Love-- the Ultimate Resistance: Sermon for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost, February 23, 2025

A couple of weeks ago Bill and I started seeing ads for a new show being prepared for daytime TV—it’s a new soap opera called “Beyond the Gates”—the first new daytime soap since 1999.  My first gut reaction was, "Are you kidding me?" In a world that has about a hundred different versions of Real Housewives of every town with a population over 5000 people, they think we need more daytime drama?

In fact, if you want to experience soap opera tales, you don’t even have to go to TV. All you have to do is turn to the first books of the Bible—they are chock-a-block full of the stuff of soap operas. Jealousy. Betrayal. Cruelty. Rivalries. Even murders and attempted murders. Our first reading reminds us of one of those scriptural soap operas— jealous brothers turning on daddy’s favorite, selling him into slavery and thinking he was as good as dead. And yet when that betrayed brother has the chance to get his payback, what does he do? He ends us saving his entire family from famine, and forgiving the whole lot of them.

That’s why this is a good story to open up our gospel passage.

Hear again Jesus’s words:
“I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

This week and the last we have been hearing the core of Jesus’s ethical principles in the 6th chapter of Luke’s gospel, corresponding to the 5th chapter of Matthew’s. Last week we heard Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, which is notable for its juxtaposition of specific and personal blessings and woes, instead of Matthew’s more general list of blessings. This week we will hear Jesus’s discussion about how we deal with those we would consider to be enemies.

In the first part of our gospel this week. Jesus will list seven rules for how to deal with those whom we perceive to oppose us:

Love your enemies,

do good to those who hate you,

bless those who curse you,

pray for those who abuse you.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

Give, and it will be given back to you.

Of these seven rules, the ones most of us have probably heard the most are numbers 5 and 6. The fifth rule is also known as the Golden Rule—and what’s interesting is that a version of that rule exists in nearly every religion and ethical structure across the globe, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, the Sikh faith, Taoism, Homer (representing Greek philosophy), Philo, Confucius, and even the Code of Hammurabi. The sixth one should be familiar to all of us—because we pray to live by that rule that every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer.

And that whole first sentence: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. Just right there that one sentence, there’s a lot to unpack. Like what does the word “love” actually mean in this instance? Who exactly are our enemies? How do we do good to those who hate us and still protect ourselves from being victims of repeated victimization? How do we bless those who curse us and how do we pray for those who abuse us?

You know, part of the problem right now in this world is that that word “enemy” gets thrown around way too much. Just because someone doesn't agree with you does not make them your enemy. Just because somebody is from a different state, or supports a different team, or supports a different political party, does not make them our enemies. Enemies are people who want nothing but our own destruction. Opponents and people who disagree with us are not necessarily our enemies.

Would it sweeten the pot if I told you, that, in the times I have seen this actually attempted, this loving of enemies and praying for those who abuse us, it has actually driven the person who has done the hurting absolutely nuts? I mean, it’s like pouring salt and lemon juice into a paper cut. 

I once saw this play out once when I joined a counter-protest against Westboro Baptist Church when they were in town picketing the J. There they were, saying their horrible things, and we counter-protesters got together. What was something we could yell back that would defeat their messages of hate? We came up with this: all together, we screamed out, “WE’RE PRAYING FOR YOU!!!!!” And once they figured out what we were saying, you could just see it get under their skin. Everyone expects that when you’re punched, you punch back. But when someone shows the worst of themselves and gets back crickets, it tends to expose their wrongness even more vividly.

It was awesome. And then some of us really did pray for them. Now it's true that sometimes the prayer we pray for them is Psalm 52. Do you know what Psalm 52 is? It starts with, “You tyrant, why do boast of wickedness against the godly all day long? You plot ruin; your tongue is like a sharpened razor, O worker of deception.” I recommend it highly for times when you're in front of somebody who is just absolutely opposed to your flourishing.

The power of our gospel reading today is in its promise of abundance at the very end: if we live a generous life toward others, we ourselves will find an abundance beyond measure, so much that it spills out of our cupped hands and into our laps.

Jesus’s teaching here is filled with active verbs that instruct us in what we are called to do to live as disciples of Jesus. We hear repeated positive commands:
Love. Do good. Bless. Give. Lend. Forgive.

