On the Jericho Road: Speaking to the Soul, August 4, 2022

Luke 10:25-37

 

 

On the Jericho road his luck ran out.
The air above the beaten track shimmered
and hissed like a snake. One sandal
lay in the center of the road, vanquished—the thieves
had left that, but all else was gone. 
Its forsaken foot curled up into the lip of the ditch,
disembodied. The man laid there,
arms flung wide, like a fledgling who had
fallen to earth; astonishment curtained 
his inert mouth. He floated
in a sea of dust, blood
pooling in tracks from his wounds. A buzzard
clasped a crag, sensing promise.

 

Perhaps the road would bring a savior.

Face toward Jerusalem, the priest 
placed each foot delicately after the other, and then
drew the drape of his robe
across his face at the sight, blanched,
and muttered charms to ward off evil
as he moved to the other side, eyes averted. 
A prayer of thanks rose skyward,
congratulating himself for his own righteousness,
to preserve him from such a fate. So too
the Son of Levi--he clasped his ewer by the handle,
suspicion of ambush and 
contempt seizing his heart like a fist,
edging away on his holy business.

A buzz of flies eddied in his wake.
The buzzard snorted humorlessly 
and shrugged. 
Not long now.

There was no one to see, they thought—
but behind the blue veil of sky
the stars blinked 
and spun in protest.

The sun mounted higher.
A Samaritan approached, 
fresh from shunning by the priest and Levite,
who’d made him walk around them.
But at the sandal he slowed, his donkey
shaking her head, skittish at tang and echo of violence
in her nostrils and ears, at the glare
that glowed off sunburned flesh. 
Her master crouched beside
the discarded sack of a man, 
leaking like a burst wineskin. 
He could still walk away.

 

                                    “Cursed be
the one who leads the blind
on the road astray, or distorts
the justice and mercy owed a stranger,”
the Samaritan murmured.
The donkey breathed the amens.

A trumpet blare of mercy
echoed in his soul’s chamber; the 
walls of the Samaritan’s heart lay in rubble.

With gentle hands he shifted the donkey’s load until
he found wine and oil,
anointing the wounds 
and cooling the stranger’s brow.

Like a mother, tenderly he drew 
the fevered body to his chest, arms beneath 
neck and knee, and raised his neighbor
from ditch to donkey delicately,
claiming the stranger as his brother, 
whose heartbeat was an obligation, whose face
so closely resembled his own,
and only the buzzard turned a baleful eye,
a grudging witness.

--This was first published at Episcopal Journal's Speaking to the Soul on August 4, 2022.

 

The Heart of a Home: Sermon for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany (Observance of MLK Day)

The last few months have seen a variety of challenges in the lives of our family—like everyone, we’ve had illnesses and tension. But one of the blessings we have had has been our son being able to stay with us, perhaps for one of the last times, for a month. He is in his senior year of college; he already has a job lined up after graduation. He’s our youngest, so that empty nest thing is staring us right in the face. We have played numerous games of UNO, he has tried once again to get me to understand how a Playstation controller works so I can play video games with him, and I have introduced him to the joys of 80s video games like Joust and Ms. Pac-Man.

One of the things we have always enjoyed as a family is watching movies together, and one of the ones we got to share was Encanto, the latest Disney movie. It’s even got music by Lin-Manuel Miranda. The basic outline of the story is this: A young family with triplets flees a war in Latin America, Along the way, the father perishes as they are pursued, but the mother, Alma, with only a candle to light her way, manages to save her children when the candle suddenly magically protects them. Not only that, the candle then creates a magical home for the family in a hidden valley and burns continually for the next 50 years. 

The house gives each of the triplets--and their children-- their own special power AND their own special room as a symbol of that power: being able to produce flowers at will, or incredible strength or hearing, or being able to cook dishes that heal others. All of the children and grandchildren of Alma, now known as Abuela, or Grandmother, have powers—except for poor Mirabel. And because she lacks a special power, she is scorned by her grandmother and overlooked, even if unintentionally, by much of the family. She is literally deprived of her own room in the house, as well.

One day the youngest grandchild, Antonio, gets his special power. Abuela takes great pride in these miraculous gifts and in their miraculous house—and there is great rejoicing as Antonio learns he can talk to animals, and his room appears in the house, filled with animals for him to engage with. The family celebrates by taking a picture--- leaving Mirabel out. During the celebration, Mirabel has a vision of the house cracking apart and the candle going out—a vision she alone experiences. Not only is she not believed, her grandmother treats her as a malcontent and a misfit, trying to destroy the celebration because she is jealous at her own lack of miraculous gift..

