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."

Labels and Clubs: Sermon for Proper 21B

I bet we can all remember when we reached certain milestones in our lives. I remember when I was finally tall enough to ride Zingo, the wooden roller coaster at Bell’s Amusement Park in Tulsa. I remember when I was finally old enough to join the Bluebirds. I remember when I won a part in the high school play. I remember when I auditioned for and landed a spot in the Tulsa Youth Symphony. Each of those milestones provided me with a sense of belonging. Each enlarged my sense of identity: grown-up kid, not a baby. Member of a group of girls who shared my own interests in the outdoors and admission into a sisterhood that worked in service to others. A budding performer. All of these were labels I embraced joyfully.

Labels can also be limiting. I remember being told I could not use the computer in my high school classroom or play baseball with my neighborhood pals because I was a girl. I remember being told that I would never go to college because we were a working class family. I remember being told that I was just a dirty little Okie kid one time when I visited California.

Jesus draws our attention to labels in today’s gospel passage. First, John expects praise for shutting down someone who was doing the good work of healing people, but were doing it without the proper credentials, you might say. John claimed these do-gooders were not members of the "Jesus Club." Then Jesus addresses people within the community he is forming who act in ways that negate his call to guide and care for one another—who may be actually leading others astray, and doing that in Jesus’s name. Jesus’s name is in danger of becoming a label, not a way of living and doing good.

Funny how we still see these same questions about labels and identities today. In fact, arguments about identity are some of the most dangerous in our common life together. Labels and affiliations can be used as clubc against one another. But it shouldn't be that way.

The question of doing things in Jesus’s name is an interesting one to the original hearers of this gospel passage. Remember, the original followers of Jesus did NOT use the word “Christian.” When the movement finally got big enough to need an identifier, the term was simply “those who belonged to the Way,” according to Acts 9:2. Acts 11:26 states that the first time disciples of Jesus were called “Christians” was in Antioch in Syria, one of the most ancient churches outside the actual Holy Land.

The deeper meaning about the transition from the first term to the second is subtle, but telling. Notice that the phrase first used starts with the description of belonging—reminding us that Jesus formed a community of believers to help support each other, and to support each other specifically in ministering to the world around them. When the name began to collectively shift to “Christians,” the implication is that Jesus’s followers are now specifically bearing his Name and acting in his name. This placed a heavy responsibility upon them to bear that name with humility and with grace, keeping in mind that a life lives publicly as a Christian, then and now, is in itself a profound testimony about Jesus and his Good News.

The question, therefore, in the first section of the gospel is whether the kind of example Christians are called to set as followers and embodiers of Jesus’s teaching can be found outside the Christian community. Have we ever known people who, while not professing the name of Jesus, or even while professing no faith at all, have nonetheless embodied the kind of lovingkindness and humility that Jesus calls his followers to model? Of course. Think of it: without Mahatma Gandhi, there might have been no Martin Luther King, Jr., whose study of Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance to British colonial rule in India informed his own passionate commitment to non-violent protest, what king called the use of “soul force.” It is here that we should note that Gandhi’s first name was not “Mahatma” but Mohandas. Mahatma is an honorific which means “great-souled.”

In our first reading, Queen Esther reveals that she is a Jew-- a label that could have gotten her killed under the scheme of her husband's advisor, Haman. She claims that label and is wmpowered by it.

Reflecting on our gospel story, the disciples are worried about someone doing God's work without having the official label of "follower of Jesus." And yet, haven't many of us known about the opposite, who do evil and hide it under the name of Christ?

I imagine we all have known people who do great harm to Christianity by loudly professing to be Christian yet whose lives reveal a shocking lack of compassion, empathy, loving-kindness and reconciliation. Some of the meanest people I have known in my life, angry, bitter, judgmental, grievance-filled prunes, have professed to be good, upstanding Christian people—and loudly proclaimed it too, all the while treating others, especially vulnerable people, with contempt and carelessness.

There’s a church sign I once saw on a marquee: “I’d rather be with a kind atheist than a hateful Christian.” That hurts that it can be true. Bbutwe'cve all known people like that, haven't we?

I wonder: is it the label that is so important, or is it the action? 

Is it truly even possible to be a Christian and be hateful? 

Can someone call themselves “Christian” if they refuse the inner transformation that accompanies truly giving one’s life over to the love of God as we experience it in the life and example of Jesus, who is God in human flesh? Why would God bother to take on a human life at all if it was not to show us how to live a God-centered life?

For much of the last many millennia, at least in the West since the removal of prohibitions on Christianity by the Emperor Constantine, the title “Christian” has been associated with power and influence. Funny how a once-ragtag group of some of the least influential people in their own backwater region of the Roman Empire suddenly shifted to being powerful and connected.

Even here in America, which was founded during the Enlightenment, and which, thanks to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, officially proclaimed the separation of church and state as a governing principle, persons seeking influence and elected office usually did not do well if they proclaimed themselves to not be Christians. Heck, it took this country until 1960 to elect a Roman Catholic to the presidency, and friends, that WAS an actual point of contention. During the Cold war, since refusal to believe in God was associated with communism, proclaiming oneself a Christian became an unspoken prerequisite to higher office. Churches were places not so much where people were formed as disciples but as places where people were seen, and where they networked and conducted business deals—kind of what the golf course is now for much of corporate America.

