Turn and Bind Up the Nation's Wounds

Sermon for Nov. 10, 2024
Mark 13:1-8

Note: With the bishop’s permission, we switched the readings appointed for Nov. 10 and Nov. 17 because the parishioner scheduled to be interviewed on Nov. 10 had to reschedule for Nov. 17 … and her interview is tied to the readings appointed for Nov. 10

First, I need to let you know this homily will sound a bit strange.  That’s because I wrote it the morning of Election Day, before we knew any outcomes.  So, I’ll read it (rather than preach it) more than I usually would.  Think of it as a letter from me to you, written Tuesday morning.

* * *

The polls opened a few hours ago, and a steady stream of people are coming to HJ’s to cast their ballots.  It’s good to see, regardless of the outcomes of the races and ballot issues.

Also, since 8 a.m. today, the church has been open for individual reflection and prayer, as it will be the day after the election.  We put out three resources: a “Season of Prayer for an Election” handout, with prayers from the BCP; a set of Prayers of the People for an Election; and Abraham Lincoln’s Second Inagural Address.  In fact, I’m wearing my Lincoln socks as I write this.

Here in the Diocese of West Missouri, this isn’t the only important Election Day we’ll have this week.  On Saturday, our Diocesan Convention delegates –  lay people and clergy – will elect the ninth bishop of West Missouri, someone who likely will serve longer than whomever is elected president today.  Having been on the Bishop Search Committee, I can tell you that any of the four candidates will be a good and faithful chief pastor for us.  That said, among the candidates is one of my best friends, the Rev. Amy Dafler Meaux.  So, I can’t exactly say I’m objective about the outcome.

By Sunday, we’ll know who our next bishop will be.  I may be more or less happy about that personally, depending on the outcome.  Also by Sunday, God willing, we’ll know who our next president will be.  If so, I’d bet my next paycheck that 50 percent of you are happy and relieved, while 50 percent of you are dismayed, maybe depressed, maybe angry.  

What do we do in the days after these elections?  If my friend wasn’t elected bishop, how will I work with the winner?  If your candidate wasn’t elected president, how will you walk alongside those who are happy with the outcome?  If we know nothing else about our nation after these months of campaigning, we know it will be tough to move forward together toward the common good.

So, where can we look for hope?

It turns out, our Love in Action series this week is taking up the spiritual practice of turning: pausing, listening, and choosing to follow Jesus.  We actually didn’t do that on purpose, scheduling “turn” as the spiritual practice to follow Election Day – but the Holy Spirit helped us out.  I say that because I believe our only way forward together is to turn together – not toward a “good” winner or away from a “bad” winner but toward the only One who will lead us toward the common good.

Our Gospel reading is another Holy Spirit moment – again, given to us regardless of the elections’ outcome.  This story may be a little hard to hear as “good news” on a first reading, and it certainly wasn’t comforting for the disciples or the early Christians.  Jesus is talking about the end of the world as we know it, and nobody feels fine.

The writer of Mark’s Gospel is looking back 40 years or so from just after the Jewish Revolt of the years 66 to 70.  The end of that conflict looked a lot like what Jesus is describing in today’s reading:  As his followers marvel at the Temple’s grandeur, Jesus says, “Do you see these great buildings?  Not one stone will be left upon another; all will be thrown down.” (Mark 13:2)  For the early Christians, when the Roman army crushed the Jewish revolutionaries, slaughtered thousands, and destroyed Judaism’s holiest site – when the worst thing they could imagine happened – they saw it as the “beginning of the birth pangs,” God bringing fiery judgment on the people who hadn’t accepted Jesus as the Messiah (13:8).  And they were sure God’s judgment would be completed soon, with Jesus returning in the “clouds with great power and glory” (13:26) to reign on earth the way he was reigning in heaven.

And as the early Christians remembered Jesus promising to return in power and glory, they also remembered him saying, Be careful who you follow in the meantime.  “Many will come in my name and say, ‘I am he!’ and they will lead many astray.”  When everything around you seems to crumble, Jesus says, “do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come.” (Mark 13:7)

“Beware that no one leads you astray.”  Why does Jesus say that?  Because he knows how susceptible people are to following gods of their own making – then and now.  The fact we’re so divided about which candidate is our savior might be a hint that neither candidate is our savior.

But our temptations toward idolatry go further than that.  We may be tempted to see our system of government as our savior.  Or our economy.  Or maybe our nation itself.  My hero Abraham Lincoln called this nation “the last, best hope of earth.”¹  But Lincoln also saw that earth’s last, best hope was itself deeply in need of repentance.  In his Second Inagural Address, he named slavery as our original sin, the cause of the war that had cost the lives of more than 600,000 mostly White men.  Lincoln saw the war as nothing less than God’s judgment:  He wrote, “If God wills that [the war] continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, ‘The judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether.’”²  This last, best hope of earth needed to make a serious turn toward righteousness.

And it still does. God calls us always to turn around, to change our minds toward God’s purposes. That’s why turning is a spiritual practice and not a one-time dramatic moment.  What we need to turn from may not be sexy, like most people’s images of sin – and that’s why idolatry is so pernicious.  Putting our hope on that which is not God – power or money or candidates or parties or nations – it’s just what people do, right?  But it doesn’t help us.  Instead, when things don’t go our way, our idolatry just makes us anxious and fearful, and we respond as humans do – with anger.

“Beware that no one leads you astray,” Jesus says.  Instead, as your post-election resolution, take up the spiritual practice of turning – of pausing, listening, and choosing to follow Jesus instead of the many other forces that come and say, “I am he!”  And how do we do that?  Go back to our foundation, the covenant we renewed last Sunday as we welcomed new followers of Jesus through the waters of baptism.  Just as the Baptismal Covenant was there during the campaign to serve as our voting guide, so it’s there to navigate us through the uncertainty of the coming weeks and months.  We’ll find our way forward when we turn toward God to discern, “What can I do to foster the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers?  What can I do to resist evil and turn to the Lord?  What can I do to proclaim by word and example the good news of Jesus’ reign and rule among us?  What can I do to seek and serve Christ in all people, loving my neighbor as myself?  What can I do to strive for justice and peace, and respect the dignity of every human being?”

