told his listeners to warn them about being too confident in themselves, and that I needed to be more like the tax collector.
And lest the point of the parable be missed on us, for Jesus listeners, to be a Pharisee meant to be part of society’s elite that were upholding truth and religion in ways that others were failing at, including the priests and temple rulers themselves. We hear the word Pharisee and think that the person must have been awful, because that’s how we typically are taught to think about them and those who belonged to their group, but that wasn’t the case for Jesus’ listeners. They were often seen as pillars of society, they were the ones who were doing it right, and doing it better than the average, ordinary person could. They were generally well-regarded and looked up to for a model of how to live. And in Jesus’ parable, the Pharisee goes above and beyond what was expected of the faithful. He fasted more often and tithed more than he was required by law. He would have every right to think he would find favor with God for all he was doing.
To be a tax collector meant to be a traitor to one’s country – to God’s chosen people – to be unscrupulous, and morally corrupt. They had sold their souls to serve Rome, the pagan occupiers, so that they could get rich off the backs of their hardworking fellow Jews, serving Caesar and serving their own greedy desires. They got there by a practice called “tax-farming.” Under this system, the man would bid in an auction of how much taxes would be paid to Rome, the winner being the one who bid the highest amount. When he won the bid he paid the sum himself, and then went out to make back the money he paid to Rome plus whatever he wanted to line his own pockets. He was the ultimate at being complicit with the very system of government that was oppressing the Jews.
And yet, in an unexpected twist in the plot, it is the tax collector whose prayers were heard, who was approved by God, who was doing it right, because it was the tax collector who depended on God’s mercy above all else, whereas the Pharisee in the parable didn’t need it, didn’t pray as though he need God’s mercy because of how satisfied he was in himself and his impeccable character.
This is a theme that gets repeated in the Scriptures, that it’s not who you are or even what you do that matters most, but it is our dependence on the loving-kindness of God toward us that matters above all. When the people who had left slavery in Egypt and wandered in the wilderness were on the cusp of entering the Promised Land, they were reminded that it was not because they were a great and powerful nation that God chose them to be his people, but because God loved them and was keeping the promise made to Abraham. Moses himself was a murderer and afraid to stand before Pharaoh, but he was also God’s chosen instrument to deliver the people from slavery in Egypt. The Apostle Paul was a persecutor of the Church, who also became one of its greatest missionaries. And Saint Peter, the wildly impetuous young man and frequent subject of Jesus’ correction, was given the keys to the Kingdom.
Among all of these examples, there is one quality that binds them all together, and that is faithfulness. Abraham, the father of the nation of Israel, was praised for his faithfulness. And Moses, Paul, and Peter, and many before and after them, were praised for their faith. All who, just like the tax collector, knew that they depended on God’s loving-kindness and mercy to save them, in this life and in the next, and not on their own power or strength.
That is the crux of the matter, and the lesson for us to learn from the Gospel. To remember that it’s not who we are before God that matters or what we do, but that we are loved by a God abundant in grace and mercy. That God doesn’t want us to be perfect, but to be faithful. And that we therefore don’t need to bring anything before God but ourselves.
Next week is All Saints Sunday. As such, it is one of the days that the Prayer Book suggests is most appropriate for baptism. And today’s parable has me thinking about that, because baptism is a great example of how all these themes from the Gospel reading come together–that we all come to the same waters of baptism by faith, not because of anything we do or have done, or who we are. This act of faith of coming forward for baptism is followed by the pouring out of God’s mercy, that just as the tax collector in the temple, we ourselves now come before our God saying, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And without fail, God shows each and every one of us mercy, and we all walk out justified before God, because all who exalt themselves will be humbled, and all who humble themselves will be exalted.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we…
Easter Sunday – 4/20/2025:
“May I speak and may we all listen in the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit”
A blessed Easter to you all! And what a blessing it is for me to be here with you today! This is a day to celebrate, to feel hope after fear and grief, and to see joy where there was despair.
For Christians everywhere, that Easter morning when Christ rose from the dead marks the initiation of the promised salvation and reconciliation between humanity and the Divine. It is the day when God showed powerfully that death had no power over his Beloved Son, Jesus the Messiah, and through his new life has brought hope and joy and light to the world.
I absolutely love that the account of the Resurrection of Jesus in the Fourth Gospel focuses on Mary Magdelene and her journey from fear and confusion and desperation to joy. Instead of following Peter or John, who were there at the empty tomb with her, the emphasis is on Mary, and on the words she spoke to those around her that day.
And to explore that more fully, let’s look at what it is she said that blessed morning.
We begin with her going to the tomb, which we learn from the other Gospels was done so that she could care for the body which wasn’t able to be performed prior to the weekend’s Passover activities. Had she done so, she would have been ritually unclean and unable to partake in the Passover, the celebration and remembrance of God’s deliverance for the people of Israel from their bondage in Egypt.
When Mary comes to the grave, she discovers that it is empty, so she returns to the disciples in despair and tells them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.”
The fear and confusion in her voice is palpable as she tells the disciples that Jesus’ body is gone. Just gone. And there’s no reason why this should be so. It’s just… not there. Someone must have come and taken Jesus’ body away, but who knows who would have done such a thing, and why they would have done it.
Put yourself in her shoes. Imagine yourself going to visit the gravesite of someone you’ve lost, and to find the grave wide open and there’s no body there, and no one to turn to for answers.
Jesus’ death was already controversial enough, and cause enough for the disciples to be afraid for their own safety. Their teacher, their rabbi, was conspired against by the Jewish leaders, condemned to death by the Roman rulers, and executed as a traitor to the Roman empire and the people of Israel. Peter’s disavowal of any connection with Jesus during the trial before the Sanhedrin, and the scattering of the disciples who abandoned Jesus during his execution, reveals the fear they had as all this was happening, that they could be next. So they took to seclusion together to hide from the outside world. And now the body has been taken. Why could this be?
When Mary returns to the tomb with Peter and John, the two men look into the tomb and see the linen wrappings, neatly folded on the stone. Confounded by this, they left and returned home. But Mary stayed there, weeping. And even when the angels appear before her inside the tomb and ask her why she is weeping, to them she again says, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.”
Two angels appear to Mary, and she doesn’t react. She’s not moved by them, not in awe, not afraid as others had been when angels appeared to them. Jesus’ body is gone, and it’s tragic.
She then turns around, and seeing someone she thinks to be the caretaker for the garden, says to him, “If you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” She just wants to get the body of the man whom she cared so deeply for, and who showed such love to her and to others. She just wants to care for the dead man’s body according to Jewish custom, and to honor the man in his death.
But then, Jesus calls to her, speaks her name: “Mary.”
And all of a sudden, hope and joy have sprung up! Not only has she found the body of her Teacher, but he is alive, standing before her and talking to her!
“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?”
And after speaking with Jesus, Mary races to find the others and says to them, “ I have seen the Lord!”
“I have seen the Lord”
“I have seen the Lord!”
It’s simple. It’s profound. It’s beautiful.
I have seen the Lord!
Hope springs forth. Joy explodes. Life abundant has come for us.
Now, how are we to understand the resurrection of Jesus and its meaning for our own day?
In the years since the the story of Jesus resurrection first started emanating from the Christian community, what we’ve come to find is that the resurrection is not merely an event we believe in, but a transformational reality in which we live in, in the midst of a broken world, and in which we cling to the radical idea of hope in the face of a world that can feel beyond saving.
Life didn’t only appear after death that one time, but it does every day, in countless different ways. Hope didn’t only displace despair once, but it does so regularly, repeatedly.
That is the Gospel reality that we face each day – that there is still hope in the darkness. Life may yet come out of death. That no matter how bleak the situation may be, we can still have hope, because we have faith in a God who deals in the impossible. Because there is a God who has done the impossible.
The resurrection wasn’t a one-time event, and it’s not merely something that we hope to experience ourselves at the end of this mortal life.
Resurrection is something that we can experience for each day, for us ourselves and for the world that we inhabit. It is the transformation from death to life, from brokenness to healing, and from bondage to freedom.
From the impossible to reality.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we be so filled with the joy of resurrection today that our hearts and our voices cry out, “I have seen the Lord.” May we find hope and joy and peace and redemption arise out of the ashes of a broken world through the power that brought life back to the dead man. And may we, like Mary, come to believe in a God that deals in the impossible.
Now unto God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit be all dominion, glory and power. Amen.
Easter 4C – 5/11/2025
One of the goals, I presume, for anyone in the position of preaching from the Lectionary, as we do in the Episcopal Church, is to tie together the various readings that we have for any given Sunday in their sermon. In our lectionary, that three year cycle of prescribed readings for each Sunday of the year, it used to be the case that the four readings were thematically tied together. The Old Testament reading, the psalm, the New Testament Epistle, and the Gospel reading were chosen to go together, typically to support the Gospel readings which were selected to be more or less chronological. We would hear the story of Jesus play out, and we would get supporting texts from the other readings of the day.
That all changed in 2006 when we got a new lectionary, the Revised Common Lectionary, and for much of the year the readings have been altered to be chronological, more or less, so the readings may be only incidentally related on any given Sunday. Tall order indeed to draw the texts together–except for days like today, which is the fourth Sunday after Easter, colloquially known as Good Shepherd Sunday!
But, lest we make it too easy on ourselves, it is also the second Sunday in May, which makes today Mother’s Day. So therein lies the challenge–to connect Good Shepherd Sunday to Mother’s Day.
Let’s start with Good Shepherd Sunday. The analogy of Jesus as the Good Shepherd is one that we see made in Scripture on a few occasions in the life of Christ. In the words of Jesus to his disciples and his listeners, he portrays himself as the Good Shepherd, the one who cares for the sheep, and who lays down his life for the sheep – the sheep being those who are faithful to God and to his teachings. He is the shepherd, we are the sheep.
This image of the Good Shepherd is in contrast to the hired hands, paid to watch over the flock, who watch over the sheep, but who flee when danger approaches. Their concern is not the safety and well-being of the sheep, it’s for their pay, and they won’t risk their lives for the sheep. The Good Shepherd, on the other hand, stays, does not flee at the sight of danger, but even lays down his life for the sheep, because the Good Shepherd loves the sheep, cares for the sheep, provides for the sheep, and protects the sheep.
That is the kind of love that we have in Jesus, that he would willingly go so far as to even die if that meant saving us from death. It’s very Easter-ish, right? Appropriate that we have Good Shepherd Sunday on the Fourth Sunday of Easter. And that is the particular message that we get from our Gospel reading this morning – “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish,” said Jesus to his challengers in the Temple.
And, as to images of the Good Shepherd, one of the oldest paintings we have of Jesus, dated to the mid 3rd century, in the catacombs of St. Callixtus located in Rome, is of a young, beardless, dark-skinned Jesus, carrying a lamb over his shoulders and leading two others with a pail of water. Depictions of Jesus as a shepherd were, apparently, relatively common at this point. Jesus as the Great Shepherd meant a great deal to them.
And while that analogy, the shepherd, is a bit foreign to us and our non-agrarian lifestyles here in the modern-day United States, it would have been a familiar trope for Jesus’ listeners. Keeping animals was an important part of the lifestyle and economies of the small towns and villages that dotted the ancient near east. Two examples that immediately come to mind for me go back in the biblical narrative, first to the birth of Christ, whose birth was announced to the shepherds who were watching over their flocks in the fields near Bethlehem. It was to them that the angels first announced Jesus’ birth, and they were the first to attend to him, long before the Magi from the East arrived. The shepherds were the privileged ones to be able to go and see the Christ child that day.
So we have this great analogy of Jesus, the Great Shepherd, who cares for the sheep. And in our reading from John’s Gospel this morning, we see an important point drawn: My sheep know me, they listen to my voice, they follow me, and I will give them eternal life. Like the disciple who had died and rose to new life again when he name was called, to be a part of Jesus’ flock means to know Christ, to listen to Christ’s voice, to follow Christ, and in doing so becoming the recipients of eternal life. “Tabatha, get up,” and the dead rise to new life again.
That is the picture that we have in the reading from the Revelation according to John. In this vision, the author writes that he looked up and saw a multitude of people, from every tribe, tongue, and nation, standing before the throne, and praising the paschal Lamb who had been slain, the Lamb who has become their shepherd, and who will guide them to Drink of the water of life. “for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.”
And here is where we make our connection to Mother’s Day.
Mother’s Day has its roots in the late 1800’s in this country, when a woman from Virginia named Ann Jarvis made it her mission to care for those who had been wounded in the Civil War, regardless of what side they fought for. She encouraged her band of work clubs to care for these wounded from the battles, and this work here led her, her daughter Anna, and others to call for for a national holiday called Mother’s Day–a day to call for the women of the world to get involved in national politics and to use their voices to create a better world for everyone. They called for a world without war, where disputes were settled peacefully, and believed that women were especially suited to do this work because, in her estimation, the process of giving birth and nurturing, and raising children made women much more reticent to send their children off to kill the children of other women.
After all, we are all part of the family of God, and will join with others who come from all tribes, all nations, and all languages of the world, standing around the throne of God, praising the Lamb who has become their Shepherd to lead them to calm waters. Globally, we are all part of the same family of God, made in the same image of God, and will join together in the next life to love and serve the one God.
This, then, ought to have implications for this life, and how we relate with one another, regardless of tribe, nation, or tongue. That in this life we as followers of Christ, the great shepherd of the sheep, pursue love, peace, and justice in all our dealings with one another.
Now, I will wrap up with the “Appeal to womanhood throughout the world” (later known as “Mothers’ Day Proclamation”) by Julia Ward Howe, a message given in 1870, on the heels of the conclusion of the American Civil War, which demonstrates the spirit of the origins of Mother’s Day:
“Again, in the sight of the Christian world, have the skill and power of two great nations exhausted themselves in mutual murder. Again have the sacred questions of international justice been committed to the fatal mediation of military weapons. In this day of progress, in this century of light, the ambition of rulers has been allowed to barter the dear interests of domestic life for the bloody exchanges of the battle field. Thus men have done. Thus men will do. But women need no longer be made a party to proceedings which fill the globe with grief and horror. Despite the assumptions of physical force, the mother has a sacred and commanding word to say to the sons who owe their life to her suffering. That word should now be heard, and answered to as never before.
