I Want to See Jesus

Sermon for Sunday, March 21, 2021
John 12:20-33; chapters 7 and 9 of Love Is the Way

You know, sometimes when we read Scripture, it’s just as important to note what isn’t said as to note what is said.  I think that’s true about our Gospel reading today in its very first sentence. 

Let me set the stage.  For us, today is the fifth Sunday of Lent, and we’re beginning to anticipate Jesus’ riding into Jerusalem a week from now on Palm Sunday, the start of Holy Week.  But in today’s Gospel reading, it is Palm Sunday, just after Jesus has ridden into Jerusalem challenging the religious and political authorities.  In fact, in the verse before today’s reading, the Pharisees have looked around at the crowds and said, “You see, [we] can do nothing.  Look, the world has gone after him!” (John 12:19).

And as proof, the scene shifts to “some Greeks” who are also in Jerusalem for the Passover festival (John 12:20).  Now, when the New Testament talks about “Greeks,” it doesn’t just mean people from Greece.  It means outsiders – non-Jews, people who were part of the Hellenistic culture of the Roman Empire.  So, these outsiders come to one of the disciples, and they say, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (12:20).

Interestingly, the reading doesn’t say the Greeks wanted answers to deep theological questions.  Now, if we’d been there, we might have asked any number of questions – maybe, “How does eternal life work?” or “Who gets into heaven?” or “How good do I really have to be?”  But answers aren’t what these outsiders wanted.  Instead, they wanted simply “to see Jesus” – to talk with him, to experience him, to bask in God’s loving presence.

For the past several weeks, we’ve been reading our presiding bishop’s book, Love Is the Way.  In one of the chapters for today, Bishop Curry describes an experience he had with an outsider, an outsider of the worst kind – someone who was dealing drugs and dealing death in the church’s neighborhood in Baltimore. 

Bishop Curry and his congregation had done great work to reach the people around them – inviting neighborhood kids to breakfast and Sunday school, preaching on street corners, singing Christmas carols to folks in the alleys.  Well, one of the “bad guys” in the neighborhood had heard them singing in the streets, and he came to church wanting to talk to the priest. 

Michael Curry did not share the young man’s desire for a conversation.  In fact, he was angry with this young man, who represented all the problems afflicting the neighborhood.  But the young man came to church, and Curry started meeting with him.  Eventually, the young man said, “Tell me about Jesus.”  Curry’s anger turned to surprise and then to some shame for not having talked about Jesus before, instead trying to come up with community resources to help the young man deal with his problems.  (I’m pretty sure that’s exactly what I would have done, too.)  But the young man was after more than social services:  “Tell me about Jesus,” he said.  And several conversations later, Curry was baptizing this young man into a life-changing commitment to “renounce Satan,” to renounce “the evil powers of this world,” and instead “to follow and obey [Jesus] as [his] Lord” (BCP 302-303).¹

What would we do in a similar situation?  How would we respond if someone we considered an enemy wanted to sit down with us and find out about this Jesus we worship? 

As we try to wrap our heads around that one, let’s shift the question so it strikes even closer to home:  Bring to mind someone who’s on the opposite side from you on nearly every issue – someone who thinks the political leader you can’t stand is a witness for all that’s just and true.  Now, what would you do if this person, someone who’s “the other” in that way – what would you do if that person wanted to know how you see God, how you see Jesus? 

I think how we see Jesus underlies much of our disagreement about social issues and public policy as Christians.  On the one hand, some see Jesus witnessing against those who wield power through unjust and oppressive social structures.  On the other hand, some see Jesus reinforcing American exceptionalism, proclaiming rugged individualism as the good news of freedom for God’s children.  Could those people sit down together and talk about how they see Jesus?  Could they have a conversation about how they understand our society and our nation, and how their faith in Jesus Christ might shape that?

In his book, Presiding Bishop Curry describes a meeting of the primates of the Anglican Communion, the archbishops leading Anglican Christians around the world.  This meeting took place just after the American Episcopal Church had changed its rules about marriage.  The same month in 2015 that the Supreme Court decided all people have a right to marry the person they love, The Episcopal Church’s General Convention voted to take gender-specific language out of our rules and allow marriages of same-sex couples.  Soon after that, Bishop Curry went to his first meeting with the other leaders of the Anglican Communion, where he had to defend this change to his colleagues, most of whom disagreed with him vehemently.

It’s a great story, as the presiding bishop tells it.  But to cut to the chase, here’s what the Anglican leaders did:  They chose to hang in there with each other.  They spent time getting to know each other and built relationships.  Eventually, they compromised on some sanctions the American Church would have to endure.  And finally, most important, they decided to keep “walking together” as followers of Jesus.  They didn’t deny the distance that separated them as they kept to opposite sides of a common path, but they chose to keep walking together in the same direction.²  For people who like clear rulings and decisive action, this might seem pretty lame.  But I think it was brilliant – and, by the way, holy.

I believe “walking together” is a great metaphor for what we need to do in our parish, in our Episcopal Church, and in our nation – bravely choosing to be on the same path despite the distance between us, choosing to value each other even when we don’t understand each other.  You know, as it turned out, the Greeks who came to see Jesus didn’t end up understanding him just the same way as his Jewish followers did.  Christianity morphed as it spread through the Empire, as Greek philosophy and Roman culture bled into the witness of Palestinian Jews … and that was OK.  It created a movement that was stronger because of its breadth but that still held Christ as its core.  For us now, regardless of how we each see Jesus, we share the core of his Great Commandment:  Because God is love, we are called to love – to love God, and neighbor, and one another.  Everything else is theological reflection on that truth.

Here’s something else we have in common, regardless of the differences that put distance between us.  Not a one of us walked the dusty roads of Palestine 2,000 years ago.  We’re all Greeks.  We’re all outsiders.  We’re all still asking to see Jesus so we, too, can glimpse the heart of God.

