Jerry the Angel Finds the Good News

Sermon for Christmas Day, Dec. 25, 2025
John 1:1-14

This Gospel reading may not be what you were expecting for your Christmas story.  That came last night – the angels and the shepherds and the baby in the manger.  This morning, we get the story from a cosmic perspective: the Word of God made flesh and dwelling among us in glory.

In Anglo-Catholic congregations, there’s a tradition of offering this reading every Sunday.  It’s the “Last Gospel,” and it comes at the very end of the service, even after the final blessing.  You can’t miss the importance of God taking flesh among us if it’s the last thing you hear literally every time you worship.

So, the incarnation is important, but maybe it’s hard to know what we’re supposed to do with it.  How does this amazing mystery affect my life?

Well, it’s Christmas morning. So, rather than diving deep into a theology of the incarnation, how about a story?

 *  *  *

Jerry the Angel wasn’t much of an angel, really.  Every time he was on the edge of success, about to make a real difference for people, that’s when he managed to mess it up.  If you ever wondered how we found ourselves with concrete lawn ornaments and 24-hour news channels, you can blame that on bungled messages from Jerry the Angel.  It’s what angels do, after all – they deliver messages. 

Well, when you’re an angel who’s not so good at delivering messages, they assign you to the heavenly Office of Salvation Research.  Instead of sharing good news of great joy, these angels go out listening to people’s opinions and perceptions about God.  Maybe you didn’t know heaven has its own research department.  But the angels have to stay in touch with how we’re thinking so they can tell us Good News in a way we can understand it.  I mean, what would people think these days if an army of shining, flying soldiers suddenly hovered over them in the night, talking about a Messiah who’s come to save them?  It probably wouldn’t show God’s love nearly as well as a story on the evening news about an anonymous stranger handing out $100 bills.  Like God always says to the angels, you’ve got to tell the story in a way folks can hear it.

Anyway, that was Jerry’s job – to go around talking to people about how they understand salvation.  What do they think the Good News is?  So, Jerry heard a lot of crazy stuff, frankly, especially at Christmas time – like those stories about Santa’s little henchmen, the elves, tiny spies who watch your every move.  In fact, this time of year usually left Jerry a little depressed.  “Just once,” he said, “I’d like to meet someone who really gets what the Good News is all about.”

So, it was late afternoon on Christmas Eve, and Jerry was on patrol.  His first stop was in a nice neighborhood – a huge, lovely home filled with guests for a holiday party.  Jerry walked down the long driveway to the front door and rang the bell.  A woman with a drink in her hand answered the door.

“Hello?” she said, dubiously.  “I’m sorry – do I know you?”

“No, ma’am,” Jerry said.  “I just want a moment of your time for a couple of quick questions.”

“Oh, not a survey!” the woman replied.  I have guests!”

“It will only take a minute, really,” Jerry said.  “In fact, I’ll cut it down to just one question.”

“All right,” the woman said, looking over her shoulder.  “Let’s get this over with.”

“OK,” Jerry said.  “What’s the Good News for you?”

“I’m sorry?” the woman asked.  “The good news about what?”

“It’s Christmas,” Jerry reminded her, “when the Word of God was made flesh and came among you.  It’s the reason you’re having a party, right?  So, what’s the Good News for you?”

“Oh, you’re one of those religious types,” the woman said, nodding her head knowingly.  “Well, then, I’d have to say the Good News for me is … um … let’s see.  I know:  God wants us to treat people nicely.  OK?”

“OK,” Jerry said.  “One vote for politeness.  Thanks for your time” – and the woman shut the door in Jerry’s face.  “So much for ‘nice,’” he thought.

From there, Jerry transported himself to a very poor neighborhood.  He came to a broken-down apartment building and passed through the locked door.  He walked up to the third floor and found a door with a laughing, plastic Santa face hung on it.  “Here’s someone who at least celebrates Christmas,” he thought.  “I’ll give this a try.”  And he knocked.

A teenaged boy answered the door.  Looking in, Jerry saw very little – not much furniture, nothing on the walls.  He could hear a TV in the corner. “Wha’cha want?” the young man asked.

“Hi there,” Jerry began, trying to sound positive.  “I just want a moment of your time for a couple of quick questions.”

“You gotta be kiddin’,” the young man said.  “Your takin’ a survey?  How’d you get in here, anyway?”

“It’ll only take a second,” Jerry said.  “How about just one question?”

“OK – shoot,” the young man said, looking back over his shoulder at the TV.

“It’s Christmas Eve, right?” Jerry asked.  “The night Jesus was born.  So, what’s the Good News for you?”

The young man looked back at Jerry, his eyes narrowing. “Oh, I know about Good News,” he said, bitterly.  “Good News is what they call it when the preacher says you’ll be happy if you just give God more money.  Good News is what they call it when you come to church and end up takin’ home nothin’ but empty words about how things’ll get better if you just pray harder.  Is that the Good News you had in mind?”

Jerry began to step back from the doorway.  “Thanks a lot for your time,” he said quickly, “and … um … have a merry … well, have a safe night.”

“OK,” Jerry thought, heading down the stairs.  “Folks can smell a lie a mile away.  So, the Good News has got to be real.”

From there, Jerry transported himself to the closest thing we have to a town square or Main Street in the year 2025, the place where the locals gather from miles around:  He went to Costco.  There, even on Christmas Eve, Jerry had his pick of hundreds of folks he might interview – people doing their Christmas shopping at the last minute or stocking up for the family’s visit.

Amid all the intense shoppers going this way and that, Jerry saw a little girl.  She was about 10, and her parents must have left her on her own for a bit while they hunted for her present.  Jerry decided she was the one to talk to.

“Hi, Honey,” he said softly.  “I want to ask you a couple of questions.  Is that OK?”

“Sure,” the little girl said.

“What’s your name?” Jerry asked.

“I’m Gabriella,” the little girl said.  “What’s your name?”

“I’m Jerry, and I wish I had a name as good and strong as yours.  It’s perfect for an angel.”

“Oh, I’m no angel,” Gabriella said.  “Just ask my parents.  So, what did you want to ask me?”

“Well,” Jerry began, “it’s Christmas Eve.  You’re not in church, or at your grandparents’ house, or opening presents with your family.  You’re here at Costco.  This is the night the angels appeared, announcing the Good News that Jesus was born.  Do you know what that Good News is?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Gabriella said.  “The Good News is right here in my cart.”

Jerry looked down and saw what the little girl had been shopping for: Stocking caps – lots of stocking caps.  There must have been 50 stocking caps in the little girl’s cart.  “Stocking caps?” Jerry asked.  “I don’t get it.  Where’s the Good News in a cart full of stocking caps?”

