Finding Jesus at the Tomb

Sermon for Easter, April 9, 2023
John 20:1-18

In the past couple of weeks, an addition has quietly come to our columbarium.  If you go over there to light a candle, you’ll notice a small crucifix on the wall – an image of the cross with Jesus hanging on it.  A couple of parishioners had asked about adding a crucifix somewhere in the church, and that seemed like the right place. 

I’m telling you this because Easter morning is a good time to think about where we look for Jesus – on the cross, or somewhere else?  In the Episcopal Church, you don’t see a lot of crucifixes.  We typically look toward the empty cross, toward Jesus rising and reigning in glory, rather than sacrificed for us, hanging there in death.  We like to think of ourselves as Easter people, and we are – not just this morning but always.  But, as Good Friday teaches us, you can’t run to Easter morning without spending time at the cross along the way.

Even our Gospel reading this morning recognizes that both/and.  You know, we hear this story in the light of 2,000 years of Easter celebrations, but Mary Magdalene isn’t there yet.  As the story begins, in that darkest hour just before the dawn, Mary makes her way to the tomb – and in John’s Gospel, we aren’t ever told what she’s doing there.  In John’s story, after Jesus died on the cross, two of his secret followers from among the Jewish leaders prepared the body for burial – anointing it, wrapping it up with “a hundred pounds” of spices, and laying it in a fresh tomb (John 19:39).  In the account we heard today, Mary isn’t there to prepare the body for burial; that’s how it happens in the other Gospels.  Here, Mary just comes to the tomb.

And for more than half of this Easter story, darkness still reigns.  The stone that sealed the tomb has been removed, and the body’s gone.  Mary reasonably assumes their enemies have stolen the body, maybe planning to drag it through the streets to show just how dead this Jesus fellow really is. 

So, Mary runs to get Peter and John, waking them up to help look for the body before the horror show begins anew.  The three of them make their way through the darkness back to the tomb.  The guys have to see it for themselves, I guess to make sure Mary hadn’t just missed the body tossed in a corner of the cave.  Peter looks in, and John goes in, and Peter goes in after him.  They see the body’s empty wrappings, and they believe that Jesus truly is not there – but they don’t know what that means.  So then, the guys go home.  That’s always seemed strange to me, but maybe they thought for a minute about what might happen if they went out looking for the body.  Peter and John didn’t want to end up as bodies dragged through the streets themselves.

Well, here’s the remarkable thing:  Through all this, Jesus is watching.  He’s been there the whole time, standing alongside them in the dark.  But in the dark, Mary couldn’t see him standing beside her.  Even when Jesus starts speaking to Mary, her pain is too thick to let in the voice of God.  Her mind is full of awful images of truly awful people, backed by a murderous regime, desecrating the body of her Lord – which would prove that evil does get the last word after all, despite Jesus’ signs that love would win.  She even talks with Jesus there by the tomb; but in the darkness that surrounds her, she still can’t see it’s him. 

For more than half of this story of the ultimate good news, the news is not good.  But then, it turns.  The story turns from night to day when Jesus calls Mary by name.  She sees Jesus when she knows Jesus sees her.  And it’s then she knows she’s not alone – and never will be alone again.

All that sounds like the shape of life to me.  I mean, I’m in the business of proclaiming good news, but I’ll tell you – life is at least half darkness, and I think it’s our time in the darkness that forms us most.  To find the light, you’ve got to go into the darkness with your eyes wide open.  You’ve got to go to the tomb to find Jesus waiting for you.  

And there, what you’ll find is that he’s been walking right alongside you the whole way, taking the hardest steps we take.  It started with being born in poverty, his parents forced by the government to travel cross-country to be documented and then fleeing as refugees from persecution.  As an adult, he worked with his hands, scratching out a living day by day.  He watched the people he loved suffering in an imperial system set up to profit by taking their resources.  He saw his cousin, John the Baptist, begin to lead a holy movement, only to be arrested and killed in prison.  And he himself rode into the center of power, the people proclaiming him to be their king, only to watch his friends desert him and deny him and betray him, delivering him up to his own torture and death. 

Every pain of human life is a pain he knew – and a pain he defeated.  Because, alongside the persecution and deprivation and struggle, Jesus – God in the flesh – also knew every joy that’s ours and promised to bring us into that joy for all time.  All those moments when heaven and earth intersect – the joy of deep relationship, the joy of miraculous creation, the joy of changing someone’s life for the better – all those moments when heaven and earth intersect are previews of our coming attraction, life with God that never ends.  “I have overcome the world,” Jesus told his friends (John 16:33 NIV).  So “do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid” (14:27).

But, of course, we are afraid.  Because all around us, we see night creeping in.  We see loved ones die.  We see our bodies failing.  We see leaders we can’t trust pursuing the politics of endless bickering.  We see one shooting after another, and we rush to blame rather than to solve.  We see young people – young people – living in fear of the future.  Much of our life is spent at the edge of the dark night, afraid of what the next day may bring.

But also at the edge of that dark night stands the risen Christ.  And he’s calling your name.  Whatever fear you face, he’s faced it, too.  God has taken flesh and blood, and walked through the worst that humanity can dish out, and walked out of the tomb in victory, scattering the darkness with the light of life.  But here’s the holy irony that Mary Magdalene shows us:  You have to go to the tomb to find Jesus.  For it’s from the tomb’s womb that the risen Christ comes.

As you know, I’ll be going to Jesus’ tomb before long myself, God willing.  As part of the sabbatical that starts tomorrow, I’m planning to make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.  Now, of course, I’m watching the news, as you are, and praying that conditions on the ground will allow the trip to go forward.  But the plan is for me to tag along with another church’s group and learn how parish pilgrimages work so we can take pilgrimages from St. Andrew’s.  I’m also staying in Jerusalem a couple of days extra, once the tour is over.  It will give me the chance to go back to the Mount of Olives and take my own journey of Holy Week and Easter, my own walk from the Garden of Gethsemane, down into the Kidron Valley, and up Mount Zion into Jerusalem’s Old City, following the Via Dolorosa, the way of sorrow, to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the tomb.

