Live Hope Out Loud

[Sermon from Easter, April 20, 2014]

This year, our journey with Jesus through Holy Week took a turn we’d have never expected.  Seven days ago, we had just marked Palm Sunday and the deep mystery of God’s self-sacrifice for us, despite our propensity to choose death over life.  And in the beauty of that quiet springtime afternoon, a longtime hatemonger turned his vitriol into violence, traveling hours to Kansas City for the sole purpose of killing Jews.  Ironically failing in his task, he still murdered three people at the Jewish Community Center and Village Shalom.

This act is something we can neither understand nor undo.  But, as we’ve witnessed throughout this week, people of hope can do something:  We can respond in love.  We gathered here on Wednesday to lift up our Jewish sisters and brothers in prayer as they celebrated Passover – the story of the redemption of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, God’s victory over the forces of sin and death.  Their Exodus is our Exodus; their freedom is our freedom; our stories are one.  And so is our common blessedness as children of the one God.

These murders – particularly with their horrifying motivation – they make us recoil.  But they also challenge us to speak our faith in the conversations that follow.  A reasonable person might well look at this week and wonder how in the world we can claim what we claim.  We say Jesus has defeated sin and death … and yet, look at the world we live in.  Where is Jesus’ victory?  Where is God’s deliverance through the Red Sea?  Evil and death are clearly still there; Pharaoh’s forces still bear down on us. 

The mysterious truth is this:  God paints new life on the canvas of death.  Yes, death is present, but it is never the end of the story.  Yes, evil still raises its head from the swamp of our brokenness; we still have an enemy against which we contend.  But those battles are merely mopping-up actions in a conflict Jesus has already won.  So even in a week like this one, our call is to live hope out loud.

And you know – God assigns that mission to those who seem least likely to carry it out.  Go back to the Gospel reading we just heard.  Mary Magdalene has come to Jesus’ tomb to take care of the final details of burial.  Because he died just before the Sabbath began, she couldn’t finish her work on Friday.  Her world has come to an end – and now she has to deal with the body.  So in her grief, she comes to the tomb, where she finds insult added to injury:  The body is gone.  She runs to find Peter and John, either to help her find it or just to share the pain.  They look around and find the body’s wrappings neatly set aside.  But the men just go back home, leaving Mary alone in her grief.  As she sobs, she sees angels in the tomb; but even they don’t offer any help.  She turns and sees someone she thinks is the gardener, and she looks for help from him.  But that man standing there is Jesus himself, having come to Mary in her pain.  Once he speaks her name, she can see him for who he is – and his new life becomes her new life.  This person whose words were choked by tears now finds a new voice.  She runs to the disciples, who are hiding out at home; and she boldly says to them, “I have seen the Lord!” (John 20:18).  God has transformed her pain into proclamation as she lives hope out loud. 

In our own experiences, we’ve each had our places of pain.  If we have very many years behind us at all, we’ve each known Good Friday, one way or another.  Whether it’s abuse or addiction, limitation or loss, self-doubt or self-destruction – we’ve all come a little too close to the tomb.  And yet, here we are.  God has empowered us to keep on walking.  In a faith that thrives on paradox, this is perhaps the most surprising truth we come to know in our relationship with Christ:  That precisely through our deepest wounds, we’re called to help God heal the world.  The pain that we’ve confronted, the evil we’ve resisted, the tombs from which we’ve walked away – all of it prepares us to serve those still broken and bound.  Through our words and through our deeds, our call is to live hope out loud.

This week, we’ve heard an incredible example of this kind of proclamation – Mary Magdalene among us, in the flesh.  She is Mindy Corporon, the mother and daughter of two of Sunday’s victims, who was there when her loved ones were gunned down.  I imagine most of you have seen Mindy Corporan on TV at some point this week.  She’s appeared on local and national newscasts; she spoke at the funeral of her father and son on Good Friday.  And she’s done all this with astounding composure.  She embodies such peace that, as she describes her experience and her feelings about the shootings, you almost forget that this woman is living through hell:  the brutal killing of her father and her son, perpetrated by the worst person you can imagine.  Out of such sorrow, most of us would speak horror or bitterness or vengeance or despair.  Mindy Corporon spoke peace – even the very day of the shootings.  Only hours after losing her father and her son, at a hastily arranged vigil, this is the proclamation God gave her to share with the world.  She said:

 “I came upon the scene very, very quickly … before the police and before the ambulance … and I knew immediately that [my father and my son] were in heaven.  And I know that they are in heaven together.…  My dad got elected to take [my son to the audition] because my mom was busy with other cousins, and I was with my other son at a lacrosse game.  We were in life; we were having life.  And I want you all to know that we’re going to have more life, and I want you all to have more life.”¹  

Deep in her bones, Mindy Corporon gets Easter.  Faced with seemingly unbearable loss, she chooses to bear it by proclaiming life and peace, fearlessly.  In doing so, she is nothing less than an apostle.  As God did 2,000 years ago for Mary Magdalene on the first Easter morning, God has brought life out of death, giving Mindy Corporan an unbelievable assignment and equipping her for her task.

That is our Lord’s pattern:  God takes the person in the deepest pain and chooses her as the proclaimer of new life – resurrected life – eternal life – in the here and now, and continuing forever.  Like Mary Magdalene, clearly Mindy Corporan has seen the Lord.  And in her witness, so have we.  In this terrible and beautiful and holy week, she has shown us the best way to join in Christ’s victory and stand against evil when it surfaces.  She has shown us that the wounded make the very best healers.  She has shown us how to take up the cross, bedeck it with flowers, and boldly bear it to a world that loves to hate.  Mindy Corporon has shown us how to live hope out loud.

And now, that call is ours.  We, too, have been to the cross.  We, too, have come to the tomb and found it empty.  Unlikely witnesses though we are, we, too, have peace to proclaim.  Use the wounds you bear to help God heal the world.  Live hope out loud.

 

1.        KansasCityStarVideo.  “Daughter and mother of victims speaks at prayer vigil after Overland Park shootings.”  April 13, 2014.  Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8N1_qcUwTeQ.  Accessed April 18, 2014.

 

Who Is This Man, and Why Is He Dying on a Cross?

