Love-- the Ultimate Resistance: Sermon for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost, February 23, 2025

A couple of weeks ago Bill and I started seeing ads for a new show being prepared for daytime TV—it’s a new soap opera called “Beyond the Gates”—the first new daytime soap since 1999.  My first gut reaction was, "Are you kidding me?" In a world that has about a hundred different versions of Real Housewives of every town with a population over 5000 people, they think we need more daytime drama?

In fact, if you want to experience soap opera tales, you don’t even have to go to TV. All you have to do is turn to the first books of the Bible—they are chock-a-block full of the stuff of soap operas. Jealousy. Betrayal. Cruelty. Rivalries. Even murders and attempted murders. Our first reading reminds us of one of those scriptural soap operas— jealous brothers turning on daddy’s favorite, selling him into slavery and thinking he was as good as dead. And yet when that betrayed brother has the chance to get his payback, what does he do? He ends us saving his entire family from famine, and forgiving the whole lot of them.

That’s why this is a good story to open up our gospel passage.

Hear again Jesus’s words:
“I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.”

This week and the last we have been hearing the core of Jesus’s ethical principles in the 6th chapter of Luke’s gospel, corresponding to the 5th chapter of Matthew’s. Last week we heard Luke’s version of the Beatitudes, which is notable for its juxtaposition of specific and personal blessings and woes, instead of Matthew’s more general list of blessings. This week we will hear Jesus’s discussion about how we deal with those we would consider to be enemies.

In the first part of our gospel this week. Jesus will list seven rules for how to deal with those whom we perceive to oppose us:

Love your enemies,

do good to those who hate you,

bless those who curse you,

pray for those who abuse you.

Do to others as you would have them do to you.

Forgive and you will be forgiven.

Give, and it will be given back to you.

Of these seven rules, the ones most of us have probably heard the most are numbers 5 and 6. The fifth rule is also known as the Golden Rule—and what’s interesting is that a version of that rule exists in nearly every religion and ethical structure across the globe, including Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, the Sikh faith, Taoism, Homer (representing Greek philosophy), Philo, Confucius, and even the Code of Hammurabi. The sixth one should be familiar to all of us—because we pray to live by that rule that every time we pray the Lord’s Prayer.

And that whole first sentence: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. Just right there that one sentence, there’s a lot to unpack. Like what does the word “love” actually mean in this instance? Who exactly are our enemies? How do we do good to those who hate us and still protect ourselves from being victims of repeated victimization? How do we bless those who curse us and how do we pray for those who abuse us?

You know, part of the problem right now in this world is that that word “enemy” gets thrown around way too much. Just because someone doesn't agree with you does not make them your enemy. Just because somebody is from a different state, or supports a different team, or supports a different political party, does not make them our enemies. Enemies are people who want nothing but our own destruction. Opponents and people who disagree with us are not necessarily our enemies.

Would it sweeten the pot if I told you, that, in the times I have seen this actually attempted, this loving of enemies and praying for those who abuse us, it has actually driven the person who has done the hurting absolutely nuts? I mean, it’s like pouring salt and lemon juice into a paper cut. 

I once saw this play out once when I joined a counter-protest against Westboro Baptist Church when they were in town picketing the J. There they were, saying their horrible things, and we counter-protesters got together. What was something we could yell back that would defeat their messages of hate? We came up with this: all together, we screamed out, “WE’RE PRAYING FOR YOU!!!!!” And once they figured out what we were saying, you could just see it get under their skin. Everyone expects that when you’re punched, you punch back. But when someone shows the worst of themselves and gets back crickets, it tends to expose their wrongness even more vividly.

It was awesome. And then some of us really did pray for them. Now it's true that sometimes the prayer we pray for them is Psalm 52. Do you know what Psalm 52 is? It starts with, “You tyrant, why do boast of wickedness against the godly all day long? You plot ruin; your tongue is like a sharpened razor, O worker of deception.” I recommend it highly for times when you're in front of somebody who is just absolutely opposed to your flourishing.

The power of our gospel reading today is in its promise of abundance at the very end: if we live a generous life toward others, we ourselves will find an abundance beyond measure, so much that it spills out of our cupped hands and into our laps.

Jesus’s teaching here is filled with active verbs that instruct us in what we are called to do to live as disciples of Jesus. We hear repeated positive commands:
Love. Do good. Bless. Give. Lend. Forgive.

We also hear prohibitions:
Do not judge. Do not condemn.
But even these are couched in our own self-interest:
Don’t judge—so that you won’t be judged.
Don’t condemn—so that you won’t be condemned.

Jesus here calls us to remember the grace we receive FIRST, a gift freely given though we may not deserve it. And in the same breath, he calls those who follow him to embody grace for ourselves, and then live out that grace in our interactions with others. To make God visible in this world, embody God’s values first and foremost: love, mercy, forgiveness, and grace, as Bishop of Washington Mariann Edgar Budde’s plea from a month ago reminds us all. One of my teachers once explained it to me this way: “Just because we can get away with something, or think we have the right to, does not mean that we should. One person’s right to swing their arms around ends at the tips of the noses of the people around them.”

Listen. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Offer. Give. Do.

In the Beatitudes, Jesus calls us to one-ness with each other. Jesus calls us to renounce calculations of giving based on fear, calculations of giving to each other that in the end don’t cost us too much, whether that’s in money or attention or time. Instead, we are called to expand our circle of well-being to include everyone, to have the kind of love for each other that sees that peace can only exist where we all support each other. That love can only exist where generosity and empathy rule.

