The Call for All: Sermon for 2nd Sunday after Epiphany B

This morning I had a decision to make: should we go ahead with in-person worship, or should we go online? The bitter cold outside and the safety of everyone was my overriding concern—but then I feared that if I decided to call off in-person worship, some people would not get the message. Even if I tried to call people, I was afraid some would not get the call—or take the call, if they didn’t recognize my number.

Then I laughed to myself, because the theme of calling runs all through our scripture choices this morning. In this season of Epiphany, we are drawn through our readings to see how God was manifest in the life of Christ to both Jew and Gentile alike. But this week, and actually next week, we are led to a deeper consideration: how are WE manifestly known, treasured, and called into partnership by God? This, too, is a vital question that the season of Epiphany calls us to explore.

First of all, our readings encourage us to consider WHO God calls into partnership. It can be someone who is so young that they do not even KNOW God’s voice, as with the child Samuel. We see throughout scripture that God knows us better than we know ourselves—and loves us intimately because of and sometimes in spite of that knowledge.

The portion of Psalm 139 that we read this morning reminds us of exactly that—that because God created each of us, God knows us to our very core. And as beautiful as the verses we hear today are, the part that is omitted is even more precious:

6 Where can I go then from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
7 If I climb up to heaven, you were there;
If I make the grave my bed, you were there also.
8 If I take the wings of the morning
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
9 Even there your hand will lead me
And your right hand hold me fast.

Even the reading from 1 Corinthians, which normally I would not want to touch with a thirty-nine-and-a-half-foot pole, supports the day’s theme by reminding us that what we do in front of others as self-professed Christians not only affects the Church, but reflects back upon what the world thinks about Jesus. We are, as St. Francis and many other saints insisted, the only Christ, most people will see. Part of our call as Christians is to exemplify the life for others that Jesus embodied with every single breath.

In our gospel, we again see a call narrative: the calling of Philip and Nathanael as disciples of Jesus. John’s gospel is the only one that lists Nathanael as one of the apostles. The other gospels mention Bartholomew in Nathanael’s place, so some scholars wonder if they are not the same person. It certainly is common that people in the Bible have multiple names: Abram-Abraham; Jacob- Israel; Simon-Peter; Saul-Paul, just off the top of my head. So it’s possible.

Nathanael at first fails to understand who Jesus is, just as the boy Samuel misunderstood who was calling him and speaking to him. Yet Jesus tells Nathanael that he had “seen” Nathanael under a fig tree, and this causes Nathanael to believe that Jesus DOES have the special powers that the Messiah would have. Just as in our psalm, we have Jesus as the Son of God claiming to know a person intimately, even though he and Nathanael had never met. Once again, we see God through Jesus reaching out to us and seeking us, knowing us even better than we know ourselves. The image of the ladder reinforces that our relationship with God is a two-way street. God calls to us, but we can choose to respond or not.

One of the reminders we have here in all of our readings is that whatever we hear or know about God comes first from God. Without God’s initiative, we would know nothing about God. Our own reason alone will not lead us to that understanding—in fact, depending on reason alone can lead us in exactly the opposite direction if we believe that reason works in opposition to faith (an incorrect assumption, but nevertheless the point holds).

Of course, fitting with the theme of Epiphany, this reading is about various people having a sudden understanding or revelation of who exactly Jesus is. But there’s another, important discovery being made here. In each of this week’s readings, God calls out to us as much as we recognize God.

We are assured in each of our readings today that God knows us, better than we know ourselves. And in knowing us, God sees in us our potential to share in God’s work of reconciliation and redemption.

The great Jewish teacher and rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote a wonderful book after a lifetime of study. It was called God in Search of Man. The title was meant to startle us by the order of the words—it wasn’t “Man in Search of God.” Instead, Rabbi Heschel pointed out that throughout scripture, it is always God that seeks us—and too often, it is US who hide, or run away, or evade, or stop up our ears or our hearts. And when we do that, we inevitably come unmoored. We lose our way. We make compromise and prevaricate against doing what is right in favor of doing what is easy. We stop listening for God’s call to us to use our lives to God’s glory. And that is the start of the slide toward evils both small and great.

The 20th century, after all, with its terrible cataclysms that rocked the world, including the Holocaust as the most glittering example of the dangers of humanity’s technological prowess operating free of ethical or moral constraints, led to an actual movement called the “God is Dead” movement in some intellectual circles.  Yet those evils were the result of us abandoning God, not God abandoning us.

