Looking Within: Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension C (7th Sunday after Easter, tr.)

This week, I don’t know about you, but I have been thinking a lot about good-byes.

I have thought about this being Memorial Day, the day we give thanks for and honor those who have laid down their lives in defense of this country in our armed services, our Coast Guard, and our Merchant Marine; those who have been willing to give up their lives to protect others, which is particularly poignant this week. I've thought about their departures from their families to defend our country and other countries, and for their families' farewells to them after giving their lives for others.

I have thought about the feeling you get as you are getting ready to be parted from a loved one—maybe for a few days or weeks, or maybe longer. It’s the time of year for it, isn’t it? It’s graduation season-- a time when we acknowledge achievements but also the huge changes those accomplishments place upon our horizons, with some of our graduates getting ready to move to college or into careers that may take them far from us.

In our house, there have been lots of changes, just like in many of yours. Our son is getting ready to start his career next week, and he is getting ready to go back to Kansas to get ready for that today. Our middle daughter moved to Florida this spring for a new job. Our eldest changed jobs but thankfully is still here living in town.

It’s a time of vacations and journeys—as I have been enjoying my friend Maria’s travels of the Camino de Santiago in Portugal and Spain for these last several weeks, and thinking about how sometimes the journey IS the education rather than just a means of getting TO an education. I have been getting ready for my second summer at Sewanee for the month of June, and so getting ready to keep things running smoothly around here and so thankful for everyone who is helping me to do that.

I have been thinking about the way that these transitions and departures change us. Watching friends I love move to different places, and hoping that our friendships will still endure across distances and the lack of daily presence, hoping that we will still be able to maintain the depth of connection when the whir and demands of life might make it easy to move our friendship more to the periphery, regardless of all the ways technology can keep us connected. Even when friends leave after a visit, the bittersweet feeling of parting.

Our relationships shape us, for good or for ill, and even the difficult relationships have much to teach us, and with God’s help, offer us a chance to practice grace—this much I have learned in my years on this Earth.

Our relationships change and grow throughout the time we have them. Some are fleeting. Some endure, like our relationships with friends and spouses and parents and siblings and cousins. There are great songs about this tender subject, like the Finn Brothers’ “Disembodied Voices,” where they remember talking to each other up and down the hall from their separate bedrooms at night as boys, or the song “Won’t Give In,” where lead singer-songwriter Neil Finn imagines a best man speech in which he talks about the promises we make to those we love to hold fast to “the people we call our own.” 

In her song, “Only a Dream,” the beautifully gifted singer-songwriter Mary-Chapin Carpenter remembered growing up with her elder sister and how she protected and comforted her even during their parents’ unhappy marriage, assuring her in the night that the things that scared her were “only a dream.” In the final verse, she remembers the day her sister left for college:

The day you left home you got an early start
I watched your car back out in the dark
I opened the door to your room down the hall
I turned on the light
And all that I saw
Was a bed and a desk and couple of tacks
No sign of someone who expects to be back
It must have been one hell of a suitcase you packed.

Twirl me about, twirl me around
Let me grow dizzy and fall to the ground
And when I look up at you looking down
Say it was only a dream.(1)

How often have we too stood staring sadly after the beloved ones as they drove around a corner, taillights and turn signal a final blaze goodbye; or watched their suitcase disappear around the corner of the jetway (before we had to say our goodbyes at the security gate); or settled the teen into the dorm room and almost started a fight just to make the leaving easier?

We accept that children from the moment of birth will continue to draw away and recede from us—even eventually recognize the good in that, remembering our own declaration of independence from parental hovering years ago.

I think about that as I hear these stories today about Jesus’s ascension. I think about how traumatized the apostles must have been over the whirl of the past forty days—they had watched their teacher be arrested, crucified, and buried—only to have him return to them after three days, resurrected. Of how they must have rejoiced at having their beloved friend back. But now here he is leaving again—and yet assuring them he will always be with them.

Is it any wonder they stand, gazing up at the sky, afraid to break the connection and tear their eyes and hearts away when all that means is that now, they truly do not know the way forward through their loss? We’ve all done the same. Change is hard, especially changes to the relationships that define us and protect us.

Biblical scholars believe that the same person who wrote the Gospel we call Luke also wrote the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. So it is interesting that today, as we celebrate Jesus’s Ascension, we have as our gospel the closing verses of Luke and the opening verses of Acts—and that they both recount the same event. Luke’s gospel closes with Jesus opening the apostles’ minds to the meaning and fulfillment of the scriptures, his final blessing upon them, and, in the midst of that blessing, his ascension to heaven.

We then hear Acts begin with the same event—but with some different details. The one that jumps out at me is the two angels appearing after Jesus has ascended. They bring the apostles back to earth, so to speak, with a forthright question: “Why are you standing around, staring up at heaven?”

Jesus promises the apostles the power of the Holy Spirit, and then he ascends into heaven, and that’s often where we get distracted. Right there with the apostles, we tend to focus on the image of Jesus flying up into heaven rather than think about what that leave-taking means.

It’s a scene that has been depicted in art thousands of times over the centuries, in icons, and paintings, and reliefs and stained-glass windows. One of the weirdest ways to depict the scene shows only Christ’s feet dangling at the top edge of the scene, as if he were doing an Olympic high dive in the wrong direction.