“Oh, it’s not about the caps exactly,” Gabriella said.  “The Good News comes when I take the caps to church later, and we give them away for people who don’t have a warm place to live.”  She looked down at her treasure and then looked back at Jerry.  She was beaming.  “I saved up my allowance.”

Bingo, Jerry thought.  Finally, he’d found a little messenger.  “So tell me why that’s Good News,” he said.

Gabriella looked at Jerry with a little sympathy, like maybe he wasn’t very smart.  “It’s easy,” she said, again.  “Jesus came into the world long ago, on a cold night like this.  Jesus is still in the world, on a cold night like this.  He’s there in all those people who don’t have a place to live, who can’t find any room at the inn.  He loves me just like God loves me – and he’s shivering out there in the cold.  So I need to help keep him warm, because I love him, too.”  She cocked her head and looked at Jerry.  “It’s not complicated.  Don’t you get it?”

Jerry smiled and remembered why he loved his job after all.  “Yes, I get it,” he said.  “Can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure,” Gabriella said.  “Do you want a stocking cap?”

“No,” Jerry said.  “I just want you to go and tell other people your story.” 

“I can do that,” she said, as she pushed her cart toward the check-out lane.  Jerry watched as she walked away, and suddenly he found himself listening to what was playing over the Costco loudspeakers: 

Hark! the herald angels sing
            glory to the newborn King!

Christmas Past, Present, and Future

Sermon for Christmas Eve, Dec. 24, 2025
Luke 2:1-14

Here we are, in this beautiful space on this beautiful night, celebrating the realization of our hope:  the long-awaited coming of Christ the Lord, God made flesh, the One who will save us and bring us light.  For four weeks now, we’ve been marking church time, ever so slowly lighting a candle a week on the Advent wreath and waiting expectantly to see what happens next.

That’s been true for many of us.  But others have been waiting differently – waiting just to make it through a tough time.  From my perspective, closing the book on 2025 can’t come soon enough.  If you’ve lost someone or something recently, or if you’re having trouble making ends meet, or if you long for civility and common decency to be normal once again, then maybe you, too, feel weary, tired of waiting not so much in hope but in fear of what might be the next shoe to drop.

In fact, you’d be forgiven for wondering about the relevance of hope in our world at all.  Hope seems quaint, like rotary phones or TV Guide, a marker of a bygone age.  In fact, you might have come here tonight/today with some resentment or anger in your cup of Christmas cheer.  Peace?  Goodwill?  Hope?  They might sound, at best, like a nice children’s story, or, at worst, from the cynic’s perspective, like the opiate of the masses.

For me, I’ve always waited in hope for Christmas by watching certain movies – It’s a Wonderful Life, Miracle on 34^th Street, Elf, Love Actually.  This year, I haven’t watched any of them.  But, a couple of nights ago, I did feel the urge to see a Christmas movie.  So, on my daughter’s recommendation, I picked The Muppets’ Christmas Carol.

Now, A Christmas Carol is a story I imagine we all know, at least in outline.  Ebenezer Scrooge is the ultimate misanthrope – a truly awful man who describes poor people as “surplus population” and happily underpays his staff.¹  He’s visited by three spirits who show him how his choices have made life so much worse, for himself and for others.  The experience converts him to a life of love.

It’s a great story, and it sits very close to my heart.  In fact, I was in A Christmas Carol at a local theater in Springfield a long time ago, so at one point I had the whole script memorized.  And, of course, we offered our own short version of A Christmas Carol here for a decade or so, with me perhaps typecast as Scrooge.  So, Dickens’ words are in my head – and the Muppets’ version of it actually follows his language closely.

So, it surprised me to be surprised by a line I heard in this movie a couple of nights ago.  It comes at the end of the story, when Scrooge has had his epiphany.  The three spirits have revealed to him Christmas past, present, and future, each scene showing the consequences of choosing against love.  And Scrooge wakes up finally to daylight, realizing it’s morning, and he isn’t dead, and he hasn’t even missed Christmas.  Through the grace of God, hope still awaits him.  So, he arranges with a kid in the street to go buy the prize turkey in the butcher’s window and deliver it to the hungry Cratchit family.  He says, “I am as light as a feather, I am as happy as an angel, I am as merry as a schoolboy.”  And as he comes to see just how good it feels to choose love, Scrooge promises the universe he will “keep [Christmas] all the year.”  That line I remembered – a lovely thought, but seemingly no deeper than what you might find on a Christmas card.  But in the Muppets’ Christmas Carol, true to Dickens’ text, Scrooge fleshes it out a bit and connects his jolly heart more directly with God’s purposes.  He says, “I will live in the past, the present, and the future.”¹

Sit with that a bit.  “I will live in the past, the present, and the future.”  That’s a line I hadn’t remembered.  But I think Scrooge is onto something there because the way he resolves to live is the way God lives – past, present, and future, all available to be lived, in any given moment.

Now let me tell you a second story, as quickly as I can.  It’s not that the story is quick – in fact, it’s the longest of them all – but this thumbnail version can be quick.  It’s the story of God.

It begins with God on top of the world – more precisely, creating all the worlds, all the universe, including this beautiful Earth, “our island home” (BCP 370).  God brings forth life over all of it, the peaceable kingdom of mutual dependence and blessed interconnection – the wolf living with the lamb and the leopard lying down with the kid (Isaiah 11:6).  And God creates humans, too, the coup de gras of creation, beings made in God’s own image and likeness, including the mirrored divine attributes of love and freedom.  God aches for the humans to choose the loving side of their nature, but these nearly divine beings choose individual interest over interconnection.  In time, they turn against each other, too, behaving so badly that God sees no choice but to start over.  Well, the flood ends up being messy and not exactly just, so God decides not to solve the problem that way a second time.  Instead, God anoints a couple of heroes, Abraham and Sarah, to journey into a divine covenant, for themselves and their descendants.  Why?  To bless the two of them and their families, sure, but also to bless everybody else, to show everybody just how good life is when you live it in God’s image and likeness.  The people of the covenant thrive and fail and thrive and fail.  God sustains them, and delivers them, and instructs them, and blesses them, even with other people’s lands.  But the people forget their covenant and choose against living in God’s image, over and over again.  Finally, God says, “Enough – enough of kings and their armies, enough of experts and their law.  I’ll send my beloved to show them what love’s supposed to look like.”

