Remembering Love

Sermon for Jan. 9, 2021

Luke 3:15-17, 21-22

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas season, shared with family and friends.  I don’t know what captures the essence of Christmas dinner for you, but for me, there’s just one answer: It’s the gravy.  And not just any gravy, but my mother’s gravy.  There’s a particular character to the gravy my mother used to make.  If you look at turkey gravy in jars at the store, or what you usually get at a restaurant, it’s a pleasant-enough light brown.   My mother’s gravy was darker because of the way she cooked the turkey, roasting it open in the oven, bathed in butter for hours.  In addition to the butter, the gravy’s flavor comes from the particular stuffing my mother put in the bird.   Combine it all, and there is no other gravy that tastes like this … with the possible exception of my grandmother’s gravy, which is where my mother learned it.

As my extended family gathered at our house on Christmas Day, many things were new this year.  My family had never shared Christmas at our house before.  Ann and I had never hosted 17 people for a meal before.  There was a new face at the table, a niece’s boyfriend, a young man no doubt a bit overwhelmed by it all.  And, my great nephew is in the process of transitioning from having been a great niece, and it took some work to remember his new name.  Much was different.  But there was turkey, and stuffing, and rich, dark gravy.  And with it, we remembered who we were, even though my parents’ house, where we gathered for decades, was a couple of Christmases long gone.

My mother’s gravy has the power to unlock memory.  Eating it, my family remembers who we are and what’s driven us for as long as we’ve been us.  Gathering is what matters most; showing up shows that you love someone.  Presents come and go; even particular family members come and go.  But love draws us back together again and again, uniting us as members of a family larger than ourselves or our own households.  And the gravy helps us remember that.

Today, we’re remembering the baptism of our Lord Jesus and bringing three new members into the family of God in this place.  So why did Jesus need to be baptized?  If we’d read Matthew’s account today, we might struggle with what Jesus says there about coming to the water to “fulfill all righteousness” (3:15).  In Luke’s account this morning, there’s no attempt to explain.  Jesus’ baptism just happened.  In the midst of all the other people coming forward to profess their allegiance to God, or be cleansed from their sins, or turn their lives in a new direction, Jesus had come, too.  And afterward, while he was praying, Luke says, “the heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon [Jesus] in bodily form, like a dove.  And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well-pleased.’” (3:21-22)  And I imagine Jesus sighing deeply and saying to God, “Oh, yeah, that’s right.  I know that, but sometimes it’s so hard to remember.”

At least part of the reason we’re doing what we’re doing this morning is to help us remember that same truth.  You are God’s beloved child; and with you, God is well-pleased.  We may have screwed up any number of things.  We may be woefully underperforming in answering God’s call to us.  But just as a parent loves a child, so God – like the father welcoming home the prodigal son – so God reminds us there is nothing we can do to stop being God’s beloved children.

When we gather to baptize people, we’re welcoming them into the family, like the boyfriend joining my family’s table for Christmas dinner.  I don’t believe pouring that water on a child’s head makes the child suddenly more beloved in God’s eyes than he or she was before.  But it helps us know and affirm that belovedness.  When we’re baptized, we’re sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked as Christ’s own, forever.  We receive the Spirit’s power equipping us for the journey, blessing us with “an inquiring and discerning heart, the courage to will and to persevere, a spirit to know and to love [God], and the gift of joy and wonder in all [God’s] works” (BCP 308).  So when we gather here for baptisms, over and over again, we remember all this.  We sigh and say, “Oh, yeah, that’s right.  I knew that.  I know I’m God’s beloved child, filled with the Spirit’s power to face each day.  I know that – but sometimes … it’s so hard to remember.”

For me, at least, most of my prayers are about remembering.  Maybe that’s true for you, too.  It’s certainly true about what we do here, week after week, in worship.  We come to this altar, our family’s dinner table, and we re-member Jesus – we bring him back among us through our prayer, drinking in the wonder of his love, the sacrifice that brings us eternal life and the power that sends us back out into the world to embody God’s love for others.  Each week, we gather around our family’s table and remember that Jesus is with us always.

So, maybe we can do something similar with baptism.  Maybe it can help us remember – not just on these baptismal feast days but week by week, day by day, remembering that we are God’s beloved children, empowered with God’s own Spirit.  When we doubt, when we fear, when we feel alone and adrift, maybe we can draw on the power of memory to cast out that doubt and fear and isolation, and replace it with love instead.  As the first letter of John says, “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18).  That’s not just a nice sentiment; it’s a promise from God to you, God’s beloved child.  Perfect love casts out fear – today, tomorrow, forever.  That bond with your heavenly parent never dissolves, regardless of how long it might have been since you brought it to mind.  It can be years since I last tasted my mother’s gravy, but one bite takes me home. 