Now, that doesn’t exactly sound like a fun vacation: “Hey, I know – let’s walk the path where Jesus was beaten and killed!”  That’s why it’s not a vacation but a pilgrimage, a journey not just to see a famous site but to find yourself, and God, in the holy mystery of that site.  I am trusting that there is a balm in Gilead, healing to be found along the way of sorrows.  I’m trusting in that because Jesus shows us it’s true, walking out of the tomb and calling us by name – if we come to the tomb to find him.

So, at some point, when you feel the darkness creeping up on you, I invite you to make a tiny pilgrimage of your own.  You don’t have to go to Jerusalem.  You can make a powerful journey right here.  Sometime, when you’re having trouble seeing the way forward, when the edge of the dark night is near, come by the church.  Come into this beautiful space and walk down the aisle, encircled by fellow travelers from centuries gone by.  Feel free to stop in a pew, to “enter, rest, and pray” along your way. 

But then, keep going; and make your way to the columbarium.  Maybe you have someone there whose love you want to remember.  But even if you don’t, make your way over there, and light a candle, and be present in the beautiful, holy tension of this space.  Look to the crucifix in the corner, and remember that your Lord and Savior walks with you through every hard step you have to take.  And then, look up to the angel window, and remember that the promise of life in its fullness, a life of heavenly healing, awaits you, so close you can almost touch it. 

And then, make your way out of the columbarium, out of the tomb, and climb the steps to the sanctuary – to the empty cross, to Jesus’ victory over sin and death in the here and now.  Why make that trip?  Because he’s calling you by name, asking you to come and see, and then sending you to go and live – to live the truth that you, too, have seen the Lord, even in the darkness.

Praying for Dead People

Sermon for March 26, 2023
Ezekiel 37:1-14; John 11:1-45

As you probably know from all the funeral notices over the past few months, we’ve had several parishioners die in a relatively short period of time.  Since the first of the year, we’ve lost 13 friends and siblings in the faith, and I want to raise them up in prayer now, seeking God’s continuing care for them as they rest in peace and look to rise in glory.  They are Charlie McCord, Harriet Kokjer, Mary Allen Roysdon, Gwen Caranchini, Jennifer Moore, Janice Talge, Bob Steinbach, Nancy McClure, Bill Peters, James Hanson, John Brunk, Richard Moseley, and just a few days ago, Carol Williams.  In addition, every week we pray for parishioners’ family members who’ve died, as well as those in our community killed in violent acts.  In fact, each week, we pray for all those who have died – as the Prayers of the People in Rite I says, we ask God to “grant to all the departed continual growth in thy love and service” (BCP 330).

Why do we do that?  Why are we praying that dead people would know “continual growth in [God’s] love and service”?  And what does that have to do with our lives now?

This Sunday seems a good time to ask these questions, given the Old Testament and Gospel readings.  Both have kind of a horror-film quality to them, readings you might pick for a Halloween party – first, an army of skeletons rising from an ancient battlefield; and then someone looking like the Mummy stumbling out of his tomb at Jesus’ command.  These stories capture our imagination because … well … they’re about dead people.  And, for most of us, death is our greatest fear. 

Right?  I mean, I won’t ask for a show of hands, but – in this time of Lenten self-examination, which we began by remembering that we are dust, and to dust we shall return – in this time of dust and ashes, ask yourself:  Am I afraid to die?  Am I afraid that I’ll never again see the people I love?  Am I afraid that, when I die, my life will truly be over?

If you are afraid to die, know that you’re in good company.  It’s easy for someone who’s relatively healthy and relatively young to see death as an abstraction most of the time, a distant eventuality I can ignore for now.  But it doesn’t take much – the doctor suspects something, and schedules a scope or a scan, and then you have weeks to think about what they might find….  And when we’re in a situation like that, dying seems to be much more of a going concern.

Well, into our fear of dying walks Jesus.  He and his friends are about 35 miles away from Bethany when Jesus gets word that his good friend there, Lazarus, is very sick.  Now, by this point in the Gospel of John, we know Jesus has astonishing powers to restore health and well-being.  He’s healed the son of a royal official who was dying.  He’s healed a man who’d been sick for 38 years.  He’s given sight to a man born blind, as we heard last week.  So, of course, we expect Jesus to run back to Bethany and offer another healing, another sign of his authority to reveal God’s glory. 

But Jesus stays put.  He tells the disciples, “This illness does not lead to death; rather it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of Man might be glorified through it” (John 11:4).  And he lets Lazarus die.  Knowing full well his friend is really sick, Jesus stays away two more days before taking the 35-mile hike back to Bethany … where, by the way, he knows the authorities are plotting to kill him.

Near Bethany, Martha, Lazarus’ sister, comes running down the road to meet Jesus.  By now, Lazarus has been dead four days, and Martha is filled with equal parts rage and hope.  “If you’d been here, my brother would not have died,” she yells at him.  And then, remembering at whom she’s yelling, Martha also says, “But even now, I know God will give you whatever you ask.” (John 11:21-22)  This conversation with Martha is the crux of this story, maybe even more important than the miracle itself.  Jesus assures her that her brother will rise again; and she hears that as the commonly held faith that, when the Messiah comes in glory and God rules the earth, the dead will be raised.  But no, Jesus says.  It’s better than that, because the future is now.  Are you looking for heavenly life, for life in all its fullness?  It’s standing here before you.  Come and join me in it, Jesus says, because “I am the resurrection and the life.  Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live; and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26) 

Yes, Martha says.  And her trust will bring her into a direct experience of God’s glory.  Jesus comes to the tomb, finding Lazarus quite dead, as the stench attests.  Everyone’s grieving, and Jesus joins in the tears.  Then he narrates why he’s about to offer this miracle – “for the sake of the crowd standing here, that they may believe that [God] sent me” (John 11:42).  So, Jesus calls to the dead man.  And the dead man hears his voice and lives (John 5:25).