But even the angels who suddenly appear at that moment remind us that focusing on looking upward is pointless, a hindrance to getting about the holy charge that Christ has placed upon us of witnessing to his truth in the world. It’s an awesome responsibility and an honor. It's a sign of how very much Jesus loves us that’s every bit as breathtaking as his laying down his life for us on the cross. Jesus loves us so much that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he commissions each and every one of his followers to be his ministers and to be his Body, to carry on his holy work of redemption, reconciliation, and healing into the world: to carry him and bear his image within ourselves for the sake of the world. And if we want to be worthy of bearing his name, we have to take up that holy responsibility with steadfastness and hope, with action rather than mere words.

It’s so easy, I know, to look to heaven to solve all of our problems. We will especially hear about people talking about “thoughts and prayers” this week as people of conscience are rocked with grief at another horrific school shooting, this time in Uvalde, Texas, and nineteen precious small children and two teachers murdered with weapons of war in neighborhood school--a place that is supposed to be a sanctuary and place of growth. I have wept as I thought about the goodbyes, the final chance to be with each other, that all those families have experienced—and all the thousands of families who likewise have been parted from their loved ones by the scourge of gun violence, and by our pretended helplessness to do anything about it except claim to look up to heaven and offer “thoughts and prayers.”

And I’ll be honest with you: I wore this orange gun violence stole last week, after the Tops Supermarket shooting in Buffalo and the shooting in Orange County at the Taiwanese church. And here I am again, but this time wearing it for 19 precious children and two teachers who put their bodies on the line, all massacred, and the husband of one of the teachers dead mere hours later from a literal broken heart. Twenty-two dead victims and their dozens of classmates wounded either physically or psychologically, and their families, and their town. I would give ANYTHING to not have to wear this stole and to have to preach about this. But the gospel demands it. The Christian life is one of engagement with the world in Jesus's name.

Memorial outside Robb Elementary in Uvalde Texas from The Guardian (UK).

Because we’ve been here too many times, watching these terrible losses with hearts breaking and demands for change that fade once the going gets tough and sacrifices are called for. Every single time, we hear people with a financial and partisan interest in the status quo murmur about praying to heaven, and then shrug off any responsibility or any intention to actually work for the common good to help prevent these horrors from being so easy and so common and so horrifying. It’s easy to claim free will when it suits us, but when times like these call for sacrifices for the common good, we can’t simply turn our eyes to heaven and shrug and claim such things are out of our hands. It’s easy—and it’s wrong.

That’s why I hope you think about what the ascension of Jesus means for you and me—whether you literally believe in it or not. I mean, it sound fantastic—Jesus being bodily carried into heaven, when there’s so much here on earth that still needs to be fixed! So we join with the apostles in our grief and cry, “How could he leave us? There’s so much here that still needs to be healed! Why doesn’t God do something?” And Jesus asks us, “There’s so much that needs to be healed! Why don’t they do something?”

The fact is, we are all in the same situation, those apostles 2000 years ago and us, right now. We can realize that Jesus’s ascension places the responsibility for witnessing to the resurrected life Jesus offers to us squarely on OUR shoulders. The responsibility to act is now OURS.

The story told in Acts is meant to build up our courage so that we may joyfully take up the mission he loves us enough to entrust to us: to take up our call not as observers but as disciples; to actively proclaim Jesus’s gospel of love and reconciliation in the world.

It’s about hearing that question directed at us: “Why are you standing there, looking up at heaven?”

This is a question posed in love and in encouragement. With Jesus’s ascension, WE are Christ’s Body in the world. It is up to us to literally embody Jesus’s gospel in our lives, our attitudes, our words, and our actions.

Being a Christian is NOT a spectator sport. Being a Christian calls us to not only transform OUR own lives, but to make visible to the world the possibility of its transformation and restoration. Being a Christian is a social and political act in the very best sense of those words. Politics isn’t a dirty word—it simply means our commitment to the body politic and its well-being. The foundation of politics, just like the foundation of the gospel, is not mere personal advantage but the common good—the same common good Jesus calls us to when he reminds us that the greatest commandment is to love God, and to love each other as much as we love ourselves, NO EXCEPTIONS. Politics is the heart of our lives together in groups big or small-- the commitment and the love we are called to practice and offer to each other and act of hope, bravery, and enduring willingness to see the potential and the beauty within this Earth and within every inhabitant of it. The gospel absolutely is political-- intended for our flourishing as one community of the children of God. It should NEVER be partisan.

As we grow in our relationship with God, we are empowered and loved by God to take up our own ministry in the world. To remember that we are now the face, hands, and healing heart of Jesus out in the world—to remember and to look within ourselves, where Jesus has been all along, and find the courage to tear our eyes away from heaven, to give thanks for the love and grace that God continually shows us, and take up our call to witness to the love that reaches out to the world, this hurting, wounded, beautiful world, through our own discipleship and gratitude for all that God has done for us, in times of joy as well as sorrow, in times of meeting as well as times of parting.

The Ascension of Jesus reminds us: it’s time to look within rather than toward heaven. Look within, and locate the beating heart of God placed inside of us at our birth—given to us not just for ourselves, but for those around us, friend, family, or stranger. And then act, for the good and protection and flourishing of those around us. Why do you stand looking up into heaven? Look within, instead. That’s where Jesus is—all along.

