Working With My Spiritual Wiring

Sermon from Feb. 18, 2024 
First installment of a Lenten series, "Igniting Your Spirit to Find Heaven on Earth"
Mark 1:9-15

So, first, a quick heads-up:  This sermon will be a little longer than usual.  Consider it a moment of Lenten discipline.

We find ourselves now four days out from the shooting at the Super Bowl parade, struggling to make sense of the senseless.  It’s a time for lamentation, as we offered here Thursday evening.  But our laments aren’t limited to prayers in church.  Interviewed after the shooting, Chief of Police Stacy Graves lamented, “This is not Kansas City.”  Indeed, mass shootings don’t fit with our sense of community.  But the reality is that, in fact, this is Kansas City.  And not just Kansas City.  This is also Las Vegas, and Orlando, and Virginia Tech, and Sandy Hook, and El Paso, and Lewiston, and Uvalde.  The difference now is that we’ve joined the list of places where good folks thought mass shootings wouldn’t happen. 

Of course, Wednesday’s shooting comes on the heels of a record-setting year for gun violence in Kansas City.  Every week, as we offer the Prayers of the People and name our neighbors who’ve been killed, I shake my head and wonder, “How long, Lord?”  That’s not a lament about God’s inaction, by the way.  It’s shorthand for, “How long, Lord, will we say ‘yes’ to the evil of violence that slithers at the edges of our hearts?”

This is the first Sunday of Lent and the beginning of our Lenten preaching series, “Igniting Your Spirit to Find Heaven on Earth.”  I have to say, the igniting that our spirits received this week wasn’t exactly what we had in mind for this series or for the booklet of reflections that will soon be in your mailbox.  I don’t know about you, but I came away from Wednesday furious, which is not an emotion I know how to have.  But with a few days’ time, fury can morph into reflection. 

So: What’s next for my spirit, and for yours, and for the spirit of our community?  Is this a moment when we have any business seeking heaven on earth?

Absolutely it is.

As we start our pilgrimage, it’s good to recognize where we begin.  And one way to name where we are today is where we found Jesus in today’s Gospel reading: in the wilderness.  In that fast-cut story from Mark’s Gospel, we see Jesus flipping from what must have been joy to lamentation.  In one moment, he’s being baptized and comes out of the water to a voice from heaven proclaiming, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased” (1:11).  And then “immediately” the Spirit of the Father who loves him so much drives him out into the wilderness. 

That’s odd parenting, to say the least.  Why would God do it?  Well, that’s a different sermon, maybe the sermon I would have preached before this Wednesday afternoon.  But we’re left with Jesus out there “in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan” (Mark 1:13). Now, in the fast cuts we get in Mark’s Gospel, we don’t hear the dialogue that Matthew gives us – the details of temptation, as Satan offers Jesus food, and the chance to flaunt his divine status, and an easy road to power.  No, here in Mark, we just know Jesus is out there in a desolate desert landscape, what must have felt like hell itself.

It seems to me we’re in the wilderness, too.  And that brings us to this week’s stop in our sermon series.  If we’re seeking to ignite our spirits to find heaven on earth, we have to start by recognizing our own spiritual wiring and considering how we might work with it to go deeper in relationship with God.  In fact, we might start a few questions before that:  Am I really wired for relationship with God?  What if I can’t feel it?  What stands in the way of connecting with God for me?

The wilderness is a good place to ask those questions, for Jesus and for us.  Now, Jesus knows he’s God’s beloved – he’s heard it straight from the deity’s mouth.  And we know it, too – intellectually, at least.  After all, “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).  Or, as the bumper sticker on my refrigerator puts it, “God loves you whether you like it or not.”  If God’s opening the door to heaven for you, you must be worthy of God’s love.  Now, we may believe that in our heads.  But knowing it in our hearts can be a different matter, especially here in the wilderness – the wilderness of grief, the wilderness of isolation, the wilderness of futility.

So, in a community that’s lost its innocence, just four days past the parade shooting, what do we do here in the wilderness?  When we’re tempted to listen to the power of evil selling us hopelessness and empty promises, how do we “beat down Satan under our feet” (BCP 152)?  How do we remember that we are each God’s beloved, and how do we live that way?

Mark’s story gives us at least two clues – a blessing and a call.  First, the blessing: Jesus is indeed out in the wilderness, but he’s not alone.  The story says, “The angels waited on him” (1:13).  Now, my hunch is that doesn’t mean they were bringing him pina coladas on the beach by the Dead Sea.  Instead, remember who angels are in scripture.  Angels are God’s messengers.  They come bearing God’s word – a saving word – to frightened, beloved people.  There’s a reason why angels are always telling folks, “Do not be afraid.”  The message they’re bringing, from God’s lips to our ears, is that God’s got this.  No matter how lonely or frightened or angry the world has made you, God’s got your back.

So, that’s the blessing.  And along with that, there’s a call – a call that came to Jesus the Beloved and that comes to us.  You’ll notice that the last scene in this morning’s story puts the camera on Jesus as he walks out of the wilderness.  He’s endured his isolation.  He’s lamented what must have sometimes felt like abandonment.  He’s been sustained by angels, and he’s stared down Satan.  And so, when the evil of the world coils and strikes, he shifts to action.  Jesus’ cousin and friend John the Baptist is arrested by the authorities who want to silence him, so Jesus sets out on what will be a long, hard road – immediately and for the next three years.  He leaves the wilderness near the Dead Sea and heads back home, a 90-mile hike to Galilee.  But he’s not retreating in defeat and despair.  Instead, he’s on the advance, proclaiming good news to counter the voices selling despair.  “The time is fulfilled,” he says, “and the kingdom of God has come near.  Repent, and believe in the good news.” (Mark 1:15)  Recognize that God’s reign and rule supersedes what the world tells you.  Change your mind, which is what “repent” means, and set your heart and your feet on the path of love.