So, here’s something to try.  Look for a reminder of your belovedness that works for you.  In baptism, we’re renewed with the water of life – waters of birth, waters of cleansing, waters of refreshment, waters of resurrection.  Water is such a powerful symbol, so let it bring God’s life-giving love to mind for you.  It could be a daily practice, an act of bodily prayer every morning.  When you wash your face, or shave, or take a shower, or make your coffee or tea, let the water of daily life remind you that you are connected daily to Love far greater than the confines of your own heart.  The water in this baptismal bowl may only be a few drops from an ocean of Love, but that’s all it takes to connect us with Love’s source.  So give it a try.  Let water awaken you each day to the truth that never ceases to amaze – that you are God’s beloved child, and with you God is well-pleased.

Steering Clear of Herod

Sermon for Epiphany, transferred, Jan. 2, 2022

Matthew 2:1-12

OK, let’s pretend we’re in seventh-grade English class.  Who are the main characters in today’s Gospel story?  Here’s a hint:  They’re really tall, and they get impressive music for their entrance and exit.

OK, who’s another main character in today’s Gospel story?  Here’s a hint:  We don’t have a puppet for him because he’s a scoundrel.  Yes, it’s King Herod, the man we love to hate.  When he’s named in the story, it makes you want to boo and hiss and throw peanuts.  Herod is awful – no redeeming social value, the contrast to everything good and holy.  But interestingly, Herod gets most of the ink in today’s reading.  In fact, I think he’s absolutely necessary to this story.  But what luck do you think we’d have getting somebody to wear the Herod puppet when we celebrate Epiphany?  We’re much happier when we get to be one of the good guys.

And while we’re thinking about who gets the ink in this story, it’s interesting to think about who is not a main character.  In that category, I’d put Mary, who has nothing to say.  Joseph isn’t even there, completely absent from the story.  And maybe most surprisingly, the Lord and Savior himself doesn’t do anything but lie there, with all the action revolving around him.

Well, let’s look at these main characters and see what they might have to say about us.

First, the magi.  They were astrologers and magicians, but not with the baggage those terms carry for us.  When we hear “astrologer and magician,” that might say to us “entertainer” or, worse, “con man.”  That’s not what it meant to be an astrologer and magician back in the day.  They were seen more the way we might see scientists, people with specialized knowledge who could carefully observe and even manipulate the created order to serve human purposes.  Magi were respected across Ancient Near East cultures, even within Judaism.  One ancient historian reports that the curtain in the Temple protecting the holy of holies was decorated with constellations of stars.¹  And there was a prophecy in Hebrew scriptures about how “a star shall rise out of Jacob” – that the nation of Israel, led by God’s anointed king, would one day throw off its oppressors and regain a lost empire of its own.²  So, it wouldn’t have been all that strange for watchers of the skies from a distant land to come to investigate the reality on the ground after they’d seen a star that seemed to indicate this prophecy might be realized.

So, our first main characters are the magi, however many of them there were.  Then we have the other main character – King Herod.  Now, Herod was a “king” in title only; his Roman overlords allowed him to play that role among his own people as long as he did what he was told.  Herod was Jewish, and he went by the title “King of the Jews” – so it must have been a surprise, to say the least, when these respected astrologers came looking for “the child who has been born king of the Jews” (Matt 2:2).  Like a stereotypical gangster, Herod isn’t powerful enough to allow his rivals to thrive, so he immediately goes into self-preservation mode.  He cozies up to the magi, drawing them into a plot to kill the baby before anyone has time to follow him as the true king.  A few verses later in Matthew’s story, we find out just how awful Herod really is – that he’s basically a terrorist as he kills all the babies of Bethlehem two years old or under (Matt 2:16-18).  Herod represents the human heart at its worst: someone so afraid of losing power and control that he kills the innocent to protect his own interests.

So, what was Matthew trying to say about Herod, and the magi, and the baby king?  As is true of the best stories, I think this one can say several things at once.

Is the story about the gifts the magi bring to Jesus?  Sure.  For centuries, interpreters have seen symbolic power in the gold, frankincense, and myrrh; and the famous carol we sang frames this theological reflection nicely.  Gold would signify kingship, indicating that Jesus is the ultimate ruler.  Frankincense, used in Temple worship, would signify deity, indicating that Jesus is God Most High having come to dwell as God With Us.  And myrrh, used to anoint bodies for burial, would signify sacrifice, foreshadowing the death by which this king and God would defeat death itself at Easter.  Did Matthew intend all that symbolism when he named the magi’s three gifts?  I don’t know, but it sure works nicely with the way Christian theology developed.

So, what else might this story mean?  Is it an indictment of the power of Herod, and the emperor, and every secular government or culture that sees itself as greater than the reign and rule of God?  Sure.  Given that the Gospels were compiled soon after the Roman army destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple, God’s own dwelling place on earth, the early Christians definitely wanted to stick it to the empire.  So, putting Herod in his place in this story is a great way to show how the power of self-interest, evil, and death embodied in human institutions does not get the last word.  Instead, God intervenes to lead the nations of the world to come and find Jesus, outsmarting and overturning those who think they can compete with the Lord.