We also hear prohibitions:
Do not judge. Do not condemn.
But even these are couched in our own self-interest:
Don’t judge—so that you won’t be judged.
Don’t condemn—so that you won’t be condemned.

Jesus here calls us to remember the grace we receive FIRST, a gift freely given though we may not deserve it. And in the same breath, he calls those who follow him to embody grace for ourselves, and then live out that grace in our interactions with others. To make God visible in this world, embody God’s values first and foremost: love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace, as Bishop of Washington Mariann Edgar Budde’s plea from a month ago reminds us all. One of my teachers once explained it to me this way: “Just because we can get away with something, or think we have the right to, does not mean that we should. One person’s right to swing their arms around ends at the tips of the noses of the people around them.”

Listen. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Offer. Give. Do.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus calls us to one-ness with each other. Jesus calls us to renounce calculations of giving based on fear, calculations of giving to each other that in the end don’t cost us too much, whether that’s in money or attention or time. Instead, we are called to expand our circle of well-being to include everyone, to have the kind of love for each other that sees that peace can only exist where we all support each other. That love can only exist where generosity and empathy rule.

When Luke combines blessings with woes, it brings us up short. Because if we believe that those who are spit upon are blessed, we also have to understand the spiritual peril in being those who spit upon others—especially the poor and the hungry and those borne down by weeping, pain, or trauma. We are called to stand against those who dream up new ways to treat supplicants with contempt rather than mercy. It's like the San Francisco cathedral I read about a few years ago who, when they were frustrated with the homeless who were sleeping in some of their sheltered doorways, used an overhead sprinkler system to spray them with water several times during the night. Maybe they were afraid there wasn't enough to go around, I don't know.

I do know that our culture is predicated upon scarcity, and over and over again we hear a drumbeat warning us that we don’t have enough. That idea of scarcity makes everyone else a competitor in a mad scramble for power and wealth. It’s a culture based on fear. And that is the reason why there are 366 reminders throughout scripture not to be afraid—one for every day of the year, and then another just because, in case we need it. But that’s not the culture of the Beatitudes.

But, although we Episcopalians tend to be very judicious in the use of his word, it is very clear that there is such a thing as evil in this world. We renounce it in our Baptismal Covenant every time we repeat it.

Furthermore, we see it all around us.
In delighting in cruelty and the dehumanization of others.
In trying to prevent the development of kindness and compassion in the education of our children.
In the mocking of marginalized groups, such as the disabled, the poor, the refugee.
In the denial of health care to those who most desperately need it in order to make a profit on the pain and suffering of others.
In the lack of concern for a livable wage for workers, or of safe water to drink, or in the ignoring of climate shifts that are making huge swaths of this planet inhabitable for human or beast.
In the short-sighted denial of the blessings of science in saving lives through the miracle of vaccines.

The message we receive today in Luke’s gospel starts from a place of gentleness and compassion—that amazingly generous gift known as grace which is better than riches or vengeance. Jesus doesn’t give us the easy news, here, but it IS the “good news” of transformation and reconciliation that leads to justice based on true healing.

We are absolutely called to resistance. We are called to opposition of evil with every fiber of our being, and to oppose the normalization of hatred and cruelty. But Jesus never advocated shortcuts or rationalized returning evil for evil. Jesus stood for the dangerous idea that love will conquer hate, and that unity will always overcome division. He believed in it so much, he died so that we could all learn this lesson.

The culture of the Beatitudes is the culture of the kingdom of God—one where we don’t sit on fluffy cloud playing harps in the hereafter, but instead joyously set about doing the work to prepare the fields of the kingdom by sowing love and reconciliation. We have to remember that saints are NOT born, they are made.

Being a Christian is NOT just about labels. It is not about saying “I believe in Jesus as MY Savior” and then carrying on with placing our own interests above the suffering of others. Jesus is NOT a personal possession.

Being a Christian means embodying the light of Christ in every way we can. It means celebrating that we are Beloved and made in the image of God—while then tempering our ability to do whatever we want to whomever we want because we understand that our perceived “enemies” are just as beloved and made in God’s image as we are. It is a challenge for us as Americans, in 2025 especially, to realize that might does NOT make right.

