Do We Want to Be Made Well?

Sermon for May 26, 2019

Revelation 21:10,22–22:5; John 5:1-9

Here we are at Memorial Day weekend.  As Abraham Lincoln said at the cemetery at Gettysburg, we remember and give thanks for those who’ve given “the last full measure of devotion” in service to our country.  Memorial Day isn’t a feast on the church calendar, but it still seems an appropriate time to pray for those who have died in our armed forces and to pray for the nation they gave their lives to serve.

I have to say that I’m concerned about this nation they gave their lives to serve.  That’s not because of a single person, or a single issue, or even several issues, but because of the way we’ve come to deal with issues these days – running to our respective corners of disagreement and approaching public policy as a zero-sum game.  By definition, that polarization separates us from one another precisely at the time when what we need most is to find common ground.

Among the issues where we see this polarization play out is one that’s been in the news a lot over the past few months, so much that people have asked me why I haven’t said anything about it.  That issue is abortion, a political potato so hot that “smart” preachers never talk about it.  Honestly, I don’t want to talk about it, because no matter what I say, I’m guaranteed to make some of you angry.  More than that, as I’ve said before, you don’t need or want your clergy pretending to be experts in public policy just because we have collars around our necks.  If you want to know what I, personally, think about abortion, I’m happy to get together with you; but I don’t think a sermon is the place for that.  Still, I do think abortion is worth a sermon, not because I have “the answer” but because people turn to the Church to hear its voice on things like this.  And that voice must be a voice of Good News.  That voice must be a voice of hope.  So, is there Good News for the Church to proclaim about this seemingly unsolvable issue?

You probably know the legislative highlights of the past five months or so.  At one end of the spectrum, New York has removed criminal penalties for injury to a fetus when a pregnant woman is assaulted, which abortion opponents see as a step toward taking away the personhood of a fetus completely, regardless of the length of gestation.¹  Virginia legislators considered a measure that would have repealed some restrictions on abortion, lowering the bar related to how much harm the birth would cause the mother and allowing abortion even at the end of term.²  At the other end of the spectrum, Missouri has just made abortion illegal past eight weeks’ gestation – the point when fetal heart tones begin and a point before many women know they’re pregnant.  With this action, Missouri joins several other states in passing “heartbeat” laws about abortion, seeking presenting cases they hope will overturn Roe v. Wade.³

For me, and for at least half of you, this controversy plays out not in lived experience but in conversation.  As I said, over the past few months, people on both sides have shared their passionate beliefs with me, implicitly or explicitly asking me to speak or write on their behalf.  In fact, I’ve had two conversations just recently, one over breakfast and one over a beer.  One person saw the issue completely in terms of a woman’s autonomy over her own body and health; the other saw the issue primarily in terms of a fetus’ complete vulnerability and society’s duty to protect it.  In other words, people on opposite sides of this moral issue were both looking to the Church to affirm their convictions.

And both of my conversation partners could root that expectation in the same place.  In the Episcopal Church, our job description as followers of Jesus Christ can be found in black and white in the Book of Common Prayer – the Baptismal Covenant (304-305).  From the three strands of authority we recognize – from Scripture, tradition, and reason – we’ve come to identify these baptismal promises as fundamental to faithful discipleship.  And I think the last of those promises is where both my conversation partners would point to support their divergent positions:  It’s the promise that we will “strive for justice and peace among all people and respect the dignity of every human being” (BCP 305). 

You can make a good case that both women and fetuses fall into a class of people who have been or might be threatened in terms of their human dignity.  Over pancakes, one conversation partner was highlighting the historical disempowerment of women, socially and legally, particularly their lack of autonomy over their own bodies.  Over a beer, the other conversation partner was highlighting the disempowerment of those who will be, or are, human beings but who can’t speak for themselves from the womb.  Both could have turned to the Bible to bolster their case.  You can point to scripture like Psalm 139 to affirm God’s love for us as unique individuals, even in the womb; and you can point to Jesus’ advocacy for marginalized women when he affirmed their full human autonomy in the face of social oppression.  Both my conversation partners saw a need to protect the dignity of people whose full humanity has been threatened or denied. 

What happens when there are competing claims on that Gospel value of human dignity?  And what do we do when those competing claims drive us apart and deafen us to one another’s authentic cry for justice?

Perhaps through our readings this morning – on this weekend when we honor a nation worth dying for – perhaps God might speak a word of Good News, even a word of hope.  And I believe that word of hope is this: “healing.”

In our Gospel reading, Jesus visits a pool where broken people come to be healed.  The blind, the lame, and the paralyzed come to this pool of Beth-zatha, where apparently healing happens by immersing oneself in the life-giving waters.  There, Jesus sees a man who’s been coming to this pool a long, long time, someone who’s been blind or lame or paralyzed for 38 years.  Thirty-eight years.  By this point, illness and disability have become second nature for this man; he probably can’t imagine what it would feel like to be healthy.  “Broken” has become his way of life. 

So, Jesus looks the man in the eye and asks a question that just seems wrong – wrong in at least a couple of ways.  He asks, “Do you want to be made well?” (John 5:6).  We might hear that as a dumb question:  This is a disabled man at a healing pool; of course he wants to be made well.  Or, we might hear it as a question so direct as to be almost rude:  “What are you doing?  After 38 years, you haven’t found a way to get yourself to the healing water?  Do you want to be made well?”  Myself, I hear it that second way.  Sometimes love is confrontational, and I think this is one of those times.  No more excuses, Jesus says.  “Stand up, take your mat, and walk” (5:8), because God needs you out there, working for the kingdom.

But, you know, God doesn’t just desire our healing as individuals.  God’s purposes include the healing of this nation and of all the nations.  We heard it in the reading this morning from Revelation.  In this vision of the city of God, the vision of eternal life that’s awaiting us all, the nations of the earth come and bring their glory to God’s throne – people once at war with each other, people who’ve cut each other down for generations.  They will come to the throne bringing God “the glory and the honor of the nations” (Revelation 21:26); and there, they will be healed of all that’s left them broken – all the pain that comes from our chronic inability to listen to the heart of the other.  And there, when God brings the heavenly city to our redeemed earth, we will find the “river of the water of life” flowing through the city (Revelation 22:1); and beside that river will be the tree of life itself – the fruit of the tree from the garden of Eden now freely available to us all – “and the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations” (22:2).  That’s where God is calling us – toward the healing of the nations.  God’s dream of love includes the coming together of even those who’ve never heard each other’s hearts.

That’s hope.  That’s healing.  And we don’t have to wait until the second coming to find it.  In fact, I believe God asks us to seek it, even – especially – in the bitterness of our deepest divides.