So, we find ourselves at that first Christmas, with the power that created the universe taking the appalling step of becoming a human baby, an absolute nobody and, thereby, everybody – the ultimate image and likeness of God.  People didn’t know what to do with that, especially once this incarnate Word of God started talking and teaching and training one poor Schmoe after another how to follow in his steps.  Against all odds, the movement caught on, so much so that the people in charge decided it was better to kill the power of Love than to lose their own power.  But the Word of God would not be silenced.  Christ rose from death and defeated it, sharing the Spirit of Love so his friends could spread the word, and then returning home as CEO of the universe.

And now?  What do we do with that now?  Well, now, we wait.  But it matters what we’re waiting for.  Are we waiting for God to do something more, for the sequel to the story, where God conquers sin and death completely?  You could see it that way.  Or, if you’ll entertain the possibility of a larger story with a God-sized scope of time, maybe that victory is already complete.  After all, if the baby in the manger, the Word made flesh, is truly the sovereign of the universe, that would imply there’s no serious resistance left.  Here on earth, we’re in a 2,000-year-long mopping-up action, just waiting to see the fullness of God’s victory revealed – both in our own choices, day by day, and eventually in Christ pulling back the curtain completely on creation that’s been made new.

As Scrooge said, “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.  I will live in the past, in the present, and in the future. …”¹  That’s how we honor Christ, too.  We live in the past when we celebrate Eucharist, taking our seats at the Last Supper, as Jesus gives himself to give us eternal life.  We live in the present when we inhabit our role as the Body of Christ today, being Jesus’ head and heart and hands to bring the power of Love to bear in this mopping-up action of Christian life.  And we live in the future when we remember what’s yet to be fully revealed but what we’ve been affirming since the 300s as a done deal:  Christ “ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father … and his kingdom will have no end” (BCP 358-359).

In the midst of the hardness of this world and the hardness of our hearts, we can hope because God’s already got this.  What remains now – as we play the long game to face down all pretenders to Jesus’ throne – what remains now is to live hope by embodying love, joining Scrooge in his Great Commission for this present age.  So, take it as your Christmas commission, too, because it means much more than greeting-card verse.  Draw God’s past and God’s future together in the holy now by living Christmas every day.  Let your life be the light that shines in the darkness – the light that the darkness did not, and will not, and even now cannot overcome.

1.      Dickens, Charles. A Christmas Carol. Available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/46/46-h/46-h.htm. Accessed Dec. 23, 2025.

 

Maybe It's Not Just a Sunrise

Sermon (narrative essay, actually) for Sunday, Dec. 14, 2025
Matthew 11:2-15

Maybe it was just a sunrise.

Thursday morning, as I was walking with the dog, I looked up.  That doesn’t seem noteworthy, but sometimes looking up matters.  It was nearing sunrise, and Pete and I were heading back toward the house, walking west.  Now, last time I checked, the sun rises in the east.  But as we walked west, I noticed the edges of the wispy clouds on the horizon beginning to gleam in pinks and purples.  I stopped and looked south.  And north.  And east, finally.  And all around, at about the same level of brightness, the wisps of clouds at the horizon were being painted in pinks and purples.

After a few minutes of watching the colors brighten, I went into the house for breakfast.  When I looked out the window, no surprise, the eastern skyline was brightening gloriously; and the clouds around the rest of the sky’s dome were growing whiter, beginning to lose their pink and purple.  It was as if the artist’s gaze had shifted:  Having played with color all around the horizon, the artist got busy with the canvas’ focal point.  As my cereal got soggy, I kept watching; and the shifting colors crept through the clouds for what seemed like twice as long as any sunrise I’d ever seen.  In divine slow motion, the artist seemed to say, “You like this?  Hang on … wait just a little more.  It gets even better, if you keep watching.”

Maybe it was just a sunrise.  But on this particular morning – in this season of my own life and our collective life, too, when expectations of goodness and love perhaps have never seemed lower – on this particular morning, it felt like more than a sunrise.  It felt like a wonder – an assurance – an embrace.

*  *   *   *

Two thousand years ago, a wandering preacher and his band of misfits had stopped in a village.  It had been a busy few weeks.  Heading from town to town, they’d found what you’d expect: people doing the best they can, living grindingly normal lives – same as it ever was.  Some were doing well, settled in responsibility and respect, comfort and control.  Others weren’t so lucky.  Two thousand years ago, the sick and the broken and the poor and the alone were out there for all to see, not shunted away but out in front of God and everybody.

So, this wandering preacher and his band of misfits focused on them – not the folks who had it all together, the ones who might have offered a meal and a place to stay, but the folks with no expectations of aid or comfort, and nothing to give anyone.  

Now, among these folks with nothing more to lose, crazy things kept happening.  A guy everybody knew was blind suddenly could see.  A woman everybody knew was sick, and therefore excluded, suddenly felt great and was out with everybody else on market day.  A kid whom everybody knew had died wasn’t dead after all.  These things made no sense.  Nobody was complaining, mind you, but they also couldn’t explain it.

Miles away, a guy in a jail cell couldn’t explain it either.  His name was John; and Herod, the Romans’ local lackey, was letting John rot in prison because he kept calling Herod a hypocrite for breaking religious rules when they grew inconvenient.  John was the cousin of this wandering preacher, Jesus from Nazareth; and Jesus had been part of John’s own band of misfits out in the desert, where John spoke hard truth to people in power about how they should love God and love neighbor rather than lining their pockets and pushing people around.  Now, stuck in his dank cell, John was losing hope.  He’d seen himself as the next great prophet, like Elijah, taking down corrupt kings and bringing hope that God’s true king was coming to set the world to rights.  So much for that, John thought. 

But still, John had heard these stories about his cousin and the amazing things that kept happening wherever he went.  Back when Jesus had joined John’s band, John had had a vision and told anyone who’d listen that Jesus was the one they were waiting for.  Maybe that was true after all.  Maybe God was at work here after all.  Maybe this prison cell was just an ugly stopover on the journey toward life under God’s true king.  So, John sent a couple of his old friends to find Jesus so they could check things out and ask Jesus what all this meant.

They got there just after Jesus had healed four people, and the local crowd was buzzing.  Like always, the folks in control weren’t too pleased, but the nobodies started daring to think maybe change was finally coming.  After all, they’d always been taught that, someday, God would send the king who would kick out their oppressors just like the Maccabees had done 200 years earlier, and restore Israel’s golden age, and put a new King David on a new Jewish throne.  Had David done anything greater than the things this Jesus was doing?  And the prophets back in the day had said the greatest prophet, Elijah, would return from heaven just before the king would come – that Elijah would prepare the way for his victory.  So, was Jesus Elijah?  Or, even better, was Jesus the king?