[Sermon from Palm Sunday, April 13, 2014]

Palm Sunday is one of those times when the liturgy preaches far more eloquently than I can.  If we truly see and hear what today’s worship proclaims, we will walk away astonished, slack-jawed at what we’ve witnessed.  So rather than trying to explain a theology of the atonement; rather than examining Roman imperialism and the religious power structure in Second-Temple Judaism; rather than trying in any other way to make rational sense of the events we’re bringing into living memory this morning – instead, I’d like us to consider two simple questions:  Who is this man, and why is he dying on a cross? 

And I’d like us to put a face on the person who might be asking those questions.  I’d like you to imagine her now.  Her name is Chelsea, and she isn’t anyone you know … or she’s many people you know.  And this anecdote about Chelsea is a true story.  As Emmanuel Cleaver likes to say, it’s a true story, and it may have actually happened, too.

Chelsea walks into Macy’s, shopping for Easter.  She’s looking for an outfit for her little girl because the family is getting together for Easter brunch, and it’s a longstanding tradition in her family to get something new and springy to wear that day.  But Chelsea also wants to find something for herself; after all, moms deserve a little something special for a holiday, too.  So she comes to the jewelry counter.  Since they’re getting together for Easter, she thinks it might be nice to get a new cross necklace.

So Chelsea starts looking at the crosses … dozens of them, it seems.  Every possible style you could imagine – gold and silver, ornate and plain, traditional and contemporary, fine and rough.  Who knew you could find so many different crosses?  The sales associate comes over, offering to help – “Do you know what kind of cross you’re looking for?”  Chelsea examines the options and sees that, even with all the variety, they fall into two basic categories.  “Well,” Chelsea says, “let’s start by narrowing it down this way.  I’d like one with the little man on it.”

I’ve heard this story told to bemoan the religious ignorance of our culture today.  But there is no shame in not knowing something.  The only shame would be if we had nothing to offer Chelsea in reply.

So:  Who is this little man, and why is he dying on a cross?  I can see why Chelsea might look for those answers.  She’d be in good company.  Everybody in today’s Passion Gospel is asking those questions, too.  The Roman governor, the religious authorities, the soldiers, the passersby – everyone’s trying to get a handle on those questions:  Who is this man, and why is he dying on a cross?

What would we say?  Well, if I know anything about theology, I know there is no single way to answer those questions.  But here’s my answer, at least.

In one sense, this man is Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish peasant and itinerant preacher who’s been alienating himself from his own religious leaders by questioning their authority and undermining their credibility with the people they’re supposed to lead.  He keeps pointing out how they’re missing the mark by worshipping their religious system more than following God – a God who’s much more interested in seeing people fed, clothed, healed, and forgiven than in seeing people follow religious rules. 

Not surprisingly, Jesus has gained quite a following.  And that’s brought him to the attention of the Roman authorities – especially when he marches into the capital city with the crowd calling him king and calling out to him to “save us,” which is what that cry “Hosanna!” actually means (Matthew 21:9).  Jesus is a threat to everyone in power, religious and civic rulers alike; and starting a riot in the Temple only seals his fate.  He’s whipped within an inch of his life and then crucified – a ghastly way to be executed, reserved for the lowest of the low, intended to terrorize anybody else who might think about challenging imperial authority.  So he hangs on a cross, along with two lowlifes, until he suffocates.

That’s one way to see who this man is and why he’s dying on a cross.  But Jesus is so much more than that.  This man dying on the cross is there to rule and heal the very people who are killing him. 

All through the story we heard this morning, he’s named as “king.”  The chief priests and religious elders accuse him of it.  The governor interrogates him about it and even presents him to the crowd as “the messiah” (Matthew 27:17), which means the one anointed by God to rule God’s people.  The soldiers dress him up as the emperor, complete with a fake imperial scepter and a wreath of thorns instead of laurel on his head.  Even the official charge nailed to the cross ironically proclaims the God’s-honest truth – this is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews. 

And that’s only scratching the surface.  The religious authorities also speak the truth they can’t abide.  As Jesus hangs on the cross, gasping for air, they mock him by calling him “Son of God” (Matthew 27:40), the historic title for the divinely chosen kings of Israel.  They challenge him to save himself, this man whose very name, Jesus, means “he saves.”  They say they’ll believe in him, if God actually bothers to show up.

And here’s the greatest irony:  As is so often the case in our own hearts, the reality they most reject is the deepest truth there is.  Everybody’s working so hard to deny that Jesus is king and deny that Jesus is divine because, deep down, they’re all terrified it’s true.  Only the emperor could be called kyrios, or Lord – the incarnation of divine power on earth.  Only the religious hierarchy could command the people how to live.  Imperial power and religious power must be unquestioned … unless, of course, God actually shows up in the flesh. 

But the journalist on the scene tells the truth.  As the Lord and king takes his final breath, the earth shakes, and rocks split, and the Temple’s barrier between people and God is torn in two.  And the Centurion, the reporter doing the live shot, names what he sees, with no filters:  “Truly, this man was God’s son!” (Matthew 27:54).

So who is this little man on the cross?  Jesus, the insurrectionist?  No, Jesus the kyrios, the Lord – the true emperor and the true embodiment of God among us.  We know it precisely because he doesn’t claim it.  He doesn’t need to.  This is the One – the one who, “though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself … [and] humbled himself, and became obedient to the point of death – even death on a cross” (Philippians 2:6-8).  And in God’s inverted economy, where power is weakness and weakness is power, God reverses humiliation into exaltation, giving him the “name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:9), so that we all might see and know the truth:  that this little man on the cross, this Jesus, is the Lord – the ruler anointed to follow the great Jewish king David, the emperor who trumps whichever clown sits on the imperial throne in Rome.  This little man on the cross is God in the flesh – torn and bleeding flesh – come to bind up and heal every wound we bear.  This little man on the cross breathes the Holy Spirit as he gasps for his final breath.  This little man on the cross holds his arms out wide to speak this astonishing truth to the world that wants God dead:  “See how much I love you?” he says.  “I love you this much.”  [Arms extended in cruciform shape]

Am I More Than My Work?

Sermon from March 23, 2014 -- part of a series on "What Keeps You Up at Night."
Exodus 17:1-7, Romans 5:1-11; John 4:5-42

Here we are in the third week of Lent and week 3 of this sermon series on “What keeps you up at night?”  The first week, the topic was money.  Last week, it was aging.  This morning, it’s another one of the questions that plague us:  “Am I more than my work?”  

