The Obligation of the Cross-- Sermon for Second Sunday in Lent B

We human beings love stories about magic. We also like to imagine that there is some way to have power over every single thing in our lives. This extends even to fiction -- even fantasy. In the movie, Bruce Almighty, Bruce was given the power of God for one day -- but couldn't force the woman that he loved to start seeing him again after he broke her heart. Likewise, in the Harry Potter series, it is made clear that nothing can bring back the dead to life -- not even the resurrection stone, an object of supposedly almost unlimited power, and that you can use magic to create infatuation, but real love had to be genuine. In the Disney movie Aladdin, the Genie has three limitations on his power: he could not kill anyone, make anyone fall in love, or bring people back from the dead.

In all these we see an acknowledgement that love cannot be coerced. Jesus’s power, just like God’s also has this limitation.

Jesus, newly proclaimed the Messiah by Peter, then immediately predicts his own suffering and death, which we know happened on the cross, with our 20/20 hindsight. So Jesus swears them to secrecy about the Messiah thing—until he can make it clear that he is NOT going to be the warrior Messiah everyone is expecting. Far from it. He then lowers the boom on his disciples, and tells them he will suffer and die, and then rise again.

This is absolutely a distinctly unwelcome message, and we can’t blame Peter—the disciple most like us—for protesting against this stark potential loss. Just over a week ago, on Ash Wednesday, we had the sign of the cross placed on our foreheads by someone else, and we then wore that sign of shame and mortality into a world that denies the very existence of both shame and mortality.

Another thing we have turned into an article of faith in our society is our lack of obligations to others. This has been especially pronounced in the last few years, especially in American political discourse: the same people who used to tip their hats and say, “Much obliged,” now would sooner chop their right arms off than acknowledge that they have an obligation to anyone but themselves. And yet the more they isolate themselves from their neighbors, the more vulnerable they feel. And rightly so.

The time in which Paul and Jesus lived was a time in which the vast majority of people in the Roman Empire lived in abject, crushing poverty. Scarcity and want were real and pressing concerns. And the thing about living in a scarcity mindset is that it heightens one’s sense of disconnection and competition against one’s neighbor.

Obligations narrow our options. They take us from what we want to do to what he are compelled to do. We don’t want to be tied down. We live in a culture awash in “rugged individualism,” in which any need for someone else is portrayed in the public American ethos as a failure. And ironically, the same people who extol individualism fear the power of the community even while they decry the loss of those “good, old-fashioned American values” that supposedly existed somewhere back in the mists of time, but in actuality have NEVER provided equal benefits for all people.

Jesus tells us bluntly that the core of discipleship is self-denial, and many of us stop right there and check out. We hate self-denial: that might be why when we are called to enter into a period of self-denial, like during Lent, we pick things to deny ourselves that really don’t matter very much. We don’t like to hear the word “losing” either. But losing your life can also be seen as shedding the old way of living that was in harmony with the values of the world. Self-denial offers to take us from the emptiness of thinking only about ourselves to the fulfillment of living a life with purpose—one that is directed toward others. Taking up your cross is taking up that obligation to others.

From our side of history, we know that the cross led also to the resurrection. What if we understood that denying ourselves and taking up our cross is meant to remind us that we are called as Christians into obligation with each other, in the name of God? 

We are called to love each other, be compassionate toward each other, and take care of each other in faithfulness, in good times and bad. What if denying yourself and taking up your cross was understood as giving up something you have a right to, if that would spare someone else pain or suffering? What if denying ourselves and taking up our cross means that instead of using people and loving things, as so much of society tells us to do, we loved people and used things to help us accomplish that?

We are indeed, much obliged to God, and to each other. What if denying yourself actually means being true to what makes us children of God, made in God’s image—that we are called together to live in community, loving our neighbors as ourselves and not trying to draw lines about who are neighbors are, and who are neighbors aren’t. What if it means putting down our solipsism and the fear and anxiety that generates, and instead embrace the beauty of community, held together by love and the hope that gives us the endurance we need for times such as these?

What if we understood what Jesus is saying here as “Take up your love and hope, and follow me in truly loving each other?”

What a radical change that would be, if the public face of Christianity would become about love rather than power. Because right now there are too many people calling themselves Christians who believe that Christianity is all about forcing others to live according to their rules—and Jesus never ever did that. To be clear: your faith has the power to reshape us, and lead us to change our perspective until we see life all around us—which is surely what the kingdom of God is all about.

I’ve heard it said that faith is rooted in the present, and hope looks toward the future. Martin Luther, in a sermon on Galatians 5:5, stated the difference, among other things as being this: “Faith has for her object the truth, teaching us to cleave surely thereto, and looking upon the word and promise of the thing that is promised; hope has for her object the goodness of God, and looks upon the thing which is promised in the word, that is, upon such matters as faith teaches us to hope for.” But both are tied together by “promise,” another idea that also appears several times in the readings we have today, even when it is not explicitly named. Faith is related to trust, while hope is tied to expectation. Faith is the foundation, and hope leads us to the goal of living by God’s values, not by ours. Following Jesus means losing the old way of life—a life that, for most people, doesn’t work very well, anyway.

So here is the kernel of hope buried in our readings today. Abraham has faith rooted in trust, and that faith carries him through in hope that God’s promise to him will be fulfilled in the future, even though he and Sarah are certainly not getting any younger. Peter hears about crosses, and rightfully panics and loses hope. In his panic, he doesn’t hear that the cross is not an end—but a doorway. A doorway to having abundant life right now and always, in changing our orientation from scarcity to abundance.

Taking up our cross calls us to understand that we are not fully human without embracing each other, and without checking ourselves any time we are tempted to seize the opportunity to use others rather than see ourselves as intimately connected with each other, even with those half a world away. Taking up our cross means embracing each other despite our differences, but then gaining a community of faith and hope. To embrace others in their joy and in their pain. This journey to Easter requires us to walk the way of the cross—the way of living for others—first.

May we embrace and take up our cross today, because it also means we embrace resurrection, the new life of Christ, which is the pearl beyond price. May we turn to hope rather than fear. May we choose to walk with the suffering, the outcast, and stand with those the world shames. For then we stand with Jesus.


Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online worship service at St. Martin'a Episcopal Church, Ellisville on February 28, 2021.