That truth came out in a webinar I saw last week about “people of faith building bridges from polarization to reconciliation.”  It featured someone I admire very much – former Missouri Sen. John Danforth.  As many of you know, Jack Danforth served in the U.S. Senate for 18 years and, after his retirement, was ambassador to the United Nations and a special envoy to Sudan.  Jack Danforth is also an Episcopal priest, and his faith and discipleship have undergirded all his service.  The webinar was a conversation between the senator and Fr. Matt Malone, a Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, writer, and editor of America magazine.  I want to share with you a snippet of Sen. Danforth’s comments – a brief theological reflection on the truth that unites us:

One thing we have to say is … truth, from the standpoint of Christianity, … is not an ideology; it’s certainly not a political ideology.  Truth is a person, and the person is Christ, whom we meet in love and through whom we meet others in love.  A second point is to understand that our political opponent, somebody who totally disagrees with us, is made in the image of God.  This is a child of God we’re talking about; it’s not a thing.  It’s not a political position.  This is a human being created in the image of God.³

And walking alongside that human being created in the image of God, we step closer and closer toward seeing the truth that is Jesus Christ. 

Similarly, in his book, Bishop Curry recalls working with the Archbishop of Canterbury as they prepared for the Royal Wedding.  A reporter asked them how they could work together when they didn’t see eye to eye on marriage equality for LGBTQ people.  So Bishop Curry pointed to the archbishop and said, “This is my brother, [and] we follow Jesus.  [Jesus] teaches us the way of love; he didn’t teach us the way of agreement.  That love dominates our relationship, not our agreements or disagreements.”⁴ 

So, if you’re still looking for a little spiritual practice here at the end of this Lenten season, here’s a challenge to try out.  In our common walk to see Jesus, when you encounter a potential enemy, acknowledge the distance between you on the path.  But instead of politely easing away from this person you might see as “the other,” take a step or two closer.  Choose conversation over polite silence.  Listen for the passion that brings this child of God to walk the same road you’re walking.  Don’t agree to disagree.  Instead, agree to love in disagreement.  And when you do, you’ll see Jesus just that much more clearly.

1.      Curry, Michael.  Love Is the Way: Holding on to Hope in Troubling Times.  New York: Avery, 2020.  155-159.

2.      Curry, 194-204.

3.      John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics.  “Interpersonal Relations Across Political Divides: People of Faith Building Bridges from Polarization to Reconciliation. John C. Danforth and Matt Malone in Conversation.”  Available at: https://rap.wustl.edu/events/interpersonal-relations-across-political-divides/.  Specific clip is 35:43 to 36:42, beginning at https://youtu.be/On--7MF8lfc?t=2142.  Accessed March 19, 2021. 

4.      Curry, 205.

 

The Gospel of the Long Game

Sermon for Feb. 28, 2021
Genesis 17:1-7,15-16; Mark 8:31-38

Welcome to week 2 of our sermon series on the book Love is the Way, by our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry.  Today, we’re considering chapters 4 through 6, where his reflection on the power of love gets a little more personal for us.  Bishop Curry moves from asking “can love really change the world?” to asking “I’m just a regular person – can my love have an impact?” 

Well, you know, if we ask ourselves, “What can I do to change the world,” most of us will stop dead in our tracks.  But if we ask ourselves, “Who can I be for the people around me?” – well, maybe we can live into an answer to that one.  I think Bishop Curry would say we are nothing less than God’s conduits, delivering the power of Love that gives itself away.

Going down that road, we’re following in the footsteps of some unlikely world-changers.  In our first reading today, we eavesdrop on Abram and God, who’ve already talked twice before this story.  Earlier, God promised children to Abram, and a woman he held in slavery had borne their son, Ishmael.  Well, that was one way to make good on the promise of descendants, but it wasn’t the answer Abram was looking for.  Now, God formalizes that promise by making a covenant with Abram and his wife, Sarai.  God says, “You shall be” not just the ancestor of a nation, Abram; “you shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations” (Genesis 17:4).  And to mark this pivot point in history, God gives them new names – Abram, the “exalted ancestor,” becomes Abraham, the “ancestor of a multitude.”¹  And Sarai becomes Sarah, meaning “princess.”²  The new names mark a turn in the lives of these characters:  They won’t just change the future for their nation; they’ll change the future for peoples yet to come.

Then, of course, we hear from Jesus in the Gospel reading, the Son of God taking a path that even his chief lieutenant thinks is crazy.  After a section of Mark’s Gospel where Jesus has been healing people, and walking on water, and confronting the religious leaders, and feeding thousands, Jesus now drops the news his followers least expected:  His path to bringing in the reign and rule of God goes through Calvary.  There’s a cross awaiting him … and not just him.  “If any want to become my followers,” Jesus says, “let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me” (8:34).  And Peter says, wait a minute, Jesus.  We thought we were heading to glory.  We thought we were changing the world.  Now you’re telling us that we’re giving up everything, giving up our lives, in the hope that things will get better later?

Abraham and Jesus are both playing the long game.  They’re both practitioners of the spirituality of tomorrow.  They’re both seed planters, as Bishop Curry says.  Abraham is never going to see the nations that will rise as his descendants.  Jesus is willing to be the seed himself, the grain of wheat that dies in order to bear the fruit of eternal life (John 12:24).  His followers, like Peter and Andrew, then take the promise of the kingdom on the road, to the Roman world and beyond, dying themselves without seeing the end of the story they’re preaching. 

Well, let me tell you about some other practitioners of the spirituality of tomorrow – other folks who play the long game of God’s kingdom.

As you know, we’ve begun a Lenten class in civil discourse.  Our leader, Ann Rainey, asked the 25 people on the Zoom call to say briefly why they were there.  Many of the responses reflected frustration with conversations, social media, and culture now, as well as class members’ grief that they just can’t stay in relationship with friends or family who say objectionable things.  But along with this frustration and grief, I heard shared faith that the act of offering themselves for this experience might be
the start of a change.  As any educator knows, learning, by definition, is change; and applying what we learn can change the world around us.  In Bishop Curry’s book, he quotes a Jewish proverb that says, “Before every person, there marches an angel proclaiming, ‘Behold, the image of God’” (95-96).  Archbishop Desmond Tutu has asked what we would do if we took seriously that notion that every person is made in God’s image and likeness.  What would we do?  We would bow to every person we meet³ – even those whose points of view we can’t abide.  In trying to build that skill, I think the folks in the civil-discourse class are playing the long game, practicing the spirituality of tomorrow.