“Arise, then, Christian women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts, Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears! Say firmly: We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country, to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: Disarm, disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of council.”
I conclude with this: If you wish to truly honor your mother today, and to honor all mothers of the world, let today be more than a day to thank her for her suffering and sacrifices made on your behalf. Do that, without a doubt, but also let today be a day to reflect on what it is that we have to learn from them–that charity, mercy, and patience are virtues that have true power to change the world, just as these are virtues taught to us by Christ Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep. And let our lives, in ever-increasing measure, be characterized not by division, anger, or violence, but rather by a desire for love, peace, and justice, just as Christ loved us and showed us a better way.
Easter 5C – 5/18/2025
Song: “we are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, and we pray that all unity will one day be restored we will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand, and together we’ll spread the news that God is in our land. we will work with each other, we will work side by side, and we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride. All praise to the Father, from whom all things come, and all praise to Christ Jesus, who is God’s only Son, and all praise to the Spirit, who makes us one, And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.”
High school/Moody friends “they’ll know we are Christians by our t-shirts”
Eusebius of Caesarea wrote about the outbreak of disease in 311 and 312 in the eastern Roman Empire. He wrote that is was the Christians who gave practical evidence of their sympathy and humanity. Countless people were sick and dying and had no one to look after them, but the Christians took care of all of them, regardless of who they were. Not only to their own families, but they cared for everyone. Not for fellow Christians alone, but they cared for everyone. Even the pagans around them, acknowledged that there was something unique about the care that they gave to all people, regardless of who they were.
Julius, the last Pagan emperor, later tried to engage in a major act of organized charity by the Roman empire, giving the reasoning that “it is disgraceful that no Jew ever has to beg, and the impious Galileans [Christians] not only support their own poor but ours as well, yet all men see that our people receive no aid from us.” He adds that he does not want to continue to see Christians “outdoing us in good works.”? It was the opinion of the emperor that reversing the rise of Christianity could only be done if their works of compassion and charity could be matched or surpassed.”
Is this what Christian today are known for? Works of compassion? Are we known for our love?
My friends in Christ, I assure you that when others around us think about Christians, we are not known for our love.
Catholics: sexual abuse scandals.
Evangelicals: judgmental, compromising their principles for political power.
Episcopalians: who?
What to do: it’s a lost cause, we’re too fractured by denominations. We’re not all going to work together to fix the Catholic church’s image on sexual abuse.
Instead, I think we should be much more organic.
Rather, the solution is that WE need to be loving. You, need to be known by others as being a loving person. I need to be known as a loving person. And maybe, God-willing, the people of St Bede’s can become to be known as loving people.
Have you heard of St Bede’s, on the corner of Monte Rosa and Sand Hill? I don’t know what it is, but I just feel so LOVED when I go there.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we be a people that loves one another, with the same love shown to us in Jesus. May we be known for our love that we show to one another and to everyone we meet. And may we all be filled in our hearts and minds with the love shown to us in Christ Jesus.
Easter 7C – 6/1/2025
What is a Liminal time/space – a transitional period between events; that which has occurred, that which is yet to happen. A gap between one reality and the next, the known and the unknown.
It can be an uneasy or even a fearful place to be, full of uncertainty.
In the pattern of the church year, this is where we are, between the Feast of the Ascension and Pentecost.
That’s the world of the disciples – living in the space between Jesus’ presence among them and his ascension, and the sending of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost.
Jesus has gone, the Spirit hasn’t come yet.
Liminal space – transitional, and full of uncertainty.
But that doesn’t mean being adrift and without hope. Even in the midst of the darkest times, God is still with us. Even when we may not see the light, that doesn’t mean that it’s gone. We might not be looking in the right place, or it may be hidden from our eyes.
Therefore, that’s why Paul and Silas’ imprisonment is so encouraging of a story.
In Philippi, the slave girl’s message “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”
Exorcism, jailed and flogged for their “new and unlawful customs”. Put in the innermost cells and fastened their feet in stocks. Going nowhere.
What did they do? They prayed and sang hymns. They turned to God.
When all was bleak and hopeless, they turned to God. And God showed up to get them through.
God has shown up for me in the bleakest times of my life.
When my father was sick and diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Describe his diagnosis and my fears.
We were not abandoned and without hope.
Neither were the disciples abandoned and without hope after Jesus ascension. The holy spirit was on its way to them. It just took a few extra days to get there.
Sometimes our own salvation is like that. It takes some days for God to get here. But in the end the light prevails. The darkness ends at some point.
Sometimes we are the answer. Sometimes we are the ones to bring about the change needed in the world. Sometimes, it has to be us. We have to do it. We have to be the light that the world is waiting for. We have to be the change that the world needs.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we be encouraged to keep up hope when the future ahead of us is unknown and the days around us are filled with uncertainty. May we be comforted in knowing that the Holy Spirit is now with us, whom the disciples eagerly awaited its arrival. And may we seek how we may be the answer to someone else’s uncertainty and fears.
Many of you know that I worked for several years as a chaplain in hospitals before I was ordained as a priest. At the end of each program year which ran August to August, it was customary to have a graduation ceremony, which included sharing gifts with one another. These were typically items that had personal significance to the individual and what they went through and how they were shaped by the program. At the end of my second year, when I knew that I was done and moving to Dallas, one of the items I received from one of the staff chaplains was this (bring out statue).
You may be thinking that this is Jesus. It is not, in fact, Jesus, but it is St. Jude—the patron saint of lost causes.
Since then, Jude has followed me around the country, and has sat on my desk wherever I have gone. Partially because it’s funny, that I have the patron saint of lost causes in front of me, and partially because I believe it, that I need God’s help.
And I feel like I need it more than I have in a long, long time.
Because to be honest with you all, it’s been a hard week. It wasn’t that long ago that we were talking about the shooting in Buffalo, and now here we are again, faced with the death of so many in Uvalde, Texas because an 18 year-old kid with a gun wanted to go out in some kind of twisted glory.
It makes my soul sick, in large part because I worry that these things will continue unabated, and that it’s unlikely that much will be accomplished to make our schools and our malls and our churches safe from someone who has decided to cause harm to strangers.
And in the midst of all that, there is the feeling that I’m your priest, and that I have been called by God and by you to lead by word and deed, showing the path from despair to hope and centering this community in how we go forth from here to bring about justice and peace in the world and in our lives and in our homes.
How does one find hope, and to avoid collapsing into despair?
One obvious direction is to turn to the Scriptures and to learn from those who encountered God, and the risen Jesus Christ, to see how they handled adversity. And in our reading from Acts today, we see just that.
It’s amusing, really, in how it starts. Paul and his companions are in Macedonia, modern-day Turkey, and telling all who will listen about Christ. And there’s this girl, who was something of a fortune-teller, and after several days of her crying out “Listen to these men!”, they were so fed up with it that they turned and cast the spirit out of her.
Why they didn’t do that before, who knows. But look at what happens next. They’re attacked by the crowd, stripped of their clothes, and beaten and flogged before being thrown into prison—all for casting out the spirit from the girl.
But they didn’t despair. In prison, they prayed, and sang songs to God. And while they were doing so, God came to them, and gave them an opportunity to proclaim God’s love to the jailer who turned to follow the way of Christ, him and his whole household. And why? Because “blessed are those who wash their robes, so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates.” They trusted in God’s loving presence among them, that God had not abandoned nor forsaken them, and that God was right there with them, in that prison.
And as it turns out, that prison was an opportunity to share with those around them, both prisoner and guard, about God’s great love for them. That in the midst of the darkness, there was a light, in the face of Christ.
Many times that light can be found by turning to the world of the Scriptures, where we can find strength, comfort, and moral guidance on how we are to live our lives in the here and now, while we look forward to that day when Christ will repay everyone for their work. But until then, our calling is to keep on keeping on, and to stay faithful to the calling with which we have been called in Christ Jesus.
And that is why I keep this statue of St. Jude on my desk—to remind me that even when all hope seems lost, when there seems to be no way out, to remind myself that God is still here, and that somehow, in some way, it’s going to be alright. That’s the faith and conviction that Paul and his companions had when they were put into prison, knowing that their God was mighty to save them. And in the other writings of the New Testament, they showed that even if God didn’t intervene in that moment, that it was going to be okay in the end, because we still have the hope shown to us in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, our Lord, if not in this life, then in the one to come, when all will be put to rights, and God will have the final victory over sin and evil.
I also recognize so much else in front of us that we haven’t addressed about this day, that this past week saw the Feast of St. Bede, the feast of the Ascension, and that this is Memorial Day weekend.
I hope that this will be a blessed day and a blessed weekend and a blessed week for you all, and that God will give all of us the strength and wisdom to always do what is right, and together to work to bring about God’s Kingdom on earth, as it is in heaven. May God be with us all.
Passion / Palm Sunday – 4/13/2025
These are the instructions to the people of Israel, who in the story of the book of Exodus are slaves in Egypt at the time and are on the cusp of being freed from their oppression. Bear with me, this is long:
Exodus 12:1-11:
“The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt: “This month is to be the beginning of months for you; it is the first month of your year. Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they must each select an animal of the flock according to their fathers’ households, one animal per household. If the household is too small for a whole animal, that person and the neighbor nearest his house are to select one based on the combined number of people; you should apportion the animal according to what each person will eat. You must have an unblemished animal, a year-old male; you may take it from either the sheep or the goats. You are to keep it until the fourteenth day of this month; then the whole assembly of the community of Israel will slaughter the animals at twilight. They must take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses where they eat them. They are to eat the meat that night; they should eat it, roasted over the fire along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. Do not eat any of it raw or cooked in boiling water, but only roasted over fire—its head as well as its legs and inner organs. Do not let any of it remain until morning; you must burn up any part of it that does remain before morning. Here is how you must eat it: you must be dressed for travel, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in a hurry; it is the Lord’s Passover.”
And why do I share that? Because of the parallels made between the Passover of the people of Israel in the Old Testament and in the life of Jesus, especially in the week between the Triumphal Entry and the Crucifixion.
The final plague of the exodus of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt was the death of the firstborn son of every household. But to spare the Jews from this fate, and to make a distinction between them and the Egyptians, they were commanded to take a 1 year old sheep or goat, slaughter it, and spread it’s blood on the doorposts and lintel of their houses so that the destroyer would not enter their homes to kill the children of Israel. They were to eat it and the meal with it prepared to flee – Dressed and ready to go. And a few notes are in order in the parallels.
First, to summarize, that in order to be spared from death, they were to slaughter a sheep or goat that was unblemished and without defect. On the tenth day of the month, they were to choose the animal, and it had to be perfect – it couldn’t have birth defects or be sickly or weak. They had to offer to God from the best of their flock. And they did so four days before they slaughtered the animal and ate the meal.
Then we have Jesus. The one presented by the authors of Scripture as the lamb of God, as John the Baptist said, and the blameless and spotless lamb, as in 1 Peter 1. Jesus, who the authors of Scripture wrote that it is his blood and ihs sacrifice that brought redemption for humanity. And Jesus who entered into Jerusalem days before his arrest and crucifiixon – as though his triumphal entry to fanfare and hooplah parallels the selection from the flock the perfect, faultless sheep or the goat that would then, several days later, be killed so that its blood could save the faithful from death.
Thus, Jesus the passover lamb. Thus “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us.”
Time would fail to spend more time going into the parallels and repercussions from this – which you all would especially be upset with me since this is already a long service with the other liturgical elements, what with the procession and the passion narrative that we heard read / sung.
But here’s where I do want to go. Hear the words of the prophet Zechariah, which read:
“Rejoice greatly, Daughter Zion! Shout, Daughter Jerusalem! See, your king comes to you,righteous and victorious, lowly and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey.” Later he continues: “I will take away the chariots from Ephraim and the warhorses from Jerusalem, and the battle bow will be broken. The king will proclaim peace to the nations. His rule will extend from sea to sea and from the River to the ends of the earth. “
Unlike the conquering Roman generals who come triumphant in great shows of power, the king that God sends to the people, the righteous and victorious, one is also lowly, humble, and comes not with great shows of power and might, but in humility.
And in doing so, brings peace. True and lasting peace. Peace that strips away the chariots and the warhorses and the weapons of warfare. But there shall be peace, in all the land, and for all peoples.
That’s Jesus. The king who has come to Jerusalem, at the start of the Passover celebrations that celebrate God’s delivery of the people from slavery in Egypt, and comes bringing a message of peace.
In the passion of Jesus, we see just this thing. That the humble king that comes to the people doesn’t fight against the powers that have conspired against him, nor do his followers fight for him, and yet he reigns victorious even today. The rulers of the Jewish people were not powerful enough to stop this king, nor was the wrath of Rome powerful enough to stop this king, and without lifting a finger against those who would destroy him, he still overpowered them by the love and grace of God.
And you and I are called to imitate this Christ, who though in the very form of God, did not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped, but humbled himself, taking on the form of a servant in human flesh, who came in peace to his people to call them to love God with all their hearts and to love one another, even thor enemies and those who persecute you, as yourself.
May this be true of us, that we may live out the messianic vision of peace, love, pardon, faith, hope, light, and joy that the people who saw Jesus that day as he entered into Jerusalem longed for in their own lives. Not returning evil for evil, but responding in love, understanding that it was the love of God that broke the bonds of death and the grave, not anger. Not violence. Not rage. But love. Love is the force that breaks all bonds, tears down injustice, seeks out the oppressed and the marginalized and downtrodden, forgives all error, restores all relationships. Because where love is, there God is also.
Easter Vigil, Year C – 04/20/2025
The story of Easter is a story of deliverance.
To understand the story of Easter requires us to go to the beginning of the biblical narrative:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. God created the stars, sun and moon, separated the waters and made dry land appear, and filled them with fish and land animals and birds. And finally, at the culmination of it all, created humans. And it was all very good.
That is, until the two humans broke the command of God to eat from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They doubted God’s intentions, and the one restriction on the two was broken. As a consequence for this sin, they were cast out of the Garden of Eden, their home, and in time they died, barred from the fruit of the tree of life. But before they were cast out God pronounced curses on them and on the serpent that deceived them. On the serpent was the curse, that it would strike the heel of the woman’s offspring and he would crush the head of the serpent.
