Trust at the Blind Curve Up the Hill

Sermon for Feb. 25, 2018
St. John's Episcopal Church, Columbus, OH, part of its Reimagining Church conference
Genesis 17:1-7,15-16; Mark 8:31-38

Good morning! I bring you greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus from the good people of St. Andrew’s in Kansas City, a congregation a little larger than St. John’s but no less concerned about the future.  I think that’s true everywhere across the Episcopal Church, everywhere across mainline Christianity, for that matter.  It seems we’re all anxious about attendance, and membership, and pledging – and how, in most of our congregations, when you look out across the nave from the back of the church, what you see is 50 shades of gray.  In my congregation, we call it the “demographic cliff.” 

For decades, since the Second World War and the Baby Boom, Episcopalians have gotten used to the notion that people will come to us, if we just don’t mess things up too badly.  The neighbors eventually will come to a place in their lives where they’ll want to take advantage of what the church has to offer.  Our kids eventually will come to a place in their lives where their negative memories of a boring church will somehow switch to fond remembrance, and they’ll bring their own kids to endure it just like they did.  As crazy as that sounds, it worked for us for a while, in the days when social and business contacts happened at coffee hour rather than the coffee shop down the street.  It worked for us to expect the kids would go through their rebellious period and eventually find a church because many did come back.  Not anymore.  Nationally, the Episcopal Church has been shedding worshippers for decades, and the trend just keeps going. 

So, aren’t you glad you brought in some inspiring out-of-town preacher to bring you the Good News this morning?

Actually, I think Good News is exactly what this situation reflects.  And that’s not because I have a death wish for the Church.  It’s because the two vital pieces of the puzzle are coming together for us.  First, we’re being honest about our situation, as individuals, as congregations, and as the larger Episcopal family – honest about where we are, the part we’ve played in it, and our call to turn in a new direction.  That’s the first piece, the one about us.  And second, just in case we needed reminding, we worship a God who brings light out of darkness, joy out of sorrow, life out of death – and nearly always when it’s the last thing anyone would have expected.  Put those pieces together, and you can solve the puzzle.  Leave either one out, and we actually are sunk.

So first, about us:  Let’s remember what time of year it is.  It’s Lent, which isn’t about wallowing in our wretchedness but about being honest.  It’s about self-examination and repentance, as we heard on Ash Wednesday – like an annual physical.  It’s about acknowledging where we are and deciding where we’re going from here – changing our minds about some things and acting differently, which is what “repent” means in Scripture.  So the time is right for us as individuals and congregations to look at where we are, acknowledge where we’ve been missing the mark, and turn in a new direction. 

That’s what you’re doing here at St. John’s, what Lee Anne has been leading you toward – turning toward the neighbors coming among you.  Now, for some Episcopal congregations, making that turn might start with just realizing that there are people among you.  You’re a long way beyond that.  You’ve given your hands and your hearts in serving people who are hungry, people sleeping in the cold.  You’ve built those relationships into a worshiping community, which I can’t wait to experience this afternoon. You do amazing things here.

And still, those words we heard in today’s Gospel reading hang like Jesus’ thought bubble over all our best work.  “If any want to become my followers,” he said, “let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the good news, will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)  It’s tempting to hear those words and think, “Absolutely, Jesus – that’s what our feeding ministry is all about. That’s what our street church is all about.  We’re bearing that cross right alongside you.”

And so you are.  So is my congregation, in the way it helps feed and educate kids in Haiti, feed and clothe people in Kansas City, and foster social enterpreneurship.  And Jesus sees all that: “Absolutely,” he says back to us – “and bless you all for walking alongside me.  And now, the path is turning.  Will you stay with me as we carry this cross up a new hill?  Will you let go of just a little more, so you can become ever so much more?”

