The Most Compelling Witness the World Has Ever Known

Sermon for St. Andrew's Sunday, Nov. 26, 2017
Matthew 4:18-22; John 1:35-42; Romans 10:8b-18

Here’s your bit of Bible trivia for this St. Andrew’s Sunday: Scripture gives us not one but two stories about how Andrew met Jesus and what Andrew did as a result. It’s something I love about Scripture, actually – that these two stories conflict with each other, and yet, there they are, right alongside one another in the Bible.

One is the story we just heard, from Matthew (and it’s in Mark’s Gospel, too). Jesus has been baptized and anointed with the Holy Spirit, and he’s spent 40 days in the wilderness struggling with Satan. Now he’s begun his public ministry, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near” (4:17). And as he walks by the Sea of Galilee, he sees a couple of brothers, Peter and Andrew, out fishing. Now, these guys must have heard Jesus preaching earlier, because they aren’t zombies, just following anyone who tells them to. But when Jesus makes the invitation, he sets the hook in these fishermen: “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people” (4:19). And “immediately, they left their nets” and began to follow him (4:20).

So that’s the story we heard today. The other version of this event comes from the Gospel of John. Again, John the Baptist is there, naming Jesus as God’s anointed. And again, soon afterward, Jesus is walking by, and two of John the Baptist’s disciples set out to follow Jesus instead. One of these two was Andrew; the other isn’t named. They ask Jesus what he’s doing and where he’s going, and Jesus just looks back at them and says, “Come and see” (1:39). So, they do, and they spend the day in the presence of the Son of God himself. When that amazing day is over, Andrew runs home to share what’s happened with the person he’s closest to, his brother, Peter; and he says to Peter, “We have found the Messiah!” (1:41). This is why, through Christian tradition, Andrew is remembered, first and foremost, for bringing the renowned St. Peter on board. And it’s why, in our windows over the altar, we see Andrew to Jesus’ right and Peter to Jesus’ left – a little editorializing about pride of place for the guy, as the collect this morning puts it, whose claim to fame is that he “brought his brother with him” (BCP 237).

Of course, after the Gospel stories, Andrew didn’t just fall off the map. In fact, depending on which traditions you want to believe, he went all over the map. Different traditions say Andrew brought Jesus’ good news to Ethiopia, or to Ukraine, or to Russia, or to Greece, where he was martyred on an X-shaped cross. Even in death, Andrew was still on the move as his remains were reportedly taken to Scotland, which is why he became Scotland’s patron saint. And that explains why a bunch of people in Kansas City are wearing tartans and listening to bagpipes as they celebrate this day that honors a Palestinian fisherman.

So, other than giving us a chance to enjoy pipes and drums and tartan, what does all this mean for us? Where are we in these two stories of St. Andrew?

I think both stories of Andrew’s call matter for us because they call us along two different dimensions of our journey as Christians: to be disciples and to be apostles, to put down our fishing nets to follow Jesus and to bring someone along with us. God has created us for both aspects of our calling, for discipleship and apostleship – wired us to follow and wired us to invite. That’s not just true about religion but about all of our life in community. When someone or something offers us compelling answers, we’re more than happy to be led out of our darkness and into the light. And when we find that those answers work for us – whether to lose weight, or grow our portfolios, or find a like-minded community – when the answers work for us, we’re very happy to invite others to come with us, and see.

Next Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent, as well as the official conclusion of our season of stewardship. We’ll gather the pledges we’ve received so far and bless them as a foretaste of all that we’ll receive – pledges of money, certainly, but also pledges of time and talent through the parish survey we recently sent out. And because next week is the first Sunday of Advent, it will also be New Year’s Day, at least as far as the Church calendar is concerned. We’ll start a new cycle of Sunday readings and begin our season of spiritual new beginnings, the time when we prepare ourselves to receive the gift of Emmanuel at Christmas – God-With-Us to dwell in the dirty stables and hang on the crosses of our own lives, sharing everything we live and know and giving us eternal life anyway. It’s a great time for resolutions, as we prepare our hearts to receive our Savior.

So, with the stewardship season winding down and the Church’s new year on the horizon, here’s your call, as a spiritual descendant of St. Andrew. Here’s your call, as a steward of all the amazing gifts God’s given you. Here’s your call, as someone stepping into Advent’s preparation for God to be with you, at your side and in your heart. Your call is nothing less than Andrew’s call: to be both a disciple and an apostle. Your call is to follow Jesus – as Paul’s letter to the Romans reminds us very directly, “If you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (10:9). And, your call is to invite others along on your journey. As Paul also puts it in Romans, “How are they to believe in one of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone to proclaim him? And how are they to proclaim him unless they are sent?” (10:14-15) Our call is Andrew’s call, from both of his stories: To leave our nets and follow, and to bring someone along with us.

Now, when I hear someone say something like that, what comes to mind for me are all the reasons why I think I can’t do it. I’m not good enough to consider the Lord of the universe my friend and companion. I’m not really willing to give up everything to become all religious and lose the things I love about normal life. I’m not compelling enough to bring someone with me to some churchy event … and on any given Sunday, I’m not sure what I think about every word we pray in worship anyway.

If you identify with any of those feelings, I think you’re in good company. But here’s the thing. First, you are good enough – God says so. Second, you don’t have to become a nun or a monk or some crazy church person who wears crosses and Bible verses on your t-shirt. And third, you are the most compelling witness the world has ever known.

It’s that last one that makes you stop short, right? How can that be? Well, it’s all about context, and opportunity, and relationship. Here’s what I mean. St. Peter was St. Peter, for God’s sake. He healed people with only a word; he converted thousands by preaching Jesus’ resurrection; he did all that despite his own religious leaders’ attempts to silence him with beatings and imprisonments; he ended up dying a martyr’s death in Rome. Talk about a disciple and an apostle! A person like that would never have listed to me.

Well, probably not – unless, of course, I also happened to be his brother. Andrew didn’t quote Bible verses at Peter, or preach some inspiring sermon to him, or write a theological treatise to teach him the mysteries of God. Andrew simply brought his brother with him to experience something Andrew found compelling on his own journey. Andrew could make the ask because he had the relationship that counted.