If you were here a few weeks ago, you may remember a sermon about breakfast on the beach.  Jesus met Peter, and grilled fish for him, and worked through Peter’s denial and the rupture of their relationship.  I believe God has a similar call for us now.  And on this Memorial Day weekend, nothing less is at stake than the health of this nation worth dying for. 

That call is something as simple as sharing pancakes, or sharing a beer.  Find someone you disagree with.  Make time for breakfast or a drink together.  And then listen to one another’s heart.  God’s desire for us is healing – healing of our own wounds, and our nation’s wounds, and our world’s wounds.  And I believe the most effective way each of us can be agents of healing is to put human dignity first – beginning with the person sitting across the table from you. 

Even in the abortion debate, there is Good News to be found.  For God is calling us to practice a way of hope.  God is calling us to practice a way of healing.  As Jesus might say, the question is:  Do we want to be made well?

1.       “Reproductive Health Act.”  Wikipedia.  Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reproductive_Health_Act.  Accessed May 24, 2019.

2.       “Repeal Act (Virginia).”  Wikipedia.  Available at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeal_Act_(Virginia).  Accessed May 24, 2019.

3.       Thomas, Crystal.  “Missouri House approves near-total abortion ban, sends it to governor for signature.”   Kansas City Star, May 17, 2019.  Available at: https://www.kansascity.com/news/politics-government/article230523469.html.  Accessed May 24, 2019.

Us and Them

Sermon from Sunday, May 19
Acts 11:1-18; Revelation 21:1-6; John 13:31-35

In today’s Gospel reading, we hear Jesus offering one of the most important lessons of the New Testament.  After washing his friends’ feet and telling them to do the same, he gives them this New Commandment: “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another” (John 13:34).  It’s right up there with the Great Commandment, to love God and love neighbor; and because these commands are so central to who we are as Jesus’ followers, they’re the core of our parish’s purpose statement.  It’s right here in the bulletin every week, by the way – that, first and foremost, we are a church family called to love God, love neighbor, and love one another.

So, how do we live out that call to love?  When Jesus tells the lawyer to love God and love neighbor, the lawyer comes back with, “OK, but who is my neighbor?” (Luke 10:29) – which leads Jesus to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan.  Similarly, as we wonder about who’s included in the command to love “one another,” we get today’s reading from Acts.

In the chapter just before what we heard this morning, Peter has a transforming experience; and he gives a recap of it in today’s reading.  Peter had a vision of all kinds of animals that were ritually unclean for Jewish people to eat, but he heard God issuing a new dietary commandment – that what was once considered unclean is now literally on the table.  That vision set the stage for an even bigger course correction God was giving Peter – overturning the ancient laws prohibiting Jews from eating and drinking with non-Jews, also known as Gentiles.  A Roman army officer, Cornelius – the epitome of an enemy for a follower of Jesus – Cornelius came to Peter looking for a word from the Lord.  And Peter saw that God was opening the doors of the kingdom of heaven to non-Jews, too, especially once the Holy Spirit came to Cornelius and his friends.  

All that probably sounds great to us, given that we, too, are Gentiles.  But for the rest of the disciples, Peter had gone rogue.  They demand to know, “Why did you go to uncircumcised men and eat with them?” (Acts 11:3).  God set those boundaries for a reason, Peter.  What the heck were you thinking?  So, Peter tells them the story of his vision, and Cornelius, and the Holy Spirit coming to these outsiders just as it had come to the apostles in the upper room (John 20:22; Acts 2:1-4).  And Peter concludes his story this way:  “If God … gave them the same gift [God] gave us when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, who was I that I could hinder God?” (11:17).

Now, in fairness, Jewish people had always welcomed non-Jews to come to worship and to pattern their lives on Jewish teachings.  Gentiles like these were called “God-fearers,” and Cornelius was one of them, as it turned out.  They followed the ways of the God of Israel without making the full commitment of conversion and, for the guys, circumcision.  So, it was just fine when Gentiles would come to Jewish synagogues to worship.  But things got messy when Peter stepped across a holy boundary and went to the outsiders instead.

It’s always easier for a community to let people in, on its terms, than for a community to change and adapt to folks from the outside.  Churches struggle with this all the time.  In fact, it’s really hard for most of us to see the life of our church from the perspective of someone who isn’t part of it.  A couple of Sundays ago, we hosted a Lutheran pastor, who offered a workshop on hospitality, how we can be more intentional about embracing people who come our way.  Forty-two St. Andrew’s folks came out for tacos and training in being hospitable, which is amazing.  Honestly, I think we’ve made huge strides in being more welcoming, and I give thanks for every person here who makes it a practice – a spiritual practice – to look for people they don’t recognize.

Over the past year, we’ve also been experimenting with new ways to gather, praising God, hearing God’s Word, celebrating special times, and welcoming people who maybe don’t come to any church on a Sunday morning.  Typically, these events are part of our third-Sunday-of-the-month Sunset Series, and they’re usually over at HJ’s.  In August, we had a back-to-school celebration and blessed kids’ backpacks.  In September, it was a jazz concert.  Then we celebrated Oktoberfest.  In November, we had two celebrations – debuting a new choral presentation of The Prince of Egypt and, later, honoring our veterans.  In December, we had a St. Nicholas party, sang carols, and made gingerbread houses.  Since the first of the year, we’ve celebrated St. Patrick with a Pub Night featuring an Irish band, and we had an amazing opportunity last Sunday night to sing spirituals along with one of the finest pianists and conductors in the Midwest. 

Now, this afternoon, at 5 p.m. over at HJ’s, we’ll have our end-of-school bash, with hotdogs and hamburgers, an ice-cream truck, inflatables for the kids, music, and something new for the summer: the blessing of the feet.  Kids of all ages can bring their flip-flops, or tennis shoes, or hiking boots, or just their bare feet and have them blessed to be sent out into the joy of summertime.

What are those events all about?  What happens when we do them?  Well, we gather in the Lord’s name, praising God for what we’ve been given and asking God to bless our lives.  We hear some Scripture.  We sing spiritual songs.  We feast and have a great time.  I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounds like a worshipful celebration, even though you don’t find any of those gatherings in the Book of Common Prayer.  So, do they “count”?  In the language of the people I interviewed in England during my sabbatical, are these events “proper church?”  In my book, absolutely.  And at each one, we welcome in people we’ve never met before. 