Readings:

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16

Psalm 22:22-30

Romans 4:13-25

Mark 8:31-38

Much Obliged: Speaking to the Soul, February 25, 2021

"Jesus called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me….” –Mark 8:34

Just over a week ago, on Ash Wednesday, we had the sign of the cross placed on our foreheads by someone else, and we then wore that sign of shame and mortality into a world that denies the very existence of both shame and mortality—and if you don’t believe we have lost our sense of shame, you haven’t stared slack-jawed at an episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians or Judge Judy as people parade their worst versions of themselves on TV simply so they can say they’ve been on TV. In fact, the amount of time the Kardashians spend obsessing about perceived flaws in their appearances is also wrapped up in our culture’s denial of mortality, as well.

Another thing we have turned into an article of faith in our society is our lack of obligations to others. This has been especially pronounced in the last few years, especially in American political discourse: the same people who used to tip their hats and say, “Much obliged,” now would sooner chop their right arms off than acknowledge that they have an obligation to anyone but themselves. And yet the more they isolate themselves from their neighbors, the more vulnerable they feel. And rightly so.

The time in which Paul and Jesus lived was a time in which the vast majority of people in the Roman Empire lived in abject, crushing poverty. Scarcity and want were real and pressing concerns. And the thing about living in a scarcity mindset is that it heightens one’s sense of disconnection and competition against one’s neighbor.

Being willing to appear weak in front of others has NEVER really been considered to be a desirable situation, whether in first century Palestine with its rigid cultural and honor barriers, or in 21st century America. We live in a culture awash in “rugged individualism,” in which any need for someone else is portrayed in the public American ethos as a failure. And ironically, the same people who extol individualism fear the power of the community even while they decry the loss of those “good, old-fashioned American values” that supposedly existed somewhere back in the mists of time, but in actuality have NEVER provided equal benefits for all people.

Remember that each of the Gospels was written for a particular community of Christians. The community for which Mark writes is undergoing persecution itself at the time that the gospels being written. Thus, in a way, these are words of comfort for them, because it lets them know that their suffering was foreordained by the words of Jesus himself. It reminds then that their suffering was shared by Jesus.

However, it doesn’t just go to suffering. The core of discipleship is self-denial. It is at this point especially that Jesus makes it quite clear that the gospel is certainly counter-cultural. However, one could take “losing your life” more than one way. Losing your life can also be seen as shedding the old way of living that was in harmony with the values of the world.

The cross in Jesus’s time was shameful, yet for us it is a sign of faith and hope—and so it is important to remember how shocking and brutal the cross was as a symbol but more importantly as an instrument of execution. If we remember that, it is indeed shocking that we now regularly make the sign of the cross over ourselves as we are blessed or absolved. The cross itself was not then a sign of hope, but a sign of shame.

From our side of history, we know that the cross led also to the resurrection. What if we understood that denying ourselves and taking up our cross is meant to remind us that we are called as Christians into obligation with each other, in the name of God? We are called to love each other, be compassionate toward each other, and take care of each other in faithfulness, in good times and bad. What if denying yourself and taking up your cross was understood as giving up something you have a right to, if that would spare someone else pain or suffering? What if denying ourselves and taking up our cross means that instead of using people and loving things, as so much of society tells us to do, we loved people and used things to help us accomplish that?

We are indeed, much obliged to God, and to each other. What if denying yourself actually means being true to what makes us children of God, made in God’s image—that we are called together to live in community, loving our neighbors as ourselves and not trying to draw lines about who are neighbors are, and who are neighbors aren’t. What if it means putting down our solipsism and the fear and anxiety that generates, and instead embrace the beauty of community, held together by love and the hope that gives us the endurance we need for times such as these?

What if we understood what Jesus is saying here as “Take up your love and hope, and follow me in truly loving each other?”

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on February 25, 2021.

Image: Bleeding Hearts outside St. Augustine's Chapel at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN.

Prayer, day 2951

God of Abundant Grace,

we worship You and give you thanks,
seeking to live an ethic of generosity
as our work in partnership with You.

Teach us to never return evil for evil, O God,
but respond to hatred
with the power of loving resistance,
practicing forgiveness with courage.
Shape our lives by your mercy, O Holy One,
and follow in our Savior's footsteps,
let us Love.
Do good.
Bless.
Give.
Lend.
And Forgive.

Spread the awning of your grace above us,
and the path of your peace before us
that we may be a blessing in the world
in your Name, as we pray.

Amen.

Where the Wild Things Are: Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent B

When I was a kid, one of my favorite books was Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. There are only ten sentences in the entire story, which is why, when the book was made into a movie a few years back, a whole lot of detail had to be invented and added in. Mark’s gospel shares that characteristic when compared with the other gospels-- although Sendak’s glorious illustrations and incredible beasts made up for the scarcity of words. Sendak also had a main character whose imagination was running wild, which got him into trouble—unusual in a world at that time of vapid, whiter-than-white and blander-than-bland Dick, Jane, and Spot.

Where the Wild Things Are is the story of a boy named Max. One evening while wearing his wolf costume, he literally goes wild. His mother calls him a wild thing, and she doesn’t mean it as a complement. He responds by threatening to eat her, and so he gets sent to bed without anything to eat at all. As the minutes and maybe hours go by, the walls of Max's room disappear and become a forest, and he wanders through it until he finds a shore and a boat that takes him sailing a long distance to the land where the wild things live. 

Max quickly subdues the Wild Things and becomes their king. He enjoys bossing them around for awhile-- but eventually he starts to miss his home, and so announces his intention to leave. The Wild Things beg him to stay, and threaten to eat him up just as had his own mom. But he refuses them, climbs back into his boat, and sails back over that long distance. Even at sea he can smell the smell of something good to eat. And when he gets back to his room, he finds his supper there waiting for him on a table, still hot. (1) 

In Mark’s gospel, we get a lot of drama happening in just these first total fifteen verses, and our gospel today includes the last seven of those fifteen verses. And just like in the children's book, a whole lot takes place in these sentences in Mark.

All this happens in just ten sentences of the children's story: Max goes from miscreant, to prisoner, to escapee, to adventurer and king all by sentence number four. In our gospel passage, Jesus goes from leaving his hometown, his baptism and theophany in the Jordan by John, his being seized by the Holy Spirit to be driven into the wilderness, his 40 days of temptation by Satan, and his return to Galilee to begin his public ministry as God’s Son, God’s healer, God’s teacher, and God’s prophet. All in six sentences. Seven verses.