So, what might look like if we lived out the answers to those questions?  I think we might find ourselves following the call to turn that Abraham Lincoln gave us, as individuals and as a nation:  “With malice toward none; with charity for all; with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan – to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and a lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations.”²

1.       https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm

2.       https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/second-inaugural-address-1865-2

Worship: Your Memory Aid

Sermon for Oct. 27, 2024
Mark 10:46-52

That may seem like an odd Gospel reading for a Sunday when we’re highlighting the spiritual practice of worship.  After all, in today’s reading, blind Bartimaeus isn’t even in a house of worship.  He isn’t praying in a synagogue or offering sacrifice in the temple.  Those are the kinds of places where worship happens, right?  But here’s Bartimaeus, on the side of the road yelling at Jesus, naming him as “Son of David” and crying for mercy.  What does that have to do with worship?

Well, maybe we should clarify what we mean when we talk about worship.  That word is often used as a noun – a thing churches do, the main product we offer.  And that can lead us to think about worship as a commodity:  How good is it?  How compelling is it?  How well does it meet my needs?  But worship isn’t about us, actually.  There’s an audience of One for this offering we make each week.  The object of worship is God, for whom we gather to give thanks and praise.  When we come here, we’re the ones providing a service, not the ones receiving it.

I think the reason why this Gospel reading makes sense for today is less about Bartimaeus’ actions and more about the object of his actions.  Bartimaeus may be blind, but he can clearly see Jesus’ identity.  He knows this is God’s anointed ruler passing by – the “Son of David” (Mark 10:47), the Messiah.  And that doesn’t mean simply a king; this is God’s viceroy on earth.  That’s how the ancient Israelites understood kingship:  They saw their king as God’s own son, God’s deputy; and it was through the king’s rule that God exercised divine sovereignty on earth.  So, when Bartimaeus calls Jesus “son of David,” Bartimaeus isn’t just naming him as Israel’s king.  Identifying Jesus as God’s Messiah, Bartimaeus is ascribing to him worth, dignity, honor, renown, and glory.  He’s worshiping.

And what happens as a result?  Two important responses, one of which may be easy to miss.  First, because the blind man sees God in the presence of Jesus the Messiah and trusts in God’s power that flows through him, Bartimaeus receives the healing he asks for when he says,  “Let me see again” (10:51).  But just as important, Bartimaeus’ life changes on an even deeper level in what happens next, when he follows Jesus “on the way” (10:52).  It’s not enough for Bartimaeus simply to give God honor, renown, and glory – to recognize God’s ultimate worth above all else.  Bartimaeus sees he has to take the next step, too, and make his life an act of worship by following Jesus on the way.

 In Bartimaeus’ day, there were many people and powers competing to be seen as the true object of worship.  You could see that in the conflict between Judaism and Rome, certainly, with the Romans worshiping their own gods and seeing their emperor as the divine Lord.  But the conflict over which god to worship went back centuries before that.

Traditionally in the ancient Near East, every people and nation had its own deity, the god who was understood to exercise power and authority over just that place.  That would have been how non-Israelites saw Yahweh – as the god of the Israelites, presumed to be roughly equivalent to the gods of the Egyptians and the Canaanites and every other nation.  But the people of Israel started making this crazy claim about Yahweh – that this wasn’t just their god but the God, overruling all the others.  Yahweh defeated the gods of the Egyptians by freeing the Israelites from bondage and delivering them through the Red Sea.  Yahweh defeated the gods of the Canaanites by empowering the Israelites to take that land from the people who lived there. 

And all through the history of the people of Israel, their huge challenge was to remember it was Yahweh and Yahweh alone who was the sovereign.  Monotheism was a deeply radical idea.  And to keep that radical idea burning in people’s hearts and minds, the people worshiped.  They offered appointed sacrifices in the Temple in Jerusalem.  They made several annual pilgrimages to the holy city.  They studied their scriptures and offered their prayers in synagogues in their hometowns.  Worship reminded them that they were different because their god was different.  Their god was the One God – and when they forgot, and worshiped the gods of the nations around them, they found life went badly.  They found their nation divided into competing kingdoms.  They found their power crumbling on the regional stage.  As they forgot which god deserved their honor, renown, and glory, they found themselves driven into exile, losing their nationhood completely.

I think one way of understanding Jesus’ mission is that he came to remind Yahweh’s people – who are all people – just who the object of worship must be.  That was true 2,000 years ago, and it’s true now.  Monotheism is just as radical a notion today as it was in the ancient world.  Now, today, Yahweh’s competitors are always before us.  They’re on your social media feed, and in the stock-market report, and in entertainment, and in what passes for public discourse.  And in this election season, rivals for your worship make a particularly blatant appeal.  The candidates say, “Only my way can save you, and if you’re not with me, you’re evil.”  In fact, for some candidates, the message becomes even more coarse:  “If you’re not with me, you’re not really human.”

In this moment, when the gods of power and self-interest make their strongest pitch, we need worship to help us remember two truths that will save us.  The first truth is this:  There is but one God – the One who made us, and who brought us back when we turned away, and who heals us, and who calls us to follow.  And the second truth is this:  We are the children of that God, made in Yahweh’s image; and our purpose is to grow into the fullness of that divine stature.  We are made by love, for love.  And following any power other than love warps us into lesser creatures than we’re made to be.

Worship is the most powerful way we remember who God is and who we are.  Even when we find ourselves blind beggars, sitting at the side of the road, shushed by the powers that surround us, worship helps us remember we have a voice.  And worship helps us remember that when we call out to the one God – ascribing honor, renown, and glory to the only One who deserves it – then God heals us and empowers us to help heal our world, too.

