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.

Giving Thanks and Praise ... for Loving our Enemies

Sermon for Oct. 12, 2025
2 Kings 5:1-15c; Luke 17: 11-19

Well, the Scripture we’ve heard this morning may seem like an odd start to a preaching series for a season of stewardship.  After all, there’s not a pledge card in sight in any of those readings.

As you’ve heard me say before, stewardship isn’t just a code word for church fundraising.  Over these next six weeks, we’ll be reflecting on the way giving and receiving let blessings flow.  It’s a cycle we know well, if we stop and think about it.  God gives us everything we have and everything we know – from the food that we eat to the love that sustains us.  And when we see how richly we’re blessed, we have a choice to make: try to hold onto those gifts, or let them flow through us to pay blessing forward.  In God’s economy, the only choice that makes sense is not to hoard but to invest.

So, for the first three weeks of this stewardship season, both in sermons and in the weekly devotional guide coming to your mailbox, we’ll consider how we give.  Then, in the last three weeks, we’ll consider how we receive – and, I hope, marvel at it.

For today, and in this week’s devotions, the focus is giving God thanks and praise.  It comes first because giving thanks and praise is where our part in the cycle of blessing starts.  We can’t be conduits of blessing without seeing that those blessings come from the Source of all things – and that sure as heck isn’t us.  Yes, God graciously collaborates with us, making us instruments in the cycle of blessing.  But by giving God thanks and praise, we remind ourselves who God is and where we stand in the pecking order – that all we have was God’s first.

But giving God thanks and praise also reminds us who we are, which is God’s beloved, no matter what.  Now, we’re pretty good at putting up boundaries to say otherwise.  Sometimes we put boundaries around ourselves, insisting we aren’t worthy of that kind of love.  Sometimes we put boundaries around others, whomever we see as not like me, insisting they aren’t worthy of that kind of love.  It’s brokenness we show early on.  I remember marking out a boundary with my sister when we were kids and we had to share a room on a trip.  We’d run masking tape down the middle of the room, insisting you stay over there and I’ll stay over here – exiling each other from the one most like us in the world.  As a nation, we’re in a moment of intensely marking out my side of the room from your side of the room.  Meanwhile, God the parent looks at us, and shakes God’s head, and says, “You’ll be happier coming together instead.  Maybe you could try remembering that you’re siblings, not strangers.”  From God’s point of view, our relationship with God and with each other is one long story of moving from exclusion to embrace – and then, shocked when it actually happens, giving God thanks and praise that both we and “they” truly are beloved after all.

In our readings this morning, we hear about people once on the outside being brought in.  First is the long and wonderful story of the healing of Naaman, a military commander for the king of Aram, in present-day Syria.  Naaman has a contagious skin condition, making him a pariah among his people despite his status.  He hears about a healer in Israel, the prophet Elisha; and Naaman petitions his king to set up a healing through royal channels, which turns into a royal misunderstanding.  When cooler heads prevail, Naaman and his entourage come to the house of Elisha expecting the honor of pomp and circumstance.  But Elisha, seeing Naaman like any other pilgrim in need of healing, sends word that Naaman should just go wash in the Jordan River.  Naaman takes it as a snub; but his servants convince him to give the bath a try.  So, Naaman comes out of the water with his skin made new – and his heart, too.  He realizes he didn’t need status or power to come before the God of Israel.  He was simply welcomed in and cared for like any other beloved child.

And the experience transforms Naaman.  As he says at the end of the reading: “Now I know there is no God in all the earth except in Israel” (2 Kings 5:15).  And a few verses after what we heard today, Namaan takes his thanks and praise one step further.  He asks for two loads of earth from Israel to take home with him, so he can worship Yahweh on the Lord’s home turf, even in a distant land.  Naaman comes for a cure but finds so much more – the healing that comes when we see ourselves as children of a common God.

Then, in the Gospel reading, Jesus takes God’s mission to the outsiders several steps further, moving toward those on a border.  Jesus is in “the region between Samaria and Galilee” – a religious no-man’s land.  Remember, in the eyes of the Jews, the Samaritans were the worst kind of outsiders: They shared a common history but then went apostate, mixing Judaism with the religions of their occupiers and captors.  Family feuds are the worst conflicts of them all; and by this point, the Jews and the Samaritans had been keeping one up for centuries.

So, Jesus is in this region between his tribe and “them,” the Samaritans, when he comes across these 10 people with contagious skin conditions.  It’s not as random as it sounds; if you look at a map of the region in Jesus’ day, there are very few towns in that area – a perfect place for a leper colony.  And the symbolism works, too:  Who’s more on the outside than a group of lepers?  And especially the Samaritan leper among them, the ultimate outsider.