So I want to challenge us all today to take heed to Jesus's urging-- to pray for our enemies and to love them, yes-- but also to embody the light of Christ bravely. There is an alternative to the culture of greed and fear and othering and scarcity. There is an alternative and it is love: love that is not an emotion, but love that is an act of will. May we ever try to embody that love starting now.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church on the 7th Sunday After Epiphany, February 23, 2025.

Readings:

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42

1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50

Luke 6:27-38

Good Enough—Sermon for Epiphany 5C, February 9, 2025

In August 1965, the Beatles were sitting on top of the world. In just over two years since the release of their first album, they had toured the world twice, had met Elvis Presley, their idol. The eldest of the Fab Four was just barely 25 years old. had released five albums, and were feverishly at work on a sixth. As they prepared to record the album in October of 1965, there was pressure on all the band members to come up with new songs—in all their previous albums except for A Hard Day’s Night, they had included covers of other bands’ material as well as original songs.

But John Lennon faced a huge case of writer’s block. He struggled for days to write a song, and that struggle was a part of his own feelings of self-questioning and doubt. He was young, handsome, stylish, wealthy, and famous. And yet he was very troubled. His unstable mother had handed him over to her eldest sister to raise, and then, while he was still a teen, she was killed when a car struck her, leading to a lingering grief throughout his life. He had a young toddler and a troubled marriage due to his own physical and emotional absence. And now he couldn’t write.

He finally laid down after hours of struggling—and within minutes, supposedly the basics for a song came to him nearly whole, and came from the depths of his insecurity and feeling of drift. Unlike most of the previous Beatles songs, and in fact most rock songs at the time. This one did not feature a boy, or a girl, or romance. Instead, Lennon wrote about his own feelings of aimlessness—disguising the autobiographical nature, by writing in the third person. And the song “Nowhere Man” came into being and was included on the Beatles’ sixth album Rubber Soul, released in December of 1965.

The song starts out with the four Beatles singing in harmony, in 5 chords that descend steadily in pitch, mirroring the descent into introspection:
He’s a real nowhere man
sitting in his nowhere land,
making all his nowhere plans for nobody. (1)

This song was groundbreaking in being able to frame the self-doubt that so many people experience periodically throughout their lives. Haven’t we all, at one time or another wondered if we were “good enough” to accomplish some task or achievement? Even more pointedly, haven’t we all questioned, at one time or another, whether we are “good enough” as human beings at all?

I know that some people are not really blessed with a sense of self-awareness deep enough to realize when they have done wrong—we see that far too often in celebrities and other powerful people behaving badly. We see it in the constant rise and fall of movements throughout the last two centuries that give rise to dictators who promise to give people scapegoats and a sense of superiority to drown out the voice of individual conscience that should be setting off alarms in their heads. But most of us, I would wager, are acutely aware of our own failures, of our own times when we have caved into weaknesses or even joined the herd in doing something dumb or even callous.

That feeling of unworthiness is a universal impulse. We see it today in our readings. The great prophet Isaiah has a vision of the glory of God calling him to bear a message of doom to Isaiah’s people—hardly an assignment that will win Isaiah friends. But he answers the call—by overcoming his feeling of unworthiness.

In our reading from 1 Corinthians, the apostle Paul acknowledges the continuing shame he feels for having persecuted the earliest members of the church and therefore Jesus himself, calling himself “the least of the apostles” and indeed unfit to be called an apostle at all. And yet, Paul also recognizes that the grace of God throughout his life has led him to where he is at that moment: a leader and planter of churches all over the Greco-Roman world. If he had just stopped there without then humble bragging about his work ethic, his admission of self-doubt might have been better. But that’s Paul for you.

And then we have Simon. Simon is a simple, hard-working fisherman on the Sea of Genessaret. He encounters the holy man Jesus as he is ashore, washing his nets after a frustrating, futile night of long labor—a night in which he has caught nothing. He probably was questioning his own abilities as a fisherman when Jesus asks Simon to lay aside his nets and row him out a way from shore so that he can actually teach the crowd that is clamoring after Jesus so earnestly they practically have him up to his knees in the water. We don’t hear about the exchange. And so I imagine Simon sitting there in the boat while Jesus talks, frustrated and alone in his thoughts.

Jesus finishes with the crowd, and in the next breath, turns his attention to Simon—telling him to get his nets, and row out into the deep water to try for a catch.