That’s a tall order, that kind of powerful, deep remembering.  How do we begin?  I think it starts by saying, “Thank you.”  It’s our most fundamental prayer, the heart of all true worship.  And it’s no accident that what we offer here each week is called Eucharist, which in Greek means “thanksgiving.”  We come here to worship not because God needs our thanks but because we need to offer it, over and over again, to remember who and whose we are.

What Have I Got to Lose?

Sermon for Oct. 13, 2024
Mark 10:17-31

If you were here last week, you know we celebrated the feast of St. Francis of Assisi.  We blessed pets, too, as a way to remember God’s love revealed in the created order and our responsibility to steward the creation God has entrusted to us.  By seeing the earth and the stars and the seas and the creatures as his siblings, St. Francis found spiritual rest knowing that what God provides is truly enough.

But St. Francis’ story is so rich that he’s also a great model of the spiritual practice we’re highlighting today in our “Love in Action” series.  It’s the practice of going: crossing boundaries, listening to the experience of others, and living like Jesus.  That may not be something we think about as a spiritual practice, like praying or reading Scripture or setting aside time to rest.  But when we make a practice of going along Jesus’ path, we find God’s blessings, even in the least likely places.

As a young man around the year 1200, Francis of Assisi was a spoiled brat, enjoying the wealth that came with being the son of a silk merchant in Italy.  But eventually he realized that partying with his friends wasn’t much of a calling.  So, Francis decided to go be a soldier … until he found that being taken prisoner was much less fun than parading around with shiny weapons. 

So, Francis returned to Assisi and began taking care of people who were sick or poor, forgotten by others.  He also heard God asking him to “repair the church,” and he took that literally, paying to rebuild Assisi’s crumbling church.  Unfortunately for his family relationships, he paid for that work by selling much of his father’s stock of fabrics.  As you might guess, his father wasn’t amused; and he disowned Francis – so, Francis disowned his father and the worldliness he represented.  The story is told that Francis came to the village square, stripped off his fancy clothes, and walked away.

And that’s where the story starts to get interesting.  Francis began wandering from village to village, caring for the people others rejected – the poor, the sick, the outcast.  As Jesus had instructed his disciples, Francis traveled with “no purse” (Luke 10:4) or any other means of support, living off the kindness of strangers.  He went to serve the people most in need and brought with him the love of God … as well as what came to be hundreds of others inspired by this ministry of going to people on the margins, meeting them where they were, and treating them as Jesus would.  It was the true meaning of the call Francis had heard years before to “repair the church” – helping it reclaim its identity as followers of Jesus going out to serve others.  And eventually, this movement that Francis hadn’t intended to start became the Franciscan monastic order.

Francis could follow that path not because of what he had but because of what he’d given up.  For him, the life of plenty had been a burden, holding him back from the love God was calling him to share.  Like the man in the Gospel reading today, Francis heard Jesus telling him that, in his abundance and his privilege, he actually lacked something vital: the freedom to go where God wanted to send him.  Paradoxically, his wealth and power held him back from taking part in the life Jesus wanted to give him, the life of following God’s reign and rule.  But once Francis released what held him back, he could go beyond the life his father had carved out for him, traveling light in the kingdom to live out God’s own love.

The point of the Gospel story we heard today is not that God doesn’t like rich people (although you do hear it preached that way sometimes).  In fact, with both Francis of Assisi and the man in the reading today, God embraces a person with wealth and loves him enough to try to set him free to go follow a different path.  In fact, this rich man in today’s reading is the only individual in Mark’s Gospel Jesus is said explicitly to love.¹  So, Francis of Assisi took Jesus up on the offer.  Unfortunately for the man in today’s reading, instead of going off toward the kingdom of heaven, he goes “away grieving, for he had many possessions” and was possessed by them all (10:22).

For us to follow the spiritual practice of going – of crossing boundaries, listening to others, and living like Jesus – we have to ask ourselves, “What burden is holding me back?”  I think the reason Jesus points to wealth in the story today, and why God led Francis to renounce his family’s wealth and power, is because what holds us back from going deeper with God is the fear of what we’ll lose.  You know, the reign and rule of God actually sounds pretty good, right? – unconditional love, eternal life, growing in relationship with God and the people around us.  But at what cost?  What will I lose if I go that direction?

Of course, Jesus’ answer is that you don’t lose; you gain – “a hundredfold now in this age … and in the age to come, eternal life” (Mark 10:30).  Now, those gains do include “persecutions,” Jesus says (10:30) – if you walk away from the crowd, they’ll sneer at you sometimes.  But to follow the spiritual practice of going, think about what you’re walking toward instead.  Here’s one example – from the chief of our Brew Crew, the baristas at HJ’s: Craig Lundgren. (Interview with Craig follows.)

1.      New Interpreter’s Study Bible, 1829 (note).

 

Equipping the Called

Sermon for Sept. 29, 2025 (kickoff of Stewardship Season)
Numbers 11:4-6,10-16,24-29; Mark 9:38-50

In today’s reading from Numbers, we hear about the complaining “rabble” that’s turned against Moses in the wilderness (11:4).  At least the way the Book of Numbers tells the story (which is different from the way Exodus tells the story), the people had crossed the Red Sea more than a year earlier.  Soon after, God began providing manna for the people out there in the desert – a “fine flaky substance” (Exodus 16:14) later described as the “bread of angels” (Psalms 78:25).  The people made cakes from it – ancient power bars – and they journeyed in the strength of that food for about 15 months.  Fifteen months.  Now, I don’t care how good something is, or how grateful you are for it, after 15 months of eating it – and only it – you’d go a little crazy.  

So, that’s what’s happening here, as the people’s frustration with the monotony of bread from heaven gets the best of them.  The people start complaining against Moses:  Sure, you liberated us from slavery, but what have you done for us lately?  “We remember the fish we used to eat in Egypt for nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, the garlic; but now … there is nothing at all but” the bread of angels “to look at” (Numbers 11:6). 