Well, I’m a priest; so my work is an ordained vocation and all that.  But I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be a bartender.  The romantic image of it appeals to me, the image from movies or old reruns of Cheers.  On difficult days here, I could really see myself doing it:  John at the bar, who welcomes people as they come in, listens to their stories, offers a wise word here and there, and serves drinks to ease their pain.  Actually, maybe my current vocation isn’t so different after all.  Turn the bar into a communion rail …. well, perhaps it’s not a 1:1 match. 

But I do have days when I wonder, “Am I more than my work?”  You don’t have to be a priest to experience it.  You get up in the morning and start thinking about what’s on your schedule.  You get to work and dive into the day – moments of energizing creativity alongside mind-numbing details.  Amid one meeting after another, you try to get the most important things done and keep the urgencies of the moment from pushing the priorities aside.  You struggle to keep up with the e-mail.  You worry whether there will be enough – customers or profits, Sunday attendance or pledging units.  You take real joy in those times when you know, deep in your heart, that you’ve actually made a difference.  You go to the day’s last meeting, and then you go home to find it’s nearly bedtime.  And you go to sleep thinking about what’s on the schedule for tomorrow….

You don’t have to be a mental-health professional to know we need a more holistic sense of who we are and what we do.  God has equipped us for work, but God has not created us to be workers.  God has created us to be … human beings, earth-creatures miraculously filled with the divine Spirit so that we can bridge this world and the kingdom of heaven we can’t quite see.  We know this, deep down.  We know we’re more than carbon-based life forms, random collections of chemicals that somehow evolved self-awareness.  We know God sees us as more than that.  But we also find ourselves right there with the people of Israel sometimes, wandering in the wilderness.  In the dust and the heat of our own barren landscapes, we sometimes look around and see no water.  Intellectually, we may know God’s leading us on a journey; we may understand we don’t get to see the Promised Land until we’re there.  But in the moment, it’s easy to wonder whether we’re doing anything more than wandering.  Are we just walking in circles in a barren wilderness?  “Is the Lord among us, or not?” (Exodus 17:7).

Let’s change the scene to today’s Gospel reading.  We’re not in the desert wilderness, but the setting is just as hot and dry – and potentially, just as spiritually desolate.  Jesus is walking through Samaria, a place that used to be part of Israel.  David and Solomon ruled this land; the people there and the people of Judea once were one.  But over the centuries – after divisions, and invasions, and deportations, and return from exile, and rule by different foreign empires – the people of Samaria and “the Jews” are just similar enough to despise each other.  

So at noon, traveling in the heat of the day, Jesus stops at a well to rest.  There he meets a Samaritan woman – an odd meeting for several reasons.  First, most of the local women wouldn’t have chosen the heat of the day as the time to lug gallons of water back home, so you have to wonder if she wasn’t welcome among the others who would have been there that morning.  Second, Jesus engages this woman – he asks her for a drink, and he carries on quite a conversation with her.  That would have been a breach of social norms because a man and a woman wouldn’t have engaged each other like that in public.  And finally, he was a Jew, and she was a Samaritan.  And you don’t have deep, meaningful conversations with people you’re supposed to hate….

The woman names the awkwardness, but Jesus takes the conversation in a new direction – away from the need for a drink of water and into the need for hope.  He tells her he can offer not just well water but “living water” (John 4:10) – flowing water, not stagnant; and water that leaves you satisfied forever after only one drink.  The woman is intrigued – she’d love to stop making her daily journey to carry water from the well – but she’s no fool.  Who’s ever heard of water that quenches your thirst forever?  Jesus needs to take the conversation deeper so she can see him as something more than a snake-oil salesman.  So he leads her to look at herself through his eyes.

Now, here we’ve got to be careful to step outside the assumptions people often bring to the character of this Samaritan woman.  It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of R-rated biblical interpreters, but that’s what often happens with this story.  Jesus points out the woman has had five husbands and that the man she’s living with is not her husband.  That doesn’t make her either a skank or a hooker with a heart of gold.  In this social context, a woman had no legal right to divorce her husband.  So the likelihood is that she’s lived through the hell of being dumped or widowed five times.  And now, the only relationship she can find is outside what little protection marriage offered women.  She’s had an incredibly hard life.  She’s on the margins of everything.  Jesus wants her to know that he gets it.

And he wants her to know that she is more than what her hard life would lead her to believe.  In the eyes of her culture, this woman’s identity would have been a negation: “not someone’s wife.”  In the eyes of a Jew walking into her Samaritan culture, the woman’s identity would have been a judgmental negation:  “a heretic who’s not someone’s wife.”  At best, she’s a nothing.  And yet, here’s a prophet engaging this nothing in a theological conversation.  Here’s a prophet saying that where people worship God doesn’t make a nickel’s worth of difference; what matters is knowing the Father and worshipping authentically, “in spirit and in truth” (John 4:24).  Here’s a prophet revealing to her that actually he’s the Messiah, and he wants to have a conversation with her.   This woman’s identity is as far away from “nothing” as you can get.  It’s not about her marital status, or her ethnic group, or her religious practice.  Her identity comes from the living water welling up within her, the water Jesus gives her by focusing not on what she is but who she is.  And who is that?  This woman is the greatest thing there is: a child of God, worthy of a conversation with God’s own Son, worthy of receiving living water, worthy of being taken completely seriously.

And once she begins to see herself through Jesus’ eyes, she begins to see Jesus through God’s eyes.  She says, testing the waters, “I know that [the] Messiah is coming…” (4:25).  And Jesus smiles and lets her know she got it right:  “I am he,” he says – or, more precisely, as the Greek text gives it, “I am” (John 4:26) – just like God on Mt. Sinai.  This has truly been a divine encounter.  And it heals the woman so deeply that she can live into the opposite of her society’s expectations.  This outsider, who couldn’t even go to the well with the other women, now runs to the crowd and says, “Come and see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done!” (4:29)  Come and see the first man who ever truly saw me.

When Jesus looks at you, who does he see?  Does he see a banker, or a homemaker, or a student, or a parent, or a physician, or a retiree, or a businessperson, or a priest?  Does he gauge who you are based on your accomplishments in your role?  No.  No.  No.  No.  What Jesus sees is you – the real you, deep down, at the core of your being.

