Being Made New: Sermon for Pentecost Sunday, 2023

Descent of the Spirit, Ivanka Demchuk (Ukrainian), 2022. Used by Permission.

Today is a day of creation.

In our readings we just heard, we were taken from the very first beginnings of this precious Earth upon which we all depend, filled with marvels great and small; to Peter’s recounting of God’s love for God’s people throughout history to Easter Sunday to fifty days later, to the Day of Pentecost—and imaginatively, to today.

It’s the birthday of the Church—and we are the ones who have been given the presents. Yet this may be a present that at first glance we are not sure we really like. In the film, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Ferris complains that his parents, rather than giving him a car, gave him a computer. Never mind that that gift of a computer allows him to take his “day off” from school—and even erase the evidence from the records at school. Like teenagers everywhere, he equates what he doesn’t have with freedom.

Perhaps that is how many of us feel about our relationship with the Holy Spirit. It’s the part of the Trinity that lots of us most want to hold at arms’-length. Flames of fire popping out over our heads like we’re Bunsen burners? The way she seizes control of people by the hairs of their head and drives them out into the wilderness or into the streets speaking a whole new language? We are post-modern people, and if there is one thing that is true about most of us, it’s that we want to be in charge of our own lives. Mmmm, not sure about all this.

But today is the day we remember that without the Holy Spirit, there would be no Church. There would be no fellowship. There would be no communion. Without the Holy Spirit, all we would know of the life of faith would be in the words in a dusty library of books written by people who thought the world was flat, claimed that there was really only one gender that mattered and that women were at best defective males, and would have reacted to the fact that we can carry access to libraries greater than the library at Alexandria around in our pockets and to our loved ones voices even when they’re thousands of miles away probably with an accusation that we were practicing witchcraft, which never ends well for those accused, my friends. You can look it up.

The Holy Spirit has been there all along, as our psalm today reminds us. And without spoiling next week’s Trinity Sunday sermon too much, our psalm portion today reminds us that the Holy Spirit contains the playful creativity and imagination of God, even if it’s the part that is the hardest to depict without resorting to drawing floating, curly red flames over noggins or pretty white doves, which seems altogether too meek and mild to describe something that also creates mountains just so they can smoke when touched by God’s hand. Maybe the Scots have it right when they at least depict the Holy Spirit as a wild goose, because if you have ever encountered one of those defending its nest while out on a walk, you know what it’s like to meet something that hisses like a viper and charges with the ferocity of Godzilla or Gamera or some other Japanese monster movie character.

So what exactly does the Holy Spirit do within God that helps us?

First, she gives us the courage and the inspiration to put to embody the very best of our natures—the things Jesus came to teach us, the Holy Spirit takes and sets on fire within our souls. All the best of humanity as implanted into us at our creation: our courage to selflessly lay down our lives for others like that our Memorial Day holiday tomorrow also enshrines.

And we need that courage and sense of community. With Jesus’s rising and then ascension we are assured we will never be alone. And with the gift of the Holy Spirit, that promise is brought to fulfilment—even when things seem the bleakest. And so as we meditate upon what it means to welcome the Holy Spirit into our lives, I ask that you take a look at the beautiful icon on the cover of our bulletin. It is by a Ukrainian iconographer named Ivanka Demchuk.

Ms. Demchuk was born in 1990 in Lviv, Ukraine, which is a city on the far western border of Ukraine-- a city that has been batted back and forth between countries since its founding in the 13th century. It has at various times been claimed by Poland, Lithuania, Austria, the Soviet Union, and then, right as Ms. Demchuk was born, the restored nation of Ukraine.

Although technically Russia and Ukraine have been at war since 2014, the invasion of eastern Ukraine by Russia in February, 2022 was a cataclysmic intensification of Russian aggression, resulting in the internal displacement of 8 million Ukrainians within the country, as well as over 8 million more fleeing as refugees into Europe as of May 2023, creating the biggest refugee crisis in Europe since World War II. Many of those internal refugees are sheltering in Lviv—or pass through it on their way out of the country. It is no exaggeration to wonder how much this long threat has influenced Ms. Demchuk’s icons.