So, the lepers flag down Jesus and cry out for him to heal them.  Jesus obliges and heals all 10, but then the story moves to its point: the response God expects when blessing comes to us.  One of the outcasts comes back to Jesus, and he throws himself down at Jesus’ feet, thanking him and praising God.  None of the other healed lepers comes along, just this one – and this one a Samaritan.  Jesus is scandalized:  “The other nine,” he asks, “where are they?  Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner? (Luke 17:17-18)  Clearly, he’s miffed at the ingratitude of the other nine.  But it’s also an object lesson for the disciples.  Turns out, it just might be the last person you’d expect who gives God the truest thanks and praise.  It just might be that the “other” is on the same spiritual page as you.

God is always crossing boundaries and inviting us to do the same – especially when a boundary separates us, ironically, from the people most like us in the world – our family members, our siblings.  Now, I don’t diminish at all the vast political differences we hold.  Our worldviews are diverging to such an extent that, like the Jews and the Samaritans, we can be tempted to see those differences as insurmountable.  But it just so happens that our political leaders thrive by fanning those flames of discord.  How long will Americans buy into a family feud that serves the interests of those in power?  Our “enemies” today are the same people with whom we grieved a brutal terror attack two decades ago.  Now, instead of standing together, we act like siblings running masking tape down the middle of the room.  You stay on your side, and I’ll stay on mine – and we’ll all be the smaller for it.

So – you knew this was coming, right? – we have an opportunity to do some boundary-crossing ourselves.  At Trailside Thursdays starting next Thursday, Oct. 23, we’re taking up this hard topic: Loving our enemies.  I think both the content and the process are equally important.  About the content: We’ll look at what Scripture has to say about loving our enemies, how that cornerstone of our theology supports the mission of the church, and how Christian ethics wrestles with real-world examples of dealing with enemies, issues like war and capital punishment.  Alongside the teaching, we’ll also learn how to share our hearts and minds on these topics and listen in curiosity and love.

This may sound a little scary, speaking our truth when we know others won’t agree with it.  It’s certainly easier just to be nice – we’re really good at being nice.  But it’s more loving to take our fellow parishioners seriously enough to share our perspectives and the experiences that have formed them, to be curious about the thoughts and lives of others, and to listen with open hearts.  We often wonder, in these divided times, what on earth we can do to foster healing.  I believe we can do that individually by loving the potential enemy across the room.  And I believe we can do that as a church by claiming our role as a community where civility and truth can walk hand in hand.

The good news is that we won’t be doing this on our own because the Holy Spirit will be there, right alongside us.  After all, God is the one in charge – the one who knows truth far better than we do, and loves us even when we miss the mark, and insists on gathering us all under the shadow of God’s wings, regardless.

That constant, loving presence certainly makes God worthy to receive our thanks and praise.  And offering it, we remember who we truly are.  We’re not people on this side and on that side.  We’re not people who are right and people who are wrong.  Fundamentally, we are God’s beloved, and that’s what unites us – united in thanks and praise for the love that sees beyond our boundaries, the love that beckons us all to come and be healed.

Holy Wealth Management

Sermon for Sept. 28, 2025
1 Timothy 6:6-19

There are those weeks when something happens out there in the world, and the preacher has to decide whether and how to address it.  This week, President Trump made a comment about loving enemies, or not – a core Christian teaching, as well as a call many of us are having trouble following these days.  Well, because it’s a core Christian teaching, and because we all could use some help loving our enemies, and because church should be a place where we can learn and share our struggles together – we’re going to approach this topic not with a one-way, “here’s what the rector thinks” sermon but with a class on Thursday nights, beginning Oct. 23.  It will be a chance to see what Scripture, theology, and Christian ethics have to say about loving our enemies – and, just as important, a chance to practice the art of civil discourse among ourselves.  Stay tuned for more details.

So, instead of talking about loving our enemies today, we find a much easier topic in that reading from 2 Timothy, something people love to hear about in church – money.  <Sigh.>

You know, in my strange line of work, I find myself having conversations that probably would never happen without wearing a clerical collar.  Recently, I met a young man, about 30 – so, about the same age as my kids.  This young man comes from a background of affluence.  The perks of wealth have always been his “normal,” and his mind has been set on gaining as many of them as he can.  But now, he’s wrestling with big questions about what he’s striving for.  He’s come to one of those pivot points where we ask ourselves, “What’s my life really about?”  He told me he’s made some bad decisions in the past, and he’s trying to find a way forward to the life he believes is waiting for him.