Our identity, our value, comes not from what we make but from how we’re made.  We can earn millions of dollars, or labor countless hours, or insist on perfection in all that we do – but none of that gives us our value.  Our value comes from the Spirit’s presence welling up within us.  Our value comes from the fact that you – not humanity in general but you, the beautiful face looking back at you in the mirror – you are made in the image and likeness of God.  You bear the spark of divinity within you.  In God’s eyes, you are worth dying for – not because you are “good”; in fact, despite much that you regret. (Romans 5:6-8)  Your failures aren’t the point.  In God’s eyes, you are worth dying for simply because you are a precious child.  Precisely because God knows you so well, because Jesus can tell you everything you’ve ever done, because you cannot earn love no matter how hard you try – because God knows you need it, the love of your heavenly parent flows into your heart.  It’s the river that watered the Garden of Eden in the beginning and the river that flows through the city of God, the heavenly city waiting to welcome each of us home.  It is the water of life.  And it’s yours.

The question isn’t, “Am I more than my work?”  God knows you’re more than your work.  The question about work is this:  “Does my work reflect who I am?”  Does what I do spring from the living water that springs up in me?  Does my work honor the God who loves me unconditionally for who I am?  Does my work honor the inherent value of every person my work touches?  Through my work, do I love God and love the person in front of me? 

So what is your true work?  To serve drinks.  When you come right down to it, we are all holy bartenders.  You are called to take the love of God that flows into your heart and pour that love back out again.  In your office, in your home, at a party with your friends, in a meeting room filled with tension – in every waking moment – your work is to love.  Nothing less will do for us, for the children of the God who is love.  Your work is to draw living water from the well of your own beloved heart and pour it out freely, not fearing the loss.  Your work, my work – our work – is simply to offer a drink to every thirsty child of God the world sends our way 

Open Your Doors

[State-of-the-parish address; St. Andrew's, Kansas City; Jan. 19, 2014]

Welcome to annual-meeting Sunday and the state-of-the-parish address.  And here’s my annual warning: This will be longer than a standard sermon.  On the bright side, I won’t be giving a speech in the meeting downstairs….

In a nutshell, the state of our parish is mixed, honestly.  Some parts of our common life are strong and getting stronger; in others, we see red flags we’ll be addressing this year.  That’s not a surprise, given the huge changes underway, both in our parish culture and in our world.  Following our model of collaborative leadership, I’ll share with you where we are in terms of the parish’s spiritual affairs, and you’ll hear about the temporal affairs downstairs. 

We’ve had a very good year in terms of “equipping the saints for the work of ministry” (Ephesians 4:12).  Basically, we’ve spent a year strengthening our staff.  We defined a new leadership position, pastor for young adults and families; and we searched for and found Fr. Marcus – praise God for that.  We bid farewell to Dr. Sharon Hettinger in her retirement, redefined the music director’s job with a more missional focus, and called Dr. Tom Vozzella – praise God for that.  We redefined the roles of the children’s and youth ministry coordinators, making their work more collaborative with their commissions; and we found Kat Mercer and Mathew Berger, who’ve energized these ministries greatly – praise God for that.  We redefined our communications role to focus on marketing the parish internally and externally, and we’re very close to filling two part-time positions to get that work done.  Our talent pool is deep and getting deeper – praise God for that.

We’ve also built our capacity to stay connected with you.  Many of you remember Telecare, led by Chuck Sweeney – a ministry of calling everyone in the parish simply to check in.  Thanks to the leadership of Mtr. Anne and Deacon Peg Ruth, we’ve renewed Telecare and rechristened it “Sweeneycare” in Chuck’s memory.  We’ve also increased the number of parishioners visiting other parishioners for pastoral care, with 11 lay people now regularly doing that work.  At the other end of the age spectrum, Fr. Marcus, Kat Mercer, and Mathew Berger have been busy contacting our families to strengthen those relationships and invite them to join the fun.

And we’ve begun building our capacity to reach people who aren’t yet here.  With Take5, our Saturday-evening service, we’re offering a new, more relaxed approach to worship at a new time – and about 50 people a week are taking us up on the offer.  And Fr. Marcus is meeting people in neighborhood coffee shops and watering holes, building toward a regular series in a bar – relaxed fellowship and conversation about real issues, offering “church” in a new way.

But in other ways, as I said, the indicators aren’t so good.  For the year, our worship attendance is down.  Our sojourn in the undercroft during the nave renovation had something to do with that, and the addition of Take5 on Saturday evenings has increased our averages in the past seven weeks.  But still, attendance is down.  Also, our pledged income is basically at the same level as last year, which is good; but the number of pledging units has decreased.  From what we’ve heard in following up with people, many just forgot to send in their pledges or didn’t recognize the pledge mailing for what it was.  Still, we have some real work to do in engaging parishioners better and in making stewardship a year-round, spiritual practice; and we’ll be digging into that beginning with the Vestry retreat in a couple of weeks.

You’ll hear more about 2013 in the meeting downstairs.  But for now, let’s think about the big questions as we look forward:  Who are we, what is our mission, and what’s God asking of us in this moment?  The answers to these questions have everything to do with what’s coming in the next 12 months.

Our readings today tell us pretty clearly who we are and what we’re called to do.  The prophet Isaiah says, “It is too light a thing” for us simply to be people of faith.  Like the Israelites, we are called to be the Lord’s “light to the nations, that … salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (49:6).  The people of God are by definition a missionary presence in the world.  The light of Christ shines through us.  It shines through the witness of our lives, our words and our actions.  That witness is both our greatest gift to God and our brightest beacon of blessing for the people around us.  And in that offering of ourselves, in our brokenness and in our giftedness, we are “called to be saints,” Paul says in First Corinthians:  We are holy and set aside for the service of God, and we “are not lacking in any spiritual gift” necessary for a saint’s work (1:7).  If a bunch of fisherman were good enough to follow Jesus and take his word to the world, aren’t you?  And in John’s Gospel, we hear that story, our story – the call of Andrew to call others.  He begins as a follower of John the Baptist, but he goes off to follow Jesus instead.  Jesus asks him what he’s looking for and invites Andrew to “come and see” (John 1:39).  We don’t get to hear what happened, but something clearly happened because Andrew couldn’t keep his saints’ light from shining.  He had to run off and find his brother, Peter, and share the news: that he’d found the real deal, the messiah, the real presence of God come to earth.  Andrew couldn’t help himself: He had to open the door and invite his brother in.