So, in last week’s Messenger and bulletin, you saw an article about a next step we’re going to try out beginning Father’s Day, June 16.  We’re calling it “Java and Jesus.”  Here’s the idea:  As much as many of us love this traditional worship space, with its pews and stone walls and stained-glass windows, a lot of people would find this setting stuffy or even intimidating.  People ask me, “Do I have to wear a suit or a dress to come to St. Andrew’s?” and I always say, “No, of course not.”  But the fact they feel the need to ask says something – that our worship environment may be setting boundaries we don’t intend to set.  So, we’re going to try something, not a change but an addition to what happens here on Sunday morning. 

Beginning June 16, we’ll be livestreaming the 10:15 service over at HJ’s.  The café will be open, and people can come in wearing their shorts and t-shirts for complimentary coffee and pastries, just like the other six mornings of the week.  But along with the coffee will be worship, including consecrated bread and wine, Jesus’ Body and Blood for Holy Communion.  We’ll set out a mat with toys where kids can play.  As far as I’m concerned, dogs can come in, too (though they don’t get Communion).  People can sit wherever they like; and honestly, if they find the sermon boring, they can get up and get a muffin while I drone on.  It’s definitely church – the same Word and Sacrament that happens here on this side of the street.  But, you know, if you can come in your shorts, and have a bite to eat, and talk with your neighbor without feeling self-conscious about it, that brings down the boundaries between “us” and “them.”

So, if St. Peter were here with us today – and as we join with the angels and archangels and all the company of heaven, I like to think that St. Peter is here with us today – what might he have to say about “Java and Jesus”?  Now, without his vision of God telling him to eat “unclean” foods, and without his conversation with the Roman army officer Cornelius, and without seeing the Holy Spirit come down on those non-Jewish people and welcome them into God’s family – without all that, Peter might have had some issues with us offering Eucharist over coffee and pastries at HJ’s.  But after his experience with Cornelius, I think Peter would say, sign me up.

Here’s the thing:  Our God is always doing something new.  In the beginning, it was creating the heavens and the earth out of nothing.  Then it was setting a particular people aside to shine God’s light for everybody else.  Then it was coming into our lives to take our nature and make common humanity divine.  Then it was dying to defeat death and let us live forever.  Then it was beating the boundaries of who’s in and who’s out, opening the promise of healing and eternal life to everybody who trusts in Christ.  And even at the end of the story, when God reunites heaven and earth as we heard in the reading from Revelation, and restores things to be the way God intended in the beginning, God will still be proclaiming, “See, I am making all things new” (21:5). 

So, as we try to beat a boundary ourselves the first Sunday of June, and invite neighbors to find God in coffee and pastry as well as in Word and Sacrament, I hope you’ll pray for this next step to make our little part of creation new.  If you’d like to come over and try it yourself, please do.  And when you do – just as you do on this side of the street on a Sunday morning – look first for the people you don’t know.  Look first for the Gentiles.  Look first for whoever might strike you as “them.”  And then, make “them” part of “us.”  As Jesus said to his friends 2,000 years ago, so he tells us as he sends us out:  “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.  By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples” – each time a “them” becomes an “us.”

Breakfast Partners

Sermon from Sunday, May 5, 2019
John 21:1-19

OK.  This might hurt just a little, but let me invite you to bring to mind something hard:  What’s something for which you have real trouble forgiving yourself?  As Paul observed, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23); we miss that mark all the time.  But sometimes the pain of missing the mark doesn’t go away so easily.  And sometimes that’s because you haven’t really resolved the issue with the person you ended up hurting.  And when that person remains part of your life, it’s all the harder to know how to move past the injury. 

That’s where the disciple Peter finds himself in today’s Gospel story.  Now, this is the third time that Jesus has appeared to his friends after the resurrection – twice in the upper room in Jerusalem, and now by the Sea of Galilee.  The disciples have marveled and celebrated that Jesus is alive, and Thomas has had his own famous moment of coming to trust that resurrection is real.  But since Easter morning, we haven’t heard a thing from Peter. 

That’s because Peter is carrying some heavy baggage.  At the Last Supper, after Jesus says someone will betray him, Peter says, No way; not me:  “I will lay down my life for you” (John 13:37).  But by sunrise the next morning, Peter has denied Jesus three times, saving himself when the going got tough.  And he’s been carrying that guilt like the rock from which he took his name. 

Peter has no idea what to do with that guilt, now that Jesus is back from the dead.  What do you say to your leader and friend after you’ve pulled the rug out from under him?  So, Peter tries to get on with his life, heading out to do what he knows best – fishing.  But nothing’s right.  Not even the fish will cooperate.

And then suddenly, things get really awkward.  From the boat, the disciples see someone on the beach; and one of them realizes it’s Jesus.  Peter reacts without a lot of thought.  He puts a rope cincture around the work smock he’s wearing, which I guess seemed better than trying to swim in a loose blanket; and he comes ashore.  He wants so badly to be with his friend and his Lord … but he’s got no idea what he’ll say once he gets there.

Meanwhile, Jesus is cooking breakfast for his friends.  It’s loaves and fishes once again, and once again way more than the group could possibly eat.  But no one’s talking.  Maybe the guys are waiting for Peter to break the ice, but Peter’s still got no idea what to say.  So, Jesus takes Peter off to the side for a private conversation. 

Now, in our translation, this dialogue between Jesus and Peter doesn’t make much sense.  “Do you love me?”  “Yes.”  “Do you love me?”  “Yes.”  “Do you love me?”  “Yes, you know that I love you.”  As we hear it in English, the dialogue affirms Peter’s repentant heart three times, symbolically cancelling out Peter’s three denials of Jesus.  But I think there’s more to it than that, if you look at the original language.

As you know, there are three Greek words for “love” in the New Testament.  There’s eros, which is romantic love.  There’s philos, which is deep friendship, the love of a brother or sister.  And there’s agape, which is loving like God loves – love that gives itself away for the other, Jesus’ sacrificial love for us.  Agape is the highest form of love, the kind Jesus calls us all to learn as we follow him.

So, here’s a loose translation of this dialogue between Jesus and Peter (John 21:15-17).

Jesus asks, “Simon son of John, do you love me sacrificially (agape), more than the rest of these guys do?”  Peter says, “Yes, Lord.  You know that I love you … like a brother (philos).”  Now, that’s not what Jesus was asking for.  But even so, Jesus says to him, “Feed my lambs.”  Lead these sheep I’ve given you.

Then a second time, Jesus asks, “Simon son of John, don’t you love me sacrificially (agape)?”  And Peter says again, “Yes, Lord.  You know that I love you … like a brother (philos).”  Frankly, it’s the best Peter can do; at least he’s being honest about it.  And Jesus says to him again, “Well, tend my sheep.”