So, back to this week’s focus in our Lenten sermon series.  How do we work with our own spiritual wiring to deepen our relationship with God when we find ourselves in a wilderness time like this?  First, remember the story.  Jesus wasn’t alone there in the wilderness, and the same is true for us.  Alongside the anger and frustration is the assurance that we lament together, and that we lament to the God who hears us and comes to our aid.  God will pick us back up, and walk alongside us, and keep pointing us toward our hearts’ true home – the kingdom of heaven, even in the brokenness.  Then, once you’re back on your feet, keep your eyes and ears open.  Look for the angels in your midst, reminding you of love’s power.  Listen for the voice of God in scripture and the words of people you trust.  Make time to be still enough to hear God speaking to you in the daily-ness of life.  Look for patterns of direction and fingerprints of blessing that affirm your belovedness.  Come to worship; and drink in the sustenance of Word and song and sacrament; and let the Spirit recharge you for whatever lies ahead.

So, our first step is remembering the story and listening for the voices of angels.  The second step is acting on what you hear.  Steer clear of despair by using the spiritual gifts you bring to the journey.  Some of us are listeners, gifted at being present with people in their suffering.  Some of us are pray-ers, gifted at offering God our common laments and our hopes for healing in the assurance that prayer changes things.  Some of us are encouragers, gifted at inspiring people to live their faith and honor God’s reign and rule in the world.  Some of us are analysts, gifted at naming different options and discerning among them.  Some of us are relationship-builders, working with people across similarities and differences to find unexpected solutions.  And some of us are mobilizers, gifted at organizing people to translate their faith into change.  We have a variety of gifts, as the apostle Paul wrote, but they’re empowered by the same Spirit.  And using those gifts is our best antidote to despair.  For, in our own ways, each of us is wired to join Jesus on that road to Galilee, proclaiming the kingdom so that God’s will may be done on earth as it is in heaven. 

As we live our individual gifts, remember we also walk this road together.  Let me close with an invitation to something that’s suddenly taken on immediate relevance given the events of last week.  You may remember, two summers ago, when the abortion amendment was on the Kansas ballot, about 25 of us gathered for a listening session – not to debate the topic but to hear each other’s passions about it.  It was a healing moment, a time when people could gather in love as well as disagreement, and listen to each other, and honor the dignity of everyone in the room.  Recently, our parish Discernment Commission has been putting together a series of listening opportunities for the next few months, addressing issues like divisiveness in politics, the war between Israel and Hamas, the effects of social media, the well-being of our education system, and the ethics of end-of-life decisions.  We’re calling it the St. Andrew’s Listening in Love Forum, and it will be led by one of our resident experts in helping people listen, counselor Ann Rainey. 

The series will happen on the fourth Tuesday of the month through June, and it’ll start next week as we create a safe space to share our hearts related to the issue of the moment – gun violence.  As it happens, we have a presenting moment legislatively, too. The Missouri House is considering a bill that would allow concealed carry in churches and on public transportation.¹  Now, some of us will hear that and think, “Why in God’s name would we put guns into more public gatherings, given the shooting on Wednesday?”  And others of us will hear that and think, “How else can you stop someone like the shooters on Wednesday?”  Again, this session on Feb. 27 will not be a time to debate but a time to model the most basic skill we must learn if we hope to find heaven on earth, and that’s listening – in this case, listening to each other without vilifying each other, and listening for ways the Spirit might move us forward together.  The bulletin and Messenger this weekend have more information on the Listening in Love Forum, so I hope you’ll consider coming.

Here's the hope I take away from today’s Gospel reading and from this awful week:  We can make our way out of the wilderness.  We can join Jesus as he hits the road proclaiming that the kingdom of God has come near and calling people to change their minds.  It’s a matter of tapping into the spiritual wiring God has given each of us and letting Jesus set the course.

1.      HB 1708, “Changes the law regarding firearm concealed carry permits.” https://house.mo.gov/Bill.aspx?bill=HB1708&year=2024&code=R

The Pilgrim's Pathway to Heaven on Earth

Sermon for Feb. 4, 2024 (State of the Parish Address)
Mark 1:29-39

The State of the Parish Address might be a good time to ask: “Why are we here?” 

One way to answer that would be the way the Church has answered it at least over the past century or so – that the Church’s purpose is to grow.  Immediately, that spurs disputes between people who understand growth this way or that way – growth in membership, or attendance, or giving, or learning, or service, or prayer.  But whatever metric you use, the focus tends to fall on the institution: that the Church is the focus, and our job – especially the job of people in collars – is to build it. 

It doesn’t take an expert to see that focusing on the Church hasn’t served us so well.  When people critique the Church’s relevance and vote with their feet to work out, or go to the coffee shop, or watch CBS Sunday Morning instead of coming here, I think what they’re saying is they find exercise, or coffee, or good journalism to be more valuable than what they think they’ll find here.  And yet, we keep at it.  It might be time for us to shift the focus.  It might be time for us to stop focusing on the institution and focus on people instead.

So, why are we all here this morning?  Why are you here?  We could answer that question faithfully in many ways.  First and foremost:  We’re here to follow Jesus.  In a sense, that’s the full answer; so, I’m tempted to stop talking now and go have breakfast.  But let’s dig a little deeper.  We’re here to follow Jesus’ Great Commandment, to love God with everything we’ve got and love our neighbors as ourselves.  We’re here to follow Jesus’ Great Commission, to “go and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19).  We’re here to love one another deeply, “that [we] all may be one” as Jesus and the Father are one (John 17:21), so that the world might see God’s love and join in.  Or, as our parish mission statement puts it, we’re here to “seek God’s healing love and share that love with all by growing in relationship with God, each other, and our neighbors.”

All of that is true.  And … underlying it might be a certain way of seeing our relationship with God – maybe a something of transactional perspective.  Because Jesus calls me or commands me, I’ll go and do something for the payoff he promises.  He leads, and I follow, and eventually that’ll get me to heaven. 

OK … but maybe there’s something missing.