Of this particular piece, Ms. Demchuk explained to me that she had a commission for an icon on the descent of the Holy Spirit right before the Russian invasion. This invasion then led her to consider the similarities between the situation of the disciples in that upper room and the Ukrainian people as their country was being invaded. She writes, “I was thinking all the time how relevant in some meaning the situation is, especially for Ukrainian people who are under occupation of the invaders. Same as the apostles, they were hiding and in anxiety, and hoping- so I was praying for the Holy Spirit to help them to find a peace for their souls and help to endure these difficult times.”(1)

And if we are paying attention, we have seen the people of Ukraine respond with courage, with faith, with determination to resist the evil that seeks to tear them apart. And in our two depictions from John and the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit descends upon the gathered disciples the same way it descended upon Jesus at his baptism, and for the same reason: to empower us for them, and therefore us, for our mission into the world for the sake of the world. Nothing less. To realize our true ministry is not behind locked doors of buildings or hearts but out into the streets of the world.

At Pentecost, through the power of the Spirit, we are reminded that language is power, empowering us to carry the gospel of Christ throughout the farthest reaches of the world as disciples, evangelists, and teachers—as Christians who are the Church.

But the disciples’ first new language came as a challenge even earlier, for them as well as us. As soon as those early disciples answered Jesus’s call to follow him, they had to learn the language of Jesus—a strange language, then and now, awash in a grammar of grace rather than a grammar of vengeance.

We are still learning Jesus’s language of reconciliation today. It is the language of salvation, but not salvation for selfish ends. Rather, this language calls all disciples, them as well as us, to find the vocabulary for helping to repair the world and our relationships within it, with each other and ultimately, with God. This idea of responsibility of faithful people to repair the world is what our Jewish brothers and sisters call tikkun olam.

This language was filled with strange ideas, in which the greatest is the least, the least is the greatest, in which forgiveness and grace are more important than being right or self-righteous. Even after Jesus’s life on Earth was done, we can see that the disciples were still trying to make sense of that language. And we are too. We ourselves as Christians 2000 years later also continually work at acquiring that same language and it’s still just as alien and difficult for us as it was for them. The power of the Holy Spirit is here to help us continue learning Jesus’s counter-cultural grammar of grace and reconciliation.

Three of our readings today—from Acts 2, Psalm 104, and John 20-- hearken back to creation, and remind us that creation is not a one-time event. God did not make heaven and earth so much as God IS MAKING heaven and Earth. With the same breath or Spirit or wind that hovered over creation at the dawn of time, Jesus breathes that same life-giving, empowering, creative Spirit over and into the disciples and sends them en masse out into the streets, where they are then empowered to go and make more disciples of all nations and all peoples. Rather than the end, they begin anew. Our celebration of Pentecost today reminds us to begin anew, too, and draw closer to God so that we may serve God in all our lives.

Presiding Bishop Michael Curry makes this connection between Pentecost and creation clear in his book Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus. He says,

“When we draw closer to God, we draw closer to each other, for we are all children of the one God who created us all. And when God draws us closer, the Spirit moves, and we experience the power of Pentecost, that day many Christians over the centuries have regarded as the day when the Church was born. Paul said, “If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”(2)

That doesn’t mean we have to be perfect. Seriously. Remember those same apostles. They took being NOT perfect to an art form. And thank God for that. That allows us to have hope for ourselves.

The Spirit moves over the world at creation, and the Spirit moves over us seeking to restore and renew creation within us. I want you to listen in a few minutes during the Eucharistic prayer we are going to pray together as Christ’s Church for the world. Listen as we call down the Spirit to move over the bread and wine, and therefore over US, so that WE can be made a new creation before God as we lift our hearts in thanks. Listen as we ask that same Spirit to transform us as God’s children and heirs, to be sent out into the world to continue Christ’s mission to all the world as his Holy Church.

Just as creation is ongoing, the Church is not something tied to a specific time or place or event in history. The Church is not a building. The Church is not a hierarchy. The Church is not a denomination. The Church is not a social club. The Church is the Body of Christ, bound together in bonds tighter than the closest family bonds we may have known. The Church does not exist for its own sake, and that’s a crucial point to make, I think, in this day and age, when institutions can run roughshod over people, and when it seems we are more divided by ever.

As members of the Church, empowered by the Holy Spirit, called to live out the gospel of Christ, we too do not exist for our own sake, or for our own salvation. Instead, we are called into discipleship for the life of the world, to go out into the places that most need the light of Christ, starting with the corners of our own hearts-- and then spreading outward into the entire world.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, the Church is part of the mystical Body of Christ and as such, is given FOR the world as an offering. As each of us remember this day that we are the Church we are called to offer ourselves for the good of others. We are called to build bridges between people who are all so different, and yet united by bearing the image of God that was planted in all of us at creation, no matter what our race, background, social class, or perceived “goodness” or “sinfulness.”