Here's another example, a community leader profiled in last Sunday’s Kansas City Star: Alvin Brooks.  If you’ve been around Kansas City any length of time, you know that name.  Alvin Brooks grew up in here in the 1930s and ’40s in a world of strict segregation – something he learned directly as a boy when he and some white friends walked into a drug store on the border between a black and white neighborhood and ordered themselves cherry Cokes.  The White druggist made him take his Coke in a paper cup out on the sidewalk.⁴  Since then, Brooks has made it his life’s work to bring people together to confront and upend injustice. 

           He did that as one of a handful of Black police officers here in the 1960s.  Once, he was hanged in effigy, called the N-word, and told to go home.  Fellow police officers cut down the effigy, took it back to the station, and set it at a desk, thinking that was funny.  Brooks’ father asked him why he would want to be a police officer here, saying, “You know how they treat us.”  But, Brooks said, his thought was that he would show them how to “be a better cop.”  From there, Brooks served with the school district, served as the city’s director of human relations and assistant city manager, served on the Board of Police Commissioners, served on the City Council, and became mayor pro tem.  And maybe most significantly, he founded the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime, which for decades has provided crisis intervention and crime prevention, supporting families affected by violence.⁵  

In all this, he’s pushed against seemingly immovable forces, but he’s done it Jesus-style.  Here’s how one of our city’s greatest religious leaders, the Rev. Wallace Hartsfield, described Brooks:  He said, “Alvin deliberately takes up the pain of others.  He doesn’t have to do that.  He has his own pain.  But he has surrendered his life for others, and that is the secret to his strength.”⁵  Alvin Brooks has spent decades changing the world one life at a time.

        Here’s another example, a Kansas City leader from a younger generation: Natasha Kirsch.  You know her work if, like me, you take your dog to The Grooming Project.  Natasha created The Grooming Project and the organization behind it, Empower the Parent to Empower the Child, or EPEC.  Most of you have heard about EPEC and its training program, where single moms can learn a profession that actually pays a living wage.  It’s worked so well that its dog-grooming facility is now expanding, and EPEC is building apartments for students who need housing as they go through the program.

Natasha’s gift – one of her gifts, at least – is that she figured out how to use the world as she found it to change women’s lives.  Yes, many people in our culture probably care more about their dogs than they care about hungry people on the street, or about moms who don’t earn a living wage.  That’s not good, and we need to keep moving away from our “our blindness to human need and suffering, and our indifference to injustice…,” as we prayed on Ash Wednesday (BCP 268).  And, at the same time, Natasha looked at the fact that I’m willing to pay $40 to get Petey groomed, and she figured out how to use that to train a mom for a job that will pay her a living wage.  Natasha is changing the world, one life at a time.

Here's a final example of someone playing the long game and practicing the spirituality of tomorrow.  I know a businessman here at St. Andrew’s who, politically, has a pretty conservative bent; he finds that this approach to public policy works best for his small business.  He also invests himself in the people who work for him.  In fact, he intentionally hires people of color and people with sketchy histories.  And then, he takes the time to get to know them –  learning their stories, learning their gifts, guiding them when he can.  I don’t know whether he’d frame it like this, but I’d say that by taking his employees so seriously, he’s seeing in each worker the image and likeness of God.  As a result, their lives improve – and, by the way, his business benefits because his workers know he’s invested in them.  That’s changing the world, one life at a time.

So, what do these examples have in common?  They flesh out our story.  As Bishop Curry says, “To pray and to work for the way things could be ….  That’s the hard way of love.” (79)  Their story also can be your story, a narrative any of us can step into.  In fact, it’s a narrative we’re each called to step into, in our own ways. 

You can change the world because you have the two fundamental capacities required for it.  First, you are made in the image and likeness of God, filled with power to accomplish God’s purposes.  And second, you can make the choice to recognize that divinity in everyone else around you.  You can invest yourself in real, live human beings who also bear God’s image and likeness.  For a few of us, that happens by leading a movement or starting a nonprofit.  But it also happens by putting yourself out there to serve someone who needs justice or who needs a second chance.  And, I’d say, it happens through your engagement in our democracy – when the way you vote seeks solutions, progressive or conservative solutions, that share this priority: putting first the well-being of the folks who get the short end of the stick.  That’s the test.

I guarantee you that you can change the world by being the person you are, living into the identity, the new name, God gave you in baptism.  If you’ve come through those baptismal waters, you share in the Spirit of the incarnate God who changed the world by giving his life for the people around him, even the ones who didn’t deserve it … which is all of us.  You have the capacity to “[set] your mind on divine things [not] on human things” (Mark 8:33), practicing the love that gives itself away by changing one life at a time.  

It’s the Gospel of the long game.  You may not see the harvest, but you’re called to plant the seeds.  And, as Bishop Curry says, even though the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second-best time is now (120). 

1.       The HarperCollins Study Bible.  Text note on Genesis 17:5.  New York: Harper Collins, 1993. 26.

2.       Speiser, E.A. Genesis.  In The Anchor Bible, volume 1.  Text note on Genesis 17:15.  New York: Doubleday, 1964. 123.

3.       Tutu, Desmond.  In God's Hands: The Archbishop of Canterbury's Lent Book 2015.  New York: Bloomsbury, 2014.  22.

4.       Schirmer, Sherry Lamb.  A City Divided: The Racial Landscape of Kansas City, 1900-1960. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2002.  179.

5.       Williams, Mara Rose.  “Alvin Brooks and Kansas City: A love story imperiled by racism, saved by service.”  The Kansas City Star, Feb. 21, 2021.  Available at: https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article249015770.html. Accessed Feb. 26, 2021.

 

Look Satan in the Eye

Sermon for Feb. 21, 2021
Mark 1:9-15

We’re beginning a preaching series today on the book Love is the Way by the presiding bishop of The Episcopal Church, Michael Curry.¹  And in this season of Lent, when many of us are giving up something we enjoy that’s really tasty, it seems almost unkind that Michael Curry spends much of Chapter 3 of his book describing his grandmother’s cooking. 