So, imagine you’re one of the elders of the Israelites.  You’re as sick of manna as anybody else, so you join in complaining about Moses’ leadership.  But then, Moses calls the elders together, bringing you and 69 of your friends around the tent housing the Ark of the Covenant, the place where God comes to dwell among you.  And suddenly, the story says, “The Lord came down in the cloud and spoke to [Moses], and took some of the spirit that was on him and put it on the seventy elders; and when the spirit rested upon them, they prophesied” (Numbers 11:25).  So, yesterday, you were complaining about Moses.  Today, you find yourself on his leadership team.  And you’re thinking, “Wait a minute – I’m not cut out for this.  I didn’t go to God’s 40-day leadership retreat on Mt. Sinai like Moses did.  I’m just trying to move my family on to the Promised Land.  But now, God, you’re putting the same spirit on me that you put on Moses?  I never wanted to be a spiritual leader.”

Neither do most of us – including most of us God dragged off to seminary.  I think most of our Vestry members would say they’re not cut out to be spiritual leaders either.  But this year, we’ve been working on that.  As I told you in January, along with all the other things on the list for our commissions – offering inspiring worship, and replacing boilers, and empowering Outreach ministry, and putting on fellowship events – along with all that “regular” holy work, your Vestry this year is creating what we’re calling the Pilgrim’s Pathway to Heaven on Earth.  We’re assessing our offerings and realigning some of our ministries for better collaboration, and we’re creating a user’s guide for the spiritual journey.  And, along with that, your Vestry members are working on their own spiritual growth.  It may seem shocking, but we’re spending more time in Vestry meetings on that than we’re spending on financial statements or contract approvals.  All this is a work in progress, definitely.  But I think it’s the right work to be doing, helping leaders grow as disciples.  It’s also an example of collaboration:  If I can help put together fundraising campaigns and the annual budget, then Vestry members can take their share in the church’s spiritual leadership.

OK, now for a really radical thought:  It’s not just Vestry members whom God equips to be spiritual leaders.  It’s you, too.  So, what might that look like?

First, let’s think about what it doesn’t have to look like.  God equips some of us for more public roles – leading worship, being a parish warden, praying with others for healing, reading Scripture, leading music.  That kind of ministry may be what comes to mind when you think of spiritual leadership.  But just as important is the effect one person can have on another, drawing someone into deeper connection with God and the people around them.

You’ll get to hear about that over the next seven weeks in our preaching series about “Love in Action.”  Yes, that series will include sermons from us, but it will also feature interviews with people you know who bring God’s love alive day by day.  You’ll hear from Joy Bower about making time to rest.  You’ll hear from Craig Lundgren about going outside our comfort zones.  You’ll hear from Linda Brand about leading Pray at 8.  You’ll hear from Johnny Honnold about leading fellow acolytes in worship.  You’ll hear from Paul Johnson about learning God’s story of new life.  You’ll hear from Grace Coughlin about serving kids at the St. James Pantry.  And you’ll hear from Ann Rainey about listening for and then following the voice of God.  Now, my hunch is that none of those people would stand up and say, “Look at me; I’m a spiritual leader!”  But, as you’ll hear in their stories, that’s just what they are.

You’ll also find the opportunity this fall to go deeper with God and one another through our new fellowship groups, the St. Andrew’s Circles.  The idea here isn’t Bible study or intercessory prayer – we have other opportunities for that.  The point is just to get to know a few people you haven’t known so well before, learn their stories, and share your own.  You can still sign up today to be part of a St. Andrew’s Circle; just email the address in the bulletin or talk with one of us.

And we’ll get the chance this fall to connect with people and give back to God as we serve our neighbors.  Today at the parish picnic, we’ll pack hygiene bags for clients at Welcome House and two of our partner food pantries.  Then, in November, we’ll have two chances to serve alongside our friends at St. James Church, offering an early-Thanksgiving community dinner and providing holiday meal kits for families in need. 

Both connecting with people here and connecting with neighbors at St. James gives us a chance to put into action the love that Jesus is teaching today.  This is a tough Gospel reading this morning – it’s hard to know where Jesus is going in those verses about cutting off your hand or your foot.  But this reading is connected to what he was saying last Sunday, when the disciples were arguing about which of them was the greatest.  He told them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35).  And he put a little child among them – a symbol of powerlessness, the lowest status of anyone in that culture – to say, look, the people we’re called to seek out aren’t the powerful, the ones who bring us higher status, but the powerless, the folks who represent Jesus himself. 

Well, in today’s reading, he goes one step further.  The disciples are still hung up on their status, trying to shut down other healers who are using Jesus’ brand without paying the royalties. But Jesus puts his power to heal right out there in the public domain:  “Do not stop [them],” he says, “for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me” (Mark 9:39).  In other words, doing the right thing in the spirit of Jesus is enough to lead someone to set their heart on his path.  Right action leads to right belief.  So, Jesus says, don’t criticize someone for doing the right thing for not entirely the right reason.  It’s a step on their journey. 

In fact, he tells the disciples, if you keep someone out because they aren’t as “in” as you are, you’ll be the one to suffer for it. So, if you’re tempted to keep the outsiders out, you’d be better off losing what means the most to you, rather than enduring the judgment that comes with exalting yourself over them.  The one you keep off “Team Jesus” may be yourself.

After all, you’re supposed to be the “salt of the earth,” Jesus tells his disciples elsewhere (Matthew 5:13), and he mentions it here, too.  That image of salt had not just a double meaning but a triple meaning back in the day.  Salt was a seasoning, of course, bringing a food’s flavor alive.  But salt was also valuable – so valuable that salt was a gift people brought to the temple as a thank-offering for God’s blessings.  And, salt was a preservative – really the only preservative in the Ancient Near East 2,000 years ago – so salt was a symbol of extending life and well-being far into the future.¹  In all these senses, those who follow Jesus are to be the salt in God’s kingdom – those who live life fully, those who offer themselves as living sacrifices, and those who bring to others the life that never ends.

