Prayer 4292

On this crisp morning,
let my heart sing a song of gratitude,
that I may like with eyes of wonder
upon this world of delicate beauty
your fingers have woven, O my God.

Let me sing out
the praise of your encompassing lovingkindness
sustaining all that is
in each moment.

Holy One, Shepherd of Our Souls,
guide us into deeper knowledge of you
and grant us the wisdom to live in love and faithfulness
with purity of heart and intention.

In your abundant compassion,
spread the awning of your mercy
over those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Known By Our Love: Sermon for Proper 24B, 22nd Sunday After Pentecost

What does it mean to have power? And what is the purpose of having power?

Is it so that you can have everything your own way? Is it to be able to lord it over others, and have people bow and scrape before you? Or is it so that you can do the most good for the greatest number of people you can? What if doing that good costs you something?

This is the dilemma Jesus and his apostles spread before us today.

It’s not like Jesus hasn’t tried to tell his closest followers that being Messiah means exactly the opposite of being the emperor of Rome. He’s described that he will be handed over, and suffer, and die. He will do this for the sake of the world—to destroy the forces of death and violence that we humans have set loose upon this world.

The words are literally sting hanging in the air, and James and John apparently have been nodding absently while cooking up a plot to grab the seats of honor “in glory.” Yet for weeks now, we have been hearing Jesus not just predict his passion and death, but also telling his disciples that those who are on the top will be on the bottom, and that those on the bottom will be on the top. One also wonders if they were thinking that the coming of Jesus’s kingdom is going to be as the result of an actual political coup. For the third time, Jesus tells what awaits them in Jerusalem, and for a third time the disciples miss the entire point.

For those of us who know what’s coming, there’s some irony here: we know who is going to end up on Jesus’s right and left at the end of this road: it leads to Calvary, to Golgotha, and it’s NOT two followers of Jesus, but rather, a thief and a murderer hanging on a cross on Jesus’s right and left. Mark picks up on that irony.

Jesus then asks if they really think they can “drink the cup that I drink”—a reference to a cup of suffering that Jeremiah foretold, the cup that Jesus will pray to be taken from him in Mark 14:36 when he is praying on the night before his betrayal. The “baptism” that Jesus will undergo is likewise one of fire and death and betrayal through which he will pass to resurrection. James and John affirm that they can—perhaps a bit too quickly. Again, it seems that they are not really listening, that they do not really understand Jesus.

And then, as soon as the other disciples hear of what James and John are attempting, they get upset—but not because they have gotten Jesus’s message about service, but because probably they too were dreaming of asking for those positions of power and glory.

Now, don’t think I am using the lucky gift of hindsight to make fun of the disciples or mock them. Instead, I think about how lucky we are to see that the disciples were, really JUST LIKE US.

Jesus has laid out for them three times exactly what risks they are taking following him, and exactly what risks he is taking for himself. Someone who goes around criticizing the power structures of the world ends up very often at the very least unpopular and at the very worst dead—because even people who get abused by those same power structures nonetheless often support them, because they can’t imagine there being any other way being any better, or they think, “Well I may be struggling, but this system at least ensures that I’m not on the absolute bottom, because I HATE those people on the bottom”—fill in the blank with any likely group—the poor, the refugee, people from a different country or race, whatever.

Maybe the disciples DO have a sense of impending danger, even while they seem to not fully understand what Jesus is saying. And it’s a common thing that when we feel endangered, we try to take care of ourselves, first. Let’s be honest, don’t we feel grateful when we’re on a plane and the flight attendant tells us that, in case of emergency, we should put our own masks on first? Yay, that’s what we wanted to hear anyway!

Yet that is exactly the opposite of what Jesus has been urging for these many weeks. When we think there’s not enough to go around, our first reaction unfortunately is not to share what we’ve got but to hoard up resources for ourselves—which further multiplies the suffering if there truly is a shortage of resources. That’s kind of the challenge Jesus put in front of that wealthy man last week. If you’ve got a lot, and those around you have nothing, and you let that stand in the way of truly following me, you need to rethink how exactly it is you follow all of those commandments we just talked about. There’s a reason why, my friends, in our confession we are called to truly consider and turn back from both the things we have done, and the things we have left undone.