            Now, what do I know about soul food?  From direct experience? – not much, other than to say that soul food is what you find down at Niece’s, just south of Meyer and Troost, which also has maybe the best breakfast in Kansas City.  Of course, as Bishop Curry describes, this wonderfully rich and satisfying food originated from the scraps that kept the slaves alive, trash more fit for hogs than humans.  After emancipation and the abolition of slavery, these scraps were the food most Black people could afford, given that what they had was “nothing but freedom,” as historian Eric Foner describes it.²  But, as Bishop Curry says, his ancestors made those scraps into something new and wonderful, seasoning them richly and cooking them with an artist’s touch.  “My ancestors took a little and made a lot,” Curry writes.  “They took what was left over and made sure no one was left out. … That’s a miracle.  That’s taking what is old and making something new.” (55)    

Curry describes soul food to help us see what he means by “making do,” which is how he answers what I think is the most compelling question in these first three chapters of his book.  Here it is:  “How do I find the energy to keep loving when the world seems to be going the other way?” (50).  Well, we find the capacity for that by “making do” – living in what Curry calls the “miraculous mixture of hardship and hope” (50); “making garbage gourmet.” (56) 

            The Black experience in America, and here in Kansas City, is certainly a study in that.  But we also heard about a “making do” experience in today’s Gospel reading.  This is one of those readings that we hear and then, piously and politely, we try to ignore the elephant in the living room.  Well, here’s the elephant:  When Jesus is baptized, a voice comes from heaven pronouncing, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:11).  But then, one breath later, we hear this:  “The Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness.  He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan.” (1:12-13)  Really?  This is what you get when you’re God’s Son, the “beloved”?  That’s what God’s love looks like – being driven into the wilderness?

Well, Bishop Curry’s book might help us with this.  When he says his ancestors were “making do,” that doesn’t mean what it might mean for most of us – getting by, in a holding pattern, making it through a rough patch.  For Bishop Curry’s ancestors, and for many people of color today, “making do” means “figuring out how to both survive and thrive” in circumstances that history has put upon you (55).  It’s figuring out how to make soul food from the master’s scraps.  It’s figuring out how to live in the wilderness.

In today’s Gospel reading, I think that’s what Jesus is doing out there in the wilderness – “making do.”  Does he want to go spend 40 days in a wasteland, being tempted by Satan.  I imagine not.  In fact, the situation is imposed on him.  In our English text, the verb is “drove” – “the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness” (1:12).  In Greek, the sense is the same – the verb is ekballei, and in this usage it means, “to lead one … somewhere with a force which he cannot resist.”³  I get the sense Jesus was not going quietly … much like Bishop Curry’s ancestors.  So, there he is, out in the wilderness, being tested by Satan.  And he has to make do.

In Mark’s Gospel, so short on details, we don’t learn what that looks like.  So, I’m now going to commit one of the cardinal sins of preaching and look to one of the other Gospels – Matthew, in this case (4:1-11).  Matthew tells quite a story of Jesus and Satan out in the wilderness.  There, we learn Jesus has been going without food, which may not be too surprising, given the landscape.  And once he’s seriously hungry, that’s when Satan shows up for the test.  

Satan says, if you’re God’s Son, filled with power, turn the stones into bread, and eat up.  Jesus’ response is important – what he says, but also where it comes from.  Quoting the Law of Moses, he says, “One does not live by bread alone but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Deut 8:3).

Then, in an instant, Satan transports Jesus to Jerusalem, setting him on the pinnacle of the Temple and trying to get his goat.  Satan says, if you’re God’s beloved Son, throw yourself off this place, because after all, this Father who supposedly loves you “will command his angels concerning you,” and “on their hands they will bear you up so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.”  Now it’s Satan getting in on the act and quoting Scripture, this time Psalm 91 (91:11-12).  But Jesus shows what Scripture’s for – not for proof-texting but for guiding your life – and he says, quoting Moses, “Again, it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’” (Deut 6:16). 

Then Satan goes for the spiritual jugular and offers Jesus the easy way to royal power and dominion.  He transports Jesus high above the kingdoms of the world and says, Look, “all these I will give you, if you fall down and worship me” (Matt 4:9).  But again, Jesus stands on God’s Word instead, the Word that empowers him even though it’s also God who drove him into the wilderness in the first place.  So, Jesus goes to the Law of Moses once again, snarling, “It is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only him’” (Deut 6:13).  And Satan disappears, defeated.

Wait.  Defeated? 

That’s right.  The war isn’t over yet – in fact, it’s just begun – but Jesus has won this battle.  Let’s see … in Scripture, when has Satan been defeated before?  Well, really, he hasn’t.  Job stood up to the test, but he didn’t send Satan packing.

In this time in the wilderness, Jesus has proven something I’m not sure we knew before: Satan can be conquered.  The power of evil, overwhelming as it is, does not get the last word.  And “making do” has proven it – proven the power of Love over the power of evil.

How does that happen?  And more to the point, how do we tap into it?  Well, in his book, Bishop Curry talks about a process for it, a “recipe” or a “methodology,” whereby the power of Love takes “an old reality and [creates] a new possibility.”  It’s about overcoming evil with good, as St. Paul wrote (Romans 12:21).  It’s like soul food: “Making garbage gourmet.” (56) 

Here’s how that recipe goes.  First, lean on tradition – not in the sense of “the way it’s always been” but in the sense of the stories and wisdom and direction that have guided God’s people for millennia.  That’s what Jesus is doing out there in the wilderness.  Driven out on his own, away from his community, seemingly away from the Father who loves him, Jesus remembers – and the Word of God flows from his heart.  So, first, learn and remember the tradition that sustains us.

Then, second: Practice imagination.  Jesus was a Jew in first-century Palestine, living under the thumb of the Romans.  Now, defying Rome was something his people did all the time, in quietly subversive ways, as people everywhere do in the face of oppressive power.  But defeating that power was something else.  There wasn’t a lot of precedent for that in the experience of Jesus’ contemporaries.  Revolts didn’t go so well.  But Jesus imagined a different future.  He called into being a future that others literally couldn’t imagine – a world where Love overcomes oppression, where good defeats evil, where swords are beaten into ploughshares, where peace rules.  Scripture has a name for what he was imagining – “the kingdom of God” (Mark 1:15), the reign and rule of God.  It’s what we ask for every time we offer the Lord’s Prayer – “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  We can name it, but Jesus could see it and imagine it into being.  So, Bishop Curry would say, the second step in the recipe of “turning the problem of reality into possibility” is to imagine it (56).

And the third step in the recipe is this: Add God to the equation.  This was the core of Jesus’ answer to his test out there in the wilderness.  Satan was offering him lots of things.  He invited Jesus to draw on his individual power.  He asked Jesus to lean on the assumption that, if we back ourselves into a corner, God will bail us out.  He offered Jesus the power of the world as tycoons and kings live it.  But Jesus changed the outcome by adding God to Satan’s equation.  As Bishop Curry says, when you change the variables of an equation, the outcome must change, too; and when you factor God into the equation, the outcome must change for good.