But here’s the thing:  As much as Jesus loves Lazarus, simply fixing his death isn’t why Jesus does what he does here.  If we knew Greek and heard the story that way, we’d get a hint what’s going on when Jesus famously cries.  In English, it’s written like this:  Jesus “was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved,” and he began “to weep” (John 11:33-35) – which is not just shedding a few tears, the scholars say, but “wailing and lamentation for the dead person.”¹  Naturally, we hear this as compassion, as Jesus suffering with those who are grieving over the death their brother or good friend.  But in Greek, what we translate as “greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved” is more like “agitated and indignant.”²  Jesus is angry when he sees sin and death exercising their dominion in the world.  He’s angry because he knows it doesn’t have to be that way, and he’s about to start the fight.  He’s come to vanquish sin and death, breaking the teeth of the beast that hunts us all.  So, he’s about to demonstrate God’s power to do just that, a preview of the ultimate victory he’ll win when he walks away from his own tomb, having trampled down sin and death under his feet.  He’s about to show Mary and Martha and all their friends why they need not fear death anymore.

So, why do we pray for dead people?  I think there are at least two really good answers.  First, our loved ones’ stories are not over.  If the movies these days teach us anything, it’s this:  A good story never has to be over; there’s always another sequel to write.  And, unlike most of our movies, when God is the screenwriter, the story just keeps getting better with each new chapter.  As our catechism puts it, “We trust that in God’s presence those who have chosen to serve [God] will grow in [divine] love, until they see [God] as [God] is” (BCP 862).  Our journey alongside that God who loves us more than anything only grows richer with time, until finally we “come to the fullness of grace which [God has] prepared for those who” make the choice of love (BCP 379).

And here’s the other reason we pray for dead people: Because it helps us remember.  It helps us remember them, yes; and that’s right and a good and joyful thing.  But even more important, praying for dead people helps us remember that eternal life is a real thing.  As the old dictum goes, praying shapes believing.  The act of praying for someone who has died reminds us of the truth that this person’s life is not over.  And we need to be reminded of that eternal reality – over and over again.

In fact, maybe that gives us a third good reason to pray for dead people.  Ironically enough, as Mary and Martha and Lazarus come to learn, death is not about us.  Death is about the fullness of reality, the fullness of God’s reign and rule lived now and later – the fullness of life freed from sin, freed from aging, freed from worry, freed from fear.  When Jesus says to Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life,” it’s in present tense – and it’s in present tense for you, too.  Eternal life starts now, the minute you can look to Jesus and say, with Martha, “Yes, Lord, I believe” that physical death is both real and not our ultimate concern. 

“Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live,” Jesus says (John 11:25).  So, death will come our way, as our prayers remind us each week.  And – it’s just as true that “everyone who … believes in [Jesus] will never die” (John 11:26).  It might be the greatest paradox in a faith that’s full of paradox. 

But embrace it, and it’s yours.  The offer is there for you to take, the Tree of Life given to you, even though you do pick the fruit God tells you not to take from the garden.  It’s an offer that seems too good to be true precisely because none of us is good enough to deserve it.  But it’s yours for the taking anyway, eternal life beginning now and continuing always.  You need not stay bound up in the fear of a certainty you can’t control anyway.  Instead, trust in the God who loves you to death, and unbind yourself, let your fear go.

1.      HarperCollins Study Bible, 2036 (note).

2.      New Interpreters’ Study Bible, 1931 (note).

The Laundromat of Living Water

Sermon for March 12, 2023
John 4:5-42

About a month ago, as part of our annual retreat, your Vestry members went to church somewhere else.  We went to St. James United Methodist on Paseo and worshiped with the people with whom we’ve been partnering on wonderful outreach projects over the past year and a half.  It was great to be with them on Super Bowl Sunday, most of us from St. Andrew’s with different colored skin than the people at St. James but everyone there dressed in our Chiefs red.

Later, the Vestry members reflected on the experience.  The service had definitely been different from what we do here.  Worship began with us all singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” the Black national anthem – and just that is cause for rich theological reflection, a dozen White people singing in a Black church about “the blood of the slaughtered” ancestors, whose experience in this country wasn’t about writing constitutions and worshiping in box pews.  

But the differences didn’t stop there.  At St. James, there was a praise band, and screens on the wall, and no Communion, and a sermon about the preacher’s grandmother’s hands, given while the preacher sat in a recliner in the middle of the stage. It was so different … and yet so welcoming.  And, I would argue, it was also very familiar.  After all, the Methodists began as a revival movement within the Church of England, and its founder, John Wesley, was an Anglican priest all his life.  We share common history and common theological DNA with our siblings at St. James.

This relationship with St. James is growing from good soil – springing from a clear awareness of difference alongside a desire to heal division.  Our work together is rooted in personal relationship: If Janet Kelley’s three golfing friends didn’t go to St. James, all this never would have happened.  The volunteering began with St. Andrew’s people serving at St. James’ food pantry.  It grew with seasonal Connecting Community events.  It kept growing as our Outreach leaders learned from St. James’ outreach leaders how to strengthen this kind of ministry at St. Andrew’s.  It kept growing as St. James and St. Andrew’s partnered on the Free Store in January.  And now, it’s still growing as we’ve begun monthly Loads of Love at Carol’s Coin Laundry across the street from St. James.

We’re just beginning to get to know our neighbors to the east.  But we already know some backstory that both unites and divides us.  We probably wouldn’t think of the east side as a place where you’d find many Episcopalians.  Yet one of our oldest congregations, St. Augustine’s, the historically Black Episcopal church at 28^th and Benton, has been an east-side presence since 1882.  And, in fact, there used to be other Episcopal congregations in east Kansas City, including St. Mark’s at 7^th and Prospect and St. George’s in the old Southeast, near Linwood and Paseo.  But as Black residents were pushed farther south and east by restrictive covenants, redlining, “urban renewal,” and White flight, our Episcopal presence in east Kansas City shrank to be St. Aug’s alone.  Still, ours is not a Black city and a White city but a shared Kansas City; and St. Andrew’s and St. James are only six minutes apart.  So, in our incremental, sacramental way, we’re trying to see what it looks like to walk alongside each other, following Jesus as he serves and loves and heals people in need.

Healing – that’s not a bad way to capture what Jesus was up to.  And it’s exactly what we see in today’s Gospel reading.  To make sense of it, we need a little backstory about the Jews and the Samaritans and their history.  A thousand years before Jesus’ time, Israel had been united as a kingdom under David and Solomon.  After Solomon’s death, the kingdom split into a larger northern area that continued to be called Israel, while Judah in the south broke away, with its capital of Jerusalem.  Fast-forward a few more centuries, and the northern kingdom of Israel was overrun by the Assyrians, and many of its people were taken into exile – but not all.  A remnant of Israel remained as Jews in Samaria.  Meanwhile, the southern kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians a century later, with most of its Jewish people taken into exile.