Often the wildernesses of our imaginations are the most frightening of all. Yet it is at times when we are thrown upon our own resources that we learn a lot about our own strengths and weaknesses, and about who we really are.

How does Jesus end up in the wilderness at all?

In the verses just before our gospel, it is stated that John had been baptizing people from throughout the countryside, predicting the coming of one more powerful than he. And here comes Jesus, the one who was predicted, and he steps up to take his turn to be baptized. Mark explained that John’s baptism was for repentance, and that people undergoing it confessed their sins. And thus, we see connected between all three of our readings, excluding the psalm, a discussion of water as enabling the remaking of creation, of a rebirth.

But why does Jesus need to be baptized, if we understand him as being without sin? Perhaps by undergoing this baptism, Jesus publicly aligns himself with the need for repentance; his baptism story does not include any confession, unlike the others mentioned in the narrative before our reading. This act demonstrates that God’s kingdom is breaking in, as demonstrated with the heavens being powerfully and maybe even bewilderingly torn apart in our gospel today. The term for this is used only one other time in Mark—and that is at the moment of Jesus’s death on the cross. The proclamation of God’s kingdom by Jesus will prove to be a dangerous political statement in a place ruled by a puppet king within the Roman Empire.

And when Jesus is baptized, he also receives the Holy Spirit, which hovers “like a dove” over him. With the arrival of the Spirit we see represented the complete Trinity—as St. Augustine of Hippo noted, God is the Voice, Jesus is the Son revealed in the Jordan, fully human yet fully obedient, and the dove is the Spirit. This Spirit empowers Jesus to embark upon his public ministry. The voice from heaven also speaks directly to Jesus, not to those observing, and declares that Jesus is God’s Son, “the Beloved,” who has pleased God by his willingness to undergo this baptism. This reference to pleasing God reflects one of the Servant Song in Isaiah 42.

Jesus is baptized in the Jordan—a place of significance in Israel’s history. It’s the place where, Jesus’s namesake Joshua (“Y’shua” is both Jesus and Joshua) led the people of Israel into the Promised Land after their own time wandering in the desert for 40 years. Thus we hear echoes of the Exodus story in this story from Mark.

But that Spirit is not content to hover there like a pretty little bird. It then immediately takes hold of Jesus and “drives” him into the wilderness. Jesus is then (immediately, again) driven out by that same Spirit to be tempted for 40 days—always a significant number, especially when referring to time. Jesus, just like us, in plunged into the wilderness, regardless of where he might have chosen that his feet would take him. Although in Mark we get no details of the temptations themselves, Jesus himself was vulnerable to those temptations, or they wouldn’t deserve the word. But he is not defenseless during this long time of trial. God is with Jesus—just as God is with us especially in times of disorientation, pain, and even suffering. Even tight-lipped Mark includes the reassurance that angels and wild beasts are “with” Jesus while he is in the wilderness, with the angels actually serving Jesus.

And that turn of the phrase is interesting, though if you slow down and look at it. Angels? You would expect them to wait upon Jesus, especially if you have read Psalm 91. But wild beasts? Less so. In most stories from ancient times, wild beasts were expected to live in the wilderness, which is a large part of what makes the wilderness dangerous. These wild beasts behave more like Max’s Wild Things, acknowledging Jesus as being at one with creation, in harmony with their wild, free hearts.

And of course, that is a great reminder to us. We are far too prone to try to “tame” or “domesticate” Jesus. Too many people try to make Jesus into a prop for their partisan philosophies by stripping out the absolutely radical political message of love, community, and resistance to oppression that Jesus brings to earth. Stripping out the wild, radical nature of Jesus’s gospel makes Jesus into a two-dimensional prop, when we all see over and over again that he lives in at least FOUR dimensions. It makes him palatable and toothless. It’s a point C. S. Lewis made in his epic allegory, the Chronicles of Narnia. When first asked to describe Aslan, the great character representing Christ, Mr. Beaver, one of the Narnian creatures is very clear about the wild, powerful heart of Jesus:

“Aslan is a lion- the Lion, the great Lion.”
“Ooh,” said Susan. "I'd thought he was a man. Is he-quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion…” and she trails off
"Safe?" said Mr Beaver... “Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.” (2)

And so where does this lead us? As we enter more deeply into the season of Lent, we too are being encouraged to enter into the wilderness of our own souls. Not to domesticate them. But to do something far more dangerous: to open them to the unpredictability and yet the glory of life in the Spirit of God. A life that will not necessarily always take you where you want to go. But then again, we often prove ourselves to be spectacularly bad at choosing our own paths—perhaps because we try to hard to pay it safe, to maintain our own independence, to deny our dependence upon anyone, much less God.

With so many of us living lives shut up in boxes all day—houses, skyscrapers, classrooms, offices, even our cars are really just sealed moving boxes in which even the air is filtered and stale-- we need desperately to let go and enter into wilderness places that remind us of our wild beating hearts. Hearts that are called to connect to each other, to God, and to all creation and recognize our essential unity and solidarity. Lent calls us into that wilderness alongside Jesus, to confront all that might try to pull us away from God: our arrogance; our greed; our hard-hearted denial of any claim of our neighbors upon us—as we see tragically playing out right now in the crisis in Texas; our worship of money and the power we think it gives us, making it a god rather than a tool for good; our destruction of the natural world in pursuit of immediate comfort at the expense of the health of the planet for our children; our scoffing at science which is actually a scoffing at the Creator herself.

It is when we open ourselves to the dangerous beauty of the wilderness within us that we see that we are all only as safe as the most vulnerable among us. To understand, as this pandemic continues to prove to us, that we are only as healthy as the most ill person among us. That we are all bound together—and to rejoice in that rather than respond with denial that only makes us more vulnerable. To enter into what the agrarian essayist and poet Wendell Berry describes in his beautiful poem, “The Peace of Wild Things,” which has even been set to music for choral voices by choral composer Jake Runestad (3):

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting for their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free. (4)

As our gospel, and Wendell Berry’s last line reminds us, the foundation of the wilderness places is not fear, but grace. No matter what wilderness we may be plunged into, God is there with us, just as the Spirit and the angels and the wild beasts were there with Jesus as he endured the temptations we’re just left to guess at in Mark’s spare telling. To enter into the beautiful, creative darkness so that those day-blind stars are revealed to our hungry eyes once more, reminding us that the ages of humanity are but a flicker in the eternity of God’s creation—and yet God seeks us out again and again, calling us back to covenant and relationship. To lean into the beauty of Lent and the beauty of life without being blinded to the beauty of NOW by the “forethought of grief.”