Pentecost reminds us to open ourselves to the power of God in the world right now. Jesus is still creating a new Spirit within us, calling the Church out into the streets to testify to this ongoing creation in the world—and that is you and me, not an institution or a building or just the clergy, but all of us who are baptized by water and the Spirit, as our Baptismal liturgy reminds us. Each and every baptized Christian, whether lay or ordained, is a minister of the gospel of Jesus. Each and every one of us, as Christians, is called to testify to the power of the love of God as revealed in Christ Jesus in the world, by living lives of joy, compassion, wisdom, faith, hope, and healing—all of which qualify as grade-A, bona fide miracles in this day and age of cynicism and greed.

Pentecost, Dame Warburg Welch

In a few moments, we are going to be called to say together the words of the Nicene Creed, which is the description of how the Trinity works and moves within our lives. We haven’t said those words since Easter Day—something that three of you all have asked me about, which earns you a gold star.

I hope you hear those words anew on this Pentecost Day. I hope, no matter how much certain parts of it make you want to cross your fingers behind your backs, you listen especially to the escription of what the Holy Spirit does in our lives there in that last paragraph where she is the star of the show. And then I hope you listen for what the Spirit does as we pray together the Eucharistic prayer—especially as we all collectively call her down into our midst to change ordinary stuff of creation and human hands into the very Body of Christ into our midst, so that we can be formed and sent out, strengthened and encouraged, just like those apostles on that Pentecost Day two millennia ago.

We can be the miracle. Let us go forth by the power of the Spirit. Let us be the Church in and for the world.

Preached at the 505 on May 27 and the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist on May 28, 2023, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church.

Readings:

Acts 2:1-21

Psalm 104:25-35, 37

1 Corinthians 12:3b-13

John 20:19-23

Citations:

1) Email exchange wit Ivanka Demchuk, May 24, 2023, on Etsy. Copies of Ms Demchuk's art can be purchased at Modern Icon Art.

Michael B. Curry, Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus, Kindle edition, kindle location 1347-1350. 

Home Among the Weeds: Speaking to the Soul May 25, 2023

At our former home

my beloved disliked
our Rose of Sharon trees—
he likened them to weeds.

Yet I am convinced
that it is always the “weeds”
that provide the most refuge
without asking anything in return.

In five minutes,
I watched six hummingbirds
zoom around the blossoms
as they jockeyed for a chance
at each unfurling blossom.

I watched cardinals
and Carolina wrens fight
over the ripening grape clusters
from the vine
that is supported by not one but two trees
along our fence.

I watched butterflies—
humble little skippers,
but also hairstreaks, fritillaries,
swallowtails,
and oh my God, even a monarch,
once so ubiquitous
but now almost as surprising to see
as a Bengal tiger.

Even on my deck I could hear
the thrum of probably thirty bumble bees
hovering like tugboats from blossom to bloom,
staying aloft
only God knows how.

We owe our lives
to the “weeds” of this world,
to their humble welcome
and hospitality,
anchoring the chain of life.

Is that not beautiful?

--This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 25, 2023.

Created for Wonder: Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension (transferred)

There are a variety of images of the Ascension that have been visualized by artists throughout the centuries, and they range from straightforward illustrations from one of the readings we just heard, to the somewhat weird and then to the sublime. 

Icons are usually pretty straightforward: Disciples gathered around, Jesus rising to heaven, maybe a rainbow breaks out. Weird ones show just Jesus’s feet dangling in the top center of the picture, focusing on the comically awe-struck faces of the disciples. But the sublime ones express the mystery that is at the heart of the Ascension in a way that promoted thought and wonder.

One of my favorite images of the ascension of Christ is one by Salvador Dali, painted in 1958. It’s actually called Ascension: Pieta. This is not one of his stranger paintings with crutches and melted watches, or impossibly spindly, toothpick-legged horses or robotic humanoid figures.

This one is hyper-realistic. Christ is depicted floating directly over the viewer’s head, so you see bare feet, thighs, ribcage expanded like a diver getting ready to plunge, arms outstretched, hands powerfully flexed, straining and grasping at the air. Jesus’s chin is pointed skyward. The feet are smudged; Jesus’s time walking with the disciples is over.

But this diver is plunging upward, upward into the center of perhaps the nucleus of a cell, but more probably the center of an atom. See, this painting was inspired by a dream he’d had years before, soon after mankind first began creating atomic weapons. Dali depicts Jesus entering the nucleus of the atom, literally becoming one with all, part of the building block of the universe, which is actually a beautiful way of thinking about God using a scientific metaphor. Dali’s Christ turns thus bodily transforms a figure of destruction into a hope for new creation and unity. 