Sometimes bad things just happen. But more often, bad things happen, and they happen because of choices that have been made by humans and human societies. The most dangerous examples throughout history occur when people are convinced that they themselves cannot make a difference and blind themselves to the consequences of their inactivity. When we see suffering or danger, but we convince ourselves there is nothing we can do, we acclimate ourselves rather than exercising the agency God has given us. Rather than asking “Where is God?” when trials or cataclysms happen all around us, what would happen if we instead asked ourselves, “Where are we?”

Always, always, there’s a reminder that in our journey through life, the biggest obstacle most of us have to overcome is ourselves. Our fears. Our doubts. Our lack of faith in both God and in ourselves, especially when it comes to making a real difference in the world.

Epiphany reminds us that God realized that being WITH us was not enough. God came into this world as Jesus and became ONE of us in God’s search for us. When we couldn’t hear God’s voice calling us in nature or in history or in law or in scripture, God became one of us, in the hopes that we would hear the voice of God calling us into relationship. Relationship with God, and each other, in order that we would make a real difference in the world. In order to truly be children and disciples of God.

We may believe we are not worthy of being called by God—that’s completely normal. We may think what good we might try to do doesn’t matter. But that’s exactly the opposite of why God became incarnate in Jesus and came to show us the way to live.

When God calls to us, God empowers us to step into our status as beloved children of God. Where we once believed ourselves powerless, or disconnected, we are changed. The overall call we hear from God as God’s children is to a new identity with new possibilities, a new understanding of ourselves. That new understanding is predicated upon God’s knowledge of and love for us, asking us to open up our eyes to have an epiphany in our understanding of ourselves as well as of our understanding of God. When Jesus calls to us, we are really being called to see ourselves in a new light, in a new way.

Epiphany is not just about Jesus being recognized as the Messiah and the Son of God. It is also about people throughout history who have listened to and heard the call of God to a life of love, compassion, reconciliation, and healing. It’s a time when we are called to remember that Jesus’s call to US is not to be simply spectators, but to BE members of a Beloved Community that encompasses all people and all of creation—to be people who work for the common good, having faith that God sees us, knows, us, and makes us partners in this world-changing work, even if we simply do so one small action or kindness at a time.

And how each and every one of us are being called by God in every moment is a vital question to ask ourselves during this weekend in which we celebrate the life and calling of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. We celebrate his life as a catalyst for equality at a time when most of this country accepted the separation and oppression of others based on the color of their skin.

But especially as Christians, we must NEVER forget that every single thing the Rev. Dr. King did was not just as a civil rights leader, but as a person whose life was directed and formed by his faith in God and by his response to God’s calling to him. And that is why, at the start of his leading others to fight for the freedom and equality of all people, Dr. King grounded his leadership in prayer.

How is God calling you, and us, right now to embody the life of Christ in our lives, in our choices, in our common life together here at St. Martin’s? Let us hear and share this prayer of the Rev. Dr. King’s:

O God, our gracious heavenly Father,
We thank thee for the inspiration of Jesus the Christ,
who came to this world to show us the way.
And grant that we will see in that life
the fact that we are made for that
which is high and noble and good.
Help us to live in line with that high calling, that great destiny.
In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.(1)




Preached at the 505 on January 13 and at the 10:30 Holy Eucharist on January 14, 2024, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO

Readings:

1 Samuel 3:1-10(11-20)

Psalm 139:1-5, 12-17

1 Corinthians 6:12-20

John 1:43-51

Citation: 

1) Prayer from “Thou, Dear God:” Prayers That Open Hearts and Spirits (King Legacy Book 6), p. 63.

The Gift is the Call: Sermon for the 22nd Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 25 B

One year in the 90s,  when I taught middle school, the choir teacher decided to take her students on a singing tour of nearby nursing homes. She had enlisted me to be a special accompanist that season because they were singing a song that had classical guitar accompaniment, and so even though I am not a classical guitarist, I agreed to give it a go and learned the music. It was a beautiful piece. The bad part was, there was another piece of music they performed which absolutely drove me nuts. It was the theme to that movie, Titanic. 