In too much of the world, attaching the label of “Christian” to someone or something went from being less about taking on a discipline of service and self-denial, and more about opening up the doors of the corridors of power. And so it has been and so it has remained—until very recently. Christianity, too often, has become a club—and remember that the second meaning of the word club is “a tool to beat someone with.”

I was recently told by a person online that if I didn’t believe that each and every word in the Bible should be interpreted as he did, that “I could not be a Christian.” He was pretty mean about it too. I gently reminded him that, fortunately for both of us, that wasn’t his decision to make. Tra- la- la! You are NOT the decider!

Labels DO matter—and undoubtedly they matter too much. Labels are, after all, a way of stereotyping—and that becomes a way to not see the human being bearing that label. We are now in the midst of one of the most bitter partisan contests in our lifetimes. And we are at a dangerous point in our country where labels have gotten to where they matter more than the belief systems they are supposed to represent. We look for a single letter after a candidate’s name, we talk about whether they are “red” or “blue,” and then we get blinded to what those letter and colors actually stand for. Worse, too many of us have now doubled down so that anyone on the other side is not just someone with whom we disagree, but someone who is immediately assumed to be “the enemy.”

And so what is Jesus saying to us right now? Maybe it’s to look beyond the labels that divide us. Look, there it is: right there: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Wow—what would it be like if we took that line right there to heart?

Jesus reinforces this viewpoint in the last sentence we heard today as well: Be at peace with one another.” Not a fake peace, where we refuse to discuss the things that matter. Not the false peace that avoids engaging with those different from us and closes us off from each other. But a real peace, in which we don’t worry about labels and dividing us one from another, but coming together in good will and open-heartedness, putting down our clubs, and instead working together for the common good. Looking for the way we can build each other up rather than oppress and cast out others.

Especially in the days and weeks and months ahead, may we all try to let our lives testify to the goodness of God, and welcome anyone who truly beings about healing and reconciliation, no matter what labels they do it under. Let’s be for each other, rather than against each other. And even though there are plenty of other things to do each Sunday, let’s recommit, as this new program year begins, to show up for each other, here and throughout the week, and for our own deepening of our faith in Jesus. Putting aside all that we use to divide us or to let ourselves off the hook for doing the work, as James has been reminding us this last month.

No labels. No clubs. Just community.


Amen.

Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church on September 28-29, 2024.

Readings:

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124 
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

Off the Hook: Sermon for the 3rd Sunday after Epiphany B

Many of you have probably heard the old Chinese proverb: Give a man a fish, and he eats for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he eats for a lifetime.

It’s a beautiful sentiment. But I have also seen the truth of its corollary: Give a man a fish, and he will eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he will be gone the entire weekend.

There’s a lot of fishiness in this week’s readings, and hopefully, we are hooked into trying to learn more.

We start with just a snippet from the Book of Jonah. It’s unusual among the prophetic books. There are very few prophecies of his included. Instead it is a narrative of Jonah’s life. His life as a prophet is unique because in this book he is sent not to the people of Israel to correct their sins and shortcomings, but to the people of Israel’s oppressor—specifically, to the great city of Nineveh. A city Jonah hates, because it is the capital of Israel’s enemies, the Assyrians. So when Jonah is told by God to go offer his enemies salvation, he adamantly refuses and does everything he can to avoid it. I mean, a prophet who defies God. That’s some chutzpah. But in the end, to Nineveh he does go, and converts them with a single sentence. And in doing so, he learns that God’s mercy is wider than the widest sea.

In Mark’s gospel, which is notorious for using the word “immediately” dozens of times, Jesus converts two pairs of brothers with a single sentence, too. As I discussed this gospel with the vestry the other night, some of us contrarians reflected that the idea of fishing for people can seem rather negative. This image implies, after all, that maybe people should be baited, or hooked, or caught against their will. Fishing works by fooling the fish, or sneaking up on them unawares, after all. Not to mention the fact that fishing for a living, rather than when one does it as a hobby, is backbreaking work with no guarantee of success—and desperate, too, when fishing is a matter of survival.

When we survey the scope of scripture, being caught in a net is almost always a negative thing. A net is almost always portrayed as a trap. In the psalms, a net is what your enemies lay out to trip you up, to ensnare you. With that in mind, the idea of “fishing for people” can be seen as manipulative.

And sure, there are some faith communities that use gimmicks to ensnare people. There’s the obvious things, like offering childcare—I used to know a lot of parents who would send their kids to a local church in east Tulsa because it had a fleet of old school buses that would drive through the neighborhoods, and they could send the kids off to this church and get a couple of hours to themselves while the church kept the kids busy on a Sunday morning. I know other churches that advertise coffee bars, and climbing walls, and even Mixed Martial Arts bouts and fashion shows, or who play to the very attractive idea that those who DON’T belong to the church are losers, outsiders, cast off from God—like God’s love is an exclusive offer to only the right sort of people. Then there are churches where people go to make business connections, or to be “seen”—a story as old as time.

This week’s readings continue last week’s theme of being called by God and the mutual recognition that is involved in call, as we are given more depictions of being called by God and the various ways we can respond.

To review: we could respond with innocent eagerness, like the boy-prophet Samuel last week.

We can respond with skepticism, like Nathanael did last week in John’s gospel.

We can respond with a desperate and angry “NO!” until one gets FORCED to surrender, as in Jonah’s story--and surrender he does, but he resents the hell out of being forced to offer a chance for repentance to his most hated enemies.