The descendants of the two multiplied, and with them multiplied sin on the earth, until God appeared to a man named Abram. To this man he promised that all the people of the world would be blessed because of him, and his descendants would inherit the land that God promised to him. He himself would not possess the land, but his descendants would.
His descendants, due to a great famine, moved from the land of the Canaanites to the land of Egypt, where they were multiplied and grew. And as they did, their Egyptians forced them into slavery and hard labor. For 430 years they suffered under their oppressors, until finally God sent them a deliverer – Moses. To this Moses God first appered at the Burning Bush, and told Moses that he had heard the cry of the people and through Moses would deliver the people from slavery in Egypt and take them to the land promised to their ancestor Abraham.
After none plagues on Egypt pronounced by Moses – of rivers turning to blood, flies, frogs, hail, pestilence, and darkness, one final plague remained – the death of the firstborn son of every household. But this plague would not reach the descendants of Israel, who were commanded to observe the Passover.
They were to take an unblemished sheep or goat, one year old, and they were to slaughter it, to spread its blood on their doorposts and the lintel of their homes, and to eat its meat with bitter herbs and unleavened bread. And in doing to, when death came to Egypt, the people of Israel were saved from death. Indeed, this is why it is called the Passover, because God passed over the houses of the people of Israel on that night of deliverance.
Following this final plague on Egypt, the people of Israel were freed and sent out of the land of Egypt where they ventured to the east, through the parted waters of the sea, and onward to the land promised to the descendants of Abraham, which they later took possession of the land and settled in it, fulfilling the promise to Abraham that they would inherit the land.
The story of the Passover is a story of deliverance.
But God wasn’t done yet, according to the biblical narrative.
In Moses’ instructions to the people, they were to remain faithful to the covenant they made with their God while they lived in the land. If they remained faithful, God would bless them and give them peace, but if they were unfaithful, God would cast them out of the land until they repented, after which God would forgive them and bring them back.
This is indeed something with which the people struggled. At times they were faithful, at times they were not. To draw the people back to covenantal faithfulness, God sent the prophets – Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others – and through them tried to restore adherence to the covenant that God made with Moses and the people at Mt. Sinai. In the end, God did cast them out of the land, to Assyria and Babylon, to correct their waywardness.
But God did not forget the promises or love for the people, and brought them back. In this time, the people began to year for a renewed deliverance. The idea of a Messiah rose up, one who would again come, as Moses once did, to save them from their oppressors and to return their ability for self-determination, and deliverance from the consequences of their wayward past.
Remember that the Passover is a story of deliverance. Of God leading the people of Israel from slavery to the Egyptians and into freedom and peace.
This story becomes the basis for the parallels that we see fulfilled in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus.
I adore how we see these parallels drawn out in the Exultet, or Easter Proclamation, sung just after we took our seats following the procession into the Church from the newly kindled Easter fire, and in the readings that we heard as we sat in darkness, awaiting the lights to be drawn up again in our service.
This is what we hear in the Exsultet:
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 echoes forward to the life of Jesus, whose coming was foretold to deliver the people from their slavey to sin and death. One of my favorite of these parallels when he stood atop the mountain of transfiguration with Peter, James, and John, and his appearance was changed before them, with Moses and Elijah appearing at his side. There, they spoke with him about his own Exodus, his own departure and deliverance, that he was to undertake in Jerusalem.
There is a second Exodus that we see that Jesus instituted.
Hear again the words of the Exsultet:
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.
And as we see in the Exultet, all this was a foreshadowing that leads us to the life given by Jesus Christ’s resurrection that first Easter morning.
This redemption was foreshadowed when the people of Israel, after they were freed from Egypt, were commanded to annually commemorate and remember the events of the Exodus in the Passover meal. Each year they were to tell the story again to one another and to their families so that they would not forget that their God has delivered then from bitter slavery in Egypt.
And now, we see the promised redemption in the resurrection of Jesus, the 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 were unable to atone for sin. But now, Christ, who gave his life for us, has become our very life.
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.
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 1C, 3/9/2025: Why Lent? Why is this part of the church calendar, and why do we observe it each year, just before Easter?
The thought behind the question, and why I start that way, is that I have heard from a number of Episcopalians throughout the years that they don’t like Lent. It is too dark, too solemn, too unhappy. The joy of Easter and Christmas are great, the elevated vibe of Epiphany and Pentecost are good, even the middling vibe of Advent is good –Jesus’ birth is great, the warnings of the Second Coming, meh but brief.
But Lent, I’ve been told, is just a drag. Its theme is repentance and its message is that we are sinners before a holy God who does not tolerate evil. Therefore we need to repent and make a turn from our ways in order to be approved by God. And that’s a message that one, is not fun or joyful, and two you may not relate to in your understanding of what God is like.
I get it, it can be a drag. It can be a real bummer.
To address that, I want to read for you the part of the Ash Wednesday service called the “Invitation to the observance of a Holy Lent.” Part of that prayer reads this way: paraphrasing here, because Easter was a day to baptize converts to the faith and restore to full communion those who had been separated from communion because of sin, quote, “the whole congregation was put in mind of the message of pardon and absolution set forth in the Gospel of our Savior, and of the need which all Christians continually have to renew their repentance and faith.
“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.“
If Easter is about forgiveness and new life from God, then Lent is about remembering what needs repenting and turning away from. It is a time of reflection and self-examination, to find the areas in us and in the world around us that aren’t in alignment with the will and desires of God so that we know how and where to turn godward in order to make it right.
Lent reminds us that there is brokenness in the world, and sometimes within us, and that this should not be, and should not be allowed to continue in that state. It helps us from skipping over the process of repentance that leads to forgiveness and straight to the new life from God.
It’s not a fun process, nor an easy one sometimes, but it is an important one. How can you have restoration without repentance, after all?
So here’s the to-do for us these next weeks of Lent; consider where one of the spiritual disciplines may be used to engage the meaning of the season of Lent. Spiritual disciplines is a fancy way of saying different practices that Christians have used to engage their spiritual sides, and taking from what I said before about the observation of a Holy Lent, they include quiet moments of self-examination, regular times of prayer, fasting & abstaining, and reading & meditating on holy writings.
Maybe these next weeks you can set aside 5 minutes in the morning before you start your day for quiet prayer, so that your day will be holy and good. Or end each day with the compline service from the prayer book. It takes less than 10 minutes to pray that service. Or pray the morning office from the prayer book, which takes about 15 minutes. If you’re interested in these but don’t know who to do it or where to start, let me know and I can help you with that.
Maybe these next weeks you want to try regular fasting as a part of prayer, and a reminder that our dependance is on God, or abstaining from something as a way to make new habits that are healthier for your heart, soul, and well-being. Abstaining from things that are not good for your soul can do tremendous good for one’s mental health, and Lent is an appropriate time to do so.
Or maybe these weeks you would want to regularly read each morning something from the Bible or another writing that inspires you to good thoughts and to love those around you more – something that helps you to bring more goodness into the world, whether that be poetry or the writings of people who are working to bring peace, justice and love to the world. You have about 6 weeks to read through the four Gospels. Two chapters a day, probably 10 minutes, should be just about right to get you to Easter.
My invitation, and my own intention for these 40 days of Lent, is to take this season seriously. To not just let it pass by like any other week of the year, but to be intentional about it and engage in the disciplines, in order that it may reach down into our hearts and souls, that we would be inspired to turn godward and find joy and life in God.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we find this season to be not simply a bummer, but to be holy. May we make room in our schedules and in our lives for God’s spirit to speak to us and to turn our hearts. And in doing so may we find even greater joy and life as God revealed it to us through Jesus Christ.
Lent 2C – 3/16/2025
It’s sort of risky, I suppose, to take an idea that I want to preach on, and to look to the lectionary readings on how they speak to that issue I have on my mind. At least, that’s true if, as I do, I believe that the readings should inform what I preach on, and not vice versa. They should influence in this direction, not in that direction.
At least that’s what I have internalized about this process. And I try to stay faithful to this process. This is especially true at a time like this, the Second Sunday in Lent, where the norm would be to examine what it means to repent, to turn one’s heart back to God, and to amend one’s ways – all those Lenten ideas that are preached from the pulpit on days like today.
But for today’s worship and our time together, I am kind of in that other place, of having something that I want to talk about here with you all that I have on my mind.
With all that’s going on in the economy, domestically and globally, it certainly feels to me that we are potentially on the precipice of tumultuous financial times ahead for us. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what may happen and how it will affect peoples’ jobs, income, spending power, and retirement accounts.
And I am deeply concerned about how that might impact all of you, and in particular those who might be vulnerable to increasing prices for groceries, transportation, and housing, to drops in the stock market, and to changes in Medicare and social security benefits.
There are least some in our community that I suspect may struggle should such things happen for us.
And that has me concerned. Concerned for your well-being should that happen. And not just for those that I suspect are particularly vulnerable, but for everyone, and in particular those who are no longer working and have retired.
That is to say, if one day as we are talking one-on-one I ask you how you’re doing and if you’re struggling economically, it’s not that I’m targeting you or singling you out, because I’m not. I’m just asking anyone and everyone, because I care, and because we all may be affected differently by economic difficulties due to external forces we all are subject to.
That is, perhaps, one part of the job as a priest, is to be concerned about your well-being and to check in with you about it. And it gives me a bit of latitude to ask without it coming across as prying into your personal life – at least, that’s my intention. To be caring without prying.
My hope for us as a community in this is that if things do become difficult economically, that we as the people of St. Bede’s would rally around each other to help. That we would be a loving, supportive community for those who are struggling in our midst.
It strikes me that one of the biggest hurdles that we would face to become such a community is how hard it can be to admit that we’re struggling; How hard it is to say that we’re not making it in life, that it’s hard, or that we need help.
I know. I’ve been there. In my adult life, I’ve had to ask for help on several occasions when I was struggling financially. And I will admit and acknowledge that I put it on myself and I internalized this, but it was so embarrassing, and it felt so shameful to have to ask. I felt like I had to grovel or demean myself in asking for money to pay bills. It was brutal.
So there’s a couple of things that I learned. First, that I wouldn’t want someone to have to feel that same way when approaching me, asking for help. Yes, there’s only so much that I can do, but that as far as I can help it, to make asking for assistance an easy thing, without shame of embarrassment. To be unjudgmental and to be compassionate, and to normalize the process of asking.
Second, I learned that people are usually eager to help. I would imagine that you are, are you not? That if someone came to you needing a favor, needing help in their great need, that you would want to help however you’re able, especially someone you know and have a good relationship with them. Cause it feels good to help. And if that’s so, then why deny others the blessings and joy that comes with helping others. Why take that away from them? That should be part of our path, walking in the way of Jesus. That we are blessed and find joy when we help.
So two applications that I have for our community. First, that would build up our community here, so that we have people to turn to when we are in need, and that our would have a community to support each other through the struggles of this life. They feel a bit more pressing to me today than normally, but this should be true of us in general. That we are would be a supportive, caring community to one another.
Second, to be a place that helps people. Some of you may not know that Episcopal Churches always or almost always have what’s called the rector’s discretionary fund. It’s money that has been given specifically for the purpose of helping people in need. It’s in the national church’s canons for the Episcopal church that the discretionary fund would be used for “pious and charitable causes,” and here at St. Bede’s we use it to help people who need help with food, shelter, or basic necessities in life. It is funded by designated gifts to the fund, and all disbursements are confidential in that only I know who the recipients are. There are checks on that so that it’s not abused, but if anyone from the parish were to seek help it would be confidential. That said, I also appreciate your gifts to keep it funded, of which it currently has about $2,000 in the bank.
And in that same spirit, we are working on bringing back simple suppers on the first Wednesday of the month here at St. Bede’s. This is something done in the past, pre-COVID, and we are picking up again. So on the first Wednesday of the month, you’re invited to join us for dinner. It will be simple, but it will be an opportunity to come together to break bread with one another, share a meal together, to build community (and maybe to provide a meal where it helps). Look for more information on that.
But that reminds me. There are community events we do that we always say not to let money get in the pay of participating, that if the cost would be the reason for you to not join us, then let’s fix that. And I know that it can be hard to come forward to say that the cost is a problem. It’s that shame and embarrassment, right? But your presence among us and participation is the most important thing. You can always come to me, privately and confidentially, without grovelling, and we’ll make the problem of the cost go away.
My request to all of you is your help in making all this happen. Strengthen bonds with one another. Support and care for one another in times of need. Normalize asking for help and giving help. And together, let’s become a supportive and caring community, walking in the way of Jesus.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we strengthen the bonds of fellowship as those who follow the teachings of Jesus. May we be eager to help and brave to ask for assistance when need arises. And may we be all the more a supportive and caring community for one another in any time of need.
Lent 3C – 3/23/2025
Do you remember the cartoon Dilbert? I remember as a kid, taking my father’s newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal, and digging through to the Green Sheet—that was the cosmics section which they printed on green paper. It was easy to find, it was the only thing during the week that wasn’t black and white. And, being the early 90’s, one of the cartoons featured was Dilbert, which in case you’re not familiar, was an engineer working in a micromanaged office setting with his boss and coworkers, among other characters.
One day, Dilbert featured a single image with a simple punchline. There was Dilbert, sitting next to his dog, Dogbert, who says to him, “I believe in karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it.”
I think a good many of us, also, believe in karma, deep down in our souls. Not karma that justifies doing bad things to people, That’s just being silly in a comic strip. But karma, the idea that you get what you deserve. You reap what you sow. That if you are a good person and do what is good, good things will happen to you in return. But if you are a bad person and do bad, bad things will happen to you in return. You get what you deserve.
And at some level, I think we are natively inclined to feel this way. We may not have a developed, rational system of belief around it, but I suspect we believe it all the same. That we believe that we deserve good things in life because we are good people. That God, or the universe, or whatever, owes it to us to bring good into our lives because we are good people. And when bad things happen to us, something went wrong, because we don’t deserve it. I’m a good, kind, loving person, who wouldn’t hurt a fly. I don’t deserve to be sick. I don’t deserve to lose my job in this round of layoffs. I don’t deserve to be treated this way by my family.
Or maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe you believe that you’re not a good person, that you deserve it as though you have it coming to you.