Our gospel today reminds us that even when you are in the Promised Land, you are never far from the wilderness. Yet that is a gift, for the wilderness keeps us honest and fully alive. As Anglican theologian N.T Wright notes, the way of pilgrimage is the way of risk. 

“In order to arrive at what you do not know
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
You must go through the way in which you are not.” (5)

May we embrace the wilderness journey alongside God this Lent. May we remember our essential unity with all creation. May we lie down in peace with all wild things, and embrace the wildness of the spirit that God seeks to awaken in us.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO on February 21, 2021.

Readings:

Genesis 9:8-17

Psalm 25:1-9

1 Peter 3:18-22

Mark 1:9-15

Citations:

1) Maurice Sendak, Where the Wild Things Are (1963).

2) C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (1950), p. 79.

3) Jake Runestad, "The Peace of Wind Things," from American Triptych, recorded by Conspirare and Craig Hella Johnson, on the album The Hope of Loving (2019). See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CseiIKJC7wo .

4) Wendell Berry, "The Peace of Wild Things" from Openings: Poems (1968).

4) N. T. Wright, The Way pf the Lord: Christian Pilgrimage Today, (1998), p. 32.

Images:

1) Alessandro Bonvincino, Christ in the Wilderness, 1515.

2) Maurice Sendak, from Where the Wild Things Are, 1963.

3) Sir Stanley Spencer, from his series Christ in the Wilderness, 1954.

4) James Tissot, Jesus Ministered to by the Angels, (1886-1994).

Intention at the Start of Lent: Speaking to the Soul, February 18, 2021

Most Holy One,
envelop us in your love and grace today.
Abba, may we bend the knee
of our hearts, minds, souls, and bodies,
to live in joyful obedience to your will.
Make us bold to step out, Lord Christ,
upon the path of love that you have set before us,
for the way of hope is the way of blessing.
Guide us, O Holy Spirit,
into wisdom and holiness,
filled with your reconciling power.

Give us the courage, O God, to dare to work for justice and peace for all,
and work for the common good.
Give us empathy, O God, to reimagine our lives with each other,
grounded in mercy and lovingkindness.
Give us the faithfulness, O God, to see that your ways are sure and beautiful,
and work to open the closed fists of our hearts.
Give us the strength, O God, to reach out to those in need,
loving our brothers and sisters as ourselves.

Give your light to those who are lost, O Holy One,
and give your peace to those who are troubled.
For You are the God of Compassion,
and we want to be your people, your beacons, and your witnesses.
Holy Trinity, unite us by your love,
and gather within your embrace those we now name.

Amen.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, February 18, 2021.

The Least We Can Do: Homily for Ash Wednesday 2021

Lent is a season that I doubt many people say that they look forward to. First of all, there is a broad swath of American Christianity that scarcely pays this season any notice. Then there is the common misconception of most things about Lent in popular culture. 

 

Even people who are NOT religious seem to know plenty about Mardi Gras, with its party-in-the-streets, purple green and gold, king cake eating, Southern-Comfort-drinking, bead-tossing, zydeco-dancing, costume-wearing, “laissez le bon temps rouler” attitude. One last chance to party it up before what is commonly held to be seven long weeks of denial and surrender during what in most of the US is the coldest part of winter.

 

After the big party comes Ash Wednesday, the official start of Lent, and to outsiders it can seem to be filled with morbid reminders of human mortality. It’s a day of fasting after the feasting of Mardi Gras—and THIS meaning of the word “fast” is one most of us view with at worst dread and at best resignation.

 

Christians who observe Lent are often asked “What are you going to give up for Lent?” Give up. As in surrender. As in submission. And these are very uncomfortable words. 

 

Then there’s the actual idea that you must offer up some beloved habit or treat for those seven weeks, denying yourself the pleasure of chocolate, or dessert, or soda, or caffeine, or swear words, or refined sugar, or red meat. You know—all the things that help us do the adulating during the day. And the giving up of something that our body may crave with the idea that it will make us more spiritual perpetuates some unhelpful stereotypes about suffering and pleasure, not to mention exaggerating the supposed divide between body and soul. Done right, Lent reminds us that our bodily existence is a gift from God, not something to deny. 

 

Too often, all of the things we associate with Lent can threaten to overwhelm us with distraction rather than leading us into a deeper understanding of how much God loves us and pursues us throughout our lives. Worst of all, it gives us the idea that God wants us to be deprived, or even miserable. As if devotion to God can’t lead us to true joy and praise! 

 

I fear we have allowed Lent, and much of our church-going experiences, to become transactional rather than transformational. We say we believe in Jesus, but we avoid following him. We get hung up on saying the right words to get into heaven, and forget to do the right things so that we can stake our claim in God’s love and abundant mercy right now. Instead of wonder, we scoff. 

 

We spend too much time eating the bread of anxiety. We hold ourselves back, thinking it will keep us safe, or we worry what our friends would think if we started placing God’s commandment to love each other at the center of our existence, rather than our own fears and suspicions at the heart of our day. 

 

Too often, we end up doing the least we can get away with, in the hopes that we can forget that we are God’s, and we are also God’s beloveds. We turn our backs on people and associations if they do not cater enough to us. WE put up our defenses rather than really allow love in, for fear of being hurt—and yet the binding of our hearts does far more damage than any potential heartbreak could cause.

 

Jesus urges us to a better way. In our gospel we are urged to enter into fasting and self-examination with joy and gladness, knowing that offering just this little thing to God still leaves us enormously outmatched by the gifts that God offers to us. 

 

The name of the season on Lent comes from the Middle English word for "Spring." We have it all wrong: Lent is a time of new growth, of anticipation, of hope, and of looking forward in joy and gratitude for the breaking of winter’s grip on our frozen hearts. Jesus calls us to joyfully embrace the turning into the greening of our spirits into a renewed commitment to God and each other.

 

The love that Christ offers to us, especially during Lent, is one of self-giving, of generosity. That love elicits in us the impulse turn upon its head the notion of doing “the least we can do” in our relationships with God and with each other—of avoiding the common responsibility and care we owe each other as fellow-creatures. When we seek to offer a sacrifice to God, may we remember that the purpose of a sacrifice is not pain and denial, but to make ourselves holy, and making ourselves holy is a step toward making ourselves whole. 