Or we can respond with shocking abruptness, like our two sets of brothers in our reading from Mark. Here we see them drop everything that they are doing—leaving behind bewildered (and undoubtedly angry) fathers and unmended nets and following this stranger with a handful of words.

I don’t know about everyone else, but for me, choices two and three have definite relevance for my life. After all, saying yes to God sometimes means ceding control, letting God’s will triumph over our own will. And there are few things more unsettling and potentially scary than that. We live in a culture, after all, in which sacrifice, compromise, joyful obedience and being malleable are seen as signs of weakness, signs of being a patsy. We have been conditioned, after all, to always seek to win—to demand “What’s in this for me?”—and the way our churches are set up can be no different.

So maybe that’s why some of us feel sorry for those poor fish-people. Visions of that scene in Finding Nemo might be flashing through your mind’s eye right now—the one where poor little Nemo has been caught in the net of the trawler along with hundreds of other fish, and they panic at the prospect of their impending doom as the net inexorably cranks upward.

But Jesus’s Good News never starts by tricking or guilting people into conversion and repentance. Jesus’s Good News, one that we are called to proclaim and embody, emphasizes living a life of discipleship rather than an emphasis on how to suffer through life until you get a reward of heaven when you die. My life was hard enough growing up. “Get used to it, kid,” or, a million times worse, smugly being told “It’s all God’s will” in answer to the real deprivations and chaos in which I grew up did NOT entice me into feeling like I was on the winning end of a bargain.

Jesus met people where they were, and invited them into relationship by being spiritually and intellectually welcoming. Again and again, he invites us to bring our questions and our doubts and not be rejected or shamed for them. And the places in my youth that operated with baiting nets and condemning some people as “garbage” worthy only of destruction when they got caught in God’s net did not appeal to me one bit.

In calling us, Jesus doesn’t offer us a bargain. In calling us, Jesus offers us our lives.

Rather than vengeance and punishment, Jesus calls us to mercy and grace. Rather than a transactional mindset like the rest of the world around us, run by merciless parameters like “dog eat dog” and “take advantage of others before they take advantage of you,” Jesus’s Good News is instead an orientation toward compassion and helping others without stopping to refuse those who were deemed “unworthy.” An emphasis on helping the struggling rather than ignoring their struggles or seeing those struggles as “God’s will.” A proclamation of how Jesus’s incarnation is meant to remind us of how precious we are in God’s sight, rather than how fallen and corrupt the material world is—and letting Christians off the hook from trying to make the broken places in the world better.

It's a question of emphasis. As our gospel passage begins, Jesus is walking along the shores of Galilee proclaiming GOOD NEWS. Good news, of mercy and grace, rather than suffering and smiting. That’s what entices people to leave the nets that have ensnared them and follow Jesus.

We can hear Jesus’s call with a different emphasis.

Instead of “Follow me, and I will make you fish for PEOPLE.”

What if we heard, “Follow me, and I will make you fish FOR people.” 

To live for others, to live for God, and in doing so, living lives that really matter.

Jesus calls Simon and Andrew and James and John and you and me to actively join with him in proclaiming the Good News to those we encounter in OUR lives. To take stock of what God’s love does for us in each moment, and to be so overjoyed we share that love with others. And that’s how we get out of the net and off the hook, and instead live lives of richness and abundance.

Jesus’s call to us, as disciples, is to not to trap people in our nets, but to leave the nets and the manipulations and seek reconciliation and good news for ALL.

Jesus’s call to us, as disciples, is to have faith in God’s love for us—and for our own ability to share that love in a world that DESPERATELY needs it. Immediately.

Preached at the 505 on January 20 and the 8:30 and 10:30 Eucharists on January 21 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville. MO.

Readings, 3rd after Epiphany B:
Jonah 3:1-5, 10
Psalm 62:6-14
1 Corinthians 7:29-31
Mark 1:14-20

Looking for a Bargain: Speaking to the Soul, October 7, 2021

Mark 10:17-31

This Sunday’s collect reads as follows: Lord, we pray that your grace may always precede and follow us, that we may continually be given to good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Despite this collect, this Sunday’s lectionary readings are about how one cannot gain faith by good works alone. Grace, as the first part of the collect reminds, is required. God always makes the first move in salvation. God takes the initiative. Something inside a person responds to that pull from God, even if we are unaware of God’s invitation as such.

The gospel story includes Mark’s version of the “rich young man” who approaches Jesus to find out how he can “inherit” eternal life. This young man means well, and is humble enough to be a seeker after this wandering teacher, instead of attempting to summon Jesus to him, as a person of privilege might do. Jesus at first inquires as to his following of the commandments, and the young man affirms his commitment to them. What is interesting is that the gospel states that Jesus looks at him at this point, and “loved him.” Mark doesn’t usually talk about Jesus’s feelings of love in this way, so this is a significant statement. But somehow, this young man also thinks that he can earn salvation without some cost to himself. When Jesus tells him he should give up his wealth in service to the poor, he goes away, not just sad, but “shocked and grieving,” because he has great wealth.

This passage thus brings us once again to a word that causes so many of us to shudder: sacrifice. Passages like this one make us associate sacrifice with deprivation, with pain, with loss. But the most literal meaning of sacrifice is “something that makes one holy.” This young man, who has probably never been excluded from anything in his life due to his wealth and the privilege wealth brings, hesitates to give that up. Even for “eternal life.” He is looking for a bargain, for a lever with which to move God—always a foolish presumption.