So what does it mean to be a Christian? Does it mean committing ourselves to a life of giving up things, of denial, of sacrifice?

Well yes—in a way. Jesus calls us to give up the idea of our own powerlessness to work for change. Jesus calls us to denial of the forces that are built on hatred, of causing others to suffer for our benefit. Jesus calls us to sacrifice, but so that we can be investors in the growth of God’s kingdom and God’s message.

Jesus doesn’t ask for empty words of belief. Jesus asks for us to roll up our sleeves, and commit ourselves to following Jesus as the biggest love of our lives. That doesn’t mean everything will go smoothly in our live of faith—far from it, as Jesus insists again and again. But Jesus called us into community so we would have each other in those hard times. So that we would commit to each other as well as to Jesus in love. And when you love something, you dedicate everything you have to making it thrive. 

Jesus specifically doesn't call us to intimidate, or to use his name as a code word for domination. I thought of that when my spouse came home yesterday from getting groceries, and he told me there was a group of people from a local church in the parking lot there handing out Bibles-- and then he noticed that one of them was wearing a gun on their hip, right out there in the open. Would you take a Bible from that guy, from someone trying to intimidate others? What might someone who has little knowledge of Jesus assume about our Savior when seeing this?

Jesus is trying to explain to us this fact: that as his followers, who share in his baptism and his cup, we both live in the heart of God and in the broken places in the world. We are the church of St. Martin all together here, worshiping and giving thanks, but that we also have to be the church of St. Martin out there, where people need us to show us who God is in the face of poverty, exploitation, fear, and division. We discover who we are called to be in being brave enough to turn the values of the world on its head to reflect the love of God in a world that thirsts for it.

Maybe this leads to disillusionment for many—for that rich man last week, for the apostles this week, for us any time we feel uncomfortable with the living out of that commandment to love God and each other with all we’ve got when at the same time we are afraid what we’ve got isn’t enough for ourselves, which is what the forces of division and acquisitiveness want us to believe. Or we are being told that those around us simply want to take everything from us. We live bombarded by lies like that every day. But as Episcopal preacher Barbara Brown Taylor said, “Disillusionment is the loss of illusion—about ourselves, about the world, about God—and while it is almost always painful, it is not a bad thing to lose the lies we have mistaken for truth.”

We will close our worship today with one of my favorite hymns I remember from my childhood. Its simplicity is only outshone by the truth that simplicity bears.

We are ONE in the Spirit, we are ONE in the Lord,
And we pray that ALL UNITY will one day be restored.
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

And then, especially in this vitally important election season, and in this vitally important stewardship season, I know I am grateful for this verse:

We will work with each other, we will work side by side
And we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

Love that expresses itself in caring for others, and working to bring that to fruition. In working to create a society that seeks the greatest good for the greatest number of people, that is grounded in unity rather than division and in love rather than hate.

To walk in love together, so that we change the world by that collective effort, and by that love.

To serve the world, rather than to seek power for our own ends. To challenge exploitation or neglect of the weak or the sick or the ignorant or the oppressed.

To challenge the idea that a few people are meant to lord it over the vast majority of others.

To refuse to get comfortable with the idea that some people deserve to suffer based on who they are or what they’ve done or where they’ve come from, and get numb to that very real suffering with the idea that we can’t do anything about it rather than admit we “won’t” do anything about it, no matter how small.

Our challenge is to BE the church in the world, each and every one of us as individuals, in what we say and what we do, and how we live, in serving the many people who need help or protection or community, so that we can make the case that the church IS visible and relevant in the issues facing the world today. That our paradoxical values are exactly what is needed in offering hope where there is despair, a willingness to engage in the questions alongside people rather than pretend we have all the answers, in being willing to love those who are ignored or overlooked or isolated, in willing to serve rather than to be served.

Being Christian is not about power—except for the power of love. It’s not about forcing others to live as we —it’s about living the best life we can live because that in and of itself is a blessing. May we declare ourselves able to share that baptism and that cup.