Every time we feel this way, or say these things, we demonstrate just how much we believe in karma. That we reap what we sow, whether positive and negative.
Irish Theologian and megaband frontman Paul Hewson stated it well when in an interview he said “At the centre of all religions is the idea of Karma. What you put out comes back to you; an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, or in physics – in physical laws – every action is met by an equal or opposite one. It’s clear to me,” he said, “that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it.
“And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that ‘As you reap, so will you sow’ stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts the consequences of your actions.”
The idea that you reap what you sow is a logical system, and one that in our hearts we may hope to be true. This is especially the case if we believe that God is just and fair. But our God doesn’t always work that way, as taught by Jesus to his disciples.
You don’t always get what you sow. At least, that’s not all that there is. The Galileans whom Pilate killed, they didn’t die because they were worse people than others. The 18 who died when the tower of Siloam fell on them, they didn’t die because they were worse sinners than others. Their deaths had nothing to do with what kind of people they were. They didn’t have it coming to them. But we all need to turn from the bad and turn our hearts to the good, and to open ourselves to the grace of God. To open ourselves to forgiveness and life and peace.
Grace “upend[s] all that ‘as you reap, so you sow’ stuff,” because Jesus comes to us bringing resurrection, overcoming the power of sin and death, bringing the love and grace of God to all of humanity. That we, undeserving as we are because of the ways that we all have done evil in our lives, find forgiveness and life and peace through Jesus Christ.
So is our faith that of grace or karma?
According to the parable of the fig tree, the answer is… both. The tree bears no fruit, so the owner wants to cut it down. It’s a bad tree so cut it down.
But the Gospel message at its core is grace. That in Christ, God took the initiative to reconcile us to God, because God loves us and has come to our aid. God took the initiative. Like the gardener, who agrees that the tree that doesn’t bear fruit should be cut down, but also that it might just need a little more time, and a little more care, and some nurturing to bring it around.
Because “love interrupts the consequences of your actions.”
I can’t say this definitely, that we have the market on this as Christians, but there is one thing about our faith that is especially distinctive among world religions: that God initiates our reconciliation. That God goes first and does all the work. That God didn’t wait for us to make the first move, but sent Jesus to do the work of repairing the broken relationship between humanity and the divine. That salvation is by grace, through faith, and this is not our own doing, but it is the gift of God, not the result of our efforts. God took the first step.
This same God was revealed at the burning bush to a man who wasn’t looking for God – he was tending to the sheep when God came to him; later this same God brought the people descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to a land flowing with milk and honey, even though they defied God and put God to the test all the way from Egypt, through the desert, and to the Jordan River at the edge of the promised land. Love interrupts the consequences of our actions.
That’s a lesson that we can all learn from. That if our God takes the first step to make things right in the world, we should be a people who do the same. Not like Dogbert, who justifies doing bad things toward people because he believes they deserve it, but who do good to all people, especially those who don’t deserve it.
So who are the people in your life with whom you need to take the first step? With whom you need need to show kindness and love as a first step? For a broken relationship, someone needs to be the one to take the first step toward peace and reconciliation. Or maybe it’s not a broken relationship, but someone who could use a little extra love and kindness today. Someone who could
Today is a great day to bring more grace and love into the world.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we not receive according to what we deserve, but may we find ourselves to be recipients of a grace that upends karma and a love that interrupts consequences. May we turn our hearts toward the good and away from the bad so that we may find the love of God. And may we be a people who bring healing and restoration to the world.
Lent 4C – 3/29/2025
This fourth Sunday in Lent has me feeling lucky for today. We have one of the most familiar of the parables that Jesus gave to his listeners, or his detractors even. And it’s only read in our services together on this Sunday: The fourth Sunday in Lent, but only once every three years. Our lectionary moves in a three year rotation, and this is Year C, or the third year. So the last time we had this was three years ago.
And that is the parable of the Prodigal Son.
A closer look at the details is in order, starting with the setting. There are some people who think that Jesus shouldn’t be associating himself with the despised and contemptible people that he dines with and has befriended in his travels. Hearing that, Jesus tells them a parable.
A wealthy man – you can tell that he was wealthy because he had servants working for him and enough to spare when his son later returns home – but this wealthy man’s younger son one day demanded his share of the inheritance.
Immediately this is shocking, that the son would demand his share of the inheritance. An inheritance, after all, is given after the death of the parent, so to do so is essentially casting off his faily as though they were dead. The money and wealth meant more to him than the love of his family and their relationships with him.
So he takes his share, blows it all on high living, and becomes so destitute that he takes a job working with the pigs. Pigs would be, if you recall, detestable to the Jewish people. Consuming pork products is expressly forbidden in their teachings and religion. And here is the young man, longing to be as well fed and taken care of as these swine.
So he decides to return and to thrown himself at the mercy of his father, hoping that he could get a job like the servants working in the field, who have it better than he does now. So he comes up with a speech – earnest, and honest, not a ploy – and even though it’s a short speech, when he returns home he can’t finish before his father is hugging him, celebrating his return, and restoring his position in the family.
That’s wild already! Not only is the son not stationed as a worker in the field, but he is restored as a son.
Wild, because there’s a commandment in the Jewish Scriptures of what to do with such a son as him. This takes us to Deuteronomy. If you’re not familiar with Deuteronomy, it’s presented to us as Moses’ last instructions to the people as they are about to enter into the Promised Land without him. Here’s a section from that book:
“If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard. ‘ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear.” (Deuteronomy 21:18-21)
The parallels here to what we are told about the son in the Gospels seem fairly 1:1, because the son in the parable takes the money to live lavishly and wastefully, or “dissolute living” as is translated, doing what is strongly disapproved of, like a glutton and a drunkard.
I found this commentary of Deuteronomy 21: “The son… would inevitably squander his inheritance when his father died; he would likely bring ruin to his present and future family. He was like a compulsive gambler who bets away his home and life savings right out from under his family’s feet. More than that, drunkenness and gluttony lead to and represent a wholesale departure from the Law. You can easily imagine this including a tendency to criminal debt, familial violence, and other profligacy. This is a man, then, whose choices not only threaten his own safety but who shows every sign of being on course to destroy his family.”
When the son asks for the inheritance, the father does not take him to the gate to be stoned. He willingly complies, gives the money, and does not inhibit the son from going.
And when the son returns, he showers him with love and celebrates his return.
But the story doesn’t end there. The older brother hears the sound of the party going on, and when he finds out what is happening, he is filled with resentment. Why should the father forgive the son for all the hurtful and terrible things he did to his father and to his family? Rather than join the party, he stays away in his bitterness and anger.
We often times overlook that last bit, which is just as important as the rest of the story. See this is not just a story, but it is a parable.
I’d been taught in school and still to this day hold on to this definition of a parable: An earthly story with a heavenly meaning.
This is a story about a father and his two sons that has a deeper meaning. The prodigal son is the sinners and the tax collectors who have come to listen to Jesus’ teachings. The father is God, who loves the son even though the son went astray and did awful and hurtful things when he did. And the older son are those complaining that Jesus welcomed the tax collectors and the “sinners”, the dregs of society, dining with them and befriending them.
THAT, my friends, is mercy from God that knows no bounds. That chooses relationship and reconciliation and forgiveness, first and foremost. That keeps no records of wrong, but rejoices when the wayward comes forward to find love and life.
That is, afterall, meant to be a picture of God’s love for us. That when Jesus is associating with the sinners, the tax collectors, the unfavorables, and the dregs of society, that these are exactly the kind of people that are loved by God.
There is no bottom to how low God is willing to stoop to show love to all humanity.
There are, then, two things to learn from this.
First, of the unconscionable love of God toward us. That the love of God knows no bounds. That God loves you, no matter who you are and where you came from. All God cares about is that you come, and open your heart to God, seeking that love of the father from the parable, who keeps no accounting of the things that we may have done, but runs out to embrace the wayward and the sinner.
Second, that just as God loves us, God loves all the others out there. All the dregs of society are loved by God as well. Those that we might be inclined to judge, avoid, or denigrate. The poor, the homeless, the drug addicts, the mentally ill. Thieves, murderers, degenerates. Warlords, insurgents, terrorists.
Like a loving, patient father, whose son has gone astray, our God longs for all to find their way back home. To embrace them, clothe them in the finest robes, slaughter the fattened calf and throw a party for them, when they too open their hearts to God’s love.
God’s call to us today is to remember the depth and width and length of God’s love, to remember that in the excessive loving-kindness of God, there is no bottom to how low God is willing to stoop to show love to all humanity.
THAT, right there, is the greatness of the mercy and love of our God.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we find and encounter the excessive kindness of God toward us, even with all our failings and shortcomings. May we show the same welcome in our hearts and our communities for all people who come seeking love and life and peace. And may this continue to be a holy Lent for you all.
Ash Wednesday, 3/5/2025: In the reading of our Gospel today, we hear Jesus say, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” And then he goes on to say when you give alms, when you pray, and when you fast, to do so in private and not publicly like hypocrites.
And at the end of this service you will be walking out of here with ashes on your forehead in the shape of a cross…
(hopefully, depending on my dexterity and how closely they look to a cross and not a smudge like you were changing a tire on your car)
And going out into the world, publicly showing everyone what you did today.
So, are we being hypocritical, and doing exactly what Jesus told us not to do?
I don’t think so. Consider what Jesus said about almsgiving, the first of his three warnings: “Whenever you give alms, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be praised by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward.”
Notice in there that the reason for being vocal and public with the giving of alms is so that they may be praised by others. The prohibition is against doing these acts in order to gain the praise, affirmation, and respect of other people. That’s the warning, and therefore the admonition to do so privately.
For how many of you, do you walk out of here thinking how awesome other people will think you are because you went to an Ash Wednesday service? Rather, I think you are either going to go about it sheepishly and hope no one says anything, or else you’re wondering how long you’re contractually obligated to keep it on before you wipe it off in the bathroom or in your car.
Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think many people in this service are here so that other people around Menlo Park will think you’re an amazing person because of the ashes on your forehead.
So no, I don’t think we’re being hypocritical.
But why are we here?
What we do here is to remind us that life is short, and that our lives are not our own. At the creation of humankind in Genesis, God took the dust of the earth and with it formed the man, Adam. Even his name is related to the Hebrew word for dirt, earth. He was created from the dust. And when he died, he was buried and his both returned to the dust from which he came.
He did not live forever as was God’s intention, to live in harmony with God and all creation, but he and Eve, the woman with him, sinned against the command of God, and for that they both died. They were made of the dust of the earth, and their bodies returned to the dust.
And we continue to do the same, to live the years we get and then to return to the earth. Life is short.
And our life is not our own. It has been given to us by God. In the garden at the creation of humankind, God breathed life into the dust and life sprang forth. The life of God was infused in the life of Adam and Eve.
Then, when Christ appeared, he came that we may be given eternal life. He came to give us the life that was lost through the sin of our ancestors. Paul, in his first letter to the Corinthians, wrote that Jesus became the second Adam for us: The first Adam became a living being, Jesus is the second Adam, a life-giving spirit.
So though we are destined to return to the dust when our breath gives out, we have hope for a life after this life because of the life promised to us through Jesus.
Our life is not our own. It has been given to us by God. And after we have been gathered to the earth, we will breathe the new life that is in Christ.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we remember that this life is precious, and to not waste the breath that has been given to us. May we have hope in the new life in Christ that there will be a life after this life. And may this be a holy Lent for us, that we would turn our hearts godward more and more each day.
Epiphany 2C, 1/19/2025: We are now in the second week of Epiphany, the church season between Christmastide and Lent that focuses on the beginnings of Jesus’ ministry. It is about Jesus being revealed to the world, of being made manifest to the people.
And today, we have the miracle at the Wedding at Cana, of Jesus turning water into wine.
The Gospel authors are masters of subtlety. They are not known to drive the point home, but instead to leave things understated for the reader to work out or discover. This is especially true of John’s Gospel, and today’s reading is no exception.
Likewise, it is sometimes, if not typically, the case with a biblical text that one can draw multiple points from it that we can learn from and which shape our understanding of our faith. This is again the case with our Gospel reading for today. There are a number of points or sub-points we can draw from this passage, many of which I think distract us from perhaps the main point. So let’s see how that goes now with this story of “The Wedding at Cana.”
Here we have Jesus, going to a wedding in a town called Cana in Galilee, where Nathaniel, the disciple of Jesus, was from, and not that far from Nazareth where Jesus grew up, and not far from Capernaum, where he essentially made his home and his base for his ministry. And not only is Jesus there, but so are Mary, his mother, as well as his disciples. And a few main, obvious themes or motifs going on here include: That he is at a wedding, his reticence to get involved, and his eventual miraculous “sign” of turning water into wine.
The actions and the drama here have led people to draw several conclusions. One such conclusion that is that Jesus’ intention is to affirm the institution of marriage. That he is blessing this marriage by his presence, and by supporting the festivities by supplying more wine. And thus, by extension, Jesus continues to be present at Christian weddings and blesses Christian marriages to this day. That is true, and one potentially valid takeaway from this reading, but there’s more.
I mean, it’s John’s Gospel, there’s always more to it than that.
Before moving on, interestingly, there is a tradition that Thomas Aquinas promoted, that the groom was the author of the Gospel according to John – a tradition that goes back to the Venerable Bede himself! So Thomas Aquinas was taking from our very own Bede for this tradition.
That’s all.
There’s also the interaction with Jesus’ mother. She finds out that the big wedding celebration, one which would last for days, has run out of wine. That’s a disaster in the making. It would be an embarrassment to the couple and their families to run out of wine at a celebration of this magnitude. It may even be the case that they are relatives of Mary and Jesus which prompts her to want to help. So Mary goes to her son, Jesus, and asks him if he can do anything about this. Apparently, she realizes that her son has the authority and the power, from God, to be able to do something in these circumstances. She thinks he can help, which makes one wonder why she thinks he can do anything at all. But even though he appears to blow her off she tells the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” It shows Mary to be a model of faith, a role model for the church. Would that we all had the faith of Mary to say about Jesus, “Do whatever he tells you.” The story presents Mary in a subtle but magnificent light.