So, on this St. Andrew’s Sunday, let me give you this challenge: Ask yourself, what do I find compelling about this journey of relationship with God, and who might I invite into it? There is no single answer to that question; in fact, there are scores of answers to that question. I know of a parishioner who recently started a new AA group that meets here, and its attendance doubled in the first few weeks. I know of a men’s group that had a conversation, over Bible study and beer, about who they might invite to come and join them. I know of a music program that offers prayer and praise, both Sunday mornings and two evenings a month, rivaling the best vocal music in the city. I know of outreach ministries that bring healing to people in our community and change lives for more than 400 kids at a school in rural Haiti. I know of a partnership with the Roasterie that’s providing our own St. Andrew’s Blend coffee, which we’ll enjoy on Sunday mornings here and which we’ll serve in the new HJ’s youth and community center rising up across the street. I know, and see, people before me here today who find some of their life’s best and deepest relationships through this family of St. Andrew’s, reveling together in times of joy and holding each other up in times of pain. There’s a lot that’s compelling about this journey with God that we’re taking together. And some piece of it would be authentic for you to offer as a way to invite someone else to come along, too.

You don’t have to give up your life entirely. You don’t have to become a street-corner preacher. God isn’t asking us to take ourselves out of the world we know. Instead, God’s asking us to connect the world we know with the kingdom Christ calls us to see coming near. Just interrupt your fishing long enough to get to know this Jesus we’re following. Just make an invitation to someone you know to come along and experience something that feeds you. Just leave your nets, at least for a while, and bring someone with you. Because, for someone out there, you are the most compelling witness the world has ever known.

10,000 Thank-Yous

Sermon for Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 23, 2017
Deuteronomy 8:7-18; Luke 17:11-19

You’ve probably heard the claim that anyone can become an expert at something by practicing it for 10,000 hours.  Now, apparently other experts say that isn’t exactly true, that all the practice in the world isn’t going to let me nail a base stealer at second like Salvador Perez does.  Fair enough.  But still, all that practice is certainly going to sharpen your skills.  If you practice a foreign language for 10,000 hours, you can become pretty proficient in it.  If you make 10,000 fancy meals, you can become a pretty fine chef.  Practice may not make us perfect, but practice does make us different.  Practice changes us, forming us for good … or for ill.

So, this is Thanksgiving, not just our national day of eating and self-reflection but also a feast on the Episcopal Church calendar.  It seems this isn’t just a historical remnant of Abraham Lincoln’s gratitude for Union victories, nor a sanctified day of overindulgence, nor the calm before the storm of Black Friday, our national feast of consumerism.  This is Thanksgiving, when our readings, at least, call us to pause, to marvel at all that we’ve been given, and to reflect on where it all comes from. 

It seems we humans have a deep need for this kind of reorientation, given that Moses’ admonitions to the people of Israel ring perfectly true to us 3,000 years later.  Standing before the Israelites as they’re about to cross over the Jordan into the Promised Land, Moses gives his valedictory address, his last chance to guide the people as his own life is ending.  Moses paints a lavish picture of the abundance they’re about to receive.  He says, the Lord is bringing you into a land of flowing streams, wheat and barley, grapes and figs, pomegranates and olives, iron and copper; “a land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack nothing.” (Deuteronomy 8:7-10).  Interestingly, the Europeans who came to these shores saw this land of the New World in similar terms and, on their best days, blessed God for it … even as they also took it away from the people they met … again, like the Israelites.

Anyway, Moses’ point isn’t just that the people’s time in the wilderness is over.  His point is the responsibility that comes along with such astonishing blessing.  “When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them,” Moses says, “…then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery….  Do not say to yourself, ‘My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.’  But remember the Lord your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth….” (Deuteronomy 8:12-18)  And when you remember, Moses says, let that memory guide you into the practice of faithfulness:  “[K]eep [God’s] commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes…,” Moses says (8:11).  Remember, and follow God’s ways.  Remember, and live by God’s love.

So, this is Thanksgiving, here to remind us of the same truth Moses saw: Our blessings are not our own.  Our blessings are on loan to us from God, and God expects us to pass them along, to steward the incredible abundance we receive and then share it, both with the people around us today and with the future yet unborn. 

What do we need to do in order to be formed into those people God longs for us to be?  What does Jesus ask of the lepers whom he heals, bringing them out of the darkness of exclusion and into the blessing of relationship?  He asks them, simply, to say thank you.

It’s no accident that our lives of prayer and worship are focused on giving thanks, especially for we who are blessed with this rich Anglican tradition of ours.  Every Sunday, in fact, we celebrate Thanksgiving.  You may have missed it, in the same way a fish doesn’t notice the water in which it’s swimming.  But every Sunday, and right here this morning, we gather at God’s altar to celebrate Thanksgiving.  It even says so in the Prayer Book, both in English and in Greek.  This is a congregational-participation sermon, so please get out your prayer book and turn to page 361.  Look about a third of the way down the page, where we begin to offer the prayers that invite Jesus to come into our midst in the bread and wine of Holy Communion.  There, you’ll see the title of this section of the service:  “The Great Thanksgiving.”  The priest says, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God,” and the people respond (go ahead, respond): “It is right to give him thanks and praise.”  And the priest continues, saying, “It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and everywhere to give thanks to you….”  Every Sunday, we celebrate this Great Thanksgiving, and we offer it as the centerpiece of the larger service of Holy Eucharist.  That’s the Greek word I mentioned before, eucharist.  Know what it means?  That’s right – thanksgiving. 

Of course, there are many ways we each fall short, every day.  Like the people of Israel, we aren’t always so good at keeping God’s commandments, ordinances, and statutes, which is why we offer a confession most Sundays, in addition to our thanksgiving.  But I believe God isn’t looking for perfection from us.  I believe God is looking for us to be continually formed as followers and witnesses of Jesus Christ.  And a huge part of that formation is the spiritual practice of simply saying thank-you.  Saying thank-you to God 10,000 times may not make us experts in being followers and witnesses of Jesus Christ.  But I’d say it’s a pretty darned good start.