The young man remains inwardly focused, seeing the relationship with God as, ultimately transactional: I will do X and then God will reward me with Y. He is doing what we all do: trying to bargain with God and get the best deal according to a human calculus of value and loss. But that subverts the point of faith, which is to look outside our own concerns to the needs of the community, to the needs of others. To celebrate our common bonds with our neighbors and with creation. To look beyond our delusion that we can earn God’s grace at bargain-basement prices to ourselves and our delusions of autonomy.

In God’s kingdom values, people are not “in” or “out” by accident of birth—where they are born, or who their parents are, or the color of their skin or the language they speak or whether they are outwardly good at following rules while inwardly cruel and hard-hearted. At some point in your life, you are responsible to choose whether to follow God and God’s expansive vision of community or not.

We see it a lot in our society right now, across those parts of the globe formerly known as “Christendom.” There are people who were born into Christian homes, and brought up with going to Church. They even absorbed knowledge of Bible stories and perhaps can quote the Lord’s prayer and the 23rd Psalm. They’re “culturally Christian”—nominally fluent in the language and rituals of the Christian religion. But unless anyone decides for themselves to walk in the Way of Jesus, no matter how imperfectly, their knowledge doesn’t translate into faith.

Luckily, if we can hear aright Christ’s loving message of radical generosity and inclusion, it means that as we embark on our journey of faith, we are assured that we are not only never outsiders, we are never alone. We not only have Jesus. We have each other. We are called to deny the forces of the world that seek to exclude, to divide, and instead to embrace those we encounter, especially those who call out for help.

We ourselves have received astounding grace and mercy, whether we have deserved it or not. Jesus calls us to demonstrate that same grace to the world around us—especially when everything around us tries to make us hard-hearted and afraid. That’s how the light of Christ will shine, even in this time of fear and darkness. It will shine from inside us, once we embrace each other in true charity and empathy. No bargains necessary.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, October 7, 2021.

The Witness of Intention: Sermon for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 21B)

Our readings today have stories of enemies, jealousies, and rivalry coming through them. There are some harsh images in the harsh for such a beautiful day. But certainly relatable in the fractured, divided time in which we live.

In the first part of our gospel, the apostles see someone not affiliated with Jesus nonetheless doing the deeds that Jesus promised his disciples they could do—casting out demons and healing people of their suffering. This is not a story of a magician (code word for pagan) performing magic that was. In competition with the Jesus movement. No—it clearly states that this person was acting in Jesus’s name.

Debie Thomas talks about the fact that what the disciples are complaining about is that, to them, proper procedure is not being followed-- and God knows Episcopalians in particular are allll about procedure sometimes. The disciples here are all standing around saying “Who is dis guy???” and feeling that he or she is stealing their thunder. They have completely lost sight of the fact that this person, acting in Jesus’s name, is doing Jesus’s work, and is bringing about hope and healing where previously none existed. She puts the issue this way: rather than not being a known follower of Jesus, they are complaining that he is not following THEM and placing himself under their supervision.(1)

Jesus's answer to them is the phrase that jumps out to me as being important to hear right now: Whoever is not against us is for us.

In 2021, we just memorialized the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York, Virginia across the river from Washington DC, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, probably on the way to DC had the passengers and remaining crew not risen up and interfered. A somber anniversary, one reminding us of a day that changed us in so many ways, some good, and some bad.

One of the things I remember from those somber days come to me in flashes: the relief I felt when my dear friend’s daughter who had been in Manhattan on a business trip finally arrived home days later. The sacrifices of first responders. The rapt attention of students as we processed what had happened in the days and weeks that followed. The concerts. The anxiety and even tears of kids whose parents or siblings were in the National Guard or Reserve, and who got their orders for Afghanistan. The long lines to donate blood. The concerts to support the families who had lost loved ones.

But one of my memories that touched me deeply was the prayer service held on September 23 in Yankee Stadium for the missing and the dead. Representatives from the Jewish, Roman Catholic, Sikh, Muslim, Greek Orthodox, and various Protestant leaders, as well as famous musicians, joined together to pray and remember. It was a beautiful coming together, a defiant declaration of kinship and love in action in response to the attempt to divide and destroy.

However, one of the ministers who took part in that truly interfaith prayer service was later censured by his denomination. They saw praying with non-Christians as akin to fully approving what they called “paganism”—itself a provocative word. In the end, their arguments ran along the lines of “By praying with Muslims, you prayed to the Muslim (small- g) god.” Their claim was that the Muslim god is different.

Yet here is the first reality we have to consider: different languages by definition use different words. In Arabic, the name Allah simply means “God.” Christians who live in places where Arabic is the language also pray to “Allah.” But secondly, do we really want to claim there is more than one God—all in contention with each other? Or do we not proclaim each and every time we worship liturgically, that there is ONE God, revealed for Christians through Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, true, but one God and Creator of all that is?

To my mind, the objection against praying with anyone who doesn’t believe EXACTLY what you do is, really, as we would say back home, “There ain’t no such thing.” There’s a famous saying—wherever you have two Episcopalians in a room, you have five opinions.” We belong to a branch of the Jesus movement that embraces that ambiguity and openness to matters of practice. We consider intention to be a vital consideration in judging the rightness of an action. And that’s what we hear in our gospel today.