When they were liberated and returned to Judah 50 years later, their top priority was rebuilding Jerusalem and its temple, as the Good Book Club has been reading in the book of Ezra.  Meanwhile, the Samarians continued their own religious practice, and eventually, under Alexander the Great, a temple to Yahweh was built on Mt. Gerizim in Samaria.  This was utterly offensive to the Jews in Judah, for whom Jerusalem and its temple were God’s one earthly dwelling place.  

Then, fast-forward another 200 years, and we come to a brief time of independence for Judah, the time of the Maccabees, when their king conquered Samaria, destroying the temple on Mt. Gerizim and their holy city, Shechem.  By Jesus’ time a century later, this religious and political divide had hardened into historic hatred.

From the Jews’ perspective, the Samaritans were the worst kind of enemy: someone very much like you, who shares your history, who basically shares your values, but who disagrees with you on how to be true to those values.  Think Northerners and Southerners in American history.  Think Protestants and Catholics.  Think Republicans and Democrats today, it seems.  The Samaritans focused on following the law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets; and the Jews focused on the practice of sacrifice in the temple at Jerusalem.  Of course, we hear all this today, and we’re struck by the faith they share.  But, you know, we humans love to keep up a good family feud.

In this context, Jesus goes back home from Judah to Galilee – a Jewish area with roots in the old northern kingdom of Israel – and he decides to take the most direct route, passing through the land of the detested Samaritans, rather than taking the long way around to avoid them.  And in a village there, he stops for a drink of water.

Now, like any biblical story, this one can be read on multiple levels.  But the scholars will tell you there’s good reason to think the Gospel writer is using the Samaritan woman to represent not just the individual healing we can find by following Jesus but the healing of the deepest rifts between us, especially rifts between groups who have so much in common.¹

So, if you read the story this way, the woman represents all the Samaritans, people who worship the right God the wrong way.  In that day, an observant Jewish man wouldn’t have interacted with a Samaritan, much less have risked ritual defilement by drinking from a Samaritan’s bucket.  You can also see the Samaritan woman representing divisions of gender and class.  A good Jewish man would not have interacted with a woman in public if her husband or father wasn’t around, and he certainly wouldn’t have engaged her in deep conversation.  So, this woman is about as “other” as anyone could have been to Jesus.

And that’s what makes the story astonishing.  Jesus doesn’t just share her water bucket; he talks with her about what gives life its deepest meaning.  And she seizes the opportunity, especially when Jesus makes it clear he’s not just a Jewish traveler but a prophet at least – someone who can see into people’s hearts and histories.  She comes to the well just wishing she didn’t have to lug water home every day – water that kept her alive but left her thirsty again, a symbol of the Samaritan people’s incomplete religion, from Jesus’ point of view.  She wants to hear more about his living water that satisfies her thirst forever.  So, Jesus offers what she didn’t know she could have: the living water of relationship with God, a “spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14).  For the woman herself, that offer changes her life.  But the fact that Jesus offers it to his tribe’s worst enemies – that changes the world around him.

What’s the right way to worship?  What’s the right way to organize a church?  What’s the right way to raise people out of poverty?  What’s the right way to take on the forces that threaten us?  We look at the conflict between the Samaritans and the Jews, and we say, “Deep down, you’re siblings.  Come on, work it out.”  Jesus would say the same thing to us.  In fact, Jesus would come among us, just as he came among them, offering himself as an outward and visible sign of God’s desire for us – as our marriage rite puts it, “that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy conquer despair” (BCP 429).  That’s why we’re pursuing this partnership with St. James.  Serving the people of our city, our common neighbors, is the best way to learn about one another, to honor our differences, to see what we share, to grow in humble understanding, and, as Jesus commanded us, to become one, “as I and the Father are one” (John 10:30; 17:11).

Having the right goal doesn’t mean your journey won’t be hard.  We’ve made mistakes along the way in our work with St. James, saying things we didn’t realize would push buttons for our friends there.  I guarantee you we’ll make more mistakes.  Living as reconcilers is not an easy path.  We could avoid it, after all.  Just as Jesus could have taken the road around the Samaritans and never left the security of his fellow Jews, we could choose to live within the echo chambers of our own experience and our own points of view.  But the holy road, the route of reconciliation, the highway of healing – it’s the road Jesus takes first and asks us to follow.  

And it’s deep within our DNA.  After all, the mission of the Church, from our Episcopal perspective, is to “restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (BCP 855).  Our own mission here at St. Andrew’s is to “seek God’s healing love and share that love with all by growing in relationship with God, each other, and our neighbors.”  Bridging divides and building relationships – that’s what we’re all about.

Of course, doing that work doesn’t just heal God’s world.  It also heals our hearts.  When we live as God’s instruments of reconciliation, we find ourselves reconciled with God and the people around us. And that comes in the most unlikely moments, God’s healing grace poured into us when we’re not looking.  Like the Samaritan woman, we come to the well just seeking water to get us through another day, and instead Jesus gives us “a spring of water gushing up to eternal life” (John 4:14).  Who knew that we’d find that living water swirling around the machines at Carol’s Coin Laundry?

1.      Sloyan, Gerard. John. A volume of Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching. Atlanta: John Knox, 1988. 50-60.

Choosing Forever

Sermon for March 5, 2023

Genesis 12:1-4a; John 3:1-17

I love funerals.  I know that’s sort of weird, but I do.  And why?  Because funerals have so much to teach us about being alive.

After last Saturday’s funeral, a couple of parishioners said they were surprised at what they’d heard me say – that a Christian view of eternal life means we continue to be us, the same people we’ve been here in our first chapters of eternal existence.  They said that message was important enough that I should preach it sometime on a Sunday, when more people would hear it.  And today, here’s Jesus talking about eternal life in the Gospel reading, including maybe his most famous line, John 3:16 – “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life.”  Seems like the timing is right for the sermon those parishioners were asking for.