I’ve been blessed to talk with people in the Episcopal Church, and our cousins in England, who are saying “yes” to this call to give up some of what we’ve known in order to love differently and love more.  I’ve talked with folks who’ve invested themselves deeply in the places and the people God has given them.  There are a hundred different ways to go about it – dinner churches, or community partnerships, or pastoral presence, or kids’ play groups, or community organizing, or sharing physical space, or preaching with kids each week.  And there is no Holy-Grail sort of solution that will bring young adults and families through our doors for Sunday-morning worship.  But there is a common thread, and that thread is individual connection.  It’s taking the person in front of you completely seriously, and linking her up with the next person in front of you to build networks of relationship, networks of blessing for the real, live human beings nearby – whether we would choose them, or not.  Whether we feel comfortable with them, or not.  As one of the priests I interviewed told me, the key to building ministry with young families – or with anyone else, for that matter – is wanting to.  The key is wanting to invest ourselves in easing the burdens or spurring the passions of real, live people you come to know and love.

That’s possible.

But it’s not enough simply to want to.  It’s not even enough simply to try hard.  The second part of the equation is trust – trust that God will be God.  God does not offer us easy solutions – not even to God’s good friend Abraham, the ancestor of many nations, chosen by God to model what it means to walk side by side, in loving covenant with the sovereign of the universe.  For Abraham, that path began with leaving everything he knew to come to a land God was promising but that he’d never seen.  It continued with a dangerous sojourn in Egypt and conflict with those who’d become his neighbors.  And it included big promises that must have seemed pretty empty in the moment.  A couple of chapters before the reading this morning, God had said to Abraham, “Here, I will give you land and descendants, innumerable like the stars of the clear night sky.”  Then decades pass, and Abraham doesn’t have much of anything to show for those promises.  His wife, Sarai, hasn’t had any kids, and it’s hard to have descendants without any kids; so they figure a child with Hagar, whom they hold as a slave, is better than nothing.  But God comes to Abraham again and says, “Wait, the story gets better than that.  Your descendants shall come from your 90-year-old wife, Sarah.”  That’s a laugh line, by the way.  Scripture does have laugh lines, and this is one of them.  Abraham falls down laughing, but God is serious.  “I know you can’t see it now,” God says, getting serious, “but this is the way I work.  Trust me.  The best outcomes are the ones you’d never expect to see.”

The Episcopal Church is not a bunch of slackers.  Many congregations, like yours and mine, have worked faithfully for a long time to deny ourselves, and take up our crosses, and follow Jesus.  We’ve tried hard.  We’ve offered feeding programs, or school partnerships, or new worship experiences, some of us nearly killing ourselves trying to come up with the right things that will bless our world and draw in new folks.  What maybe we haven’t done so well is to be open to learning how we might serve different people in different ways.  Maybe we haven’t done so well at setting aside what we understand and how we’ve always done things, and learning from people in our midst whom we don’t really even know.  That’s one of my congregation’s growing edges, and I think that’s true for most of the Episcopal Church.  There are people around us yearning for spiritual meaning in ways a standard worship service may not sufficiently address.  There are people around us hungry for connection with God and each other in ways we’d never think about ourselves.  There are people around us already tapping into the power of the Holy Spirit to solve problems in the neighborhood and bless people’s lives. 

We can trust that God will bring us wisdom and insight and new life, for ourselves and our congregations, if we will set aside some things we’ve always done and hear the wisdom that real, live people will teach us over a hundred cups of coffee.  We can trust that God will bless us to be a blessing in this time when church is shifting under our feet and the road ahead has hit a blind curve.  Even in the dark of Good Friday, even along the way of the cross, we can trust that Easter is on its way because that’s how God works:  The best outcomes are the ones you’d never expect to see.

"Repent and Believe in the Good News" ... Episcopalian Style

Sermon for March 18, 2018
Series:  Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don't Belong To, part 1
Mark 1:9-15

If you’re someone who’s here most Sundays, you’ve probably noticed things look and sound a little different today.  The rough wooden cross has appeared behind the altar; we’ve offered up our sins with the centuries-old Great Litany; and we’ve changed the liturgical color to a penitential purple.  Welcome to Lent, our 40-day journey of repentance as we follow Jesus to the cross.