As we are marked with the ashes today, ashes derived from the palm fronds from previous Palm Sundays, may we remember that the ashes originated in rejoicing, in proclaiming Jesus as our ruler and Lord within our lives. And let us wear those ashes with joy, with hope, as people of love.

 

As we are reminded that we are dust, and to dust we shall return, may we remember that ashes are not just a sign of mourning but a reminder of our union with all creation, and that being dust makes us kindred of the stars that dance overhead, and set ourselves the task, during these 40 blessed days, to be drawn back into the knowledge of our one-ness with all things, our fellowship with even the most common stuff of creation, and be drawn therefore into love and care with each other and with all the whole earth, that we may we dies to the casual sins of complacency and disdain that so pervades too much of our world, and instead live in gratitude and joy --starting today and for the rest of our lives.

Let Lent begin the thawing of our gratitude—formed by the hand of God, who breathed life into us from God’s own Spirit, the God who then gave us God’s Son as the ultimate sign of how beloved we all are—all of us. No exceptions. I am convinced that living out our days embodying that truth would be the greatest, most holy fast and offering of all. Nothing more, and nothing less, than all we are we are called to offer to each other, and to God.

 

And that is the least we can do.

 

 

 

Amen.

Preached at the online noon service on Ash Wednesday, February 17, 2021, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO

Readings:

• Joel 2:1-2,12-17
• Psalm 103
• 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
• Matthew 6:1-6,16-21

Perceiving the Light Within: Sermon for Transfiguration Sunday

In her lovely book, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, the writer Annie Dillard talks about how individuals who had been blinded by cataracts, some from birth, reacted to being given the ability to see when those operations to remove cataracts were first available. For people who had been sighted most of their lives, the operations were miraculous enough. But, as you can imagine, the most shocking was the effect that was visited upon people who had no real memory of sight.

The surgeons found that those blind since birth had no understanding of space and depth perception, no way to name shapes or shadows or tell the difference between them. Instead, they were dazzled by the sheer brightness of the light that now flooded their eyes—vision was more a physically overwhelming sensation rather than a fully functional one of the five senses. Some were filled with delight everywhere they looked. She tells of a girl who sees a tree in a garden and stands before it, transfixed. She takes a hold of it, and at the touch of the leaves and bark names it as a tree, but then refers to it as “The tree with the lights in it.”

Dillard herself seeks to be visually amazed in her perception of the woods and creek near her home, where she walks daily. She seeks particularly to try to untrain her mind for just a moment to see the two-dimensional yet carnival-like swirl of colors and brightness of what is before her described by those with restored vision.

She searches for her own “tree with the lights in it,” what the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins described as kingfishers catching fire, to see beneath the recognition of objects as objects and instead to behold the spark within all creation. Sometimes, she manages the un-knowing of the objects around her until they broke down into their constituent colors and brightness, but only fleetingly, for an instant at a time.

Far more commonly she would look for hours and yet have everything resolve into known categories of flora and fauna. She walked through a peach orchard repeatedly, craving the montage of fruit, leaf, branch, and air to unravel in front of her, to no avail. She admitted:

“I couldn't sustain the illusion of flatness. I've been around for too long. Form is condensed to an internal dance macabre with meaning: I couldn't unpeach the peaches. Nor can I remember ever having seen without understanding; the color patches of infancy are lost. My brain then must have been smooth as any balloon. I'm told I reached for the moon; Many babies do. But the color patches of infancy swelled as meaning filled them; they arrayed themselves in solemn ranks down distance which unrolled and stretched before me like a plane. The moon rocketed away. I live now in a world of shadows that shape and distance color, but world where space makes a kind of terrible sense…. The fluttering patch I saw in my nursery window --silver and green and shapeshifting blue --is gone; a row of Lombardy poplars takes its place, mute, across the lawn.” (Dillard, p. 31)

Finally, one day it happened when she had all but given up after years of effort.

“Then one day I was walking along Tinker Creek thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was holy fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, not breathless by a powerful glance.” (Dillard, p. 35)

Dillard, in other words, was looking for the spark of the divine that is embedded in and that makes holy everything in creation. Our readings today similarly writhe and swirl with visions and revelations. The veil of our knowing perception is pulled back to reveal that which has not been seen before, and those who witness it are both charged and changed forever. What are we to learn from these stories of the revealing of God’s presence in the world, what is known as a “theophany,” or showing of God?

In both the story of Elijah’s departure from Elisha, and the disciples’ witnessing of the Transfiguration of Jesus on the mountain, we see awe and wonder—but also bewilderment, confusion, and a sense of looming loss. Scholar and teacher Debie Thomas points out that these visions also represent thresholds, changes in the lives of those who witness these events. With each of these epiphanies, something familiar is lost, and what will take its place is shrouded in mystery. It’s only human to be reluctant and resistant at the approach of such transitions in our lives.

As we have moved through the stages of life, our vision and perceptions are changed as well. We resonate to these stories because we know that life itself involves crossing many thresholds.

We are well acquainted with the bittersweet passages of life: there is no new baby without the pain and risk of childbirth and often the vulnerability and risk of relationship for the parents and then the parents and child. There is no creation of a family without eventually letting go of children as they enter adulthood and leave home to make their own ways in the world. Our own parents, who once seemed so invincible and unerring suddenly begin to become dependent upon our help, and it sends a ringing slap of a reminder about our own mortality as well as calling in the loan of care they first invested in us.

It seems we are just get used to one way of relating to each other, and then another season of life comes by and scrambles our understanding of what we thought we see and know, especially about each other.

If we remember the backstory to our reading from 2 Kings, we recall that old Elijah had taken the boy Elisha away from all he had ever known and become his teacher and mentor. Now, in the reading we hear today, all that has become familiar to Elisha in those succeeding years is coming to a close with a final snap, and Elisha is awash in what today we call “anticipatory grief.” How will he go on without the old man’s guidance? We all have been there, as Thomas notes:

Regardless of the particulars, we all know what it's like to get used to one way of being in the world. One way of knowing God, one way of practicing our vocations, one way of relating to our families, one way of doing church, faith, and religion. By the time Elijah's ascension draws near, his student Elisha is well entrenched in finding both his God and his purpose through his mentor. He can't bear the thought of having that safety net ripped away. Who will God become in Elijah's absence? Who will Elisha become, if he is forced to step into spiritual adulthood? If he is forced to evolve?... Elisha saw God's glory, that's for sure. But he also saw a point of no return, and his response was neither gratitude nor joy. He tore his clothes and grieved. (3)

Because Lent moves in the calendar from year to year, the number of Sundays in the season of the Epiphany can change, and due to the way the Christian calendar is set up, there just aren’t that many weeks between Jesus being born as a baby and Jesus moving toward his passion and resurrection. It is traditional to tell the story of the Transfiguration on the Sunday before Lent starts.