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Love in action, love in the cause we stand for—the redemption of the world through the power of love.

Amen.

Readings:

Job 38:1-7, (34-41)
Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45

Preached at St. Martin's Church in Ellisville MO on October 20, 2024.

Image: The Red Vineyard, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

Spirits in a Material World, Sermon for Proper 23B

Back in the 1980s, MTV ruled the airwaves. The empowerment of youth was a constant theme, and gender expectations were often turned on their heads: Cyndi Lauper took a song written for a male voice and laughed her way through “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Robert Palmer took a song written for a female voice and stood in a Savile Row suit in front of mini-skirted writhing supermodels pretending to be his backup band claiming innocence as he crooned to a randy date “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On.”

Dire Straits, a group of decidedly unglamorous blues rockers from England, created the theme song for MTV with the song “Money for Nothing,” about a real-life conversation their frontman heard between two deliverymen in an appliance store.

As the workers watched music videos, they resent their existence delivering expensive machinery to yuppies and consider that their career choices might be a dead end. Instead, they moan after the glamorous life of a pop star:

“Look at them yo-yos
That’s the way you do it
You play the guitar on your MTV
Aw, that ain’t working
That’s the way you do it
Money for nothing and your chicks for free.”(1)

And we all laughed (including the programmers at MTV itself, as they put the video into heavy rotation)—because we heard our parents complain exactly the same thing to us every hour that we had MTV going full blast.

And the queen of MTV was Madonna, who, like many female stars of the visual medium, had started out as a dancer until someone plopped a mic in front of her, lacquered her blond hair in crunchy waves, and cut all the hems, sleeves, and necklines off her outfits. Her life was filled with glamour and provocation—especially viewed with alarm by our parents. She wore religious jewelry, and her name brought to mind the mother of Jesus, but she sang about NOT being a virgin. She was a fashion icon, a middling actress, a serial dater, and provocateur. She reinvented herself more often than a Transformer, which back then was a just a silly cartoon out of Japan.

We were a generation raised on sarcasm, visual puns, and irony.

And one of Madonna's most ironic videos that we adored came out in 1985, when she rolled out a new song called “Material Girl.” In the video, instead of wearing the torn dresses and studded leather accessories that previously had been her costume, suddenly here she was gliding down a staircase from a soundstage straight outta Marilyn Monroe’s hit film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

A chorus line of handsome men in Armani tuxes fawningly danced around her as she sang of only dating men who could keep her in the lap of luxury as she is showered in cash, furs, and diamonds. The video was a story within a story, however, because in the reality off the set, she claims to be unimpressed by the expensive gifts of her suitors. The rich guy backing her video figures this out, and instead woos her with wildflowers and drives her off the set in a broken-down truck he buys off a handyman. And off they drive into the soundstage of true love.

The truth is that we DO just wanna have fun after working all day, especially with a sharp dressed man. We DO want exciting dates. And we DO live in a material world.

But the irony is that we also long for meaning, for purpose, and for real community and connection.

This is hardly a new issue. And talking about it without irony is fraught with tension.

We see this in our gospel reading today. Jesus continues, as he has for the last many weeks, toward Jerusalem and his passion and resurrection, and his disciples are struggling to accept the harshness of the fate that is awaiting him. The time Jesus and those disciples lived in was just as much a material world as now—only with lots fewer option. The vast majority of people in Roman-occupied Israel were abjectly poor. Then there were a few wealthy people. Nothing in between. On top of them were the Roman overlords, sucking the country dry of anything of real value.

Most of Jesus’s followers fell into that category of the working poor. Fishermen, handymen, day laborers, most of them. They knew what suffering was. So, the idea of a messiah who would suffer and die seemed hardly reassuring.

In the midst of Jesus repeatedly explaining how this would lead to the kingdom of God, today we have the sudden appearance of a rich man running up and kneeling at Jesus’s feet. The man runs up and kneels before Jesus. He then addresses Jesus with an honorific, one that gets brushed aside. Jesus is not swayed by flattery. What must I DO, the man asks, to inherit eternal life? How, in other words, can I add eternal life to my stack of possessions? Jesus responds by listing things NOT to do—did you notice that? Don’t cheat, don’t lie, don’t steal—he even throws “don’t defraud” in there even though that’s not actually from the 10 Commandments.