When Luke combines blessings with woes, it brings us up short. Because if we believe that those who are spit upon are blessed, we also have to understand the spiritual peril in being those who spit upon others—especially the poor and the hungry and those borne down by weeping, pain, or trauma. We are called to stand against those who dream up new ways to treat supplicants with contempt rather than mercy. It's like the San Francisco cathedral I read about a few years ago who, when they were frustrated with the homeless who were sleeping in some of their sheltered doorways, used an overhead sprinkler system to spray them with water several times during the night. Maybe they were afraid there wasn't enough to go around, I don't know.

I do know that our culture is predicated upon scarcity, and over and over again we hear a drumbeat warning us that we don’t have enough. That idea of scarcity makes everyone else a competitor in a mad scramble for power and wealth. It’s a culture based on fear. And that is the reason why there are 366 reminders throughout scripture not to be afraid—one for every day of the year, and then another just because, in case we need it. But that’s not the culture of the Beatitudes.

But, although we Episcopalians tend to be very judicious in the use of his word, it is very clear that there is such a thing as evil in this world. We renounce it in our Baptismal Covenant every time we repeat it.

Furthermore, we see it all around us.
In delighting in cruelty and the dehumanization of others.
In trying to prevent the development of kindness and compassion in the education of our children.
In the mocking of marginalized groups, such as the disabled, the poor, the refugee.
In the denial of health care to those who most desperately need it in order to make a profit on the pain and suffering of others.
In the lack of concern for a livable wage for workers, or of safe water to drink, or in the ignoring of climate shifts that are making huge swaths of this planet inhabitable for human or beast.
In the short-sighted denial of the blessings of science in saving lives through the miracle of vaccines.

The message we receive today in Luke’s gospel starts from a place of gentleness and compassion—that amazingly generous gift known as grace which is better than riches or vengeance. Jesus doesn’t give us the easy news, here, but it IS the “good news” of transformation and reconciliation that leads to justice based on true healing.

We are absolutely called to resistance. We are called to opposition of evil with every fiber of our being, and to oppose the normalization of hatred and cruelty. But Jesus never advocated shortcuts or rationalized returning evil for evil. Jesus stood for the dangerous idea that love will conquer hate, and that unity will always overcome division. He believed in it so much, he died so that we could all learn this lesson.

The culture of the Beatitudes is the culture of the kingdom of God—one where we don’t sit on fluffy cloud playing harps in the hereafter, but instead joyously set about doing the work to prepare the fields of the kingdom by sowing love and reconciliation. We have to remember that saints are NOT born, they are made.

Being a Christian is NOT just about labels. It is not about saying “I believe in Jesus as MY Savior” and then carrying on with placing our own interests above the suffering of others. Jesus is NOT a personal possession.

Being a Christian means embodying the light of Christ in every way we can. It means celebrating that we are Beloved and made in the image of God—while then tempering our ability to do whatever we want to whomever we want because we understand that our perceived “enemies” are just as beloved and made in God’s image as we are. It is a challenge for us as Americans, in 2025 especially, to realize that might does NOT make right.

So I want to challenge us all today to take heed to Jesus's urging-- to pray for our enemies and to love them, yes-- but also to embody the light of Christ bravely. There is an alternative to the culture of greed and fear and othering and scarcity. There is an alternative and it is love: love that is not an emotion, but love that is an act of will. May we ever try to embody that love starting now.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church on the 7th Sunday After Epiphany, February 23, 2025.

Readings:

Genesis 45:3-11, 15

Psalm 37:1-12, 41-42

1 Corinthians 15:35-38,42-50

Luke 6:27-38

Taken, Broken, Blessed: Sermon for 4th Sunday After Epiphany A and Annual Meeting

Sometimes it seems that we live—and die—by numbers. Especially when it comes to our health or our status.

For instance, health: think about it. For the last three years, we have watched what the infection and hospitalization rates were from COVID, the flu, and RSV, and proceeded accordingly.

But then there’s the more prosaic numbers. How old are you? How much do you weigh? What’s your resting heart rate? What’s your cholesterol count? What’s your A1C? What’s your BMI? And the dreaded, soul-crushing, fun-sucker of all questions: how many calories are in that?

Then there’s status: How many degrees do you have? How much money do you make? How much in your 401K or Roth? How many bedrooms—or more importantly, bathrooms-- in your house or apartment? How many cars do you have, if any? How many shares of stock do you have? What iPhone model do you have? What’s your zip code? And if you think that one doesn’t matter, let me try an experiment. What numbers come after this? Beverly Hills… (90210).

And what’s worse, all the numbers in that second set can have an impact on those numbers in the first set. In fact, here in the US, depending on what zip code you are born and then live in, your life expectancy can differ from those in other neighborhoods by as much as 22 years in St. Louis County alone.

You will forgive me if numbers have been on my mind a lot lately, and on the minds of a lot of us here at St. Martin’s whether you’re a staff member or lay leader or member. It’s annual meeting time, after all, and then comes parochial report to the diocese and the Episcopal Church time, and once again that seems to be all numbers, numbers, numbers.

But I am snapped out of this obsession by our gospel today. Today, Jesus gives us nine statements of blessing—and hopefully that’s the last number I use for a while as we ponder this pivotal and yet in some ways puzzling teaching. Because for Jesus, numbers have nothing to do with belovedness or with ranking.

Instead, Jesus lists categories of people whom he names as being blessed, right now. And what’s intriguing is that the categories Jesus names are NOT categories many of us would normally associate with being in a state of favor or blessing. Especially the first four. In the first four, he singles these out: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.

In all four of these categories, people are not there because they want to be. They are there because of trying circumstances in their lives. According to Psalm 51, the “poor in spirit” are the broken-hearted; those on the verge of giving up, or those who are oppressed. The Message translation of the Bible, which uses modern idioms, translates this verse as those who are “at the end of their rope.”