In the wisdom of the lectionary, we began the season of Epiphany with the story of Jesus’s baptism in Mark, hearing the voce of God address Jesus and declare to him, “You are my Son, the Beloved….” It is only right and fitting, therefore, that we close out the season after Epiphany with another declaration from God about the identity of Jesus, and with another revelation of God’s glory. It is a bit disconcerting, considering that we spent six weeks covering just the first two pages of Mark’s gospel, and now suddenly we jet to the fulcrum of Mark’s story like we were teleported. Yet we hear those words twice, and are reminded that we are God’s Beloveds, too, and Lent tells us exactly how much God, through Christ, loves us.

The depiction of the Transfiguration is a singular miracle story. Unlike the other ones we’ve heard this year, where Jesus heals or changes others, it is Jesus himself who is the one who appears changed. But is he really changed—or is the veil pulled back from what we mere mortals can tolerate in seeing the glory of God, so that the disciples get a glimpse of Jesus as he REALLY is?

The Transfiguration reveals to us the profound mystery of God’s intimate involvement in confronting the evil that can overshadow too much of human existence. And that’s a truth we need to remind ourselves of repeatedly, as we witness injustice, oppression and falsehood seemingly reign. We have to remind ourselves that God empowers us as children of God to denounce and stand against evil forces in the world, that lie to us and tell us the world is so broken there is no point in trying. There is a reason why Satan is called “the Father of Lies.”

That evil comes about through our need for domination, mastery, and power over others, which is also the source of much of the suffering for the majority of the world’s population. In the reading from 2 Corinthians, Paul reminds us about the things that keep us from seeing the gospel as it really is. Paul points out that if we focus on the “god of this world,” we are unable to perceive to see God in unexpected places, or to see the gospel with clarity and what it requires of us. Instead, our perception is “veiled.” Humans are the ones who have broken our societies, and God gives us the wisdom to fix it. We just need to understand the power within ourselves. That’s another thing the Transfiguration does—it reveals God’s empowerment of us as God’s children.

Perhaps Paul is too generous to make the “god of this world” singular. Power, status, self-righteousness, money, material possessions, fame, greed, entertainment, yes, even violence, as we remember three years since the Parkland Florida school shooting at Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School: all of these things we may worship, as we offer them the priority for our attention, our time, and our striving, hoping they make dependence upon God unnecessary.

There are so many gods we focus upon and elevate that we think will take the place in our hearts that belongs to God. And this is especially true in our lives today, with false prophets all around us proclaiming a gospel that seeks to divide and conquer rather than unite and heal. Our perceptions are scrambled.

The story of the Transfiguration recounts a moment when the veil between the visible and the previously invisible is torn away, like the first time you look at a few drops of pond water through a microscope, or at the milky surface of the moon through a telescope. In both cases where once we saw something ordinary, now color and crater and shadow dance before our eyes, and we become aware that those things were there all along—we just didn’t see it.

This is the turning point, midway between Jesus’s baptism and his death. Now he will turn his face toward the cross. On the cross, Jesus will also be between two figures—the two criminals who were crucified with him. On the cross, his claim to be God’s son will be inscribed over him as a form of mockery, for surely the true Son of God would not be hanging on a cross. While he is on the cross, the crowds will wait around to see if Elijah will come to save Jesus. Three of Jesus’s followers will witness his crucifixion, although they will be women (Mary Magdalene, Mary and Salome).

We now turn toward Lent, a wilderness season of our own, where we are led to being transformed ourselves—transformed by our honest admission of our need for repentance, for perceiving the world and ourselves with a new light. During Lent we are called to let go of all that holds us back and prevents us from crossing the threshold of new life that Jesus offers. Yet if we allow this season to open our eyes to new ways of seeing the gospel of Jesus at work even in the face of evil, violence, and death, we will cross over to the other side of death, to resurrection and joyful discipleship, to full maturity, from belief to faith.

As we prepare to enter into Lent, we are encouraged to lean into the creative power of darkness in order to expand our perception. We end the season after Epiphany each year with stories of transfiguration to give us the courage to allow our eyes to adjust to the seeing of who Jesus REALLY is in our lives, much like those disciples who witness his transfiguration in our gospel.

Too often we seem to expect a bearded man, wearing a loose linen tunic, sandals, gorgeously-tressed hair. We fail to perceive him in other guises: the frazzled dad working three jobs to help put food on the table; the teenager hungry for someone to take her under their wing and counter the story she hears at home about being ugly inside and out; the neighbor with whom we have been feuding for so long we no longer remember why; the panhandler on the corner we sneer at for having a cell phone.

But the point of the transfiguration is not to focus on how Jesus has been changed. Rather, what if we looked upon him and realize that the veil has been pulled back: Jesus reveals just a tiny bit of who he really is, and once we perceive that, it is we who have been changed. In a year when even the everyday and commonplace has sometimes become a struggle, we may not perceive the ways in which the Christ-light has been revealed to us, much less within us.

The season of Epiphany is about drawing back the veil and joyfully encouraging us to see God’s presence everywhere and for everyone. Jesus’s transfiguration calls us to embrace our own, so that we ourselves may perceive that that same glory and light resides within each of us. As Jesus transfigures us, he urges us to leave behind the gods of this world. “Come, follow me. Be the light you need to see within the world.”


Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am online worship service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

• 2 Kings 2:1-12
• 2 Corinthians 4:3-6
• Mark 9:2-9
• Psalm 50:1-6

Citations/Links:

(1) Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 31.

(2) Ibid., 35.

(3) Debie Thomas, “When Everything Changes,” February 7, 2021, at Journey With Jesus, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/2917-when-everything-changes

Pulling Back the Veil: Speaking to the Soul, February 11, 2021

When I was eight, my third-grade teacher suspected that I had something wrong with my vision, and she was right. When I would read out loud, I would skip lines. And sometimes at the end of a long school day, the chalk board would get blurrier, like a gauzy veil was drawn over it. Mrs. Mathews was right: come to find out, one of my eyes had weaker muscles than the other. And so for a year I went to eye therapy.