Then Jesus asks Peter about love once more.  But this time Jesus changes the word he uses:  “Simon son of John, do you love me … like a brother (philos)?”  That’s it?  That’s the best you can do?

And by this point, I imagine Peter is breaking down.  He says, “Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you … like a brother (philos).”  You know I can’t give you the ultimate love you’re asking for, Peter exclaims.  You know I’ve failed you.  Why are you making me say it out loud?!

Of course, Jesus knows Peter’s answer before he asks the question.  Hearing the answer is for Peter’s benefit, because you can’t heal a relationship without taking accountability for the harm that broke it.  Reconciliation requires truth first. 

But that hard truth also paves the road ahead.  Peter has admitted his heart’s failure, love that only rises to the level of friendship or brotherhood.  And Jesus comes back to him as Jesus always comes back to us, with something more – with agape, the love that forgives failure, and heals relationship, and moves forward into a new reality.  “I love you anyway,” Jesus tells Peter.  “Brotherly love will do for now, so get to work.  Feed my sheep.”  But Jesus also warns Peter there’s sacrificial love to come at the end of his road – and that true love, agape love, comes with a cost.  Jesus can say that with authority because he knows all about the costly path of love.  I know it hurts, Jesus says.  But even so, follow me anyway.

So, what does all this have to do with us?  I think it’s stunning that God chooses the least likely candidate – in fact, the disqualified candidate – for the most important job.  Peter, the one you can’t depend on, will lead the newly forming Church and help it navigate the waters of inclusion, exclusion, and persecution.  He’ll grieve as his friend James is killed by King Herod, and Peter will be thrown in prison himself to await the same outcome.  And he’ll receive a vision that changes everything about who’s in and who’s out in this movement, and he’ll help change the rules to open up the boundaries of God’s love to everyone.  Eventually, the authorities will kill him just as they killed his Lord.  But he follows Jesus anyway.  He couldn’t do anything to deserve Jesus’ forgiveness.  He had no business even staying in the movement, much less helping to lead it.  But God’s forgiveness changed the relationship, replacing his heart of stone with a heart of love made new. 

So, I began by asking you to imagine walking in Peter’s sandals, needing to have a hard but loving conversation with someone you’ve hurt.  Now, imagine yourself in Jesus’ sandals instead, walking on feet that have taken the nails of broken relationship.  Think about someone who’s failed you, someone whose sins of omission or commission have taken a toll on your life.  With whom do you need to have breakfast on the beach?

In last week’s Gospel story, when Jesus appeared to his friends, he breathed the Holy Spirit on them and said, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained” (John 20:23).  We often hear that as empowering the Church, through its priests, to speak God’s absolution to people confessing their sins; and that’s true.  But of course, the Church isn’t an institution first; it’s the assembly of those who follow Jesus Christ.  In that sense, we are all called to be people of forgiveness – those who receive it and those who give it.  It’s important enough to make it into the Lord’s Prayer:  “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”  As Jesus reconciled us with God, so Jesus asks us to reconcile with one another – that we might be one, as he and the Father are one, so that the world might see what God’s way of love looks like (John 17:22-23). 

That sounds like an overwhelming project, and maybe it is.  So, it might be worthwhile to start off simply.  Think again of that person you need to forgive.  Maybe it’s time just to invite him or her to breakfast – and see what our loving and liberating and life-giving Lord will do with it.

Do You Believe in Miracles?

Sermon for Sunday, April 28, 2019
John 20:19-31

So, let me ask: Do you believe in miracles?

We usually use that word “miracle” to describe fairly non-miraculous things, honestly – fourth-quarter comebacks or walk-off home runs.  But I think today’s Gospel reading might make us stop short and ask whether we believe in the more amazing kind of miracle, when God empowers a change in the created order and makes a new reality possible in the here and now.

To me, miracles are theologically messy.  We’d like for them to work in ways we can control or at least understand.  We like certainty or, failing that, at least predictability.  If I believe deeply enough or say the right prayers, it would be great if I could know God was going to do something miraculous in response.  We’d like miracles to follow the rules of physics: for every spiritual action, there should be an equal and opposite spiritual reaction.

Of course, miracles don’t work that way.  Sometimes healing comes, and sometimes it doesn’t – at least not in ways we see.  Sometimes God’s power changes lives; sometimes those lives remain the same.  And like the disciple Thomas, we’d find it much easier to believe in God’s astonishing power if we could see it and touch it for ourselves.

Now, Thomas gets a bad rap, being called “Doubting Thomas” because he demands evidence of resurrection.  In fairness, he wasn’t asking for anything the other disciples hadn’t already received.  The rest of them were together on Easter night, hiding out after hearing Mary Magdalene say that morning that she had “seen the Lord!” (John 20:18).  If they’d believed her news, they wouldn’t have been hiding out from the authorities; they would have been out in the streets, telling everyone Jesus was alive.  Instead, they were hedging their bets behind a locked door until Jesus himself passed through it and stood among them, showing his friends the nail wounds in his feet and his wrists.  Thomas just wanted the same proof the other doubters got to see.

So, I think we might be forgiven, too, for wanting to see some evidence that resurrection happens.  Even though Jesus explicitly blesses “those who have not seen and yet have come to believe” (John 20:29), it doesn’t hurt if you get to see a miracle every now and then.  So, let me share a couple with you.

One involves someone we see here at St. Andrew’s pretty much every week.  First, a little background: One of our outreach partners is Welcome House, a place here in Kansas City where men struggling with addiction can begin a solid recovery.  It’s a refuge of last resort for most of the 80 men living there at any given time.  Guys come to Welcome House when they have no other option, once their disease has cost them homes and livelihoods and spouses and kids – and they go there seeking nothing less than a miracle, the gift of a new life. 

So, Welcome House had its annual fundraising breakfast last Tuesday.  I was there, along with other St. Andrew’s people.  Each year at this breakfast, the organization honors someone who’s made a huge difference for the men Welcome House serves, someone whose story of enabling transformation for others qualifies him or her for what they call the “Miracle Award.”  This year, the miracle story they highlighted belongs to our own Harold House.

As I said, we see Harold just about every Sunday, but St. Andrew’s is not his first stop.  That’s because every Sunday, Harold begins his morning at a meeting at Welcome House, providing presence, support, and two dozen donuts for the men there.  He’s done that for 25 years now, after graduating from Welcome House himself.  And Harold is the one responsible for connecting St. Andrew’s with Welcome House, the one who brought our partnership into being. 