Yet Mirabel is certain she has seen that the house, and therefore the family, is in grave danger. Mirabel decides to try to prevent this calamity, and sets out on a quest to find out why she is experiencing what she is. In the course of her investigation, she uncovers family secrets and hidden fears. Perhaps these secrets and hidden fears are at the root of the house’s instability.

I don’t want to spoil the movie, so I will leave it at that. But as we prepare tomorrow to celebrate the impact and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., on what would have been the start of his 93rd year, I can’t help but see this charming little cartoon as also giving some insight into MLK’s own life, and into our readings for today.

Mirabel had a prophetic vision. That was her gift. It didn’t require magic. It required courage—the unbelievable courage to tell the truth to those you love, even if—especially if—they don’t want to hear it, even if they FEAR the truth being told. She foresaw a disaster, and tried her best to get her family to focus on what should have been most important to them: not their individual powers, but each other. Abuela takes great pride in these miraculous gifts and in their miraculous house—more pride in these things than she does in seeing the family itself as a miracle. Frankly, the foundation of the house was shaken by the failure to value each person who lived within it equally.

In our hymns today, and in our readings, we see reminders of prophetic voices also urging us to seeing the blessing of true communion with each other in our lives. We hear the prophet Isaiah renouncing silence when he sees calamity besetting God’s people: “For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn and her salvation like a burning torch!”

You can just hear the prophet thundering in his refusal to accede to staying silent for the sake of comfort. And what calamity was it that Isaiah, and all of the prophets of Israel, named and denounced? 

It was one that was ever-present, then and now. A failure of the Great Commandment: to love God with all of our hearts, strength, and minds, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. A refusal to commit to justice and care for all of those within society, attempts to exclude and marginalize others deliberately—or the softer, more insidious danger of being blind to the existence of division and injustice in the community, a preference for the comfort of the illusion of peace bought at the price of respecting the dignity and full equality of all people.

Isaiah also makes it very clear that salvation is not defined by a personal, individualist focus. Salvation, redemption, and release from the peril of death and destruction isn’t just about whether this person or that person individually goes to heaven or goes to hell. Jesus’s miracle of turning the water into wine similarly isn’t about just saving a wedding host from embarrassment. It’s about reminding us of God’s abundant gifts to all of us, and about God’s abiding call for us to share that abundance with each other and to be animated by that abundance in our dealings with each other. Salvation is about the reclamation of the community, about the strength of the entire body of God’s children. All or nothing.

Our reading from Isaiah is thus a perfect reading as we look back on the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin’s Luther King Jr. In the 54 years since Dr. King’s assassination, we have come to take for granted just how radical his message was, and how his vision of the Beloved Community still is yet to be realized.

Through the mists of time, we forget how much hatred and opposition Dr. King received—and not just from acknowledged segregationists and racists. No, as Dr. King noted in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” some of the greatest attempts to silence him and the civil rights movement’s prophetic demand for freedom and equality came from within the power structures of faith communities and the Church itself—the very body that as followers of Jesus should be most committed to justice for all. That letter—which every American should re-read at least every year, was written in response to a group of faith leaders, including Episcopal bishops, denouncing what they termed his radicalism, his impatience, his “outside activism” since he was not actually from Birmingham. We have forgotten how much suspicion the civil rights movement received from the federal as well as state governments, even from people of goodwill. 

And it continues. Too many of us have insulated ourselves from the very real injustices that still exist right now. Even from within the Church—the very family which was the source of Dr. King's own hope. A nation, a church, or any institution, is only strong when the people within it are valued more than its edifices. When leaders focus on the institution, rather than the people, injustice flourishes.

Like Mirabel, like Isaiah, like Jesus, like Abraham Lincoln, Dr. King saw the cracks in the house—the house of this nation, in his own particular instance, a house which proclaimed itself dedicated to the notion that all persons were created equal on paper, when its reality was vastly different in practice. This was a truth and unvarnished revelation that those who were powerful, those who were comfortable, refused to acknowledge as an injustice, much less confront. Dr. King not only saw those cracks, and the long-term dangers they posed to African Americans and to all Americans, through his years of activism and his fifty arrests. He sought to have even those whose privilege inured them to the perils of injustice and oppression believe in a possibility and the necessity of a better, stronger, more united house that would include all. The heart of a home-- the heart of a nation-- is the people, not the structures. 

But also, like Mirabel, like Isaiah, like Jesus, like Abraham Lincoln, Dr. King didn’t raise the alarm merely to be a critic and announcer of doom. He raised the alarm because of the great faith he had that we can do better in living into the vision of love and unity to which God calls us as Christians, and to which I believe God calls each and every nation, especially this one. Through the lens of this pandemic, it is patently obvious that this nation is still divided—and that the source of that division is STILL refusing to act out of a desire for the flourishing not only of ourselves and our personal circle, but of everyone.