This fall, we have the chance to be salt like that – making life rich and flavorful, offering our hearts to the One who made us, serving others from the well that never runs dry.  Sign up to be part of a St. Andrew’s Circle and build a relationship you never expected.  Come on Sundays and hear people tell their stories about offering themselves to God day by day.  And serve at St. James, connecting with our parishioners and theirs as we offer a foretaste of the heavenly banquet one slice of turkey at a time. 

When we put ourselves out there as salt for God’s kingdom – when we add the flavor of Love to life, when we offer ourselves in gratitude, when we share the hope of life that never ends – we become the last thing we ever imagined: spiritual leaders helping others go just that much deeper in their own experience of God.  Thankfully, we don’t have to rely on ourselves to do that; we can trust the Spirit to supply the power to make it happen.  Because, as countless pastors and writers have said before me, God doesn’t call the equipped.  God equips the called – including you.

1.      HarperCollins Study Bible. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. 1936 (note).

A Walk Through Holy Sepulcher

Sermon for Holy Cross Day, transferred
Philippians 2:5-11; John 12:31-36a
Sept. 15, 2024

Today we’re celebrating Holy Cross Day, transferred from yesterday.  Now, why would we celebrate the cross?  Of all the things to raise up about the Christian faith, the Church sets aside a day to honor the instrument of Jesus’ death?  That seems odd, to say the least. To look for an answer, I want to take you somewhere I visited on my pilgrimage to the Holy Land last year, a place that’s all about the mystery of the cross – the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem. 

A strange truth you learn in the Holy Land is that many of the things you came to see are covered up by churches, and this one is maybe the best example of that unhappy truth.  The Church of the Holy Sepulcher covers the traditional sites of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial.  The church was dedicated on Sept. 14 in the year 335, which is why Sept. 14 is Holy Cross Day.  The Roman Emperor Constantine had converted to Christianity and, with the faith now legal, the bishop of Jerusalem excavated the site thought to be Calvary.  In 326, the effort revealed three crosses and a cave close by; and Constantine’s mother, Helena, went to Jerusalem to supervise construction of a church over the site.  The original building was a basilica (a rectangular space, like where our pews are) next to the rock where the crucifixion was said to have happened.  And at one end of that space was a rotunda around the tomb.  The cross-section view tries to make sense of how the building encloses these sites.

Over the centuries, the building witnessed the rise and fall of empires and Church authorities, and the repeated changing of the guard left its mark on the building and its administration.  The building itself was added onto several times.  And control of all those spaces came to rest with no less than six different Christian authorities simultaneously: the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Syriac, and Coptic churches.  Conflict among those bodies has played out even in physical violence over the centuries, leaving Jesus shaking his head in dismay.  The present “status quo” agreement dates from 1757, and the truce is still so uneasy that, literally, the movement of a ladder over the outside door would be enough to bring the six different authorities back at each other’s throats.

The church’s geography mirrors both the crazy authority structure and the range of holy things to venerate there.  Making your way through the church is like exploring somewhere in a dream, with disconnected realities cobbled together into a structure you couldn’t imagine in real life.  But there are three primary spaces of veneration.  There’s the Rock of Calvary, on which the three crosses are thought to have stood.  There’s the Stone of Anointing, where Jesus’ body is said to have been prepared for burial.  And there’s the tomb itself, a cave whose hillside has been deconstructed and enclosed by a building within the building, called the Edicule.

When I visited, our group had 90 minutes at Holy Sepulcher.  The guide told us to choose which holy site mattered most to us because we’d be spending most of those 90 minutes waiting to glimpse the thing we’d chosen.  I chose the Rock of Calvary, the site of the crucifixion, where pilgrims can get down on their knees and put their hands about nine inches down into a hole in the rock said to have held Jesus’ cross.

Now, it’s tempting to say we “stood in line” to visit the rock.  But there was no line.  Instead, there was a mass of humanity making its way, like a school of fish with no sense of personal space.  We moved very slowly up steps, and into an antechamber, and toward the chapel on the rock, with an altar over the hole where the cross stood.  People from many nations pushed and shoved each other toward the site of the world’s salvation.  Maybe they understood the holiness of the site, but they’d forgotten the Golden Rule along the way.  This seems like the least appropriate place on the planet to push ahead of someone else.

Finally, each pilgrim gets a moment at the foot of the cross.  You drop to your knees, which seems completely appropriate, and you get a few seconds to stick your hand down the nine-inch hole and touch the bottom. Now, a thousand of your closest friends have done the same thing that day, and millions more over the last 17 centuries; so, what you touch bears the residue of that – dirt and God knows what else from all those hands that came before you.  But, you know, after I touched the bottom of the hole in that rock, I crossed myself, as if it were a holy-water font.  It just seemed right to trace the shape of the cross on my body and remember, in that outward-and-visible way, the shape of Jesus’ suffering and death on that rock.

After my five seconds of holiness, I followed the other pilgrims down the stairs and back to the church’s entryway.  With the 15 minutes left, I walked past the Stone of Anointing, made my way to the rotunda housing the Edicule, and walked around that odd little building within a building containing Jesus’ burial cave.  I couldn’t get very close because of the crowds waiting for their pilgrim moment, but at least I got a few pictures, along with everyone else. 

What I didn’t realize is that even the Edicule is controlled by different religious authorities with different rules about respecting its holiness.  Although you can take pictures of the Edicule’s entrance and its sides, the back of the tomb is overseen by the Coptic Church; and their cleric standing guard at that chapel gets testy and yells at you if you take a picture there.  I didn’t mean to be disrespectful, but at least a got the shot.

Why am I telling you all this?  Because, as a pilgrim in this holy space, where God Incarnate used an instrument of bloody death to give us eternal life, I found it challenging to know exactly what I was venerating.  The cross, yes.  But in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, it’s easy to get lost, literally and figuratively.  You can get distracted by the ancient icons and mosaics, the incense and the hanging lamps.  You can get distracted by questions of historical authenticity:  Is this really where the cross stood and where Jesus was buried, or did that happen at the competing Protestant site down the street?  You can get distracted by the people, the mass of humanity jockeying for position to honor the One who emptied himself of position.  Especially after the Coptic cleric yelled at me, I left wondering what I was supposed take away from all this.