So, here’s what I said at that funeral.  The reading was from First Corinthians, chapter 15, which is where the apostle Paul lays out most clearly the Christian hope.  If Christ has been raised from the dead, and if we follow Christ’s path, then we, too, will live in resurrection.  For Paul, that means something very specific.  It does not mean simply that our memories will live on among those we love.  It does not mean we will be disembodied spirits, floating on the clouds.  It does not mean we will come back here as someone or something else, punished or rewarded with another harder or easier shot at living.  For Paul, the next chapter of eternal life is specifically your life, continued.  Death will be no more, and the body we’ve watched decline will be “raised a spiritual body” (1 Cor 15:44) – made new, and whole, and without decay, but somehow a body still – and not just any body.  In eternal life, we unique children of God can keep living, as us, forever.

Now, we often act like that statement must be true for everyone – that if you’ve been alive, eternal life is waiting for you.  Instead, Christian teaching would say that what’s awaiting everyone is “the general resurrection” – that when Jesus returns in glory, the dead will be raised for judgment, some coming to know “eternal life in [their] enjoyment of God” and some coming to know “eternal death in [their] rejection of God,” as our prayer book’s catechism put it (862).  So, the question isn’t whether resurrection will happen; the question is what awaits us afterward – living forever in relationship with God and others … or not?

Most of us here in the Episcopal Church aren’t crazy about judgment.  In fact, for some of us, that’s why we’re here.  We’re much more comfortable being functional universalists, assuming that, in the fullness of time, life with God and neighbor will continue for everybody.  On one hand, I think there’s a healthy humility in that, in recognizing that God is the one who makes the call about how person A or person B will spend eternity, not me.  But there’s this pesky doctrine of free will that gets in the way of universalism.  Here’s what I mean:  If we’re free to choose what path to follow, it stands to reason that some will decline God’s invitation to walk the way of love.  And God respects our free will enough to let us to follow our own path, if that’s what we choose.

I think that’s where Jesus is going in our Gospel reading today.  Nicodemus, one of the religious leaders, comes to Jesus, not to give him trouble but because he’s basically on board, acknowledging that Jesus is indeed a teacher sent by God.  As we might say, Nicodemus doesn’t disagree with Jesus.  He just doesn’t understand what’s behind the signs he’s doing.

My guess is that Nicodemus is looking for proof from the Hebrew Scriptures pointing to a messiah who acts in such surprising ways.  Or maybe he’d like evidence from the law of Moses justifying Jesus overturning the tables of the merchants in the Temple, which is what happened just before this story.  Instead, Jesus takes Nicodemus’ curiosity about God’s kingdom and asks him to look at himself.  You like the signs I’m doing? Jesus asks.  You want to see the reign and rule of God come to life here and now?  Here’s what you need:  You must “be born from above,” he says (John 3:7).

What does that mean? Nicodemus asks.  Well, Jesus sort of clarifies it this way: “No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit,” he says (John 3:5).  In other words, truly human life, fully human life is both physical and spiritual.  And to receive that fully human life, we have to choose it.  In our first birth, our physical birth, there’s not a lot of choice involved.  When bodies get pregnant, babies come, ready or not.  But as for our second birth, our spiritual birth – well, God asks us to sign on for that ourselves.  

And Jesus is astonished that this religious leader, this “teacher of Israel,” doesn’t already “understand these things” (3:10).  After all, the wind is certainly real, he says – and, by the way, the same Greek word here, pneuma, means both “wind” and “spirit.”  You know the pneuma is real when the wind blows your tent down, Jesus says.  So you also should know the pneuma is real when God’s Spirit blows through your life, knocking down what you thought you knew and pointing you in a new direction.

So, why should this “teacher of Israel” already have understood such things?  Well, because God’s Spirit has been working that way a long time.  Go back to our Old Testament reading today, one of the fundamental stories of the people of Israel and a paradigm of giving ourselves over to the Spirit of God blowing where it will.  It’s the beginning of the story of Abram, who’s just out there, minding his own business.  Years earlier, Abram had moved with his family from what’s now southern Iraq to a community on what’s now the border between Syria and Turkey.  They’d settled there, and built a new life; and now all’s well as Abram is tending his sheep or whatever, when suddenly God blows in and says:  “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to a land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).  Abram ends up making his way to Canaan, which will become the Holy Land we know.  But not only is there no GPS for the journey, there’s not even a map.  In fact, there’s not even a destination.  Instead, there’s an instruction from God – “go” – and a promise:  “I will make of you a great nation,” God says, “and I will bless you, and make your name great … and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:2-3)

That’s remarkable enough, but even more remarkable is what doesn’t come next in the story.  Now, if this happened to us, what would we say?  “Well, God, I don’t really want to move, and why should I believe you anyway?  If I’m going to be blessed, show me.”  So, what does Abram say?  We don’t know.  We’re told he just goes, as the Lord told him to; but we aren’t told what might have come between the call and the response.  So, is Abram the automaton the story makes him out to be?  I doubt it.  After all, Abram is Abram.  Later in Genesis, he’ll go through a long process of negotiating with God to save the lives of innocent people who might have been collateral damage from an act of divine judgment,¹ so Abram is no wallflower.  In fact, in his questioning and his arguing, he builds such a close relationship with his Lord that later Scripture gives him the title, “God’s friend.”²  Now, we don’t hear any of that in today’s reading.  But do you really think that when God told him to pull up stakes and move his family to an undisclosed location, Abram just said, “Okey dokey”?

Well, neither does God expect blind obedience from us.  If we thought God expected blind obedience, our Anglican way wouldn’t include reason as one of the three legs of the theological stool.  So, we don’t have to be automatons.  But we do have to make a choice.  

Go back to the end of the Gospel reading today: “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).  Think what it would mean if just a few words in that text were different.  What if it said, “God so loved the world, that he imposed his only Son, so that everyone would not perish but have eternal life.”  Well, if it said that, then Christianity would be universalism.  But instead, there’s still that pesky gift of free will.  God “gives Jesus in love to all people, and whoever receives this gift will receive eternal life.”³  It’s not a divine mandate.  Love is an offer, and we can take it or leave it.