Amen.


Preached at the 505 on Saturday and the 8 and 10:30 am services on Sunday, May 28-29, 2022, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.


Readings:
Acts 1-11
Luke 24:44-53

Citations:

1) Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Only a Dream," from the album Come On, Come On, 1992.

The Shalom of Resurrection: Sermon for Easter 6C

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.”

For several chapters in John’s gospel. Jesus gives an extended speech known as his Farewell Discourse, and we have spent the last few weeks of the Easter season reminding ourselves of what instructions Jesus gave his disciples, including us, as his earthly ministry was drawing to a close. And it doesn’t take much imagination to understand that what Jesus is saying, the disciples do not want to hear. They don’t want him to leave them. Nobody wants the people they love to leave.

And so the disciples are afraid and anxious, facing an unknown future. Just like us. We have been thrown into a state of constant upheaval particularly since March 2020, when the entire world seemed to halt in midstride due to the outbreak of a novel coronavirus now known as “COVID-19” and all its variants. In the early days, when there was no treatment, much less vaccines or boosters, there was fear, and panic. Both of these things stemmed from a lack of knowledge, a lack of certainty. And that lack of knowing is also exactly what Jesus’s disciples are facing as he tries to make them understand what is about to happen, and as he spends several long chapters describing something unimaginable to his friends.

The late, great Tom Petty once famously sang that “the waiting is the hardest part.” He was right—because waiting when you don’t know what the way forward into the Great Unknown—which Tom called “the Great Wide Open” in another song—is exhausting. And so we are tired.

In response to the fears the disciples have been plunged into, fears of abandonment and uncertainty at the potential loss of their beloved teacher, Jesus offers what sounds like a simple gift: peace. The word peace is repeated: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give to you….” This is a precious gift indeed and much needed, since Jesus tells his friends he is leaving them. But Jesus reminds them that the gifts that come from God are untarnished and unsullied by the penury that functions in society when he continues: “I do not give to you as the world gives.”

I think of the juxtaposition between the way society “gives” and God gives. “The world” around us focuses on profit, leverage, competition, and advantage. It encourages giving only if that giving does not inconvenience oneself—giving out of one’s remnants rather than giving out of our first fruits, as the earliest scriptures commanded.

But too many among us are also angry, which is another reaction to stress. And anger is dangerous when it leads to hatred and violence, to looking for scapegoats instead of working for understanding and positive change.

The key to managing the kind of stress and uncertainty in which we have been often lies not in defying but in managing our expectations. Some people today manage them by adopting the lowest standard, like those who are determined to expect the worst from the people around them and from the institutions that make up society. This can make one seem savvy rather than naïve. After all, disappointment is often a daily dish served cold to each of us.

But having expectations be set cynically low leads not just to worse behavior from others—it leads to worse behavior in ourselves. After all, in the transactional world in which we live, the golden rule itself has been twisted from its original intent. It used to be “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It seems like all too often lately, that has instead become “Do unto others before they can do something to you first. Too many of our fellow citizens walk around angry, frustrated and focused on their grievances, whether real or imagined. This especially is on my mind as we hear of a teenaged white supremacist in Buffalo driving all the way across the state to murder Black people in a grocery store in a black neighborhood based on a paranoid delusion that white people are endangered by the mere presence of people of color.

The “peace” the world offers us is too often no peace at all. It is a peace that is based on a lie, of denying that injustice and inequality exists. It is a peace bought at the price of inaction and silence in the face of evil. It is a peace that requires no shared sense of purpose but that pushes the burden onto other people. It is a peace that requires the suffering to be patient in their suffering rather than disrupt the status quo and question those whom he status quo benefits.

The peace that Jesus offers to his disciples and therefore to us, however, is not the peace that the world offers. The peace Jesus talks about is a word most of us have heard: shalom.

Shalom is an amazing word. Apparently it’s one of those words that has a multitude of synonyms when translated into English, and no matter what, we still don’t get the full equivalent of its meaning. Those of us who are not speakers of Hebrew hear “shalom” often as a synonym for the word “peace,” and indeed that is how “shalom” was translated in our reading. But shalom means much more than this. Shalom can also be used to express health, wholeness, completeness, welfare, safety, tranquility, perfectness, harmony, rest, or health. A state of shalom is a state of completion. A state of shalom is a state without fear. It’s exactly the kind of situation as described in our readin from the Book of Revelation.

Shalom, real peace and contentment even when we encounter setbacks, is the embodiment of a phrase we pray all the time in the Lord’s Prayer as we will in just a few minutes: “Thy kingdom come; thy will be done/ On Earth as it is in Heaven.” Do we mean it? Then we can start by living the resurrection, right here, right now.

In praying that prayer, we are not asking God to come in and fix everything that is wrong with the world we have made. We are praying for the strength, the wisdom, and the love to make God’s will of peace, plenty, and security our own will. We are not praying for peace for ourselves—that’s giving as the world gives. Instead, we are praying for our hearts and minds to be transformed so that we can embody Christ’s peace here on Earth the peace that God wills for all, whether friend or stranger. Peace that is not merely the absence of tension and division, to expand upon a statement by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but the presence of justice.