Last year, I was blessed to take a sabbatical, and the focus was pilgrimage.  First, I went to the Holy Land, walking in the footsteps of Jesus as he moved back and forth between what’s now Israel and Palestine.  We saw holy stones at holy sites and met “living stones” of faithful discipleship (1 Peter 2:5), people who follow Jesus now in a place divided like we can only imagine.  Then, with Ann, I also made a pilgrimage to Britain, visiting cities and villages from whence our ancestors came and learning their stories of emigration – the religious and economic pressures that led them to risk everything for a new life in a new land. 

They say pilgrimages like these are life-changing, and it’s true.  I’m not sure I would have identified myself as a pilgrim before, but now I do.  I’m no longer just the Lord’s staff member, ready for my list of daily assignments.  I’m a pilgrim, journeying with Jesus on a path of deepening discovery, deepening love, and deepening trust.

So, where are we going?

For me, that’s the next question for us, as those who walk with Jesus in this family of St. Andrew’s:  Where are we going together?  And here’s a second, related question, one that I’ve always frowned on:  What’s in it for me?

Now, that last one may sound like the least Jesus-y question ever, especially coming from someone in a collar.  But I think we must answer that question if the Church really expects anyone to answer this call we always talk about.  For a long time, the institutional Church has issued Jesus’ call and expected people to follow because … well, because they’re supposed to.  That was the church I grew up in.  You went to worship, and served, and gave, because … you were supposed to. 

But the truth is, the Christian hope is not about meeting obligations.  Jesus didn’t come as our boss to give us assignments and judge us on our work.  Jesus came … let’s see … to bring us healing and wholeness, as we heard in the Gospel reading today.  In fact, he came that “that [you] may have life, and have it abundantly,” as John’s Gospel puts it. 

But wait; the deal gets even better.  That abundant life Jesus is offering isn’t just our reward in heaven once we die.  Jesus offers us the abundance of eternal life now. 

One of the benefits of all the funerals we’ve celebrated recently is that they make you stop and think about what eternal life really is.  Typically, we think of heaven (if we think of it at all) as some ambiguous “good place” we get to go if we behave well enough on earth.  But it’s so much more than that, Scripture says.  In fact, as you’ve heard me say before, eternal life is a story with three chapters, a play in three acts.  The “good place” we usually imagine is chapter 2, actually, the paradise Jesus promised to the thief on the cross next to him (Luke 23:39-43).  After that, in the fullness of time, comes chapter 3, when Jesus returns to earth to set the world to rights, remaking creation and reunifying heaven and earth as God intended in the beginning.

So, what’s chapter 1?  That’s our quest now – a pilgrimage to find heaven in this life we share, in the inbreaking of God’s reign and rule among us now.  Embodying God’s kingdom on earth isn’t a project dreamed up either by the conservative righteousness police or the progressive social-justice reformers.  It’s Jesus’ own promise in the Gospels:  “Very truly I tell you,” he says, “anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and … has passed from death to life” (John 5:24).  Or this: “Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die,” he says (John 11:25-26).  Or simply this:  “The kingdom of God is among you,” he says (Luke 17:21).  If you’re looking for heaven, look around.

This year, we’ll begin exploring what it looks like to go on pilgrimage together in chapter 1 of eternal life, seeking nothing less than heaven on earth.  Now, if you’re going on a pilgrimage, you have to name your destination – because making a pilgrimage isn’t the same as wandering in the woods – and you have to set a course.  That course may well shift from time to time, but at least you need a route to begin.

So, this year, your Vestry and a few other pilot groups will start identifying, for us at St. Andrew’s – if we found heaven on earth, what would it look like and feel like?  Who would be with us?  What would we be doing?  How would our day-to-day experience be different than it was before our pilgrimage began?  How would our lives be transformed?  

Then, once we’ve discerned that together, we’ll begin marking out a path – a pilgrim’s pathway to heaven on earth.  As we journey toward eternal life day by day, what signposts would tell us we’re headed the right way?  What trails have been blazed by those who’ve walked this way before?  What knowledge and experience do we need to sustain us along the way?  And what foundational preparation do we need before we can make a good beginning?

Now, this is the State of the Parish Address, and the state of our parish is an important part of this discernment process, too.  As we move into 2024, it’s not that everything is perfect in the life of St. Andrew’s, because it never will be, here in chapter 1.  But the Holy Spirit is moving among us.  Take home the Annual Report after the meeting downstairs, and read through it, and give thanks for where we find ourselves today.  Sunday attendance is up as worship moves our hearts through Word and sacrament and song.  Pledged giving is up – including more than double the number of new pledges we typically receive.  New members are joining us and stepping into leadership.  The staff is stronger than it’s ever been – a tremendous blessing to our common life.  No, things aren’t perfect.  But I think we’re at a point where we should set our sights beyond tinkering with the details of ministry.  I think Jesus is asking us to “come up higher” (Luke 14:10) even as we keep our feet firmly planted on the ground of eternal life, chapter 1.

It’s time to ask seriously about the “value proposition” of church, as the marketing consultants would say:  If you follow Jesus as part of the St. Andrew’s family, what’s in it for you?  And it’s time for the church to provide a pathway to help you find that value in your life.  It’s time for the Church to say clearly how we can equip you for a journey with Jesus and lead you along the way.  As much as we want the Church to grow, the Church isn’t here to grow as an institution.  The Church is here to turn flatlanders into mountain climbers, equipping and guiding them for a heavenly trek to find purpose and meaning and love.  Oh, and by the way – if we actually do that, the Church will grow, too.

So, it’s time to go on pilgrimage together – a pilgrimage seeking nothing less than heaven on earth. 

Christmas in the Holy Land

Sermon for Dec. 31, 2023
John 1:1-18

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1:1)

Welcome to Christmas according to the Gospel of John.  The poetry is beautiful, but what does it mean?  Well, the best answer is that, ultimately, it means more than we can ever comprehend.  But there are some claims here in this prologue to John’s Gospel that are worth noting … with awe and wonder.