So, here’s your Thanksgiving challenge:  As you begin each day, and as your end each day, make it a practice to say thank-you to the source of your being and your blessing, the source of light and life.  Our Anglican tradition has recognized the helpfulness of that daily practice by giving us the gift of the services of Morning Prayer and Evening Prayer, which I would certainly commend to your use.  But even if you’re not ready for that quite yet, let me recommend to you one piece from Morning and Evening Prayer.  It’s called the General Thanksgiving, and it’s a treasure for the way its language both delights our ears and shapes our hearts.  I told you this was a congregational-participation sermon, so let’s finish it up by offering together the General Thanksgiving, found on page 101 of the prayer book:

Almighty God, Father of all mercies,

we your unworthy servants give you humble thanks

for all your goodness and loving-kindness

to us and to all whom you have made.

We bless you for our creation, preservation,

and all the blessings of this life;

but above all for your immeasurable love

in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ;

for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.

And, we pray, give us such an awareness of your mercies,

that with truly thankful hearts we may show forth your praise,

not only with our lips but with our lives,

by giving up ourselves to your service,

and by walking before you

in holiness and righteousness all our days;

through Jesus Christ our Lord,

to whom, with you and the Holy Spirit,

be honor and glory throughout all ages.  Amen.

Choosing Hope, Not Fear

Sermon for Sunday, Nov. 12
1 Thessalonians 4:13-18

Thank you, Steve, for that compelling witness about your stewardship journey.  You know, in seminary, when they teach you about talking with a congregation about the annual pledge campaign, the experts typically wouldn’t suggest that you do that on the Sunday following a horrifying church shooting.  But you know, that’s the world in which we live now.  For many of us, especially those of a certain age, we remember fondly a time when the church doors were left unlocked 24 hours a day so that neighbors could come in and pray.  In my church growing up, Christ Episcopal in Springfield, I remember where I was standing, as an acolyte ready for the procession to begin, when the service was delayed because of a problem in the chapel, which you entered by an exterior door.  It turned out that one man had killed another there, and the priest had to go administer last rites before presiding at the Eucharist.  That was 40 years ago, and the doors have been locked at night ever since – even in Springfield. 

Nostalgia makes us long for the “good old days,” whenever we might locate that time in our minds – a time when mass shootings were something we couldn’t fathom rather than something we struggle to prevent.  But last Sunday’s shooting during worship in Sutherland Springs, Texas, jolts us right back to the present moment.

When we see violence like that, it’s tempting to go down some dangerous roads.  We might begin to see threats everywhere we look and wonder whether we should even walk down the Trolley Trail or take kids to the park.  We might begin to believe we must take matters into our own hands and be ready to drop an active shooter wherever we might be … even at Jesus’ altar.  We might even begin to believe the two most pernicious lies the world tells us – that we are hopeless and that we are alone.  When we begin to believe those lies, the powers and principalities of darkness win.

I cast it in those terms intentionally because, as we look back on our past as followers of Jesus Christ, we notice that the apostle Paul found himself in a world just as threatening as ours, albeit for very different reasons.  Paul lived as a Jew, an ethnic and religious minority surviving at the whim of the Roman Empire, which taxed the living daylights out of its subjugated peoples and executed their leaders, like a certain Jesus of Nazareth, when they began saying challenging things.  But the danger came from the other side, too: Paul and his Christian communities also endured persecution from the Jewish authorities, who saw this Jesus movement as a threat to their authority and power. 

In Paul’s world view, the conflicts he and his communities faced were reflections of cosmic struggles taking place in a realm we can’t see.  Violence and persecution were the consequence of standing on the side of God’s realm of light and life, which Paul believed was battling and triumphing over the powers of darkness and death.  Jesus’ resurrection and his reign as Lord were the decisive blows against the powers that wield “hardship or distress or persecution or … peril or sword” (Romans 8:35).  From Paul’s perspective, the struggles he and his communities faced were part of a mopping-up action that would soon be brought to its fulfillment when Jesus returned in glory – which Paul expected to happen any day.

So, writing to the Christians in Thessalonica, Paul urges them to remember where they stand in this cosmic conflict.  “We do not want you to … grieve as others do who have no hope,” he writes.  “For just as Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. …  For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the archangel’s call and the sound of God’s trumpet, [the Lord] will descend from heaven, and the dead in Christ will rise. …  Then we who are alive … will meet the Lord … and be with the Lord forever.” (4:13-16)  When Paul writes about the “coming of the Lord” (4:15), he’s using a technical term in Greek for a state visit by the emperor,¹ so he’s making a very clear statement about who’s really in charge – and it’s not the emperor.  Despite the struggles of the moment, Paul says, do not join those “who have no hope” (4:13).  “Encourage one another” instead (4:18).

Of course, the “principalities” and “powers” (Ephesians 6:12 KJV) look different in their presentation now.  Today the “hardship and distress” comes to us in a litany of shootings: Sutherland Springs and Las Vegas and Charleston and Orlando and San Bernadino and Virginia Tech and Killeen and Aurora and Columbine and Sandy Hook Elementary.  And we feel a growing sense of impotence to stop such madness, getting caught on the horns of a dilemma between gun control and constitutional rights, rather than seeing gun violence as a public-health crisis, one every bit as serious as tuberculosis or polio were, and just as much within our capacity to address.  Instead, we see hardness of heart defeating the common good.  But if the apostle Paul were standing in this pulpit today, I think he would tell us the response of the Christian community remains the same.  When the powers and principalities of the world threaten us, choose against them.  Choose community and hope over isolation and fear.

What does that look like?  I read an interesting post from my seminary this week. The writer was struggling with just these questions – when 26 people die going to church, how in the world can people of faith respond in a meaningful way?  But the post noted that “when violence intrudes into the places we thought were safe, one thing that can make a huge difference is knowing we’re not alone,”² a reality we embody by reaching out rather than drawing in.  We stand with Christians across the centuries, and stand against the power of violence, when we make the choice to stand together: when we grieve deep loss, when we gather to pray, when we visit someone who’s sick, when we cook for a friend, when we work for social change, when we act to help light overcome the darkness.  The impact of these actions may seem tiny compared with the impact of hundreds of bullets.  But I think Paul would tell us to “encourage one another with these words” and actions “so that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thessalonians 4:18,13).