Harold does this holy work in the world because he is a witness of the miracle of resurrection.  He found new life through Welcome House, and he’s committed himself to sharing that hope with others on the same journey.  If a miracle is, indeed, God empowering a change in the created order and making a new reality possible in the here and now, then I would say Harold’s story is nothing short of miraculous.  And 25 years later, he lives that miracle by serving the guys God gives him to serve, week after week.

Here’s a second miracle story for you, one more distant geographically but close to our hearts.  For more than 25 years, St. Andrew’s has had a partnership with St. Augustin’s Episcopal Church and School in Maniche, Haiti.  The Diocese of Haiti started the school to serve families living on the other side of the river from the main population of Maniche, a community with no bridge across that river.  For many years, St. Andrew’s provided financial support for the school’s operation, teaching maybe 100 kids a year in preschool through sixth grade.  When we would go to visit, on mission trips, we’d see red-tinged hair among the kids there, a sign of protein deficiency.  But you didn’t have to be a physician to notice many of the kids were listless and struggling to learn, simply because they were hungry. 

So, 14 years ago, we took a risk.  We decided to increase our support for the kids at St. Augustin’s by providing a hot lunch every day: nutritious beans and rice, a complete protein.  Honestly, we didn’t know whether this effort would work.  Would the supplies get there consistently?  The road up the mountains to the village was demanding, and our partner priest had five other congregations and schools to oversee, too.  Would the money be enough?  Haiti is a place where food prices sometimes skyrocket unpredictably.  Would the effort be sustainable?  I mean, a single fundraiser for hot lunches is one thing; asking people to give over and over again is something else.

So, here’s the miracle.  Over the past few years, the quality of the education at St. Augustin’s has earned it a strong reputation among the families there, and parents want to get their kids into it.  So, enrollment has risen to 470 students in preschool through ninth grade.  That’s almost five times more mouths to feed – 85,400 lunches each year.  85,400 lunches.  But you all have come through, every year, with the Haiti Benefit Dinner, which happens tonight.  Through ticket sales and your contributions, we’ll fund the hot-lunch program for another year, bringing hundreds of kids the opportunity for a life beyond subsistence agriculture.

If a miracle is God empowering a change in the created order and making a new reality possible in the here and now, then I would say the school’s story is nothing short of miraculous.  And the participants in that miracle are sitting right here, right now; and we’ll gather again tonight for a fantastic celebration of life made new.  As the years of this partnership go on, we’ll keep living out this miracle by serving the families God gives us to serve.

Now, I do not doubt God’s power to intervene in the created order and change things suddenly, with no rational explanation.  After all, God is God, and we are not.  But still, I think most often in our world, new life is a collaborative enterprise, with us blessed to take part in God’s miraculous work.  That's not exactly the most efficient approach.  So, why would God choose to do it like that?  I think it must be because God likes it that way.  Sure, God has the power to flip a switch and change hearts and lives at will.  But how much more fun must it be for the One who creates us and redeems us and sustains us to draw us children of God into the miracle-working?  As every parent knows, it’s much more rewarding, and much more formational, to let your kids do the work on their science-fair projects, rather than doing it for them. 

In theological language, we might put it this way:  Resurrected life is the mission of God in the post-Easter world.  And amazingly enough, God invites us to carry out that mission, asking us to be agents of new life ourselves.  The lives of the guys at Welcome House don’t change without the people who fund its operation, as well as people like Harold House who live the story of resurrection day to day.  The future for the kids at St. Augustin’s doesn’t change without that school, and its teachers, and you providing the wherewithal for almost 500 kids to learn and eat well at least once each school day.  Resurrection happens most often not by singlehanded divine magic but by divine collaboration.  In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit on his friends, and he gives them his peace, and commissions them as his apostles, the force of new life in the world.  “As the Father has sent me,” Jesus tells his friends, “so I send you” (John 20:21). 

And, so God sends us on this mission – making life new by creating and redeeming and sustaining our world.  Remarkably enough, it’s you and I whom God asks to do the work, blessing us richly, too, in the process.

So, do you believe in miracles?  Do you believe in God’s power to make life new?  I do.  We may not see the marks of the nails today, but I see the Body of Christ here before me, living and active in the world.  Just look around.  Just come tonight.  And just like Thomas, you’ll see Jesus’ hands and feet in the flesh.

Resurrection in the Dark

Sermon for Easter, April 21, 2019
John 20:1-18

Here’s something crazy for you this Easter morning:  Did you ever think about the fact that Jesus rises from the dead in the dark? 

At least as John’s Gospel tells this story, the resurrection happens quietly, imperceptibly, while the world still thinks it’s night, while darkness still thinks it’s won the battle.  Now, movies like to show Jesus breaking free in the brilliance of the sunrise.  The stone rolls away, shafts of light penetrate the tomb, the orchestral score swells, and Jesus steps boldly into the morning.  That’s great for Hollywood, but Scripture tells the story differently – that God preferred to defeat darkness in the dark, when nobody was looking.

Apparently, nobody even knew it had happened until Mary Magdalene came on the scene.  In John’s telling, we don’t know why she’s there; the story doesn’t say anything about her finishing the work of preparing the body for burial.  All we know is that she’s there, and she sees the stone over the tomb’s entrance has been rolled away. 

Well, Mary presumes foul play a second time, the insult of grave robbery added to the injury of crucifixion.  So, she goes to find Peter and John, two leaders of the disciple community.  Peter and John run to the tomb and eventually step inside to investigate.  But they find a tidy crime scene, with the cloth that had been on Jesus’ battered head neatly rolled up and set aside.  Then, unbelievably, the two men just go back home.  With all the compassion of the rock that gave Peter his name, the two guys abandon Mary, leaving her standing there, weeping alone.

So, Mary also looks into the tomb.  There, she sees more than the evidence; she sees angelic beings, and they ask her the question of the day:  “Woman, why are you weeping?” (John 20:13).  Now, you can hear this as a rhetorical question, which is where the theologizing goes:  Why weep in the face of new life?  But you can also hear this question as divine compassion for a grieving child of God. 

Well, Mary can’t really hear the question at all or contemplate why the angels are asking it.  In her grief, Mary’s in problem-solving mode; she’s got a body to find.  So, she turns away from the tomb and sees a stranger, who continues the angels’ compassionate questioning: “Woman, why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?” (John 20:15).  

Let’s hit the “pause” button on this story for a second.  This moment is a fulcrum in time, a hinge point between old and new, past and future.  Mary figures this stranger is the gardener, and she confronts him about whether he might have had a role in the grave robbery.  In this last minute of the old order, Mary is living in the world of death.  She’s looking for a body, managing the details of human demise.  She can’t hear the deeper point in the stranger’s question about what she’s looking for, because she isn’t looking for Jesus.  She’s looking for Jesus’ body, which is not the same thing.  She’s looking to do the best she can to manage the consequences of our mortality. 