First is the claim that God the Son has always existed with the Father and the Spirit.  The Word was “in the beginning” with God and, in fact, “was God,” John says (1:1).  That’s an astonishing claim, right up there with its spiritual ancestor, the first verse of Genesis: that, “in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”  These two claims are where we start as Christians.  God doesn’t just watch as creation takes shape; God brings creation into being, the Spirit moving across the waters of chaos to create the beautiful and well-ordered universe that the Webb Space Telescope has shown us this year.  Similarly, God the Son isn’t a son along the lines of the kings of Israel, adopted by God at their coronations.  The Christ, God’s true King, has been there from the start.    

So, the Son has always been and remains the Father’s creative partner, in the power of the Spirit.  And in the fullness of time, that creative Word “became flesh and lived among us,” John’s Gospel says (1:14) – or, as the paraphrase The Message puts it, “the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”  I love that language because it’s so intimate.  You can hold at arm’s length the notion of God living “among us,” imagining it’s some other “us” the Gospel writer has in mind.  But God moving “into the neighborhood” puts a fine point on the tangible nature of Incarnation: God chose a particular neighborhood to inhabit back in the day; but with us as the Body of Christ in the world and the Holy Spirit ever present, God still moves into every neighborhood we can know.  As Fr. Jerry Kolb likes to remind us when he offers the final blessing, “You cannot go where God is not.”

So, “the Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.”  But what or who is that – “the Word”?  On its surface, it seems familiar.  After all, we talk about the Bible being the Word of God.  So, is John’s Gospel saying Scripture became flesh and lived among us?  If so, the logical conclusion would be that Scripture is the object of our worship, that God is contained in these pages.  That seems like a small box for the sovereign of the universe.

And there you see the limits of trying to read poetry as technical writing.  John’s Gospel isn’t a manual for disassembling the Divine and putting God back together in a way we can understand.  The gospels are mirrors that catch God at different angles, revealing a mystery so deep and so vast, we can only take in a few glances at a time.

So, what is John’s poetry trying to say?  The key word is “Word.”  It meant something very different theologically 2,000 years ago, in the context John was using it.  “Word” didn’t mean printed word, or even spoken word exactly.  Human words could carry divine Word, but not all human words speak the Divine.

In Greek, John’s term is logos, and it meant something well beyond human expression.  For the ancient Greeks, whose thinking helped shape the Good News as it spread beyond its Jewish roots, logos had several meanings: “the eternal principle of order in the universe”; the “intermediary between God and [God’s] creatures” that gave “meaning and plan to the universe”; or the “instrument of God in creation and the pattern of the human soul.”¹  Jewish tradition understood the Word of God similarly, often naming “the word of the Lord” as an active, creative, corrective, saving force in the world, such as when it came to the prophets and impelled them to speak on God’s behalf.² And, of course, Genesis says it’s through God’s word that creation came to be.³

So, once we glimpse what “the Word” meant, we have to think about what it means for the Word to take flesh.  One commentator puts it like this: that as the logos incarnate, “Jesus does not simply speak God’s words and do God’s works; rather he does those things because he is God’s word and work in the world.”⁴  It’s worth noting the verb tense there.  It’s not just that Jesus was the logos incarnate; “he is God’s word and work in the world” – the Word that’s still taking flesh and moving into the neighborhood, meeting us out on the sidewalk day by day.

And, of course, sometimes where that sidewalk runs isn’t exactly Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood.  Like you, I saw the news footage last weekend from Bethlehem.  Any other Christmas in any other year, Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity would be packed.  Even in May, when I was there, this church marking Jesus’ birthplace was so crowded that the pilgrims didn’t stand in lines to touch the cave’s holy stone; we moved like a school of fish funneled through a tiny opening. 

Guiding us to this spot, and all through our Holy Land pilgrimage, was a young woman named Ranya.  Ranya is just the kind of person you want leading your pilgrimage visits – not just kind and attentive but also brilliant and faithful.  Ranya certainly knows her history, but even more she lives it through her own specific incarnation in that place.  She and her parents and children are Palestinians, living in the West Bank; and they’re among the 2 percent of Holy Land residents who are Christian.  As we walked through countless churches, she knew the traditions about what Jesus had done in those places; and she knew the history of one force after another seeking to control them – Romans and Byzantines and sultans and Crusaders and Ottomans and Brits and Israelis. 

But beyond telling the history, Ranya also showed us what it’s like to live as a tiny minority in a land controlled by another country.  On a bus ride south along the Jordan River, she described the reality of life in the West Bank and the blame that all sides share.  For example, about the towering concrete division running through cities, villages, and countryside, she carefully called it “the Security Wall, or the Separation Wall.”  What it is depends on who you are and which neighborhood you inhabit.  Does it keep terrorists out of Israel?  Well, when I was there in May, the answer was “yes,” though I’m sure the answer would be different today.  And, does the wall separate Palestinian people from their jobs, and their loved ones, and any sense of freedom?  The answer certainly is “yes” to that, too.

But what really struck me about Ranya was her faith.  Of all people in the Holy Land, a local tour guide would have maybe the most cause to be a cynic.  Week after week, she leads one group after another, enduring travelers who haven’t bothered to learn much about her land.  Over and over, she visits sites like Cana – where, well, maybe Jesus turned water into wine there; we can’t really know for sure whether it’s the spot.  But there’s certainly been a lot blood spilled over it, and plenty of churches built to mark it, and scores of gift shops nearby….  On top of that, as a Palestinian Christian, Ranya has nobody going to bat politically for her family’s interests or well-being. 

And yet, what we heard in her descriptions of one site after another in this broken Holy Land was her trust in the Truth those sites represent.  God has been on the ground there – Ranya knows it in her soul.  The accounts from Scripture roll off her tongue like old family stories, narratives of identity that form us into who we are.  God’s action there through salvation history is simply a given for Ranya, every bit as real and true as the conflicts raging around her.

What I don’t know at this point is how Ranya and her family are.  The people who run the pilgrimage company are going to the Holy Land next week to talk with her and get a sense of the conditions on the ground.  But I’ve been thinking about her and her children a lot in the past two and a half months.  She doesn’t live in Gaza, thank God, but I’m sure she has friends and family there.  And the people of the West Bank are hardly out of harm’s way, never knowing when Israeli settlers will come and take their land … or worse.

