Hearing Voices – and Trusting Them

Sermon for Jan. 5, 2024 (the Second Sunday of Christmas)
Matthew 2:13-15,19-23

If you were looking forward to the arrival of the Three Kings today, I’m sorry to disappoint you.  With the winter storm and the warnings to stay off the roads, it seemed prudent to delay our royal visitors and have them come next Sunday instead.

Among other disruptions, this change throws the sequence of our Gospel readings out of whack.  Instead of hearing about the magi and King Herod today, we move to the next episode in Matthew’s story.  But, in the category of finding the silver lining in the clouds of our blizzard, this gives us the chance to hear part of Jesus’ family story we usually miss because of the kings’ visit here.

For today’s Gospel reading to make sense, you have to know not only that the magi have just left from visiting Jesus but what that means.  As we’ll hear next Sunday, the story of the wise men concludes in two parts.  First, they give Jesus gold, frankincense, and myrrh, symbolizing his status as God’s own king – the messiah.  But after that, the story ends with an angel visiting the wise men in a dream, telling them to avoid King Herod as they make their way home.  Why?  Because King Herod was trying to use the wise men as spies.  He’d told them to go find the baby King and then report back, supposedly so Herod could go and worship, too.  Right.  What we hear today is what Herod really had in mind, which was to kill his tiny rival to strengthen his grip on power.

So, in today’s story, the spotlight shifts from Herod and the wise men to the Holy Family.  And because it’s Matthew telling the tale, the central character among the Holy Couple isn’t Mary but Joseph.

The reading begins with an angel, a messenger of the Lord, coming to Joseph in a dream.  This time, the angel isn’t offering wise advice; it’s acting as a first responder.  “Get up,” the angel says, “and take the child and his mother and flee to Egypt … for Herod is about to search for the child to destroy him” (2:13).  And then comes one of those lines in Scripture that, by itself, holds enough material for a book: Joseph does what the angel says; the family escapes Bethlehem in the middle of the night, moves to Egypt, and stays there until Herod dies.  I’d like to hear the rest of that story.

Anyway, this was no quick camping trip; this was the Holy Family fleeing to a foreign country as refugees from government persecution.  And they were exactly right to have left because Herod’s next act in the story is to slaughter all of Bethlehem’s children two years and younger, an act of state terror that would have killed Jesus, too.  We don’t know exactly how long Joseph, Mary, and Jesus lived in Egypt but probably a few years as they waited for Herod to die.

Now, let’s hit the pause button on this story and think about Joseph for a minute.  In Matthew’s version of the Christmas story a chapter earlier, there is no annunciation to Mary.  In Matthew, the annunciation comes to Joseph when, you guessed it, an angel visits him in a dream and says, “Do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit” (Matthew 1:20).  Now, if we were Joseph, we’d be thinking, “Right; sure that’s where the baby came from.”  But Joseph shows himself to be the paragon of trust.  He may not have been happy with the angel’s news, but he lets it be.  He takes Mary as his wife anyway.

Well, now, the angel is back.  If the first news was strange, this news is terrifying.  The angel tells Joseph, “Remember what I said about this baby being God’s instrument to save people from their sins? [Matthew 1:21]  Well, first you’ve got to save this baby from Herod.”  And, like I said, Joseph follows the angel’s instructions.  He trusts this voice he hears in a dream.  He uproots his family and treks hundreds of miles across the desert to go to … who knows where?  It’s not like Joseph had family in Egypt.  He didn’t even have a plan.  Like Abraham and Moses, Joseph simply went where God told him to go. It’s trust I can barely fathom.

OK, then our reading picks back up again.  We don’t know what the Holy Family has been doing in Egypt, other than not being killed by King Herod.  But eventually, Herod dies, and Joseph has another dream.  The angel tells him Herod is dead, and it’s time for the Holy Family to go back where they came from – well, sort of back where they came from.  Joseph is figuring they’ll head back to Bethlehem, or at least somewhere in Judea, near Jerusalem.  But once they arrive, they learn that Herod has split his kingdom among the three sons he hadn’t killed yet, and the one now ruling Judea, Archelaus, is no better than his father.  So, what to do?