I remember sitting in the waiting room for my appointments, reading old Highlights magazines. After reading all the stories with my new, extra-fragile glass bifocals, I would enjoy the pages filled with visual puzzles, like where you find lists of hidden images in a picture, or a line drawing where you saw a young woman looking over her shoulder, but if you turned the picture upside down suddenly you were looking at an old hag. Or if you looked at the positive space of a drawing you saw one image, but if you concentrated on the negative space you saw something else. Years later I marveled at how that doctor made sure we were working to strengthen our eyes and our perception even in the waiting room.

The eyes work by collecting and focusing light so that it can be interpreted by the brain.

But unless we have some idea what we are looking for, we will seldom find it, because our brains filter out a majority of the images our eyes take in so that we can make sense of what is in front of our eyes. Our brains perceive what is seen by interpreting, based on context, and by filtering out a great amount of input. We see this people who have had their sight restored either by surgery or by correction, or in studies of what newborns see. When asked what they see, they have no way of making sense of the light flooding their eyes. Of those who have the ability to talk, they describe brightness, and later flashes of color. Eventually, their minds learn to interpret the input coming through their eyes. There is even scriptural testimony to this phenomenon: in Mark 8, Jesus heals a blind man from Bethsaida, and after Jesus attempts the healing the first time and asks what the man sees, he says, “I see people, but they look like trees walking.”

In the reading from 2 Corinthians that we will hear this Sunday, we will hear Paul talk about the things that keep us from seeing the gospel as it really is. Paul points out that if we focus on the “god of this world,” we are unable to perceive to see God in unexpected places, or to see the gospel with clarity. Instead, our perception is “veiled.” Perhaps Paul is too generous to make the “god of this world” singular. Power, status, self-righteousness, money, material possessions, fame, greed, entertainment—all of these things we may worship, as we offer them the priority for our attention, our time, and our striving. There are so many gods we focus upon and elevate that we think will take the place in our hearts that belongs to God. One thing is certain: the gods of this world reign by being easily perceptible all around us, while many complain that they do not see signs of the true God anywhere. Once again, depends upon what you are looking for, and where you focus your attention.

As we prepare to enter into Lent, we are encouraged to expand our perception. We end the season after Epiphany each year with stories of transfiguration to give us the courage to allow our eyes to adjust to the seeing of who Jesus REALLY is in our lives, much like those disciples who witness his transfiguration in our gospel. Too often we seem to expect a bearded man, wearing a loose linen tunic, sandals, gorgeously-tressed hair. We fail to perceive him in other guises: the frazzled dad working three jobs to help put food on the table; the teenager hungry for someone to take her under their wing and counter the story she hears at home about being ugly inside and out; the neighbor with whom we have been feuding for so long we no longer remember why; the panhandler on the corner we sneer at for having a cell phone.

But the point of the transfiguration is not to focus on how Jesus has been changed. Rather, what if we looked upon him and realize that the veil has been pulled back: Jesus reveals just a tiny bit of who he really is, and once we perceive that, it is we who have been changed. In a year when even the everyday and commonplace has sometimes become a struggle, we may not perceive the ways in which the Christ-light has been revealed to us, much less within us.

The season of Epiphany is about drawing back the veil and joyfully encouraging us to see God’s presence everywhere and for everyone. Jesus’s transfiguration calls us to embrace our own, so that we ourselves may perceive that that same glory and light resides within each of us. As Jesus transfigures us, he urges us to leave behind the gods of this world. “Come, follow me. Be the light you need to see within the world.”

This was first published on Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on February 11, 2021.

Each Day a Miracle: Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

In 1967, what was then the greatest rock group in the world, The Beatles, released their album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Part of the album was the story of a fantastic carnival. As the crowd noise and applause fades, the album segues into an altogether different scene, depicted in the song, “A Day in the Life.” The events recounted in the song reveal the highs and lows of one day in the British news. It moves from someone being killed in a car crash, to a story of potholes so numerous they could fill the Albert Hall. And in the center of the song is a recitation of the way that a British everyman begins his day as recounted by Paul McCartney:

Woke up, fell out of bed
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup
And looking up, I noticed I was late
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
Found my way upstairs and had a smoke
And somebody spoke and I went into a dream....(1)

Up until last year, perhaps, many of us could have recognized ourselves in that hurried depiction of our days: rushing around in the morning, caffeinating ourselves to make up for lack of sleep, arriving at every place seemingly just on the verge of not making it in time, and then settling into a routine of the workaday world that passes like a dream.

It’s often the way that we treat our days with a casual disregard. Yet, as the writer Annie Dillard notes, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing.”(2)

I don’t know about you, but when you put it that way, I am brought up short. When you apply the microscope to the ways in which I use my precious time in each and every day, it appears I am not doing too well with what Mary Oliver challenges us when she asks: Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?(3)  Because my answer is, too often, thinking less about the present than I should, looking too much at the future that the day I am in flows past me unaware.

But what we have seen in the last two weeks in our gospels has been Jesus’s rootedness in the present. We see here in our gospel today and last week a depiction of how Jesus spends one of his days, and not just any day, but a sabbath day, a day that should indicate a particular holiness and dedication to God’s values and God’s sovereignty. He starts it in study and teaching in the synagogue. Jesus teaches with an authority that is previously only granted to the elite scribes who were part of the dominant class in the religious life of that time. Jesus heals, but with an eye to restoring people from being outcast to being welcomed back into being productive members of the communities in which they lived.

Today, in case you did not notice, we see the very first woman mentioned in Mark’s gospel. Now, Mark doesn’t give her a name—nope, she gets defined by what her relationship is with a male relative. She is Peter’s mother-in-law. But then again, at least she gets a mention—Peter’s wife is completely off stage.

Thus the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law is significant in many ways. Jesus moves from the synagogue—a world in which only men spoke and dominated, a less-public space accessible only to insiders who belonged to that synagogue, to a house. This is a public space, as this reading makes clear, where the entire town can approach Jesus. The synagogue was the domain of men. Yet immediately afterward, Jesus now enters a private home, which, although it may belong to Peter, is where women are primarily the actors.