In this tragic Christmas in the Holy Land – as pilgrims and the tiny Christian community aren’t filling Manger Square and the Church of the Nativity, as the people living there don’t know what horror might come next – regardless, we remember that the Word of God came among us and comes among us still.  For me, it comes in the person of Ranya; and Fr. Nael, the Anglican priest we met in Nazareth; and the people serving St. George’s Cathedral in East Jerusalem; and the staff at the hospitals and other mission sites run by the Episcopal diocese there. 

John’s Gospel tells us, “To all who received him, who believed in his name, [Jesus] gave power to become children of God” (1:12).  In them, in us, God continues to join humanity with the logos, making us not just born of flesh but reborn of the Spirit.  This is why we must not despair when we witness empty holy sites, and Separation Walls, and daily airstrikes.  Instead, we must join with Ranya in witnessing to the way the Word makes creation new.  We can’t stop the killing and the other injustices in Gaza and Israel and the West Bank.  But we can stand with Ranya, and John the Baptist, and the other lonely voices crying out in the wilderness to say that injustice and death are not God’s answers to human problems.  We must expect better, and we must embody better – because, after all, from that tiny speck of God’s good creation we call the Holy Land, the place where the Word first took flesh and moved into the neighborhood, God’s light shines in the darkness.  And the darkness will not overcome it.

1.     Brown, Raymond E. The Gospel According to John I-XII: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. Vol. 29 of The Anchor Bible. New York: Doubleday, 1966. 520.

2.     Brown, 520-521.

3.     Brown, 521.

4.     New International Study Bible, 1905 (note).

Fire the Boss and Follow the Friend

Sermon for Dec. 24, 2023 (Christmas Eve)
Luke 2:1-14

Where do your heart and mind go when you hear that Christmas story?  For me, it’s the family room at the house in Springfield where I grew up.  I’m maybe 8 years old, sitting on the hearth, under the stockings, with the Christmas tree twinkling just to my right.  It’s Christmas Eve, and every seat is taken … which is why I’m sitting on the hearth, the littlest kid.  I’m watching my mother at the other end of the room sitting on a barstool, taller than the rest of us, elevated physically to match the place she occupied spiritually in the family.  We’ve had dinner, and the grownups are enjoying a glass of Christmas cheer as they await the time to leave for Midnight Mass at Christ Episcopal Church.  And as they wait and celebrate, my mother suggests we read the Christmas story aloud. 

Now, this wasn’t a tradition in my family.  In fact, I’m not sure we’d ever read Scripture together.  Doing that was not in my family’s spiritual DNA.  Now, we went to church every Sunday; and my mother and we kids all sang in the choir; and Sunday school was every bit as much an expectation as regular school Monday through Friday.  But sharing faith our loud wasn’t our groove.  We were very comfortable with God being in our heads and in our understanding.  But it felt much too intimate, maybe even risky, to say anything about how God might be in our hearts or might direct our lives.  In my family, that would have sounded too much like those evangelical Christians we didn’t understand. 

So, when we sat in our family room that Christmas Eve, good Episcopalians waiting for Midnight Mass, my mother broke the rules by inviting Jesus to come sit in the circle with us.  She opened her King James Bible and read the Christmas story with an eloquence befitting her vocation as an English and speech teacher – even beating Linus in the Charlie Brown Christmas special.  And that moment was important enough to me that, 50 years later, I can see myself right back in the story.

Putting yourself into the story – that’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown.  And I mean that in two ways.  Not only is Christmas about us putting ourselves into God’s story; it’s about God putting Godself into ours.

Let’s think about that for a minute – because, even though my family overemphasized the intellectual aspect of faith, it does matter that God be in our head and in our understanding.  That’s what our class at Trailside through Advent was all about:  When we sing our favorite Advent hymns and Christmas carols, what are we actually proclaiming about the coming of Christ – who was he, and what was he doing?  Well, in that class, we looked at four roles Jesus came to play in the story of our salvation – and they all start with the letter “R” to make them easier to remember.¹  The first is “release”: that in Jesus, God releases the power of divinity, emptying Godself to show us the way of humility and self-giving love.  The second “R” is “rescue”: that in Jesus, God rescues us from the power of evil and death, liberating us to choose eternal life instead.  The third “R” is “reconcile”: that in Jesus, God heals the divide caused by our brokenness and self-interest, bringing us and God back into the relationship that began in the Garden.  And the fourth “R” is actually two, “reign” and “return”: that Jesus reveals what God’s reign and rule looks like “on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10) and that he’ll return to bring life back into alignment with the paradise God created “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:1).

So, what unites these roles Jesus plays in the story of our salvation?  To me, it’s this: that God isn’t just willing to save us; God goes to the extreme to save us.  I mean, we’d expect God to act a certain way, right?  If the sovereign of the universe is coming to do battle with Satan, and heal us of our sin, and give us a new way of relating to each other – you’d think that would be a pretty stunning display, right?  You’d think the anointed King would come … well, the way God’s people 2,000 years ago were expecting, with war horses and chariots and cosmic power.  After all, the “heavenly host” (Luke 2:13) in the reading tonight was the army of the Most High God.  Those legions were supposed to be toppling the legions of Rome, not serenading shepherds on a dark, lonely night.  

But instead, God enters into our story as us.  The cosmic King is born in a cave on a quiet hillside in the middle of nowhere, welcomed by people on the margin of the margins, a couple of unmarried peasants under orders to report for imperial taxation.  First on the road and then on the run, the young parents Mary and Joseph emigrate as refugees to get away from a ruler who wants to see them dead, taking the newborn King to a more welcoming country where they start over, homeless. 

This is not your standard story of divine conquest.  So, if we’re looking for what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown, here’s one way to see it: God wants so badly to defeat sin and death, to heal our broken places, to show us how to live – God wants so badly to set the world to rights that God will rebuild it, at great personal cost, from the bottom up.