Likewise, we hear “meekness” in our macho-obsessed culture as “powerlessness” or “wimpiness” even though that was not the case in Jesus’s day—in fact, it was one of the adjectives used to describe both Jesus and Mary his mother, and neither one of them were in any way weak. Instead, their meekness was their willingness to yield to God’s will, as we pray in the Lord’s prayer every time we pray for God’s kingdom to come.

Those who hunger and thirst for righteousness and justice are those who see the brokenness in our world and cry out for resolution and correction. They are those who allow themselves to see and name the sorrows and injustices that surround us, and call on us to stand against the forces of hatred, division, and inhumanity. And as we have seen especially in the last few weeks with the death of Tyre Nichols and the release of the video evidence of his brutal murder at the hands of those who dehumanized him even though sworn to serve and protect, we also know that these categories can overlap. Those who thirst for justice are also those who mourn, and those who are at the end of their rope.

Jesus calls us to recognize ourselves within these four categories. We need to be honest and think of those times we have been in one or more of those categories, either through our own circumstances or by empathy for the circumstances of those around us. Jesus reminds us that those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who protest against oppression should be as dear to us as ourselves, that we are all bound together in mutuality and love. What one suffers, we all suffer. We see that in the next three categories Jesus names as blessed: the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers.

The merciful receive mercy and it grows and grows until the violence and exploitation our society is absolutely drenched in is cut off at its knees, because the merciful will never support the merciless, no matter how much it may profit them in the short-term. The pure in heart will see God, because they will see the image of God everywhere, as they view creation with wonder and each person in it as being in the image of God Godself, as precious to us as our own breath. 

And the peacemakers—oh, the peacemakers. Here Jesus uses the term you might hear elsewhere translated as shalom, which is more than just the absence of conflict. It is working for wholeness, wellness, the common good, repairing what is broken and strengthening what is good. Peacemakers work to align humanity with God’s dream for us, vertically as it were, as well as recognizing our neighbors as just that—our neighbors, our kindred, regardless of differences—peace spreading out horizontally until it covers all the Earth.

Jesus finishes up by acknowledging the cost of living in this state of blessedness. Those last two statements of blessing may be the most paradoxical of them all. And Jesus is blunt. First, he makes a general statement: blessed are those who are persecuted for the sake of working for Jesus’s gospel. Because it is certain that the forces of this world will fight tooth and nail against being overturned. But then, Jesus turns and looks at each of us and makes it clear: he means you and me. Blessed are YOU, he says. The first time he uses that word in his sermon. Blessed are YOU when you are mocked and resisted as you work to help bring my kingdom into being. He is looking right at what we now call the Church, here. We are called to stand at the nexus of each other and God and, with our fallible yet faithfully striving hands and hearts, and promote blessing instead of curses, healing instead of injury, engagement instead of apathy, care instead of disdain.

And there our gospel portion ends. If that was all we got, surely we would be left at best scratching our heads, or at worst, scoffing and declaring this precious message, this encapsulation of all of Jesus’s teaching, to be impossible and simply walk away. But we are blessed for another reason: we know the entire story of Jesus’s saving life and example among us. And when we gather in worship, we do so not for what it gives us, but for how it empowers us to give to the world.

There is a story from Hasidic Judaism. A teacher and his students in schul were studying the story in Deuteronomy when Moses gives the Ten Commandments to the people, and God commands them to place the words on their hearts. One of the disciples asks the rebbe, or teacher, “Why does Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon our hearts’? Why does it not tell us to place them in our hearts?” The rebbe answers, “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed, and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on top of our hearts. And there they stay until, one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.”(1)

And we know something about blessing being possible through brokenness, don’t we? Every single time we gather around this altar, God’s altar, here at St. Martin’s, we take, break, bless, and eat. We share communion only through breaking and blessing the offerings we bring forward—not just bread and wine, or our money, but our very selves—and sharing them with each other. That’s why we ask you to rise as the offerings are brought forward. We rise because what we are truly called to offer to each other is ourselves. That’s what makes this parish a blessing in the world—the breaking open and the blessing and the consecrating of ourselves to God’s service, out of love and faith and hopefulness. Breaking open the hard muscle and fortresses of our hearts so that the words can get in, especially the most important word of all—the Word of God, Jesus.

Come, Lord Jesus. Come to us who are poor in spirit, who mourn, who seek your will, who cry out for justice and righteousness. Come to us as we embody your call to be merciful, to be pure in heart, to hammer our swords into plowshares and our hearts into worthy vessels for your love in the name of peace. Come, break us open that your Word may find a home within our hearts, and make us a blessing for the world in truth and love.

Amen.

Preached at the 9 am single service and annual meeting at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO on January 29, 2023.

Readings:

Micah 6:1-8

Psalm 15

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

Matthew 5:1-12

Citations:

1) Christopher K. Germer, The Mindful Path to Self-Compassion: Freeing Yourself from Destructive Thoughts and Emotions, pp. 142-143; cited in J. Marshall Jenkins, Blessed at the Broken Places: Reclaiming Faith and Purpose with the Beatitudes, loc. 756/3579, kindle edition.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Speaking to the Soul, November 3, 2022

This Sunday many of us will celebrate the transferred Feast of All Saints, officially observed on November 1, combined with the Feast of All Souls, which falls on November 2. We will remember those we have lost and gone to be with the saints, yet whose lives continue to touch ours.

The gospel reading is Luke 6:20-31, when Jesus sits down on a plain to teach the crowds, and we receive one of the two versions of the Beatitudes in the gospels.
“Blessed are you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
“Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.

“Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh.
Luke’s version reminds us to love our enemies, to do good to those who wish us ill, and be generous to all who ask regardless of what we might think of them.