Note the complete details of the situation: someone is performing deeds of healing who has not been previously seen following Jesus. And yet listen carefully to the words used to describe those healing actions: they are being performed “in Jesus’s name.” Whoever they are doesn’t matter—the reason they are doing these things DOES. They are healing and restoring for the glory of God, and God’s dream of healing, reconciliation, restoration, relief, compassion. For the restoration of people to community. For shalom: peace, wholeness, being at ease. As testimony to Jesus’s teaching and witness and example. Whether they’ve completed all the classwork or joined the right clubs doesn’t change the love behind their actions in the least—it might even make it MORE praiseworthy.

From the earliest years of the Church of England’s separation from the Roman church, its great theologians held to a doctrine called “adiaphora.” It comes from the Greek word meaning “indifferent.” It doesn’t mean that one is indifferent to matters of theology, but suggests that in worship practices that are essential versus those that are not. If you visit parishes within our diocese, you will see a wide variety of ways to worship on Sunday: some use incense, and some do not. Some only pray in Elizabethan language, and some use a much more modern vernacular. Some have loads of glorious artwork, like we do, and some have a plain brick building and plain white walls. Even within a parish, you will see some people genuflecting and others not; some people dressed to the nines and others coming as they are. All matters of preference, not commandment. But you will always see people seeking to understand how to walk in the path of Jesus.

It is intention that matters, and intention that witnesses to the glory of God. When those religious leaders of a wide variety of faiths gathered in those dark days twenty years ago, their intention was not to put forward some sort of competition to see whose practices were the greatest, much less the “only.” They were insisting that people of all backgrounds were lost on that terrible day, and that people of all backgrounds could join together in laying their devastation and also their resilient faith on the line together. That as members of the only race that matters— the human race-- the wounds of one person affect us all. The death of one person affects us all. What better way to deny the goals of those terrorists to destroy us and to divide us than to come together faithfully and deny their attempt to use death as a tool by re-committing ourselves to life, to decency, to the respect and dignity of every person—including those who pray, and even vote, differently than we do?

That last phrase might sound familiar to you, especially today. It is one of the eight questions we answer in our baptismal covenant: Will you strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being?

And indeed, those questions we affirm each time we renew this Covenant, from the first time or for the hundredth time, describe what truly is important in matters of our religious or spiritual life. Continuing in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread, and the prayers means Living a life of commitment to others and to your own development: it means committing ourselves as individuals to being part of a worshiping community that you may continue to grow deeper in your life of faith. Persevering in resisting evil means it is NOT better to apologize than to ask permission, it means listening to your conscience and being guided by it to avoid hurting others and having to make amends later. Proclaiming by word and example the good news of Jesus means realizing that all that those who call themselves Christian say and do is a testimony to the world of who Jesus is. It means that everything we do, we do in Jesus’s name—including the times we do things we ought not to do. Nothing makes Jesus look as bad to a world deeply unfamiliar with Jesus’s radical love and acceptance more than seeing his followers openly behaving as if they have no intention of embodying his values, either. When the Church violates Jesus’s example, we can’t be surprised that the world turns away in disbelief. Seeking and serving Christ in all persons means being among those who challenge us, who reject us, who are different from us, and yet seeing Christ’s face shining out from their faces, calling us to embrace him through embracing them.

Jesus’s gospel is radical BECAUSE it challenges the life to which we are accustomed. Jesus’s gospel is radical because its power in centered in being a person for others, and not for ourselves; in giving, rather than taking; in seeing the interconnectedness of all life in God’s good creation rather than fighting against everyone else as a competitor and enemy for scarce resources and privileges. Jesus calls us to transformation of our transactional natures. And that is absolutely counter-cultural. The fact is, if you are not confounded at least ten times a day as you attempt to live this life of following Jesus, you are not paying attention. We live in a world where our leaders have proclaimed in times of crisis, “Whoever is not with us is against us,” and there are times when that is true—like when we are silent in the face of violence and oppression. When we proclaim, as one religious leader did recently, that of course we are against sexual abuse committed by ministers, but not if it destroys our denomination to openly investigate that abuse. (2) This axiom is useful when applied to harmful behavior. Jesus is looking at good works in his comment, though. 

When Christians are more interested in claiming they belong to an exclusive club than in engaging in the hard work of loving people, you get alienation of the world from God’s dream of fellowship and amity among people. Mahatma Gandhi, who was no slouch when it came to standing up for the powerless and living a spiritual life with intention, once was asked by a missionary what would help bring more Indians to embrace Christianity. He suggested that Christians, from missionaries to political leaders, begin to live more like Jesus Christ. Consider that for a moment. If you think that is not practical, then admit to yourself that Jesus will never be the solution until Christians stop being part of the problem.

When someone is accomplishing the reconciling and loving work that Jesus embodied, whether they have all the right credentials or not, they are advancing Jesus’s life and mission in the world. That’s what we commit to do today—and every day. As we celebrate the welcoming of our newest Christian today, sweet little Clementine, we stand around her and promise to teach her how to live like Jesus. 

And the way we best do that is by doing it ourselves, knowing that she is learning by watching us. 

What a gift.

Preached at the 10:30 service, held in limited number in person for a baptism, and broadcast online at 10:30 am on September 26, 2021 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124 
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

Citations:

1) Debie Thomas, “Hosts, Not Bouncers,” at Journey with Jesus, 19 September 2021.

2) See the comments by Joe Knott, member of the Executive Committee of the Southern Baptist Convention, paraphrased in this article.