Well, if you’re Joseph, you go to sleep to find out.  Once more, God comes to him in a dream, telling him to take his family north to Galilee instead – still Jewish territory but with a different history and, now, a safer ruler.  And so, in Matthew’s Gospel, this is how the Holy Family ends up raising Jesus in Nazareth.

So, what do we take from this story of the Holy Family and their journeys?  One lesson I hear is that Scripture calls us to take refugees seriously.  In our day, these are people fleeing war and persecution in search of a better life.  For example, the refugees served by JVS, a local resettlement agency with whom St. Andrew’s partners – those refugees have been through a documentation process that’s beyond thorough, registering with our government, being carefully vetted, and usually waiting years before being resettled somewhere like Kansas City.  Jesus, Mary, and Joseph were living the refugee story, fleeing the harm of an oppressive regime.  So, today, welcoming refugees into a new land is being true to the teaching of our Scriptures.

But here’s the other lesson I hear in this story. It’s about Joseph, the saint who usually flies under the radar of the Sunday readings.  I see Joseph as an astonishing example of what many of us – maybe most of us – find to be a huge stumbling block in our relationship with God, and that’s trust.  If someone says to you, “Trust me,” what’s your first impulse?  And that reaction comes when it’s a real, live person asking for your trust.  How about when it’s a voice in a dream?  Spiritual discernment is notoriously tough; as parishioner Doc Worley used to say, it’s hard to know whether what’s keeping you up at night is the Holy Spirit or the chili you had for dinner.  Trusting that what we hear is the voice of God, taking the leap of faith – that just might be the hardest thing God asks of us.  And yet, here’s Joseph.  He hears from an angel in a dream not once, not twice, but four times.  And the response is always that Joseph follows the call the angel puts on his heart.

I say it that way because the heart is where seeds of divine trust blossom and grow.  As you’ve heard me say before, even our primary statement of faith asks us to look to our hearts, not to our heads, to nurture our relationship with the God who is Love.  Each week, we say the Nicene Creed.  And, for those of us who offer Morning or Evening Prayer –  each day, we say the Apostles’ Creed.  That sounds like an intellectual exercise, reciting the claims of these creeds, these fundamental statements we make as followers of Jesus.

But remember where that word “creed” comes from.  In Latin, it’s credo, which means, “I believe.”  But deeper down, credo comes from an Indo-European root that’s also the basis of the prefix cardio.  That ancient root means “heart,” not “head.”  For faith is not about agreeing with intellectual propositions.  Faith is about trusting the Love those propositions describe.  And to help myself do that, I cheat when I say the Apostles’ Creed by myself.  I don’t say, “I believe.”  I say, “I trust” – “I trust in God, the Father, the Almighty, creator of heaven and earth….”

Why do I do that?  Because our faith, Joseph’s faith, is all about the work of trust.  The practice of faith is to remind ourselves, over and over again, that the God who is Love has our back.  That’s good news, always.  But it’s especially good to remember late in the night, when we hear the angels calling us to take the leaps of faith that bring us life.

What Jesus Wants for Christmas

Sermon for Christmas Eve
Luke 2:1-14

I want to start tonight by ruining the mental picture most of us bring to the story we just heard.  Mary and Joseph come to Bethlehem along with hundreds of other people, following the emperor’s order to go to their hometowns to be counted.  Mary is at the end of her pregnancy, and I hope she really did ride on a donkey or something because, as Mtr. Jean said on Sunday, it’s a 90-mile, arduous hike from Nazareth, across arid plains, and then up 2,700 feet of steep hills to Bethlehem.  But because of the crowds, Joseph and Mary find … what is it the story says?  They find “there was no place for them in the inn” (Luke 2:7).

So, what do we picture when we hear that?  A Bethlehem street lined with cheap motels, all with “no vacancy” signs?  Well, no – at least we know it wasn’t that.  Maybe we picture Ye Olde Inn from Shakespeare’s England, with a pub on the first floor?  Or maybe a ramshackle Old West bunkhouse, managed by a kindly, grizzled old innkeeper?  