“Now? In the middle of the day?” I imagine Simon wondering. Every fisherman knows that the fish aren’t close enough to the surface to be caught in the heat of the day. But after a token protest, Simon does as he is told—and here we see a miraculous catch of fish, so huge that it threatens to swamp not just Simon’s boat but the boat of his associated James and John as well.

This miraculous abundance changes Simon’s self-doubts about his abilities as a fisherman to the much more crucial self-doubts about whether he is worthy to be in the presence of someone who has the powers of God, for everyone knows that sinners cannot see God and live. In terror, Simon begs for Jesus to get away from him.

Simon KNOWS all his faults. He KNOWS he is not good enough to be so near someone so holy.

And yet, nonetheless, Jesus not only reassures him and comforts him in his terror. But then, even more mind-boggling, Jesus specifically calls Simon to follow him and share in Jesus’s work of teaching, healing, and ministry. To catch people instead of fish.

That metaphor might give us pause—after all, aren’t those fish that are caught slaughtered and eaten? Maybe that’s why you will notice that this is a miraculous catch of fish that gets abandoned once it has served its real purpose. The purpose of this miracle was not to nourish anyone’s bodily hunger or need to make a living. The purpose of the miraculous catch was to awaken a spiritual hunger—to light a flame of hope in a downtrodden, anxious, fearful people living in a downtrodden, anxious, fearful time. A time much like now.

And so Jesus calls those who follow him to share in his ministry. To catch people, but instead of entrapping them like fish, to lift them up out of the depths and offer them the good news of salvation, reconciliation, and hope. And even though Simon has NO qualifications for any of those tasks, nor do his friends James and John, they themselves are “caught up” in the power of the message that Jesus has been offering, and without a backward glance at those bulging nets and swamping boats, they leave it all behind to follow Jesus.

Simon and James and John and all who follow Jesus will still occasionally experience doubts about their abilities to work for change, will doubt their own worthiness. People who follow Jesus regularly have doubts about whether what they do actually matters. And people following Jesus under the crushing oppression of empire have these doubts in quantities sufficient to sink a battleship—because that’s how empires subjugate people. By making them scared. by making them feel powerless. by making them feel small and insignificant. By using force and terror and playing to all the pettiest, cruelest, most callous impulses people usually keep buried down deep. By encouraging exactly the same kind of violence, exploitation, and cruelty that Jesus came to us to call us away from.

We just have to believe enough that we CAN make a difference. And we CAN come to that conclusion—if we remember that we are never walking alone in our constant struggle for true justice, peace, and dignity for all. God meets us where we are—whether on the shore or in a boat or behind a desk or washing dishes—and calls us to follow. Jesus called those first disciples from their nets and led them to a horizon they had never imagined before. Jesus will walk alongside those first disciples—and all the ones who follow after, even now. That’s why, when we are asked to promise to walk in the ways of God at our baptism, the answer isn’t just “I will,” But “I will—with God’s help.”

None of us are expected to live a life of meaning and purpose alone. Even John Lennon realized that he could be a force for good and for change—even if just by writing songs that touch us all, recognized that in his song, when he wrote later in his song:
Nowhere man, don’t worry
Take your time, don’t hurry--
Leave it all—til somebody else lends you a hand. (2)

There’s truism in ministry—God doesn’t call the perfect. God perfects and strengthens the called. Jesus is calling the church right now to push off from the safety of shore, and row out into the deep water. To row out into the deep water, and begin hauling in those who are most vulnerable and targeted for hatred right now. We are being called for this moment just as Simon and John and James and Paul and Isaiah were called for theirs. As we recount during Black History Month, as God called Absalom Jones and Thurgood Marshall and Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Ella Baker and Fannie Lou Hamer in our own recent history.

We have all been called to carry the light of Christ into darkness, and to bring the hope of Christ’s saving help to those struggling in the deepest waters of our time. We are called, but we are called in community known as the Church for exactly that reason.

We are called and equipped for this moment by Jesus himself. Jesus shows us we can walk the path of justice and reconciliation because he first led us and walked that way first.

We just have to believe that we are good enough. Because God promises us that we are.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Isaiah 6:1-8, [9-13]

Psalm 138

1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Luke 5:1-11

Citations:

1 and 2: John Lennon and Paul McCartney, "Nowhere Man" from the Beatles album Rubber Soul, 1965.