The "pieta" part of Dali's vision shows Dali’s wife Gala posing as the Jesus’s mother Mary, looking down on the world, weeping; knowing how her son has suffered and continues to struggle against the evil in the world. Yet even here the risen Christ, on his way to heaven, acts to unify with what we have used all our vanity and skill to break apart, offering to bring peace where we have unleashed destruction. Dali uses the Ascension to insist on the inherent unity of faith with science, and of Creator and creation, with Christ as the mediator.

Given that the Feast of the Ascension is about Jesus leaving his disciples and ascending to heaven, one might wonder, first of all, how this is something that should be celebrated, and whether anyone in their right minds can actually believe it happened at all. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen sarcastic pictures of Jesus dressed like an astronaut noting that, unless he obtained warp speed, even after 2,000 years he would still be zooming through the space in the Milky Way, our own galaxy.

The meaning and truth of the Ascension, or any biblical account, does not depend upon whether writers 2,000 years ago could describe what they experienced and witnessed with scientific precision. The Bible was never meant to be a scientific text—nor was it ever meant to be used to oppose or contradict science, reason, or knowledge. Whether in theology or in literature, great stories can expose deep truths about ourselves and our world even using fictional events and characters. The beauty of the Anglican strand of Christianity is that most of us are quite willing to imaginatively engage with both science and faith, and see them as complementary.

For instance, we no longer believe in a three-layered cosmos, with the Earth surrounded by waters and held up by pillars. And hopefully most of us have abandoned the idea that the Earth is flat too. Hopefully! 

We now know our galaxy alone has 50 galaxies within it, with maybe as many as 100 billion stars, most with their own systems, and that there are possibly 200 billion galaxies in the observable universe. That we know of right now. Where “heaven” is in relationship to all that is not a fruitful line of inquiry for most of us.

But that doesn’t mean that the Ascension is untrue. It is true in what it expresses—that Jesus lives, and is available to all of us and seeks out relationship with all of us that we may change the world. While in his earthly ministry, as a human he accepted certain limitations. He couldn’t be in two places at once, for instance, and so his ministry was limited to a small part of the world. Even in his resurrected body, he was still limited to this constraint until his ascent.

It's funny—we supposedly live in a scientific age, but most people’s actual knowledge of science, mine included, is not that great. Yet we use the tools of science to assault anything that threatens our own assumptions. We are now at the point when people simply block themselves off from information they don’t like—a perversion of not just the so called scientific revolution, but the tactic of tyrants and despots throughout history.

Yet God created us for wonder. And that’s part of what faith is all about.

So what might we take from the Ascension that would have meaning in our own lives? There’s enough there for a book (or many). It is about the uniting of creation with God, the completion of the unification of human with deity that began with Jesus’s entry into the world and continues after his return to God. It is the same mystery we celebrate every time we prayer together the Eucharistic prayer and unite ourselves with the ongoing heavenly banquet before God’s throne.

The Ascension is a mystery.

WHAT heaven is, and the kingdom of God is, is what Jesus came to us to reveal— and, as our scriptures today remind us for us then to reveal to the world. And he was clear that it was not a place as a state of existence beyond life and death. He was clear that it IS a state of existence that we could and do participate in, seeking it, working for it, NOW.

Heaven, the kingdom of God, is now—where peace, justice, equality, communion, compassion, generosity, abundance, grace, sacrifice, the common good, empathy—otherwise known as love in action-- reign. And we are called to help exemplify that and build that with our voices, our actions, our advocacy, our time, our choices, and our very lives.

And where Hell is now, where violence, injustice, oppression, hatred, contempt, deprivation, want, fear, selfishness, destruction, and cruelty—otherwise known as evil and sin, from individual to systemic-- reign. And we are called to resist that not just with “thoughts and prayers,” but with our voices, our actions, and our advocacy, our time, our choices, and our very lives.

That’s where Jesus’s Ascension comes in. The Ascension is the fulfillment of the Incarnation. In Jesus’s birth, God entered time and history. In the Resurrection, Jesus defeats death. In the Ascension, humanity is taken into the Godhead, for the Incarnate One sits at the right hand of God in his humanity and well as his divinity. Creation becomes one with Creator.

Jesus returns to God, the first resurrected one, completing the work in incarnation, in which humanity and creation become physically, truly one with God. Through Christ we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to witness to the Good News of God’s dream for us. Through Jesus’s Ascension, he is no longer rooted to any one place but becomes available to all as a living, loving presence in each of our lives. Through Jesus’s Ascension, the focus of Jesus’s followers moves from “What must we do to be saved?” to “What can we do to serve God and each other?” Inward to outward. From Jerusalem throughout the world.