Next, the miracle itself. Jesus tells the servants to pour water into some jugs. It was a great deal of water, and–poof!–wine! So Jesus turns water into wine, and, there you go, no more wine shortage. What we see is that Jesus clearly has power from heaven to do this mighty miracle. No one else could do this. Jesus is at least, minimum, a prophet sent by God, suddenly made manifest to those who knew what had happened, that Jesus had turned water into wine.
But there’s one almost insignificant detail to this story that is missing from all of what we’ve already discussed. Which makes sense for John’s Gospel, that there is a deeper meaning at play which is found in the small details of the story, in the subtle clues and seemingly needless little detail. And here is it: John writes, “Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.
And the fact that this made 150 gallons of wine is only incidental to the point here:
He says that these are six stone water jars used “for the Jewish rites of purification.” Now, he didn’t need to mention that, but he does. The jars to be filled with wine are water jars for Jewish rites of purification.
The Jewish people had various self-ablutions, various washings, to render themselves ritually clean and to get rid of certain types of uncleanness. We read elsewhere in the gospels, that the Jews, the Pharisees, would have particular washings–hand-washing, for instance–to make themselves clean. Thus the presence of these six stone jars for ritual purification.
It will be helpful to remind ourselves of two other places in Scripture where wine is a significant part of the story.
The first is a parable about putting new wine into old wineskins. In response to a question about why John the Baptist’s disciples fast while Jesus’ disciples eat and drink, Jesus replies that while he is present here, in this life, it is like a wedding banquet. And furthermore, he told a parable that that no one puts new wine into old wineskins, because the old wineskins have become brittle with age and will break if unfermented wine were put into them.
In this parable, wine is a metaphor for the teachings and the traditions of the Pharisees compared to the life-giving teachings that Jesus was sharing with those who would listen to him. This new wine symbolizes the good news that Jesus preached and the life that he came to give. Wine is a symbol of Jesus’ ministry and the works and teachings that he brought.
The second notable role of wine in the story is as one of the central elements of the final meal that he shared with his disciples, when he took the cup, blessed it, and shared it with his disciples saying, “Drink this, all of you: This is my Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins. Whenever you drink it, do this in remembrance of me.”
Now here we have wine as a symbol and sacrament of the blood of Christ, and the life that was given in order to bring peace between God and humanity, healing the rift that existed between us and God.
Thus we see, that when Jesus turned water into wine inside these jars that were used for purification, we see more fully what’s going on in the background here. That the death and resurrection of Christ is for our purification from evil and from sin. That so early on in Jesus’ ministry, that his first miracle and sign in John’s Gospel, is telling us not only that Jesus has been given power by God to do such things, but that it prefigures and points us forward to a greater reality, that Jesus has come to bring our purification, our sanctification, our being made whole again, through the power of God and through the life of Jesus Christ.
And with this cleansing, this forgiveness, this purification that only Jesus can provide, what is the result? The answer: Life. And joy. And celebration. Think of it. Where do life and joy and celebration all come together as beautifully in human experience as at a wedding. Here are two lives joined into one. Alongside the birth of a child, it’s about the most joyous kind of celebration we have in our experience. It’s a great party. There is wine to gladden the heart. And in Jesus’ time, the joy and the feasting and the celebrating went on for days. It’s no wonder that Jesus so often in his teaching compares the kingdom of heaven to a wedding feast, a wedding banquet, where humanity and the diving are brought together as one, and where joy and celebration abound at the union.
To together with you, my friends in Christ, may we be filled with joy and celebration at the redemption which God made manifest in Jesus’ life and teaching. May we be amazed at the power of God, even in the subtle ways that it comes to our lives. And may we be made pure through sharing in the cup which Jesus poured out for us in his death and resurrection.
Epiphany 3C, 1/26/2025: The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington created quite a stir this week, didn’t she?
I’ll catch you up on it if you don’t know. On Tuesday, the National Cathedral held their traditional Service of Prayer for the Nation following the presidential inauguration. They do it every year, and this year as always it was held with the President, Vice President, Speaker of the house, members of Congress and the Supreme Court, and many others in positions of power in the federal government present, and Bishop Budde of the Diocese of Washington caught the nation’s attention with her sermon. At the conclusion of it, she implored the President to consider how he might be merciful to people who were scared this day.
For some, it was a glorious moment, to speak to power and to speak on behalf of the vulnerable and those who are afraid of what is to come and how it will affect or hurt them. Similar to when Presiding Bishop Michael Curry preached at the Royal wedding of William and Kate and caught the world’s attention as he spoke on the power of love, Bishop Budde did the same with her plea for mercy toward the vulnerable amongst us.
For others, it was an unwelcome mixing of politics and religion, and out of place for the bishop to import such language into a service that was supposed to be about unity.
For that, I’m glad that we have our Gospel reading this morning, as I think it speaks wonderfully to our current situation.
As it is the Season of Epiphany, we come to Jesus’ first sermon. Jesus, just having returned from the wilderness where he was tempted by Satan, has been going about the Galilean countryside, teaching in the synagogues. Now he comes to Nazareth, his hometown where he grew up. And on the Sabbath, he enters the synagogue, opens the Isaiah scroll, and reads:
“The spirit of the Lord is upon me. I speak with the authority of God, and act in the power of God. The poor among you shall be lifted up. The imprisoned shall no longer be locked up. The captives shall be set free. Those who can’t see shall see again. And all must know, this is the year that God has come to make all this come about.” He stops reading and says to them, “And now you must know, God is using me to make it happen.”
And all those who heard it thought, “Let’s murder him.”
They heard these words Jesus spoke, of his call to turn the world order upside down, to bring restoration and healing, and hearing it, they rejected it, and when they heard that God’s mercy would be withheld from them in the hardness of their hearts, but that those they found contemptible would find God’s love and healing, they drove him out of town to a place where they planned to kill him.
Bishop Budde is in good company, is she not? She made her plea, that those who are scared would find mercy in their plight, and for it she has received death threats and calls for her resignation and to take back her nasty words. After all, Jesus’ message so disturbed those in power that in due time they executed him for it, rejected by the Jewish rulers and condemned to death by the Romans.
It also reminds me of a phrase spoken on more than a few occasions by a man who was a member of my previous parish. Ed would, on occasion, say that the point of the Gospel is to comfort the uncomfortable and to upset those who are comfortable. To comfort the uncomfortable, and to upset the comfortable. If the Gospel is doing its work, it’ll do those things. The lowly and the outcast will be raised up and brought in, the proud and the arrogant will be pulled down and cast out.
When the people around Jesus begin to question how it is that Jesus, whom they know and whose family they know, could say these things, he replies that in the times of the prophets it was on occasion the Gentiles that experienced God’s blessings, not the people of Israel, and not the children of the covenants. It wasn’t simply being part of Israel that led to God’s favor, but it was those who responded in faith, regardless of who they were. Sometimes, even the outsider and the contemptible were the ones who experienced the kindness and mercy of God. Because, as it turns out, they were only outsiders and contemptible to those who thought they were insiders. In reality, they were loved by God and found favor from the Lord, and thus healing and restoration.
The surprise we find in Jesus is that God’s love and mercy extend much further than we assumed God was capable of. While we thought we had an understanding of God pinned down, God surprised us with the expansiveness of divine love.
That’s been my experience. I was raised to believe that God’s mercy was conditional, and was limited to the insiders and those who came in through the front door. As it turns out, though, God not only loves those who came in through the back door, he also loves those who came in through the window, and those who are still outside.
And that is why our call as those walking in the way of Jesus to bring healing and restoration to the world extends beyond these walls – because the love of God extends to those who are beyond these walls. Just as I have been created in the divine image, so have you, and so have everyone else out there. And that’s why God’s spirit in us is calling us to love them as well. And to be merciful to them, and to show extraordinary loving-kindness.
Not “a lot of love, or a lot of kindness,” but an extra-ordinary love, and extra-ordinary kindness. One greater than that which is ordinary, that which was modeled to us in Jesus, who gave his entire life for us, even life itself.
So with you, my friends in Christ, may we find the Gospel to be a comfort to us in our time of need, and a challenge when we are in need of correction. May we show extraordinary love and kindness to all, especially in their hour of need. And may we be a community in which there is room for all who make up the various parts of this family of God.
Epiphany 4C, Presentation of our Lord in the Temple, 2/2/2025: I am especially delighted to be worshipping with you today, because today is one of my favorite feast days of the Christian calendar: Groundhog Day.
This is a day that we only get to celebrate together on average once every 7 years, as it needs to fall on a Sunday. The last time that Groundhog Day fell on a Sunday, however, was in 2020, so it has come around extra early.
I shared what I’m about to share with you two years ago, which I’m a little bummed that I did that. It takes the wind out of my sails a little to think that this isn’t all new, and that I did so on a day that was NOT Groundhog Day, but I’m going to repeat it anyways because it is a delightful thing to reflect on.
To do so, a little history is in order on this feast day.
You know the basics of Groundhog Day – that on February 2nd, if the groundhog sees its shadow – which it did this morning! – there will be 6 more weeks of winter, but if it does not, then spring will come early. But here’s what you probably don’t know.
According to legend, Punxsutawney Phil, from Punxsutawney Pennsylvania, is the same groundhog that has been predicting the weather since 1887, supernaturally kept alive by drinking Groundhog Punch every October at the annual groundhog picnic. And early on the morning of February 2nd, the members of the Inner Circle (the ones wearing tuxes and top hats) find out from Phil if he’s seen his shadow. Phil tells the
But this was not a tradition born in Pennsylvania, or even in the United States. This is a tradition that arrived with German settlers to the New World, whose celebrations involved whether or not a badger would cast a shadow on this date, February 2nd. Originally it had been if a bear saw its shadow, but as the bear population declined, it was replaced by badgers.
Interesting note: In other European cultures, similar traditions and superstitions existed as well, and in Scotland, the tradition was if a hedgehog saw its shadow it would be a hard winter ahead.
Why hedgehogs, bears, and badgers? Because they all hibernate, or rather enter into torpor which is sort of a less deep sleep than hibernation. And if the weather is mild enough they will come out of their hiding places to look for food.
All this, though, developed from the observation of the Christian feast of Candlemas, where tradition arose that if the weather on Candlemas was good, on February 2nd, then the rest of winter would be harsh. I Scotland the saying was “If Candlemas be fair and clear, there’ll be ‘twa winters in the year.”
Now, what is Candlemas? It is the traditions around the celebration of the Christian feast, the Presentation of our Lord in the Temple. 40 days after the nativity of Jesus, after Christmas Day, our calendars mark the journey of the Holy Family to Jerusalem where the Jewish customs around the birth of the firstborn male child in each family. And on this journey, the Holy Family is greeted by Simeon, who declares that Jesus is the light of the world in the familiar words of the Nunc Dimittis.
He holds the child 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.”
A light to enlighten the nations, and the Feast of the Presentation evolves to be a celebration of light, and for the followers of Christ this day to celebrate by bringing their candles to be blessed by the priest, that they may bring light to their homes, just as Jesus brought light to the world.
So we move from the feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple to Candlemas to Groundhog Day. Groundhog Day is directly descended from the feast of the presentation.
Now, taking heed from our collect for the day, just as Jesus was presented to God as holy, and redeemed before the lord as holy, redeemed by the price of the lives of the two birds, so too does Jesus present us as holy to God, redeemed by the price of Jesus’ life. A significant price too. Which should cause us all the more to want to be holy people. Our other readings reflect this. Malachi describes God as the fire that melts gold and silver to remove inpurities from it and leave the pure, precious metal behind. To be honest, that sounds downright unpleasant, but the purpose is to arrive at the end result–purity.
The author of Hebrews presents Jesus as a high priest, like us in every way so that he could make atonement for sin and present us holy to God, releasing us from the power and fear of death, so that we might be free to be a godly people.
This is our Lord. This is the light, that enlightens all the world, prepared for all the world to see!
So may you, my friends in Christ, rejoice in Jesus, the light who was prepared for all the world to see. May you be made holy through the grace of our Lord, who is a refining fire to make his people pure. And may you spread the light of Christ to all who could use a little light in their lives.
Epiphany 5C, 2/9/2025: You may have noticed in recent years, like the past decade or two, that superhero movies have dominated the blockbuster movie business. Whether from the Marvel or the DC comic universe, each year pumps out multiple movies based on superheroes from comic books. There’s superman, spiderman, batman, Iron Man — lots of men, apparently. But there’s also Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Black Widow, and plenty of women getting headlines too.
Why are superheroes so popular?
I think that, first of all, Superheroes continue to be so popular because, to quote an online author, “In times of trouble, people tend to wish for someone who is bigger than them to help them. Superheroes are strong, tough, and can kick some serious butt. They are always fighting the “bad guys” whether that be the Nazis or aliens. They help people. They make sure they stand up for the common man. And ultimately, they save people.”
They’re the good guys who have an altruistic desire to help people in trouble. And they have incredible powers to do so.
But not only that, I believe their popularity stems from the sense we want to be like them. We want to be able to do what they do. To reach outside of ourselves, to be bigger than we are, to be stronger, more capable, better versions of ourselves. To do the extraordinary, because at the core we find ourselves too ordinary, too incapable. But if anything, our Scriptures show us that God does not work with extraordinary people.
God does not call extraordinary people, but God does call upon ordinary people to do the extraordinary work of God.
Peter, for example, was by no means an extraordinary person. When Jesus meets him, he is working with his father as a fisherman, alongside his brother Andrew, and also James and John. That is an important fact. It shows just how ordinary Peter was. Like most all Jewish boys and girls at the time, he was likely well-versed in the Torah, having committed much of it to memory. And for only a select few of the brightest and best learners, they would be selected for further instruction and learning to become a rabbi themselves. These children would be invited to become a rabbi’s apprentice, and to continue to study with that person and follow them in all they did.
When Jesus met Peter, he wasn’t one of these select few. He wasn’t studying and being taught in the Scriptures. He wasn’t a disciple of a rabbi. He was working, like the vast masses of people who were never selected to study under a rabbi, but instead went to work and to live a normal, ordinary life.