And because we were short of sopranos that day, and I was more fully soprano-y back then, so I was asked to stand behind the kids and belt out the melody line in support. Yuck. Couldn’t stand the song, couldn’t stand the movie. I mean, really—plot holes you could have driven an ocean liner through and why didn’t Rose scoot over on that door if she loved Jack so much but she managed to hold on to that necklace? But when we went on our tour, the older folks just ate it up. Which just goes to show you. Sometimes we put our own issues aside and go for it.
We went to three different nursing homes, right around Christmas, and so we also sang some seasonal tunes and a couple of classics from the 1940s as well as those two pieces.

Afterward, the kids would visit with people who were sitting out in the common area and share some treats. We talked to the kids beforehand to prepare them, and some kids were worried, because they didn’t know if they would have anything in common to talk about with people half a century older than they were who were strangers. So we suggested they start out with introducing themselves, and talked to them about shaking hands (not too firm a grip, not too soft). We suggested they could ask residents about what their favorite songs were when they were kids, or pets, or maybe Cardinals baseball or Blues hockey, or their favorite movie stars or movies.

There were lots of people who came out, with varying levels of need. But at the first place we visited, one man didn’t wait. He reached out and grabbed the hand of one of our boys and asked him to sit down and talk with him. He confessed that he had no family nearby and few visitors. He saw his opportunity for a visit, and he grabbed it, literally, with both hands. Soon he was regaling our student with his life as a minor-league baseball player, and giving the kid batting advice. The thirty minute visiting period flew by, and at the end, both the boy and the gentleman had had a great time.

In our gospel today there were lots of people who sat by the gates of towns, and they had various needs. Some came to conduct business, or seek advice, or make a contract with another person, or to ask for alms, like Bartimaeus. Jericho was no different. And Jesus very easily could have passed Bartimaeus by. But Bartimaeus called out and would not be shushed. Just like our friend in that nursing home, he didn’t wait—he asked outright. He perceived an opportunity for help, and he grabbed it and would not be denied. When Jesus hears Bartimaeus’s cry for mercy, he calls him forward. That word call is important—it’s used three times in that single verse alone.

And Bartimaeus responds to that call from Jesus instantly. Even though blind, he “springs up,” throwing off his cloak, and moves confidently, answering Jesus’s question with a bold declaration of Jesus as “My teacher….” The casting off of his cloak, the garment which a beggar used to collect and carry his alms, signifies the throwing off of his old life, the giving up of the possessions urged upon the rich young man we heard about two weeks ago. Bartimaeus is eager to leave his old life behind.

And even though Jesus can probably tell what the man needs, he asks him. For the second time in two weeks, Jesus asks someone what they want from him. Last week we had James and John asking for preferential treatment and honor; this week we see a humble beggar, who sees with his heart and soul what the disciples cannot see despite long experience, asks for his vision to be healed. Jesus doesn’t just assume what Bartimaeus needs—he gives him the dignity of asking for himself.

Jesus heals Bartimaeus’s sight, asking nothing in return, telling the healed man he can go. Unlike almost everything else in our own society, this interaction is NOT transactional. Jesus doesn’t give in order to get something in return. Yet Bartimaeus does NOT go. He stays. He stays and becomes a disciple, rejoicing, not taking the gift he has received for granted.

The blind man sees clearly who Jesus is and what Jesus’s ministry means, even though he is a stranger, not a disciple, and is physically blind. Meanwhile, the disciples with been alongside Jesus for these last 10 chapters have repeatedly shown themselves incapable of seeing and recognizing Jesus for who he is, much less accepting his predictions about his ultimate fate. Here’s what a true disciple like Bartimaeus sees with the eyes of the heart and soul: Jesus came to earth for a little while, filled with the power of God through the Holy Spirit that descended upon him at baptism. In his temptations, he was tempted to use the gift and powers he had received for himself. But instead, Jesus steadfastly insisted on being a conduit of God’s power of love and redemption, to spread wisdom and healing and hope to those he encountered.

Bartimaeus KNOWS what Jesus has done for him, what a gift he has received, and in gratitude he responds by dedicating his life to supporting Jesus and his ministry. This is a story about gratitude—and about giving, perhaps even more than it is a story about healing. It’s a story about how we can live into the ways Jesus calls to us as disciples.

And there’s a lot for us to hear in this story as we begin our annual giving campaign today. We often hear about the three “Ts”—time, talent, and treasure. In the area of sharing our time and talents, there’s all kinds of activities we can engage in, both here at church and in our daily lives. Being a good steward always means being like Jesus, really—and in this particular story, that means being willing to respond to those who are sidelined or silenced by the community. 