You cannot repair the cracks in the house until you see them, and then determine to do the work of repair. You can’t repair the cracks in the house until you understand that the value of the house is about the people within it—and making sure all of them are equally protected, equally valued. Dr. King’s vision of a strong, united house, home to a strong, united community, founded on the bedrock of equality and commitment to ever seeking to make ourselves stronger as one people, is a vision we all as people of faith are called to share.

May we continue his prophetic work, rooted in our faithfulness to God, and to God’s desire for all of us to live in a house that is not only undivided but strong and flourishing because the people within it are secure and valued, regardless of their different gifts. Let us be a house united by our dedication to truth, to justice, and to dedication to our God and to each other.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am online Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, on January 16, 2022 during time of COVID.

Readings:

Isaiah 62:1-5

Psalm 36:5-10

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

John 2:1-11

Given and Received: Speaking to the Soul for November 4, 2021

Mark 12:28-34

The scribe had a question.

Which law in Torah is the greatest?

With supposedly 613 separate laws in the Torah (365 of them negative), this had been a subject of debate for centuries. And many attempts had been made to distill these various laws down to an easier number.

Jesus puts a twist on his answer. The Law, he says, can be summed up in two things. First, he quotes Deuteronomy, a statement known as the Shema, a prayer that Jews were required to recite morning and night every day: Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He goes back to Leviticus and pulls this lesser-known verse out and sets it alongside the Shema: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And he says this is the same as the first.

Jesus boils down the essence of the Law down to love.

Think about this as what he DOESN’T say the law is about.

He doesn’t say it’s about believing certain things- especially ones that Christians nowadays often argue about.He doesn’t say it’s about who will get into heaven or “personal salvation.”

He doesn’t say it’s about casting out folk you don’t like or don’t approve of.

He doesn’t say it’s about being RIGHT. He doesn’t say it’s about God being vengeful or punitive.

He says it is about LOVE. And further, he states very clearly that the best way to put your love for God into action is by loving those around you—your neighbors, whether you even like them or not, your political opponents– it doesn’t matter. He equates those two things as being the same.

Think about that! And then wonder at how revolutionary an idea this still is, 2000 years later! Love that isn’t about individual, personal relationships with Jesus so we can escape punishment, but love that is grounded in forming a community in which all are welcome—what the gospels call the Kingdom of God, or Dr. King called the Beloved Community.

Jesus repeatedly emphasizes that everything in the Law and Prophets is meant to create a community in which justice and peace prevail—what we would call “heaven on earth.” The heart of God’s kingdom on earth and in our hearts, which was considered to be the seat of a person’s will, is LOVE. That is what makes Jesus’s message so compelling, then and now. Love doesn’t seek control but the flourishing of the beloved.

In our gospel this coming Sunday, the scribe’s question and Jesus’s answer brings the scribe into a position to be openhearted enough to consider the truth of Jesus’s message. Jesus’s answer is straightforward. The living out of that answer is too often anything but straightforward.

But love, even as an answer to a question we have trouble forming, is at least beautiful and wondrous. It’s a mystery we experience when we still our hearts and souls so that we can hear and know God’s presence in our lives. It’s the kind of love that sings out, wonderingly, about amazing grace—both given AND received.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on November 4, 2021.

Loving God- A Beginner's Guide: Sermon for Proper 25A

One of my favorite movies of all time—favorite because it can lift my spirits more than almost any other movie, is The Princess Bride. I love its blend of, as one character lists at one point, “Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, and miracles.” I am one of those people who can quote scene after scene from this movie, and apply lines from this movie to almost every situation, just like my friend Shug Goodlow can do with The Godfather.

The movie centers around a grandfather coming to read a book to his sick grandson. The grandson is skeptical, but the grandfather talks him into it, and off they go. Only a few pages into it, though, the boy stops his grandfather, who is describing how the main characters meet and fall in love. “Hold it, hold it—are you trying to trick me? Is this a kissing book?” he asks with disgust. The grandfather urges his grandson to let him continue reading. (1) Sure enough, soon there’s plenty of fencing, fighting, giants, miracles, and torture. There’s even rhymes. But in the end- literally, the book—and the sharing of the book-- is about love. All kinds of it.

The entire book is distilled down to the idea that love is the greatest thing in the world—and that there are many ways to show love. 

You can show it by doing whatever you can to make the one you love happy, even in as small a thing as handing her a water pitcher she could have gotten herself but that she asks you for just so she can be near you. 

You can show love by never giving up on rescuing the one you love even if you think they’ve forgotten about you. 

You can show love by never forgetting the beloved father you lost in childhood, and doing anything you can to seek justice for him. 

You can show it by spending an entire day sharing a special book with someone you love, even if you have to convince them repeatedly to stick with you. 