I give special thanks this year for this gospel, heading into next week. So many of us are anxious because of the election on Tuesday. We have already heard people, long before voting began, anticipating the worst and vowing to resist violently by turning against their political opponents. Violent political rhetoric has intensified.

This is NOT the American way, nor is it the way of people of faith. But such talk does have precedent in American history.

In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president in a fractious election that featured the vote split among four candidates. After the electoral college met in December of 1860, states began attempting to secede from the Union, even before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. Seven states had already announced their decision to split by the time Lincoln addressed the nation in his first words as president. In his First Inaugural Address, he appealed to calm, to reason, and to affection, to shared history and values. Lincoln closed with this plea:

“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”

In the end, Union prevailed, albeit at a great and terrible cost. Unity is yet harder to come by, even now, although it is never too late to turn aside from division to embrace hope.

Consider the list of blessings from Luke. Each of them refers to better angels of our nature. Each of these blessings begins in the present (Blessed ARE…) and points to the future (for you WILL BE…). Is. Present tense. And so too, our political lives are rooted in the present, but should look forward in hope to a better future for all.

The Beatitudes remind us that those who are especially blessed of God are not the high and mighty ones, but those who are on the side of those the world esteems little: the poor, the weak, the suffering, the innocent, the peacemakers, and those who persevere in discipleship even when they stand at risk of unjustly losing all the things the world values. The Beatitudes are addressed to the Church, to those who proclaim that they are disciples of Jesus. Those who are blessed are those who look beyond themselves, to work for the common good, guided by the better angels of our nature.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, November 3, 2022.

Being Where Jesus Is: Speaking to the Soul February 10, 2022

Sometimes we need to hear a message several times before it sinks in. Perhaps that is what was running through the minds of the group that produced the Revised Common Lectionary as they considered this Sunday’s readings. We hear the same message three times in four readings.

The message embedded in Jeremiah 17:5-10, Psalm 1, and Luke 6:17-26 is this: Those who put their trust in God are those who are blessed, or truly happy. Sounds good, yes?

Consider also the flip side, to help keep ourselves honest: Those who trust in themselves and become the center of their own attention, and thereby turn away from trusting God, will suffer woe.

Blessed are those at the margins, Jesus tells us—and he urges us, and in particular the whole Church, to make those margins our home. Those who are comfortable so often believe in their own ability to put themselves in a position of comfort. Putting trust in God and God’s promises is hard—we tend to come up with work-arounds that in the end undermine and even blunt our sense of God’s presence with us.

The Beatitudes provide another broad brush-stroke in Jesus’s instruction about the priorities of God. Even before Jesus’s birth, in Luke’s Gospel, we hear revelation after revelation about God’s love for those that society might deem “losers:” the poor, the hungry, the homeless, the outcast, the notorious sinner. First there is the Magnificat, with its proclamation that God has filled the hungry with good things, while the rich God has sent away empty. Mary’s is a raised-fist shout of defiance repeated by her son thirty-some years later. We heard it again a few weeks ago, when Jesus read from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because God has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. God has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Freedom, release, contentment, jubilee. These are the gifts God gives to those who allow themselves to trust in God, rather than trust in the working of the human will.

In the gospel passage for this Sunday, notice that Jesus addresses his remarks to the disciples–not necessarily to the crowd around him, but to those who will become the Church. Jesus has just finished calling the last of the disciples and is giving them their marching orders: If you want to live a godly life, deposit your hearts and souls into the love of God, into reflecting God’s kingdom values. Jesus, who just a few weeks ago reminded us that his ministry inaugurates the in-breaking of God’s kingdom in the world, now leads us to understand God’s love of those who are marginalized.

As the self-professed heirs of the apostles, Jesus is always with us in ministry. But I want to turn that around for us as well. To be the Church, to truly live a life of faith, we also must be where Jesus is.

Where Jesus is, there we must be also, if we are to actually be disciples, and not just fans (here’s my nod to the Super Bowl). And Jesus calls us out into the deep waters and into the margins. As we seek to witness to the life and vitality of the gospel in our hearts and in our parishes, Jesus calls us, right now, today, to cast our nets our wide in sometimes deep water, and do the hardest thing of all for modern people: to reflect God’s priorities, not our own, in all we do.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, February 10, 2022.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Speaking to the Soul for November 5, 2020

This last Sunday the gospel we heard, leading us into Election Day, was Matthew 5:1-12, when Jesus sits down on a mountain to teach the crowds, and we receive one of the two versions of the Beatitudes in the gospels.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
"Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
"Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. "Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

I am grateful for this gospel being stretched over us like a canopy this week. Many of us are anxious for an extra reason in the next few days: the election on Tuesday. We have all heard people, even before voting began, anticipating their idea of the worst and vowing to resist violently and to turn on their political opponents.

This is NOT the American way, nor is it the way of people of faith. But it does have precedent in American history.

In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president in a fractious election that featured the vote split among four candidates. After the electoral college met in December of 1860, states began attempting to secede from the Union, even before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. Seven states had announced their decision to part by the time Lincoln addressed the nation in his first words as president. In his First Inaugural address, he appealed to calm, reason, and affection, to shared history and values. Lincoln closed with this plea:

We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

In the end, Union prevailed, albeit at great and terrible cost, but unity remains harder to come by, even now. Yet it is never too late to turn aside from the forces of division, and embrace hope.

Look back over that list of eight blessings from Matthew. Each of them refers to better angels of our nature. Each of these blessings begins in the present (Blessed ARE…) and points to the future (for they WILL BE…), except for the first and the eighth statements, which say that the poor in spirit—the downcast, the anxious, in other words-- and those who are persecuted are blessed “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Is. Present tense. And so too, our political lives are rooted in the present, but should look forward in hope to a better future for all.