But there in the dim of daybreak, with light just painting the edges of the scene, she hears that gardener say, “Mary!” – and she knows she’s stumbled into new territory.  In the compassion of his question and the heart that calls her by name, Mary sees the truth: that death is not the end, that love can’t be held prisoner, and that light shines in the darkest night.

A month and a half ago, I found myself in a peculiar, even surreal, darkness – one I’d never quite experienced, though I’d been in it many times before.  My father was dying – actively dying.  We’d found out just a few days earlier that he had esophageal cancer, and his decline had been blessedly quick.  Now, it was just a matter of waiting for it.  In this odd and beautiful line of work, you find yourself at the bedsides of dying people sometimes.  But it’s not the same when it’s your father. 

And honestly, he was struggling as that long night wore on.  He would try to speak, which made him cough, which I imagine made the pain intensify, which made him move around to try to get away from it.  As many dying people do, he kept reaching out into the air, seemingly trying to connect with something just that too far away to grasp.  But eventually, in the dark hours just before dawn, he calmed and seemed ready to rest.  And soon – with no drama, no fanfare, no angelic presence – he stopped breathing.

After a few minutes, I went out to the nurses’ station and talked with the woman who’d been caring for my father through that night.  She went and found a colleague.  They did the obligatory assessment and assigned a time of death.  She put the steps in motion for others to tend to the body and prepare it for transport.  As she had all though that long night, the nurse did her job carefully, respectfully, lovingly.  Finally, she turned to me and asked, “How about you?  What is it that you need?” 

I hadn’t thought about that.  And I didn’t have a good answer.  So, I stammered out the stupidest and most inaccurate thing I could have said.  I told her, “I don’t need anything, thanks.  I’m fine.”  And she looked at me, and smiled, and said, “No, you’re not.  But he is.  And you will be, because God will raise him, and you’ll be together again.”

What is it that you need?  Why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for? 

In our world, on any given day, death can seem to hold such power over us, bringing us the darknesses we grieve:  Broken relationships.  Broken choices that hurt others.  Long-term illness and slow demise.  The end of life for those we love.  Evil that we seem powerless even to influence, much less defeat – families caught in poverty and violence; people trafficked for sex; children treated as if they were disposable; a political culture of echo chambers and self-aggrandizement, where leaders seem more eager to strut and to taunt than to serve.  Even on Easter morning, for some of us – maybe many of us – pain or bitterness can make these beautiful flowers fade and make the grandest music ring hollow. 

Into that pain, or illness, or loneliness, or sin – into the mess steps someone we probably don’t even recognize at first.  Maybe he’s the gardener.  Maybe she’s a coworker.  Maybe he’s a guy at a coffee shop.  Maybe she’s a nurse, just doing her job.  But what strikes you is that this person, meeting you at the edges of your pain, becomes an unexpected bearer of the light.  She takes you seriously enough to look you in the eye and ask, “Why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?  What is it that you need?” 

Implicit in that stranger’s questions is stalwart trust, despite the evidence, that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not overcome it (John 1:5).  In fact, in that moment – in the garden, or in the office, or in the coffee shop, or in the nursing center – in that moment, Jesus Christ himself steps out of the tomb and into your darkness.  Even before the sunrise, he brings you light, not with some empty “everything will be OK” but with a costly victory that comes by defeating evil and sin, and rising from the grave, and making all creation new.  Even the earth itself witnesses to the story, redbuds and daffodils and tulips and forsythias declaring in living color that winter will not have the last word.

And that’s the irony, isn’t it? – the irony of resurrection in the darkness.  Flowers blossom brightest just at the edge of winter’s chill.  Hope lifts us up when despair nips closest at our heels.  The deepest darkness shows us God’s light.  And there we find an unlikely champion, a surprising voice of Good News, who enters into the darkness with us, and leads us out into life.

So:  In this Easter season, I invite you to look deep into your darkness, and refuse to look away, and seek the unlikely face of Jesus Christ.  I invite you to listen hard to the silence of the night, and open your ears to his unlikely voice.  How will you know you’ve found him?  Not because you’ll hear trumpets.  Not because you’ll hear all the answers to what keeps you up at night.  But because you’ll see eyes looking back deeply into your pain, and you’ll hear a voice asking you to share your heart:  Why are you weeping?  Whom are you looking for?  What do you need?  And then, when that voice speaks your name, you’ll know it’s Jesus, and into your darkness will come the greatest light of all.

Taking You to Paradise

Sermon for Palm Sunday, April 14, 2019
Luke 19:28-40; Philippians 2:5-11; Luke 23:1-49

Just in case you were wondering, you’re not the only one who thinks our worship this morning feels like spiritual whiplash.  I know we’ve just walked through it, literally; but I’d like to take a moment to think about the crazy path Scripture has given us in these past 20 minutes.

We started in the Jewell Room, hearing the story of Palm Sunday, Jesus’ “triumphal entry” into Jerusalem.  He asks the disciples to go find him a colt and bring it to the Mount of Olives.  Now, that may not sound provocative, but we have to realize, what Jesus is doing would have been like a leader today asking his supporters to get a bulletproof limo with a security detail, and bring it to him at the Capitol in Washington, and drive him down Pennsylvania Avenue to the White House.  This was not an accidental parade.  Palm Sunday was a provocation, because everything Jesus did was to remind people of a bigger story his actions were telling – a story about power and authority that reaches beyond secular government. 

In ancient days, the kings of Israel came riding on a donkey or a colt (1 Kings 1:33-35), with people spreading their cloaks on the path along the king’s way (2 Kings 9:13).  And the people of Jesus’ time were desperately seeking a new king to save them from their Roman oppressors.  And here’s the coup de gras, maybe even the coup d’etat:  At the last day, the Day of the Lord, when God would come to be “king over all the earth” and set the world to rights, that final reckoning was expected to begin when the Lord came and stood on the Mount of Olives, just outside Jerusalem (Zechariah 14:4-9).

So, when Jesus begins his procession down the road from the Mount of Olives, the people begin shouting, “Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!  Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!” (Luke 19:38).  That’s because the people knew what all this symbolism meant – that this was nothing less than the King.  His servant humility notwithstanding, Jesus was making it clear that he was the divine monarch, and that the rival of the day, Caesar Augustus, was just a pretender to the throne.  But Jesus wasn’t claiming any earthly throne, which is the only thing the authorities could understand.  He was asserting his authority as the cosmic King, a king whose reign even the rocks and stones themselves would shout about. 