Sometimes that response may involve financial resources. 

Those funds are given to literally “treasure” the PEOPLE we meet here even more than the buildings and programs. Empowering St. Martin’s not just for the opportunities for fellowship it provides us but being empowered by that fellowship to hear the call of the world for healing and hope, and be thrilled for the opportunity to give back just a part of the manifold blessings we ourselves have received.

Here’s the practical truth. Each year we ask you for an estimate of your giving for the coming year. We then build a budget off of those collective estimates. And we need to look at what that budget says about our mission and our priorities. What we spend money on in our lives is what we most value. It’s that simple, and that stark. Our giving—yours and mine—is a statement of the depth of our faith and our acknowledgement of our gratitude and our love. Our giving is NOT about using money as a way to settle grievances, or expressing our displeasure or pleasure, a kind of carrot and stick contraption to get our own way. It’s not based on a profit-and loss calculation, on a measurement of how much we first get. No, it’s a way to rejoice for God’s love and presence in your life. It’s a way to live without fear or limitation. It’s a way to be a part of God’s healing work in the world, and to make a real difference.

Sure, some of the money given to St. Martin’s will go to pedestrian things like maintain the building and grounds, paying the light and the heating and cooling bills, finding and fixing leaky pipes. But if that’s all we take care of in the budget, we have failed as a congregation. Even more important, the money we raise each year is a spiritual statement from each of us individually as well as collectively. That statement either empowers us or hinders us as a congregation in our ability to reach out, listen to, and be with folks like Bartimaeus, because we recognize that we have all BEEN Bartimaeus at one time or another.

Whether we engage with someone whose society deems is to be marginalized, or whether we merely keep the lights on for our own sake, our annual budget becomes a spiritual document. It declares to ourselves and to the public our priorities in our efforts to be good stewards and disciples. To follow Jesus on the way. And following Jesus starts, like with Bartimaeus, with gratitude—with recognition for the very real ways Jesus has touched our lives and healed us of our fears, our own willful blindnesses, our tendency to turn inward upon ourselves.

We live in a cynical time. It has become a national sport in some quarters to blame those in need for their situations. We even see so-called Christians engaging in this attitude, even though time and again Jesus models the opposite path: giving because he can. Denying that idea that God punishes people with illness or suffering as we have heard play out in the story about Job in our first reading for the last several weeks—an idea that many people in Jesus’s time held about people like Bartimaeus. That’s why they shushed him at first. Asking for healing was viewed as asking to avoid God’s justice. Again and again, Jesus rejects notions of justice based on the suffering of the most vulnerable. And this story gives us the gift of reminding that above all things we are called to be like Jesus.

We can often close our eyes to the suffering of the world, and refuse to acknowledge the needs of others. We try to avoid placing ourselves in situations where a voice crying out for help can interrupt the rhythm of our lives. That hesitancy can become a weight, like a heavy garment holding us in place, preventing us from following Jesus with our whole hearts, like the weight of that garment Bartimaeus threw aside as he boldly stepped toward the call of his Savior and Redeemer.

Jesus is calling to us, calling to each of us because he loves us and desires to be our companion along the way of this life we are given as an opportunity for connection. This is a moment, right now, when Jesus is specifically calling each of us into the special gift of taking what we individually have, and joyfully, hopefully, faithfully joining together to engage in mutual ministry here in this place. So that we may have life more abundantly. Living joyfully, generously, and open-heartedly. Without the constant anxiety of whether there will be “enough.”

“Throw aside your cloaks, the weights of fear and anxiety that holds you back!” Jesus calls. Throw them aside, and embrace the freedom and the joy of following Jesus.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 Eucharist, both online and in person, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Job 42:1-6, 10-17
Psalm 34:1-8, (19-22)
Hebrews 7:23-28
Mark 10:46-52

Notes/ Attributions:

I am indebted to a meditation by the Rev. Todd B. Freeman, pastor of College Hill Presbyterian Church across the street from the University of Tulsa campus, for insight about the gospel reading. And I hope you all in the congregation have forgiven my friends and me from what was then called Canterbury House for all the times we climbed up your fire escape onto the roof to enjoy the night view when we were in college.

Prayer 2773: The Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Almighty God,
your love sustains us in every moment,
and we rest within the embrace of your mercy:
hear our prayer.