Now, it might be tempting to stop there.  In fact, it might be in our self-interest to keep this Epiphany story at arm’s length.  If it’s mostly a reflection on the person of Jesus, that’s safely interesting.  If it’s mostly a reflection on the reign and rule of God, and an indictment of governments and cultures that stand in God’s way, well, that’s safely interesting.  But I think Jesus would probably like us to go a little deeper, too, and see what this story has to say about us.

It's easy to look at King Herod as a stock character – Snidely Whiplash from the old Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons, or Darth Vader from Star Wars.  In good stories, we need to see evil embodied as a contrast to the power of goodness and light.  But in our personal stories, we don’t need Snidely Whiplash or Darth Vader.  We carry them with us every day.  As much as I might like to caricature the dark side of my heart, or ascribe that darkness to whichever political leaders I might see as the Romans of today, Herod is there to remind me that the urge for self-preservation, maybe even self-promotion, always lies close at hand.  We justify the dubious decisions we make, saying they were necessary or that the good outweighed the bad.  Often, that’s right and true.  Life is complicated, and none of us gets to live in the land of black and white.  But still, it’s good to have Herod there, staring back at us in our own self-reflection, making us ask the hard questions about our motivations as we navigate our way through oceans of gray. 

You know, maybe we should have a Herod puppet for Epiphany after all.  It might be a good way to remember this truth: that God always opens the door so that, like the magi, we, too, can go home by another way.  But we have to decide to follow the magi’s lead and choose that path instead.

1.      Albright, W.F., and C.S. Mann.  Matthew.  Vol. 26 of The Anchor Bible.  New York: Doubleday, 1971. 15.

2.      Numbers 24:17.  See Hare, Douglas R.A.  Matthew.  In Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching.  Louisville: John Knox Press, 1993.  14.

Trust Verified

Sermon for Dec. 24, 2021

Luke 2:1-14

Here’s a question to ponder as you sit around your table tomorrow, sharing your Christmas feast and trying to talk about anything but politics or pandemics.  A big part of Christmas is the message to trust, even when things seem completely unbelievable.  So … which character in the Christmas story do you think went furthest with that?  Who in the Christmas story do you think had to exercise the greatest trust?

You could certainly make a case for Mary.  Here’s a 14-year-old girl asked by an angel to bear the Son of God out of wedlock.  Saying “yes” could well have meant losing her husband-to-be, being ostracized, and ending up desperately poor and at risk of all kinds of abuse.  Mary is a great candidate for the one who had to trust the most.

From the guys’ perspective, you could make a case for Joseph, too.  An angel visits him in a dream, saying that his fiancée is pregnant with the Son of God.  He knows for a fact it’s not his, but can he trust a voice in a dream?  Yeah, Joseph’s trust sets a pretty high bar.

What about the shepherds?  There they are, at work, and an angel tells them they should leave to go find God’s newborn king, who’s lying in a feed trough.  And no need to worry; the wolves and the bandits will leave their sheep alone while they’re gone, right?  The shepherds are being asked to trust visions in the night sky over their years of experience.

But maybe the character in the Christmas story who has to work hardest to trust is … you.  I’m not sure trust has ever been as hard to come by as it is in our culture today, as we attribute disagreement not to different perspectives but to the other side’s selfishness or hate.  Today, trusting is a downright countercultural act.  And trusting in God – that’s about as countercultural as it gets. 

As Luke tells it, the Christmas story challenges those who hear it to think hard about where to invest their trust.  I think Luke’s question comes down to this: Who’s really in charge?  Mary and Joseph are God’s faithful servants, but the power driving their action seems to be the power of the emperor.  Mary and Joseph make their way from Galilee to Bethlehem because the government tells them to.  The empire is demanding that its subjects go to their family’s towns and villages for a census to determine the taxes to be levied there.  It was all about tightening the empire’s control over its subject peoples.  But the empire didn’t stop there; it even wanted to convince its subjects that their ruler had divine power.  Caesar was called “Lord” and “Savior,” the one whose power supposedly brought peace and well-being to “all the world” (Luke 2:1). 

Well, the Christmas story sets up a direct challenge to the Roman narrative.  When the powers of the world tell us to trust in them, Luke’s Christmas story tells us to take a huge leap and trust in God instead, because God acts directly in the world to accomplish divine purposes.  The empire might seem to be in charge right now, Luke says, but true power and authority belong to the God who comes to be born as one of the peasants, starting this project to change the world as a newborn crying in a filthy feedbox.  The angels proclaim this good news first to the folks at the bottom of the ladder, the essential workers just getting by.  The angels tell the shepherds, “Your true Lord and Savior has arrived and in the last place you’d expect – in your own world.  So, you can trust that God’s got your back.”    

I don’t think God asks for that trust in order to check a box on our divine scorecard.  I think God asks for that trust because we need to offer it.  Trust is the balm that will heal us, and healing is what the baby in the manger is there to bring – salvation, which at its root means healing.  If we trust that God is actually at work in our own lives, not just sitting back and wishing us well but bringing healing to our brokenness and light to our darkness – when we offer that trust, that’s when God heals our hearts by letting us see our trust verified. 