Truly, there are dozens of ways love is demonstrated in this sweet, funny, fairy tale. Love sums it up.

In The Princess Bride, the hero, Westley, faces all kinds of opponents, and he overcomes or wins over every one—even the giant. Looking backward from today’s gospel reading from Matthew 22 over the last several weeks, Jesus has now come full circle in being confronted by nearly all the major factions and parties of the day within Israel. The scribes, chief priests, Pharisees, Herodians, Sadducees, and now the Pharisees again, but this time adding in a lawyer—they all have now confronted Jesus and questioned him and his authority. 

And these are groups that usually would not be seen as allies. The Herodians were secular Jews who supported a puppet king of the Roman empire. The chief priests and scribes possibly included both Pharisee and Sadducees. Pharisees were those who acknowledged the power of traditional teaching of the rabbis alongside scripture, while the Sadducess didn’t—they were like the fundamentalists of their time in giving authority only to what was written in scripture. But one thing all these groups could agree on—that Jesus posed a threat to their power and their understanding of themselves as being “right.”

Today, they put the lawyer forward with a question to engage in a battle of wits with Jesus. Looking over the entire span of scripture, the lawyer asks a deceptively simple question, with a smirk calling Jesus “Teacher” when they have just spent several chapters challenging that. The question is this: which law in Torah is the greatest?

With supposedly 613 separate laws in the Torah (365 of them negative), this had been a subject of debate for centuries. And many attempts had been made to distill these various laws down to an easier number. 

Jesus once again puts a twist on his answer. The Law, he says, can be summed up in two things. First, he quotes Deuteronomy, a statement known as the Shema, a prayer that Jews were required to recite morning and night every day: Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone. 5You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He goes back to Leviticus and pulls this lesser-known verse out and sets it alongside the Shema: you shall love your neighbor as yourself. And he says this is the same as the first.

Jesus boils down the essence of the Law down to love.

Think about this as what he DOESN’T say the law is about.

He doesn’t say it’s about believing certain things- especially ones that Christians nowadays often argue about..

He doesn’t say it’s about who will get into heaven or “personal salvation.”

He doesn’t say it’s about casting out folk you don’t like or don’t approve of.

He doesn’t say it’s about being RIGHT. He doesn’t say it’s about God being vengeful or punitive.

He says it is about LOVE. And further, he states very clearly that the best way to put your love for God into action is by loving those around you—your neighbors, whether you even like them or not, your political opponents-- it doesn’t matter. He equates those two things as being the same.

Think about that! And then wonder at how revolutionary an idea this still is, 2000 year later! Love that isn’t about individual, personal relationships with Jesus so we can escape punishment, but love that is grounded in forming a community in which all are welcome—what Matthew calls the Kingdom of Heaven, or Dr. King called the Beloved Community.

Jesus repeatedly emphasizes that everything in the Law and Prophets is meant to create a community in which justice and peace prevail—what we would call “heaven on earth.” The heart of God’s kingdom on earth and in our hearts, which was considered to be the seat of a person’s will, is LOVE. That is what makes Jesus’s message so compelling, then and now.

Our Presiding Bishop nearly always includes in every one of his sermons this observation: “If it’s not about love, then it’s not about God.” Jesus states the same thing quite clearly here. 

Love is the only thing that can change the world. So why do we have such a hard time doing it?

There is a poverty of real love in the world—and this is true 2,000 years after Jesus’s earthly ministry. We’re too prone to toss off the word love and make it seem common. We love our friends. Most of us love our families, even if that means we have to make our families intentionally rather than by birth. We love our pets. We love Ann and Nancy Wilson of the rock group Heart.

That’s not the kind of love Jesus is talking about, however- love that is a response to something we first get. The love that Jesus talks about is grounded in compassion and generous acceptance. It is what Episcopal priest and humanitarian Becca Stevens talks about when she talks about love healing—and if you listen to her, that healing comes from the inside out as much as the outside in. The kind of love Jesus is talking about is also grounded in self-discipline. It is rooted in an open-heartedness that post-modern culture tries to drive out of us with every effort at distraction at its disposal. 

When I was a kid, there was actually a popular novel whose tag line was "Love means never having to say you're sorry." What nonsense. Our entire culture tries to convince us that love shouldn’t be hard work. The mere fact that Jesus has to keep telling us to do it tells us that it IS.

So where do we begin? One tangible way to step toward this kind of love is by practicing justice for others—to stand alongside those who are often denigrated or seen as “less than” in our society, and to treat them as we ourselves would wish to be treated. Isn’t that kind of fairness the basis for true justice, and isn’t that kind of justice the foundation for true peace?

What if we were to try it?