Give us ears alert to your call to us,
as you called to Moses as he did his daily work.
May we hear you call us by name,
and turn to hear your voice
taking your instruction to heart
that we may be a blessing in the world
and join ourselves
to upholding your work of reclamation
in your Name.

Set our hearts aflame
to burn with joy by your Word and Spirit,
O God of Grace and Mercy.
Hear our prayers and petitions and longings
as we lift them before You,
and grant your blessing to all who seek You,
especially those we now name.

Amen.

What Are You Looking For? Sermon for 2nd Sunday after Epiphany

In 1987, the Irish rock band U2 released its iconic album “The Joshua Tree.” One of the greatest hits from that album was the song “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” This song came at a time when most rock fans were beginning to forget that three of U2’s members identified as Christian, and that their first hit on MTV was a song called Gloria, which was not about a girl but instead contained the words “Gloria in te Domine”—in English, “Glory to You, Lord.” I enjoyed watching my friends in college unknowingly singing praises to God as they sang along.

The lyrics to “I Still Haven’t Found What I am Looking For” describe the seeking and the searching that so many of us have felt, not just in young adulthood, but throughout our lives: 

I have climbed the highest mountains 
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you Only to be with you
I have run, I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you
But I still haven't found
What I'm looking for 

The song then describes the search for pleasure and connection. But it is in the last verse that the band makes explicit the spiritual nature of their searching: 

I believe in the Kingdom come
Then all the colors will bleed into one 
But yes, I'm still running
You broke the bonds and you loosened chains 
Carried the cross of my shame
You know I believe it
But I still haven't found 
What I'm looking for…(1)

The frank confessional tone of the last verses emphasize that this is a song about faith, about searching for transcendence in a world all too mired in immediate gratification. The song recounts a catalogue of experiences that should have thrilled and delighted, but instead have nonetheless been ephemeral, unsatisfying, leaving the seeker empty because they do not point to anything greater than the isolated response to a series of isolated experiences that only provide temporary distraction.

But isn’t this a plaintive cry that comes from the depths of so many people today, both from those who admit to some sort of engagement with faith, and those who lack a faith community of any kind? We are filled with an insatiable hunger for meaning, for connection, for purpose, for peace, for contentment in a world that keeps us constantly on the edge of dissatisfaction, where we are constantly told to want more even as our possessions often are tarnished in our appreciation before we’ve even thrown away the packaging?

The members of U2 were surprised when, shortly after the album’s release, a choir in New York reworked it into a gospel anthem. But to my mind that makes perfect sense: the greatest hymns have always dealt honestly with emotions. “It is Well With My Soul” was written by a man who lost his wife and daughters in a shipwreck. “Amazing Grace” was written by a man who had been involved in the transatlantic slave trade before becoming an Anglican clergyman. “How Great Thou Art,” was written after a powerful storm subsided to tranquility as the writer, Carl Boberg, pondered Psalm 8 while walking. 

Just being able to admit “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for” is the first step to acknowledging the longing that lies within us.

It is that sense of longing that caused those two disciples of John to go trailing after Jesus on that dusty road—too unsure or overwhelmed to go up to Jesus directly, they simply lurk behind him, not even knowing what they were hoping to find. “What are you looking for?” I think Jesus’ question to those seekers trailing along behind him is one that we ourselves can ponder, and also ask others when it comes to matters of faith. What is it we are looking for? Jesus is reminding us that the path to enlightenment starts from the acknowledgement of longing, the acknowledgement that we are all seekers, trying to fill a hole within our hearts and souls with something.

We live in an age of substitution. We crave nourishment, but we fill ourselves to the brim with junk food, where even Bread Co. mostly serves up prepackaged foods and actually became the subject of a national petition when they removed their French Onion soup from the menu. We crave excitement, even as we numb ourselves with technology, and the top movie honored by Academy Award nominations is a psychological thriller about a comic book villain many of us wouldn’t want to spend five seconds with, much less two hours in the dark with strangers.

What is it we are actually looking for? The question resonates today as much as it did 2000 years ago. Jesus asks those two seekers that question out of love and compassion. Because just as much as those disciples think that here might be what they are looking for, Jesus has been searching for them, and for each one of us. And I am convinced that that’s another vitally important message to take from this gospel passage. Jesus’s interactions with his disciples constantly portrays him as seeking them out, engaging with people even when they disagree with him, not just sitting back and waiting for people to come to him, but going to where the people are, in their everyday lives.