The friends of John the prisoner found Jesus in the marketplace.  They knew him from the old days, so they could trust he’d give it to them straight.  “Look,” they asked, “what does all this mean?  You’re making folks think they’ve got reason to hope.  You’re making John think God might break him out of prison.  You’re making the crowds think God’s going to drop the hammer on the Romans.  John wants to know what’s going on:  Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?  And if you’re the one, which one are you – Elijah or the messiah himself?”

Jesus smiled. “You’re asking the right questions,” he said, “but the story won’t play out the way you think.  Look, you want an answer for John?  Go back and tell him what’s happening.  Blind people can see.  Deaf people can hear.  Poor people can see a way out of debt.  Dead people aren’t staying that way.  Sound familiar?” Jesus asked.  “You might check out what the prophets said was going to happen before the messiah comes.”

As John’s friends ran off to share the good news, Jesus turned and saw the crowd gathered around him.  They had the obvious question on their minds, and someone dared to yell it out:  “If the blind see, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised, what’s John doing in prison?  Can’t you fix that, too?”

Jesus sighed and looked at his questioner the way a parent looks at an angry child.  “This isn’t going to work the way you want it to,” he said.  “What’s coming won’t follow your script.  God is with you, but not as a general or a magician.  You want certainty.  You want control.  You want miracles everyday,” Jesus said.  “Instead, what I’ve got are everyday miracles.”

“But what about John the Baptizer?” someone else called out.

Jesus shook his head.  “Look, when you fight for a kingdom of love, the violent will take it by force – same as it ever was.  Love’s not something God can impose.  Love is something you have to choose – you and them, too, the ones holding John in prison.  Remember your scriptures,” Jesus continued.  “What happened to the prophet Elijah?  He told the truth, too, and the king tried to kill him.  So, Elijah ran away, hiding out on Mount Sinai, expecting God to send him an army.  Instead, God sent him … God, walking with him in person at the edge of the cliff, embracing Elijah with the sound of sheer silence.  And in that power, Elijah returned to face down the corrupt king, and defeat the prophets of Baal, and find himself taken straight to heaven.  But I think Elijah’s back,” Jesus said. “I think he’s been preparing the messiah’s way.  Right now, he’s stuck in a prison cell with worse yet to come, but the story won’t stop there.  Remember:  The blind now see.  The deaf now hear.  The poor now look forward in hope.  The dead now live.  Maybe it’s just a crazy preacher in that prison cell,” Jesus said.  “But maybe Elijah’s back.  And maybe the messiah looks and sounds a lot different than you’d expect.”

*  *   *   *

Over these next two weeks of Advent, we’re still going to be walking in the dark.  The wind will still be cold against our faces.  Voices will still pipe up with realistic angst:  “Can’t you see how rough this path really is?  You’re on your own, you know; only the strong survive.”  

On those cold, dark days – look up.  Look to the edges of the clouds where light’s not supposed to start breaking through.  Look for the pinks and purples of sunrise coming from the least likely directions.

Maybe it is just a sunrise.  But maybe it’s more than you’d expect.

People Who Say, 'Thank You' (or, Praying Shapes Believing)

Sermon for Thanksgiving
Nov. 27, 2025

When I was growing up, Thanksgiving was a day of ritual for me, and I imagine some of you had a similar experience.  I’d wake up and watch at least some of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade on TV.  I loved the huge balloons.  Plus, we were home from school; and even with the inane commentary, the parade was the best choice among Springfield’s four channels.  

But I didn’t watch much of the parade because of the next Thanksgiving ritual for us: church.  Probably not surprisingly, that wasn’t my favorite part of Thanksgiving, that we had to go to church two days that week.  But once we got there, and I put on my choir robe, and we came into the church singing, “Come Ye Thankful People, Come,” the gears in my heart slipped into place.  “Oh, yeah,” I thought.  “I do have a lot to be grateful for.”  And it was good just to sing that song again, a song people have been singing since 1844 to help them remember just how thankful they are.

After church, we’d go home for the other Thanksgiving rituals:  Football – both on TV and in the yard with my friend, Ted.  Family – whoever could get there, given my sisters’ obligations to spouses and their families.  And my mother’s turkey gravy – which truly is the best in the world and for which the turkey was just a necessary ingredient.  With the rituals completed, we did indeed find gratitude and the peace that gratitude brings … right before slipping into a turkey coma.

We each have our Thanksgiving rituals, right?  We have gatherings or practices or foods that make the holiday the holiday.  You may even think your mother makes better gravy than mine, which, in the spirit of Christian charity, I’ll strive to forgive.  But why do we keep these rituals?  Other than the comfort of habit, what do the parades and football and turkey and pie give us?

Rituals help us remember.  It’s the power I felt standing at the back of the church as a kid, hearing that old familiar hymn rise once again.  Rituals bring past, present, and future together for us, helping us see that the moment we inhabit is just that – a moment – but one connected to moments across time and space.  That’s what we remember when we say the Eucharistic prayer – when, each week, regardless of the liturgical season or the form of the prayer we’re using, we remember that we’re joining with “angels and archangels and all the company of heaven” as they offer this prayer with us.  As we stand here before God each week, we never stand alone.

And as we gather with one another and that heavenly company, ritual binds us around a common experience.  In fact, the theologians would say that ritual brings the common experience to life.  The Greeks had a word for it – anamnesis, which means active remembering, the kind of remembering you do when you hear a baby cry and you’re transported to your own child’s crib.  Anamnesis is bringing memory into lived experience, making the past present and banking on it for the future, too.  It’s what happens every time we offer that Eucharistic prayer and connect our bread and wine to Jesus feeding the 5,000, and the Last Supper, and the heavenly marriage supper of the Lamb.  We say we experience the real presence of Jesus in that meal as he brings us a feast out of nothing, and gives himself so we can live forever, and welcomes us home to the banquet that never ends.

And one of the most important memories our rituals bring to life is the active remembrance of “thank you.”  It’s no accident that this meal we share in worship is called Eucharist, which means “thanksgiving.”  Every week, we come together for the ultimate Thanksgiving dinner, reminding us of the full scope of gratitude – blessings past, present, and future; people we have loved, and do love, and will love; belovedness from the God who created us, and redeems us, and will sustain us eternally.

This is why we’re here today, when we could be doing anything else to enjoy a day off.  This is why ritual matters.  It reminds us who we are, which is fundamentally people who say, “Thank you.”  And “thank you” cures a multitude of ills.  It reminds us we’re in relationship with a power far greater than we are.  It reminds us that the nature of that power is love.  It reminds us that the consequence of love is always blessing.  And so, it reminds us that, no matter what, in all things, the right response to the love that creates and redeems and sustains us is, “Thank you.”