Well, here we are, beginning the season of Lent once again, walking with Jesus out into the wilderness.  So, let me ask you the other elephant-in-the-living-room question today:  What do you fear you can’t change?  What do you fear you can’t overcome?  What do you fear might be so powerful that you can’t conquer it? 

This Lent, take a cue from Jesus in the wilderness, and look Satan in the eye.  Remember the tradition that upholds you.  Imagine a liberated reality.  And add God to the equation.  Then, get ready.  Because when you do that, in the ancient words of the Great Litany, you will “finally beat down Satan under [y]our feet” (BCP 152).

1.  Curry, Michael.  Love Is the Way.  New York: Avery, 2020.
2.  Foner, Eric.  Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy.  Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1983.
3.  Thayer’s Greek Lexicon, electronic database, 2011, quoted at Bible Hub.  “1544. ekballo.”  Available at: https://biblehub.com/greek/1544.htm#.  Accessed Feb. 18, 2021.

Stepping Up to Heaven

Sermon for Feb. 14, 2021
2 Kings 2:1-12; Mark 9:2-9

Preaching about the story of the Transfiguration sometimes feels like analyzing a dream.  No matter which Gospel writer tells this story, it’s an otherworldly experience.  In Luke’s Gospel (not what we heard today), the text even states that Peter, James, and John were “weighed down with sleep” there on the mountain; so, they themselves weren’t sure whether they might not be dreaming (9:32). 

Today’s account from Mark is different, more straightforward.  There are no sleepy disciples here; the story just happens.  But still – what exactly is it that’s happening?  Even if Peter, James, and John are wide awake, they just thought they were taking a little hike with Jesus up the mountain.  They hadn’t planned to meet God up close and personal.

You get a similar sense from today’s Old Testament reading, too.  Elijah had been Israel’s most important prophet – battling the priests of other gods, anointing kings, and talking with God on Mt. Sinai when a corrupt king was trying to kill him.  Now Elijah’s come to the end of his ministry, and God has told him to call Elisha as his successor.  Elisha says “yes” to the prophet and follows along; but soon after, we come to today’s reading. 

Elisha is loyal and refuses to abandon his master, even though something highly dramatic and probably terrifying is about to happen.  Realizing Elijah is about to be taken away, Elisha asks for a “double share of his [prophetic] spirit,” fully embracing his call (2 Kings 2:9).  But then, I wonder if he regrets it immediately, as “a chariot of fire and horses of fire” take Elijah off to heaven (2 Kings 2:11).  Elisha cries out and tears his clothes as a sign of mourning – grief that his master is gone, sure; but maybe some second thoughts about what Elisha has signed up for, too.

Elisha knows that Elijah will be taken from him.  Peter, James, and John know that Jesus is the messiah, God’s anointed king.  They know these things are true – at least they know it intellectually.  But did they know what those truths would mean for them before they crossed their boundaries and followed along to find God revealed in frightening majesty?

Now, the evidence was there to tip them off as to what was coming.  Elisha had seen Elijah call down heavenly fire on a royal army and condemn the king to death – not a move likely to endear the prophets to the next king (2 Kings 1).  For Peter, James, and John, the testimony was straight from the mouth of Jesus himself.  Just six days before their hike up the mountain into heaven, Peter had said out loud that Jesus was the messiah; he got the answer right.  But then Jesus had pushed him – do you know what lies ahead for God’s anointed king?  “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering,” Jesus had said, “and be rejected by the [religious authorities], and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31).  But that’s not all.  When Peter had protested that Jesus got it wrong, Jesus had raised the stakes:  It’s not just the messiah who will take that hike up the mount of Calvary.  “If any want to become my followers,” Jesus had said, “let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow me” (8:34).  The servant is not greater than the master, after all. 

I wonder what the disciples made of that.  I mean, they’d seen Jesus healing people.  They’d witnessed him walking on water and stilling a storm.  They’d watched him feeding thousands from five loaves and two fish.  They’d heard him challenging the authorities and calling them hypocrites for choosing law over love.  Now, the disciples heard Jesus name the cost that love would carry.  Their head knowledge told them they were following God’s anointed king.  But it took them a while to realize the cost that call would carry for them.  It’s one thing to know a truth intellectually.  It’s something else entirely to step across the boundaries of our experience and make that truth our own. 

I spoke to you a few weeks ago about the boundaries we’ll seek to beat this year as we follow Jesus together.  One of those is the boundary of difference – the boundary that says, you and I are not enough alike to take the risk of connection.  Some of those differences are real and active among us – differences of politics and policy, and to what extent a church should address them.  We’ll have some opportunities to talk about that as we read our presiding bishop’s book Love is the Way and as we learn about the practice of civil discourse during Lent.

Other boundaries of difference lie outside our parish family – but they’re not so far away, just a mile or so to the east.  We saw a powerful example of crossing that boundary last weekend, as people here took part in the sixth installment of our Andie’s Pantry ministry with families at Benjamin Banneker Elementary.  Through these months of pandemic, Andie’s Pantry has morphed from an anonymous food-distribution event into an opportunity whereby some of us are stepping into difference.  There are lots of ways to help Andie’s Pantry get food to hungry families, including contributing funds or buying groceries.  But some of us are going one step further – stepping onto a family’s front porch or meeting up at the store to buy groceries.  

There’s a wonderful write-up about it in this weekend’s Messenger and bulletin – parishioners delivering shopping bags to someone’s home, or meeting someone in a grocery store, and having a conversation.  These conversations aren’t about delving into the divisions that plague our metro area.  They aren’t interviews about “what it’s like to be black in Kansas City,” as if one person would want to speak for a community’s experience.  They’re just conversations about what we have in common:  kids, grandkids, frustration with COVID, frustration with the Chiefs, staying warm in such abominable cold.  There is some risk in having these conversations, as Jesus said would come when we set aside our fears and follow him.  But as we take those steps across the boundaries before us – steps of faith, steps of love – we find that we’re stepping up the mountain into heaven itself.