It matters, on this holy night, that we know that.  But it also matters that we feel it.  And in our culture, experiencing a relationship with God often gets expressed in terms of “being saved.”  Growing up in Springfield, Missouri, at least outside the friendly confines of my head-oriented family and church, I heard a lot about having a personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  It was all over the bumper stickers and billboards and other churches’ signs.  It was on the lips of the people who came knocking on your door.  And it made me nervous because, although we shared a common faith, we did not share a common language.  I had no idea what they were talking about when they asked, “Do you know Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?  Have you been washed in the blood of the Lamb?”  I had no answer to give them.  I didn’t even know what it meant to have Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior or to be washed in the blood of the Lamb.  I was much more comfortable with a reasonable God, a God who only needed to make sense.

Over time, my conceptual God gave way to a different one, a slightly more relatable deity – God the supervisor, God the boss.  It may be an occupational hazard for people in my line of work, but it came to define my “relationship” with Jesus Christ:  He was the one who gave me assignments.  Now, you can have a good relationship with your boss, but it’s not exactly a “relationship” in an emotional sense, the kind that might change your life.  So, for years, Jesus has sat across the desk from me in a constant state of performance evaluation.  Whoopee.

Well, recently, I was talking with my spiritual director about how I see God, who God is for me; and this image of God the Boss came up.  It may not be a surprise that the way I spoke when I described this kind of God wasn’t exactly filled with joy.  So, my spiritual director said, “What would happen if you fired that God?  What would it be like to look away from God behind the desk?  Who would you see instead?”  And, in my mind’s eye, I looked in the other direction, away from the great big desk; and what I saw was a friend.  For me, it was a woman, because most of my best friends have been women.  She wasn’t sitting behind a desk, critiquing my job performance.  She was on her feet, smiling, even laughing, heading somewhere – and inviting me to come along.

So what does this have to do with the birth of Jesus as our Savior and King?  I think it’s this: that just as God went to the extreme to save us, entering into our experience to remake humanity from the bottom up, so God goes to the extreme to save me, and you, entering directly into our experience to lead us into new life from the inside out. 

So, this Christmas, I invite you to experience God as tangibly and relationally as your spiritual wiring will allow.  If you’re in your family room, enjoying a glass of Christmas cheer by the tree, pour one for Jesus.  If you’re opening presents and you get some awful Christmas sweater, imagine Jesus there giving it a belly laugh. 

And by the same token … if you’re reeling this Christmas, if you’ve lost someone you love, if your life is on fire, if the world is frightening, if everything’s hard … then remember the best hug you’ve ever had, and imagine it coming from Jesus himself – because it is.  If there’s a wall between you and someone you love, let Jesus take down the first brick and then follow his lead.  If you’re knocked down by something you just can’t beat, feel the strength of his hand lifting you up and his arm around your shoulders as, day by day, you take the next right step – together.

The crazy truth is this: The King who came to save all humanity also comes to save you.  It’s got nothing to do with you earning it, but it’s got everything to do with you inviting it.  Jesus is a gentleman, after all, and he won’t break down the door.  Instead, he’s standing on your doorstep, waiting to be let in.  For, as I heard my mother read out loud in our family room half a century ago, the most stunning words in this stunning Christmas story are these: “to you” (Luke 2:11).  To you is born a Savior, and to you that Savior’s still aching to come.

1.     Framework taken from Urban Skye’s Gloria in Excelsis Deo: The Deep Theology of Christmas Carols. Available at: https://www.urbanskye.org/urban-skye-publishing/the-seven-deadly-virtues-tax3l-hlwmz-5eclw-79bx3. Accessed Dec. 21, 2023.

The Glorious 'Yes'

Sermon for Dec. 24, 2024 (Advent IV)
Luke 1:26-38

Well, as far as the Church calendar is concerned, this is the fourth and last Sunday of Advent – at least for the next few hours.  Over the past three weeks, while the holiday season has been revving up all around us, we’ve been hearing stories that seem intended to keep us from thinking about the baby in the manger.  We’ve heard about the coming of Christ at the end of the age and about the work of John the Baptist to prepare the way of the Lord.  Now, finally, we get to hear a story that mentions a baby.    

It’s the story of the Annunciation, when the angel Gabriel comes and tells Mary what God has in mind for her.  This is a story many of us have heard before; and in a way, that’s the problem with it.  We know it too well.  We know it so well it doesn’t surprise us much anymore.

It might help us get a handle on this story if we consider who it’s about.  In one sense, the story’s about God – how God works in the world and in our own lives.  The story makes it clear God specializes in the unexpected.  Think about it: Our Creator decides the way to bring people back into relationship with God and each other is to become one of those people.  If that isn’t strange enough, God decides the way to do it is by coming as a vulnerable newborn in a society where he’ll be oppressed and victimized.  On top of that, God decides to do all this through a young woman at the bottom of the social ladder – and a woman who isn’t even married.  In human terms, that’s a pretty unproductive situation God’s entering into.  But that’s the point: God takes the raw material of life, raw material that doesn’t look very hopeful, and turns it into something new.  As the angel says, “Nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37). 

So, in one sense, the story is about God.  But you can also see the story being mostly about the baby Jesus.  After all, this is where he makes his entrance in Luke’s Gospel.  The angel says to Mary, not only will you conceive and bear a son without your husband’s assistance, but “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” (1:32).   So, from the moment of Jesus’ introduction, we learn that he won’t simply be a great human being, the king long awaited by the people of Israel.  Instead, he'll be Son of God as well as Son of Man.  So the birth that’s about to happen will be like no other birth before or since – even while it’s also just like every other birth, before and since.  So, you could certainly say the story is about Jesus.

            But, of course, the story is very much about Mary.  Now we don’t know a lot about her.  The story is pretty sparse.  We’re told that she’s a virgin and that she’s engaged to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David.  Other than that, we have to fill in the blanks ourselves. 

Mary was a young woman, probably somewhere in her mid-teens.  Today, she might be a freshman or sophomore in high school.  But in Galilee 2,000 years ago, Mary’s teenage years weren’t about preparing her for later life.  Because Mary had reached child-bearing age, a marriage had been arranged for her.  Her father and Joseph had reached a deal about the price Joseph would pay for her, and the time of their wedding was coming soon.  At 14 or so, Mary’s life was set, and she had very few choices.  And so it was for every young woman in Galilee.