Embodying Sanctuary: Sermon for the Feast of the Presentation of the Lord, 2025

    

Do you have a special place, or time of day, where you feel close to God, or spiritually at peace? For some people it is the sunrise; for other people it is the sunset. For some people it is in the precincts of holy places, such as Notre Dame de Paris, La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, or some other grand edifice.

For others it could be the seaside, or in a boat at sea under twinkling stars. For others it is in a forest, strolling within the embrace of an aspen grove, which is actually a single tree, or lying on a soft bed of needles under giant redwoods thousands of years old. For others, it is looking in the face of their sleeping spouse, or child, or grandchildren. It can be in the voice of a loved one. It can be in a sesshin of Zen meditation.

Today, the regular readings for the 4th Sunday after Epiphany give way because today is a particular Feast Day—one that has fallen from observance in much of the Christian world, but a feast day nonetheless. Today is the Feast of the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, which occurs 40 days exactly after Christmas Day. And for those who contemplate scripture seriously, when we hear the number 40 our ears should perk up, because 40 is always a significant number. Forty days and nights of the flood, 40 days, excluding Sundays of Lent; 40 days of Jesus being tempted in the wilderness by the forces of evil, 40 years of the Israelites wandering in the desert after their liberation from slavery in Egypt.

This feast is also known as Candlemas—a day when a vigil would be held at nightfall with the candles of Christmas at last extinguished. Taken together, we move closer to the closing of the three-part liturgical season of the Church’s Year called the Incarnation Cycle, which contains the seasons of Advent, Christmas, and Epiphanytide. In all this time since the end of last November, we have been called especially to contemplate and celebrate the coming of God into human flesh, as a helpless, impoverished child of a subject, oppressed people.

We are called to wonder, awe, and overwhelming gratitude that God came to live among us as one of us, to teach us how to live a fully God-centered life that connects us with all of our kindred creatures. It is necessary that we mindfully embody that sense of gratitude and wonder before God and before Christ as we prepare to enter the season of Lent three days after the last Sunday after the Epiphany in just a few weeks.

We remember and remind ourselves Jesus in his body, in the Incarnation, as a supreme act of love, generosity, and mercy— gifts we ourselves have received countless times throughout our lives, and in following the Way of Jesus we are called to ourselves embody to all those we meet, especially, the poor, the destitute, the desperate, or the oppressed. We take this call to embodying mercy and grace seriously, for if we only look around, we know that is all too often in fact too short a supply in the world in which we live. This is part of the counter-cultural aspect of being not just a fan but a follower of Jesus.

Because we are hearing these readings today, I regret to inform you that we had to skip one of the greatest poems to God’s love and caritas for us, and the love and caritas we are to hold for each other in 1 Corinthians 13—that describes God’s love, and the love Christians are therefore called to boldly embody in witness to the world. So I just want to remind you of what is lying just offstage this day. That beautiful proclamation that we had to skip this year begins with these truths:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing….

Love is patient; Love is kind; Love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; It is not irritable or resentful; It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.

That love that never ends, that active, muscular love, that protects, forgives, nurtures, shelters, and embraces through grace and mercy, must be at the center of our lives in Christ—or we have no life in Christ at all, and our claim to be Christians is hollow. Our deliberate, brave embrace of the obligations those words place upon us is what makes us true witnesses to Christ in a world that has almost given up searching for him. Unless we make him visible. Unless we ourselves embody the mercy, love and grace of our Savior who came for all.

We do not get to hear these words today. But we get to see how God’s very being, how God’s very presence among us in spirit as well as flesh, is borne out, and we are called to attention to that presence and its blessings, in this festival day.

In all of our readings this weekend, we hear of focus on holy places and spaces: Malachi is attempting to prepare the people of Israel to be able to worship once again in the rebuilt Temple in Jerusalem. This is necessary because during the years of exile, the people’s collective memory of the parts of the covenant attuned to prayer in the Temple had faded. Then we have the beautiful, joyful description of being in the presence of God, and knowing it as a place of safety, security, and well-being for all that is described in Psalm 84, which is also the subject of one of my very favorite hymns we sing today.