Maybe that’s a way to think about the time that’s coming next for us.  This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent.  The Church calls us to a season of “self-examination and repentance”; of “prayer, fasting, and self-denial”; of “reading and meditating on God’s holy Word” (BCP 265).  All that is right.  But here’s another way to think about it.  We could see Lent as a time to cross boundaries, a time look and listen and learn from what we find.  It’s a time to follow Jesus through experience – to hold love in our hearts, not just in our heads. 

That’s why spiritual practice makes a difference.  It doesn’t matter whether you give something up or take something on; but I think it does matter that we do something as we make our way through Lent.  Spiritual practice matters because habits form us.  Actions change us.  When we deny ourselves something we lean on, it trains our hearts to beat first for others and not first for ourselves.  When we make time to pray or read Scripture daily, it opens our hearts to God’s astonishing love for us, despite all the reasons we don’t deserve it.  When we meet a stranger in a store and buy some groceries, it turns our hearts to understand, helping us see how we’re bound together with people whose lives we don’t know.  Lent is about beating boundaries between us and others, between us and God, to help us practice in our lives what we carry in our heads – the truth that relationships are what life is all about.

We know that – in our heads and in our bones.  But if you need to hear it from a higher authority, we have that, too.  As God called out to the disciples on the heavenly mountaintop, so God calls to us now:  “This is my Son, the Beloved.  Listen to him!”

Not a New Normal but a Heavenly Next

State-of-the-Parish Address
Mark 1:14-20
January 24, 2021

Welcome to an Annual Meeting Sunday like never before.  All through this year’s Annual Report, one ministry after another notes the strangeness, challenges, or difficulties of 2020.  And they’re right.  To me, 2020 seems like the experience of your first heartbreak: We all made it through, and we may be stronger for it; but few of us would choose to go through it again.

I think many of us wish we could rewind the clock and go back to the time before last February, when things were “normal.”  I’ve heard that longing from many of you who are aching to get together with family and friends, to come back to worship in person, to have a parish party … to say nothing of going to see a movie or taking a trip.  We can’t wait for things to get back to “normal.”

By the same token, we’ve heard countless people tell us to get ready for the “new normal” – a phrase many of us will be happy if we never hear again.  Of course, the problem is that we aren’t “there” yet – and once we are “there,” at the new normal, the goalposts will probably keep moving.  That new normal will be out of date a few months later – or less.

Through 2020 at St. Andrew’s, we did the best we could to be present and responsive to the “normal now,” whatever that was in a given moment.  The Annual Report gives us great examples of people’s creativity and heart as they looked around and said, “A pandemic isn’t going to shut down our worship.  A pandemic isn’t going to cut us off from each other.  A pandemic isn’t going to keep us from loving and serving God and the people around us.”

I am overwhelmingly grateful for the resilience, inspiration, sacrifice, and love you’ve shown this year in ministry, in generosity, and simply in showing up.  As hard as it’s been, 2020 has been one of those times St. Andrew’s will remember and say, “You know, God didn’t just bring us through that; God made us stronger.”

Well, part of growing stronger is living out this truth: We aren’t going back to what we knew as normal, and we shouldn’t be satisfied just coping with the “normal now.”  Instead, God is calling us to create the heavenly next. 

How?  A few years ago, I wrote a book called Beating the Boundaries. If you actually read it, you’re part of a very exclusive club, so feel good about that.  It was about nine congregations that were stepping beyond what had been normal for them, combining their inherited approach to being church with new expressions of ministry to the people and the world around them. 

In their own ways, each of those congregations was responding to the call Andrew and Peter heard in today’s Gospel reading: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (Mark 1:17).  Andrew and Peter understood their work of fishing in a particular way.  They’d been fishing like that for years, thank you very much; and it had worked for them just fine.  But Jesus came by, in that pesky way he has of upending our conventional wisdom; and he said, “Yes, the fishing you’ve been doing is great.  And … let’s fish differently.”  Jesus was beating a boundary, and it changed Andrew’s and Peter’s lives – not to mention changing the world.

We need to apply this same kind of thinking to the question, “How will we be church after the pandemic?”  The beauty of the congregations I profiled in my book was that they never abandoned who they’d been; they just expressed their DNA in new ways for new times and contexts.  That’s our call now.  It’s time for us to move past responding to the pandemic and start beating the boundaries that separate us from the heavenly next that God wants us to find.

So, what boundaries shall we beat?  Well, there are five that rise to the top for me, priorities for this year that will help us express what’s always made us St. Andrew’s but in a world that will never be the same.

First, we need to beat the boundaries of worship in a post-pandemic world.  Though we wouldn’t have asked for it, we’ve had opportunity this year to learn a lot about making virtual worship meaningful and connective for people at home.  The fact that we had livestreaming capacity, and that we could work on improving it in 2020, meant worship was less of a pandemic boundary for us than it was for many congregations.  But still, we’ve got work to do to provide a worship experience in which people encounter Jesus fully in Word and Sacrament, whether they’re in a pew or on the couch.  For example, think about our worship in the summer and fall, before we had to suspend in-person services a second time.  If you were at home, you got to see visuals on the screen as part of our sermons, but you received Communion only spiritually.  If you were in the nave, you received Jesus’ Body in your hands, but you couldn’t see what people at home were seeing during the sermon.  We need to move toward making the worship experience as complete as we can, regardless of whether you’re sitting on your couch or in a pew.

Second, we need to beat the boundaries of parish life in a post-pandemic world.  In 2020, we learned that people can come together virtually for meaningful fun, fellowship, and learning. Of course, we’re all looking forward to the next Haiti Dinner or Trivia Night or Discovery class where we can actually sit next to someone and enjoy a conversation.  But even once we can come back together, we’ll still need to share parish life with people who can’t or don’t want to return to it in person.  With activities like coffee hour, Sunday school, youth gatherings, newcomer classes, and other learning opportunities, we’ll have to figure out how to bring people together so that physical separation doesn’t stop fellowship. With both worship and parish life, we’ll have to learn how to inhabit a new reality, what a market-research firm calls “phygital reality” – a hybrid of the physical and digital worlds.¹

Third, we need to beat the boundaries of pastoral care.  2020 has reminded us how deeply we need connection with God and each other.  It mattered that, twice last year, Vestry members, Parish Care volunteers, clergy, and staff called members just to check in.  It mattered that we brought Christmas Communion to homebound members’ front doors.  It mattered that the Order of St. Luke was praying for people every week.  But 2020 showed us that we need to continue building our capacity to provide the care you need.  We still have work to do to beat the boundary of our expectation that pastoral care is something only “holy” people with clerical collars do.  And we need to beat the boundary that regular checking-in by trained parishioners might seem just too hard for us to pull off.  It can’t be.  So, in 2021, we’ll keep at it: equipping more people to check in and show God’s love, doing a better job of systematizing contacts with you, and continuing to improve our use of data to care for you.