I met a man with that kind of trust last Saturday.  Dozens of St. Andrew’s members and friends were serving at the Free Store downtown, providing a bountiful lunch and cold-weather clothing, but also just hanging out and being with the folks who came.  One of the guests was a man named Leland.  He was sitting in the cathedral waiting for lunch, and I asked him how he was doing.  Leland gave me a look that asked whether I wanted a polite response or the truth, and I said, “Really, how are you doing?”  He’d just been discharged from St. Luke’s, though he had no memory of how he’d gotten there.  But one thing he knew for sure: When he was taken to the hospital, all his stuff had been stolen from the camp where he’d been living.  He had literally nothing but what he was carrying when he was taken to St. Luke’s. 

Now, if you knew Leland’s background, you might be surprised at how things had panned out for him.  He grew up in Kansas City, went to a good school, served six years in the Navy, earned a college degree in business.  But over time, things fell apart; and he became alienated from his family and friends.  As we were talking, it was clear that Leland was hungry after wandering around all night, and angry that someone had stolen his stuff, and worried about where he’d stay once the sun went down.  But he also knew where to place his trust.  He said, “God brought me to the hospital to get me healed, and God brought me here today to find something to eat and replace some of the stuff I lost.  I know God’s here,” he said.  “I know God’s got me.  I know that because I’m still going.”

I don’t know where Leland’s story will go from here.  He does not have an easy life, and one day at the Free Store won’t solve his problems.  But Leland knows he’s not alone.  He knows Jesus Christ is walking alongside him, even when he’s not sure where he’s going or how he’ll live once he gets there.  Leland trusts that the true Lord and Savior has got his back, and he’s willing to take that trust on the road.

That’s our part in the Christmas story, too.  Like Mary, like Joseph, like the shepherds, like Leland, we have the opportunity on this night to choose where to place our trust and then act on it.  The world promises it’ll save us.  Consumer culture promises it’ll save us.  Political leaders and talking heads promise they’ll save us.  And amid the noise of empty promises, a still small voice rises from a filthy feedbox in Bethlehem.  It’s asking you to put your trust in the true Lord and Savior, and then watch what happens.  Believe that the one we call God With Us actually is right there with you – walking alongside you to guide your steps, working healing in your broken moments, and equipping you to partner with God to pass the peace and bring love to life.  When we trust, it opens doors between heaven and earth.  When we trust, it opens our hearts so God can heal them.  And with your heart healed, you become an instrument of healing, an outward and visible sign that God still comes into our world, in all things working for good for those who trust in the Lord.

Most of us want to change the world, and God wants us to do that, too.  But first, we have to learn the humble mystery of this night.  Just as Caesar isn’t the Lord and Savior, neither are we.  We’ve got to open that door between heaven and earth, open our hearts so God can heal them.  For when we do, it’s not just our lives that are saved.  When we claim that healing power, we take God With Us into the world Christ came to save.  And that has the power to change everything.  As the song says, let every heart prepare him room, and even heaven and nature will sing.

Mary in Ivory

Sermon for Dec. 19, 2021

Luke 1:39-45; Magnificat (Luke 1:46-55)

So, just to warn you:  Last Sunday, I gave you a heads-up that the sermon would be shorter than usual.  Sorry, but it happened again.  You can thank me on the way out.

Our Gospel reading today tells the story of Mary visiting her relative Elizabeth.  It’s a lovely reading, but it makes a lot more sense if we know what’s come before it.  Elizabeth is “barren” and “getting on in years” (1:7), Luke tells us; but the angel Gabriel comes to her husband, Zechariah, to give him literally unbelievable news – that Elizabeth would have a baby who will be “great in the sight of the Lord” and “turn many of the people of Israel to the Lord their God” (1:16).  In fact, this baby turns out to be the one we know as John the Baptist, who came to prepare the way for the Messiah.  

Luke’s story then moves on to Mary, whom this time of year everybody knows was “engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David” (1:26-27).  Gabriel drops in to see Mary, too, bringing her news that’s even more unbelievable than Elizabeth getting pregnant in her old age – that Mary will conceive a son directly from God.  He will be “the Son of the Most High” who will reign over Israel forever (1:32).  Now, we need to keep in mind that what the angel is promising is a double impossibility – both that a virgin will have a child, and that the king Israel has been waiting for will be born to a peasant girl, a nobody.  But Mary, as we know, says “yes” anyway, even though it seems impossible.

And then, we come to today’s reading.  Brimming with the angel’s astonishing news, Mary heads over the river and through the woods to see her relative Elizabeth.  When Mary arrives, the baby John the Baptist leaps for joy in his mother’s womb, and Elizabeth miraculously knows that Mary is carrying God’s king.  Then Mary, overcome with astonishment and joy herself, sings the song we offered as the canticle today, the Magnificat – the one beginning, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant” (Luke 1:46-47).