And yet, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, preached in a perfectly named sermon entitled “When Peace Becomes Obnoxious,” we are confronted with this powerful stone of truth: "True peace is not the absence of tension, but the presence of justice.” We cannot have peace if it is founded upon silence in the face of injustice and the suffering of others in the sake of profit. That is the way of the world—that world that Jesus calls us to work together to overturn in the Beatitudes.

The Beatitudes remind us that those who are especially blessed of God are not the high and mighty ones, but those who are on the side of those the world esteems little: the poor, the weak, the suffering, the innocent, the peacemakers, and those who persevere in discipleship even when they stand at risk of unjustly losing all the things the world values. The Beatitudes are addressed to the Church, those who proclaim that they are disciples of Jesus. Those who are blessed are those who look beyond themselves.

No matter what the results on Tuesday are, however long it takes to resolve, I pray for us all to be bold witnesses and peacemakers who stand for justice, unity, and respecting the dignity and worth of every person.




This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on November 5, 2020. It is adapted from my weekly rector's reflection at St. Martin's Episcopal Church on October 30, 2020.

What Do You Expect?: Sermon for the Feast of All Saints, 2020

One of the benefits of having parents who were older than your friends’ parents is that you then have relatives who are mostly older that your friends’ relatives. My dad’s parents were born in the last decade of 19th century, for instance. Seriously. 130 years ago. My Mom’s dad was the baby of 17 children. We spent lots of time in my childhood in the backseat of a car, unbuckled, driving hours to visit the dozens of great-aunts and-uncles and second cousins so old we called them aunts and uncles too. With no idea of how crazy it seems now, we’d spread out on a mattress in the back of a truck camper or station wagon, going to this relatives’ house or that one, all over the prairie west of Oklahoma.

Then when we got to wherever we were going, we would be around really old people. But I looked at it as people who has SEEN and EXPERIENCED things. I would listen to the stories of their lives and learn about my family’s history. One of my great-grandfathers on my Dad’s side, for instance, was the meanest so and so in seven counties on both sides of the Red River. He was a moonshiner who terrorized his family (it wasn’t explained like that but I read between the lines). He married a Native American woman, but refused to register the children on the tribal rolls because then they would have been excluded from schools for white children. Now, anyone in the county could see that these kids were half Native. But they went to the white kids’ schools because everybody was too afraid of their father to challenge this. This was one of the few benefits that accrued to his descendants from his meanness, but it was not an insubstantial one.

Sometimes, the older folks would actually talk to us kids rather than send us out to play. I remember I was helping one of my great-aunts make a blackberry cobbler one time in her tiny kitchen in the part of the clapboard house that had dated from territory times. It was about a million degrees in that kitchen, but she had cool sweet lemonade and the Cardinals game on a tiny radio, and so that helped overcome a lot of my resistance at being forced into the women’s sphere of life while the men sat in the breezeway and played dominoes and smoked. 

She told me all kinds of stories while we worked, but one statement buried within one of them has stuck with me until this day: “Well, what do you expect? Because the lower you set your expectations, the more likely it is that they will be fulfilled, but leave you dissatisfied.”

I don’t know why that moment struck me so vividly. But it has stayed with me for decades now, and has been one of the most encouraging mantras of my life.

Expectations can shape your perception of the world, for the good, or for the bad. Looking back over my life, I see how my aunt’s wisdom has played out again and again. If you expect something to fail, you make it that much harder for it to succeed, and you even may take steps, consciously or unconsciously, to enable that failure. If you expect something to succeed, you will invest of yourself to help make that thing succeed, and you will be more likely to persevere to make that success a reality.

Look at how the post-war American public school system was proclaimed a failure twice in the 20th century. The first time was during the Cold War, when the Soviets were supposedly beating us technologically. But at that time, we decided we expected better. The answer then, in the 1950s, was to pour federal money into the schools to improve them, and also to desegregate them. And our schooling system, from kindergarten to college level, even with its rampant inequalities, became the envy of the world.

The second time our schools were declared failures was in the 1980s. But this time, the answer was to siphon funding away from schools—and for forty years we have slashed state and local tax support for our schools. We also resisted fully implementing desegregated schools when we realized that it would mean desegregating our neighborhoods, and you can still see this at work here in St. Louis. Those with means began setting up a partially-privately funded tier of schools, and siphoned even more money and support away. We let criticism become expectation. And now our schools are struggling and gasping for air, even as we pile more demands upon them. And the states who have most slashed funding to schools have seen their populations and economies dwindle.

I am certain NONE of us expected 2020 to be the rollercoaster it has become. And we had some expectations shattered yesterday, didn’t we? We expected to have a little celebration, but, then Bill and I learned that our daughter had tested positive for COVID19, and that exposed us, potentially. We made the decision to postpone our Celebration of New Ministry out of caution and love for each other. But rather than be disappointed, instead, we can just adjust ourselves back to anticipation. Yesterday, also, I expected then to be leading this service from church—and yet for the sake of all whom I love, here we are back in the Church of My Basement, surrounded by my own wall of saints and icons, until we finish our fourteen days of quarantine.

Our gospel today is about expectations. Actually, our gospel almost EVERY day is about expectations.

In today’s gospel, we hear the first part of Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount—the most famous part, probably: the Beatitudes. What we may not hear are the expectations that Jesus is challenging in each one of the eight statements he makes. Yet he names groups of people, starting with those who struggle with the disappointments of this world, the poor in spirit, the ones who struggle against hopes being dashed, with instead being the recipients of God’s abundance and generosity. Each of these blessings begins in the present (Blessed ARE…) and points to the future (for they WILL BE…), except for the first and the eighth statements, which say that the poor in spirit and those who are persecuted are blessed “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

Is. Present tense. The kingdom of heaven is inbreaking right now. Those who expect it can see it, and work for it, even in the midst of a pandemic. For it is during times of crisis that we humans can shake off our isolation and worship of self, a selfishness which only leads to feeling more vulnerable. We can instead remember that united we stand, and divided we most certainly will fall.