It’s the kind of love that calls us to reconsider the kind of off-hand cutting remarks that are poisonous to communities. It’s about giving people the benefit of the doubt and offering the grace we would want to receive when people aren’t being their best selves. We can acknowledge our own woundedness, and instead try to see the pain behind others’ actions, rather than lash out ourselves.

And in this time of COVID, we love each other by remembering what true worship of God is all about. I know we all want to be back together to worship like we used to. It was easy. It was familiar. It made us feel good. But to do so would be to endanger each other. I know many otherwise capable people who have either imbibed the dangerous idea that putting the Lord your God to the test against all evidence is somehow a sign of faith (the “God will protect me because I have faith” cohort) OR who view worship as entertainment and social time more than a time of reverence for God and neighbor. Worship is NOT a “right.” Worship is something more important— a state of the heart, mind, and soul. It’s LOVE in action.

We like to quantify things. That’s why stewardship campaigns are so difficult for everyone involved. We are not a part of one of the traditions that flat-out tell you how much it costs to be a member of this community. Some places are upfront, and say, “Ten percent of your income.” Man. That’s a lot. More power to those people who make that commitment. But most of us resist that. However, love IS about giving without fear, but with boldness and joy. 

Especially in this time, the world around us is desperate for signs of this kind of love. The kind of love that blesses us with a grounded awareness of where the hurting is around us, and calls us to minister to those needs in the name of the God we are called to love. That makes visible the God who IS love—unchanging love that seeks to change the world.

It's about living into this blessing from A Black Rock Prayer Book:

The world now is too dangerous
and too beautiful for anything but love.
May your eyes be so blessed you see God in everyone. 

Your ears, so you hear the cry of the poor.
May your hands be so blessed
that everything you touch is a sacrament.
Your lips, so you speak nothing but the truth with love. 

May your feet be so blessed you run
to those who need you.
And may your heart be so opened,
so set on fire, that your love,
your love, changes everything.(2)

What do all the commandments tell us?

Love God. Love your neighbor. Change the world.


Amen.

Readings:

Deuteronomy 34:1-12
Psalm 90:1-6, 13-17
1 Thessalonians 2:1-8
Matthew 22:34-46

Links/Citations:

1) William Goldman, The Princess Bride script, at http://www.dailyscript.com/scripts/princess_bride.html 

2) A Black Rock Prayer Book, used at Burning Man, http://www.ees1862.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/A-Black-Rock-Prayer-Book-2019.pdf, cited by Debie Thomas at Journey with Jesus, 18 October 2020. 

The First Rule: Speaking to the Soul, October 22, 2020

 

Our gospel reading for this coming Sunday, Matthew 22:34-46, depicts the Pharisees and Sadducees again attempting to test Jesus— I like to picture Jesus smiling gently each time one of his opponents unctuously begin to address him by a title they certainly didn’t believe : “Teacher…” they intone, and Jesus—and we know as we read along, that the game is afoot.

In the lectionary this year, we omit the interlude in which the Sadducees approach Jesus with a question about marriage in the afterlife, and instead move to perhaps the most foundational religious question for a student of Jewish scripture and law—and it was one the sages and lawyers had been arguing about for generations. Which, of the 613 commandments in Torah, was the greatest? With over 600 commandments to choose from, even winnowing out the really specific ones about eating and fabric and facial hair, there were still several contenders. Whichever one he chose, Jesus would need to be able to defend his answer. Jesus, five steps ahead of his adversaries as always, answers with a commandment linked to another commandment that together summed up the entirety of the Ten Commandments and all the subsidiary commandments around them.

I was thinking about this situation in the upcoming gospel as I was looking for a prayer request that had disappeared down my Facebook page. Now that so much of our parish’s ministry and liturgy is tied to Facebook, I am chagrined to find myself on that platform as much as ever, even though one of my resolutions back on New Year’s Day was to spend less time there.

Yet one of the fun little amusements that sometimes goes around social media involves a smart phone feature known as “predictive text,” where your phone offers you three words as you type to anticipate shortcuts for those of us who are rather fumble-fingered. Of course, people on Facebook have turned this feature into an amusing little game. The game usually starts with a prompt—a phrase you type in to start a sentence, and then you chose one of your phone’s three proffered choices, linked together one word at a time, until a thought is completed. The words and phrases you use most influence the suggestions, I’m told, and given my vocation, already the playing field is probably tilted toward theological language, so I gave it a whirl. Sometimes, you get gibberish. Sometimes, hilarity ensues. Sometimes, though, you get zen-like koans that bring you up short.

I decided to test how smart my phone was as I thought about that lawyer’s question. I typed in this prompt: “The first rule about faith is…” and my phone finished the sentence like this:

“The first rule of faith is that it is not being used to make the most important decisions in the world.”

Well, now.