That doesn’t mean life isn’t hard.  Any one of us, every one of us, can lament the burdens we carry, the losses we’ve suffered, the cost of an embodied life.  But ritual helps us there, too.

Every morning, my routine includes a time of prayer.  Both the form and the content matter.  I make a cup of coffee, with sugar and half and half, my one cup of coffee a day like that.  I come into the sunroom where my wife, Ann, kept her indoor plants, nearly all of which are still alive.  I light a candle, and the dog and the cat join me in what was Ann’s favorite chair.  Then we listen to a podcast of Morning Prayer, which ends with something called the General Thanksgiving.  It’s the prayer we’ll offer here this morning, in place of the Prayers of the People, to voice our hearts on this day of gratitude.

Now, this ritual doesn’t guarantee that I’ll come out of prayer time happy.  A life of embodied blessing doesn’t work that way.  But it does guarantee that I’ll remember to say thank you – as that General Thanksgiving puts it, thank you for “for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; but above all for [God’s] immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory” (BCP 101).  My sunroom ritual is a way to remember, every day – “Oh, yeah, that’s right.  That’s who I am – someone who starts with, ‘Thank you.’”

What Are You Looking For?

Sermon for Nov. 23, 2025 – feast of St. Andrew, transferred
Matthew 4:18-22

As we celebrate St. Andrew this morning, I want to tell you a story.  No surprise – it’s his story, which seems right for this day.  But I’m going to tell it to you backwards because, sometimes, the best way to know where we’re going is to know where we’ve begun.

So, let’s start where we find St. Andrew now.  Spiritually, that would be here, and in countless other congregations in the Episcopal Church and around the world.  You might wonder, what’s the Episcopalian connection to St. Andrew anyway?  On our Episcopal shield, you find the X-shaped cross of St. Andrew – why that instead of any other disciples’ symbol?  It’s because of our historical connection to Scotland, where Andrew is also the patron saint.  It was Scottish bishops who consecrated the first Episcopalian bishop for the new United States, Samuel Seabury (you’ll find his window up there, on the lectern side); and it was the Scottish Church’s prayer consecrating the bread and wine for Eucharist that we put in our first American Book of Common Prayer.

OK.  There’s our connection to Scotland.  So, what does Andrew have to do with Scotland?  It’s a good question, given that Andrew never went there while he was alive.  Instead, the story is that Andrew’s remains were lifted and taken there from Greece in the 300s by a monk named Regulus.  The monk had a vision telling him to take Andrew’s bones and sail to the ends of the earth, wherever the Holy Spirit and the prevailing winds took him.  It turned out Regulus’ ship ran aground at what’s now St. Andrews in Scotland, which was pretty much the end of the earth for 4^th-century Greek sailors.  There, the monk founded a cathedral and a center of Christian learning to help bring the Good News to the people of Scotland.

OK, Andrew’s bones were taken to Scotland from Greece.  So, how did a Galilean fisherman end up being buried in Greece?  Tradition says Andrew was martyred around the year 60 at Patras in western Greece, crucified on an X-shaped cross.  That’s what’s under Andrew’s arm in the stained-glass window over the altar, just to the left of Jesus.  Tradition says Andrew taught about Jesus in Greece after stops in Thrace, a region that straddles what’s now Bulgaria and Turkey.  In Byzantium, later Constantinople and now Istanbul, he’s said to have consecrated the first bishop for this place that became an important patriarchate of the Orthodox Church.

Of course, we don’t have hard evidence for any of that, and other countries’ traditions remember different stories about Andrew’s travels.  He’s honored as a patron saint in the nations of Georgia, Cyprus, Ethiopia, Malta, Romania, and, ironically, both Ukraine and Russia, one of the few things uniting those countries now.  But the dominant tradition is that he ended his life on that X-shaped cross in western Greece.

So, if that’s how Andrew answered the call to be Jesus’ witness “to the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8), what do we know about Andrew as he traveled with Jesus himself?

Well, the last word we get about Andrew in the Gospels comes from John.  Just after Jesus rides into Jerusalem in triumph on Palm Sunday, with everyone shouting “Hosanna!” and proclaiming him king, a couple of non-Jewish strangers come up to the disciple Philip and say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (12:21).  Philip takes these outsiders up the chain of command to Andrew, and Andrew makes the call that these two “Greeks” are worth Jesus’ time and attention (12:20).  For Jesus, it’s his sign that the time for his glorification has come – because not just the Jews of Jerusalem but also these representatives of other nations are seeing in Jesus the light of hope and healing.  I think it’s also an important sign for Andrew, maybe something he hadn’t seen before – that his call doesn’t stop with walking alongside Jesus there in Galilee and Judea.  He’ll find himself talking to lots of “Greeks” as he takes Jesus’ hope and healing on the road.

Earlier in the Gospel story, Andrew takes center stage in John’s version of feeding the 5,000.  When Jesus tells the disciples to give the crowd something to eat, Andrew is the one who finds the boy with the five loaves and two fish.  Of course, that doesn’t seem like much.  But – and I think this is important –Andrew isn’t ashamed to bring to Jesus precisely what God has given him.  He’s living in the hope that Jesus can take what we see as our meager gifts and use them to bless thousands.

But when did Andrew actually sign up for this gig as a disciple?  For most of Jesus’ followers, the Gospel writers don’t give us a specific story.  But for those who were part of Jesus’ inner circle, we get vignettes that draw on their past to reveal something special Jesus sees in each of them.

And the first of those is our Gospel reading today, where we overhear Jesus calling two sets of brothers – Andrew and Peter, as well as James and John.  All we’re told is that “they were fishermen”– in fact, that’s what they’re busy doing as Jesus walks by and rocks their world (Matthew 4:18).  Jesus sees Andrew and Peter “casting a net into the sea” (4:18) – which, as any fisherman knows, is fundamentally an act of faith.  Are the fish actually there?  Am I in the right spot?  Do I have the right equipment?  Who knows, right? You just cast out your net or cast out your line in the assurance that, eventually, your work and your faith will be rewarded.  It’s amazing, the faith of a fisherman.  Well, Andrew and Peter must have been blessed with that kind of persistent faith – and for Jesus, this moment seems like just the right time to cast the net himself.  He yells out to them, “Follow me, and I’ll make you fish for people” (4:19).  Somehow, that offer must have seemed much more rewarding than the kind of fishing they knew, because they left their nets “immediately” to follow him (4:20).