And though it may sound self-serving to say this, I will say it anyway because I believe it to be true:  We also take a stand for light overcoming darkness when we build the capacity of a church family to be light in the darkness.  Yes, we are in an annual pledge campaign, and I would want you to fill out a pledge card in any case.  I would want you to be on that journey Steve talked about, taking the next step in a spiritual practice of giving, seeing your giving as a connecting point with God potentially just as strong as the prayers you offer in bed each night or the meal you serve to a person who’s hungry.  Those things would always be true.  And, in the midst of the darkness we see around us, I ask you to turn in a pledge card as an act of solidarity and an emblem of hope.  Making a pledge, you put on the “whole armor of God” (Ephesians 6:13) – the belt of truth, the shield of faith, the breastplate of righteousness, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit of love.  Making a pledge, you “equip the saints for the work of ministry [and build] up the body of Christ” (Ephesians 4:12), within this church family and for the world.  Making a pledge, you choose hope over fear.  And right now, there is nothing your heart, or the world, needs more.

1.       HarperCollins Study Bible.  Note on 1 Thessalonians 4:15. 2223.

2.       Minnix, Gina.  “Refusing to Let Violence Take Us Over.”  Sowing Holy Questions, Seminary of the Southwest, Nov. 8, 2017.  Available at: https://ssw.edu/blog/refusing-let-violence-take-us/.  Accessed Nov. 10, 2017.

'Thy WIll Be Done' ... but by Whom?

Sermon for All Saints' Sunday, Nov. 5, 2017
Revelation 7:9-17; 1 John 3:1-3; Matthew 5:1-12

Today, we’re marking All Saints’ Sunday – a time we celebrate the countless faithful people who’ve loved God and loved their neighbors in this first chapter of eternal life.  A little later, we’ll remember those we’ve buried from St. Andrew’s since last All Saints’ Sunday, giving thanks for the witness of their lives and rejoicing that those lives continue in God’s heavenly country.

And today, in what may seem like an odd juxtaposition, we also celebrate the sacrament of baptism, welcoming a new child of God into the family, Ella Rose Mitchell.  It’s not just the circle of life we’re remembering with this.  The deeper, and deeply unlikely, truth is this:  As baptized people, you and I share the same call as the saints who’ve gone before, as well as the same promise of eternal blessing.  This day is about all the saints – including the one sitting next to you and the one you see in the mirror. 

That reality may be hard to accept.  But the Feast of All Saints is here to tell us the truth that our lives are more than what we see, day to day.  We got a beautiful glimpse of that reality from our readings this morning – the end game, what our faith and practice as followers of Jesus is leading us toward.  In this life, what saints experience can feel like dubious blessing – being broken in spirit, hungering for righteousness, practicing mercy, being pure in heart, struggling to make peace, even enduring others’ ridicule and disdain.  But that dubious blessedness will come to its fullness in a future chapter of eternal life, when we “hunger no more and thirst no more” as God guides us to “springs of the water of life” and “wipe[s] away every tear from our eyes” (Revelation 7:16-17).  We are ever walking a bridge between who we are and who we will be, in the fullness of God’s time – and in so doing, we have the opportunity, as saints, to evoke heaven among us and point others toward it. 

Every Sunday, even every day for many of us, we offer a prayer whose implications ought to make us stop short:  We pray, “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”  It’s a beautiful petition, but I wish the Gospel writers had used active voice in remembering Jesus’ words in the second clause.  “Thy will be done” … OK, by whom?  Who is it we’re imagining doing God’s will to bring about the kingdom, God’s beloved community, here on earth as it is in heaven?  Now it’s time to look in the mirror once again, because the answer will be staring you in the face. 

So, how do we saints do that?  What is God’s will, and what does it look like for us to do it on earth, as it is in heaven?

Of course, the promises of the baptismal covenant flesh out our call, and we’ll renew that covenant again this morning.  But what ties those promises together?  What’s the bottom line?  Well, it’s the Great Commandment, of course – to love God with all our heart and soul and mind strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.  But given the way we use the word “love,” we can quickly hear that as a command to feel a certain way about God and our neighbors.  That’s not it.  Maybe it’s just my bias, but I don’t think God is nearly as interested in how we feel as in what we do.  Loving God and neighbor is about building relationships.  That’s the work of a saint, including the one you see in the mirror.

So, I want to tell you about some saintly relationship-building that’s happening around here.  You can see it in the work of our Vestry leaders, staff, and clergy.  You saw an example last week, as the Endowment Commission sponsored coffee hour and invited you to join the Legacy Society – just one of many commissions and groups setting up shop in the Jewell Room to help you to get involved.  Staff and parishioners have been reaching out to parents of our youth to invite them into the fun of youth ministry.  Deacon Bruce, Elaine Crider and I did a series of trainings for lay pastoral-care givers, to get more of us actively into the work of loving one another.  Mtr. Ezgi is inviting younger adults and parents into Bible study, or a young-adults group, or gatherings for recently married couples and baptismal parents.  We’ve brought back Holy Happy Hour, as well as the Happy Hour Concerts. 

And soon, you’ll receive an invitation to take a parish survey.  Part of that effort is about keeping the database as clean and useful as possible.  But many of the questions ask you to share feedback and think about how you might like to get engaged in something fun and meaningful.  I hope that, from the information we get back, we can put together several groups of people with similar interests and affiliations – dinner groups, or movie groups, or book groups, or (our collective personal favorite) wine-tasting groups.  The point is to help us do the work of saints, which is building relationships.

You can also see St. Andrew’s saints building relationships through the service they offer.  I am deeply tempted to start calling out specific people, but I also know I’d leave out more saints than I could name.  But just a few collective examples:  How about the ladies of Simply Divine?  As you know, Simply Divine will be closing soon; the last hurrah (and final sale) is next weekend.  In the shop’s decades-long run, the Simply Divine ladies have created a fun and welcoming space for parishioners to come together, and they’ve strengthened many community ministries with thousands of dollars in grants each year.  And all of that came from the hearts and hands of ladies who’ve been willing to give of themselves for the kingdom’s work, and I appreciate them very much.  Here’s another example: the choir, who offered that amazing Bach Cantata last weekend.  You can’t imagine the hours of service they give to help us grow closer to God, but they also build community together as they do it. How about the members of the Outreach Commission and the parishioners who come out to throw parties for moms and kids at Rose Brooks, or work with kids at local schools, or provide warm clothes for hundreds of people at the Free Store, or build relationships with our partners in Haiti?  All of that is kingdom work, building beloved community among our own family and with the world.