But if you’re someone who’s not here most Sundays, I wonder what your reaction to all this might be.  The things I’ve just said might push some buttons for you.  Maybe you’re thinking, “Great.  The church I’m staying away from was all about how God expects perfection.  I’m tired of church people making me feel beat up.”

Or, if you’re someone who’s not here most Sundays, maybe your reaction is more like this: “What are you all doing?  I only came in to recharge my spiritual batteries in this beautiful space.  What’s up with all the parading around and that long, dreary prayer at the start?”

So, if you’re a “regular” here, think for a minute: What would you say to those real people’s real concerns?  Would you apologize for our ancient pomp and circumstance, and say all this talk about sin doesn’t really matter that much anyway?  Or maybe you’d just talk about the weather instead?

Today, we’re starting a five-part preaching series reflecting on Lillian Daniels’ book Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don’t Belong To.  We’re going to spend some time through this season of Lent hearing Jesus say some things that might push our buttons or simply sound crazy.  And as we do, we’re going to take the book’s point seriously: That Christians in traditions like ours need to have something of value to offer people who’ve been hurt by church or who don’t have much experience of it.  In a day when the popular definition of Christianity is a religious institution that’s judgmental, highly political, insisting on interpreting Scripture literally, and constantly after your money – in a day like that, we need to claim our different story, a story of good news.

So, let’s start with that reading we just heard.  Each year, as we begin this season of Lent, we hear about Jesus going to the wilderness.  What was he doing out there?  The only set-up for this story in Mark’s Gospel is something we heard before Christmas: John the Baptist warning people to repent because someone more powerful than John was on his way to bring God’s authority to bear on the world around them.  Then we get today’s story.  Jesus comes to be baptized by John but with no explanation why.  Then the clouds are “torn apart” (1:10), and the Holy Spirit descends like a dove upon him.  And the voice of God breaks into the scene, proclaiming Jesus to be The One, God’s own Son, the Beloved. 

It sounds like the next step is for Jesus to mobilize the crowd, the new king ready to take on the Romans.  But what happens instead?  “The Spirit immediately drove [Jesus] out into the wilderness,” where he was “tempted by Satan” for 40 days (1:12,13).  So much for cheering crowds.  Now Jesus is alone in the desert, taking on the power of evil.

So, what’s up with that?  Why has the Spirit of God driven the Beloved Son out into the wilderness?  Well, the story never says why, so it invites us to wrestle with it.  Is Jesus struggling with this call, unsure he wants to be The One?  Is he uncertain what he’s supposed to do, now that he’s anointed by the Holy Spirit?  Maybe.  Whatever is going on in Jesus’ mind, the God who loves him as a Son wants him out there in the wilderness, wants him to have a chance to sort through what God’s asking of him.  Jesus needed to get lost for a while.  You know, sometimes you have to let yourself get lost, or admit that you’re already lost, before you can find your new direction.  More on that in a minute.

Well, while he was wrestling with the powers of darkness, so was John the Baptist, in a different way – getting arrested and eventually losing his head.  So, with John gone and the wilderness time over, Jesus steps up and begins naming the new reality he’s been sent to proclaim: that it’s time to think differently.  It’s time to see God’s power at work in the world, in contrast to the powers that suck our life away. “The time is fulfilled,” he says, “and the Kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (1:15). 

Repent and believe in the good news.

Hmmm.  I don’t know about you, but when I hear “repent and believe in the good news,” something in me kind of shuts down.  Maybe it has to do with the baggage those words carry these days.  When I hear “repent,” my lizard brain says, “Nope.  Don’t go there.  You do a perfectly good job of feeling bad about yourself without any help from overly-convicted preachers.”  I grew up in Springfield, Missouri, and we got lots of finger-shaking calls to repentance, implicitly and explicitly, from lots of religious people.  Even today, you see billboards try to scare you into loving God:  You know, “Repent or burn,” that kind of thing.  For my lizard brain, “repent” means slick preachers manipulating people into tearful altar calls.  No thanks. 