Jesus’s leave-taking as necessary for us to continue to grow toward spiritual adulthood and fuller discipleship. Jesus promises he will NOT leave us orphaned, as we heard in our gospel reading last weekend; but he also commissions us to carry on his work in the world as both individual disciples and as a community known as the Church. Jesus honors us by placing the task of witnessing to him and his gospel in our hands.

We are not called by Jesus to stand looking up. We are called by Jesus to look around. To look around, to see the wounds of the world, wounds human hands have inflicted all too often and human silences have made worse. We are then called to look within, to look within our hearts and to the very atoms of our bodies and all creation, where Christ longs to dwell. To look within, and then around again, and see the wonder of the intricacies of creation, signposts of God’s love that is also embedded into the very atoms of this world.

The great 20th century poet and songwriter Bob Dylan underwent a religious conversion in the 1980s, and became a Christian. He wrote a song that combines this acknowledgement of the sinfulness and the beauty that is woven through our existence. It’s called "Every Grain of Sand:"

In the time of my confession, in the hour of my deepest need
When the pool of tears beneath my feet flood every newborn seed
There's a dying voice within me reaching out somewhere
Toiling in the danger and in the morals of despair

Don't have the inclination to look back on any mistake
Like Cain, I behold this chain of events that I must break
In the fury of the moment, I can see the master's hand
In every leaf that trembles, in every grain of sand

Oh, the flowers of indulgence and the weeds of yesteryear
Like criminals, they have choked the breath of conscience and good cheer
And the sun beat down upon the steps of time to light the way
To ease the pain of idleness and the memory of decay

I gaze into the doorway of temptation's angry flame
And every time I pass that way I always hear my name
Then onward in my journey, I come to understand
That every hair is numbered like every grain of sand

I have gone from rags to riches in the sorrow of the night
In the violence of a summer's dream, in the chill of a wintery light
In the bitter dance of loneliness fading into space
In the broken mirror of innocence on each forgotten face

I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea
Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, at times it's only me
I'm hanging in the balance of a perfect finished plan
Like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand.(1)


Yes, we can see the heartbreak of this world. But we can also see the wonder. Then go, empowered by love, and BE Christ’s own hands and heart to heal and reconcile. Because we know we are not alone.

The point is, we are not supposed to just stand there as Jesus ascends, gazing up at heaven, waiting for God to “do something.” We are commissioned to go do something—lots of things—ourselves in ministry to the world. We can do this because we know that God, Trinity and Unity all at once, is still with us within us, in every bone and sinew and atom, challenging us, inspiring us, urging us to practice resurrection in every thing we do.

Today, we celebrate the risen and ascended Christ, risen to his glorification so that he can intercede for ALL of us, risen, but never gone, never leaving us alone. And we can look around this creation that God tenderly created and continues to love and treasure, and be filled with wonder and awe. And then joyfully, filled with wonder, to take up Jesus’s call to witness, to reconcile, to heal, with every blessed, sacred atom of our beings.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on May 20, and at the 8:00 and 10:30 am Holy Eucharists at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

Acts 1:1-11 

Psalm 93

Ephesians 1:15-23

Luke 24:44-53

Citations:

1) Bob Dylan, "Every Grain of Sand," from the album Shot of Love, 1981.

Blessing Beyond Boundaries: Speaking to the Soul May 18, 2023

The rogation procession begins at the parish door, 

in ages past a lion leading the way,
priest and people tracing and beating the parish bounds,
icons aloft, each footfall a proclamation of hope and gratitude–
saints old and new, invoking and being invoked,
that our labor may ever serve each other
and you, Lord Christ, as you ascend.

Creator God,
who laid the foundations of the earth,
and filled the sky with light both by day and by night,
we ask that you bless us this day.

New life springs up from freshly turned soil,
each furrow tracing the hills studiously,
gratefully drinking in the spring rains
like a child at breast.

Bless the fields, our holy ground and succor,
that they may thrum with the song of the diligent bees,
who help make our harvests bountiful,
orchard blossoms releasing a redolent sweetness,
scenting the air with hope.

Bless the skies, dappled with dawn,
that they may bring forth sunshine and rain in good measure,
sustaining the tender plants as they burgeon and bud,
sun gazing benevolently, enticing seed to sprout,
clouds and wind reviving the sleepy dance of ripening grain.