And then, there are the dollars that help make relationship-building possible.  Coming together for worship takes lights and heat and bulletins, not to mention Saint Robert Tillman and Saint Mary Sanders, here nearly every Sunday to meet your needs.  In addition, hosting book studies and prayer groups and meetings and community organizations takes a building that keeps the heat in and the water out.  You all know it takes dollars to fund the people and the infrastructure for ministry here.  And I want to tell you about the giving of a few saints whose examples inspire me.

I know staff members who give to the church that pays them, because they believe in the work we’re doing and because they love the people who are doing it.

I know one parishioner who began this year offering a generous pledge, more than mine, certainly.  For next year, it’s quadrupled.  The church has made a difference in this person’s life, and now this person will make a huge difference in our ability to bring more people together.

And I want to share with you something about our Vestry members.  This year, every Vestry member had a pledge turned in within the first couple of weeks of the pledge campaign.  That’s servant leadership – and it doesn’t stop there.  I asked the Vestry members if they would let me know whether they practiced tithing, giving 10 percent of their income toward God’s work in the world.  Five Vestry members are at or beyond that point in enabling God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. 

You don’t have to be there yet.  Not many of us are, honestly, but that’s OK.  It starts with making a pledge.

Actually, I guess there’s a step even before that:  Walk into the Narthex after worship today and simply let someone take a quick Polaroid shot of you to put up on the door to the parking lot.  That door is a growing icon of the company of saints in this place, the household of God into which we enter in baptism, the family of God we know as St. Andrew’s.  As our reading this morning puts it, “See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are” (1 John 3:1). From our newest saint this morning, little Ella Rose, to those of you who’ve been here across the decades, we are God’s family in this place, trying to do the will of our heavenly parent, which is to love, with flesh and bones on it.  We are St. Andrew’s, and we are here to build relationships, one saint at a time.  And as the Feast of All Saints reminds us, every saint matters.  There is no “us” without you.

The Holiness of Humility, the Glory of Grace

Sermon for the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation
Oct. 29, 2017

Today, we’re celebrating the 500^th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. The famous date is actually October 31, 1517, when Martin Luther posted his 95 theses against Church practices of his day.  It’s not entirely clear whether he nailed those 95 theses to the door of Wittenburg Castle or the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenburg; or whether he never nailed them to anything but simply sent them to his archbishop in Mainz and published them to others. 

In any event, Luther was protesting the selling of indulgences, which theologically were said to shorten a sinner’s time in purgatory and practically raised a lot of money for the institutional Church.  The deeper issues were about sin, redemption, and religious authority.  For Luther and the later Protestant reformers, we are justified by faith in God’s grace alone, not by good works.  Scripture, rather than Church tradition, is the source of divine revelation.  And all baptized people have direct access to God’s grace because they’re part of the priesthood of all believers.

Luther’s protest focused a movement that had been building for years before and would continue for years after.  What we call the Reformation had been coming since 1378, when the Western Church was torn by schism and three would-be popes claimed the title.  The movement picked up steam in 1414, when Jan Hus was burned at the stake for condemning the sales of indulgences and for arguing the papacy was a human institution – and then, a year later, when John Wycliffe was declared a heretic for translating the Scriptures into English and for criticizing the clergy’s pomp and privilege.  And the movement would grow beyond Luther’s 95 theses to include the work of others, especially John Calvin, from whom would come the Reformed tradition, including what we know as the Presbyterian Church.  Like Jan Huss and John Wycliffe, Luther and Calvin believed in the power of grace alone to bridge the gap between sinful humanity and the righteous God who loves us; and they believed that people must be able to hear and read God’s Word, and offer the gift of worship, in their own languages.  The reformers also took the movement in different and competing directions.  There’s an old joke that “divisiveness was Protestantism’s greatest gift to Christianity,”¹ and sadly there’s truth to that.  Certainly, without the Reformation, the religious shopping mall we know as denominations simply wouldn’t exist. 

The Reformation opened a couple of other huge doors to the future, too.  One was the question of authority.  Where do we look for truth, in church matters and in everything else?  If three politically motivated bishops can each claim to be the true pope; and if reforming priests can start pointing out the Church’s corruption; and if printing presses can mass-produce new ideas; and if scientists can observe that the earth actually revolves around the sun, not the other way around; and if different churches can read the same Biblical texts and find different meanings in them – if there is no longer a consensus about who holds the truth, then to whom should we listen?  Where does authority lie?²

The answer came from the other door to the future opened wide by the Reformation:  the power of individualism.  Luther came to see that, just as salvation didn’t come from following Jewish Law, it doesn’t come from following the rules of Church tradition, either.  Salvation comes from recognizing that I “have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23), and only faith in Jesus Christ heals my sinfulness and lets me share in God’s righteousness.  Well, if that’s true – if my salvation depends on my faith in Jesus Christ – and if books can now be produced with machines rather than parchment and pen, then I need a Bible in my home; and my children need to learn to read so they can get right with God, too.  And if Luther was right about the priesthood of all believers, then I don’t need a priest or a church hierarchy to do the work of reconciling me with God.  I can do that myself.  And if there are multiple ways of worshiping God, then I have the power to choose which one is right for me.  With the Reformation, it became the individual’s faith that mattered … and, ultimately, the individual who chose which path of truth to take.³

So, you may be wondering, why are a bunch of Episcopalians celebrating all this?  If you know your Anglican history, you know that we are a tradition of the Reformation, too; but we took a different path that led to a different place.  For us, the break with Rome came first, followed by the theological reflection – and bloodshed – of reform.  It’s important that the name of our vehicle of reformation is the Church of England, rather than the “Henry-ites” or the “Cranmer-ites.”  We’re named for a nation, not an individual, because for us the break with Rome was about power and sovereignty first, theology second.  But reformation did happen in England, too: worship in the people’s language, administration of both bread and wine to the congregation, and an ongoing argument about just how reformed our worship should be.  The vestments we’re wearing today illustrate what Anglican clergy would have been wearing in the mid-1500s – and over the years, there were great arguments about how “popish” our vesture and liturgical practice should be.  The more Protestant among us thought even a white surplice was too much, arguing for no vesture at all and no ornamentation at the altar.  It wasn’t until the Oxford Movement in the 1800s that stoles and chasubles, vesture from the early and medieval Church, began to make a return. 