Shalom is the very definition of a resurrection-shaped life. Shalom is the fulfillment of Jesus’s promise to us, but it can only be fulfilled if we demand peace and justice not just for ourselves but for our brothers and sisters. A society cannot live in wholeness and health if it does not tend to the well-being of all its members—and this is triply true of a society which claims to be.

Shalom cannot happen by accident— it requires the deliberate practice of love and justice for even the least in society. We love peace, but we must love justice more. Welfare for all cannot be harnessed to the plow of inequity. Urging others to peace must never be used to mean passive acquiescence to evil.

Now, the cry, “Peace!” can also be used to urge patience. “Peace!” can be used to tell us to be still. “Peace!” can be used as a way to urge people to give in to injustice in the name of order. “Peace!” is a lie when put in the mouths of those facing protest against their own actions. “Peace!” can be used to encourage silence in the face of robbery. “Peace!” can be used as a way to urge others to tolerate wrong. This demand for order over integrity is a demand for willful blindness. This was the situation Dr. King faced while jailed in Birmingham, when religious leaders in the community urged peace in place of the demands of justice, when they urged patience in the face of inequality.

If we close our eyes to injustice, we turn our backs on Christ’s peace and become hypocrites to the call of Jesus to create the Kingdom of God on Earth.

In 2017, some good friends of mine surprised me with tickets to see Arlo Guthrie in concert on the 50th anniversary of his album “Alice’s Restaurant.” It was a wonderful evening and Arlo put everything into it he could, even though he was ailing and had slowed down considerably since the last time I had seen him in college, and his daughter took over performing at times so he could have breaks at times during the concert, and she was an amazing performer herself. He ended the concert with a song whose lyrics were written by his father, the great Woody Guthrie, that Arlo had put to music. It was called “My Peace,” and he encouraged the audience to join in singing the simple but profound words:

My peace, my peace is all I’ve got that I can give to you
My peace is all I ever had that’s all I ever knew
I give my peace to green and black and red and white and blue
My peace my peace is all I’ve got that I can give to you.

My peace, my peace is all I’ve got and all I've ever known
My peace is worth a thousand times more than anything I own
I pass my peace around and about ‘cross hands of every hue;
I guess my peace is just about all I’ve got to give to you. (1)

The heart of the resurrected life is a life is which we, as followers of Jesus, offer our peace, the peace we have received from Jesus, to the world, just as the song insisted. To demonstrate the love of God for us, to do as well as say, we are called to practice shalom in all its gradients. Peace that brings forth justice. Peace that brings forth reconciliation. Peace that works against poverty. Peace that values the least rather than the powerful. Peace that is true shalom, called for by the prophets throughout history and implied in our gospel. That’s why God calls us to practice peace, real peace through witness in our lives and actions. Our actions and our lives have to serve as witness to reflect God’s love for us back into the world.

Justice, mercy, empathy, and love for all are the building blocks for lasting peace. The society God wants us to build has been described to us repeatedly. We are to care for the widow and the orphan, without distinction. We are called to feel the wounds of the world as Jesus did—to see them, and then work to heal them. We are to feed the hungry, even if our loaves are few and our fish are small. We are to insist upon a society in which there are not winners or losers, but in which each other person’s suffering is our own. We are not to be self-righteous in the face of poverty lest we reveal the poverty of our own spirits. We are called to action, not passivity, if we truly want to practice who we claim to be.

The Rev. Shug and I are wearing orange stoles today to memorialize the lives lost this week in mass shootings. And even more appalling is that there have been already 201 mass shooting in the US already in 2022, and we are only in the 19th week of the year.

The events of the last few weeks and months insist once again on us understanding this truth: evil cannot be overcome by evil-- it can only be overcome by good. Let us be united in our denunciation of the evils of racism, gun violence, and hatred. Let us pray for the souls of those victims of course. But let us be willing to ourselves act to eliminate the scourge of maimings and killings in which our society is drenched. Then and only then, will we truly embody the resurrection of heart, mind, and soul to which we commit ourselves each time we pray that prayer, and gather together here, individually and as the Body of Christ.

We are also called to take the long view as Christians—and to see the image of God in every person. We are called to serve our neighbors and love our enemies. We are an Easter people—a resurrection people. That means that we see that working to make our society more just and more filled with shalom will also increase our own connection with God and each other. The work of shalom, justice, and mercy is holy, and it benefits us all.

Peace, true peace, is a gift that blesses us only if it is shared with others—and the more the better. Jesus gives us the gift of shalom so that, by the help of the Holy Spirit, we can share that gift of shalom with those around us—and therefore we ALL benefit. Let us give of ourselves—not as the world gives, but as Christ gives to us.

Amen.

Preached at the 505, and the  8 and 10:30 Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO on May 21 and 22, 2022.

Readings:

Acts 16:9-15

Psalm 67

Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5

John 14:23-29

Citations:

1) Woody Guthrie, "My Peace," lyrics found at https://woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/My_Peace.htm   A video of Arlo Guthrie performing this song can be viewed below.

Commencing Resurrection: Speaking to the Soul, May 19, 2022

Revelation 21:1-6

It is graduation season all across the country, including in our own household. Our son Scott graduated last weekend from the University of Kansas with a degree in architectural engineering. The excitement is real, as the third of our three children has earned his degree!