Psalm 84 also starts with an outburst of joy as the psalmist stands within the boundaries of the Temple. And in the midst of that grandeur, we also have a beautiful, delicate, humble image. The image of the sparrow and the swallow, two tiny birds who could both fit in the palm of one hand, so fragile and vulnerable, nonetheless knowing that they were safe by the altars of God—that really speaks to me. They feel so safe they have made their homes, their nests, right up alongside the altars of God. The utter transformation of the holy temple of God described here becomes even more vivid when we consider that in other biblical testimony, including our gospel, birds were more likely to be sacrificed near that altar than find their home there.

We have in these readings today a celebration of dedication and promises fulfilled, both for the very young and for the very old. A baby boy is brought into the temple to be dedicated to God as the firstborn son, as required in Exodus. His parents, not being wealthy, choose the least expensive of the pair of birds to be offered on the altar, we assume. His mother also was to go through rites of purification from childbirth. But this is not simply any baby—this is, as is proclaimed openly in the courts of the Temple by an old man of faith named Simeon—the Messiah himself. Simeon, and Anna, proclaim the great mercy God has for us in sending us a Savior to teach us, step by step, how to be true children of God—each and every one precious and beloved, especially those in danger or trouble.

Simeon’s famous song of praise, the Nunc dimittis, is often prayed during evening prayer, vespers, or compline in the Episcopal Church as a canticle. It signifies, in these uses, the fading of the light of one day into the hope of another, the sense of peace on has in being in the presence of God as night begins, which for much of human history was a time of fear, as fevers could strike in the night that could claim one for death before morning. Simeon’s joyful proclamation that he has had the promise God made to him fulfilled so that he can now depart in peace from this life, is a comfort to those who are of advanced age or in danger.

Last night at the 505 the worshipers all prayed that part of the gospel aloud. And in praying that prayer of Simeon’s, we are reminded that Jesus sets us free from all fear, even the fear of death. The fear of scarcity. Jesus sets us free—so that we can share the gospel of love, freedom, and welcome with all of those we encounter. With all who are made in the image of God, who bear the love of God, even down to the tiniest sparrow.

As Christians, we do not attach the dwelling place of God to a particular place. No, instead, we are called to ourselves make ourselves a living temple for our God, within us. We do this by following the precepts of God, and by embodying them and standing up for them even in the face of contempt or hostility in the world around us. We honor the dignity and worth of every person, No exceptions, as we have been discussing our baptismal covenant repeatedly this Epiphany season. We do this by aligning ourselves with the refugee, the homeless, the poor, the outcast, just as Jesus did.

When we preach and pronounce God’s mercy, we must do it boldly. We must place that message as witnesses before the thrones of power. We must especially do it when we encounter forces that seek to dehumanize and mock, and threaten the most helpless among us. The concept of the church as a sanctuary and refuge is many millennia old--- going all the way back to the Torah. It is an obligation that is similar to the seal of the confessional. Worship spaces as shelters and refuges is a sacred tradition and fulfillment of the Law and Gospel.

We were reminded last week that we are all the members of Christ’s Body, and that the Church only exists if it makes Christ’s body visible and active in the world, no matter the cost. When the Church has NOT been a safe place for people, that has been a failure of our call to witness to the gospel of Jesus. May we ever be willing to stand up and stand with those who seek refuge, and mercy. To stand between those the world counts worthless and instead proclaim to others what we ourselves have received: the love, mercy, and grace revealed in making Jesus visible in the world ourselves.

When we realize that our very bodies are the dwelling place of God, all that we do matters in proclaiming the gospel.

“The sparrow has found her a house
and the swallow a nest where she may lay her young; *
by the side of your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.

Happy are they who dwell in your house! *
they will always be praising you.

Happy are the people whose strength is in you! *
whose hearts are set on the pilgrims' way.


Hear these words again, and take this opportunity to make an altar in your heart where the most vulnerable may find not just refuge but protection and security. And when you do so, do so knowing you are helping other eyes to see our Savior, who calls us all to safety, and security, and hope. Who loves us with a love that never fails. We have been set free, for our eyes have seen the Savior. Let us stand up for that freedom for all by making Christ visible for all. Bu boldly bearing the light of Christ into the darkest parts of our hearts and of our society. By being and insisting upon sanctuary, grace, and mercy for all. No exceptions.

Amen.

Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Malachi 3:1-4

Psalm 84

Hebrews 2:14-18

Luke 2:22-40