So, I asked him, “What is that?  As you see yourself out in the future, what does your best life look like?”

He said, “I guess I’m not sure.  I can tell you what I’ve always thought it looks like.  It looks like success.”

“And what’s that?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, apologetically, “I’ve never wanted to be virtuous.  I’ve always thought being good was lame.  What I’ve always wanted is power,” he said.  “I’ve figured the goal of my life is to get all the power I can on earth, to feel like God – you know, to be able to do anything you want, whenever you want.”

I was a little taken aback by his directness, but actually I was grateful for it.  So, I asked what he thinks about this God he wanted to imitate.

He smiled and said, “God is the consolation prize for people who are too scared to take power.  Following God is the way people rationalize their fear to take chances and get what they want.  After all,” he said, “the goal in life is to have as much power as possible.”

The conversation sticks with me because this young man is so clear in naming what he truly values.  Think what you will about his point of view, but he’s an articulate spokesperson for the gospel of worldly power.  And based on his upbringing, and his circle, and the values he learned while coming of age in this complicated world of ours, his devotion to the gospel of worldly power makes, well, all the sense in the world.

In our world, I think the most common currency of our drive for power is wealth – same as it ever was.  And in that reading today from 1 Timothy, the writer takes a look at wealth with his eyes wide open.  (By the way, I say “the writer” of 1 Timothy because most scholars think it was written by a later follower of Paul, not the apostle himself.)

The reading begins with some conventional wisdom about wealth.  The writer isn’t really plowing any new ground here; these are proverbs found both in the Old Testament and from ancient Greek and Roman authors.  The writer is saying, here are some things we can all agree on:  Everybody knows we bring nothing into this world, so we’ll take nothing out.  Everybody knows that having food and clothing is really all it takes to be content.  Everybody knows that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (6:10).

Well, we may know it, says the writer of 1 Timothy.  But what do we do about it?

Now, hit the “pause” button for a minute.  You may remember, a few Sundays ago, hearing Jesus say that “none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions” (Luke 14:33).  So, maybe we’d expect a demand for that kind of radical self-giving here in 1 Timothy, too.

Well, this letter has a different audience and a different setting than the gospels.  1 Timothy was written to a pastoral leader in one of the early churches that Paul and others had established.  The letter is concerned with church order and structure – three chapters earlier, it describes what makes a good bishop.  Scholars think the writer is dealing with Timothy’s reality on the ground, that people outside these early churches viewed followers of Jesus with suspicion at best.  So, 1 Timothy is written to teach Christians how to “enhance [the church’s] mission and image in the larger world.”¹  In other words, the letter is dealing with a complexity we know well:  How do you lead people to follow the way of love in a world that looks for every reason to reject it?

So, this letter doesn’t say Christians should give up all their possessions.  Instead, it tells the people in these early churches how they can thrive, and catch other fish, in the murky waters in which they swim.

And what does that look like?  It means being just as clear about our use of wealth as my young conversation partner was about his, but coming at it realizing that God is God, as we are not.  In fact, it means representing God’s reign and rule in this world directly through the ways we choose to use our wealth.  And that is no passive activity.  Hear the verbs the writer of 1 Timothy uses to name how we’re called to take this stand:  “Shun” wealth’s temptation to power (6:11).  “Pursue” – like, chase down – “righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance, [and] gentleness” (6:11).  “Fight the good fight of the faith” (6:12).  “Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called…” (6:12).  It turns out, using wealth as a citizen of God’s kingdom is some of the most strenuous work there is.

And what does that work look like, in lived experience?  What do we do to use wealth as ambassadors of the way of love?  The letter’s answers are as simple as they are challenging.  Don’t be haughty.  Don’t set your hopes on the uncertainty of riches but “on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment” (6:17).  “Do good … be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share” (6:18).  Using wealth this way, the letter says, we’ll store up “the treasure of a good foundation for the future” so we can “take hold of the life that really is life” (6:19).

I think the writer’s saying that it’s not about knowing what’s right; it’s about practicing holy wealth management day by day.  That’s how we “shun” and “pursue” and “fight” and “take hold” as we await the coming of our sovereign King and Lord, who will usher us into the eternity that awaits us.

Now, maybe this vigorous, rigorous call seems over the top related to something as mundane as our use of money.  But money is the ever-present token of our personal theology of power.  Our use of money is an outward and visible sign of whom we truly believe holds “dominion” (6:16) in this era between Jesus’ resurrection and his return at the end of the age.  The Christian life is not an exercise in marking time while we wait for the boss to come back.  And even less is it an opportunity to take what we can, pursuing the power that our culture and our own brokenness tell us we’re crazy not to chase.  Instead, the Christian life is following a way of love, one step after another, each one leading us closer to the Source of that love – both in the warm-up round that is this life and in the fullness of love that God wants to share with us forever.