 “My soul magnifies the Lord,” Mary says.  Think about that a minute.  On its face, that’s about as ridiculous thing to say as we could imagine.  The creator and sovereign of the universe, full of infinite power and majesty, is magnified?  How could God be made any bigger, any grander, any more magnificent than God already is?  It’s an amazing thing for Mary to say, that her lowly spirit might enlarge or amplify the Lord of the universe.  But yet, she does it, bringing God into our human experience and allowing us to see divinity in the flesh.

That’s Mary’s story from 2,000 years ago.  But I’ll tell you – I think Mary’s story keeps playing out, across the ages and into our own day.  In fact, I’d say I met Mary on Thursday, at the Valvoline Instant Oil Change shop.  Why?  Because I met a woman who magnified the Lord.

Her name is Ivory, and I’m pretty sure she was in charge at the oil-change place.  Ivory is a black woman probably in her 50s, and she came up to my car with a big smile.  Then, she stopped short when she saw my clerical collar.  She greeted me as “Father,” which says something about her spiritual background; and she went into the shop for a minute to tell the workers not to swear for a while. 

We went through the necessary conversation about my oil change, but I knew she wanted to say something else.  And then, it came:  She said, “You know, I was diagnosed with breast cancer about four months ago….”  I’m afraid I interrupted her, wanting to let her know she wasn’t alone; and I said, “Oh, I’m so sorry.”  She looked up at me and said, “Now, don’t you say that.  There is nothing to be sorry about.  The way I look at it, I’ve had cancer for God knows how long, at least four months, and I’m still here, going strong.”  She pointed up and said, “I know the Lord is where my healing will come from.”

So, she waved me in, and they changed my oil.  As I left, I told Ivory I’d pray for her.  But really, I think I should have asked Ivory to pray for me, a sinner, now and at the hour of my death.  Because Ivory’s soul proclaimed the greatness of the Lord, and her spirit rejoiced in God her Savior, for she knew that God looked with favor on the lowliness of this servant.  And, in her family, I imagine generations to come will call her blessed.

What’s the point of all this?  That short time at the oil-change place with Ivory helped me to see something I’ve been badly needing to know, not just through intellectual awareness but up close and personal:  that God, the creator and sovereign of the universe, uses such as you and me to magnify and amplify God’s presence on earth.  In the most mundane moments of our lives, in times when we’d swear nothing of any consequence was happening, saints are walking among us – even in our own shoes – and perhaps the Queen of Heaven herself might just drop in for a visit. 

This Friday night and Saturday, we’ll celebrate Christianity’s crazy doctrine of the Incarnation, as we give thanks that God chose to become one of us, and “move into the neighborhood” (John 1:14, The Message), and experience everything that builds us up and beats us up, day by day.  But incarnation doesn’t stop with Jesus.  If we have the eyes to see, God will show us divinity in even the unlikeliest people – folks at the grocery store or the instant oil-change shop.  So, keep your eyes open, and you, too, may be blessed, when you find yourself in your times of trouble, to have Mother Mary come to you.

John the Pastor

Sermon for Dec. 12, 2021

Luke 3:7-18

You know, sometimes the Word of God is hazy and complex – poetry that needs explication or history that needs context to make any sense to us.  Other times, the Word is very near you, in the sense that it names what you already know, deep down.  And when that happens, I think it’s OK for the sermon to be shorter than usual.  Maybe a lot shorter than usual.  You’re welcome.

I have to say, the last line of today’s Gospel reading always makes me chuckle.  John the Baptist calls his audience a “brood of vipers” (3:7); and he warns them God is going to hack at the roots of their society and chop down the trees that don’t bear fruit.  Then, at harvest time, God will gather up the good wheat but burn off the chaff “with unquenchable fire” (3:17).  After 17 verses of this, Luke says, “So, with many other exhortations, [John] proclaimed the good news to the people” (3:18)  I wonder whether Luke meant it as a laugh line.  Probably not, but it certainly does show that, in good writing, audience matters.  It all depends who you are and what you’re doing as to whether the Word of God comes to you as good news or bad. 

Last week, Luke introduced John the Baptist as the voice of one crying out in the wilderness to prepare the way of the Lord – the prophet who announces the coming of God to save.  And for John, it’s pretty clear how we’re supposed to prepare for the coming of God With Us:  He’s calling the people to “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (3:3). 

We call him John the Baptist or John the Baptizer, but a better name for him, oddly enough, might be “John the Pastor.”  Now, that may sound strange.  When we imagine someone being “pastoral,” we might think of warm-and-fuzzy Jesus, cuddling little children; or maybe we think of a kindly clergy person showing up at a bedside.  But my pastoral theology professor in seminary liked to say that “being pastoral means telling the truth.”  Well, what we get in today’s reading is God’s truth, the prophet in the wilderness speaking directly for the Lord, like Isaiah or Amos or Zephaniah.  But here’s the thing about John’s proclamation:  Probably nothing he says in today’s reading really comes as a surprise.  Right?  This is John’s “good news,” but there isn’t much “news” to it. 

So, what is this truth we already know that God is using John the Pastor to tell us?