So, what does all this have to do with the parishioner’s question after last week’s funeral?  Everything.  Both now and for the ages, we are us.  Each one of us is a unique child of God made in the divine image and likeness, and each one of us will continue to be that unique child of God forever.  And as someone bearing the divine image and likeness, you have the free will to live within God’s reign and rule … or not.  God is gracious enough not to impose the outcome but to leave the choice to us.  But we do have to choose it.  And not just once – in an altar call, or a baptismal rite, or a confirmation – but thousands of times, maybe several times a day, making the choice to be born from above, to be born anew.  We have to look to the one who was lifted up, to Jesus Christ, as the way toward God, and the truth about God, and the embodiment of life with God.  And then we have to decide, over and over again, whether we’re willing to let God work through us to bring divine purposes to life.  

So, with Nicodemus, when we come to the end of our conversation with Jesus, when we run out of our baffled questions, when we just stand there, listening – I think what we hear is this:  I’m not here to judge you, Jesus says.  I’m here to bring you love from the Source of Love itself.  But you’ve got to decide whether you want it.  It will cost you something.  After all, it’s the love that gives itself up for others, the love that lays down its life for its friends and that always rises again.  But I won’t push it on you, Jesus says.  You’ve got to ask yourself:  Eternal life is waiting for me, now and later.  Life blazing with God’s own love is beckoning me to walk in it.  Am I willing?

1.      Genesis 18:22-33

2.      2 Chronicles 20:7; Isaiah 41:8; James 2:23

3.      New Interpreters Study Bible, 1913 (note).

Willing for the Encounter

Sermon for Feb. 19, 2023
Exodus 24:12-18; 2 Peter 1:16-21; Matthew 17:1-9

As I’ve been thinking about my sabbatical to come, I’ve found myself remembering a place I visited on my sabbatical eight years ago.  That may be because there are four pictures of this place hanging on the walls of our house; I guess I wanted to take it home with me once the trips were done.  It’s Tewkesbury Abbey, a glorious church in a Tudor village in the Cotswolds of England.  I went there because their approach to mission at Tewkesbury was a great example of what I was studying – congregations doing both traditional and fresh expressions of ministry side by side.

So, Tewkesbury Abbey is this monumental structure from the 1100s, looking as much like a castle as a church.   You walk in, and you’re struck by both the tremendous height of the roof and the massive thickness of the pillars holding it over you.  The place manages to be both airy and fortresslike, all at the same time.  It’s a study in transcendence – a place to worship a God who is so much more, and so far beyond, our poor powers to understand.

At the same time, Tewkesbury Abbey had begun an effort called “Celebrate,” a mission into the equivalent of a public-housing project, just on the other side of the wall marking out the abbey’s grounds. The missioner was creating Christian community from the bottom up, gathering people who were dealing with generational poverty, domestic violence, poor education, and economic dead ends. The missioner wanted the people of the housing project to know that God was walking right alongside them through it all – and she knew that the massive, ancient Abbey was a stumbling block to approaching God that way.  She told the story of one public-housing resident who had tried to worship at the abbey but ran out in “fear” – a fascinating choice of words – “fear” of the God whom the resident encountered there.  So, as part of a larger effort to serve the community she was building, the missioner put together worship in an elementary-school cafeteria, including kids and parents making biblical scenes out of fruit and vegetables, and then all of them sharing a hot, free dinner at the same tables afterward.  It was a study in immanence – worship of a God who walks beside us and offers us a warm hug on a cold, wet day.

Keep that contrast in mind, that contrast between immanence and transcendence, as we go back to the readings for this last Sunday after Pentecost, the final stop of our multi-week tour of Jesus revealing God’s light to the world.  First, from Exodus, we hear about Moses going up on Mt. Sinai.  More accurately, we hear about God calling Moses to come up Mt. Sinai once again, at this point the fifth time Moses has made the trip.  God tells Moses simply to “come up … and wait there” (Exodus 24:12) so that God could give him stone tablets bearing instructions for how the Israelites should live as God’s people in the world.  Actually, what God tells Moses to do is to come up and “be” there, be ready to receive these instructions in God’s good time.¹  A great cloud, “the glory of the Lord” (24:16), comes and dwells on the mountaintop above Moses, and he spends six days simply being near God’s presence and being sanctified for the encounter he’s about to have.  Finally, God calls, and Moses treks higher up the mountain, entering the cloud of God’s glory, which has become “like a devouring fire” (24:17).  He remains there 40 days, receiving the Law for setting up God’s earthly dwelling place, the ark of the covenant and the elaborate tent where it would be housed as the people traveled – in other words, God’s instructions for bringing the transcendent divine presence into the people’s day-to-day experience.  

Then we have the Gospel reading, Matthew’s telling of Jesus’ transfiguration.  Just as Moses spent six days in God’s presence before being called into the cloud, so it’s six days after Peter proclaimed Jesus to be messiah that Jesus takes three of his deputies with him up the mountain.  The disciples have begun to understand that Jesus is God’s anointed king, but now they’re about to see he’s also so much more than that – that, in fact, he’s God in the flesh.  No longer will the people experience God’s presence on earth by keeping the Law and worshiping in the temple; instead, Jesus himself brings God’s presence into their lives.  So, there on the mountaintop, he’s transfigured before them, transformed to reveal the glory he always embodies, just usually veiled.  Moses and Elijah are there, too, showing Jesus to be the next step in God’s self-revelation to the world, completing the Law and the prophets.  

And then, Peter has something to say.  Now, it’s standard preaching procedure to make fun of Peter here for thinking the disciples could capture this moment by setting up three tents, sort of like posting a quick photo of God’s glory.  But Peter also echoes the Exodus story when he offers to build three tents there on the mountain – an updated version of the tent of meeting that God commanded Moses to take with the people on their travels.  So maybe Peter isn’t as much of a goof as we usually make him out to be; at least he knew his Scriptures.  

Anyway, suddenly God shows up, the cloud of divine glory descending on this mountain just as it had on Mt. Sinai.  But instead of giving Peter, James, and John a set of written laws, God gives them the Word in the flesh – “Listen to him!” God proclaims about Jesus.  And the disciples get the message – that Jesus is more than Moses or Elijah, more than the Law, even more than just God’s anointed king.  He is the Law and the prophets and God’s royal authority embodied – God among them.  So, quite reasonably, the disciples “fall to the ground … overcome by fear” (Matt 17:6).  