Too often, a lot of attention gets placed upon the endings that the graduation season signifies: for some, the end of 13 years of secondary education; for others the end of four or more years of postsecondary education. A lot of blood, sweat, study, and sometimes tears have gone into these diplomas and degrees. For many of us in our parishes, it is the end of the program year, the end of the choir season, and the start of many parishioners scattering for vacations and summer holidays.

Perhaps it would be helpful if we could think of this not as a season of endings but as a season of commencement—a chance to use another word that is often used for these ceremonies, only extending the idea of growth more fully in our own lives. As we heard in one of our readings last Sunday, God is ever making all things new—even in extraordinary and unsettling times such as these.

What if we were to view May, June, and the warmer months as a time of re-invigoration, as a chance to use the gift of time summer presents as a new beginning, a time to strengthen our spiritual lives? For as difficult as the last two and a half years have been, how much more difficult would it have been without our faith communities us through the traumatic, anxious worldwide emergency of covid. This season of resurrection calls us to remember and re-member and embody God’s loving-kindness and compassion not just for ourselves, when we need it the most, but for those in the world who hunger and thirst for good news in these times.

The world all around us is bursting forth in its leafy, floral finery. What better time than now to dig deep and cultivate a sense of wonder, gratitude, enjoy in our hearts for all the gifts that God has given us, for each precious moment that we have to be with those we love, and to see the miracle of this beautiful earth that bears us tenderly within her embrace? To think of the myriad ways we have received and been given grace and kindness over the fall and winter months and the ways that imperfect people and imperfect times have nonetheless also shone a light into our hearts and minds. And even as we may travel here or there, to give thanks for the home that we experience in our parishes. Our faith communities, after all, have had to struggle and rethink so much of what we do and how we connect, just as teachers and students have had to, as well. How can we double down in our support of clergy and fellow parishioners?

Beloved, in summer especially, we see the physical proof that the commencement of each day brings new possibility, new hope, and new opportunities to deepen our connection and commitment to each other and to God, our Creator and Redeemer.

Let resurrection commence, in all our heart and souls!

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, May 19, 2022.

The Resurrection Journey: Sermon for Easter 4C

Here we are with spring getting ready to burst in on us—burst in, and go blasting right by as 90 degree temperatures are predicted in just a few days’ time. How appropriate then, that our gospel plunges us back into winter. Because in our reading today, from the middle of Jesus’s ministry, it was winter—the time of the season of Hanukkah, because that is what the Festival of the Dedication is—and Jesus is walking the Portico of Solomon at the Temple, trailed by some of those opponents who constantly love to ask him leading questions trying to trip him up.

At the beginning of this chapter of John's gospel, Jesus had just finished referring to himself as “the good shepherd” to the people, and being very specific about that, as well. Yet here are these supposedly learned leaders of the people claiming they need more specifics, more proof.

It’s funny that in their maneuvering to try to trip up Jesus, they give voice to THE central issue for all of us: we all would like to just have the answers handed to us. We’d all love to have God solve all our problems and protect us all from every misfortune like a genie giving us unlimited wishes. Those leaders want to have Jesus as their Messiah for what he can do for them, rather than for what that would inspire them to change in their lives. They don’t want to have to listen, study, learn, or change. They want the answers handed to them.

And even now, that’s the problem with the life of faith, isn’t it? Here we are in Easter, when everything is supposed to be glorious summer, but instead, in all honesty, we find ourselves mired in the winter of our discontent, in the troubles and gnawing doubts and anxieties that subsume so much of our lives right now. War and crimes against humanity in Europe. Injustices in our legal system. Loved ones ill and plunged into rounds of treatment. A new variant of COVID getting ready to wash over us. Our schools becoming battlegrounds and under siege by ignorance. Leaders who seize power by dividing rather than uniting, by grandstanding rather than doing the boring work of governing for the good of all. Is it any wonder that even our lectionary acknowledges the difficulty in believing in resurrection when there is so much struggle, strife and grievance flavoring our every waking moment?

Our readings the last few weeks have been filled with stories of struggles with belief in resurrection. The male apostles accuse the women at the tomb of idle gossip on Easter morning. Thomas demands to actually see and touch the wounds of Jesus to know he’s not a ghost. Peter is haunted by his denial of Jesus and subsequent loss of faith in himself. Have you notices this? Our Easter readings are frank acknowledgements of exactly the same struggles we encounter as we try to grasp the idea of resurrection as a reality when everything around us draws our attention to earthly troubles and divisions.

The life of faith is always under assault by the forces of contempt and denial. So it’s no wonder that Jesus, in our gospel reading today, cannot even conceal his impatience with the games his opponents keep trying to play. They are asking him questions not because they want the real answer—in fact, the real answer is a threat to their system of domination. That’s why they’ve refused to see the signs all over the place. And Jesus tells them just that.

Jesus returns to the image of the shepherd in his response to the haters. And you and I might miss out on how that in itself is a criticism and an accusation against his opponents.