Our gospel passage also assures us that Jesus welcomes us with our questions, our hesitations, our refusal to believe that something good might also be true. Look at how he responds to those two seekers in our story. They’re afraid to admit to their seeking—so they blurt out the first thing that pops into their heads. "What are you looking for?" Is NOT answered by "Where are you staying?"          

Yet Jesus understands. His response is “Come and see.” And he's not talking about his lodgings. Instead, Jesus invites them to come and see for themselves who he is. And by the end of the day, they themselves are convinced. 

“Come and see” could be seen as a kind of shorthand for the entire Epiphany season. It’s an invitation to move from bewailing that we haven’t found what we are looking for, to taking concrete action to find that meaning that has been missing in our lives. In this season of Epiphany, we hear story after story of how Jesus’s identity was revealed to successive people, Jew and Gentile alike, and in doing so, reveals who God is, helping to bridge the chasm that prevents ordinary humanity from beginning to perceive the essence of God’s nature.

It’s too easy to get caught up in cynicism, across the years and centuries especially. And that’s why we can look at our gospel not just as a story about then, but about NOW.

Too many people are only comfortable with reducing Jesus to merely a historical figure, an ancient wisdom teacher who taught an ethical system based on the golden rule. I suppose that’s better than those who imagine that Jesus is a vengeful referee who hates all the same people we do and can’t wait to chuck them into a hell of unquenchable fire. But not much better. Too many people, self-avowed Christians included, fail to see Jesus anywhere today. But we proclaim Jesus, risen and living in the world today, still guiding us in the way of God, and bridging the divide between humanity and divinity.

What if we took seriously the idea of the ongoing incarnation of God in human vesture that we sing about in our hymns? Because the Church is called to be the embodiment of that same precious body, that same Anointed One, that the disciples encountered. Likewise, the Church is called to equip each and every one of its members to not just embody the healing, reconciling love and wisdom of Jesus, but to see that divine spark in everyone, friend or stranger alike.

As we heard the story of Jesus’s baptism last Sunday, many of us probably reflected upon our own anointing by water and the Spirit in the sacrament of baptism. With that in mind, the call today to “Come and see” to those who do not know God becomes a charge upon faithful people everywhere through the power their baptism to be the living embodiment of Jesus in the world today.

In the early Church, “come and see” was a scandal in the milieu of mystery cults that promised the attainment of secret knowledge to the detriment of those around them. The scandal of the gospel was its universalism two millennia ago—and that same universalism remains a scandal today to those who want to erect walls and stiles and barricades between the seeking and the Savior. Embracing that universal call to “come and see” is the essence of Christian life and discipleship, even if we are faltering and imperfect in our attempt. 

“Come and see” is not a command for the world to come to us—and that’s not how our peripatetic teacher and Savior, Jesus from no-account Nazareth, operated, either. “Come and see” calls us ourselves to be swept up in the unbounded vista of God’s saving love, for only in embracing the mystery of God’s love can we truly dare to share with others the wonders of grace and truth.

“Come and see” is a charge upon us to go meet people where they are-- the poor, the suffering, the overlooked, the downcast, the oppressed, the scorned, the broken and broken-hearted— to love them for who they are whether the calculus of the world judges them worthy or not, and be the healing we long to see in the world. It is standing alongside the despised and the fallen and nonetheless seeing the spark of God’s love in the other as much as we long to believe it resides within us, knowing full well our own failures. It is a call for us to embody the reconciliation, grace, and mercy that Jesus himself embodied—and in embodying those spiritual gifts, Jesus proves that it is possible for us to embody them as well.

Look around you: the world is our mission field. So many people still haven’t found what they are looking for. What if each and every one of us was willing to respond as Jesus did—with love, love in action where there is isolation? With healing and reconciliation, where there has been pain and anger? With invitation and drawing the circle ever wider, where there has only been rejection and heartache? With a personal, heartfelt invitation to “come and see?”

“Come and see” is a call that will only resonate when it springs from the joy abundant we feel at knowing we are Beloved of God, and rather than try to hoard that knowledge to ourselves, to share it with those the world despises so that they too, can join us in rejoicing and renewal. It is a call to a path that never claims that the ends justify the means, but holds that the path itself is holy—and calls us from being mere fans to being actual disciples.