We Episcopalians and other Anglicans around the world see ourselves as “catholic and reformed.”  We are part of Christ’s universal Church, in succession with centuries of tradition that’s come before us, proclaiming the ancient creeds, centered in sacramental practice.  And at the same time, we’re reformed – reliant on God’s grace alone, knowing God as revealed in Scripture, and living out the priesthood of all believers.  Our Book of Common Prayer unites these paths, focusing us on the sacraments, calling us back to the Creeds, giving us Scripture for daily and weekly hearing, and empowering lay people as the primary ministers of the Church.  The catechism tells us the orders of ministry are lay people, bishops, priests, and deacons (BCP 855); and the order of the orders matters. 

So, there you have it: catholic and reformed, finding our authority in Scripture, and tradition, and reason; reveling in the mystery that “both/and” can be true.  That’s the Anglican via media, the middle way – a good, if messy, path to walk.

So, what do we do with all this history, as we celebrate the 500^th anniversary of Martin Luther’s protest movement?  Here are two primary take-aways from the Reformation for me.  The first is our call to the holiness of humility as broken individuals and as a broken Church, both in need of God’s grace.  “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me,” said the Son of God, “for I am gentle and humble of heart, and you will find rest for your souls” (Matthew 11:29).  Follow my way, says God’s Incarnate Word – made flesh in a dirty stable, living among the poor and oppressed, dying the worst death imaginable.  The way of the cross is the only way Jesus calls his Church to take, in Luther’s day and in our own.  The Church needs humility perhaps more than anything else, especially in an age when people have embraced the gospel of the individual to such a degree that there is no common narrative, just the truth of my own story.  But the real truth is, people need a bigger story, even if they don’t realize it; and the Church has that story to offer, if it can do so with clarity and humility rather than entitlement and judgment.  Good News from a humble heart is the very best news there is.

Here’s the other take-away I see for us in the Reformation.  If humility is our call when we look in the mirror, and when we look at our Church, and when we look at our society, then the other side of Jesus’ call is to acknowledge where power and glory truly lie.  Power and glory abide with the God who stoops down in an act of divine humility to share power and glory with even such as us.  To those who have faith in Jesus and who aspire to the faith of Jesus (Romans 3:26), that divine glory is in sight, if we can get ourselves out of the way long enough to look for it. 

In fact, in just a few minutes, we’ll hear from a mighty apostle of that deep truth, one who certainly could have reveled in his own talent.  Johann Sebastian Bach is arguably the greatest composer in Western history; at one point in his life, he was cranking out a cantata a week of the kind of quality we’re about to hear.⁴  But Bach also attended the same school Martin Luther attended as a boy; Bach served in and composed for Lutheran churches all his life; and he had all of Martin Luther’s writings on his library shelves.  So, it’s no great surprise that, at the end of his magnificent manuscripts, Bach did not simply sign his name or his initials.  He also wrote the initials S.D.G., which stand for Soli Deo Gloria – “to God alone be the glory.”⁵ 

It is perfect, I think, that we celebrate the Protestant Reformation, and our own ongoing need for reform, by hearing Luther’s words set to Bach’s music.  Together, they bring us the complementary truths of the holiness of human humility and the glory of God’s grace.  To bring those truths together, let me leave you with Luther’s words; you’ll have Bach’s tune in your head soon enough:

Did we in our own strength confide,

Our striving would be losing,

Were not the right man on our side,

The man of God’s own choosing.

Dost ask who that may be?

Christ Jesus, it is he.

Lord Sabaoth his name,

From age to age the same.

And he must win the battle.

1.       Tickle, Phyllis.  The Great Emergence: How Christianity is Changing and Why.  Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2008.  46.

2.       Tickle, 45-48, 55-56.

3.       Tickle, 45-46, 50-51.

4.       “Johann Sebastian Bach.”  Available at: http://www.reformationsa.org/index.php/history/90-johann-sebastian-bach.  Accessed Oct. 28, 2017.

5.       Swett, Jonathan.  “Johann Sebastian Bach.”  Available at: https://lutheranreformation.org/history/johann-sebastian-bach/.  Accessed Oct. 28, 2017.

Downward Mobility

Sermon for the Feast of St. Francis, transferred, and pet blessings
Oct. 8, 2017 (posted late)
Matthew 11:25-30

As we gather this morning to celebrate St. Francis and bless our pets, I’m going to confess a sin to you, a sin for which all you good dog owners can hold me in contempt.  I bless my dog, Petey, with cheeseburgers.  Petey seems to have quite a fondness for cheeseburgers, and I have erred and strayed in my ways by getting into the habit of bringing him one when I stop by McDonald’s to get something for myself.  We stand there in our kitchen, and I tell Petey he needs to sit and calm down, which he sort of manages to do; and then I give him his heart’s desire.  We do this bite by bite until that disc of greasy, cheesy goodness is gone.  Forgive me, for I am a bad doggie daddy, blessing Petey with cheeseburgers.

I have a much better example of dog blessing that comes from another member of my family. When we first moved here, we got a Lab–Golden Retriever mix named Jenny.  Jenny was many times Petey’s size but also many times humbler.  Petey, in fact, isn’t here this morning to get a blessing because he doesn’t work and play so well with other dogs.  Jenny, on the other hand, was the ultimate good dog, both among other canines and with us, her pack.  She wanted nothing more than simply to be with you, regardless of whether you had a cheeseburger in your hand.  And so our son, Dan, got into the habit, as a boy, of getting down on the floor with Jenny and lying there with her to watch TV or a movie.  I imagine it was the best thing ever for Jenny, having one of the people of her pack bless her with that kind of presence, stooping down to inhabit her world. 