Much later, it occurred to me that maybe the most meaningful icon for veneration in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher was that annoying mass of humanity trying to crowd ahead of each other to reach the foot of the cross.  In this space especially, you can’t miss the holy irony.  God, in Christ, was willing to challenge the authorities, and be betrayed, and be arrested, and be beaten, and be nailed to a cross, and die a death reserved for slaves, thieves, and revolutionaries.  God, in Christ, was willing to do all that in order to beat Satan at his own game, using sinful death to vanquish sin and death.  And God, in Christ, was willing to do all this in order to show us the most unbelievable thing of all – that you and I are worth it.  Yes, we fail all the time.  Yes, we hurt the people we love the most.  Yes, we allow strangers to suffer as we look the other way.  Yes, even in the holy of holies, we push and shove to get ahead of someone else.  And, yes, God says, “See how much I love you anyway?  You’re made in my image and likeness,” God says.  “You bear the same creative spark that brought the universe to life,” God says.  “You are made by Love for love,” God says – the love that emptied itself, and humbled itself, and died on a cross so you could live forever.  “You are worth it,” God says.

So, what do we do with that as we walk out of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and walk out of church here this morning?  What happens this afternoon, or Monday, as we head back into our lives?  In our Gospel reading today, Jesus tells us the point of his sacrifice.  Lifted up on a cross, “I will draw all people to myself,” he says (John 12:32).  So, look to the one who was exalted … in powerlessness.  Look to the one who reigns as Lord of all … because he gave himself for all.  As we proclaim every Good Friday when the instrument of torturous death comes into the room among us, “Behold the wood of the cross, whereon was hung the world’s salvation.…  O come, let us adore him.”

But – don’t stop there.  Adoration is right and good, in a place like Holy Sepulcher and in our daily prayers.  But just as the cross is processed into the church every Sunday, leading us to the altar for worship, so it’s processed out again, leading us back into day-to-day life.  That’s where the cross truly lives – not in a church but in the world.  So, what do we do with that?  St. Paul tells us:  “Let the same mind be in you as was in Christ Jesus,” he writes (Philippians 2:5).  Or, as it says at the end of our order of service each week, as we’re dismissed back out into the world, “Our worship is over.  Now our service begins.” 

Sharing the mind of Christ doesn’t mean being holy wimps.  It doesn’t mean we should beat ourselves up for our failings or let others beat us down with worldly power.  For here are the two deep truths I think Jesus is asking us to hold side by side as we share the mind of Christ:  First, you are worth dying for.  And second, Jesus is worth living for.  As he said to the crowds, as they jockeyed for position in their own day, the point isn’t whether Jesus ticks the boxes and looks like the savior the world would expect.  The point is how you live if the same mind is in you that was in Christ Jesus.  “Walk while you have the light, so that the darkness may not overtake you,” Jesus says.  “If you walk in the darkness, you don’t know where you’re going.  While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light” (John 12:35-36) – beloved children who walk the way of the cross.

Your Worst-Case Scenario

Sermon for Aug 25, 2024
John 6:56-69

For many of us, the idea of consuming the Body and Blood of Christ isn’t exactly news.  If you come from a church in a sacramental tradition, Communion is just kind of what we do when we worship.  I grew up in the Episcopal Church, and I remember worshiping with a friend in a Baptist congregation one Sunday.  Parts of the service felt pretty familiar (even though there weren’t any kneelers in the pews).  We sang songs, and prayed, and heard a sermon … a really long sermon.  But then the service just kind of ended, and I was thinking, “Where’s the bread and wine?  If you don’t have Communion, you don’t have church.”  In fact, for us in this tradition, we celebrate Eucharist so regularly that it can become a little too familiar:  “Yeah, yeah, yeah; Jesus’ body and blood, giving us eternal life.  What time is brunch, anyway?”

But … imagine hearing Jesus say this for the first time, without 2,000 years of Eucharistic history:  “Whoever eats me will live because of me” (John 6:57).  Yuck.  I don’t want that.  It’s kind of appalling.  If someone today led a religious movement and asked his followers to eat him ritually, we’d suggest he seek treatment.  Then, think about how that command to eat his flesh and drink his blood would have struck people in Jesus’ own time and place.  Blood is a source of nourishment in some cultures, but it wasn’t for the Jewish people, whose laws strictly forbade it.  Plus, claiming that “the living Father” sent Jesus to be “the bread that came down from heaven” (John 6:57,58) – that was heresy.  Not even the greatest rabbi would claim to have come down from God.  No wonder the religious leaders couldn’t abide what Jesus was saying.  But now, in today’s Gospel reading, the folks in the crowd start shaking their heads, too.  “Wait, what?  It’s one thing to take on the authorities, and heal people, and preach love for everybody.  But you want us to eat your flesh and drink your blood?”  It must have seemed like a bridge too far.

So, Jesus pushes back a bit, but it doesn’t seem like much of an answer.  He says, “Does this offend you?  Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?  It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless.” (6:61-62)  I’m not sure that really makes it easier to hear God’s messiah telling you to eat his flesh and drink his blood.  But maybe Jesus is setting the stage for the gift of his sacrifice to come.  Jesus won’t just be a rebel leader, dying for a noble cause.  Jesus will be sacrificing his life so that your life can go on – always.  To gain that gift, you don’t have to join in overthrowing a government.  You don’t have to follow him into battle and sacrifice yourself.  In fact, you never have to fear death again.  Your task is simply to acknowledge who and what he is – “the Holy One of God” (John 6:69).  All you have to do is receive his life as the ultimate gift and love like he does, forever. 