Especially as we deal with expectations at war with fear and division this week as we await, finally, Election Day, with a mixture of relief and dread, we need this reminder. So too, our political lives are rooted in the present, but should look forward in hope to a better future for all. Politics is about how we live with each other—partisanship is the disagreement about the basis of our common life. But our life together is political in best sense. As Christians, we are called first and foremost be a people of faith, hope, and love. We need to be people whose expectations are grounded in abundance. Yes—we actually NEED this, in order to sustain ourselves in the times of struggle.

And the WORLD needs us to be those people too. If we don’t witness in our lives to God’s abundance and presence in the world, who will? That’s the expectation that shaped the influence of all the saints we remember today. They looked, and saw what was, but then lived into the expectation of God’s grace and abundance. They didn’t have to be perfect to do that. They just had to open themselves, even a tiny bit, to being channels of God’s grace.

The Beatitudes remind us that those who are especially blessed of God are not the high and mighty ones, but those who are on the side of those the world esteems little: the poor, the weak, the suffering, the innocent, the peacemakers, and those who persevere in discipleship even when they stand at risk of unjustly losing all the things the world values. The Beatitudes are addressed to the Church, to those who proclaim that they are disciples of Jesus. Those who are blessed are those who look beyond themselves.

The world, especially the economic and the partisan world, tries to shake this out of us, of course. That world wants to convince us that scarcity and poverty in spirit rules the day and haunts the night. And here we see it again—expect that you will never have enough, and you will never feel that you have enough, no matter how much you actually have. The more you hold back, the less generous you become—and that applies to stewardship and church budgets as well. Those who are blessed are those who see what could be, and work and give to make that a reality and be a part of that reality. Faithful hope is the price of admission. Those who are blessed are those whose expectations are grounded in knowing that hope can be a more powerful instrument than faithlessness in changing the world for the better.

The gospel is a long, narrative story of expectations being shattered when the reign of God breaks in. The peasant teenager named Mary didn’t expect to have that angel pop up in front of her and call her “Favored One.” Joseph didn’t expect to have to explain a pregnant fiancée. Those shepherds didn’t expect to see the heavens break open and see the constellations swirl in beat to a hallelujah chorus. The Magi expected that special baby to be in a palace, not a hovel. Nobody expected a great prophet to come out of Nazareth. Nobody expected a carpenter’s son to be a healer and teacher, much less a savior.

And the gospels themselves are located with one single plot of scripture, as my beloved teacher and Psalm scholar Clint McCann would remind us repeatedly in seminary. And that plot is the reality of God’s grace. Genesis chapters 1-9 are about God’s relationship with the world- as Genesis 9 reminds us, God covenants with humanity, every creature, and even with the earth itself God calls us to embody justice by showing us that justice is grounded not in retribution, but in forgiveness and mercy—grace again, and the prophets attest to this even as they rail against human faithlessness.(1) 

We are called to live our lives as Christians by taking seriously the hope and grace that is at the heart of God’s relationship with us. When we are transformed by this good news, this outpouring of blessing even upon those the world denigrates or overlooks, we move into the realm of the power of expectation—beyond the tension of what IS, to the assurance of what WILL BE.

What do you expect? What you expect becomes what you look for, and that then leads to what you see—or don’t see. As we remember the saints in our lives, let us decided, right now, today, to let those expectations lead us to the proclamation of the kingdom of God and the abundance of God’s dream for us, right here, right now.

Amen.


This sermon was preached at the 10:30 livestream worship from St. Martin's Episcopal Church during Coronatide on November 1, 2020, the Feast of All Saints.

Readings:

Revelation 7:9-17
Psalm 34:1-10, 22
1 John 3:1-3
Matthew 5:1-12

Citations:

1) The Rev. Dr. J. Clint McCann, Jr., "The Hermeneutics of Grace: Discerning the Bible's Single Plot," in Interpretation, January, 2003, pp. 5-15.

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Reflection Before the Election

This Sunday we will celebrate the Feast of All Saints on the day it actually occurs in the calendar, and we will combine with it our observation of the Feast of All Souls, which normally falls on November 2. We will remember all those we have lost, those who have gone to be with the saints, and whose lives continue to touch ours.

The gospel we will hear will be Matthew 5:1-12, when Jesus sits down on a mountain to teach the crowds, and we receive one of the two versions of the Beatitudes in the gospels.

"Blessed are the poor in spirit, 

     for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
"Blessed are those who mourn, 

     for they will be comforted.
"Blessed are the meek, 

     for they will inherit the earth.
"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, 

     for they will be filled.
"Blessed are the merciful, 

     for they will receive mercy.
"Blessed are the pure in heart, 

     for they will see God.
"Blessed are the peacemakers, 

     for they will be called children of God."

I especially give thanks this year for this gospel being before us as we head into next week. Many of us are anxious for an extra reason in the next few days: the election on Tuesday. We have all heard people, even before voting began, anticipating their idea of the worst and vowing to resist violently and to turn on their political opponents.

This is NOT the American way, nor is it the way of people of faith. But it does have precedent in American history.