Bless our common toil, our labor and industry,
as we offer our strength and skill
for the sustenance of your people,
that we may minister and midwife
your renewal of the gravid, engraced earth,
that the gifts yielded to us may bless one and all,
even to the communion we share,
offering and gift,
born of earth, hearth, and Spirit.

Ever enclose us within your bounds, O God,
and call us safely into your fold and embrace,
that we may flower and bloom anew
awash in wonder, sustained by goodness.
in kinship and in kindness to your glory
clothing the earth anew.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 18, 2023.

Image:  Jules Breton - La Bénédiction des blés en Artois, 1857

UnChained: Speaking to the Soul, May 11, 2023

“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”—Mahatma Gandhi

1 Peter 3:13-22

How should we respond when treated badly, even while doing good? How do we react when being good is no shield to suffering? Why do we think being good and then treated badly are even related? This is a question that hangs over the epistle reading from Peter’s first letter that will be read this coming weekend. Years ago, these questions even became the topic of a popular book by Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, entitled When Bad Things Happen to Good People. The question of why bad things happen even to people of faith is one that haunts followers of every faith, as well as those who have none—and often those who have turned their backs on faith have done so precisely because of this question. The insistence of God’s continued goodness in the face of injustice and evil even has a special name in theology: theodicy.

Let’s face it: God does not try to blackmail us into belief, but instead honors our free will that was given to us in our creation in God’s image. And as unsatisfying as it may be, it is true that sometimes things just happen. If believing in God would protect people from everything from everyday betrayals to suffering and oppression, there wouldn’t be atheists—but many people would also have a shallow, transactional faith, which really is close to no faith at all. Yet the story of Jesus himself, his passion and betrayal in particular, reminds us that we are framing the issue the wrong way. If Jesus himself could be betrayed by a friend and suffer a horrific death, then we ourselves cannot assume that we are inoculated from pain or suffering, either. We can, however, be reassured by the knowledge that Jesus not only understands our suffering and pain, but is alongside us in those experiences. We can also determine that we ourselves are going to be part of the healing, rather than part of the wounding. We are not promised a reward when doing what we should, just as we don’t always get punished when we are doing something wrong. These kinds of situations occur more often than we would like, certainly.

It is said that “Hurt people hurt people.” This is a profound truth for many hurtful acts deliberately committed. Threatened people lash out, jealous people try to tear others down—and on and on it goes. This is the chain of pain that often gets passed down through generations. And let’s be honest: previous generations didn’t really know how to move toward healing, either. Trauma, revenge, and belligerence are handed down through generations just the same as hair color or blood type. The difference is, we ourselves can decide to break the cycle of pain, develop an understanding of suffering that it is universal, and even pray for those who seek to do us harm.

But, if we practice the gift of listening, and of honesty, we can decide how WE are going to react to the residual pain that reverberates in our souls from the pains inflicted upon us or upon those in our lives. Not by repaying wrong with wrong, and by letting go of the injury that has been done to us, trusting in God that the grace we receive through love that knows no limits can put in perspective the harm we have suffered. While there is life, there is hope, and while there is hope, there is forgiveness and peace.

May we all seek first of unchain ourselves from our own woundedness, and seek the assurance of Christ’s love for us, and determine to walk gently among each other and upon this earth, forging a new cycle of community and love—the very definition of God’s kingdom come and God’s will be done.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 11, 2023.

Words and Actions: Sermon for Easter 5A

In 1988, a little-known jazz and folk musician named Bobby McFerrin broke nearly every rule of popular music and popular culture with a little ditty he wrote that rose all the way to number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts.

First of all, the song was a capella, which means vocal music with no instrumental accompaniment, and we are talking about rock and roll.

Second of all, it displaced Guns N Roses’s “Sweet Child o’ Mine” at that number one slot-- a song that one can both simultaneously love and hate. You can love it for lead guitarist’s Slash’s musical genius, as guitar aficionados consider his lead guitar work to be #37 of the top 100 guitar solos of all time. You can also hate it because first of all, this damn song never seems to die. You can hate it due to Axl Rose’s whiny vocals blatting all over a six minute song—one that was so long the band didn’t know how to end it, which is why Rose sings “Where do we go? Where do we go now?” as they look for some kind of musical stopping point. Seriously. And if you are from St. Louis, you can hate it even more because a 1991 riot at the- then newish Riverport Ampitheatre here in St. Louis ignited by Axl Rose almost destroyed the joint and got the band banned from St. Louis until 2017. For real. You can look it up.