Still, it’s a lot to ask of people in a religious movement, to eat their leader’s flesh and drink his blood.  I imagine this episode is in the Gospel account because there must have been some historical memory of it – people saying to each other, decades later, “Remember that time Jesus lost half his followers…?”  Even 60 or 70 years after the fact, the Gospel writer feels the need to deal with this inconvenient truth.  So, John’s Gospel says, “Many of his disciples turned back and no longer went about with him” (6:66).  In that moment, Jesus gets a little foretaste of Maundy Thursday, watching people who’d seemed committed abandon him instead.  So, he turns to the 12 disciples, his closest friends, and he asks, “Do you also wish to go away?” (6:67).  Is this too much for you, too?

What’s too much?  That’s a good question for us, and one that came up for our Vestry recently.  As part of our work this year, the Vestry is reading and discussing a book by retired Bishop Ed Little about being spiritual leaders.  As it happens, the section we read for our meeting last week included just this question:  What’s too much for you?  What might God ask of you that would seem like a bridge too far?

Bishop Little tells the story of a church member named Jack.  Jack was involved in his parish and had gifts for leadership.  His church was in a neighborhood where they encountered unhoused people with mental illness pretty regularly.  Jack was concerned about their well-being, but he was also deeply uncomfortable being around them – scared to death, honestly.  Well, the church’s Vestry decided they should offer a feeding program for their unhoused neighbors – and the person who came to mind with the right gifts to lead it was Jack.  The priest called him and made the ask.  Although Jack wanted to say, “Not a chance,” he found himself saying, “Well, I’ll pray about it.”  And as he did, what he heard was Jesus asking him to “say yes to his deepest fear.”¹ As Bishop Little puts it, “Following Jesus will often bring us face-to-face with our own worst-case scenarios.”²  

Here's one you might enjoy.  Some of you know that my father was a national champion in collegiate debate as an undergraduate – not once but twice.  He became the debate coach at Southwest Missouri State University, what’s now Missouri State in Springfield; and he coached that program to several national championships.  It was the stuff of legend:  He loved to tell the story of little Southwest Missouri State defeating Notre Dame for a national title, on TV, on St. Patrick’s Day.  My father went on to be a professor of rhetoric, and the university ended up naming the debate program for him.

So, when I was in high school, people sometimes suggested I should get involved in debate.  I said, “You’ve got to be kidding.”  In fact, in high school and college, I managed never to take a public-speaking class.  Speaking to groups left me terrified anyway.  And the last thing my perfectionist self wanted was to be compared with my father, the rhetorician and national-champion debater. 

So, I focused on writing instead.  And after a decade of quietly writing and editing for a living, I found myself discontented in my work because my job didn’t mean anything to me.  So, one night, Ann and I had our priest over for dinner.  Mtr. Holly listened to me grouse about my job and how I felt like I should be doing something that made a difference.  When I was done whining, she asked, “OK, if you did have a job that made a difference, what would you be doing?”  And without thinking, I blurted out, “I’d be doing what you’re doing.”

And God chuckled.  “So, you get the shakes when you stand up to speak in front of a group?” God said.  “So, the last thing you want is to be compared with your father, the champion public speaker?  I’ve got an idea,” God said.  “Let’s make you a preacher.”

It’s trite to say that following Jesus isn’t easy.  We all know that, but we usually think of it in terms of not getting all that we want, right?  Jesus has things to say about how we spend our time, and how we spend our money, and how we treat the people around us.  There might be a common thread there of self-limitation – that we’re called to put the well-being of others first.  So, I think many of us fear that following Jesus means I have to be content with getting less than I want.

But I’d say, what’s really scary about following Jesus is just the opposite – that it means you have to be willing to get much more than you want.  He just might ask you to use gifts you didn’t know you had.  He just might empower you actually to make a difference in the world.  He just might gift you with eternal life, starting now and lasting forever – which means dealing with that troublesome person down the pew for all eternity.  And he just might give you his own Body and Blood to empower you for an eternity of learning to love like he does.  Jesus has a devilish way of bringing our hearts to life in the last way we’d choose. 

So, what’s your worst-case scenario?  What’s the uncomfortable place Jesus is pushing you to explore?  If it’s Jesus doing the pushing, at least you can trust that your discomfort is a step toward blessing – for you and for the world.  “I get it that you don’t want to go there,” Jesus says.  He didn’t exactly want to go where he was heading either.  But you know it’s Jesus doing the pushing when, at the end of the day, you find yourself standing there with the apostle Peter – sighing, maybe cursing a little under your breath – and saying: “Lord, where else can I go?  You have the words of eternal life.”

1.      Little, Edward S.  The Heart of a Leader: Saint Paul as Mentor, Model, and Encourager.  Cincinnati, OH: Forward Movement, 2020.  29.

2.      Little, 28.

St. Mary's, the Theotokos

Sermon for the Installation of the Rev. Dr. Sean Kim
St. Mary's Episcopal Church, Kansas City, MO
Feast of St. Mary the Virgin, Aug. 15, 2024

What a glorious evening!  As we prayed in the Psalm, “Taste and see that the Lord is good!” (34:8 BCP).  But, hey, this is Anglo-Catholic worship, the mass St. Mary’s style – so we don’t have to stop at tasting and seeing.  We can use all the senses:  Taste, and see, and smell, and hear, and feel that the Lord is good on this glorious evening, as St. Mary’s celebrates the ministry of its 22^nd rector, the Rev. Dr. Sean Kim.

The life of this good place is all about bringing the real presence of our Lord Jesus Christ into the here and now, mediated through all our senses.  Since 1854, when a faithful deacon from Trinity, Independence, rode his Missouri mule on a cold November day to lead a few Kansas City Episcopalians in their prayers, you’ve worshiped the Lord in the beauty of holiness here at St. Mary’s – what’s become the diocesan gold standard for being high-church.  Now, as some of you know, that’s not exactly my liturgical gift.  I made sure to ask Fr. Sean a couple of weeks ago specifically what he wanted me to do in this liturgy, so I wouldn’t look like a bumbling first-year seminarian assisting at the altar.  Thankfully, he set the bar low, and it turns out I am able to follow a verger to the pulpit.  We’ll see if I can make it back to my chair without tripping.