Because the thing is, THEY are supposed to be the shepherds of the people. In the ancient Mediterranean world, a common metaphor for leadership was the shepherd. Even the symbols of the power of the Pharaoh of Egypt was the local equivalent of the rod and the staff we heard about in our psalm. In the Torah and writings of Israel, God was the ultimate shepherd, and kings and leaders were supposed to mimic that loving care and concern. Leaders were supposed to be self-sacrificing shepherds at one with the people, and repeatedly in the prophets such as Ezekiel and in the psalms like the beloved one we just heard, that model of loving solidarity and protection was the requirement for leadership. And just like an ancient prophet, Jesus has been pointing out that those leaders have been woefully inadequate in the shepherd department. Instead of shepherds, they’ve been jackals, picking off the weak and collaborating with the wolves of Rome.

So when Jesus brings up being a shepherd again in our gospel, he intended for his opponents to immediately remember the description from our psalm, which is not only a psalm of praise to God—it is also a manual for how to inspire others and courageously lead them by caring about them. And they don’t like it, because they know their leadership is not built on the model of self-sacrifice and complete trustworthiness, but on the model of exploitation and manipulation.

This is very much the situation in which we too live, thousands of years later. As that 20th century sage Prince Rogers Nelson famously introduced in one of his songs in the glorious decade of the 1980s, “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life; an electric word, life—it means forever and that’s a mighty long time….” (1)

Unlike that Prince, who advised us all to party like it was 1999, Jesus, the Prince of Peace, calls us to live like eternity matters. Jesus calls us to embrace the resurrected life as the ultimate pathway for a life that is filled with richness, direction, and value. To embrace life not just as a series of unfortunate events and struggles, but as an offering of thanksgiving and praise to God that in return fills us with confidence and joy no matter what obstacles we encounter.

Because the point of the life of faith is not merely to escape damnation and pronounce ourselves blessed: it’s to transform our living so that we live in imitation of Christ, that we truly dedicate ourselves to becoming his Body—his hands, heart, wisdom, and love—out in a world that is crying out for those things. It’s to offer those things to those around us because we acknowledge that we ourselves have received them from God, and they have transformed us from a people of fear to a people of hope.

So where are the instructions? How do we do this? The 23rd Psalm, the most beloved of all psalms, with images and verses known even to people with very little religious background, provides us with a sort of instruction manual as we embody the Shepherd's way of Resurrection.

The psalmist only knows the way to go because God, his own shepherd, is leading him. In the Mediterranean world, shepherds walked in front, and the sheep followed, unlike cattle that one drives with whips from the rear. Because the shepherd leads the sheep confidently, purposefully, the sheep know that all of their needs are going to be cared for. The shepherd, in a land that was persistently drought-stricken, knows the way to lush green fields that provide both plenteous forage along the way, but also is a sign that there is cool, sweet water nearby—another important consideration, as brackish or foul water could cause illness or even death. The shepherd’s leadership inspires faith and confidence and security in response to the anxiety we all encounter along the way.

In the anxiety of this journey, the soul can be wearied, bowed down, overcome by worry, anxiety, and stress. The shepherd knows this and counteracts it—by being right there with the sheep, by speaking tenderly to them, even by playing music or singing to them, so that even in the midst of the herd, each sheep can hear the comforting presence of the voice of the one who cares for them. In fact, the care and certainty with which the shepherd guides, leads, and cares for the sheep are such that the shepherd’s name becomes a watchword and symbol of faithful care and compassion. Such glorification of his name and his renown for his faithful care will even draw other sheep to seek out that shepherd themselves, just as God’s care of Israel was such that Isaiah spoke of the Temple becoming a house of prayer for all nations, and Paul carried the good news of the gospel out into the Gentile world. As we ourselves are called to be disciples not just inside these walls, but beyond these doors.

The shepherd responds to risks and dangers along the way, rather than making the empty promise that trials and dangers can be avoided. The shepherd does not promise that there will be no times of anxiety—but the sureness of his leadership means that even when the shadows are the deepest and the feeling of vulnerability and impending disaster seem greatest, the sheep fear no evil. The shepherd is in the front, with his rod, used to beat back predators, and his staff, used to guide the sheep and remove scorpions and snakes from the pathway are ever interposed between the sheep and any threats they may encounter. Even in the bleakest of environments, with dangers howling all around, the shepherd takes the lead and protects.

As shepherd and flock reach each resting place for the night, the shepherd makes sure that food aplenty is offered to all of his charges. This comforting domestic scene is enacted even with the wolves howling right outside the firelight of the crackling campfire. The sheep aren’t about to go hungry in the face of danger—on the contrary, that’s when the shepherd makes sure that the sheep aren’t just relieved of their anxiety, but treated to a sumptuous feast that shows a confidence and devotion that also makes a mockery of the predators’ attempts to panic the flock. The shepherd anoints and attends to all wounds with tenderness, making each sheep feel special and beloved.

And so, each day of the journey is veined with the surety of the shepherd’s devotion to the sheep, until at last they draw near to the home of the shepherd. Upon arrival at the shepherd’s home, the sheep still know that that same goodness and mercy that they experienced on the road will be their forever. Once there, the sheep realize that all that has followed and pursued them was not danger and heartbreak, but the goodness and mercy of the shepherd—the intrinsic and foundational qualities of God.