In our New Testament reading this morning, St. Paul recognizes the same truth that Jesus was claiming there on the Mount of Olives.  Even though Jesus was God, in human form, he didn’t regard equality with God as something for him to exploit.  Instead, he set his cosmic kingship aside, at least for a time, exchanging his divinity and his royal prerogatives for death on a cross.  Now, we say that – “death on a cross” – like we can understand it, but we can’t even come close.  This isn’t an execution; it’s a lynching.  This is death that sucks life from its victim with the torture of slow drowning as your lungs fill with fluid – to say nothing of the pain from the nails in your feet and your wrists.  Yet still, Paul says, that dying man was the one they were waiting for after all – the one to whom every knee shall bend and whom everyone shall confess as the true Caesar, the true Lord. 

But why did Jesus do it?  Why did he need to do it?  This isn’t something a sane person would choose.  In fact, on Maundy Thursday night, Jesus sweat blood asking God to open some other way for him instead.  But in the end, the Lord of the universe chose this.  Why?

Here’s the short answer:  atonement.  That’s one of those theological words people throw around as if everyone knows what it means.  It’s a complicated idea, but the word itself is beautifully simple.  It means exactly what the pieces of the word say:  at-one-ment.  Atonement is at-one-ment.  Our story this morning goes the way it does, with the Lord choosing the worst death ever, in order that you and I might be made at one with God. 

OK.  But what how does that work?

Well, you can answer that question several ways.  You might go toward what the theologians call substitutionary atonement, the idea that God had to subject God’s own child, a part of God’s own self, to the suffering that all humanity deserved for the ungracious ways we turn against God.  According to this line of thinking, we humans could never make amends adequately for the offense of sin, of choosing against God’s direction, so God has to take the punishment for us, sending the Son to the cross.  It’s a medieval idea, actually, coming from the model of courtly justice in medieval Europe.  If a powerless servant were to insult the lord of the manor, the lord of the manor would have to demand satisfaction for the servant’s insult.  But even the servant’s life wouldn’t be enough to provide satisfaction because of the difference in their stations in life.  Maybe multiple servants would have to die for justice to be achieved.  And how could justice ever come if all the servants insulted the lord?  So, medieval theologians looked at this logic and saw God the Father atoning for the insult of human sin not by demanding the lives of countless humans but by giving one life, the life of the divine Son.  They saw it as the only loving way God could balance the scales so thrown off by human sin.  That model does a nice job of accounting for the scandal of grace, the fact that God loves us despite the fact that we can never make up for sin on our own.  But it also raises at least as many questions as it answers about a divine parent who sends a child to die. 

Here’s another way to think about how atonement works:  that Jesus was the ultimate example of a God-shaped life.  The way this thinking goes, Jesus the exemplar came to show us what a life lived for others truly looks like.  He bore punishment he didn’t deserve.  He emptied himself of power and glory in order to take our nature and go through everything we go through.  He showed us how to deal with the ugliness life can dish out – not with retribution or exclusion, but with a heart that bore unbearable pain so others wouldn’t have to.  According to this line of thinking, Jesus dies on the cross to lead us there ourselves – to take up our own crosses; to live for others; to value love at all costs, even at the ultimate cost.  There’s truth in that, definitely.  But if Jesus is just a righteous example, why does this sacrifice have to come from the Son of God?  We know many stories of selfless sacrifice, of people emptying themselves and dying so others might live.  There must be more to the story if the one doing the sacrificing is also God in the flesh.

So, here’s a third way to think about how atonement works.  It highlights Jesus’ powerful divinity just as much as his suffering humanity by telling a cosmic story with a surprise ending.  The way this thinking goes, Jesus, the Son of God, came to vanquish the power of sin and death and open the gate to eternal life for all who trust in him.  He emptied himself of divine power, submitting himself to death in order to trick the power of sin and evil into complacency.  Now, for this to make sense, you have to see sin and evil not as the temporary failure of good human hearts but as a power unto itself.  So, if you can accept that, then Jesus comes as the unlikely conqueror of that enemy, the one who brings God’s power directly into human life, fighting the cosmic struggle of God versus evil on the battlefield of human existence – and apparently losing.  But what evil doesn’t know was what C.S. Lewis calls the “deep magic,” the truth that the power of the Creator cannot be contained by the creation any more than the clay can tell the potter what to make.  And so, this thinking goes, God in Christ lets evil win – at least long enough to prove God’s ultimate power, crushing evil by reversing its victory, which is death itself, and giving the same power over death to all of us who trust in him.  To me, at least, that model of Christ as the victor holds a lot of truth.  I have seen enough of the power of sin and evil to know it’s real.  And I have seen enough of the power of Christ’s resurrection to know death doesn’t get the last word.

At the end of the day, especially at the end of this Palm Sunday, the point isn’t knowing the right model of the atonement.  The point is the truth of at-one-ment between God and us.  For as we heard in that Passion Gospel reading from Luke, death is not the end for those who trust in God’s power, even if the evidence says God’s power is absent.  Jesus’ promise to the thief on the cross is the promise to each and every one of us who fails along life’s journey.  Eternal life is not a function of scoring the most points or getting the answers right.  Eternal life comes from turning to Jesus as he hangs there on the cross with us, and trusting him when he makes that most unlikely of all promises:  that you – no matter who you are, and no matter how slim the odds may seem – if you turn to me, even “you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43).

Calling Home

Sermon from March 17, 2019
Genesis 15:1-12;17-18

Here’s something I’m struggling to understand: My father died a week and a half ago.  I was there when he died, sitting with him through the hard, final hours.  My sisters and I took care of the arrangements for his cremation.  With my mother, we planned a celebration of his eternal life and reveled in the love that his life had brought us.  I’ve received prayers and good wishes from so many of you, loving offerings of your beautiful hearts.  All the evidence points to my father’s absence from the life we shared here, and I know his death to be a fact.  But here’s the thing:  I don’t feel like he’s gone.

Now, maybe that’s denial.  I do know grief doesn’t keep a schedule but comes in waves when you least expect it, and those waves will continue to crash on me.  But even when I confront my sadness about the distance between my father and me, it doesn’t feel like the relationship is gone.  So, rather than what I’m experiencing being denial, maybe instead what I’m experiencing is friendship, just now at a distance.

Friendship with a parent isn’t a given.  Early in my life, my father was the authority figure, the provider, the guy who went to work each day, and my partner in playing catch in the back yard.  Later, he was the guy who didn’t understand me and whose advice seemed tired and worn.  Still later, there didn’t seem to be very much for us to talk about, and getting together for family gatherings kind of felt like a routine.  My father and I did share an annual special event – a trip together to see baseball games – and those were good moments of remembering something deeper.  But then there were the other 51 weeks of the year.  There wasn’t anything wrong, exactly.  We were just on hold.