Being Open: Speaking to the Soul for September 2, 2021

Mark 7:24-37

Just like all of us, Jesus needed periods of rest. And by now, the only way he was going to get that was by going away, by going to places outside the boundaries of Israel and Judea, by physically propping a “Closed for Business” sign between himself and the persistent crowds. So he went up to Lebanon, to the city of Tyre on the Mediterranean coast, an ancient city, originally founded by the Phoenicians, the people who gave us the alphabet. And yet, even there, immediately he is approached by a woman of the area, who falls down before him at his feet, a position of both worship and pleading. It’s also a wise position, strategically, because it is impossible—and incredibly rude– to ignore someone who has thrown themselves at your feet.

This woman is an outsider on three important levels. First, she is a woman, approaching a strange man whom she does not know. Second, she is a Gentile, of Phoenician and Syrian heritage. Third, the inhabitants of the region of Tyre were typically prosperous, as it was a busy trading hub with a highly lucrative economy as compared to the poorer agricultural area from which Jesus came around Galilee, and so its inhabitants were often looked upon with resentment by their neighbors.

So Jesus responds in a way that is not exactly welcoming—maybe it’s the exhaustion talking. Or maybe he is a little resentful of her forcing herself upon him as he is seeking some peace and quiet. So Jesus tries to turn her away, and he even implies that she and her people are dogs, fit only to cringe outside the doors of the children of Israel. And maybe Jesus, fully human and worn out and frustrated, hopes that like a dog she will slink away.

But the love this woman has for her daughter, and the fear this woman has for her daughter, has led her this far in powering through all the obstacles of race and gender that should keep her completely powerless. Perhaps she anticipated that this Jewish holy man would reject her, as expected, and had prepared her counterarguments with that probability in mind.

“Maybe I am a dog, sir,” she responds, humbly, refusing to be thrown off by any attempt to provoke her. “But even dogs are grateful to accept whatever scraps and crumbs fall their way.” And in this way, she draws Jesus up short, and leads him to reconsider. He himself has just gotten finished arguing that nothing on the outside of a person can make them unclean. And now, standing before him, is living proof of exactly that message.

What we see here is that Jesus really is fully human, and that’s vitally important for us. We have hope because God became fully human in Jesus, and Jesus, just like us, got frazzled and hungry, mourned for his friend Lazarus, and got tired and frustrated. That’s the reality and the comfort of the incarnation when we take it seriously. Jesus emerges from this encounter, just like his tempting in the wilderness and his baptism, changed. He has been reminded that God’s love for the world shows no partiality and admits no lines of division. No one is outside the bounds of God’s grace. No one.

The Syrophoenician woman reminded Jesus and reminds all of us, every single day, to be opened to a crucial reality—a reality still coming into being due to our own resistance and fearfulness. A reality that therefore can never be repeated enough to break through our human tendencies to exclude those different from us. That challenging reality is that God’s reconciling, healing love truly has no limits.

God’s love is a generous, abundant love. God’s call is a generous, abundant call to all. This reminds us that our discipleship too must be open to all. We don’t exist as a community of faith merely for ourselves or for those who are similar to us. We exist as a community of faith to serve as disciples and witnesses to the world outside these doors, both when we are acting as a community and when we are acting as individuals. Even when we think no one is looking.

Being open to the movement of the Spirit of God in our lives is the foundation of salvation and discipleship, but it’s also scary. It means being open to God’s will wherever it may lead us, and we like to be in control of where we are going. It means being open to being surprised. It means being open to acknowledging that God’s ways are not our ways of exclusion and setting people up for failure. God’s ways are always about regeneration of heart and spirit, embracing the vulnerability of being open.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on September 2, 2021.

Indivisible: Speaking to the Soul for August 27, 2021

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

Many years ago, a sweeping history of Australia was published called The Fatal Shore: The Epic of Australia’s Founding, by Robert Hughes. It told the story of how England shipped convicts to Australia’s harsh terrain in the 18th and 19thcenturies, making it a continent not only wrested from its indigenous people but built by basically convict labor. One could be sent to Australia for seven or even fourteen years for stealing a loaf of bread—just like the “crime” that was the centerpiece of Les Miserables. Those who were deemed to have broken the law were seen as unredeemable.

Some might say everyone who breaks the law is a criminal who deserves to be punished—and even cast out. Those who say things like that, at the same time, we probably all know people who behave unethically while using the law as a cover, and also people who break the law in order to follow what they consider to be the greater dictates of their consciences. Laws are meant to strengthen societal bonds and relationships—not tear them apart.

In our gospel for this coming Sunday, Jesus’s critics are scandalized by the fact that Jesus’s followers do not perform the ritual washing of the hands all the way to the elbows that was the tradition that developed from the Torah over the centuries. Yet, their criticism stems not from concern, or the wish to help someone who does not know better. Instead, their criticism means to cast doubt on the holiness of this holy man and his followers. If they don’t even wash their hands before eating, how good of a teacher must this Jesus be?

And three years ago, when we last read this pericope, most of us viewed handwashing in a much different light than we do now, as deep into COVID19 as we now are. Most of us, before COVID19, gave handwashing a half-hearted effort at best. And now we have all been taught to scrub our hands up to our elbows while singing “Happy Birthday.” Twice.

Jesus reminds us that purity for purity’s sake, stripped of context, becomes an idol on its own. Jewish purity laws were, and in some communities still are, very strict. Sometimes, keeping the law becomes a display of false piety, unmoored from the spirit and purpose of the law at its inception—it wasn’t to make a big show of yourself; it was to demonstrate care for the neighbors and our willingness to be obedient before God. It was about indivisible community, not individualism.