When we live into the relationships that Jesus calls us to embrace with both God and with all creation, we are transformed. We make room within our hearts for the inner light and wisdom of the folly of the gospel of Jesus, one that denies that there must be winners and losers as much of the world’s systems demand. It is embracing the paradox and the gift of God coming into time as a helpless infant, and of the greatest becoming the least, all for love beyond all of our own fearful limitations. It is that embodiment to which the incarnation calls us today. “Come and see” reminds us that the only way love grows is by sharing it with other by not seeking to exclude those different from us but by drawing the circle ever wider until all are drawn within the enclosure of God’s mercy. It is a reminder that God’s love is not a transaction, but a gift and a grace beyond our ken. 

What are you looking for? Let us each be the way for the world to come and see.

Amen.

Readings:
Isaiah 49:1-7
Psalm 40:1-12
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
John 1:29-42


Citations:
(1) "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," by Adam Clayton, Dave Evans, Larry Mullen, Paul David Hewson, and Victor Reina, from 1987's album The Joshua Tree.

Preached at the 505 on January 18 and at 8:00 and 10:30 am on January 19, 2020 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Wholly Beloved, Holy Calling: Sermon for 3 Lent C

One of my favorite cartoons is one that’s been around for years—you’ve probably seen a version of it. It’s an extension of the idea in that inspirational poem, “Footprints.” It shows God talking with a person with tear-stained cheeks, looking back on the person’s life as if their journey through life has left behind a series of impressions in the sand.

God looks back at an early part of the person’s life journey and points: “My beloved child—I am always with you. See those two sets of footprints? That’s where you and I walked side-by-side.” 

“Yes, God,” says the human, “but what about over there, where there’s only one set of footprints?” 

God answers, “My child, there’s only one set of footprints there, because that’s where I carried you.” 

And the human in the cartoon visibly brightens. Nice, right? But some of you may not have seen the third panel of the cartoon. In the third panel, God continues, “And that deep pair of grooves over there? THAT’s where I dragged you, my child, kicking and screaming.”

Today’s reading from our Hebrew scriptures jumps us from Genesis last week to Exodus—and specifically, to God’s call to Moses from the burning bush. We are hearing this reading today because Lent is often the part of the year where we are encouraged to examine the “kicking and screaming” part of our lives with God, where we are reminded that sometimes we’ve fallen, and we can’t get up, like in those Life Alert commercials. However, in our Christian Lenten understanding, we don’t depend on Life Alert but—thank be to God—on God’s grace, on God never ever giving up on us.

Just like in that cartoon, Moses doesn’t respond with cooperation when God calls to him. There’s more than a little of the “kicking and screaming” resistance, but Moses is no dummy. Rather than outright refusal to heed God’s call, Moses engages in a debate with God, first requiring God to establish God’s bona fides. That’s when God gives Moses God’s actual name—which is a sign of relationship. As we hear repeatedly in scripture, to be called by name is to be known.

This bears repeating, because it seems so obvious: being able to know and use someone’s name implies a relationship. This same situation will later be cited in Isaiah 52:6: “Therefore my people will know my name;
 therefore in that day they will know
 that it is I who foretold it.
 Yes, it is I.” Psalm 91, which we read a few weeks ago also states: “Those who love me, I will deliver;
 I will protect those who know my name.” Naming implies intimacy and the ability to call on someone for help.

Although there have been several names used for God, up to this point in the Torah, the answer Moses receives is “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” which is translated as “I am who I am” as well as “I will be who I will be”—in other words, God exists outside the realm of time and human experience, and past, present, and future are all the same to God. And yet God is hearing the groans of the Israelites and is responding to them. That can be comforting—God has remained faithful to God’s people, even as they have forgotten all about God, lowering their sights from heaven to the brutal task of survival. God has been, and will be, with God’s people always.

God also refers to Godself as “YHVH” which was translated as “The LORD” in the Torah, since the name of God was so holy that it was not to be uttered, in case it was misused. That’s why sometimes, when you see God written about by Jews to this day, you sometimes see it written “G-d” which omits the vowels (as Hebrew does). In Hebrew, God’s name is so holy that the term Hashem is often used in its place. Hashem means, simply, “The Name.” Names are considered to be that powerful. Thus the LORD is the name of God to be used forever.