In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president in a fractious election that featured the vote split among four candidates. After the electoral college met in December of 1860, states began attempting to secede from the Union, even before Lincoln took office on March 4, 1861. Seven states had announced their decision to part by the time Lincoln addressed the nation in his first words as president. In his First Inaugural address, he appealed to calm, reason, and affection, to shared history and values. Lincoln closed with this plea:

"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

In the end, Union prevailed, albeit at great and terrible cost, but unity remains harder to come by, even now. Yet it is never too late to turn aside from the forces of division, and embrace hope.

Look back over that list of eight blessings from Matthew. Each of them refers to better angels of our nature. Each of these blessings begins in the present (Blessed ARE…) and points to the future (for they WILL BE…), except for the first and the eighth statements, which say that the poor in spirit and those who are persecuted are blessed “for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” 

Is. Present tense. And so too, our political lives are rooted in the present, but should look forward in hope to a better future for all.

The Beatitudes remind us that those who are especially blessed of God are not the high and mighty ones, but those who are on the side of those the world esteems little: the poor, the weak, the suffering, the innocent, the peacemakers, and those who persevere in discipleship even when they stand at risk of unjustly losing all the things the world values. The Beatitudes are addressed to the Church, to those who proclaim that they are disciples of Jesus. Those who are blessed are those who look beyond themselves.

During these next few days and weeks especially, I bid your prayers, and know that I pray for each of you as well as our nation and our world. No matter what the results on Tuesday or however long it takes, I pray for us all to be bold witnesses and peacemakers who stand for justice, unity, and respecting the dignity and worth of every person.

There will be special services at the Washington National Cathedral on both Sunday at 3 pm CST and Wednesday at 11 am. I also ask you to join me for a special prayer service online at 7 pm on Tuesday streamed on Facebook live at St. Martin's Facebook page.

In Christ,
Leslie+

Prayer, day 2665: Inspired by the Beatitudes in Matthew

(inspired by Matthew 5:1-10)
O God, You bless us in every moment, and uphold us by the strength of your Love: hear our prayer, for our hope is in You.
Bless those who work as your servants, for they have fixed their hearts upon salvation in each moment.
Bless those who are gentle and kind, for they draw others to You through their witness.
Bless those who hunger for a just society, for they seek to build the kingdom of God.
Bless those who demonstrate mercy and forgiveness, for they live out a life of Love and Charity.
Bless those who are innocent and childlike, for their hearts are always open to You.
Bless those who spread peace in their wake, for they call us to live as better people and children of your household.
Bless those who suffer for their faith, for their resolve will never be shaken.
Bless those who cry out to You, for they know that God will fulfill all their needs.

Amen. 

Bless. Offer. Pray. Give. Do.: Sermon for the Feast of All Saints, (tr.) 21st Sunday After Pentecost

Many of us, when we think of the Beatitudes, first think of Matthew’s version, the one we will hear next year on the Feast of All Saints. Matthew’s version is given from a mountain, and his is sometimes more difficult to understands. For instance, he starts off “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” When I was a kid, I always wondered what being poor in spirit means, and those puzzling words often drew my attention away from the rest of the reading as I kept turning over that add phrase in my head. 

Luke’s version of the beatitudes is much more straightforward—and it is not directed outwardly at “them.” In Luke, Jesus’s first statement is personal: “Blessed are YOU who are poor, for YOURS is the kingdom of God.” Not “THOSE” but “YOU.” What Jesus is doing by speaking directly to us with blessings is this: to remind us that God is alongside us, especially the poor, hungry, or those in need of relief. When Jesus pronounces his “woes” in this reading, it can be uncomfortable to many of us who are NOT poor, the same was that last week’s gospel can make us uncomfortable when we realize that we are all prone to being judgmental and thinking ourselves superior from those on the margins. 

Yet when you set Jesus’s blessings and woes side by side in the Lucan version of the Beatitudes, you understand too that what is especially outrageous is those who hoard wealth in the face of the poverty of those on the borderlines of their lives, filling themselves full in the face of those who are hungry, and laughing at the weeping of those undergoing trauma and tragedy. Actually it doesn’t even require laughing. Indifference is just as bad. And we see too much of that at work in the world around us. The Beatitudes call on us to renounce that indifference, and instead claim kinship with those on the margins, just as the saints of the world still do in ways small and great to this day. 

Professor Richard Swanson points out that the word in Greek translated here as “poor” (for that is the language of the New Testament as we have received it) is ptochoi. He then muses upon another word, a Greek verb, that begins with “pt:” ptuo, which means “I am spitting,” which shouldn’t surprise anyone who grew up watching cartoons—that probably still is literally the sound of spitting in our head: ptooey. 

What if we understood Jesus’s first words here, then, as “Blessed are you who are spit upon, for yours is the kingdom of God?” How would that change our understanding of the beatitudes? And let’s face it: in this upside down world in which we live, if we TRULY express Christian values in the face of the idolatry of the individual that falsely has aligned itself with American Christianity, the risk of being spit upon is not negligible. 

As we celebrate the Feast of All Saints and the Feast of All Souls today, we remember people who, in ways small and great, were willing to be spit upon, to go against the logic and the dominant culture around them, in order to testify to the God Jesus came to bring to flesh and bone before our eyes: the God who always takes interest in those who are humble in spirit, and yet filled with awe and wonder at the glory of this God-infused creation of which we are a part. And saints are those who see with the eyes of Jesus the belovedness of everyone, regardless of any other condition. Those people who are saints, even when not perfect. 

I know it’s hard for us—it’s certainly hard for me. When Luke combines blessings with woes, it brings us up short. Because if we believe that those who are spit upon are blessed, we also have to understand the spiritual peril in being those who spit upon others—especially the poor and the hungry and those borne down by weeping, pain, trauma. Those who dream up new ways to treat supplicants with contempt rather than mercy, like the San Francisco cathedral I read about a few years ago who, when they were frustrated with the homeless who were sleeping in some of their sheltered doorways, used an overhead sprinkler system to spray them with water several times during the night. Maybe they were afraid there wasn't enough to go around, I don't know.