Until he met Jesus.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus meets Peter at the shores of the Sea of Galilee, also called Genessaret as we have in Luke’s Gospel, and as the crowd presses in on Jesus, he gets into Peter’s boat and has him push the boat out a little ways off the shore. This is apparently because the sound of Jesus’ voice would carry better over the water due to the effect it has on acoustics versus speaking over solid land. But then, after addressing the crowd, Jesus tells Peter and those working with him to go further into deep water and let down their nets, which when they do so they make the miraculous catch of so many fish.
Peter, then, has the most curious of responses to this. He turns to Jesus and tells him to go away. “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” He can’t bear to think of his unworthiness in the presence of this Holy Man, with whom God is clearly at work doing the extraordinary.
But perhaps it’s not so curious. It is the same response that Isaiah had when he encountered the Almighty God in a vision. Upon seeing the Lord and hearing the angels calling out, “Holy, Holy, Holy Lord,” Isaiah bewails that he is a sinful man who is standing in the presence of a Holy God.
It’s the same response that Paul had, when he was walking along the road to Damascus in Acts 9, still known by his birth name as Saul, and encountered the risen Jesus on the path. Saul was on his way to Damascus to arrest the Christians there when a blinding light appears and he hears a voice say, “Why do you persecute me?” When Saul asks “Who are you Lord,” he hears “Jesus of Nazareth,” and from then on he no longer persecuted the faithful, but became one of the foremost apostles, alongside Peter.
In these three circumstances, after these men have seen the greatness of God and lamented their sinfulness before a great and holy God, God then calls them to serve him.
Saul the persecutor becomes Paul the missionary. Isaiah, the man of unclean lips, is called to be a prophet speaking the very words of God. And Peter, the fisherman, is called to leave his nets to follow Jesus of Nazareth and to be a “fisher of men” as Jesus calls it. They were ordinary people, who were called to do the extraordinary work of God.
And that’s where we find ourselves. That this same God is calling you and me, appallingly ordinary people, to do the work of God in this world. To worship, to pray, to bring peace and justice to all the world, to care for the poor and the broken-hearted.
And in this we find that God does not need us to be extraordinary, but to be faithful. Like the Apostle Paul, who chalked it up to the grace of God, and the kindness and goodness of God, to make use of his ordinariness and to overcome his shortcomings.
And that is the grace of God, to accept us and to use us, just the way that we are, as servants in the Kingdom of God, to share that same hope and love, and to bring healing and restoration to the world.
So may you, my friends in Christ, hear God’s call to spread the message of God’s love far and wide. May you respond in extraordinary faith, knowing that God can use your ordinariness to do wonderful things. And may your lives be an inspiration to others of what God can do through those who respond in faith.
Epiphany 6C, 2/16/2025: In each of today’s scripture readings from our lectionary we are presented with a duality: “This” or “that” is true.
The Prophet Jeremiah shares God’s Word: Cursed are those who trust in mere mortals, blessed are those who trust in the Lord.
Our Psalm, Psalm 1, the first verse of all the Psalms begins with: Happy are those… who delight in the law of the Lord. It continues, Cursed are those… who walk in the counsel of the wicked.
In 1 Corinthians, either Jesus has been raised from the dead, or we are all dead in our sins.
In the Gospel text, Jesus mirrors the blessings and curses to one another as he says, Blessed are you who are poor, who hunger, who weep, and are poorly regarded… But woe to you who are rich, full, happy, and are well-spoken of.
Many of us find dualities hard to swallow. I tend to, I think. Sometimes I’m prone to either/or thinking, but more often I get mired down in the greyness of life. There are always an exception, or questions about what-if’s that pop up that make such hard and fast yes/no situations difficult to adjudicate.
And so we may tend to embrace some “both/and” thinking, or desire to, rather than getting stuck in “either/or.” We don’t want to be boxed in, and we very much don’t want to be judgmental. It wouldn’t be Episcopalian of us to do so!
Our resistance to such dualities has roots deep in our Anglican spirituality. Our institutional DNA was formed by the Elizabethan Settlement back in 1559 that sought a via media, or middle way, between Rome and Geneva, between Roman Catholics and Calvinist Reformers. Episcopalians are known for continuing to embrace ambiguity as part of a life of faith. We are cautious about rigid “black and white” thinking, more comfortable than many of our fellow Christians with the metaphorical “grey.”
Thanks be to God that there is room in the Anglican tradition for people to be open and honest about their doubts! That was one of the most appealing parts of the Episcopal faith for me when I first found St. John’s in Farmington, NM. The ability to ask questions, to have my doubts, and to find encouragement in my journey from black and white, either/or thinking from my earlier years in Christian churches was a breath of fresh air.
And so, amid our embrace of the ambiguity and greyness of our lived experience of this life, our Scriptures present us with these dualities before us today.
The blessings are easy enough to accept. Blessed are those whose trust is in God. Blessed are those who have hope in the resurrection. Blessed are those whom God approves of and has come to their aid in this life.
The curses, those can be harder to accept. Does God, or will God, bring harm upon those who don’t live up to such a standard? Will God curse and punish those who do not hold the “correct” beliefs about God and what God is like?
That’s at the core of what we will be discussing at Pizza Theology this week. What does God want for us to know about God, and to believe about God, and what, if any, are the consequences for getting it wrong? And then what do we do with the creeds, such as the one that we recite together each week, if they do not line up with our own personal understanding of God?
Is life as much a binary as the Scriptures sometimes present?
Remember, now, that we are still in the season of Epiphany. The Feast of Epiphany that kicks off this season between Christmas and Lent is symbolized in the star that guided the wise men from the East to the infant Jesus. So light becomes a metaphor for the truth brought by Jesus into the world. The baby Jesus is proclaimed the light of the world. Jesus is the light that shined in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. And this light continues to illuminate our hearts and our world so that all may see and know God. The light is the truth of God coming into the world.
Remember also that epiphany means “manifestation” or “revelation.” It is the revealing, or the unveiling, of Jesus to the world. That the world is learning about Jesus, discovering who he is. He hasn’t changed, but he was unknown until he appeared at the Jordan to be baptized, until he changed water to wine at Cana, until he preached his message of God’s favor for the poor, the blind, the imprisoned, the sick, and the oppressed. He existed, but he wasn’t known.
And God is like that. God exists, but we struggle to know what God is like, and what we know is certainly incomplete, lacking, and likely to be wildly off, if God is truly the almighty, the infinite, the unknowable, the ineffible.
Perhaps the Via Media in all this is not that God’s favor expressed toward us isn’t an in/out, yes/no situation, but that our lived experience tends toward the blessings and the curses based upon how we are living in light of the revelation that has been given to us, of the light that we have received.
Another Episcopal priest connected these readings to a proverb by Hatiian Christians: “The full stomach has no need of God.” Applied to the context of Luke’s Gospel, and the blessings given are to those who know and understand their need for God’s grace; the woes are directed to those whose self-sufficiency and contentedness shield them from recognizing their need of divine grace in their lives.
For a long time, I’ve believed that the point of this life is to do the best that we can with what has been given to us.
Sometimes we are sitting amidst abundance. Sometimes we are sitting amidst our poverty and lack. And that applies not only to wealth, but to life in general.
Do the best that we can with what has been given to us.
If it is in revelation about what God is like, to receive that with acceptance and to respond in faith as we move forward from that light that we have received. And if we are lacking in understanding, to do our best with what we have seen and understood about the Holy one and to live faithfully with what we know and believe.
If it is in our possessions and in our wealth, that we are generous with the abundance that we have been given from God. And if we see someone who is lacking in their daily needs, to open our hearts to them and to share our abundance freely so that their needs will be met. If we are lacking ourselves, to find peace in contentment and to allow ourselves to ask for help when we need it.
If it is in our relationships, to learn from our experiences, to be forgiving and patient, and to help others to grow as well. And if we have been harmed and our souls broken by others, to learn how to trust those who are safe and to protect ourselves against those who would harm us.
And now where does that put us in relation to our readings today?
Well, it’s still Epiphany, so what do we learn about God and about Jesus in what we heard read today?
That God wants us to listen, to learn that which is good and to discern how to distinguish it from that which is evil, to promote the good, and to not become complacent, to take it for granted, or to isolate ourselves from others who are in need or suffering in this life. That there is a point to our lives, that there are things that God desires from us and of us, and that there are blessings and joy to be found in these things. And if we don’t, that there are blessings that we will miss out on, because walking in the way of Jesus is the best possible way to live.
So may you, my friends in Christ, trust in the Lord that you may experience God’s blessings upon your life. May you delight in the revelation of God to you, that you may seek and find the goodness of God as you are freed from the power of sin and death. And may your hunger, your poverty, your mourning be turned to joy and abundance in all the blessings of our Lord Christ Jesus.
Epiphany 7C, 2/23/2022: In 2006, when I was a few years out of college and was in seminary the first time (this is pre-Episcopalian Dan Spors), I broke up with a girlfriend of three years. That seemed like a long time back then. She had been so unkind to me toward the end, and I endured it, because she was the first person I had dated ever. I had thought for so lolng up to that point that there was something wrong with me, that I was not worthy or good enough to be loved by someone like that, and this was my shot. Here was someone that I could love, and would love me back, and accept me for me.
But as I said, toward the end of it all she became increasingly unkind to me. We were dating long distance at the end, and rather than plan to get together monthly as had been our custom, I’d go back to Milwaukee for a weekend, and she would go off to Kentucky to rock climb with friends.
And after we broke up, I harbored such bitterness and resentment in my heart toward her about it. And she was unrepentant, telling me specifically when we broke up that she didn’t think she had done anything wrong. I was just wracking myself with it all, the bitterness until one day I came upon this realization:
The Most High is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Therefore be merciful, just as our God is merciful.
I mean, it wasn’t in so many words, because that is literally a direct quote from our Gospel reading in Luke today. But the premise was the same.
It was: God forgives me for the things that, not only do I not think I did anything wrong, but when I know that I shouldn’t have done that and did anyway. And if God forgives me, I should be forgiving toward her.
The Most High is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. Therefore be merciful, just as our God is merciful.
The writings of the authors of our Scriptures frequently call upon us to take notice of the things that God does and for us to do the same. If God does these things, such as showing kindness and mercy to us, then we ourselves should show kindness and mercy to others.
I’m reminded here of one of the parables of Jesus. There was a man who had a great debt that he owed, that he couldn’t pay, and when he pleaded for mercy the debt was forgiven. Immediately after he was shown mercy, he ran into someone who owed him a tiny little debt, to whom he tried to shake him down to pay it up immediately. The moral of the story being if God has shown us mercy us, we should be merciful ourselves.
Or as the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians wrote, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly beloved children, and walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, an offering and sacrifice to God.”
Be imitators of God. Walk in love as Christ loved us.
And here is the example set before us in today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel, that we are to do well to everyone, to be merciful to everyone. And not just everyone, but those who don’t deserve it.
Our Gospel reading for this morning is full of examples of what it means to do well to those who don’t deserve it. Jesus begins our selection by telling his audience an audacious statement: love your enemies. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. And not only that, but if anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer them another cheek to hit. If someone takes from you of the little bit that you possess, offer them more to take from you.
Now, why in the world would God wish for us to do these things?
It all hinges on the idea/premise that our God already does these things. That God shows love and kindness to all people, not only the good and the righteous, to those that we would think are deserving of the goodness of God. But God shows love to everyone, gives life and health and peace to all of humanity, even to those who are enemies of God. Who curse God. Lightning doesn’t come crashing out of the sky to immediately strike down those who curse the name of God. No, rather God sends rain on the fields of the righteous and the unrighteous.
God continues to love even those who hate him. That is the model/paradigm that has been set for us, which we are to do ourselves as the people of God.
And so we are to love our enemies. We are to do the difficult thing, and to not hold on to hate in our hearts, or anger, or bitterness, or resentment. Instead, there is to be a love in us that is more powerful than hate. That is bigger than anger, bigger than our bitterness or resentment. Because God is love, our love as the people of God is to be bigger than our pain, or pride, or fear.
And, we are to do good to those who hate us. Not to pick and choose who we will be kind to and who we won’t, who we will talk to and who we won’t, who we will help and who we won’t. Instead, we are to do good to all people, even to those who don’t do good to us. To those who even do evil toward us, we are still called on to do good to them, because as we’ve already established that we are called to love them, even though they hate us.
We are to bless those who curse us. Not to respond in kind, not to do unto others as has been done to us, but to continue to want the best for those who wish the worst for us.
How difficult is that though! As I’ve said in SoulWork, our adult education program we do between services, that if it’s easy to do and understand, it probably doesn’t come from Jesus. So much of what Jesus taught his disciples is extraordinarily difficult to do, because it runs so counter to our hearts and to our instincts and inclinations.
“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them… Instead, love your enemies.”
Gah! I’m to love the one who broke my heart repeatedly and is unrepentant for it? I’m to love the one who has abused me, emotionally, spiritually, or physically? Or I’m to love the one who thinks I don’t deserve to live?
Hypothetically, yes. Somewhere in the mystery and wonder of God, God still shows kindness to all. Even at the crucifixion, Jesus asked God to forgive those who crucified him unjustly. And there is something appealing to me about being able to still see the humanity and to have mercy or pity on that part of someone who is otherwise dangerous, cruel, or downright evil. That is the extra-ordinary love of God that we are called to imitate. Not just ordinary, like loving those who are kind and loving to you, but extra-ordinary, that which is beyond our capability to do the ordinary without the example and help of God.
In practice, how can, or why should, you love the one who has hurt you, or or has abused you, or thinks you don’t deserve to live? See, there’s the rub. There’s where it breaks down for us. Why should I show mercy to the wicked? Why should I show mercy to the unrepentant? To the one who has hurt me? To the one who is still a threat and a danger, to me and to others?
Because love repairs the brokenness. Because love heals the wounds or hate and rejection. And someone needs to take the first step, just like Jesus did for us in repairing the gap between humanity and God.
And not that we are necessarily to put ourselves in harm’s way to repair the brokenness of our world (though many have, such as those who fought for civil rights in the 60s in this country or against hate and distruction in World War II), but that we are to look to Christ for inspiration of how we should live as we join in the work of God, bringing healing and restoration to the world.
The Most High is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. So be merciful, just as our God is merciful.