So, for this congregation of “missionary zeal,” as the plaque to my left says – what do we hear in all this for us?  I hear God calling the saints of this place to open our doors and let Christ’s light shine.  It’s right there, in our parish vision statement:  “St. Andrew’s is a spiritual home to all, inspiring us to shine Christ’s light into our families, our city, and our world.”  So here are four doors we’re going to work to open in the next 12 months:

First, the doors of our hearts.  There are lots of ways our hearts might be opened to a deeper relationship with God.  But first and foremost, those doors are opened by worship; and within worship, it’s particularly music that turns the key.  Over the past year, we’ve been taking a few steps to differentiate the musical experience at our three weekend services.  Now, with Tom Vozzella here, that work will step up.  8:00 will still be an experience of the richness of traditional hymnody and classic composers.  At 10:15, we’ll keep exploring a greater musical diversity, including traditional hymns along with spirituals, more contemporary pieces, maybe music from other cultures.  And at Take5, we’ll keep moving toward a more inviting and accessible sound, giving people the chance to sing things they might hear on Christian radio, things they can sing with ease.  It’s all a work in progress, the musical “product” one week being influenced by your experience in the weeks before.  So please, talk with Tom, or with Mtr. Anne, Fr. Marcus, or me.  Let us know what’s working and what isn’t.  Because the point isn’t to create an interesting range of church music; the point is to open your heart to Jesus Christ, who’s standing at the door and knocking (Revelation 3:20).

So the door to our hearts is the first one to open.  Second, we’re going to work on opening the interior doors of our parish.  Of course, I don’t mean that literally; I mean the doors that sometimes keep us separated from other members of our church community.  Maybe the door is closed by physical difficulties in getting to church.  Maybe the door is closed by a habit of keeping to the crowd we know.  (I heard recently from a long-time member, and a ministry leader, that she’s never been invited to another parishioner’s home.)  Maybe that door is closed by forgetting to invite newcomers to get involved in something you’re involved in.  (We have a good number of people coming through our red doors; and even though they may not say it, they want you to “make the ask.”)  We’re going to work on opening each of these doors – increasing our capacity to get older and disabled people to church, creating new opportunities for fellowship and pastoral care, explicitly offering multiple entry points into the life of the parish.  In the city of God, scripture tells us, “its gates will never be shut” (Revelation 21:5).

Third, we’re going to work on opening the doors of our faith to our friends and neighbors by helping you tell our story.  We’ve made a good start, with parishioners putting out yard signs at Christmas and Easter, maybe even distributing some door hangers (probably in the dark and in other people’s neighborhoods…).  As Episcopalians, speaking about faith is our greatest growing edge.  Well, your new Communication Commission has been helping us find the words to say when the time is right to talk about what makes St. Andrew’s special.  On the back page of the bulletin, you’ll find the progress so far:  a statement of beliefs and values that encapsulate what differentiates us.  (Please don’t read it now; take it home instead.)  The commission isn’t finished, so look for more tools to help us share our congregation’s story.  Doing that, along with growing our capacity to market ourselves professionally, will open doors for people who never would have thought to seek God here.  As Jesus said, “Knock, and the door will be opened for you.” (Luke 11:9)

Fourth, we’re going to work on opening the exterior doors of our church.  Again, I’m not talking about literally propping open the red doors.  I’m talking about opening the parish to the community around us, continuing our journey of reaching new people with “church” done in new ways.  As you know, for some time now we’ve been exploring what to do with our facility across the street, HJ’s, and whether we should conduct a capital campaign to celebrate our second century.  In November, we asked you those questions through a fundraising feasibility study.  The results were deeply encouraging.  We received more than 200 responses, and 88 percent of you feel this church is effective in meeting your spiritual needs.  That’s huge – exciting and humbling, all at the same time.  In addition, a clear majority supports replacing HJ’s with a new facility, and our consultants say we have a very high likelihood of raising the money to do it.  So the Vestry has voted to proceed with a capital campaign, and you’ll hear more about it downstairs.  For now, let me say this:  It’s an open question exactly what we’ll do with HJ’s; that decision is part of the campaign process.  But the building is not the point.  The goal is to create a new open door between our parish and our community – a place where activities like Youth Group and Scouts can grow and thrive; a place where fresh expressions of worship can happen; a place where neighbors can gather for art exhibits, classes, meetings, or events; a place where we can support and empower entrepreneurs working to improve the lives of people in our city who are suffering.  We want to build an open door through which parishioners and residents can come together, both to prosper our church and to prosper our community.  It’s the next step for the spiritual descendants of St. Andrew, providing a place where we, along with those not yet among us, can “come and see” Jesus as we gather together, opening the doors of the kingdom for people, like Andrew himself, who don’t even know what they’re seeking.

When we truly open our doors, we can’t predict just what will happen.  We can’t know exactly who may come in.  And that’s a good thing.  In fact, it’s the point.  Jesus is asking the saints who tend this house of God to open the doors of our hearts and the doors of our parish to the gift of new life that Jesus wants to give us. 

I want to close by reminding you of a story, something that happened here three and a half years ago now.  A parishioner and I were returning to the church after lunch; and as we pulled up under the porte-cochere, we noticed the door was propped open.  Directly in front of the doorway, at the threshold, there stood a dove.  It was minding its own business, with its back to us; and it was looking into the church. 

We sat in the car, watching to see what this symbol of the Holy Spirit would do.  And what it did was … nothing.  It just stood there, looking inside, weighing its options.  Finally, it jumped, spread its wings, and beat them hard to lift itself up and … into the building.  We took it as a healthy sign.  It’s always good when the Holy Spirit chooses to join us here in church. 

So my friend went back to work; and I went inside – where the dove was now flying around in the narthex, trying to make sense of a new space.  Part of me wanted to let it stay, to see where else in the church the Holy Spirit might choose to go.  But the practical side of me – the part that really didn’t want the dove to fly into the nave and roost in the rafters – that practical side of me intervened.  And I found myself in the dubious position of trying to corral this emblem of the Holy Spirit and drive it back out of the church. 