So, in the story, Mary is minding her own business when suddenly an angel appears.  This is no cutesy greeting-card angel with little wings and fat, rosy cheeks.  This is Gabriel, a general in the heavenly army; and being in his presence is a terrifying experience because, Scripture says, humans who stand in the presence of God usually die.  Reasonably, Mary is scared and confused, wondering why a messenger of the Lord is saying she’s held highly in God’s favor.  So Gabriel gives Mary his message: that she will bear a son and name him Jesus; that this child will be called the Son of God; and that he will rule God’s people. 

All that’s a little much for a 14-year-old to take in, and she says, “What?  How is that gonna happen?”  Gabriel doesn’t answer the question directly but tells her that the child will be conceived through the power of the Holy Spirit.  And Mary says, “Oh, come on.  How can that be?”  But Gabriel says, “You can believe me because something very similar is happening to your relative, Elizabeth, who’s supposed to be barren.  Remember,” Gabriel says, “with God, nothing is impossible.”

Then, remarkably, this newly pregnant teenager looks at the heavenly general standing before her and says, “OK.  I am God’s servant.  Let’s do this.”

What’s interesting is how Mary’s reaction evolves through the story.  She doesn’t get it at first; but she comes to understand that God might be using her as an instrument of something much bigger than herself, an instrument of God’s saving purposes.  And in this, Mary stands in good company. 

Centuries before, God had come to Abraham and Sarah and had given them news just as shocking as what Mary heard: that Sarah, who was very, very old, would conceive and bear a son, Isaac.  Sarah was standing behind the entrance to their tent, listening to God telling Abraham the news, and she laughed at the idea – until God asked her: Well, why not?  “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14).  That made Sarah stop laughing and understand that she wasn’t just a 90-year-old who was about to get pregnant.  She was God’s instrument.  And when the baby was born, she said with delight, “God has brought laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me” (Genesis 21:6).  But her laughter had changed.  She began by scoffing at God’s crazy idea; now she was rejoicing at God’s fulfillment of the promise of new life through her.

Like Sarah, Mary reacts to her message from God like any of us might.  First, she’s confused, even scared to think what this angel might have up his sleeve.  Then she reacts with disbelief.  “How can this be?” she demands.  She wants to understand, but it just seems like too much.  Virgins don’t even bear children, much less children who are to be called the Son of God.  But Gabriel reminds her that God’s ways are not our ways, that God isn’t limited by the small expectations with which we limit ourselves.  The angel helps Mary see that what’s miraculous to us is all in a day’s work for God.  And when she hears about the example of her relative Elizabeth, I’ll bet Mary remembers that story of Sarah, too, the story of new life springing from impossibility.  And finally Mary understands who she is:  “Here I am, the servant of the Lord,” she says to Gabriel.  “Let it be with me according to your word.”

            So really, this story is all about Mary.  But ironically, by saying “yes” to God, by allowing her life to be turned upside down so that God’s purposes could be accomplished, Mary makes this story about us.  She shows us how we’re called to live as followers of Christ.  Like us, Mary’s suspicious when God shows a personal interest in her.  Like us, Mary’s afraid when she learns what God has in mind for her.  Like us, Mary has all sorts of questions about how this is going to work, and she’s courageous enough to ask those questions directly.  But ultimately, she says “yes” to God’s crazy way of bringing new life to the world because she recognizes who she truly is: a “servant of the Lord” – like us. 

This servant, this peasant on the margins of her society, has come to be called nothing less than the bearer of God.  And that’s the role Mary models for us now.  This bearer of God shows us how to bear Christ to those around us.  She shows us that when we open ourselves to the work God calls us to do, we can help bring to life possibilities far bigger than anything we could imagine.  She teaches us this most astounding truth of Christian life: that you never know what glory might come from simply saying, “Yes.”

The Prophetic Butterfly Effect

Sermon for Dec. 17, 2023
Isaiah 61:1-4,8-11; John 1:6-8,19-28

I want to start today with what may be the central question of this Advent season.  It’s a bit of a personal question, actually:  Where is your hope?

I’m guessing I’m not the only one here who looks at each day’s news anymore not so much with alarm as with exhaustion.  I think it was alarm, a while back.  But by now, my reaction to war in the Holy Land and Ukraine, unconscionable national debt, a degrading planet, record-high murders in Kansas City, and the political circus that occupies our cathedral of democracy in Washington … my reaction to all this, sadly, isn’t outrage anymore but simply shaking my head.  I think that’s because we can’t function in a state of constant alarm, even if it’s merited.  We’re not wired that way.  If, every day, we see our people and our politics and our planet on fire, at some point we find ourselves wondering what more we can do than just watch it burn.

Meanwhile, Advent flickers before us like a holy flame, persistently asking:  Where is your hope?  Because, through this season, God whispers insistently that neither alarm nor exhaustion are the paradigms of God’s world.  Instead, God has a better plan.

And today, like last week, to get us ready for a redeemed world, God brings us the patron saint of strangeness, John the Baptist.  John is both a preacher’s conundrum and delight because, for 2,000 years now, we’ve never really been able to wrap our minds around him. 

Even the Gospel accounts of John the Baptist don’t speak with a common voice.  In Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we get John the hairy wild man, the baptizer who needs a bath.  In the series The Chosen, he’s described as “Creepy John,” someone even the soon-to-be disciples want to avoid.  This John the Baptist sticks it to The Man, castigating both religious and Roman authorities for exploiting people in poverty and powerlessness.  “Bear fruit worthy of repentance,” this John cries, for “even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire!” (Luke 3:8-9)  The Savior is coming with “his winnowing fork in his hand,” Creepy John says, and those who don’t meet the standards of God’s reign and rule will find themselves facing “unquenchable fire” (Luke 3:9).