Peter invites Jesus into his home, apparently knowing that his mother-in-law is ill with a fever. Peter has just seen that Jesus is the only one who can heal her, as he's coming off the heels of casting out a demon. Notice that this unnamed woman is defined only in terms of her relationship to a man, and since we get no mention of a husband, we can assume that she is widowed and has been taken into Peter's household to be cared for. Yet in taking in his mother-in-law, the structures of the time would also demand that she is a woman of some in authority in the household, exercising some authority over her daughter by virtue of her status as mother. Therefore for her to be unable to take care of guests entering her home would be a matter of some shame. Hospitality was not a matter of servitude, but honor in this context.

Jesus hears of the woman's fever, goes to her, takes her by the hand, and “raises her up.” The verb used here is the same one used for resurrection. The story then goes on to say that immediately upon her healing, the mother in law gets up and begins to “serve” them, using a verb also used to describe discipleship.

So then the question arises: Was she healed so that she could put together a meal and do the “wimmin’s work” for Jesus and his hungry followers, or was she healed so that she could too, could become a disciple? Perhaps the answer is “Both.” What is clear from this story is that once, she is healed and she has begun serving Jesus and his disciples, she emerges as a disciple herself, and her house gains further honor as the location of Jesus’s healing much of those in the town suffering from any condition that further placed them in a precarious situation of isolation due to their various maladies.

No doubt, after Jesus leaves, the woman who is Peter’s mother-in- experiences a life that is both never the same and yet still places her in a position of servitude that all women in that culture experienced, from rich to poor. But in getting up from her bed, she also becomes, even if it's without the actual recognition by mark, the first Deacon mentioned in scripture. as such she labors alongside Jesus to make Jesus's ministry possible and to enable it -- to empower it. And that is truly honorable indeed. In healing this woman, Jesus also blesses her work and commissions it as being a vital part of bringing about the kingdom. Her service to Jesus enables the rest of his healing mission that day, after all.

What is interesting is that this is also the first time that it is stated that Jesus touches someone, and in this case, the touching happens as a prelude to the healing. He takes her hand and lifts her up. Unlike the healing of the demoniac in last week’s gospel, we do not have any recorded commands of Jesus to the fever—perhaps because it is just a fever. But this is still a miracle, nonetheless. And her service afterward enables more miracles.

There is an everyday miracle embedded in this story that speaks directly to our time in this pandemic in 2021. By entering into Peter's home, Jesus consecrates and hallows the home as a space where Jesus does his kingdom-building work.

Stop and think about that for a minute, and what it reminds us about right now. As we have spent nearly a year being very much confined to our homes more than possibly ever in our adult lifetimes, home has grown ever more important as the place where many of us spend most of our time. Especially for us as a community of faith, as a parish, we have missed being able to be in our sacred spaces. Yet by having Jesus spend much of this day in a home in today’s gospel reading, we were reminded of how sacred a space home can be.

Just like Peter's mother-in-law, we have been confined to our homes because of an illness --or at least because of the fear of an illness. Many of us have rightfully and logically chafed at this enforced domesticity. And yet the story of the healing of Peter’s mother-in-law reminds us but the home can be just as sacred space and as much a source of healing and discipleship as the most beautiful cathedral on earth. Jesus takes an ordinary place and turns it into an extraordinary locus of healing and renewed hope.(4) 

Even by the middle of that one day, Jesus’s fame as a healer has gotten spread about, and people are brought to him to be healed of either physical or psychological/spiritual maladies. Jesus willingly heals those who come to him. Since illnesses made it impossible for most of these desperately poor people to work, Jesus spends a large part of this long day restoring people to independence and hope.

Before the next day begins, Jesus sneaks out before dawn and goes to “a deserted place” or “wilderness place” to pray by himself. Unlike in Luke, Jesus as a person who prays is an incidental in Mark’s gospel. And he only gets a few moments to himself, for, as our text states, the disciples “hunt” for him.

We get a lot of details about what people want from Jesus in these first few verses of Mark, but not much about what Jesus wants from his companions. Number one might be time to pray in peace. Anyone who has been a parent may be able to relate to this. And the disciples are still greatly dependent upon him—they may have followed Jesus, but they certainly don’t yet understand him. Only the evil spirits have that gift. What irony. And, not wanting to be clingy, they cloak their “hunting” and bursting in upon Jesus with the excuse that “everyone” is looking for him.

So Jesus puts aside his prayers for now, and continues upon his mission, stating that they should be moving on into neighboring towns so that he can continue to spread the gospel. Jesus never rests. This remains true today. But he also honors time spent in solitude with God, listening as much as talking-- an important part of prayer that we often forget in our hurried, transactional world. Jesus also never stops praying, teaching, or healing. And neither should we.

This past year has forced some of us into solitude, or at least caused us to drastically contract the places to which we feel comfortable traveling. But what if perhaps we could try to find in our enforced stillness an opportunity for spiritual growth?

As disciples, our jobs are to try to imitate our teacher as much as possible. Jesus is our teacher, and our healer, who calls us to repentance and reclamation of our one wild and precious life. What can we learn from this “typical day” of Jesus’s?

Perhaps this: How can we place ourselves more in the present like Jesus did in this one ordinary, extraordinary day—to see the people right in front of us, in all their need, and rather than flick our eyes on to the next thing, instead reach out to them and lift them up? Can we dedicate ourselves to the same deeply rooted spiritual life that Jesus clings to as he repeatedly is found in prayer, and imitate that, if only to see what effect it might have in our lives?

Can we see even the nameless people around us, like Jesus sees Peter’s mother-in-law, and honor the common life we have together thanks to their labor, and honor them for it, rather than take them for granted, or worse, take pride in our exploitation of their labor at the cheapest rates we can negotiate?

May we never forget that the most visible testimony anyone who claims the name of Christian gives to the watching world is the way that we spend each day. What are we testifying to each day? How can we make each day a miracle for those who would otherwise be overlooked? This is the heart of the life lived by Jesus’s disciples-- which is to say, by you and me.



Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am online worship service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

Isaiah 40:21-31

Psalm 147:1-12, 21c

1 Corinthians 9:16-23

Mark 1:29-39

Citations:

1) John Lennon and Paul McCartney, "A Day in the Life," from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967.

2) Annie Dillard, The Writing Life, 1989, p. 31.

3) Mary Oliver, "The Summer Day."

4)Debie Thomas, "A Day in the Life," Jan 31, 2021, at Journey with Jesus.