Ultimately, this argument is about authority and tradition. Jesus points out that tradition is all well and good—until it starts interfering with mission. We’ve lost our way when purity is valued over efficacy—when purity is valued over helping people.

We have been given a similar opportunity to demonstrate that lovingkindness and sense of appreciation of the value of our neighbors’ lives. We have the opportunity to live by grace—in humble acknowledgement of the grace we ourselves have received, honestly acknowledging the profligate love that is at the root of such radical acceptance and forbearance. To see no one as unredeemable.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on August 27, 2021.

No Turning Back: Speaking to the Soul for August 19, 2021

John 6:56-69

It was all good when Jesus was passing around the bread and sardines.

It was fine when Jesus was poking his finger into the eye of the elites, the powerful.

But Jesus’s talk about drinking blood and eating flesh bursts through the earliest taboos in Torah. So now, Jesus’s teachings HAVE proved too hard for some of his followers. They have not signed on for this. To drink blood and to eat flesh is unimaginable. They asked for bread, and Jesus seems to be giving them stones. Worse than stones, actually, they think. Jesus speaks matter-of-factly to them about bewildering mysteries when they were asking for another miraculous sign. “Moses,” they said, “laid out feasts in the wilderness. We want bread just like that.” They wanted manna, which they called the bread of angels, but Jesus instead gives them riddles. And so, many leave.

But a few remain—then and now. “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.” The ones who leave and the ones who stay do not yet understand that, better than loaves and crumbs, Jesus is offering himself to them—and to us.

Too often, we fall into the silken trap that undergirds our modern world—the stubborn insistent voice that insists that each person is in control of his or her own destiny. Other people will get there first, and there won’t be enough to go around. We are driven by fear of scarcity, fear of the Other. We scramble after manna and ignore the feast Christ offers us.

Jesus, however, reveals a different standard for defining reality. Jesus comes into the world as part of God’s proclamation “God loves, therefore we are.” God freely sends God’s Son into the world as the Incarnate Word through love.

There it is in John 3:16—“ For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Jesus is the sign and representation, the icon of God’s love for the world, love that feeds and sustains real life, not just existence. The is no turning back from an embrace that pure, that holy.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on August 19, 2021.

Peace, Be Still: Speaking to the Soul for June 17, 2021

Mark 4:35-41

Peace, be still.

It is the time of year that darkness descends like a curtain on the ground only reluctantly, when the long days stretch indolently like a satisfied cat. This is the time of year when the lure of the outdoors exercises a mesmerizing hold on those of us who love summer. As I sit outside among the ferns and hostas, you can almost watch new fiddleheads unroll frond by frond, like gears. The thrum of life rises up from the tree roots, a basso profundo droning song you can feel in your bones. Slow down. Pinpoint the moment when twilight descends to gloaming and then descends and kicks over into night.

Peace, be still.

I was sitting outside the other night, studying, until finally the lack of light here at Sewanee drove me inside. As I looked up from my text, and started to gather my things, I was stopped to see that fireflies were dancing around me under the broad oak that had been my place of respite in the summer heat. They were putting on a show just for me—and for the objects of their affection, of course. Their dance swirled on the current of these words as the Spirit breathed them across my skin:

Peace, be still.

This Sunday, Jesus will speak these words in response to the terror of his friends in a boat in a storm. His assurance stills the storm raging around them—and within their trembling hearts. Whether this day we encounter joy, memories of loss, the weight of tasks that seem daunting, or a crisis to prevail over, Jesus urges us to start by remembering that the most beautiful melody of accompaniment is that of our Beloved Jesus, his words a soothing caress and support for whatever we encounter.

Peace, be still.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 17, 2021.

The Best Seed: Sermon for the Third Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 6B

In the week that I have spent here on the Mountain at Sewanee, I've only had a few moments to walk among the trails that surround the domain. I’ve yet to get to their working farm, complete with chickens and goats, but that is on my list. But the forests here surround the School of Theology, which is on the periphery of campus.

These forests did not get here through human intervention (although they could certainly disappear that way). They got here through the processes of nature working as God created them. The seed falls to the ground, or even gets scattered by birds or deer. Those that fall where the conditions are right sprout. Some of those sprouts will get eaten, or fail to thrive, but that’s a pessimistic way to look at it.

Instead, we look at the forest, and we see the signs of God’s bounty and care for creation everywhere. And here’s a miracle: Each one of these trees started out as just a small seed! Some of them were here before we were born, and some of them will be here long after we are gone. 

Their growth is automatic—especially if we humans get out of the way. If we don’t try to “manage” the forest, or drive off the full range of creatures that keep a forest healthy, or pull out the herbicides and start blasting away at the plants that we term “weeds.” And our gospel today reminds us, that what one being sneers at as a weed, like the mustard seed, can be another being’s precious home, like those birds that gather in the branches after that mustard seed surprises everyone by becoming not just a bush, but a habitat.

Working in gardens all my life taught me one thing, though: If you like control, growing plants is NOT for you. There is way too much that can go wrong, even if you start from potted plants rather than from seed. The smallest thing can spell disaster as a plant moves from seed to maturity: too much rain. Too little rain. A late freeze. A marauding squirrel or grazing deer. Grubs. Mites. Moles, Gophers. Fungus. black rot. Drought. Hail. Even tornadoes.