On the other hand, we have John the Baptist from the fourth Gospel, who we heard today.  This John is much more conrolled but also much less clear.  He’s introduced as a man “sent from God … as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.  He himself was not the light,” the gospel writer is quick to say, “but he came to testify to the light.” (John 1:7-8)  In this account, there’s no Creepy John leading a mob in the desert.  Here, John the Baptist is calm, cool, and collected – more a TED Talk idea-generator than a prophet with a bullhorn. 

But this John’s still a threat to the religious authorities, who come asking just who he is and what he thinks he’s doing.  TED Talk John answers by refusing to meet the authorities’ expectations.  “Are you the Messiah?” they ask?  “Nope.”  “What then?  Are you Elijah” – the Old Testament miracle worker and killer of the priests of other gods, who many thought would return as a harbinger of the Day of the Lord.  “Nope, not Elijah,” John says.  “So, are you the prophet?” – the new Moses others thought would herald God’s coming victory over Israel’s oppressors.  “Nope,” John says.  “Well,” the authorities demand, “then who are you?” (John 1:19-22)

Indeed, who is this guy?  And what does he represent – then and now?

The preaching purists would say I shouldn’t conflate these different Gospel accounts, but I think it makes sense in the case of John the Baptist.  Whether you see John as a rebel with a bullhorn sticking it to The Man, or whether you see John as a TED Talk speaker silencing critics who aren’t as smart as he is, both Johns are saying this:  “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord,’” as the prophet Isaiah said (John 1:23).  And along that straight path is coming “one … you do not know” (1:26), the King whom the world won’t recognize, the one who’ll save us from oppression and fear and unholy misrule not by crushing the power structure but by transforming it from the bottom up, from the inside out, one heart at a time.

If there ever were a Biblical figure for our time, it’s John the Baptist.  Whether you see him leading a mob in the streets or giving a TED Talk, John’s message for us is consistent:  Yes, our people and our politics and our planet are on fire.  And that’s not OK.  In fact, it’s evil, and buying into it is sinful.  When we don’t care enough about our children to take both national debt and climate change seriously; when we tiptoe around the killing of 19,000 people so far in Palestine because we think one horror deserves another; when we see the folks wandering our streets as annoyances to be moved along rather than people needing mental health care and affordable places to live – when we watch all this and just shake our heads, both Creepy John and TED Talk John look at us and say, “You might want to rethink that.  After all, the reign and rule of God is close at hand….”

Can we really do anything about problems like these?  Well, if you accept my premise that John the Baptist, and Jesus Christ, came to transform hearts that would then transform the world – well, in that case, we can absolutely do something about problems like these.

It’s the prophetic butterfly effect.  You know about the butterfly effect, right?  It’s a scientific metaphor of the interconnectedness of life on our planet – that the fluttering of a butterfly’s wings on one continent effects one tiny change after another, eventually causing storms continents away.  I don’t know anything about climatology, but I do know about the baffling way God chooses to work – and it’s very much a butterfly-effect kind of thing.  Seven days and a few hours from now, on Christmas Eve, we’re going to celebrate the astonishing fact that the sovereign of the universe chose to bridge the gap between us by coming to be one of us, redirecting history by being born into poverty and oppression in a backwater of a tyrannical empire.  Inhabiting that world for 33 years or so, God changed the heart of one individual after another, leaving the world forever changed and millions of us forever looking to the future with crazy hope.  So, yes, Jesus says, the world is on fire.  It’s been on fire for a long, long time now.  And that’s not good.  But it’s also not the end of the story.

So, back to the question I started with:  Where is your hope?  Your hope is to be the next in line for the butterfly effect of the world’s salvation.  And you do that by being exactly what John the Baptist is in today’s reading: a witness, in both a spiritual and a legal sense.  John the Baptist “came as a witness to testify to the light” – light that the darkness cannot overcome – “so that all might believe through him” (John 1:7).  John isn’t changing the world in a flash, through his own power.  John just points to what he knows and who he knows, reporting God’s truth about this world we’re blessed to inhabit.  The oppressive forces around you actually aren’t in control, John says – God is.  OK, say the regular folks in the crowd – what should we do?  Well, John says, it’s not enough to assume you’re on the right team.  You’ve got to act:  Share your food and your clothing with people who don’t have enough.  OK, so what should we do, ask the tax collectors and the soldiers?  Well, you’ve got change how you act, John says:  Stop exploiting people who have less power than you do just because the system lets you get away with it. (Luke 3:10-14)  Well, why, they ask?  Because, John says – as he channels the prophet Isaiah – because the reign and rule of God is about bringing good news to the oppressed, and binding up the brokenhearted, and freeing the captives, and releasing the prisoners, and forgiving impossible debts (which is what “the year of the Lord’s favor” means), and meeting the needs of those suffering from their land’s devastation. (Isaiah 61:1-4)  That’s God’s plan.

It turns out, you and I get the chance every day to witness to that divine light – the Light that the world’s darkness cannot overcome.  How can we do that?  Here’s one idea.  You can come back in seven days and a few hours, and testify to God’s dominion over our world through a very worldly action.  On Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, we’ll gather to remember the stories of how God’s light came, not in blinding victory over the armies of the earth but flickering in a cave on a hillside.  We’ll remember how that light sets our own hearts on fire, turning grinches and scrooges into Love’s witnesses.  And we’ll then get the opportunity to flutter our own butterfly wings in an outward and visible way.  As we remember the Son of God who came as a child with nothing, we’ll give in order to change the lives of one child after another.  The gifts from our worship here at Christmas will go not to the church but to children we serve – 300 kids at a school in rural Haiti, 100 percent of whose graduating class passed the national exam last year; as well as 43 families at Benjamin Banneker Elementary in Kansas City, who are pairing with 39 St. Andrew’s members and friends to put food on the table and get to know each other.  Here in the candlelit brightness of our Silent Night, with each gift we make, our butterfly wings will heal a broken world.

And that’ll be just the start.  Butterflies flutter their wings over and over again as they cross continents, changing the world in ways they never see.  And so do we, if we choose.  Even in a world on fire, hope is as real as your next act of witness to the Light that shines in the darkness – God’s light, which the darkness cannot overcome.