But, as you all know better than I do, being Anglo-Catholic isn’t just about incense and birettas and processional umbrellas – although, who isn’t up for a procession with an umbrella, right?  No, being Anglo-Catholic is about much more than a good show.  Being Anglo-Catholic is about bringing heaven to earth.  Yes, you hear that in the music of the angels.  Yes, you taste that in bread and wine that’s become Body and Blood.  Yes, you enact that through daily worship at the throne of grace.  But being Anglo-Catholic, and specifically being St. Mary’s, means being heaven on earth through every breath of the Body of Christ in this place.

In other words, being Anglo-Catholic isn’t just about venerating Christ’s Body sacramentally, or gathering as a body for worship.  It’s about honoring every body – every beloved child God brings into the orbit of this good place.  St. Mary’s has been honoring and serving beloved every-bodies for 170 years – running schools in what’s now the River Market, feeding hungry people laboring in the stockyards of the West Bottoms, creating a hospital to serve those who couldn’t afford care, a hospital we now know as St. Luke’s Health System.  When neighborhoods thrived in this part of downtown, before the freeways pushed people away from their communities, St. Mary’s served the folks around it with worship and fellowship, Boy Scout and Girl Scout troops, social groups and business clubs.  Now this hallowed ground welcomes new neighbors, God’s beloved children returning to downtown and looking for a faith community where honoring God means practicing love, not judgment.  To all who’ve been hurt, to all who’ve been shamed, to all who’ve been lost, the Body of Christ that is St. Mary’s says, “Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt 11:28).  No matter who you are, every body has a place here.

And in this incarnation of heaven on earth, God has now raised up the Rev. Dr. Sean Kim as your 22^nd rector.  I’m blessed to say that I’ve known Sean as long as I’ve been in Kansas City because we met at St. Andrew’s in Brookside shortly after I came there as assistant rector.  It was 2005, and St. Andrew’s didn’t exactly have a stellar reputation for its warmth or its welcome.  Bishop Barry Howe used to tell the story of how he and Mary came to St. Andrew’s one Sunday soon after they moved to Kansas City.  Bishop Barry was wearing a coat and tie, not a clerical collar; they were just looking for a place to worship that morning as they got the lay of the land.  Apparently, what they found was less than it might have been.  “Not a single person talked to us,” Bishop Barry used to say. 

It was a sign of the work we had to do.  By the time I got to St. Andrew’s, there were at least a couple of faithful souls, Norm Olson and Connie Hesler, who were inspired to take seriously every body who came through St. Andrew’s doors.  One of them was Dr. Sean Kim, a mild-mannered history professor who happened to be looking for a church.  On the Sunday he visited, Norm and Connie welcomed him, and talked to him, and got him coffee after worship, and invited him to come back.  “That first Sunday,” Fr. Sean told me recently – “That first Sunday, I knew I’d found my home.”

Later that week, a priest called him to say hello and invite him to a class for people wanting to learn more about St. Andrew’s and The Episcopal Church.  Sean came … and suffered heroically through an amateurish presentation on Anglican history.  Later, as the church was forming new small groups, a parishioner invited Sean to join one – and that experience built deep friendships for years to come.  Other parishioners invited Sean to become a Eucharistic minister and a member of the Order of St. Luke.  A priest invited him to come on a mission trip to Haiti.  And eventually, a few years later, a deacon said out loud what others could see, too:  He invited Sean to pray about whether God might be calling him to ordained ministry.

As Fr. Sean said when we talked recently, there’s a key verb that runs through that story: Invite.  Those invitations kept leading Fr. Sean deeper into relationship with God and God’s people, so that he found not just involvement in the church but formation as a disciple.  It was a journey that could easily have gone differently.  Without those invitations, Sean could have been just that brilliant professor who comes to church sometimes.  Instead, he’s that brilliant professor who’s now your rector.

I know the stereotype is that Anglo-Catholic congregations don’t feel comfortable with evangelism.  OK; I’m certainly not going to try to convince you all to become evangelicals, not even in the good and holy and profoundly Episcopalian sense of that term.  But here’s what I will take the risk to say:  The Blessed Virgin Mary is inviting you to live fully as an incarnation of heaven on earth – and to invite others to step into it with you.  Yes, it’s a little presumptuous of me to speak for the Queen of Heaven; I get that.  But listen to her own words:  God “has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant….  His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.  He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.  He has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly.  He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.  He has helped his servant … in remembrance” of the mercy promised to all God’s people across the generations.  That’s the vision of heaven that the Blessed Virgin Mary is inviting you to embody, and to share, right here at 13^th and Holmes.

To do so, she’s asking you to draw deeply both from her model of faithfulness and from your own DNA.  St. Mary is magnifying the Lord as she proclaims God’s intention to turn the world’s order upside down.  Where the world raises up the powerful and the privileged, and invites them to lord it over the folks who’ve been shoved to the side, St. Mary magnifies God’s microscopic presence, in her womb and in the world.  Her son, Jesus, the homeless preacher and healer, will take on the empire and win, making the sacrifice that brings us resurrection as a way of life.  It’s the fulfillment of what St. Mary is singing in her canticle tonight – how God scatters the proud, and dethrones the powerful, and lifts up the lowly, and fills the hungry, and sends the rich packing.  For when we worship power and take pride in ourselves, we miss the point of why God brought heaven to earth – to gather, and serve, and heal every body whom God has made.

Tonight, as we welcome Fr. Sean as your new rector, we also celebrate St. Mary’s feast day.  And for you especially, her spiritual namesakes, this is a night to remember who you’ve been and whom God has made you to be.  For just as St. Mary is the theotokos, the God-bearer, so you are St. Mary’s, called to bear God to the world.  Therefore, as a theotokos and with your new rector, make this place a jewel of the Incarnation, with all its facets blazing – the beauty of liturgy, the sacrifice of service, and the blessing of invitation – so that every body who encounters Christ here might say, “Yeah, St. Mary’s … they magnify the Lord!”