And in that moment, when his blinding glory is shining through, what does God incarnate do?  Does Jesus issue divine directives?  Does he rebuke the disciples for being dimwitted?  No, none of that.  Instead, he reminds them that he dwells with them, that he has chosen them.  God incarnate touches them, and takes them by the hand, and says, “Get up, and don’t be afraid” (17:7).

What must that have felt like?  Maybe literally we can’t imagine.  I think we’re probably more comfortable with a God we encounter at either end of the spectrum of immanence and transcendence.  I could get it if God is a consuming firestorm on a mountaintop that miraculously allowed Moses to come out of an encounter unscathed.  That’s a God that makes sense – one so powerful and so distant that, if I just keep my own distance, I might come out unscathed, too.  Or, I could get it if God is a friend, someone who wants to pull up a chair and have a beer me, someone who actually wants to hear my story, and walk with me through it, no matter how hard things get.  That’s a God that makes sense – one so loving and so close at hand that I only need to offer my own hand for God to lead me through whatever life brings.  

But this Gospel story today tells us something harder to understand – and something far more glorious.  God is a consuming fire, ready to purge us of the “sin that clings so closely” (Hebrews 12:1), especially here on the brink of Lent.  And God is our friend, who reaches out to us as we lie cowering on the ground, afraid of all we can’t manage on our own – a friend who touches us, and pulls us to our feet, and says, “Get up, and do not be afraid.”

So, how do we connect with a God who is both immanent and transcendent?  The key isn’t figuring out how to do it ourselves.  The key is being willing to connect in whatever way you find God coming to you – calling from the whirlwind or knocking on your door.  And that’s what might be the deepest mystery of all: that God is waiting for you, hoping you’ll take the hike up the mountain, hoping you’ll reach out your hand when you’re down, hoping you’ll listen for the still, small voice coming to you on the winds of the Spirit. 

What stands between us and the presence of the divine is simply our willingness to have the encounter.  Absurdly enough, the Lord God is waiting for us to say, “Yes, I am willing for you to do … what you will do with these things that baffle me, or break me, or beat me down.”  The sovereign of the universe, the flaming fire of Love, the creator of all that was and is and ever will be – God is waiting for you to look up, or look in, or look to someone you love and say, “Come, Lord.  I am willing.”

1.      HarperCollins Study Bible, 124 (note).

Go Deep and Go Wide

Sermon for Jan. 29, 2023, and State of the Parish Address
Matthew 5:1-12

Welcome to annual-meeting Sunday and the state-of-the-parish address!  Back in the day, when I was the speechwriter for the governor of Missouri, preparing the State of the State Address was a complete nightmare.  I received input from a dozen executive departments, directives from staff policymakers, and musings from the governor himself.  Inevitably, the speech was more laundry list than inspiring leadership.  Plus, the thing went on forever.  I’ll do my best this morning not to do that in this state-of-the-parish address, but it is going to be longer than my usual 12 minutes.  In exchange, you can enjoy your breakfast without listening to a speech from me downstairs.

So, first: What’s the state of our parish by the numbers, or at least by some numbers?  Here are some quick vital signs.  First, let me tell you what I think isn’t vital: the size of our membership.  We have about 1,600 members on the books right now, but that counts equally the people who are here all the time, the people who are here on Christmas and Easter, and the people I couldn’t pick out of a lineup.  More useful, I think are these vital signs: average Sunday attendance, the balance of revenue and expenses, and the number of pledges.

Our average Sunday attendance this year is the same as it was last year: 407.  Now, that number requires some explanation.  It includes the number of people in the room, as well as the number of devices livestreaming the service (but not the number of individuals who might be sharing a device, nor the number of devices playing the sermon later in the week).  But that 407 is not the number we report to The Episcopal Church, which wants the number of people worshiping in person.  That average was 265 last year, but I think the attendance story is more accurate counting people online, too.  Anyway, for comparison, an average Sunday here before the pandemic was 362.  Having more people worshiping, wherever they are, is a blessing, and I’m grateful to God for it.

Financially, we ended the year in a solid place, with revenues exceeding expenses by $6,000.  I don’t want to steal the treasurer’s thunder, so I’ll leave the details to Paul Wurth downstairs.  But your generosity is what makes that good news happen, and I’m deeply grateful to you for your giving hearts.

In terms of pledging, the story is less positive.  Over the past few years, the number of households making a pledge of annual giving has declined each year, even as worship attendance and giving have increased.  So, the Vestry and I have work to do in the year ahead, helping members see why it matters to make a pledge of estimated giving, as well as figuring out how to make that process easier.

But even with some work to do, the state of the parish is solid.  We’re making good progress traveling along the road following Jesus, as we seek his healing love and share it with the people around us.  For details about 2022, I hope you’ll pick up a copy of the annual report, either downstairs or online. For the year ahead – what’s on the horizon? 

In 2023, we’re going to focus on how we travel with Jesus and do it a bit more intentionally.  We walk with our Lord in several ways, and different words frame different kinds of trips – especially the words journey, mission, and pilgrimage.  In a journey, we’re traveling from one place to another to accomplish some purpose.  In a mission, we’re traveling because a higher authority is sending us to accomplish some purpose. In a pilgrimage, we’re traveling because we feel a stirring to meet that higher authority and gain deeper insight and direction for the journeys and missions that lie ahead.  

We use these words to describe the Christian life because the Christian life is about movement.  If there’s one thing we know about Jesus, it is that he didn’t hold still.  And that’s our model, too.  

Sometimes our movement is literal, and sometimes it’s figurative.  For me, 2023 will be a year of both.  As I told you several months ago, I’ll be taking a sabbatical this year, being gone from mid-April to mid-August.  I didn’t get the grant for which I applied last year, so I won’t be taking the three pilgrimages I’d hoped.  But, it turns out Ann isn’t up to that anyway; so, it’s just as well that our itineraries will be more limited.  Immediately after Easter, she and I will go see our five friends from seminary, with whom we’ve gathered annually 20 times now.  Then, in early May, I’ll go to Israel myself, both to make my own pilgrimage and to learn how to lead future pilgrimages from St. Andrew’s.  Then, in the early summer, Ann and I will go see our kids and their spouses in New York.  And toward the end of the sabbatical, Ann and I hope to go to England and Wales to visit places from which our families came.