First, there’s this:  Don’t assume that just because you’re on the right team, that means you’re in right relationship with God.  “I’ve been baptized; I’m a member of fill-in-the-blank church – so I must be good for eternal life, right?”  Not so fast, says John the Pastor.  Relationship is about action, not about affiliation or even intent.  “Bear fruits worthy of repentance,” John says.  Act in ways that flesh out what it means to turn in God’s direction and take a kingdom path.

OK, says the crowd out there in the wilderness.  But what does it look like to turn in God’s direction and take a kingdom path?  What should we do?  You already know the answer, John says.  Share with those who have less than you do.  Live and work in ways that don’t take advantage of people who have less power or privilege than you do.  This isn’t rocket science; it’s what we were supposed to have learned growing up.  Are there kids in Haiti who need the kind of opportunity that only an education can bring?  Well, then buy an Advent card and pay the teacher’s salary for one of them.  Are there people in Kansas City working more than one job but struggling to buy boots or coats for their kids?  Well, then give to the Free Store, or go serve there yourself and help people find what they need.  And these St. Andrew’s opportunities to pass the peace are just a couple among a million other ways those of us who have two coats can share with someone who has none.

So, what happens if we ignore John the Pastor?  Well, he says, the Lord is coming to baptize us with the Holy Spirit – yea! – and with fire – hmmm….  The Messiah, God’s anointed king, is coming to stir up within us those actions that put flesh and bones on turning and following God.  But to the extent we trust in our own goodness, or ignore people who have less than we do, or take advantage of others because our broken systems let us – that’s not fruit worthy of repentance.  In fact, that’s not fruit at all.  It’s just chaff, the scaly, dry husk around the grains of wheat that the reaper has to pound or grind off and burn away at harvest time.

I don’t hear these words from John the Pastor as a threat that we’re going to burn in hell if we aren’t good enough in this life.  I hear these words as a call to get better.  We don’t need the fires of hell for that because I think we experience plenty of fire in this life as it is.  Right now, in this first chapter of eternal life – this is our time to examine our hearts and our actions, and see what about us needs to be ground off and burned away. 

That’s why these words from John the Pastor are good news for us as individuals and good news for the world.  Because the world will look like God’s vision of justice and right relationship – among us and between us and God – when we let God burn away our chaff: the self-justifications, the excuses, the “me first” culture that benefits those who already benefit from it.  Finding right relationship with God and one another isn’t rocket science.  It’s listening for the voice in the wilderness, hearing what God’s trying to say, and acting on the truth we already know.

Look for the Stumbling Blocks

Sermon for Sept. 26, 2021

Mark 9:38-50

That Gospel reading is not exactly a preacher’s favorite.  Not only does it threaten us with hell; it also gives us the lovely option of cutting off our hands or plucking out our eyes in order to avoid it.  But once we drill down into the reading a bit, the message is compelling – a message for us as individuals, of course, but also for congregations and denominations.  

If you remember the Gospel reading and Mtr. Melissa’s sermon last week, you know the disciples had been arguing among themselves about which of them was the greatest.  And Jesus had told them to empty themselves of their desire for greatness by becoming servants of all and welcoming the lowly. 

Well, today, the disciple John reports to Jesus that the group had come across a healer casting out demons in Jesus’ name.  But they’d tried to stop him, John says, “because he was not following us” (Mark 9:38).  Now, the irony here is that, 10 verses earlier, Jesus’ disciples had failed at the same task when they tried to cast out a demon.  Maybe they were envious of this other healer who was getting the job done, so they tried to stop him in order to hang on to their own sense of power and prestige as part of Team Jesus.  

So, Jesus again has to correct his friends.  He tells them that if they put a stumbling block in the way of people actually doing the work of God’s kingdom, whether that work is officially authorized or not, they’re putting themselves at risk of being separated from God for the long term.  Better to lose what you value most now, Jesus says – to let go of your power, your authority, your privilege – than to stand in God’s way of connecting with others.

I’m afraid hanging onto power and privilege remains a temptation for the Church as an institution and for the Church as you and me.  Sometimes we cling to what we value even though it can get in the way.  It’s been a long, slow process for The Episcopal Church to learn to communicate with people in language, sounds, and symbols that resonate with the life folks are living the other six and a half days of the week.  Overall – albeit slowly – I think the Church is doing a better job of that, learning that we have to think about the people we’re speaking with more than we think about how much we enjoy the way we speak.

But we’ve always got to ask ourselves:  What’s still standing in the way?  And when we find those potential stumbling blocks, how do we remove them without damaging the rest of the road?

Here’s an example.  As you probably know, you don’t have to be a member of The Episcopal Church in order to receive Holy Communion here.  We want as many people as possible to receive Jesus’ body and blood because it brings us forgiveness of our sins, binds us together in love, and empowers us to be the body of Christ serving the world.  It’s a practice often called “open Communion,” and I value it deeply as an example of the Church trying to get out of Jesus’ way so he can reach people and heal them.