Well, it turns out, the “inn” wasn’t like any of those because this place Mary and Joseph stopped wasn’t an “inn” at all.  We have that mental image because of maybe the most famous bad translation in history.  It happened in the early 1500s in one of the first English-language Bibles,¹ and it remains with us still.

The word translated as “inn” is kataluma in Greek, and it means a space for guests.  Here’s what that would have looked like in Bethlehem.  First, you have to know that, on the limestone hills there, people didn’t live in wooden houses or keep their animals in wooden barns because they didn’t have many trees.  What they did have was rocks, mud, and caves.  When I went to Bethlehem, we visited a cave thought to have been similar to a family’s house in Jesus’ day.  As you entered a cave house, you’d find a large space for the family to sleep; and in the back of the cave would be a smaller space, maybe hollowed out, where the family would bring in the livestock to protect them from predators at night.  And on the hill over the cave, a family might put up a small structure where extended-family members or friends or travelers could stay.  

It was this kind of small structure above the cave, the kataluma, that had no room when Mary and Joseph arrived at his family home.  Too many other family members had gotten there first as they followed the emperor’s order, and the space for guests was full.  So, Mary and Joseph had to bunk with the animals in the back of the cave underneath – which I imagine Mary didn’t mind too much.  At least she got a little privacy, as well as a feed trough where the baby could rest without lying in the animals’ muck on the floor.

So, now that I’ve ruined the nativity scenes on your Christmas cards, why am I telling you this? Because I think it matters where Mary and Joseph were staying and where the baby Jesus spent his first night.

Our image of the holy family looking for a room at a Rodeway Inn reflects our culture and our wiring.  If we’re looking for a place to stay, we take care of that on our own, finding somewhere we can join other travelers who’ve walled themselves off from each other in little rooms with locked doors.  It’s the answer we’ve come up with, one that fits our rampant individualism.  

But that’s not the world God entered 2,000 years ago in Palestine.  Instead, as Mary and Joseph came to the old homestead to bunk with the relatives, God came knocking right there, in the midst of everything this very normal family was going through.  They’d all come to Bethlehem because the emperor told them to; so, there they were, shoulder to shoulder on the floor of the cave and its guest room above.  And in the midst of that extended family’s messy life – getting dinner ready, tending the livestock, corralling the kids, caring for the elders – in the midst of everyday life, God came knocking.  “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood” as one of them (John 1:14 The Message).

OK.  Other than historical curiosity, why does this matter?  Because Jesus still comes to us now in the midst of our day-to-day lives, bringing hope where we least expect it, knocking on the door and asking to be invited in.

Well, when the Sovereign and Savior of the world comes knocking, it might be good if we had something to offer him.  In a couple of weeks, we’ll remember the magi offering the Christ child their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.  In the moment, those were perfect gifts for God’s king – rich treasure that symbolized both the honor of the nations and Jesus’ vocation as “king and God and sacrifice,” as the carol puts it.²  But when Jesus the King comes to us today, what kind of gift do you think he’s looking for?

Well, our culture says a king would be looking for markers of wealth and privilege and success – gifts only the finest could offer.  But this king comes among the rest of us, too, folks just doing their best with the life they’re given.

OK, well, our political system says a king would be looking for a power base – people to support his rule and follow his commands.  But this king says “no” to every offer of political power, disappointing his followers who want him to kick the Romans out.

OK, well, our religious establishment says a king would be looking for obedience – a righteousness most often based on fear of judgment.  But this king refuses to coerce people to follow him, honoring the free will that comes with being made in the image and likeness of God.

So, when Jesus comes knocking today, bringing hope where you least expect it, what kind of a gift do you think he’s looking for from you?  Ever more and harder work?  Spiritual perfection?  Unfailing kindness and concern for others?