The dove had flown pretty far in, onto the small greeter table by the Wornall Terrace door; and I thought I should get myself between the dove and the Jewell Room so it wouldn’t fly around in there.  Slowly I walked around it, but the dove didn’t seem to care.  Instead, it seemed to be waiting for me to take my place.  Once I’d gotten behind it, the dove flitted over to the oblations table by the door to the nave.  I came along slowly, hoping it would keep moving toward the outside door.  It looked at me, hopped down from the oblations table, and flew over near the door.  Again I came along behind.  Finally, I watched as the dove beat its wings and flew out the open door. 

I was relieved but also a little disappointed by the role I’d had to play.  But then it hit me:  Who was leading whom?  Rather than me driving the Spirit out of the church, perhaps the Spirit had invited me to follow it.  The dove had come through the open door, and I had followed it in.  Then it had moved to its positions, and I had moved into mine.  Like dance partners making up the steps as they go, the dove and I moved in choreography that came as it needed to come.  I wasn’t herding or corralling anything.  It was the dove who was leading me out, just as the dove had led me in.

The same holds true for us.  The Holy Spirit has led us here, into this beautiful and sacred space, into this warm and welcoming family.  Now, the Spirit says:  Unlock your doors and open them wide.  Open your doors, that we might let the light of Christ shine through them.  Open your doors, that we might bring in people looking to connect with a power they can’t quite name.  Open your doors, that we might go out into God’s world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.  Open your doors, that the Spirit might use us to make the old creation new.

Be a Star

[Sermon from Epiphany (transferred), Jan. 5, 2014.]

Once again this morning, we’ve been blessed to see the power of the star of Bethlehem.  We’ve watched the three wise visitors from distant lands as they join us in coming to a peasant’s shack to marvel at the impossible, impoverished king they find there. 

There’s a lot we don’t know about these traveling wise people.  But the Gospel story makes one thing very clear:  It’s the star that draws the magi to Jesus – which makes sense, given that “magi” means astrologers, observers of the sky, the proto-scientists of their day.  In a sense, the star is the main character in this story, powerful enough to draw learned people from foreign lands, powerful enough to make King Herod quake in his boots, powerful enough to reveal precisely where God has come to take up residence among us.

We know this story so well, we may be tempted not to notice how strange it is and how many questions it raises.  For example: Why did these particular wise people see that particular star?  Of all the court astrologers out there, why did these magi notice this star and care enough to follow it?  If the star was so striking, why didn’t all the astrologers of the ancient Near East flock to Bethlehem to see the baby king?  Well, maybe they did – the Gospel story never says there were only three.  Or maybe other wise people followed other signs intended for them, just as the star guided these particular astrologers.  After all, think about the shepherds out in the fields, keeping watch over their flocks:  They got a battalion of the heavenly army singing to them in the middle of the night.  That’s a pretty clear sign. 

And these are just the stories that Luke and Matthew record.  Who knows how many other people might have received their own signs of the divine wonder: that God had indeed come to save them but in the last place they would have thought to look, in a common shack.  Maybe what the stories of the shepherds and the magi really reveal is the double-barreled nature of this Good News:  first, that everyone’s included in the scope of God’s love, whether you’re a Jewish shepherd or a court astrologer from a distant land; and second, that God is endlessly creative in finding ways to let us know that this love is real, and present, and there for the taking. 

Now, if we’d been scripting this story, we might have written it differently to make sure everybody got the message.  We might have had God’s voice booming from heaven, announcing the news of the king’s birth to everyone on the planet at the same time:  “We interrupt our regular programming to bring you this special news bulletin….”  This was pretty amazing news; you’d think God might have wanted to broadcast it.  Interestingly, God went for narrow-casting instead – crafting the message for each audience.  As today’s reading from Ephesians says, God’s intent is “to make everyone see” (3:9) this amazing truth that God wants to bring all people together in love – “no longer strangers and aliens but … members of the household of God” (Ephesians 2:19), erasing differences like gender, nationality, ethnicity, sexuality, and social class.  That’s what the church is here for, Ephesians says:  to reveal “the wisdom of God in its rich variety” (3:10).  We are here “to make everyone see” that in God’s eyes, every last person is valuable, every last person is blessed, every last person is desired in God’s kingdom – no exceptions.  Whether it takes an angel’s trumpet or a shining star, God wants the news to get out there.

So how does God reveal this wisdom to wise men and women today?  There are endless possibilities, everything from dramatic life events, to glorious sunrises, to unexpected blessings.  But mostly, I think it’s … us.  It’s you.  You are the star pointing to God’s love made flesh.  You are the light revealing this truth that’s still so hard to believe – that under the reign and rule of God, you’re in, no matter who you are.  Everyone’s a member of the household, regardless of past experience or past perceptions.  God’s family is there “to make everyone see” that God wants everyone to be part of it. 

And the medium is the message:  Particular stars shine for particular people.  Not everybody followed the star of Bethlehem; it was intended specifically for those “wise men from the East” (Matthew 2:1), and it got the job done.  By the same token, none of us has to reach everyone, but each of us is here to reach someone. 

I want to share with you three examples of what I’m talking about.  Here’s the first:  You’ve heard our senior warden, Steve Rock, speak about his friend Deck Murray, who’s been struggling with cancer and who entered the next chapter of his eternal life just this week.  Deck spent most of his adult life actively not being a person of faith.  What he knew of church wasn’t about authentic relationships but about judgment or institutional promotion or self-aggrandizement.  Over the course of Deck’s illness, Steve has been present to his friend in all kinds of ways – and among them has been a quiet but relentless witness, in the literal sense of that word, about the power of a church community to bring healing even in situations that can’t be cured.  And here’s the fruit it bore:  As Deck neared the end of his life, he got deeply involved in a church family, along with his wife; and it’s that church family that will celebrate his life in a couple of weeks.  His connection with God, through a church, happened because Steve let God’s light shine through him for the person God needed him to reach.