As Jesus so often does, he draws people into not just recalling the law but drawing out what it means to follow that law in practical terms.

Here we have a call story—but one that fails, at least at the time. The rich man wants “eternal life,” but uses language thinking it is something he can acquire or inherit. In other words, he wants the benefits of discipleship but doesn’t understand the transformative nature of it.

Notice also how many times Mark notes that Jesus looks directly at those in this story. Looks, and looks deeply, really seeing into who they are. But for the first time, in Mark’s gospel, we are told that Jesus not only LOOKS at the man but sees him and loves him.

LOVES him.

You only lack one thing, Jesus says. And that is to follow me. Jesus is telling that man, you are weighed down by your chasing after material wealth. It is standing in the way of committing to being a disciple. And the man, understandably, is shocked at Jesus’s suggestion, and goes away sadly.

This seems like a harsh, even frightening tale if we see ourselves as that wealthy man. Do we really have to give up EVERYTHING to follow Jesus?

But perhaps we can admit there is some truth in the idea that the word “possession” has two meanings. The first is something that we own. But there’s another meaning especially if we are familiar with scripture. Possession can also mean those who are controlled by some powerful force—that kind of possession. And even though we no longer believe in demon possession that kind of possession and that dislocated us from living a well-rounded life certainly is a huge issue even now. If we are totally honest with ourselves, we know that there are times when our possessions and the drive for more of them, possess us and prevents us from committing completely to loving relationships with each other, and with God.

But if ever there was a story for our time, this might be it. Think about the culture of the late 20th century that we grew up in. The drive for acquisition ruled—and yet also was often subtly critiqued, even in popular media. For every “Material Girl,” there was an also a reminder that we were also souls, or “Spirits Living in the Material World.” For every Ferris Bueller resentful that he didn’t get a car for his birthday, there was his friend Cameron Fry who’s emotionally controlling father loved a sports car more than his own son. For every Gordon Gecko tycoon crooning “greed is good,” there were workers fighting against totalitarianism in Poland by proclaiming their solidarity with one another.

Countless preachers in today’s America preach that Jesus is a wish-fulfilment genie: simply say you believe, and you shall be saved. No mention of following Jesus, of emulating Jesus, or sharing in the ongoing work of Jesus for the sake of the world—just say you believe, check off that box, and continue on with your life of chasing after worldly success, fortune, fame, whatever.

This creates a disconnect, making one’s own salvation the point of claiming to be Christian. This acquisitive mindset actually subverts the gospel good news and Jesus makes that clear here: to be able to follow Jesus, we have to let go of the things that stand in the way of our full commitment. That could be wealth, as in the case here. Or it could be anger, resentment, selfishness, or any of a host of other things.

In our gospel passage, the man’s possessions themselves are not the issue. His clinging to them over the call of Jesus to follow him IS the issue. And a little part of him knows it. Because for all the stuff he owns and that owns him, he still KNOWS there is something missing. That is why he approaches Jesus to begin with.

And so, we must ask ourselves: what things stand in the way of our own commitment to really following Jesus? How can we grow deeper into trusting God with all that we have and are? We ARE, after all, spirits living in a material world. And we can use those material things for good and still keep a roof over our heads. We can walk in love with Jesus and support the mission and ministry of Christ in a world that desperately needs him. We can do both.

One of the greatest things I learned in my teaching career is that not everyone is ready for the lesson you have prepared at the same time. Some kids were—but others might require more than one opportunity. And I think that’s another thing we can take away from this story. Nothing says that the man doesn’t come back later, and that he doesn’t come to a healthier balance between his obsessing with possessions and the loving call of Jesus to be able to follow him in action as well as in labels.