A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned to you that, when I offer the Confession of Sin to begin my daily prayers, I feel like I’m being asked to catalog the ways I let God down the day before.  Well, when I met with my spiritual director, we talked about this; and she asked the obvious question: “When you do that, what kinds of sins come to mind for you?”  And I said, well, usually what comes to mind are my deficiencies of love: not wanting to pick up the phone and call somebody, or not remembering some significant time in someone’s life, or not wanting to go to one more blessed parish event.  And my spiritual director said, “I’m not sure those are sins exactly.  Maybe they’re just aspects of who you are.  Maybe those aren’t so much sins to confess as parts of yourself to give to God and see what God might do with them.”

When Jesus comes knocking on our doors, I think what he’s looking for is the gift of a true and honest heart, a heart seeking to be healed.  He’s not looking for ever-harder work toward perfection but for the gift of … well … you and the life you inhabit.  

And I got to see a great example of this just last week.  Out of the blue, I heard from an old friend, someone I knew as a parishioner years ago in Springfield.  She had come to our little congregation broken, beaten down by a history of religious leaders making her feel unworthy of love and trying to manipulate her into following them.  She felt disrespected and dismissed, and it fed her deeper feelings of self-doubt and worthlessness.  But in that little congregation of other regular folks doing their best to find God in the midst of life, my friend found a community that welcomed her.  She came to see that those people were grateful for her tremendous gifts of compassion and intelligence.  

Now, her journey wasn’t easy.  Decades of mistrusting churches and their leaders made her path of spiritual growth more like one step up and two steps back.  But my friend wrote to me last week reflecting on how that experience in our little congregation had led her to offer herself to God – warts and all – in order to see what God might have in mind for her.  And now, 20 years later, she was telling me she’d earned her doctorate in psychology and had been helping students for years learn about living into the wholeness and well-being God intends for them.

The key to my friend’s story isn’t that she figured out God’s magic formula for success.  It was that she kept coming, kept opening the door when Jesus knocked, kept up the conversation, kept showing up with other fellow travelers who didn’t have the answers either.  My friend kept offering Jesus the one thing she had to give: herself.  She put herself in the offering plate and brought herself to the altar, over and over again, inviting our Savior to come and take flesh and dwell in her.  She kept showing up, asking God to strengthen the things that were good, and heal the things that were broken, and turn her away from the things that dragged her down.

This Savior we worship tonight didn’t come to criticize us or manipulate us.  This Savior didn’t come to demand we work harder.  This Savior certainly didn’t come to soak up the world’s glory.  This Savior came to move into the neighborhood and dwell among us, even dwell within us.  This Savior came to ask for the greatest Christmas gift you can offer, which is the gift of yourself – nothing more and nothing less, for there’s nothing greater you can give.

[Choir sings verse 4 of “In the bleak midwinter.”]

What can I give him, poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;
if I were a wise man, I would do my part;
yet what I can I give him—give my heart.³

1.      Interestingly, in the first English translation of Scripture, by John Wycliffe in 1382, kataluma is translated “chaumbir” (https://textusreceptusbibles.com/Wycliffe/42/2), close to the Greek’s intent. But in William Tyndale’s translations of Scripture (1522-1525, work that led English King Henry VIII to have Wycliffe burned at the stake), kataluma is given as “ynne” (https://textusreceptusbibles.com/Tyndale/42/2). That translation was retained in England’s official Great Bible of 1539 (https://textusreceptusbibles.com/Great/42/2) and the Geneva Bible of 1560 (https://textusreceptusbibles.com/Geneva/42/2). The Bishops Bible of 1568 used “inne,” as did the King James Bible of 1611. And so it continues, with “inn” used in the New Revised Standard Version today.

2.      “We three kings of Orient are,” The Hymnal 1982, 128, verse 5.

3.      “In the bleak midwinter,” The Hymnal 1982, 112, verse 4.

How Can I Practice Hope?

Sermon for Advent II, Dec. 8, 2024
Luke 3:1-6

As we cascade toward Christmas, we find ourselves at week 2 of this Advent season of “Hope Together.”  Last week, Mtr. Jean spoke about how we can find hope in tough times.  This week, our preaching series asks about our role: How can I practice hope?