But in Scripture, “repent” doesn’t mean, “Be afraid of going to hell.”  It also doesn’t mean, “Feel bad about yourself.”  In Scripture, “repent” means, “Change your mind” – to think differently about something based on some experience.  Now, it does imply you’re turning away from something with regret for having been on the wrong path.  It’s not just realizing intellectually that it’s safer to drive 70 than 90 on the highway; it’s regretting that you’ve put yourself and others at risk when you speed.  Repenting is changing your mind and acting on it.  It doesn’t mean seeing yourself as worthless or stupid or unworthy of love because you made bad choices – just the opposite.  Repenting means recognizing that, because you’re human, you are God’s beloved.  And God needs for you to be out there spreading love, not barreling down the highway like your life doesn’t matter.

And how about believing?  That’s the other thing Jesus calls us to do in this story – “believe in the good news.”  Now, if we’re supposed to believe in the good news, does that mean we’re on our way to hell if we don’t think the universe was created in six days, or if we don’t think Noah saved the earth’s biosphere on a boat, or if we don’t think the Nicene Creed is a technical spec sheet for the nature of God?  Does believing necessarily mean we have to see theological truths as facts? 

You know, if you look at the Greek word for “believe” in this story, it’s not about facts vs. falsehoods.  It’s not about whether ancient stories jibe with scientific explanations.  The word “believe” is about trust.  It’s about where you direct your mind and commit your heart.  It’s about claiming God’s narrative as your own and staking your life on it.

And you know, that doesn’t happen with the flip of a switch.  I don’t know anyone with life-building, difference-making faith who hasn’t come to it over a long and sometimes painful process.  We’ve got to go deep in order to be deeply in relationship, whether it’s with our spouse or our kids or our friends or our God.  In her book Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don’t Belong To, Lillian Daniels talks about how a journey looks and feels very different depending on whether you see yourself as a tourist or an adventurer.  Now, I love a good tour, but you can’t live there.  Real living – living that means something, living that makes a difference in the world – real living isn’t tourism, it’s adventure.  Daniels puts it like this: 

Tourism is a journey with clear boundaries and limitations. …  When you’re a tourist, you approach the trip with a certain set of expectations.  I want to see the Taj Mahal and get my picture taken in front of it. …  When you’re on an adventure, you have to relinquish your expectations. ...  If faith is an adventure journey, you need to accept that you may not know how this trip is going to turn out. (175-176)

I think that’s what Jesus was doing out there in the wilderness for those 40 days.  I don’t think he went there as a tourist.  I think he was wrestling … maybe with his own demons, maybe with his own uncertainty, but definitely with ours.  I think Jesus was out there in the wilderness to see what it’s like to be just as lost as the rest of us.

So, where are you lost?  And what if we could be honest about that question – with ourselves, and with each other, and with God?  We spend a lot of time and energy not wrestling with the demons at our doors.  Maybe you know your family’s life isn’t perfect, but you’re doing everything you can to make sure no one else finds out.  Maybe you look at your credit-card statement and feel like you’ve fallen down a well, and no one knows you’re down there.  Maybe you look at the news and worry that someone might buy an assault rifle and shoot up the place where your kids or grandkids go to school.  Maybe you know just how easy it is for teens to buy drugs, and it kills you that you can’t protect them from it.  Maybe you feel like you’re held captive to an outside force yourself – drugs, or alcohol, or food, or gambling, or sex, or any of a hundred other addictions.  If any of those situations ring true for you – and if you know, deep down, that you need a source of power greater than yourself – welcome home. 

Yes, God wants us to repent – to change our minds and live differently.  And God wants us to believe – to trust in a story bigger than our own.  And we do that by traveling the long road together, a community of pilgrims walking the path of adventure.  That doesn’t mean ignoring the demons in the wilderness – just the opposite.  It means spending some time in the wilderness, but not by ourselves.  It means being real with each other about how hard it is to struggle with our faults and failings.  It means leaning on each other when the world trips us up or beats us down.  And though that’s not easy, I think it is healing. 