What isn’t so widely known is that, even in our Episcopal Church, Communion isn’t as open as it seems.  The Church’s canons, its laws, say that one must be baptized to receive Communion – Canon I.17.7, in fact.¹  Actually, this has been Christian practice for thousands of years.  The argument is that the Church’s mission, as Matthew’s Gospel frames it, is to make disciples, baptizing people and teaching them all that Jesus commanded (28:19-20).  Forming people in the faith and leading them to the commitment of baptism – this is how we’ve brought people into Jesus’ community, the Church.  Then, Communion is the way the Church remembers Jesus, receives his forgiveness and healing, and receives his power to go and serve.  That’s the model Christianity has been using since ancient times – the commitment of baptism, followed by the empowerment of Communion.²

But of course, life’s more complicated than that.  The Church’s rules are the Church’s rules, and I respect them.  But honestly, limiting Communion to baptized people has always seemed wrong to me, at a gut level.  It feels inhospitable at best, exclusionary at worst.  If a congregation is the body of Christ in a particular place and time, the question arises – whom would Jesus refuse to serve?  Plus, the experience of receiving Jesus’ body and blood can be deeply moving, even converting, for someone who hasn’t known God’s love “up close and personal” before.  I don’t want to deny someone that possibility, so I don’t enforce the rule – along with every other priest I know.  We don’t check IDs in the Communion line.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, that approach works.  I don’t ask, and people don’t tell.  But recently, I had a situation where I hadn’t asked, but someone told anyway.  A person whom I knew wasn’t baptized came to St. Andrew’s and came up for Communion.  In my mind’s eye, there was Canon I.17.7, flashing like a highway sign.  Of course, I served her; and I pray the experience brought the love of Jesus directly into her heart. 

But I also pray that neither she nor I stops there.  To me, it’s absolutely right to welcome someone with Communion.  But what needs to come next is conversation, and learning, and commitment, and the new life that wells up from the waters of baptism.  So, I would say to this person:  Yes, as the gift of Communion shows, you are welcome here, no matter what – welcome to be on a journey that will change you forever if you commit yourself to taking it.

So, there’s an example of how the Church’s official practice could be a stumbling block for someone who’s seeking deeper connection with God.  But what about our unofficial practices?  We’ve just started our Discovery class, a six-week introduction to who we are as the Episcopal branch of the Jesus movement – how we got here, why we worship the way we do, what we believe, and what it means to follow Jesus in day-to-day life.  I love the class … and I always worry a bit that sharing what’s special about the Episcopal way of being Christian could shine the light in the wrong place, highlighting why we’re so great rather than the greatness of the One we serve.

As with most potential stumbling blocks, probably the best way to keep from tripping over them is simply to look out for them.  Whether in the Church or in our own lives, the things we treasure can easily become idols.  Our roles in the life of the Church can easily become opportunities to judge those whom we might see as lesser.  And that’s especially tempting when, like the disciples, we feel threatened by the fact that someone else’s experience of God maybe seems richer or fuller than ours.  For the disciples, the effective healer who wasn’t on the right team was a threat.  For us, we can also be tempted to guard our sense of who we’ve always been or what we’ve always done, even to the extent of stifling the movement of the Holy Spirit. 

As a Church and as individuals, even though we treasure what we know and love, we’ve also got to be a little suspicious of it.  The unwritten rules may say that we dress a certain way, or that we speak a certain way, or that only a certain kind of person ends up in leadership.  We’ve got to look out for stumbling blocks like those by asking ourselves:  What do I need to let go of, what do I need to set aside, in order to see Jesus’ road ahead more clearly?

1.      Canon I.17.7 reads, “No unbaptized person shall be eligible to receive Holy Communion in this Church.” The Constitution and Canons are available at: https://www.episcopalarchives.org/sites/default/files/publications/2018_CandC.pdf. Accessed Sept. 24, 2021.

2.      For a review of the question of open or closed Communion – its history, theology, and Scriptural warrant – see Meyers, Ruth A.  “Who May Be Invited to the Table?”  Anglican Theological Review, vol. 94, no. 2, Spring 2012, 233-244.  Available at: http://www.anglicantheologicalreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/meyers_.pdf.

Thanksgiving Every Week

Sermon for Thanksgiving, Nov. 25, 2022

As many of you know, we had a funeral here Tuesday afternoon for parishioner Jennifer Furla.  What made Jennifer’s situation particularly poignant was that she was only 59 and had spent most of this year fighting leukemia.  Perhaps it was her age that prompted the intensity of the theological reflection I heard around her death and celebration of life.  Several people – more than usual – needed to talk about the injustice of it all.  Where is God when someone gets sick and dies young? 

It also may be that the stresses of the past two years have led us to reflect on, “Where is God when….”  We’ve heard so many numbers of COVID deaths that the reports bounce off my ears anymore.  But I spoke with a nurse who’d been treating hospitalized COVID patients, and her reflection was much more personal and intense.  So was the reflection of someone who’d moved into a new community in the midst of COVID and had real trouble building relationships when she couldn’t see people’s faces.  So was the reflection of an older woman with health challenges who, frankly, would be happy for her earthly life to end:  She asked, why does a young, beloved woman die when God won’t take someone who wants to go?  And those reflections just relate to the pandemic and its effects on us.  Don’t forget social injustice, and political divisiveness, and natural disasters, and, and, and….