I’ve always been skeptical about this story.  I mean, what small-business owner closes up shop permanently to follow a wandering preacher?  In Matthew’s Gospel, this is the first time we meet Andrew, so we have no backstory to help make sense of his decision.  But if we look to another source, we find backstory that Matthew apparently doesn’t know.  It’s from John’s Gospel again, very early on.  In the story, Jesus hasn’t even said anything yet; all we know so far is that John the Baptist is pointing to Jesus as the Lamb of God, the one who’s come to take away the sin of the world.  Well, when two of John the Baptist’s followers hear this, they break off from John’s group to go check out the new guy.  One of these two is Andrew, making his first appearance in the Gospel story.  So, Andrew and his friend tag along after Jesus, which Jesus notices, being Jesus.  He turns around, looks them in the eye, and asks, “What are you looking for?” (John 1:38).

Let’s pause the story just a moment because this is one of my favorite verses in all of Scripture.  It’s Jesus, God in the flesh, just cutting to the heart of the matter and asking the question that starts every spiritual journey:  “What are you looking for?”  Talk about God meeting us where we are.  Jesus gives no order to follow religious rules.  He makes no demand for worship.  He doesn’t even expect service right off the bat.  Instead, Jesus’ first question to Andrew is God’s first question to you and me, too:  “What are you looking for?”  I think that might be the richest question we could take with us today, something to chew on long past Thursday’s turkey.

Anyway, back to the story.  Andrew and his friend respond saying, “Teacher, where are you staying” – probably just trying to come up with something to say rather than standing there, slack-jawed, when Jesus comes up and talks to them.  And Jesus replies with maybe the other best line in all of Scripture.  The God who starts out with life’s richest question then offers them life’s richest invitation:  “Come and see” (1:39).  And they do.  Andrew and his friend hang out with Jesus all day.  When the sun starts setting and the divine interview comes to an end, Andrew heads back home to find the person he loves most, his brother, Simon Peter – because, when your life truly starts opening up before you, you can’t keep it to yourself, right?  So, Andrew says to Peter, “We have found the Messiah,” and he brings Peter to meet Jesus … thereby starting a movement that will change the world.

I think Andrew’s origin story matters.  After all, none of the rest of his discipleship would have happened without Andrew’s willingness to engage Jesus’ rich question and invitation:  “What are you looking for?  Come and see.”  All the rest of Andrew’s faithful work begins there.

We are no different.  We may not have universities and golf courses named after us.  We may not die a martyr’s death and see ourselves in stained-glass windows.  We may not travel to the ends of the earth to share God’s love with others.  But our journey starts just where Andrew’s journey started – with Jesus asking us, “What are you looking for?”

Once the turkey dinner and the football games and the weekend’s shopping are behind us, we’ll begin a journey ourselves, a four-week journey starting next Sunday – the season of Advent.  Now, the Church would tell us that Advent is a time to prepare our hearts to receive Christ anew and to prepare for his coming at the end of the age, when he returns to set the world to rights.  Yes … and … maybe before all that, Advent is a time to hear God asking you, “What are you looking for?”  The answer’s probably not parties and presents and too many commitments.  The answer’s probably more along the lines of … healing, and purpose, and meaning, and peace.  Well then, Jesus says, “Come and see.”

There are many ways to do that.  I don’t pretend to have just the right answer for you, but you’ll find several possibilities to consider on the Advent page of our website – ways to breathe and connect with what you’re truly looking for.  It might happen in a book study.  It might happen in a class on grief during the holidays.  It might happen in the silence, chants, and candles of a Taizé service.  It might happen in a Saturday spent in retreat.  It might happen through giving of yourself to bless neighbors in Kansas City or kids in Haiti.  It might happen simply through lighting a candle, finding a prayerful podcast, and turning in a new direction.

However you do it, the point is to start a journey.  You don’t have to measure up to anyone else’s definition of what it means to follow Jesus.  Like Andrew, all you have to do is take Jesus up on the offer.  All you have to do is “come and see.”

Peace the World Cannot Give

Sermon for Sunday, Nov. 9, 2025
Job 19:23-27a; Luke 20:27-38

In this stewardship sermon series, we’ve been looking at different ways we work with God to let blessings flow through both giving and receiving.  The first three weeks of the series were about giving: giving God thanks and praise, giving others a share of God’s blessings, and giving a share of those blessings back to God.  Now we’re in the “receiving” portion of the series.  Last week, Mtr. Jean spoke about receiving deep meaning and purpose in our lives.  And today, the topic is peace:  Receive peace the world cannot give.

That promise comes from Scripture – from John’s Gospel, where Jesus tells the disciples, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” (14:27).  I take great comfort in that.  In fact, that verse is on the wall in my dining room, up there with 20 photos of Ann and the kids, a print of Rembrandt’s painting of the Prodigal Son, and a painting by a parishioner imagining my wife Ann’s heavenly garden.  So, given where that verse is hanging in my house, I put a lot of stock in it – in Jesus’ promise of peace that the world cannot give.

Well, today, we don’t have that passage from John among our readings.  Instead, for our Old Testament reading, we have some verses from the Book of Job.  Job is fascinating – a 42-chapter reflection on theodicy, which is a five-dollar word meaning a vindication of God’s justice in the face of human suffering.  It can imply something like a cross examination of the Sovereign of the Universe.  How can it be, Lord, that some egregiously unjust situation is allowed to exist in your good creation?

Contrasted with that is our popular understanding of the Book of Job – that it’s a character study in patience.  That’s the source of the familiar phrase, “That person has the patience of Job.”  This sense of the story comes from just the first two chapters.  Job is a good, righteous, and very successful man, with a lovely family and deep respect in the community.  Well, Satan comes before God in the heavenly council and talks God into letting Satan mess with Job.  Basically, they make a bet about whether this good and righteous man will crack under pressure and curse the God who had blessed him so richly.  So, God gives Satan permission to ruin Job’s life, though Satan isn’t allowed to kill him.

And Satan outdoes himself.  He takes away all Job’s fortune and kills his children through enemy attacks, a storm, and a fire from heaven.  And Satan afflicts Job with awful, itchy sores all over his body.  Job’s wife, the reasonable voice in the story, tells Job to go ahead and curse God already so God will get it over with and kill him.  But Job’s famous patience shines:  “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” Job philosophizes. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” (1:21)

Our collective memory of Job’s story tends to stop there.  But where the story goes is even more interesting.  First, Job is visited by three “friends” who completely fail to comfort Job in his grief.  A quick aside:  If you don’t know what to say to someone who’s suffering, always choose to say nothing over something.  Or, better yet, just say “I’m so sorry” and “I love you.”  But don’t follow the lead of Job’s friends, who fill the silence with bad theology about how Job’s suffering is his own fault.  Job finds himself arguing with them, and with God, for 36 chapters before God finally gives a divine defense … which is, basically, who are you to be asking me to defend myself?