Fourth, we need to beat the boundaries of our church walls.  Before the pandemic, we’d been making solid progress with this.  The church and HJ’s Youth and Community Center were busy nearly all the time, both with St. Andrew’s people and folks from our neighborhoods.  Some of that community use we sponsored as part of our mission, and some of it helped with our bottom line.  We’d realistically planned that event revenue at HJ’s would cover the cost of the building’s operation in 2020 … until March came.  We’d also planned to launch a new worship experience at HJ’s called Trailside, a less-formal service with more accessible music to tap into the spiritual longing of our Brookside and Waldo neighbors we aren’t reaching otherwise.  Now, we have to get Trailside launched this year, once it’s safe and reasonable to have a service in the friendly confines of HJ’s.  I hope that can happen at back-to-school time.  In the ways we offer worship and engage with people around us, we need to help them see that the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement offers grace and hope, even if they aren’t so interested in reading from the Prayer Book among stained-glass windows.

Finally, we need to beat the boundaries of difference and learn to love people who aren’t like us.  COVID certainly wasn’t the only challenge our country faced in 2020.  Protests in our streets and a divided election have shown clearly how much we struggle to listen to each other and to hear godly intent in people with whom we differ.  In 2020, we began trying to listen to our neighbors of color.  We prayed with neighbors on Troost.  We gathered folks from St. Andrew’s and folks from St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church on the east side to experience art together and talk about what they saw.  We had plans for more gatherings like that, until COVID got in the way.  Once the pandemic allows, we’ll start that up again, as well as offering opportunities for book and film discussions here.  At the same time, we learned how differently people in our own parish view the world and how hard it can be for us to talk about our passions, hopes, and dreams for ourselves and our nation.  And, with our baptismal promises to love all people, respect all people’s dignity, and strive for justice and peace, we heard calls from parishioners for the church to proclaim more publicly what we stand for as Episcopalians.  All these situations point to the reality that, whoever we are, we need to grow in loving our neighbors who aren’t like us.  So, we’ll try to understand each other better by beating the boundaries of race and worldview, learning how to hear each other’s passions, hopes, and dreams for God’s world.

Clearly, we’ve got our work cut out for us.  But you know, we serve a Savior who’s already beat the ultimate boundary.  It was the boundary of death, with three crosses as its fenceposts and a tomb as its guardhouse.  On Good Friday afternoon, it looked like death had won.  On Holy Saturday, experience showed that sin held even the best of us bound.  But then came Easter morning, and the ultimate boundary was beat. 

Jesus has already done the hard work of resurrection for us.  All he’s asking us to do is this: to look at fishing differently and then hit the road, loving one another and the people we meet along the way.  We can do that.  What we can’t do is say that journey is too hard.  What we can’t do is say we’ve never fished like that before.  Instead, we’ve got to follow Jesus and beat our boundaries: the boundaries of worship, the boundaries of parish life, the boundaries of pastoral care, the boundaries of our church walls, and the boundaries of our differences.  If we’re faithful in that, I believe Jesus will be there helping us clear the path, leading us not simply to endure a new normal but to move down the road toward the heavenly next.

1.      “Top 10 Global Consumer Trends 2021.” Euromonitor International. January 2021. Available at: https://www.euromonitor.com/top-10-global-consumer-trends-2021/report. Accessed Jan. 20, 2021.

Hitting Bottom

Sermon for Sunday, Jan. 10, 2021

Mark 1:4-11

Last Monday, I went to see my mother in Jefferson City.  She’s in a senior living community there, just down the street from the state capitol building.  Many of you know I used to work in Jefferson City; I was speech writer and deputy press secretary for Gov. John Ashcroft in the late 1980s.  I worked in the capitol, in an office the size of a closet.  It may have been small, but it sure had a view, looking out over the Missouri River.  The view wasn’t just beautiful; it was inspiring, as was the view inside the building.  Every day, I got to see the stunning architecture and paintings and stained glass in that shrine of democracy.  Every day, I also walked by an inscription in the rotunda, a verse from the Book of Proverbs: “Where there is no vision, the people perish” (29:18).  And every day, I saw the Great Seal of the State of Missouri, which of course is everywhere in that building, even on the doorknobs.  On that seal is the state motto: “Salus populi suprema lex esto”; let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.  It was an inspiring place to serve.  So, on Monday, after I saw my mother, I took a few minutes to go to the capitol, and park there in the circle drive, and look up to my old office window. 

All kinds of memories came back.  I remembered late nights at the end of the legislative session and the pasta feast from Rigazzi’s in St. Louis, served in the House Lounge among the Thomas Hart Benton murals.  I remembered friends I worked with, people kind enough not to dismiss me for how young I was and how little I knew.  I remembered working hard to dig up positive stories and deflect negative ones.  I remembered a meeting about the governor’s reelection campaign in which a brilliant senior staff member talked about the possibility that our opponent, Betty Hearnes, might capitalize on one particularly negative story about the governor, and the staffer vowed that we’d “tear her to shreds” if she did.  It was one of many less-than-holy moments of working in that office, and it helped me discern that doing press and speeches for a political leader probably wasn’t my calling.  I remembered looking at myself in the mirror and thinking, “I can’t go on like this.”  But thankfully, as I sat in the car last Monday and looked up at my old office window, what stayed with me was the beauty and the aspiration that Missouri’s stunning capitol building embodies.

I can’t imagine what it was like then, on Wednesday, for the staffers in our nation’s capitol in Washington as they looked out their windows and saw a mob tearing down the fences and climbing the walls.  I can’t imagine how they felt as they went out into the halls to see what was happening and heard glass shattering and breathed teargas.  There they were, watching the cathedral of democracy being desecrated and fearing for their lives.  They must have wondered, where are all the police we saw at the protests this summer?  How can it be that a mob has breached democracy’s cathedral?