Why am I doing this?  Fundamentally, this sabbatical is about sabbath.  It’s about rest.  In my sabbatical eight years ago, I took on a study project and wrote a book.  It was the best time I’ve ever had, but I’m not sure I’d say it was restful.  Since then … well, you know my pathologies about overwork; and at this point, my tank is empty enough that I’m running on fumes.  

But this sabbatical is also a chance to practice what I’m preaching.  Our life with Christ isn’t just about moving for the sake of moving.  It’s about walking the circle of connecting with God and connecting with others.  It’s about prayer and action.  It’s about breathing in and breathing out.  It’s about going deep and going wide.

Jesus gives us that model himself.  In today’s Gospel reading, if you look a few verses before these familiar lines of the Beatitudes, you find what we heard last week – Jesus calling his first disciples, Peter and Andrew and James and John.  They left their boats to follow the new king in town.  From there, Jesus takes his followers “throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.  So his fame spread,” the story says, “… and great crowds followed him” from all over the Holy Land (Matt 4:23-25).

But then, Jesus takes a turn from that public path and leads his disciples up the mountain.  He stops.  He even sits down.  They’ve been “going wide” right out of the starting gate, but it’s time to slow down now and “go deep” for a while.  So, Jesus offers these Beatitudes, which means “blessings” – pointing out who’s truly blessed, who’s truly fortunate in the reign and rule of God.  Then, after what we heard this morning, he goes on for 99 more verses giving what we call the Sermon on the Mount, showing his disciples how following God’s ways will shape their hearts and guide their minds and awaken their spirits.  On this leg of the journey, he’s forming them into the people God has always dreamed they would be so they can live into their best selves and take their transformed hearts back into the world in loving, healing service.  

So, when the Sermon on the Mount is over and they come back down the mountain, the disciples follow Jesus from village to village as he heals the sick, casts out demons, stills the storm, and finally sends the disciples out on their own as apostles – those who are sent on a mission.

My challenge to you is to follow the same pattern in 2023 – go deep and go wide.  But how?  I mean, ask a hundred people, and you’ll get a hundred resources for self-improvement, each with its own app, it seems.  Ask a hundred people, and you’ll get a hundred issues to fight for or causes to support.  It can all seem overwhelming, thousands of billboards on the highway all competing for your attention.

So, as you’re preparing for your travels with Jesus in 2023 – your various journeys, missions, and pilgrimages – let me challenge you to take six paths to follow where Christ is leading.  (You’ll find these steps listed in the bulletin and on the screen.)

First, read the Bible.  You can get the texts or emails from our Good Book Club, or download an app, or listen to the readings that come in Morning Prayer, or just get a good study Bible and dive in.

Second, say your prayers.  There’s no magic here.  Just set aside time each day to sit down with God, ideally with equal parts talking and listening.  Join Pray at 8 each day on Facebook, or download Morning Prayer, or read Compline before bed, or just sit quietly with a candle and a cup of coffee.

Third, come to worship.  And you all have; so, good job.  Keep it up.  Whether it’s here on Sunday mornings or over at HJ’s on Thursdays, whether it’s in person or online: When you offer yourself, praising God and taking in Jesus himself, God makes good on the promise to guide and sustain you.

Fourth, learn your faith.  Get together with others to discuss a book or the readings for Sunday.  Come for dinner and a presentation at Trailside Thursdays.  Sign up for the St. Andrew’s podcast we’ll be offering in the next couple of months.  The disciples had three years with Jesus himself, and that just got them started.  There’s always something new to discover as we walk the path with him.

Fifth, serve the world.  We have 16 Outreach ministries and partnerships where your time, talent, and treasure can help build opportunity for children, or feed hungry people, or raise up folks at risk.  You can share God’s love by serving coffee at HJ’s, or praying for people who need healing, or cooking a meal for someone in grief.  When we do these things for the people around us, we do them for Jesus himself.

And finally, sixth, here’s a challenge you might not have expected on this list: Make a pledge. I’ve put this last because making a pledge brings the inward and outward journeys into one.  We make a pledge in order to empower godly service, right? – salaries for clergy and staff, funding for Outreach partners, payments to keep the lights on here and at HJ’s.  But just as much, we make a pledge to offer our hearts to God up front, in that ever-so-tangible form of money.  Just as my spiritual director once told me to put myself in the offering plate on Sunday mornings, so our pledges of giving bring us to the altar, giving to God off the top to help us remember how God gives us everything we have.

Finally, as you navigate these six roads through God’s kingdom, I want you to know that we’ve got your back.  You’ve got guides ready and happy to help you.  First, I hope you’ll pull up and use two maps for the journey – and you’ll find links to them in the bulletin this morning or on the screen.  The first is called “My Way of Love.”  Remember the RenewalWorks assessment we took a few years ago, identifying where our parish was on the spiritual journey and how we might move forward?  “My Way of Love” is the same kind of assessment, and from the same group, but for personal use.  It shows you where you are on the continuum of exploring a life with Christ, to growing in that life, to deepening in that life, and eventually to finding your life centered in Christ.  A report comes back to you suggesting strategies for growth and offering some coaching resources: Each week for eight weeks, you’ll receive an email with an individualized spiritual workout plan highlighting a few growth areas.  So, that’s “My Way of Love.”

The second map for your journey with Christ is a spiritual-gifts inventory developed by the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island.  We’ve offered this to people coming though the Discovery class, and it opens up great insights about how the gifts and interests God has given you equip you both to serve and to go deeper in your faith.

So, there are a couple of resources to help guide you this year.  But know this, too: You have travel agents here to help you take your journey.  Mtr. Jean, or Mtr. Rita, or Mtr. Anne, or Deacon Adam, or Archdeacon Bruce, or I – we’d be happy to talk with you about where these maps are guiding you and how to take the next steps.  Yes, we sometimes struggle with the busyness of the roles we serve here.  But that does not mean we don’t have time to talk with you.  In fact, we’d love to meet with you to help plan the journey, or pilgrimage, or mission that God has in mind for you next.  We’d love to help you go deep and go wide – to breathe in and breathe out – to be disciples and apostles – to love God and love all.

We’re just a call or an email away.  Travel agents are standing by.