But back to Bobby McFerrin. The little song he wrote, as he himself tells us in its opening lines is called “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.” McFerrin was living in San Francisco, and he saw posters reminiscent of the 60s for a jazz duo named Tuck and Patty (look them up, they are also fabulous) repeating this slogan from the 1960s: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy,” which had first been popularized by the Indian guru Meher Baba.

The song starts out with happy whistling and scat singing, which is repeated in between each verse. Then the singer, in a humorous accent, begins:

Here's a little song I wrote
You might want to sing it note for note
Don't worry, be happy
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry, you make it double
Don't worry, be happy…

McFerrin then goes on to list things that one might worry about: not having a bed, your landlord threatening to begin eviction proceedings, being broke, being unfashionable, not having a girlfriend… The answer to all these things is “Don’t worry, be happy!” and happy whistling like you don’t have a care in the world. The video, since this was the age of MTV, was also charming, and included our favorite Hollywood Episcopalian, Robin Williams.

It was infectious. And it was amazing—especially when we learned that every single sound on the song was produced by McFerrin using his voice and his body. And by the way, how many of you now have this tune echoing around in your head? You’re welcome.

Now, there are always going to be naysayers who sneer at the idea of a song making much of a difference, and there are also those people who will fight you tooth and nail if you try to encourage them NOT to be miserable.

But.

The world NEEDED this song in 1988. It was an intense year, and not just because that’s the year I got married. The US was embroiled in the Iran-contra affair, which alleged that government officials had illegally provided the Iranians weapons in their war with Iraq in exchange for secret payments that could be laundered to fund extremist rebels against the extremist government in Nicaragua a half a world away. 

Iraq, meanwhile, was poisoning the Kurdish people who lived within its borders with poison gas. We finally concluded yet another treaty trying to control the spread of Intermediate Range Nuclear Weapons, because yes, we were still afraid that some madman would launch a nuclear war that would extinguish the human race and indeed the planet. In southwest Asia, Myanmar erupted in pro-democracy protests led by students against its military dictatorship, as Poland experiences the rise of protests against its Communist government by the working class movement called “Solidarity.” 

The Soviet Army finally withdrew from its invasion of Afghanistan after 8 bloody years, and the Space Shuttle program flew its first mission nearly three years after the tragic Challenger disaster. An earthquake in Armenia killed 60,000 people.

We were tense, afraid, worried about the future for a variety of reasons. So thank God for Bobby McFerrin trying to reassure us with five minutes of light-hearted piece of perspective altering. The success of this song actually disproved the claim that telling someone to calm down never actually calms anyone down. As light-hearted as this song was, it was much-needed medicine. It was wrapped around the truth that worrying never solves ANYTHING, and that keeping our perspectives firmly fixed in what we have right now can help us avoid needlessly torturing ourselves about what might, or might not, be.

We all NEED these reminders. We are hard-wired to notice and hyperfixate on things we perceive as threats, and when we let that take up all our capacity, we then fail to notice and appreciate things that are gifts, blessings or causes for joy. Our adrenal system takes over when we worry, and we become blind to anything good. Ironically, one of the things that can most soothe moods is music. And so, yes, I am convinced Bobby McFerrin did us all a great service that year, and it paid off for him too. He received the Grammy for Song of the Year, Record of the Year, and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance in 1989.

The opening words in our gospel passage today depict Jesus trying his best to encourage his followers not to worry as they too face some of the darkest days of their lives—so dark, they still don’t understand how dark it is about to get. And so he starts with “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me.” He then promises that even when his physical presence is no longer with his beloved friends and disciples, they can never be separated from him or from God.

We need that reassurance, because several of the readings for this week sound like the plagues of 1988. In Acts, Stephen, deacon and first martyr of the infant Church, is stoned to death by religious authorities who accuse him of blasphemy as he testifies to his experience with Jesus. Yet even with this horrific fate, he rejoices because he sees Jesus sitting at the right hand of God, and breathes forgiveness of his enemies even as he meets his fate—just as Jesus did upon the cross. Our psalm also has violence and betrayal as a subtext, yet the psalmist declares their faith in God for deliverance from those who are setting nets to entrap the psalmist. Our epistle scorns those who rejected Jesus, and calls him instead the chief cornerstone. And then here our disciples are huddled with Jesus, their heads swirling with his enigmatic statements as he tells them he will be leaving them, and that one of them will betray him.

We need that reassurance, because we also live in a time when it is hard to see and know Jesus within the world around us. Yet our Easter proclamation and faith is that he IS here, alive, and active in the world around us. He asks us to trust in that bedrock principle of faith.