So perhaps we can use this uncomfortable story to reflect on all the times Jesus has called us to deeper relationship, but we have drawn back. What things possess us and hamper our deeper relationship with God and with each other? It could be cynicism. It could be fear. It could be our too-busy lives and never allowing ourselves a chance to sit in silence with ourselves, much less with God. It could be, like our friend Job, a string of unimaginable losses that make us wonder if God is punishing us, when we know God doesn’t act that way.

Jesus sees us and looks on us with eyes of love. He sees that we have filled our hands and our hearts with things that do not truly satisfy. May we hear his call to be brave enough to free ourselves from the fears, hesitations, grievances, and, yes, sometimes, stuff that doesn’t truly satisfy. May we release those things from their hold over us, so that we may be free to follow Jesus more fully, starting today.


Amen.


Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO om October 12-13, 2024.

Readings for Proper 23B
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Psalm 22:1-15
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:17-31


Citations:
1) Mark Knopfler and Sting, "Money for Nothing," from the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms, 1985.

Image: Madonna and dancers from her video for "Material Girl."

Walking in Love With Creation: Sermon for the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi (transferred)

A long time ago, almost 800 years, there lived a man named Francis. He left behind family and wealth to become a repairer of churches, a deacon, and a friar who organized a new religious order based on humility and poverty in solidarity with the poor.

One day Francis was walking in the woods, traveling from one city to another as he recruited people to join his order. Above his head he heard hundreds of birds in the trees, singing and cheeping and doing all the bird-like things they could, with gusto. He heard in their joyfully noise a message of praise to God. The story goes that he called to the birds, and they flew down from the trees and gathered about his feet, and he began preaching to them:

“My little sisters, many are the bonds which unite us to God. And your duty is to praise Him everywhere and always, because He has let you free to fly wherever you will, and has given you a double and threefold covering and the beautiful plumage you wear.

“Praise Him likewise for the food He provides for you without your working for it, for the songs He has taught you, for your numbers that His blessing has multiplied, for your species which He preserved in the ark of olden times, and for the realm of the air He has reserved for you.

“God sustains you without your having to reap or sow. He gives you fountains and streams to drink from, mountains and hills in which to take refuge, and tall trees in which to build your nests. Although you do not know how to sew or spin, He gives to you and your little ones the clothing you need.

“How the Creator must love you to grant you such favors! So, my sister birds, do not be ungrateful, but continually praise God, who showers blessings upon you.”

It is said that the birds listened attentively, and that when he dismissed them to fly away they formed the shape of the cross in flight. He later joked that animals were more attentive congregations than many human ones he had encountered.

His love for creation as a testimony to the loving provision of God for all of us is something too many of us still have difficulty embracing. We live in a time when our planet is warning us about our lack of care for creation, whether through benign neglect or through outright exploitation of the Earth and her resources. As we look at the historic flooding caused by Hurricane Helene in places that had thought they were safe from climate change, and as we watch the formation of more, even stronger storms in the Gulf of Mexico and all around the world, some of us still view nature as an adversary to be conquered than a gift and revelation of God’s abiding love for us and for all God’s creatures.

This last week (on October 4, actually), it is our tradition to commemorate the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, who is remembered as one who extolled the integrity, the oneness of creation, one who saw all of the universe, from the Sun and the Moon to even the tiniest creatures, as giving praise to the God and Creator of All. Our readings today reflect that spirit of the joyful honoring of creation that Francis taught.

Francis believed that creation revealed the glory and wisdom of God. There are stories of Francis moving earthworms aside so that he wouldn’t step on them, or of him saving a town that was being terrorized by a ravenous wolf by calling the wolf brother and treating it with such tenderness that it laid down at his feet and ravaged the town no more. No animals, from crickets and bees to falcons and pheasants, were too insignificant that Francis couldn’t see God’s generous love to us in the example of each creature.

In our gospel today, Jesus reminds us of the tender care he offers us, urging us to lay aside the striving of he world and lean into our trust in Jesus, whose burdens upon us are insignificant to the fears and anxieties of the world. In our passage from Psalm 121, we hear the voice of God reassuring us that God’s care and love for us never pauses, never ceases. And in our reading from Job, God lists wild animals not known in the ancient world for their wisdom and nonetheless asserts God's providential care. That generous, abundant provision is not just for domestic animals, as we humans sometimes emphasize, but on all creatures, especially wild beasts that roam free Jesus tenderly reminds us about the joy and beauty present in the most common things we tend to overlook in our distracted race through each day. In calling us to trust and awareness of all for which we could be grateful, Jesus calls us to live in each moment joyfully, bathed in God’s love.