And then, my father did something out of character:  He told me what he needed.  One of his great strengths was his willingness to put the needs of others first; but the shadow side of that is how hard it is, then, to say what you need yourself.  Well, several years ago, my father found the words.  He simply said, “I’d really appreciate it if you’d call home more often.”  He wasn’t looking for some huge change in my life or wanting me to feel badly for the ways I’d been missing the mark.  He just wanted more connection.  So – through regular phone calls, and more-frequent visits, and those annual baseball trips, too – my father and I took stagnation and turned it into a relationship that connected us even when we weren’t together.  We took a good-enough parent-child dynamic and turned it into friendship instead.

So, here we are at the second Sunday of Lent, the season when the Church calls us to mend the ruptures in our relationship with God.  As you know, through this Lent, we’re encouraging you to think about creating a rule of life as way to hold up and nurture your spirituality.  Now, for those of us who find it hard even to give up chocolate or remember to say the Lord’s Prayer at night, creating a rule of life probably sounds way over the top, something more for nuns and monks than for folks like us.  But a rule can be just a few simple practices that encourage us to focus on and strengthen our spiritual lives.  So, through these weeks of Lent, the sermons will flesh that out and ask us to consider what we might do to build our relationship with God, with ourselves, with others, and with God’s creation.  You can also join the Café 9:15 class, or the parents’ class, on Sunday mornings to learn more about a rule of life – or you can just take home the green booklet in the entryway.

So, this week, the focus is building our relationship with God.  And as you might have guessed, the experience of my father’s death is making me think about my relationship with God differently. 

I sort of missed the boat with the start of Lent this year:  I skipped Ash Wednesday and the first Sunday of Lent; I haven’t really figured out something to give up or take on; and I’ve been feeling kind of badly about all that.  It’s not great form for the priest to ignore Lent.  But I’ve also heard God saying – especially through the kindnesses so many of you have shared – I’ve heard God saying it’s OK give myself a break and let go of the sense of failure, despite how well I hang onto that.  Because building our relationship with God isn’t about getting good grades in religious observance.  Building our relationship with God is about turning an acquaintance into a friendship.

We hear an example of that in today’s Old Testament reading.  As we come to this story, Abram and God are in the process of building an extraordinary relationship.  A few chapters earlier, for no apparent reason, the God of Israel tapped Abram on the shoulder as he was enjoying his life in Mesopotamia and told him to leave his country and his people to receive great blessing in a new land.  And Abram went, apparently persuaded by the power of God’s self-revealing.  But over time – as Abram encountered famine, and used his wife as a bargaining chip to save himself in Egypt, and rescued his nephew’s household from warring tribes – over time, things didn’t seem to be going so well for Abram, who’d risked everything he had on nothing but a promise. 

So, God comes to Abram again, which is where we pick up today’s reading.  Abram is thinking God’s promise of a new land hasn’t really panned out.  Plus, even if he does hang onto the land he’s occupying in Canaan, he’s got no one to leave it to; so, it’s basically an empty gift.  So, even though it may seem disrespectful to talk to the Lord God this way, Abram turns to God with some honest questions.  He says, “Look, you brought me here, but how am I supposed to know this land’s really mine?  And if it’s mine, who will it go to once I’m gone?”  So God says, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them. …  So shall your descendants be.” (Genesis 15:5)  Look at the signs I give you, God says, and know that my word is good.  Well, Abram trusts their relationship enough to believe what God has told him.  And God honors Abram’s trust by renewing the promise of blessing beyond his dreams.

This kind of honest exchange between God and Abram keeps going for several more chapters in Genesis, through blessings and crises alike.  There’s God renaming Abram and Sarai as Abraham and Sarah, deepening the covenant they’ve made.  There’s the question of whether Abraham’s son with a slave will be his heir, or whether God can provide a child through Sarah in her very old age.  There’s Abraham’s negotiation with God to save even a handful of faithful people in the doomed city of Sodom.  And there’s Abraham’s time of deep testing, when God asks him to offer his only son as a sign of Abraham’s dependence on God alone.  This relationship between Abraham and God isn’t easy; it’s full of twists and turns.  Their relationship takes work, and faith, and honesty, and investment, and patience.  Above all, it takes connection – like any friendship.  And that’s how later books of Scripture describe Abraham, as nothing less than the “friend of God” (2 Chronicles 20:7, Isaiah 41:8, James 2:23).

OK, so, we’re not Abraham.  Few of us receive the word of the Lord in visions or witness holy fire and smoke to assure us of God’s promises.  But we, too, can be friends of God.  We, too, are inheritors of Abraham’s covenant, the mutual promise that as we invest our hearts and lives to follow God faithfully, so God will invest God’s heart and life to bless us in ways we can’t imagine.  And though we might not see visions, I do think we should listen for the voice of God calling us to a friendship we might never have expected was possible.  Because God asks for our friendship with the same surprisingly vulnerable request that I heard from my own father: “I’d really appreciate it if you’d call home more often.”

In churchy language, we call it prayer.  But as it says in the guide to a rule of life that we’re using this Lent,¹ prayer is not about saying the right words at specific times, no matter how much we may love our prayer book and its liturgy.  Prayer is about how we live – being responsive to God’s presence in all the facets of our lives.  It’s seeing God’s hand in the beauty of creation and hearing God’s voice in the insights of people we trust.  It’s looking for God’s direction in situations that might otherwise bind us in anxious fear.  It’s saying “thank you” for momentary gifts of beauty and blessing.  It’s saying “I’m sorry” when we find ourselves headed the wrong direction, and then turning a different way instead.  I think that’s what St. Paul means when he writes about “praying without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) – prayer that’s like breathing, prayer that offers nothing more and nothing less than our whole selves, prayer that brings us divine love in response.  In the same way that God takes mundane bread and wine and makes Jesus Christ present within it, God inhabits the mundane moments of our lives, sitting beside us as our true companion.  As Jesus said to his followers at the Last Supper, “I do not call you servants any longer, … but I have called you friends” (John 15:15).  

Growing a relationship with God isn’t nearly as imposing as it seems.  God’s not asking for heroic efforts.  God’s not demanding that we get all the answers right.  Our heavenly parent is simply asking us to pick up the phone and call home more often.

1.       Society of St. John the Evangelist.  Growing a Rule of Life workbook. Available at: www.ssje.org/growrule.  Accessed March 15, 2019.