I am probably going to turn this little gem over in my mind for a while. For a nation that argues a lot about “faith,” trying to twist it into a synonym for “ideology,” which it should be, rather than a descriptor for a determination to stand for what is life-giving in the world. I nonetheless am in agreement that faith is too often not a guide to our actions—unless that faith provides a context for doing what you were going to do anyway. And faith in each other is a sadly missing commodity in far too much of our national conversation. We talk about faith, but too often we make decisions out of fear or anxiety or cynicism.

So then I tried this prompt: “The greatest commandment in scripture is…” and this is what was returned by my phone’s predictive choices:

“The greatest commandment in scripture is to have mercy upon those people who are not in the same place as you are, and help them to learn the truth about God’s love.”

Given that one of my favorite ways to paraphrase Jesus’s answer is from the prophet Micah: “God has told you, O mortal, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?” once again it appears that my phone has touched upon part of the inner wisdom of Jesus’s answer to the lawyer in our gospel.

I now wonder what it would be like, in this time of intense division and vitriol, if we couldn’t be guided by this idea: to deal kindly on those who are at a different place on their spiritual journey, to listen and converse in kindness in service to deepening our relationships, and in so doing embody God’s love. Because the truth of God’s love is that it never, ever gives up on us. Can we argue that we aren’t called to likewise not give up on each other, as each of us are made in the image and likeness of God?

Jesus’s answer does the same: to love God, love your neighbor. Love your neighbor, and you are demonstrating love for God. Love as a determination to embrace dialogue, even when those with whom you are speaking may not have the most open hearts to your responses. That’s okay. Maybe those observing your dialogue will be the ones to embrace your message.

The first rule is the rule of love, and the faith that flows from love.



This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on October 22, 2020.

Prayer 2566: Praying for those who hate us

Caligula, Emperor of Rome for four bloody debauched years, 37-41 CE.

Precious Savior, we rise and praise You
for the gift of this new day,
for the wonders of your grace 
and the glory of your creation.

Holy One of Blessing,
pour out your spirit over us
that we may be molded and shaped by your love,
just as the western wind caresses the hills and plains,
shaping them like clay
upon the inexorable wheel of time.

In obedience to your gospel, Lord Christ,
may we resist the forces of division and hatred,
and pray for our enemies and those that hate us,
even as they reject your commandments
in derision and contempt.
May we never lose heart
as they cling to their throne of lies
and sow the twisted seeds of fear and prejudice.

Instead, may we be empowered by your love
to tear down the edifices of falsehood
that divide us and weaken us
when we lose sight of your promises
and are led astray by fear instead for love.

May we never make our peace with the sacrilege
that denies the goodness from which you formed us all,
that resists the love you breathed into our spirits,
but be united in our desire to stand alongside each other in Your Name.

As we long for your kingdom,
and for the sake of your truth,
may the hearts of all those who overflow with malice
instead be converted by your grace,
and brought into your fold, O Shepherd of the Lost.

And now, O God and Hope of the Fallen,
place us securely within the shelter of your mercy,
and stretch out your hand of comfort and peace
over all those needs we humbly lay before You.

Amen.

Prayer 2363

Holy One of Blessing,
You encircle us and enfold us;
in your constant love we are kept safe and protected.
You are with us always, O God, 
You gaze tenderly upon all creation,
the work of your fingers and wisdom,
lovingly crafted and upheld by your mighty hand.
Set our feet upon the plain of justice,
and make us a bulwark for the oppressed and the vulnerable.
Make us one with each other:
may our arms open wide to encircle our neighbor,
as you encircle us all.
O Comforter, grant us your benediction,
and pour out your peace like a balm over us
that we may sing out your glory in our lives.
Grant your comfort to those whose hope is in you,
especially those whose needs we lift before you as we pray.

Amen.

Known By Our Love- Sermon for Easter 5C

On May 31, 2019, the Church will observe the 85th anniversary of the Barmen Declaration. 
In case you are not familiar with it, this was a document written by German Protestant theologians, including Karl Barth, protesting the take-over of the German Evangelical Church by Hitler’s Nazi supporters in 1933.The Barmen Declaration clearly and scripturally laid out the reasons for their dissent against the creation of what history now knows as the “Reichskirche.” 

The Barmen Declaration denounced several false doctrines being promoted in the Reichskirches, such as

“We reject the false doctrine that there could be areas of our life in which we would not belong to Jesus Christ but to other lords, areas in which we would not need justification and sanctification through him.”

“We reject the false doctrine that the Church could have permission to hand over the form of its message and of its order to whatever it itself might wish or to the vicissitudes of the prevailing ideological and political convictions of the day.” (1)

The Declaration also insisted on the separate spheres of Church and State—a separation which the Reichskirche clearly violated, making the German Church an arm of the German Nazi state. It denounces idolatry—such as including Hitler’s Mein Kampf as a sacred text alongside scripture, and hanging the Nazi Swastika flags and banners within the church by the altar, which actually happened. 