Here’s example 2:  I was at the Free Store distribution on Dec. 20, when the cold-weather items you donated were offered to the people who eat at the Kansas City Community Kitchen.  One part of our work that day was different than usual:  Three of us were there not to hand out coats and hats, but to listen.  We asked people there if we could talk with them, and then we got out of the way and let God work.  I was blessed to overhear one conversation Pete Vogt was having.  He was listening to a man named Eric.  Eric had once been a cook, but he’s been living out of his car for four years now.  He suffers from epilepsy and deeply painful rheumatoid arthritis, which I’m sure isn’t helped by living in the cold and which limits his ability to stand for any length of time.  Pete listened to him, and asked him questions about his life, and encouraged him to get available help with medications.   But then, Pete took it one step further.  He asked the man if he could pray for him.  And then Pete offered one of the most beautiful, authentic, personally specific intercessory prayers I’ve ever been blessed to overhear.  Despite his challenges, Eric walked away from the Free Store with a lot more than a coat.  Pete had let God’s light shine through him for the person God needed him to reach.

Here’s example 3.  I try not to fall into the preacher’s trap of using stories about your own kids as sermon illustrations.  The kids didn’t sign up for that just because their dad went to seminary.  But I do want to mention something you may not know about my son, Dan.  He’s a great kid in all kinds of ways that don’t reveal themselves publicly.  But there is one fairly public thing about Dan that I truly admire.  In the past year, he’s invited at least seven people to come to church – friends of his and their family members.  There may well have been more, but I know of at least seven people who’ve come as a result of his invitations.  Given that the average Episcopalian invites something like one to two people to church in a lifetime, Dan’s done pretty well this year.  How does he do it?  He follows God’s lead.  He has real conversations with his friends about things that matter, and sometimes that ends up in an invitation to experience God in a new way.  It’s not rocket science, it’s relationship; and he’s good at it.  Dan’s been willing to let God’s light shine through him for the people God needs him to reach.

I don’t know specifically what Steve or Pete or Dan said to the people they touched.  What I know is the effect of their words and stories and presence on the people around them.  Each of them let others know they were part of God’s family even if they hadn’t realized it yet.  Each of the people they reached came to see God’s love in a unique way, through a unique vessel.  That’s how incarnation works:  God shows up in us, in you.  To people who may not even have known they needed saving, a savior takes flesh and dwells among them. 

So, you might have guessed this was coming:  What is one way that you’ve seen and known God’s surprising, reconciling, healing love in your own experience?  That’s your star.  God will give you the opportunity to speak it or show it to someone – maybe even this week.  Give it a shot.  Take that light you bear, and let it shine.  The star of Bethlehem didn’t attract every Gentile; it attracted those particular wise people from the East.  There is someone in your universe who’s searching for a sign of God’s love in a way that you, particularly, can offer.  Pray about it, speak it, act it – and then let God do the rest of the work.

Years ago, the first President Bush (a good Episcopalian, by the way) talked about offering “a thousand points of light” to the world.  There’s divine wisdom in that.  As Ephesians says, the church is here to make known “the wisdom of God in its rich variety,” the inclusion of all in God’s loving embrace.  One star doesn’t enlighten the world – not even the star of Bethlehem.  But thousands do.   Take your experience of divine love, and let it shine through you for one person dwelling in darkness.  That’s all it takes to be a star.

A New Birth of Freedom

[Sorry for the late posting, but here's the sermon from Christmas Eve.]

Tonight we gather in the beauty of this hallowed space, singing songs we’ve sung for years, hearing a story many know by heart.  It’s Christmas Eve; and after our long Advent wait, we can finally say it:  Christ is born. 

But as we’ve been exploring throughout the weeks of Advent, that claim is not enough on its own.  For a good number of us here tonight, we come with deep questions, maybe deep suspicion.  We come wondering, “Christ is born.  So what?”

As many of you know, I grew up in Springfield, Missouri – “the buckle on the Bible Belt” – so religious messages were everywhere.  One of them stays with me particularly tonight, a billboard on Highway 13.  On the sign, in huge letters, was the claim we come here tonight to celebrate:  “Jesus Saves!”  In my less-pious years, I often wondered, “Saves us from what?”  What’s the threat from which Jesus delivers us?   What do you mean, he’s a “savior?” 

In the readings tonight, and especially in Luke’s familiar story of shepherds and angels and the birth of the baby, we hear that claim made in a way that would strike us as preposterous if we hadn’t heard it so often before.  Isaiah had set the stage, proclaiming that God would deliver the Jewish people through the birth of a king, a ruler of the house and lineage of David.  This king would save Israel from its oppressors, the foreign powers that had been invading and destroying and carrying people off into captivity for decades.  Luke then picks up on this promise 700 years later and tells the story of another new king’s birth.  He was a peasant child born into Roman oppression – an absolute nobody, like all the other Jewish people trying to remain invisible to the brutal authorities who would kill a bothersome peasant without a second thought.  Yet despite the hopelessness of that situation, messengers from God tell the shepherds, “I bring you good news of great joy,” for “to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord” (2:10-11). 

For Jewish people longing for someone to deliver them from their oppressors, this news of the coming of the Messiah would have made all the difference.  But what about us?  Tonight, as we celebrate the coming of the Christ child, God-With-Us – what difference does Jesus make?  This “Savior, who is Christ the Lord” – what does he save us from?

Often on this holy night, preachers find themselves recounting heart-warming stories to flesh out the true meaning of Christmas.  I’ve heard sermons involving A Charlie Brown Christmas, or How the Grinch Stole Christmas, or It’s a Wonderful Life, or A Christmas Carol.  Tonight, I want to step out on a limb of the Christmas tree just a bit and tell you about a story you may have seen at the movies recently.  That story is Twelve Years a Slave.  OK, it’s about the least likely “Christmas movie” ever.   But bear with me.

Twelve Years a Slave is the true story of Solomon Northup, based on his memoir of the same name.  Northup was a free African-American man, born in New York state and living in Saratoga Springs with his wife and two children.  Deceived into traveling to slave-holding Washington, D.C., he was kidnapped and sold, eventually shipped to the plantations of Louisiana.  There Northup endured the frighteningly normal horror of slave life, being regularly beaten and almost killed after striking back at a brutal overseer.  He was later sold to a sadistic master who liked to quote Scripture nearly as much as he liked to whip people.  The repeated violence kept Northup from sharing his true identity.  The one time he took the risk and paid a white field hand to smuggle a letter to friends in New York, the field hand betrayed him for a few pieces of silver.