And for the star of our show, this Sunday and next, we get the hairy prophet John the Baptist – “Creepy John,” if you’re a fan of The Chosen.  Back in the day, John must have made quite a splash, because all the Gospel writers found it necessary to deal with him.  He sure must have seemed like the messiah, because John keeps saying, “No, someone else much more powerful is on his way.”  So, in Advent – as we prepare ourselves to receive God wriggling in a feedbox, and as we prepare ourselves to receive God returning in judgment to set the world to rights – we first hear John the Baptist asking us to look deep within.

What John’s calling us to experience is “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Luke 3:3).  Now, I don’t know about you, but when I think about someone telling me to “repent,” I picture a self-satisfied preacher highlighting my failings and poor choices, and demanding that I turn away from them.  It’s the dubious Good News of the billboards.  You’ve seen things like this on the highway before, right?  “Prepare to meet God!  Or, “Get Right With God!”  Or, “Repent – Jesus is Coming!”

Now, I’d say those messages aren’t wrong exactly.  Jesus is coming, and we will be held accountable for the choices we make.  We do need to repent.  And at the same time, we need to be clear about what that means.

I won’t ask for a show of hands, but I may not be the only one who hears “Repent!” as a call to feel bad about how I’ve let God down this time.  And it’s not just the billboards that can make us feel that way.  Every morning, I listen to Morning Prayer on a podcast as I walk the dog.  And every morning, right off the bat, the officiant says, “Let us confess our sins against God and our neighbor.”  And every morning, I pause the podcast to think about how I failed yesterday.  And every morning, I manage to feel bad about myself.

But repentance actually isn’t about feeling bad about yourself.  In Scripture, the “repentance” that leads to forgiveness of sins isn’t just about remorse.  It’s about change.  It comes from the Greek work metanoia, which means a change of mind that leads to “a profound moral and spiritual transformation.”¹  So, to repent is to change your mind in such a way that it changes your heart, too.

I’d like to suggest that we try on a particular change of mind this Advent.  It starts with looking at ourselves with true humility – being aware of both our failings and our goodness without veering off toward one or the other, neither spiritual arrogance nor self-loathing.  So, when we look in the mirror, who do we see?  Someone who needs a lot of work?  Or someone worthy of being called God’s beloved?  What if the answer were, “Yes”?

If we repented that way – if we changed our minds to change our hearts that way – I think we might hear John the Baptist with new ears.  John says,

“Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight. Every valley shall be filled, and every mountain and hill shall be made low, and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God.” (Luke 3:4-5).

On one level – in Israel’s history, when the people were exiled in Babylon – those words from the prophets meant Yahweh was coming to plow over not just foreign kings and their armies but even the desert wilderness itself to carve out a pathway for the people to return to the Promised Land.  On another level, in John the Baptist’s day, it meant God was about to vanquish the imperial and spiritual powers holding the Jews in subjugation. 

And, John would have said, those words from the prophets meant the people needed to get ready by changing their minds to change their hearts, opening themselves to God’s power and the hope it held for them.  Those crowds coming to John for baptism needed to change so they could participate in God’s work to change the world.  To welcome the One who would save them, they needed to stop doing what held them back – stop ignoring God, stop harming others, stop participating in Rome’s oppressive system.  But those crowds coming for baptism also needed to change how they saw themselves: that if God was about to send their Savior, that meant they were worthy of being saved.  Did they each have work to do?  Absolutely.  And, John says, God loves you deeply and seeks your well-being … enough to come in person to save you.

Today, if our minds and our hearts changed that way – if we really believed God loves us deeply and seeks our well-being – how would that change our preparation for the coming of Christ?  Here’s a crazy thought:  Maybe we’d prioritize our well-being more like God does.

But wait – isn’t that self-indulgence, to prioritize our well-being?  No.  It’s recognizing the value in which God holds you and the relationship God wants to have with you.  In two and a half weeks, the Sovereign of the Universe is coming to be born as one of us, to walk alongside us through the joys and sorrows of being human.  And, down the road, the Sovereign of the Universe is coming to restore earth and heaven to the unity God intended in the beginning and to welcome you into it forever.  Our hope is rooted in the fact that God wants nothing so much as for you to sign on, to recognize how worthy you are of being saved.  Well, if that’s true, if you’re worth that, then fostering your well-being isn’t self-indulgence.  It’s revealing the image of God you bear.