I do know that our culture is predicated upon scarcity, and over and over again we hear a drumbeat warning us that we don’t have enough. That idea of scarcity makes everyone else a competitor in a mad scramble for power and wealth. It’s a culture based on fear. And that is the reason why there are 366 reminders throughout scripture not to be afraid—one for every day of the year, and then another just because, in case we need it. But that’s not the culture of the Beatitudes. 

The culture of the Beaitudes is the culture of the kingdom of God—one where we don’t sit on fluffy cloud playing harps in the hereafter, but instead joyously set about doing the work to prepare the fields of the kingdom by sowing love and reconciliation. The culture of the Beatitudes is the culture of the Saints we celebrate today. As a matter of fact, the word for saint is right in there. “Beati”—is the beginning of the word “beatify” which means to recognize someone as a saint. And the entire point of this day is to remember that saints are NOT born, they are made. 

As we sing in one of my favorite songs for this feast, "I Sing A Song of the Saints of God." The third verse is a vivid reminder that there are saints all around us: 

They lived not only in ages past; 
there are hundreds of thousands still;
the world is bright with the joyous saints
who love to do Jesus’ will.
You can meet them in school,
or in lanes, or at sea,
in church, or in trains,
or in shops, or at tea;
for the saints of God
are just folk like me,
and I mean to be one too.

How do we go about being blessed and being a blessing to others, like those saints? There at the end of our gospel passage today, if you listen, are the verbs for living a Beatitude-shaped life. Take a look and mark them out: 
Listen.
Love.
Do good.
Bless.
Pray.
Offer.
Give.
Do. 

 “I say to you that listen, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not withhold even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you.” 

Listen. Love. Do good. Bless. Pray. Offer. Give. Do. 

In the Beatitudes, Jesus calls us to one-ness with each other. Jesus calls us to renounce calculations of giving based on fear, calculations of giving to each other that in the end don’t cost us too much, whether that’s in money or attention or time. Instead, we are called to expand our circle of well-being to include everyone, to have the kind of love for each other that sees that peace can only exist where we all support each other. That love can only exist where generosity and empathy rule.

That’s the kind of life real saints embody for us. 

They listen. 
They love. 
They do good, even in—ESPECIALLY in—the face of evils big and mundane, no matter the cost.
They bless, where others laugh in spite and malice. They pray, where others shrug, and in praying, they take responsibility for change. 
They offer, where others take.
They give, where others turn away.
They DO, embodying the Christ-shaped life.

That’s the kind of love that lives on even after our death, as we remember our loved one who are gone from us but not forgotten. What makes them live on in us is their love, their companionship, their support. All the other stuff is just chaff that blows away in the wind.

The Beatitudes encompass the greatest lesson in the lives of the saints, and that lesson is this: no matter what we have or don’t have, whether wealthy or poor, whether sinner or saint, we cannot depend upon our own resources to be blessed and to be a blessing to others. It doesn’t work that way. The key to being blessed is to acknowledge our reliance upon God, whether we are deserving or not in our own minds, that doesn’t matter. To know that God’s grace and mercy are not only necessary, but also real and present in our lives. That changes our perspective from fear to fullness, which is what the beatitudes are all about.

The gift of the Beatitude-shaped life is the gift of acknowledging our own need for others, our own need for God. To be standing in the need of mercy and receive it is to be blessed. To be standing with others helping you stand when you can’t go on is to be blessed. As Pastor David Lose notes, “For what is the promise of mercy to those who are not weak, forgiveness to those who have not sinned, grace to those who do not need it, or life to those not dead? It is at best meaningless and more likely downright offensive.”

Hear again our Savior’s words: Listen. Love. Do good. Bless, Pray. Offer. Give. Do. This is the way of being a saint of God, and we mean to be one, too. 

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on November 2, and at 8:00 and 10:30 on November 3, 2019, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:
Daniel 7:1-3,15-18Psalm 149Ephesians 1:11-23Luke 6:20-31

Citations:
1) Richard Swanson, Commentary on Luke 6:20-31, November 3, 2013, at Working Preacher.
2) David Lose, "Losers," October 28, 2013, at Dear Working Preacher.

Prayer, day 2298: Inspired by the Beatitudes

O God, You bless us in every moment,
and uphold us by the strength of your Love:
hear our prayer, for our hope is in You. 

Bless those who work as your servants,
for they have fixed their hearts upon salvation in each moment.
Bless those who are gentle and kind,
for they draw others to You through their witness.
Bless those who hunger for a just society,
for they seek to build the kingdom of God.
Bless those who demonstrate mercy and forgiveness,
for they live out a life of Love and Charity.
Bless those who are innocent and childlike,
for their hearts are always open to You.
Bless those who spread peace in their wake,
for they call us to live as better people and children of your household.
Bless those who suffer for their faith,
for their resolve will never be shaken.
Bless those who cry out to You,
for they know that God will comfort them in their needs.

Amen.

Prayer 2219: Seventh Sunday After Epiphany

God of Abundant Grace,
we worship You and give you thanks,
seeking to live an ethic of generosity
as our work in partnership with You.

Teach us to never return evil for evil, O God,
but respond to hatred
with the power of loving resistance,
practicing forgiveness with courage.
Shape our lives by your mercy, O Holy One,
and follow in our Savior's footsteps,
let us Love.
Do good.
Bless.
Give.
Lend.
And Forgive.

Spread the awning of your grace above us,
and the path of your peace before us
that we may be a blessing in the world
in your Name, as we pray.

Amen.