The Church, they insisted, belongs to Christ, not to countries or other human allegiances that often fail to follow Jesus’s Way of Love. 

Many of the pastors involved, including Martin Niemoller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, would go on to form an alternative, underground Church called the Confessing Church- and several of them, including Paul Schneider, Bonhoeffer, and Niemoller, would end up in concentration camps. Niemoller would later become known for this statement, which I kept hanging in my classroom when I was a teacher:

First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me

and there was no one left to speak for me.(2)

Niemoller had started out supporting the rise of Hitler, but eventually realized that hatred and anti-semitism were wrong. He spent the rest of his life after the war especially atoning for some of his attitudes before his change of heart.

Bonhoeffer's statue as a modern saint at Westminster Abbey

Bonhoeffer himself wrote a book, titled in English The Cost of Discipleship, which was an application of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount. In one of its most famous passages, he talked about “cheap grace” versus “costly grace.” Of course, grace is a gift given to us freely by God—part of God’s love for us. But that gift of grace elicits a response from us in making us not just fans of Jesus but disciples of Jesus. Bonhoeffer wrote:

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate…. 

Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.

It is costly because it costs a person their life, and it is grace because it gives a person the only true life…Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us. Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.” (3)

Bonhoeffer chose to return to Germany from America to be with his people during this terrible regime. Even though a pacifist, he even joined in a plot to assassinate Hitler. For this he was arrested and place in various prison and concentration camps. He would eventually lay down his life for his friends and for his countrymen, executed at the personal order of Himmler on April 9, 1945, a mere 29 days before Germany’s surrender. Even as the end of the Reich was near, with Soviet troops advancing from the East and British and American troops from the South and the West, Hitler made sure this man of God died before he did.

I was thinking about Bonhoeffer, and Niemoller, and the Barmen Declaration as I considered the context and the message of our gospel passage today. Let me help set the scene: the acrid scent of betrayal is in the air. Jesus has just eaten a meal with his disciples, his last one with them. He has broken bread—the literal meaning of the word “companion,” with all the apostles—including Judas, and Judas has just departed to go betray Jesus into the hands of those who considered him an enemy. 

Jesus reacts to his betrayer by first feeding him, by breaking bread with him, by still loving him as a “com-panion.” If Jesus can feed his betrayer, how can we not feed the hungry and care for the poor and desperate among us?

Later in John 15:12-14, he gives two concrete examples of what the love he is commanding us to have looks like: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. You are my friends if you do what I command you.” In other words, self-sacrifice and obedience.

After Judas leaves, Jesus could have said many things. It’s vital to emphasize this: He chose to talk about love.

And he talked about the requirement he was laying on his followers to love not as a hazy romantic feeling or with asterisks or codicils or amendments, but directly. We have to remember that Jesus’s commandment to love is given as the net of betrayal gathers under him—and yet he still urges us to love. That context is vital to our understanding of this command as a beautiful discipline rather than as an empty platitude.

As Biblical scholar Karoline Lewis puts it,

Jesus’ command in John follows the presence of evil and the departure of Judas. This is exactly when we need to be reminded to choose love -- when evil seems to be having its way. When those we thought were close, we thought we could trust, abandon us. When the actions and words of others clearly come from hate and suspicion and prejudice. Choose love….(4)

This is the heart of the Christian message, and yet I certainly know that I shy from the implications of this at the same time. Jesus can do it, but can I? It just seems too hard to give up all our notions of primacy and judgment and easier to draw lines around ourselves as us and set anyone outside the line as “them,” as the “other.” Certainly we all struggle with this, or more likely, try to whittle this commandment down to something comfortable and manageable… and, in the words of Bonhoeffer, cheap.

When I was a kid going to Methodist Church camp in Oklahoma, we were taught what was then a brand-new song by a priest names Peter Scholtes, one that has now become a classic. It went like this:

We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord;

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, by our love,

yes, they'll know we are Christians by our love. (5)

That song came to mind as I was reading our lectionary readings for this coming Sunday. In our gospel, one of the verses that most stays with me each time I read it is this one:

“I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."—John 13:34-35

The passage we read from John’s gospel this week that contains this commandment occurs just after Judas has gone from companionship to betrayal, and has departed to turn Jesus over to arrest and eventual execution. The echoes of Judas’s footsteps haven’t even silenced, and yet Jesus gives us the greatest commandment: to love one another.