This is the offer Jesus holds out to us:  Sure, you’re part of a broken family, the human family, God’s family – but don’t stay stuck in your brokenness.  Look at it with your eyes wide open.  Take the risk to share it with someone who’s just as broken as you are.  Think differently, and see your belovedness, and choose to turn in a new direction. 

That’s Lent.  And strangely enough, it’s Good News.

Flying With the Buzzards

Sermon for Feb. 11, 2018 (Scout Sunday)
Mark 9:2-9

First, I want to welcome the Scouts, leaders, and parents of Pack and Troop 16 as we celebrate Scout Sunday today.  I know you’re here at the church every week for meetings, but it’s great to have all of you here today for worship, too.  And thanks especially to the Scouts serving as lectors, acolytes, and ushers this morning!

So, the Gospel reading on this Scout Sunday is one that probably seems like it has nothing to do with Scouting and, frankly, nothing to do with your life.  I want to try to convince you otherwise, so hang with me for a few minutes.  It’s the story of the the Transfiguration.  It’s a story of mystery, a story that I think is supposed to make us stop short and say, “Wait, what?”  So, if it leaves you a little confused, you’re in good company.

This is a mountaintop story, and we get lots of those moments in the Bible – Moses climbing Mt. Sinai to receive God’s law; Elijah seeing and talking with God on the mountain and living to tell the tale; Jesus wrestling with his demons on the Mount of Olives – even the crucifixion, which happens on a hill outside Jerusalem.  It seems like God’s chosen people are always climbing, always making their way up the mountain. 

That includes us, by the way.  But at least for me, those mountaintop experiences aren’t always clear, even when they stick with you a long time.  I had one of those moments on what passes for a mountain in Missouri.  I’d been out of college just a couple of years; I’d gone camping by myself in the St. Francois Mountains in south-central Missouri; and I found myself near the second-highest peak in the state.  Now, this is Missouri, so being the second-highest peak in the state doesn’t mean all that much, at 1,300 feet.  But still – there I was, at Mudlick Mountain; and I decided to hike up.  It was beautiful – the oaks and hickories towering above; squirrels and deer down below.  I could have driven up, but I wanted to see what I’d see going on foot. 

And the effort paid off.  At the summit, such as it was, I came out of the woods into a clearing with a fire tower rising above it.  And all over the fire tower, and all over that clearing, were large birds.  I remember them as eagles, but probably they were buzzards.  Whatever they were, when I came out of the woods, all these huge birds took off together; and it looked and sounded like the top of the mountain lifted off and flew away.  It was stunning, and I even took a few feathers home with me, to help me remember.  But I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the experience.  I mean, I’d taken the trouble to hike up that little mountain for some reason, right?  What was I looking for?  Well, something of significance, something of value, something that that would make a difference.  I was looking for an experience of glory.

That’s why we go on campouts or climb mountains, right?  I mean, you could just stay at a hotel instead.  You could just drive your car up the mountain, pull over, and look off the scenic view.  These days, you could just get a drone and fly it up there, shooting video of “your” experience.  So why do we go camping and climb mountains instead?

I think we do it to see what God will do with the experience.  I think we put ourselves out there to see what we’ll see and hear what we’ll hear.  We put ourselves out there to see how God might show up.

That’s what Peter, James, and John are doing in this morning’s Gospel story.  The difference here is that they have Jesus as a guide.  He takes them “up a high mountain apart, by themselves” (Mark 9:2).  The story doesn’t say why they’re taking this hike, but I think they’re looking to see how God might show up.  And God doesn’t disappoint them, though it’s a little more intense than the disciples would have wanted.  Jesus is “transfigured” before his friends, his clothes turning dazzling white and his face shining with the same light that pierced the darkness at the beginning of creation, the light of the Big Bang, the light of God’s own presence.  Then, Moses and Elijah appear out of nowhere, putting Jesus literally in conversation with the Law and the Prophets of the people of Israel.  In the middle of this fantasy scene, Peter thinks he needs to say something to make sense of it, so he offers to build little shrines to worship Jesus and Moses and Elijah.  But then comes the One they’ve all been waiting for, the One they hiked up the mountain to find.  A dark cloud descends over the mountaintop, and the divine voice thunders, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (Mark 9:7). 