I don’t know whether St. Francis ever had a dog, but I’ll bet Francis would have understood what my son, Dan, was up to.  Francis of Assisi is maybe the ultimate model in Christian tradition of embracing a life of stooping down.  Some of you know his story.¹  Francis was the son of a wealthy cloth merchant in Italy, born in the late 1100s.  In his early years, he lived into the very worst you might expect from the spoiled child of a wealthy family – entitled, wasteful, drunken, arrogant.  Francis got the chance to play soldier and go off to war against another Italian city-state, so he spent a lot of his father’s money to buy a horse and fine armor.  He was taken prisoner, as it turned out, and spent a year waiting for his father to ransom him.  He went back to his unsavory lifestyle until he got the chance to play soldier again, this time leaving as a knight for the Fourth Crusade. 

But, you know, sometimes – all the time, actually – God chooses the last person you’d expect and inspires that person to change.  A day’s ride out of Assisi, Francis heard God calling him to turn back home.  It must have been quite a persuasive encounter, because the arrogant man-child actually did go back home.  Again, he resumed his old lifestyle, but he also kept listening to God, who apparently also kept knocking.  Francis began to see that his life wasn’t just shallow but contrary to the call he’d heard from Jesus in the Gospels.  And one day, Francis encountered a leper – a broken, impoverished, smelly man with an awful, contagious skin condition.  The leper was the antithesis of everything Francis had valued – fine clothes, fine food, beauty, power, strength, wealth, all that.  But Francis stooped down from his horse and greeted the leper with the kiss of peace.  Contrary to everything he knew, Francis found joy in greeting that leper.  And it sent him even further along his journey. 

Francis then heard God calling to him, saying, “Francis, rebuild my church.”  He thought the instruction was literal – that he was supposed to rebuild a local broken-down chapel.  So Francis took some of his father’s stock of fine cloth and sold it to pay for the repairs.  His father had had enough; he dragged Francis before the local bishop, demanding that Francis return his money and renounce his rights as heir.  Francis took it one step further.  He stripped off his fine clothes, tossed them before his father, and renounced his connection to his family, acknowledging God as his only Father.  Then Francis left with literally nothing to begin a life of wandering service to people he would meet and preaching about following God’s call to love. 

Before long, others saw Francis’ joy in the freedom he’d found, and they joined him.  Francis organized his companions’ life around a simple rule of giving away their possessions, keeping nothing as they proclaimed the kingdom of God, and taking up the cross daily – serving the people they encountered in acts of self-sacrificing love.  Francis and his group lived the Gospel literally.  They had nothing but the joy that comes with the perfect freedom of being bound by nothing but God’s command.  They lived Jesus’ model and his teachings.  The story is told that a thief stole the hood of one of the brothers, and Francis made the brother chase after the thief to offer him his cloak as well.  Against all the world’s expectations, this movement caught on, with thousands following Francis’ model.  Eventually, he had to organize them, and the Franciscan Order was born.

Francis was all about stooping into love – which, after all, is God’s practice with us.  The Psalms say that God “stoops to behold the heavens and the earth,” taking “the weak up out of the dust and lift[ing] the poor from the ashes” (Psalm 113:5-6, BCP).  Jesus lived that out ultimately, God incarnate born among the animals and crying in the dirty straw; the Son of God who, like the birds of the air, had no place to lay his head.  When Jesus identifies who is blessed in God’s eyes, it’s not the people whose lives seem to reveal blessing.  It’s the poor who receive the kingdom of heaven, the meek who inherit the earth.  All of what we seek and value is window dressing at best.

There seems to be a pattern here.  To practice love, both God and Francis stooped down, renouncing power and possession, status and privilege.  If that was true for God and Francis, it’s probably true for us: We have things we need to lose in order to love as Christ loves us.

Like what?  Well, there are the usual targets, of course, things Francis certainly would witness against:  Consumerism, waste, and pollution that harm God’s creation.  The love of money, which “is a root of all kinds of evil and … many pains,” as the apostle Paul wrote (1 Timothy 6:10).  But this week, as we reel from the news of yet another mass shooting, it’s violence that weighs on my heart. 

In our society, violence is a commodity, whether it’s real or entertainment.  And as long as violence is profitable, we’ll keep pursuing it.  Here’s my second confession for the morning: I choose to watch violent movies sometimes; there is something in them that seems real and raw and exciting.  And at the movie theaters, I see people there with small children … because, you know, the violence isn’t real, not like a mass shooting – it’s only a movie.  Well, I don’t think you have to be a social scientist to see a connection: If violence seems normal, then violence becomes normalized.  Whether you’re talking about movies or firearms, the government isn’t going to ban something that’s both a freedom in this nation and a source of immense profit.  We have to exercise our freedom to renounce violence, and its instruments, for ourselves.  And we have to pray that God will make use of our small examples to transform other hearts, too, working with our witness as we live and narrate the choices we make.  That’s how love happens – from the bottom up.  Love is an insurgency, not a legislative mandate.

So, as God’s insurgent of love, what do you need to lose?  What binds you and keeps you from stooping low, into the experience of another?  Like my son’s example, as he got down on the floor with our old dog Jenny, it’s the stooping low that blesses those whom God places in the intersecting points of our lives.  So, here’s my prayer for us this St. Francis’ Sunday:  May we be the people our dogs think we are, and may we practice the holy downward mobility of stooping low into the kingdom of God.

1.        St. Francis’ story is taken from “St. Francis of Assisi.”  Catholic Online.  Available at: http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=50.  Accessed Oct. 6, 2017.

We Are What We Do

Sermon for Oct. 1, 2017 (posted late)
Matthew 21:23-32

I imagine each of us has a few stories we could share about how things are done, or were done, in our families growing up.  Families have norms and expectations, some spoken and some unspoken; some flexible and some not so much.  I remember in my family, especially at holidays when my grandparents would be visiting, the norm was that everyone was there for dinner and for conversation before and after.  If you were around, and you were more than about 12 years old, you were expected to be part of the circle. 