Along the way in Job’s argument with his bumbling friends comes today’s passage.  Christians hear it with ears tuned to the Easter story, right?  We hear Job pointing toward the risen Christ, God in the flesh, who redeems us from the power of sin and death and stands “on [our] side” eternally (Job 19:27).  But for the Jewish people who knew this story first, the message wasn’t resurrection.  Job simply wants his words to be written down, read into the court record as part of his testimony of unjust suffering.  Even better, Job says, he wants an audience with the Lord God now, on this side of the grave, so he can make his case for justice in person.

Well, here’s the spoiler alert:  Job never does curse God, so God wins the bet against Satan and doesn’t strike Job dead.  In fact, in the end, God restores Job’s earthly life with physical healing, more children, and even greater wealth.  But before the story gets there, Job demands an accounting from the Lord Most High, an explanation to satisfy his need for justice.  In a nutshell, Job’s cry is this:  “God, how could you?”  

Does that plea resonate with anybody else?

Job wants answers.  Job wants vindication.  Job wants justice.  That may seem like a lot to ask of God; but I think Jesus might say that Job wasn’t asking for enough.  Job, along with the rest of us, wants suffering to make sense.  Instead, Jesus offers us peace – peace that the world’s explanations cannot give.

As many of you know, before my wife, Ann, died nine months ago, she’d struggled with lupus for 24 years.  There was a time – in fact, there have been several times – when I wanted explanations, when I wanted to know why.  Of course, you can answer that question several ways.  Ann had a positive family history, ancestors who had “the rheumatiz”; so that part of her genetic inheritance was … suboptimal.  Maybe that DNA would have expressed itself as lupus eventually anyway.  But the presenting circumstance 24 years ago was more direct.  She received an infusion of a new medication for her diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis, and a couple of weeks later she was in the hospital with a raging lupus flare, which nearly killed her.

We never pressed it.  We decided pretty early on not to invest our time and our spirits trying to prove that this drug had induced lupus for her.  From one point of view, maybe that was stupid.  Maybe there would have been a nice settlement.  But we decided that wasn’t how we wanted to spend the remaining time we had together, striving for legal justice and trying to get even.  We invested in living instead.

Why am I telling you this?  Because of the point I hear Jesus making in today’s Gospel reading.  What I hear is this:  There’s more to finding peace than meets the eye.  In fact, what truly brings us peace is precisely not what meets the eye.

In today’s reading, Jesus is being questioned by Jewish legal scholars from the sect of the Sadducees, the opponents of their more-famous spiritual cousins, the Pharisees.  What sets the Sadducees apart is that they didn’t believe in the resurrection of the dead, while the Pharisees did.

So, these Sadducees think they’ve pinned Jesus to the wall theologically by presenting a case that turns resurrection into a joke.  You can almost hear these guys chuckling as they pose it.   If a woman marries seven brothers who die in sequence, whose wife will she be in the resurrection – “for the seven had married her” (Luke 20:23).  Huh, huh, huh.

Jesus responds not by joining their argument from the absurd but by offering deep trust in the greatest hope God offers: eternal life, on God’s terms.  What’s important isn’t whose wife the woman will be, Jesus says.  In fact, those in heaven “neither marry nor are given in marriage,” Jesus says, so the point is moot anyway (20:35).  What’s important is that “those who are considered worthy of a place … in the resurrection from the dead … cannot die anymore because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection” (Luke 20:35-36).  “And the fact that the dead are raised” is proven by the lawyers’ own Scriptures, Jesus says, which name Yahweh as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – not long-dead historical characters but living dwellers in God’s paradise – “for to him, all of them are alive” (Luke 10:38).

Hmmm.  Now, I don’t know about any of the rest of you widows and widowers out there, but I want to take Jesus aside for a second.  I’ve always kind of assumed one of the benefits of eternal life is getting to continue building relationships with the people you love most.  I’d like for that to include my spouse.  But marriage as we know it apparently doesn’t simply roll over into marriage eternally, based on what Jesus says here.  And what should we make of that?  Well, it makes sense, actually.  Given that we can’t know the specifics of anything about heaven, why would we think we can know the specifics of how heavenly relationships work? So, given that, I’ll trust God to work out the details of my eternal relationship with Ann.

What I do know is this:  It sure can seem satisfying to put God in the witness stand and demand answers for the mystery of unjust suffering.  It sure can seem satisfying to make someone pay when life goes sideways, when caregivers’ best efforts fail.  It sure can seem satisfying to shove eternity into a little box, demanding answers in our suffering because meager certainty now seems to beat astonishing hope later.

For me, I’ll take hope over certainty any day.  I’ll take the Christian spin we put on Job’s cry to God, proclaiming what we say at every funeral:  “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth”; and that “after my awakening, he will raise me up; and in my body, I shall see God … who is my friend and not a stranger” (BCP 491).  I’ll take releasing my bitterness over Ann’s illness rather than working for a check from a legal settlement.  And I’ll take the assurance that this life is just a warm-up for the eternity of loving relationship that awaits us, despite the fact I don’t know what that looks like.  

I’ll take all that because, at least for me, the world’s answers are overrated, and “certainty” turns out to be nothing but today’s best guess.  Instead, I’ll choose to trust that God makes good on God’s promises, even if I can’t quite see how.  And in that trust, with my heart untroubled and unafraid, I’m glad to take a breath and say thank you for peace the world cannot give.

Jump in the Offering Plate

Sermon for Oct. 26, 2025
Luke 18:9-14

Here we are in the third week of this preaching series on how giving and receiving unlocks a flow of blessing between us and God.  Today’s topic, and the theme of this week’s readings in the stewardship-season devotional guide, is this:  Give God a share of the blessings God has given you.

Hmmm.  “Give God a share of the blessings God has given you.”  On the surface, those words sound like they make sense.  But have you ever thought how crazy it is that we would offer God anything?  What is it exactly that the creator of the universe needs?  I think about something my mother used to say, when she was considering what to get my grandmother for Christmas or a birthday.  Mom would sigh and say, “My mother gave me life, and I’m giving her a handkerchief?”  I think our relationship with our heavenly Parent is something like that.  There’s just nothing we can give that measures up to the gift we’ve received.

Clearly, then, it’s not about the gift.  Instead, it must be the giving that God values.  So, what would God like to see us offer?  Maybe our worship gives us a clue in the offertory sentences, those snippets of Scripture that the Prayer Book gives the presider to say just before the anthem and the offering.  Here’s one of the best:  “Offer to God a sacrifice of thanksgiving, and make good your vows to the Most High” (BCP 376; Psalm 50:14).