So, back to my conversation the other day.  How would this young man respond to the argument I’ve made?  Here’s what he said:  “I wish I did believe in God.  It would give my life more meaning.  But I guess I’m not desperate enough.  People who dedicate themselves to religion are just wasting their lives.”

Who’s right?  Well, it’s all about the truth or falsehood of the fundamental proposition underlying your argument.  If there is no God, the young man is right:  We are the gods our choices make us to be, and everything you see around us here this morning is a 2,000-year-old confidence game.  But if God actually is God, then eternity is a long time to spend realizing you were wrong.

Ironically enough, how we manage wealth comes down to making a bet.  It’s called Paschal’s wager, named for Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and follower of Jesus from the 1600s.  Pascal’s wager goes like this:  When we die, if we’ve been wrong to trust that God is God and eternity is real, what’s the worst possible outcome?  Well, the worst possible outcome is that we will have worshiped an invisible friend, and loved the people around us, and missed the opportunity to grab as much as we could.  But – when we die, what if we’ve been right that God is God and eternity is real?  Well, then we will have spent our decades here just getting started on “tak[ing] hold of the life that really is life” (6:19).

1.      New International Study Bible, 2129 (note).

Your Plan to Step Off the Cliff

Sermon for Sept. 7, 2025
Luke 14:25-33

Well, if I were picking Scriptures for the Sunday of our Parish Picnic and fall kick-off, today’s Gospel reading probably wouldn’t have made the cut.  Thanks very much to the editors of the Revised Common Lectionary for making sure we don’t have too much fun today.

The setting for this reading is Jesus apparently riding a wave of popularity.  He’s been healing people, keeping the crowds spellbound with his teaching, taking on the religious leaders – and it’s all working.  Today’s reading begins with Luke saying, “Large crowds were traveling with Jesus” – he’s got ’em right where he wants ’em (14:25).  

So, what does he tell them?  The last thing any of them want to hear: “Whoever does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.  Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26-27)

That large crowd must have stTiyr ared back at him, befuddled.  “Wait – what are you talking about, Jesus?  Healing and teaching and sticking it to the man – sure, we love all that.  But what’s this about rejecting the people we love, and rejecting the lives we’ve built, and carrying a cross, for God’s sake?”

So, I imagine Jesus explaining it like this:  “You know, it’s not rocket science.  If you’re going to build a house, you shouldn’t start if you don’t know how much it’s going to cost.  If you’re a king going to war, you shouldn’t stumble into a battle against an army twice your size.”

“Sure,” says the crowd.  “What does all that have to with you – and with us?”

“Well,” Jesus says, “this way of life I’m showing you – this healing and freedom and meaning and purpose and deep peace – you don’t think it all comes for free, do you?  Have you ever received anything truly good without it costing you something?  So, along with holding your family ties loosely, here’s another tough requirement: ‘None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.’” (Luke 14:33)

<Sigh.> That would’ve looked great on the signs in the yard this morning, right?  “St. Andrew’s Parish Picnic: Have a hotdog, hate your family, and give up all your possessions.”  It’s not exactly a shiny, happy way for us to start the fall program. 

So, as the preacher, I’m thinking, “How do we make our way around this one?”  I could’ve just picked different readings, I guess, but that kind of seems like cheating.

So, let’s look at the text of this Gospel story.  Maybe Jesus doesn’t really mean it.  Maybe the Greek word for hate doesn’t really mean hate, and possessions really refers to something spiritual.

Well, nope.  The Greek word for hate means just what it does for us, the opposite of love.  Plus, we might remember that elsewhere in Scripture, Jesus tells his followers that he didn’t come to bring peace but division, fierce enough to make children turn on their parents and other family members turn on each other (Luke 12:49-53).  

OK.  Well, how about possessions?  Any wiggle room there?  No, the Greek word for possessions means just what it does for us – the stuff we accumulate as we try to build meaning and security on our own terms.  Plus, we might remember that Jesus says the same thing about giving up possessions to two individuals who want to follow him (e.g., Matthew 19:21); and that, in the Book of Acts, the early Church actually decides to live that way, sharing what they have equally, as anyone has need (Luke 2:43-47).