And just as quickly as it began, the moment is over.  Moses and Elijah vanish, the cloud lifts, and the hikers are left with Jesus the trail guide looking normal again, ready to take them back down the mountain.

“Wait,” the disciples are thinking; “what was it God said?  ‘This is my Son; listen to him’?  But Jesus didn’t say anything.”  Well, that’s not very helpful.  Don’t you just wish sometimes that Jesus would show up and say exactly what he wants us to hear?  Wouldn’t it be great if Jesus just walked down the aisle and finished this sermon for me?

Not this time?  Well, OK.  Instead, let’s look at the story just before this one, where Jesus had something pretty significant to say.  It starts with Peter saying Jesus is the Messiah – God’s anointed king, the one who’s come to kick out the Romans and establish God’s rule instead.  But Jesus tells him, “Well, that’s not exactly how it works.”  In fact, it’s just the opposite.  He is the anointed king, but this king doesn’t rule the way we expect.  This king is hiking to Jerusalem, where he’ll climb a mountain with a cross on his back and come into his glory in the last way we’d imagine – bleeding and dying. 

And even worse, Jesus calls us to follow that path he’s about to take.  He says to the disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake … will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)  The way this king will defeat the powers that oppress us is by sacrificing himself.  And that sacrifice saves us.  The pains you bear, the losses you endure, the failures that stick with you, the damage you cause that you’d give anything to fix … this king takes his cross to the top of the mountain and lets himself be broken on it to give you the chance to be healed. 

How does that work?  That hike with the cross leads the way to resurrection.  Jesus takes us to a place where endings aren’t endings, where death doesn’t stop us.  He takes us to a place where love makes us new and lets us live forever.  And, as if all that isn’t enough, Jesus asks us to join him on that path, and give ourselves away, and help him heal the world.  Follow me, he says, and let God’s light shine through you so you can light the way of resurrection for others. 

Here’s the thing:  When I hiked up Mudlick Mountain, I was a young man with a great future, by the world’s standards.  I was going somewhere.  I was the speechwriter and deputy press secretary for the governor of Missouri, and the governor liked what I was doing.  I could have been working for him when he became a senator, even when he became the nation’s attorney general, as it turned out.  But the work didn’t mean anything to me.  I didn’t feel like I was making a difference.  So, I went to Mudlick Mountain to look for a sign. 

I didn’t really hear or see anything specific from God in that flight of eagles (or buzzards).  But what I heard and saw was that God was there in the majesty of those birds, in the beauty of that peak.  I heard and saw God’s possibility.  Like those buzzards, even I could take flight … by leaving behind what I had and by turning away from where I was going.  I thought that meant being a teacher, so I left the governor’s office and went back to college.  I didn’t end up being a teacher, but I met the woman who would be my wife.  And we had kids.  And I got this call to be a priest.  And here I am, loving and serving you all.  It’s not the path I’d ever imagined, and every step along the way has cost me something – a lot, some of them.  But at the end of the day, I’ve found life I never knew was out there.

Others in the room this morning could tell a similar story.  And you Scouts, you’re learning this story, too – this story about giving yourself up in service, about putting the well-being of the den or patrol first, about putting yourself third behind God and other people.  And you’re learning the mystery Jesus was trying to show his friends up on that mountain: that success isn’t about achieving power.  Success isn’t about scoring highest.  Success isn’t about getting the most.  Success comes from loving and serving others.  Success comes from being God’s light for the people who join you along your path.  Success comes from the last thing you’d imagine: from giving yourself away.