Jesus tries to remind us that perception is key, just as McFerrin’s little song does in a whimsical way. Jesus also reminds us that there are many ways to see and to know someone. As anyone who has ever been separated from loved ones, either by distance or by death can attest, you can still see and experience the presence of someone even when they are not right here with you. Perhaps that’s one reason why this gospel passage is also used at funerals—so much so that many of you may be thinking about funerals as your first thought when you hear this passage.

Others of you may be thinking of the way this passage may have been misused in your own life to exclude people rather than comfort and include them. Because it certainly has been used to claim that ONLY professed Christians are the true children of God. And that is not the intention of this passage, especially when we look at the reality of Jesus’s ministry and actions during his human lifetime. Far from it. Just think of the stories we have heard in the previous weeks: last week, Jesus reminding his followers that he had other sheep than just this one flock, for example in John 10. Jesus treating the Samaritan woman at the well with courtesy, acceptance, and seriousness rather than condemnation and rejection.

I don’t know about you, but I do find comfort that those who have been Jesus’s closest friends and followers still have a hard time really seeing and knowing him, beyond mere physical presence and sight. I find that comforting, because it helps us have perspective about our own doubts and misunderstandings of Jesus. Let’s remember, the Gospel of John begins with equating Jesus, as the Word of God, with God Godself. This passage refers back to that assertion in the Prologue when Jesus asks Philip “Have I been with you all this time, and you still do not know me?” in v. 9.

Now here is a place that perhaps can shed some light upon us in our time. Even in this secular world, one would have to be willfully ignorant to claim that they have heard nothing of Christianity. We still have a very vocal portion of the American population claiming to be acting in the name of their Christian faith in all kinds of ways within our government, our schools, and our society. Often they do this because they have misunderstood that the Word of God we worship is Jesus. The Bible is the record of the Word of God, and should be studied and interpreted again and again as the Spirit and Jesus continue to reveal God to us in the world today. We worship Jesus—not individual verses or words in documents, as holy as they are. The books are the lens, but Jesus is the light.

What has the world heard about Jesus? As the season of Easter reminds us, Jesus has been with us all this time, yet what does the world know about him? As our gospel points out, there are two ways to know Jesus: by his words, and by his actions. Not just actions in the past, but action right now, acting through the testimony and the actions of each every one of us who claim the name of “Christian.”

In the end, Jesus urges us not to worry, not to fear, but instead to believe. To try and sometimes fail but to keep trying in our journey of discipleship. And this kind of belief operates not at the intellectual level but above it at the level of trust. Part of our charge to trust is to not try to use Jesus as a way of dividing people and stoking fear.

One way to avoid fear and worry, I have found, is by activity. If the world around us does not know Jesus, we are called to respond by seizing the opportunity rather than apathy or despair. To turn away from gossip, slander, and trying to make ourselves feel better by tearing those around us down and instead embrace Jesus’s call to integrity, responsibility, and duty to each other. Jesus will not get any better known by our silence—or worse my our misdeeds in public. Jesus is best known and seen in the world right now through us and how we behave.

To the dirge of the world around us, Jesus calls us to sing a song of peace, of relationships healed and enemies reconciled, of embracing justice and compassion as our lodestars against the ignorance, betrayal, and corruption that swirls around us in this world that needs Jesus now more than ever. To remember that Jesus is our shepherd, and everyone’s. That there are many dwelling places in God’s eternal home, and to stop thinking we get to decide who gets in and who is left out. But most of all, for us to take up our own share in the kingdom of God right now, and live so that our words and actions reveal Jesus to those around us every day.

Amen.

Readings:

Acts 7:55-60

Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16

1 Peter 2:2-10

John 14:1-14

Preached at the 10:30 Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, 63011.

Citations:

Bobby McFerrin, "Don't Worry, Be Happy," from the album Simple Pleasures (1988).

God Our Refuge: Speaking to the Soul May 4, 2023

(inspired by Psalm 31:1-5, 15-16)

In You, O God, do we take refuge:
our trust is in You as we cry out in distress.
Even when the darkness surrounds us,
when walls close in upon us,
You are our mighty fortress.
Preserve us within the storms of life,
for though the tempest rages about us,
You are our God.
Mighty winds may blow and howl,
but You,
O God,
are our rock of refuge and stronghold to keep us safe.
For You take heed of our souls’ distress
and will never give us up to the power of darkness and despair.
We rest in the hands of the Almighty:
we rejoice in your mercy and lovingkindness.
Watch over your children, we pray,
and embrace those who rest within You.

Amen.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on May 4, 2023.