Hmmm.  So, how else can we soften the blow?  How about we write it off to hyperbole?  Now, there, we do find a foothold, at least.  Jesus, the master teacher, certainly worked in hyperbole to make his points, like great communicators of all times.  Abraham Lincoln called the United States “the last, best hope of earth” – a great line and one we still remember, but a claim even the staunchest Union supporter might have said was a little overblown.  Well, Jesus used hyperbole all the time.  When he said, “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out,” he wasn’t really advocating self-mutilation (Matthew 5:29).  So, maybe we can write off today’s Gospel to hyperbole…?

Or, maybe, hyperbole is in the ear of the beholder.  The amazing thing about Scripture is that the Holy Spirit can take precisely the same words and use them to tailor messages to each and every person who hears those words.  It’s the blessing of interpretation – and it’s evidence that God’s more interested in reaching each of us as we need to be reached, rather than issuing strict policy statements.

I remember talking with my priest when I was discerning the call to ordained ministry because I worried about what that would do to my family.  Quitting my job, selling our house, losing three years’ income, moving Ann away from her mother, uprooting the kids and setting them up for several future moves – it seemed like a lot to put them through.  But my priest mentioned something about Jesus teaching things like … well, what we heard today.  But she wasn’t saying I should reject my family and become a monk.  She was reminding me that even the best thing, even what you love most, can become an idol if you hold onto it too tightly.  And, she was saying, following Jesus means making hard choices, trusting God deeply, and stepping off the cliff sometimes.

In contrast, I think about what the Holy Spirit led one of my best friends to do in response to this same kind of teaching from Jesus.  This is my aptly named friend Faith, one of my Six Pack of friends from seminary.  After we all graduated and were ordained, Faith served as assistant rector in one church and then was called to serve as rector of another.  She’s a strong, excellent leader, and the parish was growing as it followed her in following Jesus.  But Faith started hearing a call to a different vocation.  So, long story short, she is still a priest and but also now an Episcopal nun in the Order of St. Helena.  Faith quit the job with her parish, gave up any hope of future income, sold her possessions, relocated to a different state, moved into a house with the other sisters, and changed her name to Sister Miriam.  She heard Jesus calling her to renounce her affiliations and possessions and to take a vow of poverty, chastity, and obedience.  Her story played out differently than mine, but it came from the same call: to make hard choices, trust God deeply, and step off the cliff sometimes.

I’m not saying you’re called to the religious life.  But I am saying we’re all called to a spiritual life.  Now, how God is calling you is different from how God is calling the person sitting next to you.  But we’re all called to listen – to join God in a conversation and discern what your next steps might be.

It turns out, we have a practical way for you to do that, and you won’t be on your own.  This Thursday, we’re starting a five-week learning opportunity called Creating My Spiritual-Growth Plan.  We’ll start by considering what “spirituality” even means, led by the Rev. Lisa Senuta, the canon for spiritual life in the Diocese of Kansas.  Mtr. Lisa says that, for her, spirituality is “what we do to grow in our values and faith,” so we’ll talk about how we can each live that out in our own lives.  Then, Mtr. Rita, Mtr. Jean, and I will lead sessions about exploring our relationships with God, with others, and with ourselves.  And finally, Deacon Adam and I will help you consider how you can use your gifts, your resources, and your own wiring to create a plan to build up your spiritual well-being.

Each of us will do that differently.  Think about it the way you’d think about a plan to strengthen your physical well-being.  How that looks depends on where you are, right?  If you’re just starting to recover from a serious illness, then getting out of bed, sitting in a chair, and walking down the hall is true progress.  But if you run half-marathons and want to run a whole one, then … well, I have no idea what that training might look like, but I’m sure it’s intense.  Well, by the same token, for your spiritual growth, what you need is not for someone to hand you some prepackaged plan; what you need is to discern the plan that fits you and your life.

That’s what we’ll do over the next five weeks.  In the entryway or over at the picnic, you can get a copy of the workbook we’ll use for this class.  It’s titled Living Intentionally.

I think that’s a title Jesus would embrace.  In this hard reading this morning, however you want to make sense of his language about hating your family and giving up all your possessions, at the very least Jesus is saying we’ve got to consider intentionally the ties that bind us.  Those ties that bind us can be holy and life-giving.  Or, they can tie us down and hold us back from becoming the fully human, spiritually alive people God’s made us to become.

If we’re honest, it’s no surprise to hear that following the way of Love won’t be easy.  You can call it carrying the cross.  You can call it turning the other cheek.  You can call it loving your neighbor.  You can call it loving yourself as one made in God’s image and likeness.  You can call it speaking the truth in love.  You can call it respecting the dignity of every human being.  None of that love is easy.  But all of it builds us up, training us for the eternal life of love we long for.