So may you, my friends in Christ, love your enemies, not returning hate for hate but praying for those who need more of God in their lives. May you follow the good example of Jesus, who came and taught and even suffered that all might live, including those who hated him. And may you bring healing and restoration to the world as we walk in love, just as Christ did and loved us.
Last Sunday after Epiphany, 3/02/2025: Today is a special day in the Lectionary, the calendar of readings that instruct us which scripture readings go with any given Sunday, feast days, and fast days.
It’s most familiar name to us is the Last Sunday after the Epiphany. That’s the name on our bulletins and most commonly used in the Episcopal Church. But there’s really around six names for this Sunday:
But there are some much, much more fun ones:
As you can hopefully tell from this, today is the last Sunday before Lent begins on Wednesday. Historically it was a season of feasting preceding the fast of Lent, and an opportunity to use up that which would go bad during Lent: Meat, dairy, and other perishables that were historically forbidden from consumption during Lent.
So here we are, Quinquagresima. The Last Sunday after the Epiphany. Transfiguration Sunday.
I’m grateful that it’s Transfiguration Sunday for two reasons today. First, because the Transfiguration is one of my favorite moments in the life of Christ. It is the moment when the veil was momentarily lifted for Peter, James, and John as they saw Jesus’ hidden glory revealed on the holy mount. And such an occasion allows me to dig into my reflections lately that we all probably could focus a bit more together on encountering the divine together.
First, the Transfiguration. You’ve just heard the story from Luke’s Gospel, where Jesus ascends the mountain with the three, and while there his appearance is changed – transfigured – before them, and his clothes become dazzling white. Then Moses and Elijah appear, and speak with him about his departure – his Exodus. After Peter speaks, the cloud overshadows them and the hear the voice, entreating them to listen to the beloved Son of God.
It’s a brilliant moment for the three. They are privileged that they were able to see Jesus in this way, the only time in all the Gospels that Jesus’ appearance is changed into the divine glory as it was. For the the curtain between heaven and earth was pulled back for just a moment, and they could start to see Jesus for who he truly is.
Because it is such a unique and special moment in the lift of Christ, it has been frequently represented in iconography. The various representations are quite similar in their depictions. Jesus is top center with Moses and Elijah at his side. They are standing at the top of the mountain, with separate peaks for each. Below are the three disciples, falling down the mountain head first, awe-struck, as if they have been overthrown why the sight of it all. And behind Jesus is the aura of divine glory.
As expected, the divine glory is presented as a light behind him, white, or yellow, or blue. But sometimes, the divine glory is black, and the aura behind Jesus is not bright, but dark.
It’s puzzling at first, maybe even off-putting. Why should the glory of God be presented as black?
But icons are not meant to be understood, they are to be interpreted. They are meant to make one ponder, and to think, and to wonder. They exist to make us contemplate the divine, and to pause and spend time meditating on what God is like, and to be inspired and filled with awe. They are not art per se. They’re more like Scripture, prayers, or devotionals than art.
The black aura of the transfigured Jesus is there to make us reflect on the divine glory. Perhaps even to surprise us. And to skip to the point, here’s my interpretation of the dark aura of holy light: the majesty of God is beyond human comprehension, and the magnitude of God’s glory is beyond our ability to grasp beyond the little that has been given to us. The blackness is a reflection of our inability to understand just how wonderful is our God. Just as our eyes are unable to perceive God’s glory, our minds are unable to understand it. And the disciples who were present for this are overthrown by it and cast down from seeing God’s glory.
What I like so much about the story of the Transfiguration is how the very human Jesus that we see in his life and teaching and deeds in the Gospels is, for a moment, revealed to have more going on in the divine realm than normally meets the eye, and for that point in time the three disciples were able to see what had been hidden from their eyes as they travelled with their teacher.
That’s the main point for today. Here’s the second: I read an article about the decline of mainstream Christian denominations in which the author gave an assessment of the cause for the decline. I read plenty of these, but one section in this caught my attention where it discussed “the rise of progressive ideology in Christian churches.” Here’s the first sentence: “The tension between ideology and theology in the church raises an urgent question: What happens when the church becomes more focused on movements and agendas than on fostering genuine encounters with God?”
I can relate to that. That got me, because I recognize that I can tend that way myself in our Sunday worship. What is the one part of our worship that isn’t scripted for us as Episcopalians and can be shaped however we wish? The sermon. And what do most of my sermons do? I try to take the teachings of Jesus and use them to derive at a call to action of how we are to live.
By far most this call to action is most often about how we treat one another. The teachings of Jesus largely focus on how we treat others, and how to love our neighbor. The Sermon on the Mount, which we are discussing at length in SoulWork, is almost entirely focused on how we live; not what we believe or learn about God, but how we conduct ourselves toward one another. So that’s where I end up most times: ideology and agenda.
But that stuck with me: “What happens when the church becomes more focused on movements and agendas than on fostering genuine encounters with God?” The author goes on to write that “this is not to say that social welfare or social justice programs are not important. Rather my point is that the order is reversed.”
The Church is not a social justice organization that worships. It is a worshipping community that loves its neighbor. Especially in this season of Epiphany, where the glory of God was made manifest to the world through Jesus, I am struck by that reminder that we are about having genuine encounters with the living God, and bring reminded of the glorious presence of God with us – even when it’s difficult to perceive or difficult to understand. Because that is the God we love and who created us, and called us to walk in love as Christ loved us.
So may you, my friends in Christ, see the divine glory of God and be awestruck at it. May you be changed into the likeness of Christ, just as Moses’ face shone radiant after he encountered God on the holy mountain. And may we all be a worshipping community that loves all our neighbors.
Advent 2C, 12/8/2024: In the story of the Bible, there is a significant gap in the records between the final writings of the Hebrew scriptures and the public ministry of Jesus in his lifetime. The last book of the Hebrew Scriptures, called the Tanak by Jews and what we commonly call the Old Testament, is Malachi. It was written to the Jewish people who had been defeated and exiled by Babylon and returned to their ancestral lands under the Persian Empire. And they returned to an occupied land, ruled by other nations and no longer free to rule themselves as they saw fit.
Malachi, sometimes known as the Italian prophet Ma-lee-chee, called upon the people to remember their God, to serve God with all their hearts, and to not forsake the covenant God made with the people. And in his call to the people to remain faithful, he describes a prophet that God will send to prepare the way for their salvation.
Thus closes the writings of the Old Testament, of the Hebrew Scriptures. Then you turn a few pages and we get the story of the life of Jesus.
In a few short pages, the world has changed considerably. But you won’t hear it from the authors of the Bible. Approximately 430 years have passed, from the writing of Malachi to the births of John the Baptist and of Jesus, with no mention of what has happened to get us to this point. It’s especially stark in Luke’s Gospel, where we hear of Roman Emperor Tiberius, Roman governor Pontius Pilate ruling Judea, brothers Herod and Philip who rule as governors over the provinces of Galilee and Itumea and Trachonitus, Lysanias ruler of Abilene, and Annas and Caiaphas ruling as chief priests.
To those reading these words, who inhabited this world, they did not need an explanation of what happened. Simply some names of notable people to anchor approximately when these events happened.
But what happened to get us here? And why is it important?
For those who joined us in SoulWork during the fall, you may already know where this is going.
In the years between the writing of Malachi and the birth of John the Baptist, which preceded Jesus by about 6 months, three major political shifts are important.
First, that the Persian Empire, which ruled over the land of Palestine at the time the book of Malachi was written, fell to the Greeks under Alexander the Great. Alexander defeated the nations north of Palestine, and the Jews and others around them capitulated to the Greeks. These Greek rulers sought to impose their culture, values, and language on those they conquered, including the Jews. They, however, we’re keen on losing their cultural identity to the Greeks, and after a period of oppression rose up against their Greek rulers and around 145 BC actually fought their way to freedom.
Civil war among the Jews later broke out, and in 63 BC some of the leaders of a party in the civil war reached out to Rome to help. General Pompey was happy to do so, claiming Palestine for Rome. It was definitely not the result that was sought by the Jews who wanted freedom, but found themselves occupied by another empire.
So when Jesus was born, it was the Romans who occupied the land. And it was for freedom from the Romans and a return to self-rule that many among the Jewish people longed for someone anointed by God to free the people from Roman rule to come to their aid. They longed for the redemption foretold by Malachi, that God would rescue the people, as the Lord had done for their ancestors when they were delivered from slavery in Egypt and led to the land promised to their forefather Abraham.
This is the messiah the people were waiting for: someone to free them from their oppressors so they would be free to live in the land.
And here’s the Good News for today:
God is listening, and God is sending a messenger to prepare the way for the coming salvation, and the advent of a messiah.
From the 40th chapter of Isaiah:
You who bring good news to Zion,
go up on a high mountain.
You who bring good news to Jerusalem,
lift up your voice with a shout,
lift it up, do not be afraid;
say to the towns of Judah,
“Here is your God!”
See, the Sovereign Lord comes with power,
and he rules with a mighty arm.
See, his reward is with him,
and his recompense accompanies him.
He tends his flock like a shepherd:
He gathers the lambs in his arms
and carries them close to his heart;
he gently leads those that have young.
God is listening, and God is sending a messenger to prepare the way for the coming salvation, and the advent of a messiah.
This is the message of the one who is to prepare us for the Day of the Lord’s coming: Here is your God.
John pointed the people to Jesus: What, in our lives, are we pointing people to?
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we heed the prophet’s call to repentance. May we look to Jesus with longing expectation for our salvation. And may we be prepared when the advent of our savior comes, appearing in our midst.
Advent 3C, 12/15/2024: When it comes time to give the Gospel reading in our worship, there is a certain flair that I am to put into it. To make it dignified, but not pompous, and to try to give it a little more feeling in the reading without being dramatic about it.
Sometimes that means losing a great deal of the passion and energy behind the reading, flattening the scene of what’s really going on.
Imagine the setting for our reading this morning. John is out, presumably at the Jordan River somewhat east of Jerusalem, the center of Jewish spiritual and political life, and speaking to the crowds that have come out to be baptized. And in a loud voice, yells to the crowds.
Calls them a brood of vipers. Calls them out for their inaction at turning their hearts to God. Tells them to turn from their ways and to live out what it is that God has revealed to their ancestors about how to live lives that are holy and pleasing to God.
But there’s one particular phrase from our reading about John the Baptist that I want to focus on here. It’s the last sentence from our reading:
So, with many other exhortations, he proclaimed the good news to the people.
The Good News. In Greek that’s the word euangelion, and it’s the word that is translated as “Gospel.” Which has me back once again to reflecting on the meaning of the word Gospel. It’s a word that we banter around in a few different meanings. While it began as a simple, normal word in Greek speaking areas, and it could have meant anything that was considered to be good news, or good tidings.
Then, when the Christians picked it up, it began to take on special, particular meanings. First, it’s part of the titles that we give to the four books that give an account for the life of Jesus: The Gospel according to Luke, for instance. But it has more meaning than just that, as people have wanted to distill its meaning to a main point, that there is this thing that we call the Good News of God in Christ, the Gospel.
Growing up in an evangelical setting, it had a very definite meaning: That by believing in Jesus Christ your sins are forgiven and you go to heaven when you die and not to hell.
But I have for the longest time thought that there needed to be more to it than that–let alone the questions that come from the latter portion about eternal judgment and fire and brimstone.
Look at the way our reading handles it. John’s message was one of repentance, and yes, that there would be one to follow him whose message was superior to his, one whom he was not worthy to untie the sandals from off his feet. But I sincerely doubt that John knew all the particulars about the crucifixion and resurrection that Jesus was to undergo that this usage of Gospel from our reading this morning.
Logically, that can’t be what’s going on here, labeling John’s message as “the Gospel” and to have anything like that meaning.
So taking it in a broader sense, what might be meant by this Good News that John preached to the people as he baptized them in the Jordan River?
Might it be, that the Good News is that God loves you, and cares about you, and would do the unimaginable in order to come to our aid? To help us and to lather us with grace and mercy, acceptance and approval?
That it’s not just in the resurrection, but even in the message that Jesus brought, and that John brought, and all the prophets brought? Of pointing us to the magnificence of God and the love of God for us, and of all the ways that God has come to humanity? To seek out a relationship with us, first seen in the covenant made with Abraham and reaffirmed through Moses, in the calling of the prophets to try to draw the hearts of the people back to God? In the coming of the Son of God to be with us and to show us the way? In the sending of the Holy Spirit, to strengthen and to comfort us even today as we strive to be holy and faithful to the life to which we have been called as followers of Jesus? And finally as we await the day that God will make all things right, and make a full restoration of things, healing this world from the sin and pain and darkness that infect our souls?
THAT, to me, is truly Good News!
That is a message that inspires me. That God loves me, just as I am, with no hesitation because of my shortcomings or the things in my past, or even of those I still struggle against today. And that no matter how dark the night may be, there is always a light out there, reminding me that God has not abandoned me or left me to struggle on my own.
That’s a very Advent-y message, after all. No matter how dark the night may be, there is always a light out there, reminding us that God has not abandoned us or left us to struggle on our own.
In Jesus’ Day, it meant that God had not forgotten the promise to send a savior, someone whose way was anointed to come to the rescue of the people, who longed for God’s divine intervention into the world once again, as God had in the past to come to the rescue for their ancestors.
Today, it means that God is still and always with us, and whose power and love comes to us each day to break through the darkness and to bring goodness, love, healing and restoration to a world broken by sin, jealousy, envy, greed, and hate. To live charitably with your neighbor: As John said in our reading, “Whoever has two coats must share with anyone who has none; and whoever has food must do likewise.” And to be honest in our work: take the tax collectors and soldiers were told to not extort or abuse people in their work or their actions.
The result of it all: The people were willed with expectation, and wondered if John might have been the messiah, the one anointed by God to bring freedom to the people. To which John said he wasn’t, but that his work was to prepare the way for the one who is.
That no matter how dark the night may be, there is always a light out there, reminding us that God has not abandoned us or left us to struggle on our own.
That is Good News, not only for the life of the world to come, but for this life, today.
That also makes a turn of this thing we call repentance. That our turning from evil and darkness in our world is not so that we might go to heaven when we die, as some who follow Jesus emphasize so strongly, but our turning from darkness is because we seek to align our values with God’s values, because the fruit of repentence is love, joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Because the way of Jesus, the way that John prepared by calling the people to repentence, is the best possible way to live.