So, one thing we know that God wants is our gratitude.  And we offer that gratitude every time we gather here for worship – not just in our prayers and our hymns but in the work we do at the altar.  Every Sunday, we come here and bring Jesus’ sacrifice into our present moment.  We remember that God has given everything for us, God‘s own life, in order to give us life forever.  We call it Eucharist because, in Greek, that word means “thanksgiving.”  When we remember what God has done for us, and who we are as a result, “thank you” is really all we can say.

Where we can be creative and generous is in how we say, “Thank you.”  Here in this stewardship season, when we consider how to give God a share of the blessings we’ve received, money often takes center stage.  That’s not wrong.  Not only is the church trying to plan a ministry budget for next year, but giving money is one of the richest spiritual practices we can offer.  I talked about that a little bit last week in my interview.  But I want to go deeper today and share with you how my experience of giving to God has changed – especially in the past eight months.

I see a parallel between my experience and what we heard in the Gospel reading this morning.  I find myself identifying with the Pharisee in Jesus’ parable – the one who judges the sinful tax collector and wears his spiritual practices like medals.  I don’t think it’s so much the Pharisee’s self-righteousness that feels familiar to me … although, just saying that is a sign of my self-righteousness.  It’s not even so much the way the Pharisee checks the boxes on righteousness that feels familiar to me … although, I am afflicted by that trait, too.  I think Jesus’ deep critique of the Pharisee has to do with his pride, which, by the way, is another way of saying “original sin.”  And it’s in pride where I see an intersection with my own story of giving back to God.

It probably won’t surprise you to hear that I’ve been a rule-follower most of my life, and that certainly applies to my life as a steward.  As a kid, I put my coins in the mite box like I was supposed to.  When Ann and I joined a church after we got married, we made a pledge.  It was a tiny pledge, but it was a pledge.  I sang in the choir, so I was giving some time and dubious talent, too.  All that was right and good.

But deeper down, when I look back at my stewardship in years past, what I see is someone who didn’t feel any need to give beyond meeting an obligation.  Spiritually, I kind of figured I had my bases covered.  I mean, I was going to church; I was making a pledge; I paid my taxes; I wasn’t hurting anybody; I was honest in my work; I loved my wife and kids.  I figured my salvation wasn’t much at risk.

It didn’t occur to me that I might have a more immediate need than “getting into heaven.”  It didn’t occur to me that God might be offering deeper meaning, and purpose, and wholeness, and healing – after all, being made safe, and whole, and well lies at the root of what that word salvation means.  That kind of salvation in the here and now was waiting for me … just on the other side of the pride that said, “I’m fine God, thank you very much.”

In the decades since, as life has taken its toll on my self-assurance, I’ve come to see that God might actually have something to offer beyond what I was offering to myself.  And that sense of wholeness and well-being has come to me, ironically, in proportion to what I’ve been willing to give of myself.

Years ago, I began a regular practice of prayer basically because I had to.  In our ordination vows, we have to say “yes” to these questions:  “Will you be diligent in the reading and study of the holy scriptures?”  And “will you persevere in prayer both in public and in private, asking God‘s grace, both for yourself and for others?” (BCP 532)  Being a rule-follower and a new priest, it seemed like I should make good on those vows.  I would read Morning Prayer and one of the Scriptures appointed for the day, and that was good.  Over time, and with the coming of smart phones, I added a walk with the dog while I listened and prayed.  I’d pray at other times, too, of course, especially coming in here for a few moments of quiet when things would go sideways.

Now fast-forward a couple of decades to eight months ago.  Among the changes that came when Ann died was that I separated Morning Prayer from walking the dog.  I started making myself a cup of coffee and sitting in Ann’s plant room to hear Morning Prayer.  That left time and space for me to offer my own prayers while I walked the dog.  It was a good change, providing more time to pray, and that pattern has held.

In fact, it’s improved, as of about a month ago. Something has shifted in my grieving over the past month; and, kind of suddenly, the future seems more like something I want to live, rather than something I have to endure.  Not coincidentally, along with that shift have come additional daily offerings of myself.  I’m now taking a walk very early in the morning — a real walk, not the dog’s time to stop and sniff.  It’s great both for exercise and for silent reflection, to go along with Morning Prayer and my own prayers while walking the dog.  Plus, I’m being much more intentional about what I eat and what I drink than I’ve ever been before.

Why am I telling you all this?  Because this extra time in prayer and extra attention to self-care has been some of the best stewardship I’ve ever practiced.  In a sense, it has cost me something.  I lose a couple of hours each morning that I used to use for work.  So, yes, that means I’m getting less done.  But it also means I’m going deeper in my relationship with the One I’ve supposedly been working for all along, and that really seems right and good.  It feels like a gift offered to the One who created me, and redeemed me, and sustains me – and who, presumably, would prefer I stuck around a while.

And, like all true gifts, this time and self-care is a gift to the giver, as well.  That happens on two levels.  Stewarding myself better improves my well-being, and my outlook, and my day-to-day sense of hope.  But the blessing also runs deeper, and here’s where it connects to today’s reading.  Offering myself to God reminds me who I am.  It reminds me that I’m better off choosing not to be the Pharisee but the tax collector in today’s parable – admitting that I need God‘s grace, rather than thinking I’m healed well enough on my own.

The truth about stewardship is that God doesn’t just want your money.  God wants your life.  And that’s because God wants to walk alongside you through it, not to grade you on your progress but to lead you to healing waters.  Following that path means turning away from all kinds of things but particularly the pride of self-reliance, choosing to rest in the humility of dependence instead.

None of that is new information, right?  You know all this.  But it can be so hard to hang onto it, especially when our wiring and our culture turn us toward self-reliance instead.  So, how can we remember the call?  How can we remember to follow the advice of another one of the Prayer Book’s offertory sentences, to “present [our]selves as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (BCP 376; Romans 12:1)?  How do we do that?

Well, years ago, I learned from my spiritual director a way to think differently about this part of our worship we rarely consider, the offertory.  You know, every Sunday, we pass the plate and offer our gifts.  It’s a great symbol of our call to give God a portion of what God has given us.  But with a slight twist, passing the plate can become even more deeply sacramental.  The difference comes in imagining what it is that you’re putting in.  As my spiritual director told me, don’t just drop in some bills, or a check, or your token of electronic giving.  Instead, put your whole self in the offering plate.

I get it:  That’s a lot to ask.  But, ironically, it’s also the one gift that each of us has to offer in an equal amount.  In addition, it’s the gift that God values most – the fullness of who you are.  And, of course, as with all true gifts, the blessing flows back to the giver, too.  Trust me:  The more of yourself you offer, the more of yourself God heals.