Well, if we’re going to prioritize our well-being, some of that’s physical, right?  But 18 days before Christmas probably isn’t the time to call any of us to eat better, drink less, exercise more, and rest.  OK, says pragmatic John the Baptist, let’s start with what might come more naturally this time of year.  Take these 18 days to prioritize your spiritual well-being.  Change your mind and your heart by opening yourself to what God’s doing with you and where God’s leading you.

What would that look like?  Well, I had a moment of clarity one morning recently, beginning my walk with the dog.  Before we head out, I put in my earbuds; and I start the Morning Prayer podcast as we head down the street.  Often, maybe more often than not, about three houses down the street, my earbuds cut out and disconnect from the podcast.  I don’t know why, and I let it frustrate me every blessed time it happens.  But one morning recently, I heard the electronic voice in my ears saying something new when it lost the signal, again.  Here’s what the voice says:  “Disconnected.  Pairing.  Connected.”  That may be an annoying message about my earbuds, but it’s also a pretty good model for prioritizing our spiritual well-being over the next 18 days.

So, first is “disconnected.”  Recognize where and how you’re disconnected from God.  What patterns aren’t working for you anymore?  What’s getting in the way of reaching out to God for conversation?  Where’s your energy going instead?

Then comes “pairing.”  Give yourself the Advent gift of “pairing” with the God who’s trying to come alongside you.  You’ll find some suggestions on the Advent page of our website:  Maybe read a daily devotional.  Maybe make space to say your prayers each day.  Maybe put an Advent-music playlist on your phone.  Maybe simply sit somewhere beautiful and quiet for a few minutes each day, and see what God does with your gift of time.  And, as I said in this week’s article in the Messenger, try journaling a little, using the booklets in the entryway to reflect on what you’re hearing, and share a few insights with the rest of us.

Then, finally, comes “connected.”  Pay attention when moments of God’s peace or insight come.  Notice what practices work for you and what practices don’t.  Feel free to pitch what isn’t helpful, but hold onto what works as the Holy Spirit’s Christmas gift to you.

Here’s one last thought:  It’ll be easier to prioritize our spiritual well-being this Advent if we’re clear about who it is we’re waiting for.  I mean, we know it’s Jesus, our Lord and Savior.  But who is that, in the minds and hearts of each of us?  If we’re expecting a judge who focuses on our faults and weaknesses, we’ll do our best to cover them up – often by pointing them out in others.  Or, if we’re expecting a baby in a manger whose birth makes us happy without threatening to change us, we’ll get a few days off and then just go back to the grind.  But what if you expected someone else? – someone who valued you, and walked alongside you, and wanted to guide your path?  Who would that Savior be?  What would you call him?  Parent?  Coach?  Friend?  Partner?  Whatever word feels right, that’s someone worth changing your mind and your heart for.

1.       “3341. metanoia.” Bible Hub. Available at: https://biblehub.com/greek/3341.htm. Accessed Dec. 6, 2024.

My Best Day Ever

Sermon for Thanksgiving Day
Nov. 28, 2024

As we gather in gratitude this morning, I want to tell you three quick stories.  Later, as you say grace at your Thanksgiving table, you can add your gratitude for the gift of a short holiday sermon.

The first story is a scene from a movie that came out 36 years ago, The Milagro Beanfield War.  It’s a great film, equal parts comedy and drama, about a village of Hispanic Americans in New Mexico who stand up to a huge corporation diverting the community’s water supply for a golf course in the desert.  One particular moment captures the film’s heart.  One of the village elders, a wisdom character, lives in an adobe shack.  He’s scraping by, and his body is rebelling against him with the pains and indignities of aging.  Yet, as he struggles to get out of bed in the morning, his first words are these:  “Thank you, God, for letting me have another day.”  Now, his situation makes you think maybe not waking up in the morning would be the easier option.  But the old man has grown wise enough to know that being grateful for each day is what makes each day worth living.