That’s the message that I want to explore with you this morning: “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”
What does it mean to repent anyway? It’s a nebulous (strange) word, and a little slippery to try and define. We’re going to try it anyway! And to do so, we’re going to talk languages.
First point: You and I are English speakers and readers, translating a Greek account of a man who spoke Aramaic to people whose Scriptures were written in Hebrew. It makes sense, then, to look at what the Hebrew has to teach us.
There are two words in Hebrew to learn from. The first is schuv–literally to “turn away from.” For example, when the people of Israel made the golden calf, Moses pleads to God, “Turn from your fierce wrath; change your mind and do not bring disaster on your people.” In turning from, there is the sense of choosing to go a different way, to choose a different path, and of not continuing to do what you had been doing or intending to do.
Then there is another word, nacham, which adds the sense of regret into the conversation. Consider poor Job, who after seeing the power and magnificence of God, declared “therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” for speaking of God in ways that did not honor the glory of the Lord. In nacham, there is more than simply turning away, but there is also the emotion of grief and sadness. We’ve now entered into the realm of the emotions, of the heart. It is now lo longer enough simply to stop, but there is an internal process of the feelings involved, and a sense of contrition involved at the acknowledgement of doing wrong.
The Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures uses two words to translate these terms. The word used to translate schuv is typically strepho–to turn from. Seems fairly one-to-one here, schuv is to turn from, strepho is to turn from, or even to return, such as to return to the Lord after doing wrong.
Nacham, then, is usually translated with metanoeo–literally to change one’s mind. On the surface that seems a little bland. Change one’s mind. Repentance then becomes a little… heady. Cerebral. It’s all up here. But that’s not the meaning of the word nacham, which is an emotional process. Metanoeo by itself doesn’t carry that feeling, but the words that it translates from Hebrew to Greek do.
Why is this all important? Because John says… “Metano-ei-tay.”
And we might think the repentance John is calling for is good enough if we think differently, if we think differently. To change our mind. But if we use the lesson we learn from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, we find that the call to repentance is much more than that. It is inner transformation. To feel the wrongness of what was done, and to commit to doing what is right instead. That we may become those trees that bear good fruit, whose lives bear out the goodness within one’s heart.
I’ve heard it said that most priests have one major theme that comes out in their preaching. That in time, the more you craft and deliver sermons, the more there seems to be one major theme that makes its way into the majority of sermons you preach. And I’d actually be more than a little curious to know what it is that you’ve seen and heard from me, but here’s what I’ve found–I talk a lot about “loving your neighbor as yourself”, about how we treat the people around us.
And if I were a betting man–which I’m not, because that would be sinful (wink wink)–but if I were, I would guess it’s because I came from a tradition within Christianity that didn’t know what to do about the importance of being a good person in this life. It was a tradition that emphasized the idea that we cannot earn God’s love or favor, that God loves us simply because God is loving and gracious, and became suspicious of good deeds as though you were trying to earn God’s love and affection, and therefore would nullify the concept of grace.
And for me, at this stage in life for me, perhaps I’m trying to make up for lost time, seeing the command to love one’s neighbor painted all throughout the Scriptures that we read together each week. Even here, when reading or hearing John say to those who came to him that the wheat will be gathered up together, and that the trees that bear good fruit will be spared from the ax, I hear in there echos back to the command to “Love the Lord our God with all our heart and mind and soul and strength, and to love our neighbor as ourselves.” And as we come together to worship God, that we would be encouraged to go out and be loving and kind to our fellow humanity around us.
So repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.
Advent 4C, 2/22/2024: When preparing the sermon for our worship together, I most often take inspiration from our Gospel reading. Occasionally I’ll focus on the first or second readings, and on quite rare occasion I’ll look at the psalm for inspiration. And even less than that, the collect of the day.
Which I am doing today: “Purify our conscience, Almighty God, by your daily visitation, that your Son Jesus Christ, at his coming, may find in us a mansion prepared for himself; who lives and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.”
As we’ve discussed, here and in SoulWork between the services, Advent is a time of anticipation. Originally to anticipate Jesus’ glorious return at the end of the age, what is called in theological terms the “second coming.” We heard readings that reflect this original focus the first Sunday of Advent, that Jesus will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead. Then, our focus has turned to his birth, which we heard first in the birth and ministry of John the Baptist, who was a prophet called by God to prepare the way for the ministry of Jesus. And now, finally, we hear of the imminent birth of Jesus, when his mother Mary goes to visit her relative Elisabeth, who was John the Baptist’s mother.
So we have Jesus’ first coming in his birth in Bethlehem, and we have Jesus’ second coming in his return in glory. But hear the words of St. Bernard of Clairvaux’s Advent Sermon #5:
“Advent prepares not just for the first coming of Christ to Israel, or even the second at the end of time. There is a third coming between these two in which Jesus comes in spirit and power for our rest and consolation.
“We know that there are three comings of the Lord. The third lies between the other two. It is invisible, while the other two are visible.
“In the first coming he was seen on earth, dwelling among men; he himself testifies that they saw him and hated him. In the final coming all flesh will see the salvation of our God, and they will look on him whom they pierced. The intermediate coming is a hidden one; in it only the elect see the Lord within their own selves, and they are saved. In his first coming our Lord came in our flesh and in our weakness; in this middle coming he comes in spirit and in power; in the final coming he will be seen in glory and majesty.”
This is the daily visitation of our God to us that we remember in our collect for this, the 4th Sunday of Advent. Not his first appearance in human flesh, and not his final appearance coming on the clouds in glory, but quietly, in spirit, in our very midst, this very day. As St. Bernard goes on to say, “Because this coming lies between the other two, it is like a road on which we travel from the first coming to the last.”
In the first coming of Christ, he made us holy as he took on human flesh, took on matter into his being, and made the creation holy. By becoming human, Jesus made all that he touched holy, and his work of making the creation good spread out from there like a shockwave from an earthquake. In the Second Coming, we look to the final act of redemption for all creation and making all righteous as well. Not all have submitted to the goodness to which Jesus called us in his life and ministry, and we long for the day that God will make this work complete and all the world will live in kindness, compassion, and concern for others.
And today, we are on that path from the first coming to the final, encountering Christ everywhere he is present with us in our work, connections, and relationships. This is where we join in the work that God continues to do to bring about good in the world.
This, then, connects to the words attributed to Mary in the poem we call the Magnificat, as in “my soul magnifies the Lord” from the first verse, which we read as part of our Gospel.
It is a song of the repercussions in this life of the work of God in sending Jesus to be born of Mary. It’s the reality of what we see as we walk the path between the first coming and the final one at the end of the age:
God thwarts the plans and designs of the proud.
Brings down the powerful and raises up the lowly.
Provides for the hungry and brings down the rich.
Throughout these words, we see a bold proclamation of the mercy and might of God, who will turn the social order over in order to affirm and lift up the lowly—the humble, the powerless, the hungry—while the arrogant, powerful, and the rich will stand to lose greatly. Do you hear the echoes to Jesus’ later words: The first shall be last and the last shall be first?
But this is our God, revealed to us in the face of Jesus, who showed exceptional kindness and mercy to those who were suffering in this life, or who humbled themselves before God and the teachings of Jesus. These ones, like the tax collector praying in the temple, went away justified, while the others went away excluded from the blessings enjoyed by the others.
May that be a lesson to us, that as we enjoy the daily visitation of Christ in our lives, the daily Advent of Jesus to us, that we would learn from the words of Mary in this Gospel, and to appreciate the mercy of the mighty one to the humble, the lowly, and those in need.
Now, let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves, we’re still in Advent. We’re still in the time of anticipation, and even more so as Christmas and the Feast of the Nativity of Jesus approaches. And let’s not jump to celebration just yet, as we are still walking the path with Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem, where the baby is to be born and given the name Jesus, for God will save the people from their sins through him.
So together with you, my friends in Christ, may we discover God around us each and every day in the daily visitation of Christ to our world. May we look with longing expectation of the day when God will make all things right and bring true peace, joy, and love to our world. And may we with joy remember his first advent as we celebrate the day that Jesus the Christ was born to Mary and Joseph, announced by angels, and visited by shepherds.
In this morning’s readings of the Gospel, for this fourth and final Sunday in Advent, we come to the Visitation of Mary to her relative Elizabeth, both of whom are pregnant in remarkable ways. Elizabeth because she was older and had been unable to have a child until this point, when the angel appeared to her husband as he was serving in the temple. And to Mary, because she had not yet married Joseph, but was overshadowed by the Holy Spirit and conceived. And in this account of the meeting of the two, we read two remarkable things.
The first being that when Mary speaks, the baby that Elizabeth is carrying responds, as though there is something special about Mary and the baby that Mary is carrying. There is the mysterious acknowledgement, without yet receiving any news or indication as to what kind of child this will be, that there is something special going on here. And in response, Elizabeth proclaims that Mary has become blessed among women — of which Luke curiously uses a form of the word “Blessed” that is only used once, in this instance, of someone other than Jesus. There is something special going on here indeed.
If we can for a moment put aside our awareness of the rest of the story and imagine that we are hearing it for the first time, here’s the information that we have so far: That the angel appeared to Mary, a young woman engaged but not yet married to Joseph, and told her these words:
And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his ancestor David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.
And I am fighting so hard right now to not go into a diatribe on the song, “Mary did you know?” Because, she didn’t, OK. That settles it.
But what does she hear? Essentially, that he will sit on the throne of his ancestor David, forever. Which doesn’t make a lot of sense if that’s all you’ve got to go with. No wonder Mary is said to have pondered these things in her heart.
She’s also told that her relative Elizabeth is now six-months pregnant. So she goes to Elizabeth, who greets her and tells her that when she spoke, her, Elizabeth’s baby, leapt in her womb.
It’s to this, and the proclamation of being blessed among women, and blessed is the baby inside her, that she responds in the words which we call the Magnificat — the name deriving from the Latin word for “magnifies,” the first word of her reply in Latin.
And in this, we see not a demurring Mary, as we often see in iconography, but a bold, confident, and even a defiant woman. Because in her words, we progress from her self-reflection of her poor estate and standing, her humility before God, to the great blessings which God has given her in this moment—and she hasn’t even given birth yet to this baby! She’s barely even pregnant at this point!
But look at the language she uses of the work that God is doing through her and this moment. In it we see a God who is strong and powerful, the Mighty One. A God who is merciful and has acted on Mary’s behalf and been good to her. And a God who upturns the social order, turning it on its head.
It’s to this that I want to turn, to what we see about the God who Mary has encountered, and who this God is that is doing this curious thing through her and the children that she and Elizabeth will raise.
Because we sang the magnificat in place of the Psalm, I want to reread it from the NRSV to you. It begins:
“My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
This praise that Mary gives to God is remarkable already, because there’s not much that has happened at this point, as we recounted moments ago. An angel appeared to her, telling her that she would become pregnant by the Holy Spirit, he will rule over Israel, and Elizabeth is pregnant. And from just THIS, Mary acknowledges that God has done great things for her. Little does she know what lies in store — because no, she didn’t know. Not at this point.
And yet, she has a remarkable thankfulness and humility before God — an attitude of gratitude — for the love of God shown to her by affirming her and inviting her to be part of this great work of salvation to come.
Following this, we see the remarkable works and priorities that se attributes to God:
His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.
Throughout these words, we see a bold proclamation of the mercy and might of God, who will turn the social order over in order to affirm and lift up the lowly—the humble, the powerless, the hungry—while the arrogant, powerful, and the rich will stand to lose greatly. Do you hear the echoes to Jesus’ later words: The first shall be last and the last shall be first?
But this is our God, revealed to us in the face of Jesus, who showed exceptional kindness and mercy to those who were suffering in this life, or who humbled themselves before God and the teachings of Jesus. These ones, like the tax collector praying in the temple, went away justified, while the others went away excluded from the blessings enjoyed by the others.
May that be a lesson to us, that as we enjoy the daily visitation of Christ in our lives, the daily Advent of Jesus to us, that we would learn from the words of Mary in this Gospel, and to appreciate the mercy of the mighty one to the humble, the lowly, and those in need.
Vic has been the music director at St. Bede’s Episcopal Church since 2022. In his time, he has continued the longstanding musical tradition of prestigious music while bringing the ideals of contemporary choral music to the church’s congregants. While bringing thought-provoking and worship enriching repertoire to Sunday services, he has also collaborated with many musicians both within St. Bede’s and the surrounding community for several special services, including bringing Christmas Eve Lessons and Carols to Menlo Park as well as many Evensong Services.
Outside of St. Bede’s, Vic is the Head of Music and Director of Vocal Studies at Ohlone College where he directs the Choral Ensembles, instructs voice lessons, and teaches courses in musicology. He earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Northwestern University (where he acquired an intense love of both contemporary choral music and deep-dish pizza) and a Master of Arts from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, both in Choral Conducting. He is originally from Orange County, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Choral Music Education from California State University, Fullerton.
Beyond music, Vic has a deep love for Olympic style wrestling, which he both enjoys as a fan and trains and competes for regularly. The remainder of his free time goes to his lovely mini aussiedoodle – Buffy.
We engage in serving the needs of the unhoused, the food insecure, and those in need of educational assistance in the Peninsula as we proclaim the Gospel and promote justice, peace, and love for all people.
We strive to understand the workings of Jesus and enrich our lives with continuous learning. We strive to teach those around us about the good works that Jesus performed, and strive to input His teachings into our own lives.
We join with one another to support one another in all things, celebrating the high points of life, mourning together the low points, and following the example given to us by Christ during his life among us.
We gather together to set forth God's praise, to hear God's holy Word, and to pray for those things that are necessary for our life and our salvation, believing that the way of Jesus is the best possible way to live.
Include Jane’ New Bio for Family Ministry
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Bio will go here.
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St. Bede’s has been home to Jane for a startlingly long time. She taught music in Trinity School and was the Music Director at St. Bede’s for many years. She was then ordained, and served as the Vicar of Holy Innocents in San Francisco. In her retirement, she has returned to St. Bede’s where her family also attends. Her delight is working with the Children’s Ministry, but she can occasionally be spotted being useful in other ways.