How is this journey possible? They key is in the very first verse: Notice that the opening metaphor in verse 1 contains a positive and a negative statement: “God is my shepherd” is positive; “Therefore I lack nothing” considers that there can be no need greater than the care and concern of God.” Perhaps that is why this psalm is so beloved. We have a tendency to focus on what we lack. Our lizard, instinctive levels of our brains are constantly on alert, perceiving threats everywhere. But if we take seriously the care and complete faithfulness of God toward us, we know that nothing can harm us.

That doesn’t mean we won’t encounter tragedy, or suffering, or illness, or even death. It means that God will be alongside us throughout those things. Never leaving us along to face them. And it means that God calls us into community to support each other and reach out to the lost as the most beautiful expression and use of this one precious life we have been given.

Today, especially, we remember and proclaim that Jesus is our good shepherd, walking alongside us and protecting us, laughing with us, mourning with us. Calling us all to live a resurrected life of hope, of faith, of generosity. To plant seeds of compassion, love and gratitude in the rocky soil of human systems of division and fear.

The resurrected life calls us to grow from being sheep to being shepherds ourselves, in joyful testimony and gratitude for the gifts that God has given us each and every moment. The resurrected life calls us to BE the change we want to see in the world. And the time to begin is now.

Amen.

Preached at the 8 and 10:30 am Eucharists at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO, on May 8, 2022.

Readings:

Acts 9:36-43

Psalm 23

Revelation 7:9-17

John 10:22-30

Citations:

1) Prince Rogers Nelson, "Let's Go Crazy,"from the album and film Purple Rain, 1984.

God, My Shepherd: Speaking to the Soul May 5, 2022

The 23rd Psalm

The Holy One is my Shepherd;
there is nothing else I need or lack.
In verdant fields God urges my rest,
by clear, sweet waters God leads me.
You refresh and revive my soul,
and are my guide to holy pathways
that I may glorify Your NAME in each step.
Even if evil and death overshadow me
and the walls of the deepest valley tower over me,
no fear of evil shall overtake me;
for You are my companion alongside me always;
Your rod and staff are ever between me and danger,
and I am comforted and at peace.
In the face of those who seek my harm
You prepare a feast;
You have marked me as holy and beloved,
and have filled my cup to overflowing.
The sureness of Your goodness and mercy
is the foundation and lodestar of my life,
and my home is with You in each moment,
and eternally.

Image: The Good Shepherd, by Laura James

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 5, 2022.

Breakfast at the Resurrection: Sermon for Easter 3C

Simon Peter’s head was swirling with thoughts, and his heart was churning with emotion. He felt the weight of guilt pressing down on him since the last time he has seen his Lord, on the night of his betrayal. He needed to get away. So he decided to say he was going fishing overnight—and of course, half of the other apostles immediately jumped in, demanding to come too.

It was torture. All he wanted was to be left alone with his failures—but instead he spent all night listening to the chatter of his fellow-apostles, who didn’t seem to notice he wasn’t his usual, impulsive self.

All he could think of was the red glow of that coal fire, and the reflection of that glow in the faces all around him as he had denied again and again that he knew Jesus. And then the rooster had crowed, and his heart had sunk like a stone, and he had run away.

He would never forgive himself.

Jesus had made a terrible mistake in claiming that he, Simon Peter, could be the head of the group, the leader of the apostles. He couldn’t continue Jesus’s work in proclaiming the good news of Jesus! He couldn’t even stand up for what he believed standing on a side street with a bunch of strangers.

Dawn came and, on top of having to endure PEOPLE all night long in that little boat, they hadn’t caught a damn’ thing. It was hot, and it was still, and the beer had run out a long time ago. It was the perfect combination of conditions for someone determined to be miserable, and it almost gave Simon Peter a grim, black sense of satisfaction.

Then, just about dawn, some guy on the shore had started calling out advice—and if there’s one thing a fisherman can’t stand, it’s some yahoo giving advice from the comfort of shore. “Cast your net on the right side,” the stranger had called. Oh, sure, THAT must be the problem.

But they hauled the nets up, sorted and rolled them, and then cast them on the right side of the boat. For a moment, the nets just sunk out of view into the gloom. And then, when they started to haul it up, the resistance caused the boat suddenly to tilt to one side. As soon as they had shifted their weight to right it, John had yelled out that the guy on shore was Jesus. He sounded so sure that Simon Peter squinted hard at the stranger—and he recognized the slope of those shoulders.

Simon Peter’s heart leapt to his throat, and he did the only thing he could think of—he made himself presentable and jumped over the side. It seemed like it took just seconds to reach the shore. Dripping, he took the hand Jesus offered as he flopped through the rushes, but then dropped it like it was hot. He saw that coal fire, burning merrily, and remembered.

He had no right to expect anything other than condemnation. He had denied his Savior three times to save his own neck, and he deserved nothing more than to be cast out.

Instead, he got breakfast. Breakfast, and forgiveness. There between the white-hot memory of two fires, and three denials.

On that ordinary day, Jesus makes sure the spiritual wounds of Peter are tended to, and placed on the way to healing.

One of the things that is most striking is the ordinariness surrounding Jesus’s encounters with his followers after his resurrection in the gospel of John.

Jesus appears so ordinary that no one recognizes him at first. Mary Magdalene thinks he’s the gardener just outside his empty tomb. The other apostles have to see the wounds on his body to recognize him—and some even demand it as we heard last week. And now, here he just shows up on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias, another name for the Sea of Galilee and starts yelling out fishing advice.