At this point, we know the story of Wednesday, so I won’t retell it – other than to note that the mob didn’t win.  Violence didn’t win.  Our representatives and their staff did what they needed to do, risking themselves to ensure democracy won instead.  

Let me also say this.  I think there’s a connection between Wednesday’s events and today’s Gospel story, and here’s the connection I see: Sometimes, it’s good to hit bottom.  Sometimes, we need to hit bottom.  Sometimes, until we hit bottom, we can’t see our sin.

Now, you’re thinking, “Uh-oh.  Just how judgy is he going to get?”  Well, when I put Wednesday’s insurrection in the category of sin, let me be clear what I mean.  Sin is separation from God, turning away from God’s purposes and desires for us.  I believe God has purposes and desires in mind for each of us, and I believe God has purposes and desires in mind for our nation, too.  We say as much when we offer the collect “For the Nation” every Independence Day.  We ask God to “give to the people of our country a zeal for justice and the strength of forbearance, that we may use our liberty in accordance with your gracious will” (BCP 258).  That’s absolutely an aspirational prayer.  We aspire to justice, and we aspire to forbearance.  But we struggle to reach our holy aspirations.  We fall short.  We fail, sometimes by what we do and sometimes by what we don’t do.  That’s sin.

But over the course of the past several years – certainly more than just four of them, I might add – we’ve been aspiring less and sinning more.  We’ve been forgetting what’s in God’s heart and mind for ourselves, our country, and our world.  Our sins have been of the most pernicious type: slow in their growth, hidden in plain sight.  We’ve allowed ourselves to think we don’t need people who aren’t like us.  If the insurrection at the capitol embodied nothing else, it embodied this lie: “Because I know I’m right, I don’t have to honor people I think are wrong.”  That represents our fundamental sin, our original sin: the sin of self-idolatry, the sin of placing ourselves ahead of God and ahead of God’s other children.

That’s the background not just for the events of last Wednesday but for our Gospel reading today.  The story’s spotlight shines on John the Baptist, but behind that is the reality John saw – a great need among the people to acknowledge their sin and choose to turn from it.  The reading doesn’t name specific sins, but it does indicate that the problem, like the Jordan River, ran deep and wide:  “People from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to [John], and were baptized by him…, confessing their sins” (Mark 1:5).  Jesus joins in with the people as they seek to get right with God – not because Jesus needed it but because he wanted to be in it with them.  And as he enters into this experience with the people he came to save, the fullness of God’s glory shines forth.  The heavens are torn open, and the Spirit descends on Jesus, and God’s voice proclaims, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased” (1:11). 

It’s no accident that the revelation of the Father’s great love for Jesus, and for each one of us, comes in the context of people turning from their sins.  When people recognize how they’ve missed the mark, how they’ve denied God’s purposes and desires for them, that’s when the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit come together to sanctify our longing to get right with God.  When we come to the river and confess our sins, God joins us there, wading into the water with us and empowering us to turn in a new direction.

So, here’s a question Scripture never answers: What led all those people to go down to the river for “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (1:4)?  Although each one had his or her own story, I’ll bet you most of the people in that crowd were going through the same thing.  Something had happened, and they’d hit bottom.  Many of us can point to a similar moment in our lives, a time when we looked ourselves in the mirror and said, “I can’t go on like this.”  That’s what leads us to the water’s edge, where God shows up to meet us.

I believe Wednesday’s insurrection was our national moment of hitting bottom.  Ugly strains of self-idolatry have been festering within us and among us for a long time now.  More and more, it’s become acceptable to turn sisters and brothers into others, puffing ourselves up by talking someone else down.  After a while, the power of evil takes that negativity and turns it into toxicity.  And eventually, some of us, at least, decide it’s OK to break the law and destroy property and threaten others … because, after all, I’m right, and they’re not.  We’ve been in that downward spiral for a while now, and finally the capitol was breached.  So, I would say we’ve hit bottom.  We’ve come to our national moment of looking in the mirror and saying, “We can’t go on like this.”

What can the Church do about that?  What’s Jesus’ call to us as we come to the river separated from God and one another?

Well, the Church is about healing and reconciliation.  The prayer book tells us the Church’s mission “is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” (BCP 855).  And the only way to do that is to start with ourselves and the people around us.

This Lent at St. Andrew’s, we’ll be offering an opportunity to get better at civil discourse.  The new Advocacy Discernment Committee has been talking about this over the past month, well before Wednesday’s insurrection, but we certainly see the need for it now.  Here in our congregation, we are blessed with a rich diversity in point of view on just about any topic you can name.  Our shorthand for this is “the Big Tent” – that just as the Episcopal tradition has prayed for all sorts and conditions of people, it holds in tension all sorts and conditions of perspectives.  What we haven’t done so well is to deal with that tension.  Here in Kansas City, we’re very good at “Midwest nice.”  That’s great, in that we don’t have to worry about people storming the church to replace the rector.  But it’s not so great in that we don’t know how to deal with our differences and divisions beyond politely ignoring them.  So, this Lent, as we take the opportunity to get right with God and each other, I hope you’ll consider wading in the water of civil discourse as a way to see how people you disagree with are beloved in God’s eyes.

But our national moment of hitting bottom is about more than needing civil discourse.  It’s about our identity, too.  What this week reminds us is that we always have to hold in living memory who we are.  As a nation, we like to think of ourselves as a people of special purpose, a people who choose to live in the creative tension of democracy because it’s what Lincoln called “the last, best hope of earth.”¹  But as followers of Jesus, gathered under this Big Tent, we are more than inheritors of democracy.  We are apostles of love.  We are God’s beloved children, empowered by the Holy Spirit to follow in Jesus’ resurrected footsteps.  We are people who strive to resist evil and who come to the river to confess it when we come up short.  We are people who live Good News in word and deed.  We are people who seek and serve Jesus in all people, loving those who disagree with us as much as we love ourselves.  We are people who strive for justice and peace by respecting the dignity of everyone – no exceptions, even the folks we understand least. 

As we walk that path, sometimes we hit bottom.  But Jesus is there, reaching out his hand, pulling us up, reminding us who we are, and empowering us to try again.

1.      Lincoln, Abraham. “Annual Message to Congress – Concluding Remarks.”  Abraham Lincoln Online.  Available at: http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/congress.htm.  Accessed Jan. 8, 2021.