Here’s the second story.  It’s one I’m sure several of you have experienced as you serve people in need.  Years ago now, when I first started at St. Andrew’s, I joined the team volunteering at the Kansas City Community Kitchen, now known as Nourish KC.  In those days, we stood along a serving line, each of the volunteers offering a scoop of casserole or a serving of salad or a piece of cake.  So, the volunteers had the chance to talk very briefly with everyone who came through the line that day.  There were people of all ages and colors.  Some were clearly in pain; some were silent; some wanted to engage.  We would talk with the guests as they passed by.  It was usually a simple, “Hey, how you doing?” – you know, that greeting we all give over and over, a question that doesn’t expect a real answer.  And the guests’ answers were equally predictable: “Fine” or “all right” or “OK, how ‘bout you?”  But when I said, “Hey, how you doing?” to one man, he stopped to answer.  He looked at me, and smiled, and he said, “I’m blessed.”  Now, since then, I’ve heard people give that answer many times – usually folks in situations far tougher than mine.  But I can still see the man from whom I hear it first – someone wise enough to know that being grateful for each day is what makes each day worth living.

Here’s the third story.  It happened just last week at St. James Church, as volunteers from St. Andrew’s and volunteers from St. James were serving an early Thanksgiving meal to people from the neighborhood.  We’d never tried this before, so of course we didn’t know what to expect or exactly what to do.  The food was fabulous, expertly prepared and abundant.  I’d signed up to bus tables, living into gifts from my high-school days.  And, as so often happens in situations like this, we had more volunteers than we needed; so I found myself walking around a lot, making small talk.  Some of that happened with guests as they came to the buffet; I’d say “Hi” and thank them for coming.  Some of that happened with St. Andrew’s folks; I’d say “Hi” and thank them for coming.  Then I met up very briefly with a fellow volunteer from St. James.  He was about my age, and he’d signed up to bus tables, too.  He was diligent, watching closely for empty plates.  You could tell the work mattered to him and he wanted to do it well.  At one point, our paths crossed, and I offered the standard, “Hey, how you doing?” not expecting anything more than a nod.  But as he passed by, he became much more than a man bussing tables.  He became an angel.  You know, in Scripture, angels are God’s messengers, sent to share an unexpected holy word.  And so, when I said, “Hey, how you doing?” this middle-aged angel slowed down in his work just enough to look back to me and say, “It’s my best day ever.”  Then he smiled and walked on.  But he’d been a messenger of heavenly wisdom: that being grateful for this day, this very day, is what makes this day worth living.  It’s the best day ever because it’s the one I’m living right now.

It’s relatively easy to take that point of view as you’re dining on a feast of “rich food” and “well-aged wines,” as the prophet Isaiah described the heavenly banquet (25:6).  Most of us will get a preview of that heavenly banquet today as we gather to share great bounty with the people we love most – the people many of us have in mind as we write our gratitude on the leaves that we’ll read from the altar later.  Today, it’s relatively easy to say, “It’s my best day ever.”

And that sense of gratitude can rise in us regularly in our foretaste of the heavenly banquet here, this feast we receive at God’s altar every Sunday.  Every blessed time we come and offer ourselves, Jesus comes though, providing not just the “bread of angels” (Psalm 78:25) but his own Body and Blood, his gift of himself to share resurrected life with even such as us.  We come here each week to make Eucharist, which in Greek means “thanksgiving.”  And as we stretch our hands across the rail and into heaven for a bite of this thanksgiving meal, we get a glimpse of what “my best day ever” will someday be.

            For now, for me, the call from the angel at St. James was to decide that “my best day ever” is true.  Not just at the altar rail, not just at a Thanksgiving feast – no matter what, it’s true.  And, the angel said, I need to choose to live each day that way – even in the long, slow, slogging seasons when one hard day just runs into the next.  Ever since I saw that movie The Milagro Beanfield War more than 30 years ago, I’ve been pretty good about saying to God each morning, “Thank you for letting me have another day.”  But I think the angel at St. James is asking me to take it up a notch: “Thank you, God, for my best day ever.” 

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).