And, once again, it is in a simple meal that Jesus communicates so much. Jesus himself has provided the fire, some fish, and the bread—and invites them to contribute too, just as we do to this day in the Eucharist. As the apostles struggle to get the boat to shore dragging their bulging net, some of them remember that time along that same shore that Jesus had fed a multitude with just a few fish and a couple of simple loaves of bread.

So often, we expect to see Jesus surrounded by the miraculous. That expectation fools us, though, and makes us forget this most important fact that Jesus himself alluded to time and again in his teaching: Jesus is almost always found where we least expect him, because he is most present to us as one of us. The stranger offering us advice we don’t want to hear. The hungry elderly man choosing food over medical care. The homeless person seeking shelter and community who feels she’s been cast away by anyone she has ever loved. The refugees fleeing the only home they’ve ever wanted for the probably unfriendly shores of a foreign land where they may never be accepted.

It is in the ordinary that the true miracle of Christ’s love plays itself out for us in each moment, whether of joy or sorrow. We too often live between the fires of our past failures and our current temptation to take the easy way still. Yet we have all been called, like Peter, to proclaim our discipleship—and all of us have had times where we have failed. But not a word of blame is spoken by Jesus to Simon Peter, or to us. Just a simple question: Do you love me? And then Jesus feeds us, body and soul.

Each time Jesus asks, one of Simon Peter’s three denials is blotted out. “Do you love me?” Jesus asks again and again, even though he already knows the answer.

And many of us are bearing burdens of guilt and shame. Many of us, like Peter, allow our failures to haunt us. Sometimes, the hardest person to forgive is yourself. Sometimes, it’s so overwhelming that we go the other way-- we even deny we have done anything wrong, we refuse to acknowledge how we have taken others and our relationships for granted, in order to avoid admitting we have anything for which we need forgiveness. But, unless we are narcissists, we know better. And it eats inside us.

Jesus doesn’t come to Peter there on the shore of the Sea of Tiberias and demand that Peter beg for forgiveness. Instead, Jesus offers him breakfast. Breakfast, and the reassurance that Peter is still beloved, that Jesus still believes in him enough to turn over the care and feeding of his followers to Peter.

And here we are. Two thousand years later, and Jesus calls to us from the shore too, telling us to have faith and put down our nets, just as the rest of society claims that we are in a hopelessly secular time. We stay silent with the good news of Christ—and allow others to seize the microphone, claiming that God is all about retribution and fear and might making right. Our silence can be deadly.

In our gospel, those nets have been empty all night—and they remind me of the way many of us feel, on a personal level, that our nets are empty after these last years of stress and worry. How many times have we put our nets down in the last few years, and hauled them up empty, and had to persevere anyway? The dashed hopes, the lack of an obvious end point has been mentally, spiritually, and physically exhausting.

And that experience of the empty nets can apply to our religious life as well. We may feel that our nets are empty spiritually. And for those of us who pay attention to such matters, the decline of the role of faith in so many people’s lives is also a cause for worry. I think of the continued tales of gloom and doom that many proclaim as the number of people who profess faith in God and who attend religious services continues to shrink in North America and in Europe. Empty nets, empty pews.

Yet—a time of empty nets is also a time of opportunity, as Jesus reminds us. If our nets are empty, perhaps it’s because we are putting them down in the wrong place both for ourselves and in our spiritual lives. The fact is that there are plenty of fish there. Among those who think that Christianity is all about power and might and judging others. Among those who have been hurt by the Church’s tendency toward being an institution rather than a way of life devoted to serving God and each other, and in doing so, finding ourselves. Sometimes, even when we feel the most bereft, we realize that we have drifted away. God hasn’t. God is always there, calling to us from the shore. Urging us to remember whose we are. And urging us to cast down our nets that all can know the warmth of God’s love for them—love we all so desperately need.

We cast down our nets for ourselves and for others, not by fear or threats of a wrathful God, but through the lives WE live as people of resurrection, as people of hope, out in a world that is STARVED for that message. We speak up over the din of division, self-centeredness, and hatred, and let the love and light of Jesus shine out of us by the life Jesus offers us—and offers all—there on the shores of the sea. Jesus offers love, compassion, forgiveness, and nourishment. 

That scene is a reminder to all of us to put our nets down where the need is the greatest. And be willing to joyfully take part in the work of discipleship-- the reason why we're here in the first place, really. We're reminded of that at the end of our gospel, because the reading ends with two simple words: “Follow me.” Simple, but not easy, as Peter and the apostles and as you and me all know.

“Do you love me?” Jesus asks us right now. Yes? Then let down your nets, and gather all you can. Draw the world to Jesus in your words and actions, and in your love most of all. Don’t worry about being overwhelmed, or about the net breaking. The net of faith is strong enough to hold everyone. Don’t worry about your own failures and shortcomings and doubts—know that you are beloved of Jesus, beloved, and worthy, and called to living a resurrected life. 

Preached at the 505 on April 30, and at the 8:00 and 10:30 am Eucharists on May 1, 2022 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

Acts 9:1-6, (7-20)

Psalm 30

Revelation 5:11-14

John 21:1-19