We know it’s really not new. Here is the kernel and root of the Christian message—and if you don’t believe me, consider the fact that the command “love one another” appears 14 times hereafter in the New Testament. And we hear the first of those fourteen repetitions right here in today’s gospel. Here is John’s version of that teaching, set in a different context— and John makes it one of the last commands Jesus will relate before his arrest and crucifixion.

Again, “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

How do we define “one another?” Does this mean we must love
Only our families and friends?
Only our fellow members of this parish?
Of this diocese?
Of the Episcopal Church?
Only other Christians?
Only other Americans?
Only those who think like us?
Only those who look like us?
Only humans?
Only those who are blameless?
Only those who seem to be trying to improve themselves?
Even those who are our enemies, or wish us ill?
Even those who annoy us or frustrate us?
Even those who have wronged us?

Maybe—just maybe—it means all of the above.

It sounds hard. That’s why practice is the key to this kind of love.

What if we committed to loving each other—no exceptions? It might be the start of a revolution.  

Jesus, who loves us enough to hand himself over to evil for us, is calling us to rise above our instincts and our mutual suspicion and try to love each other. This kind of radical acceptance and love is what was described in John’s vision—the vision echoed in our reading from the end of the book of Revelation. This is the kind of radical acceptance and love we receive not through our own merits but through grace from God.

This is the action Jesus sets apart as the sign of discipleship in his teachings. When we love each other, we truly live as God commands us to live, fully and radically alive. And they—the world— will know we are Christians by our love.

Amen.

Readings:
Acts 11:1-8
Psalm 148
Revelation 21:1-6
John 13:31-35

Citations/Resources:
(1) The Barmen Declaration, at https://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/barmen.htm
(2)Martin Niemoller, "First They Came," at https://www.hmd.org.uk/resource/first-they-came-by-pastor-martin-niemoller/
(3) Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship (Nachfolge, or "Following"), 1937, pp. 45-49.
(4) The Rev. Dr. Karoline Lewis, "Resurrection is Love," April 16, 2016 at The Craft of Preaching at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=4607
(5) Peter Scholtes, "They'll Know We Are Christians," at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQyLHi_X83s

Prayer 2081

Most Merciful God,
our spirits bless your Holy Name
as we dedicate this day to your service.
Help us to use our prayer to You, O God,
as courage for action in restoring the common good
as the fixed mark to guide our life together
as disciples and witnesses of your gospel.
Strengthen us in compassion and grace, O Savior,
that we may renounce the leanness in our souls,
and instead embody your abundance and justice
which seeks the reconciliation of all things.
Give us the heart to work for peace,
a peace whose foundation is the solid rock of brotherhood,
seeking the welfare of others in the name of love.
Spirit of the Living God,
anoint us with the wisdom from on high,
and pour out your blessing upon those we now name.

Amen.

Prayer 1988: inspired by Matthew 22:23-40

O Lord Our God,
the Anchor of our Hope,
we turn to You in wonder, praise, and love:
accept our offered prayers,
and guide us into paths of wisdom and holiness.

Merciful One, the foundation of your law is love,
love that seeks the healing of the world,
as we bow our knees and heart before You:
fill our hearts to overflowing in love of our God
as the only Sovereign of our hearts.
Lord, You are the source of eternal life and light:
make us defenders of the desperate,
comforters of the distressed,
and protectors of all who turn to us for aid,
loving our neighbors as our very selves.
Unite us in heart and mind as one Body in Christ,
living as resurrection people
bearing your light and hope in the world.

Give rest, Lord Christ, to all those who dwell
within the promises of your mercy and grace,
and comfort all those who worry or mourn.
Holy One, You know our needs before we ask:
grant your blessing to those whose hope is in You.

Amen.

Prayer 1967: Living the Commandment of Love

Holy, Holy, Holy Lord,
we sing a song of thanksgiving before You,
recalling the comforting weight of your hand
shielding and guarding us through the night:
O God, we lift our hearts to You.

God of Compassion, grant us wisdom,
that we may study your Word,
and never stray from the heart of your law:
to love You in word and deed,
and to love our neighbors as our own selves.
Almighty One, you command us to relieve suffering,
to stand alongside the oppressed,
to welcome the homeless,
remembering that your law is grounded in love,
for we are ourselves upheld
only through your grace and mercy.

Blessed Savior,
strengthen us in integrity and compassion,
that we may we do justice,
love mercy,
and walk humbly and honorably with You in every moment.
May we tear down the edifices of cruelty and injustice,
remembering we are each other's keeper
as Christ's hands and heart in the world.

Accept now, we pray,
our intercessions and our cares which we place before You,
O Merciful God,
Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer,
that your blessing may cover these beloveds
in a cloud of comfort and peace.

Amen.

Written in response to the Attorney General's claim that removing children from their families at our borders is Biblical based on Romans 13:1.
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