Where this tale becomes a Christmas story is in Northup’s salvation from the nightmare his life had become.  Bound in despair I can’t even begin to imagine, Northup met a wandering stranger – someone who really had no business even being on a plantation in the depth of slavery’s hell.  That stranger was Samuel Bass, a journeyman carpenter from Canada.  He worked his way through several states before coming into the heart of the slave kingdom.  Even more unexpected than his location was his willingness to speak out against the deep injustice he saw in slavery – and the odd fact that he was able to get away with it.  As Northup describes Bass in his memoir, “He was that kind of a person whose peculiarity of manner was such that nothing he uttered ever gave offence.  What would be intolerable, coming from the lips of another, could be said by him with impunity.”¹  Bass frequently confronted his employer, the sadistic plantation owner, forcing him to justify such grotesque exploitation of other people – which the master did by arguing matter-of-factly that non-whites were not people.  Hearing Bass argue passionately against slavery, Northup took the risk of confiding to him the truth of his identity.  Unbelievably, risking nothing less than his own life, Bass agreed to help Northup; and he sent letters to Northup’s friends in Saratoga, asking them to forward Northup’s “free papers” to the authorities in Louisiana and arrange his release.

Picking up Northup’s own account in his book, here’s what he wrote about Bass:  “He overwhelmed me with assurances of friendship and faithfulness….  He spoke of himself in a somewhat mournful tone … that his life was of little value to himself, and henceforth should be devoted to the accomplishment of my liberty….”²  A few days later, Bass left the plantation long enough to write the letters to New York.  Weeks and then months passed with no responses; and eventually Bass finished his construction work and had to move on.  But on Christmas Eve, Bass returned to the plantation.³  (Now, the movie doesn’t say much about this happening at Christmas, but that’s how Northup’s book describes it.)  Then, on Christmas morning, Bass came to talk with Northup.  Unfortunately, the news was not good:  No replies had come to Bass’ letters.  Northup despaired, lamenting that he would die a slave after all.  But Bass had a different plan:  He pledged to put his own life on the line and journey to Saratoga Springs himself.  He said, “I’m tired of Slavery as [much] as you.  If I can succeed in getting you away from here, it will be a good act that I shall like to think of all my life.  And I shall succeed….  Cheer up!  Don’t be discouraged.  I’m with you, life or death.”⁴  Not a bad Christmas present.

But the trip to Saratoga wasn’t necessary.  On Jan. 3, 1853 – still within the 12 Days of Christmas, by the way – Northup’s liberation came.⁵  Miraculously enough, Bass’ letters had reached Saratoga, and they’d had the desired effect.  Officials from New York appeared on the plantation early that morning and redeemed Northup from the hand of his oppressor.  

In the end, the wandering carpenter had achieved the slave’s freedom.  At incredible risk to himself, giving himself up to the very real possibility of death, the carpenter came into the life of a man who simply could not save himself.  The carpenter willingly entered into a place of deep darkness, a place where evil held sway; and he defeated the powers of sin and death from the inside out.  At Christmas.

Now, I wouldn’t dare to equate much of anything in our lives with the lived experience of plantation slavery.  Nor would I compare our lives with the experience of Jewish peasants living under the bloody terror of Roman occupation.  But I would say this:  There are still powers that seek to hold us in bondage.  There are still ways in which we are enslaved.  Some of us are held by the power of addiction or obsession.  Some of us are held by the power of narcissism and indifference.  Some of us are held by the power of materialism and greed.  Some of us are held by the power of prejudice and self-righteousness.  Some of us are held by the power of a hobbled sense of self that can’t even imagine being worthy of another person’s love. 

And yet, in our bondage, we, too, are blessed with visits from unexpected agents of salvation.  Through people we’d never have imagined as bearers of God’s presence, we find ourselves liberated from the powers that seek to hold us back.  Maybe it’s a sponsor in a recovery group.  Maybe it’s a stranger who shares his story, revealing strength and capacity you never imagined in someone “like him.”  Maybe it’s a sufferer who teaches you how rich your life is in comparison with hers.  Maybe it’s a spouse or a partner who sticks with you when you clearly don’t deserve it.  Maybe it’s a teacher who empties himself to prove that you are capable of more than you ever believed.  Maybe it’s a friend who shows you that, indeed, you are absolutely worthy of love.

Through those people who walk into our struggles, into our places of despair – through them, the dear Christ still enters in.  They are God-With-Us in the same way Samuel Bass was the presence of Christ for Solomon Northup.  Through them, God saves us from forces we can’t overcome on our own.  The “so what?” of Christmas is nothing less than this:  that God loves us enough to step into our places of deepest bondage and confront them from within.  God does not stay aloof from our struggles, setting the world in motion and sitting idly by.  God takes flesh – flesh that will be risked, flesh that will bleed.  God literally has skin in the game, entering into the powerless, humiliating, shameful places of our lives and inhabiting them with us.  That’s the difference Jesus makes:  In him, God takes the risk to walk alongside us.  And when that walk takes us through the valley of the shadow of death, we need not fear because God is with us – comforting us, yes; but also leading us up and out of the valley, out of the grip of bondage and into a land of new birth.

Unto you is born this night a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.  Look for him in the people and the places you’d least expect.  Look for him where you can’t find answers.  Look for him where you’re afraid.  Look for him where your heart hurts most.  Because where your bondage is most brutal, where your despair is at its depth, where your weakness is most withering, that is precisely where Jesus steps in, and walks alongside you, and speaks the words of a new birth of freedom:  “See, I am making all things new!” (Revelation 21:5) 

1.        Northup, Solomon (David Wilson, ed.).  Twelve Years a Slave: Narrative of Solomon Northup, a Citizen of New-York, Kidnapped in Washington City in 1841, and Rescued in 1853 from a Cotton Plantation Near the Red River, in Louisiana.  New York: Miller, Orton, and Mulligan, 1855.  Electronic scan available at:  http://books.google.com/books?id=61kSAAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=12+years+a+slave&hl=en&sa=X&ei=I_F6UqrOJtPesASjo4G4DA&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=12%20years%20a%20slave&f=false.  264.

2.        Northup, 273.

3.        Northup, 279.

4.        Northup, 281-282.

5.        Northup, 287-288.