All this is pretty heavy for a holiday morning, and I apologize for that.  But the heaviness is just out there.  We’re carrying a lot these days, personally and nationally – and then, here comes Thanksgiving, when we’re supposed to be grateful.  If we find ourselves with a little cognitive dissonance about that, I think it’s best not to sweep it under the rug as we clean up to welcome friends and family to dinner.  A lot of people are anxious about a lot of things – and it’s OK to name that truth.

Well, it turns out Jesus has something to say about anxiety.  In a nutshell, he asks us to trust God and choose not to worry about the things we need because God knows we need them and loves us enough to provide them.  In the midst of anxious times, Jesus is also naming a truth – that most worry is a choice.  Simply living faithfully day by day is challenging enough, Jesus says in the verse that follows what we heard this morning.  There, he reminds us:  “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.  Today’s trouble is enough for today.” (Matt 6:34)

That’s certainly true, though it may not offer as much comfort as we’d like.  So, it also might help to remember we’re not alone in making our way through anxious times.  And Thanksgiving is a good time to remember another couple of moments we’ve spent on the edge.

In fact, Thanksgiving is rooted in one of those times.  We learned in school that the Pilgrims at Plymouth celebrated a thanksgiving feast with their Native neighbors in 1621, 400 years ago. But it wasn’t great prosperity or religious freedom that made the colony’s leaders declare that holiday.  It was to honor the fact that those who hadn’t died the winter before thought they had a halfway decent chance of not dying in the winter to come.  The colony lost close to half its settlers in the first year.  Then, after their first cycle of planting and tending and harvesting, the Pilgrims were deeply grateful simply to have what looked like enough food to make it through the second winter alive. They’d come to the edge of disaster, and the experience made them thank God for giving them enough to bring them back to safety.  Wouldn’t it have been a blessing if European settlers had cultivated that ethos of being grateful for having enough instead of taking the land they came to…?

Two and a half centuries later, Abraham Lincoln also found himself and his nation on the brink.  It was 1863, and Americans had been killing each other in the Civil War for more than two years.  Tens of thousands had died on both sides without any resolution in sight other than the likely division of the nation — until July of 1863.  That’s when Union troops defeated the Confederates at Vicksburg and Gettysburg, within the space of a few days.  With those victories, finally, Lincoln could see light at the end of the tunnel, a real hope that these States might remain united.  So, he took the suggestion of a magazine editor and proclaimed a national day of Thanksgiving. The Union had nearly dissolved.  We’d come to the edge of disaster, and that experience made people – at least Northerners – grateful to God for bringing them back toward healing and wholeness.

I think it works much the same way for us.  Sometimes it takes an experience of being on the edge of disaster before we’re ready to offer what God desires most from us – a sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, the offering of our whole lives.  But how do we do that? 

I don’t know about you, but I often give myself trouble for not being grateful enough.  I look at the colored leaves we received when we came in today, and I think, “I’ve been given so much more than I deserve; I should be putting a hundred of these into the offering plate.”  Then, often, someone in a collar stands up in a pulpit like this implying we should feel badly if we just want to spend the day eating turkey and watching football.  Other people have such a rough time … if I were just more grateful for what I’ve been given, maybe somehow that would help balance things out…?

I don’t think more thank-yous are exactly what God has in mind.  I want to share an image I’ve mentioned before, something my spiritual director said once: that what God desires isn’t more tokens of thanksgiving; what God desires is us – the offering of ourselves, our souls and bodies, as the prayer book puts it.  Put yourself in the offering plate, she said.  Live in thanksgiving.

It's no coincidence that our worship points us that direction, too.  In fact, the term for what we do here every Sunday, and what we’re doing today, says it loud and clear … or at least it does if you speak Greek.  We come here, week by week, to remember God’s love in creating us, Jesus’ giving of himself for us, the Holy Spirit’s empowering of us day by day – we come to remember all this in a service called Holy Eucharist, which means holy thanksgiving.  We have Thanksgiving dinner here each week.  Our worship forms us to remember, first and foremost, to live in gratitude – not just for specific blessings but as the paradigm for our relationship with God, and one another, and the world. 

So, maybe this holiday can be more than a day when we list our blessings.  Maybe it can be a day to reset.  The time is right, after all, because Advent begins this weekend, too – our annual time of preparation for the coming of God With Us in Bethlehem, and in our hearts, and at the end of the age.  What would it be like if Jesus came and found us alive and well and living in the offering plate, despite the challenges of the present moment?  Not only would it make our Savior smile, but it would also empower us to confront those challenges of the present moment.  For gratitude is power – the power to move from the kingdom of anxiety into the kingdom of God, and to lead others to come along with us.