That's why I admire the farmer in the first parable at the beginning of our gospel today. She tends to the parts that she can control, and she relaxes about the parts that she can't. She sows the seed, trusting that some of it at least will produce. And then she goes to sleep. That right there is a great big bit of wisdom: after you've done your work, take a nap.

But more importantly, she trusts God enough to let God do God’s miraculous magic that we can especially see all around us in creation. God makes the seeds sprout—not us. The fully grown wheat or the tree or the apple—it’s all hidden there, sleeping, waiting in potentiality in every seed that falls to the ground. Think of how miraculous—how gracious—that is!

Jesus tells us that the reign of God, and our role in it, is like this: God gives us the seed. Unless we scatter it, nothing will happen. So do it. Share the word of God in your words, yes, but especially in your actions—the hardest thing of all actually, because that requires that we LIVE by God’s values of love and faithfulness, and that means that it’s not just a matter of saying you’re a Christian—it’s a matter of living like Jesus, which is much harder.

Jesus gives us that seed to scatter. So that IS an important part of our role, and it often happens best when we are unaware that we are doing it—when people are watching us out in our daily lives.

But then, trust in the goodness and fertility of that seed and soil. Trust that God has the power to make that seed sprout and grow, and don’t worry too much about how it’s going to actually happen. You can’t manage the time, you can’t manage the season. No matter what, it’s not OUR timeline—we don’t have control over when the sprouting or the growing or the harvest time will come. As we’ve been through this time of pandemic, that’s an especially precious and important reminder, as we all grow impatient. We’ve learned to scatter seed in new ways here at St. Martin’s. Some of the best ways have been just by doing little things to show our love for others. Of course, there has been loss as well as growth. Some members have moved on. Some new people have come. So the seed keeps on growing wherever it will.

Yes, it’s important to do our part in scattering that seed. But Jesus tells this story of a bountiful harvest to a hungry people, and that is ABSOLUTELY good news. We know that the world around us is tired of the hothouse tomatoes that too much of modern Christianity offers them. They look so red and ripe—but they taste like cardboard. They don’t really nourish the longing within for the TASTE of goodness that comes from the Earth at God’s design.

But when the time of harvest comes, the people will be fed, and fed abundantly. For those who listened to Jesus’s story shouted from the boat on the sea, who KNEW what hunger was, who knew how unpredictable and marginal working the poor soil of Judea could be, Jesus’s words spun out a vision of hope and abundance that welled up joyously. For the struggling community for whom Mark’s gospel was written—small, persecuted, marginalized—they LONGED for the harvest that would signify God’s grace and abundance. And in our own time, right now, after months and months of fear and loss, aren’t we just as hungry for hope as they were?

God promises us the very best seed, asks us to scatter it, and then have faith and trust in the sprouting.

As I thought about this, I remembered, a charming little comedy that came out when I was a kid. It was called “Oh, God!” In the story, a supermarket manager named Larry, played by the musician John Denver, gets chosen by God, played by comedian George Burns, to spread a message of hope.

Larry is not a religious man, but God keeps gently appearing to him in various guises. And finally, although reluctant, he eventually does begin to share that God has spoken to him. Larry becomes the butt of jokes nationwide. The rush is on to disprove the story Larry tells. Theologians lock him in a room with a stack of questions in Aramaic—but God appears as room service and gives him the answers. Then, at God’s urging, Larry denounces a popular preacher as a fraud, and gets sued. In court, Larry attempts to prove the existence of God. Larry calls God to the witness stand, but nothing happens. Accused of pulling some kind of trick, Larry defends himself by arguing that, since everyone in court actually felt a bit of hope at the idea of God making an appearance, whether they could prove he appeared or not, that God deserves the benefit of the doubt.

Then God appears and takes the witness stand. He performs miracles—even disappearing right before everyone’s startled eyes. His voice delivers a final message: “It can work. If you find it hard to believe in Me, maybe it will help to know that I believe in you”

Later no proof of remains afterward of God’s being there.

Larry loses his job, and wonders what it all was for?

A few days later, he is driving down the street when he hears a pay phone ringing. He stops and gets out to answer it, and it’s God, suddenly standing right behind him dressed for a safari.

God models his safari outfit and does a turn. “How do you like it? I'm going on a trip to spend a little time with animals. I like animals, and sometimes I don't spend enough time with them.”

Larry sighs. “We failed, didn’t we?”

God acts shocked. “What are you talking? We did terrific! I gave a message of encouragement-- you passed it along. Now, we’ll see. You did good. We both did good. We’re covered!

Larry is still unsure. “Do you think anybody got the message?”

“You think we have enough apples in the world?” God asks

Larry is confused. “Apples?”

God nods. “We got all the apples we need. You’re Johnny Appleseed-- you drop a few seeds, and you move along. If the seeds are good, they take root. I gave you great seeds—the best!”

And then God reassures Larry once more, and disappears. Larry is left standing, smiling.

God has given us the best seed—we just have to trust enough in God to welcome that seed into our hearts and into our lives, and let it grow—to change us and make us bountiful in grace, in forgiveness, in love. Trust in the seed, and let the growing come naturally, but with hope and faith. Trust in God, knowing that God believes in us. And let the abundance sprout up within us.

Amen.

Preached for the 10:30 am online Eucharist from St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, recorded and broadcast from the Chapel of the Apostles and forests of Sewanee, Tennessee.

Readings:

1 Samuel 15:34-16:13
Psalm 20
2 Corinthians 5:6-10,[11-13],14-17
Mark 4:26-34