So I remember once, after my sisters and I had long since left home but were back for Christmas, I was talking with one of them about the two of us going out and doing something else after family dinner one night.  My sister got this shocked look on her face and said, “Do you think Mom will let us?”  I was 25 years old, and she was 30.  Of course, I don’t think my mother would have kicked us out of the house if we’d gone off to do something on our own.  But my sister and I also knew that wasn’t what our family did.  That kind of thing might be fine for other families, but it wasn’t what happened in our house.  For us, being in right relationship with each other carried certain expectations.  We didn’t have to earn our way into each other’s good graces, but being with each other was part of the family’s identity.  It helped us remember who we were, deep down.

Our Gospel reading today gives us a chance to reflect on the norms and expectations of our larger family, the family of God that gathers around this table each week.  In that reading, living out the ways of God’s family is called “righteousness.”  It’s one of those words preachers like to throw around as if everybody in the room understood it the same way, which I imagine we don’t.  All “righteousness” means is this: action that reflects right relationship with God.  And because God has the priorities we know God has, righteousness extends to actions that reflect right relationship with other people, too – especially those on the margins or those at the bottom of the social scale.

But I think when many of us hear that word, “righteousness,” we might hear it in terms of self-righteousness – considering yourself holier than the person next to you, or the person down the road, or the person on the other side of some issue.  That self-righteousness is also what the religious leaders are living out in today’s reading.  They come to Jesus clothed in authority though not in leadership, and they confront him about what he’s been doing.  Just before this story, Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph on Palm Sunday, and he’s overturned the tables of the money changers in the Temple, condemning them as thieves for gouging the poor peasants trying to buy sacrificial animals.  If you literally turn the tables on the religious establishment, you can expect some push-back.  So, the chief priests and the elders challenge Jesus, saying, “By what authority are you doing these things?” (Matthew 21:23).  Who appointed you to tell us where we’re falling short? 

So Jesus responds not by claiming authority but by shining the light of hard truth.  He confronts the leaders’ self-righteousness by asking them what they thought about John the Baptist’s teaching.  Now, that may seem to come out of nowhere; but if you remember, John’s teaching was all about action that reflects right relationship with God and neighbor.  When the religious leaders came out to see John, joining the crowds wanting to be baptized, John had yelled at the scribes and Pharisees, “You brood of vipers!  Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?  Bear fruit worthy of repentance.” (Matthew 3:7-8)  If you’ve got an extra cloak, give it to someone who doesn’t; and if you’ve got extra food, do the same (Luke 3:11).  John’s baptism was a baptism of repentance toward righteousness – turning away from self-centered behavior and turning toward right relationship with God and others.  So, Jesus holds the religious leaders accountable for the fact that they didn’t follow John’s lead and didn’t offer him their stamp of approval.  Instead of the path of righteousness, the religious leaders chose the path of self-righteousness.

The other reason we may turn away from a call to righteousness is that we often think that word applies only to special, holy people – people with better wiring than what we’ve got.  Mother Theresa – now there’s a righteous person.  I can’t measure up to that, right?  Righteousness sounds like a losing proposition because the deck is stacked against normal sinners like us.

Well, Jesus might confront us on that just a bit.  Righteousness isn’t perfection; righteousness is the choice you make today.  Jesus illustrates that in the parable he tells the religious leaders.  A father has two sons.  He tells the first son to go work in the vineyard.  Now, who knows what the son had planned for that day, but he clearly didn’t have it in mind to go work in the vineyard because he refuses to go.  Maybe he’s lazy, or maybe he’s bull-headed, or maybe he simply has other work that’s required of him – for whatever reason, he declines.  But then he thinks better of it, and goes out into the vineyard, and fulfills his father’s wishes.  Meanwhile, the father gives the same command to his second son.  This one says to his father, “I go, sir” – definitely the right answer.  And maybe he even has the right intention, planning to go just as soon as … whatever.  But he doesn’t follow through.  “Which of the two did the will of his father?” Jesus asks (Matthew 21:31).  The answer is easy … but it’s also really hard because it strikes pretty close to home.

Every day, we sinners get up and have to decide what path we’ll take.  Or, I should say, we get to decide which path we’ll take.  Yesterday’s success or failure is yesterday’s success or failure.  Every day, we’re offered the grace to start again.  Every day.  That’s why Jesus says to the supposedly holy religious leaders that the tax collectors and the prostitutes are coming into God’s kingdom ahead of them – because those tax collectors and prostitutes who’d become part of Jesus’ community were making the choice for right relationship with God and neighbor each day.  That’s what being part of a beloved community means:  Choosing to act out the values and norms of that community, that family, with each new day.  Righteousness isn’t an account we build up that eventually tips the scales and opens up the pearly gates to us; it’s making the choice to live as part of Jesus’ family today, and tomorrow, and the next day.  Righteousness isn’t what earns us a ticket to our heavenly home.  Righteousness reminds us where our home already is. 

So, what does that mean for you and me, here and now?  What I hear Jesus saying is this: Remember whose family you belong to.  Be clear about the values that guide you, and be sure your actions align with those values.  In this family, Jesus’ family, the primary value is love – love of God and love of neighbor.  And we believe that the model for practicing love is following the way of the cross.  As Paul writes in the second reading today, “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave.  And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8)  That’s love that gives itself away for the sake of the other.  And for members of Jesus’ family, every choice we make must spring from that value of self-giving love. 

It doesn’t matter whether the question of the moment is personal or public because Jesus expects us to be the same person in both settings.  That value of self-giving love needs to inform everything – how much time I spend with my wife and kids, or how much of my income I give away, or how deeply I listen to someone, or how our nation treats immigrants and refugees, or what steps we take to bring people out of poverty, or how we respond to people who kneel, or don’t kneel, during the national anthem.  Love has something to say about how we deal with each of those situations … and a thousand more.

Thankfully, love is also a work in progress.  Righteousness doesn’t require of us that we come before God with an unblemished record.  Righteousness doesn’t require of us that we get every answer right.  What righteousness requires of us is that, on this day, we choose to do what we can to live in right relationship with God and neighbor.  That’s who we are because, after all, we are what we do.