Because it is so hard to fully live into each moment, we instead too often fall into the trap of feeling isolated from each other. That false sense of isolation leads to anxiety like Jesus was addressing, and that anxiety fools us into believing we are separate from one another. We see the effects of this belief right now in our city and throughout society. Anxiety and fear and isolation make us forget God’s promise of love and care.

Yet God’s promises to us are written into the very bonds of love that bind us to God, to each other, and to every living thing on the earth. That covenant that God established after the Great Flood was not just with Noah, but with both humans and all creation, plants and birds and all that lives, which, some scientists maintain, includes our very planet itself as a living organism, if one takes a broad enough view. The covenant story we heard from Genesis reminds us that creation is a full partner in our relationship with God, and gives God praise and glory.

Jesus reminds us that God’s love restores and renews us, so long as we center ourselves within each moment enough to feel that shared love. It is there in the joyful songs of birds whose welcome sings the morning into being. It is there in the lowliest, tiniest wildflower growing in a roadside ditch, turning its hopeful face toward the sun.

Instead of worry, Jesus calls us back to mindfulness, an important spiritual practice in many world religions. And not just any mindfulness, but the mindfulness of remembering how fully and thoroughly God loves us and through that love binds us together. Coming back to awareness of our unity with all living things is a wonderful place to start.

We see here in this anecdote that Jesus was a keen observer of the beauty of creation, and that he had spent time savoring the awareness of the birds singing and building their nests, and the sight of wildflowers—what some might call weeds—cloaking the fields and hills in beauty in a myriad of colors, all the hues of the rainbow mentioned in our first reading. Both the rainbow and the raiment of the most humble flower are signs to us of the promise God maintains with us and with all creation to love us and care for us always—not just in the distant past but right now and forever. Every living thing reminds us that God’s wondrous love bears the world into being and sustains it in every moment.

Luckily, we are also reminded of God’s love especially in the love and faithfulness of our companion animals, whose steadfast joy in us models to us the love and devotion we ourselves are made to exhibit toward our God.

At our pet blessing yesterday, those who gathered spoke of beloved canines and cats, fishes and rats—these creatures who show their devotion to us unswervingly. The very presence of all these living creatures in our lives remind us of God’s love. They remind us, also, that we are charged from the very first story in scripture with service to the earth and all the living things upon it and within it. Even the smallest creature has been placed on Earth to support the web of life on this planet, from humans to honeybees, and none is dispensable—not even wasps or mosquitos, who, I have to admit, are not my favorites. But we spoke of the ways that our pets’ devotion reminds us of the unswerving devotion and trust God’s abundant love elicits from us when we contemplate all the things for which we can be grateful in each day we live.

As we begin our stewardship campaign this year, I ask that you consider the way in which God has knit us into this huge community of creation, and consider the generous blessings of the natural world that make our lives possible. But I also ask that you remember how much the amazing community we have formed right here at St. Martin’s also finds ways to testify to God’s abundant love and grace each and every day, and ask each of you to recommit to supporting it

Our companion animals’ devotion exemplifies the devotion we owe God. Their love exemplifies the love we are called to bear for each other, no matter our differences.

St. Francis reminded us that all of creation participates in demonstrating God’s love—the same lesson Jesus taught us today in this gospel passage from Matthew. Each creature is a reminder of God’s blessing to and love for us. It is that holy and limitless love that binds all things together, just as mutual forces of gravity and attraction hold galaxies and stars in their courses as they dance through space. They walk alongside us as we seek to walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.


Amen.

Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO on October 5-6, 2024.

 Readings:

Job 39:1-18

Psalm 121

Matthew 11:25-30

Image: "God's Fool," statue of St. Francis in Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery, from Naperville, IL