Notice that God calls Moses by name from the very first. Then, once God establishes a relationship with Moses by giving Moses God’s very name, the story we hear today ends. I think that’s unfortunate, because what we don’t hear is Moses’s resistance to God’s call shifting from asking God's name to stating that he is not cut out for the job—that he lacks the appropriate gifts. But I want to invite you into that part of the story, too.

In the 4th chapter of Exodus, Moses has tried to evade God’s call with a number of objections, and very reasonable ones, too, centering around the idea of “Nobody is going to believe that God has talked to me,” which I think we can all relate to, as well. God then shows Moses a series of miraculous signs that will come in useful later when Moses is talking with Pharaoh. But then Moses pulls out his trump card: “Hey God,” he says, “you know I am not an eloquent speaker and this gig you are outlining requires a LOT of talking. So please send someone else.” And at this point, God gets exasperated at Moses’s shilly-shallying and ducking and weaving, and overcomes that objection too, by promises that Moses’s brother Aaron will help out with the talking thing.

Responding to God’s call is one of the hardest things for us to do, and yet one thing we know is that God has pursued relationship with creation from the very beginning, and it has been done through God calling over and over again. The great Biblical scholar Walter Brueggeman organized his commentary on Genesis around the idea of four vital calls: God calls creation into being, and creation responds in a variety of ways. Next, God calls Abram, as we heard last week, and Abram and Sarai embrace the call of God and enters into covenant, faithful to God’s promises that Abram's descendants will become a great family. God calls Jacob, but that call causes conflict in Jacob’s family, as the younger son is privileged over the elder. Then in the story of Joseph, we are reminded that the purposes of God’s call are often hidden and elusive at first.(1) Now in Exodus, the descendants of Jacob have grown from being a family to being a community—a nation.(2) Yet they are a nation under oppression, and it can only be that in freedom that Israel can answer God’s call affirmatively and freely, rather than under duress. That’s the part that Moses will play. 

God calls Moses to be God’s prophet and spokesman, God’s human agent in the work of liberation. Moses goes from being shepherd for his father-in-law to being called to be the shepherd for his people in their flight from bondage and oppression. And now we hear the story of God’s call to Moses, and I want to be completely honest with you. It is Moses’s last response that I find the most relatable in this story. Burning bushes I have never seen. But feelings of doubt and unworthiness when being called by God? Oh yes—that one I know, six different ways from Sunday. 

During the years when I resisted the full surrender to God’s call in my life, the biggest reason why was my own feelings of unworthiness to fulfill that call. Even after finally giving in and making the leap to retire from teaching and attend seminary, I was buffeted often by feelings of being in over my head, and strong case of “imposter syndrome.”

Then, as I was preparing to go before the several committees who had to approve my ordination, I was specifically, and frustratingly, warned AWAY from using call language, which then makes it awfully hard to answer the question of why anyone would actually want to take on the ordained life. And the reason why I was told that I should NOT insist that I was called by God to be a priest was that the committee members might feel like their opinion then didn’t matter.

But the call of Moses makes exactly that point in a way, doesn’t it? God calls who God calls, and in a way, what we think about it is NOT the point. Just like Moses, many of us have had a hard time recognizing the voice in our life calling us to discipleship as being God’s voice. And then, once we do, we have a hard time believing that we are up to the task, or that the task is even achievable. If we’re honest, many of us are have also struggled to recognize God’s voice and respond to God’s call. 

But just like in that cartoon,
Sometimes we let God walk beside us.
Sometimes God has to carry us.
Sometimes God drags us back kicking and screaming from sin and foolishness into discipleship.

But one thing we should never doubt is that we are worthy of God’s love and regard, and that we are worthy to try to be not just fans of God but children of God, disciples of God. God doesn’t call the perfect, the saying goes—God helps perfect the called.

What’s the big picture? God will call whomever God pleases, even if that choice seems to make no sense. God’s great prophet Moses had no qualifications to speak for God, and didn’t really want to give himself over to God—a very understandable reaction! God can be so… disruptive!

-- and yet, God has chosen, and won’t be talked out of it.

Moses has never been at home anywhere, so who better to argue for a dispossessed people? He has been an adopted son of a princess, and now he’s a scruffy shepherd. It is exactly those experiences that make him the perfect intermediary in this case. God has also revealed the name of God, which shows that God is committed to the people, and continuously opens the door for us to not just approach God but to depend upon God to care for us.

The story of Moses we hear today is the story of a call, and as faithful people we are called too- called to own our heritage of being made in the image of God—of being children of God. Children of God-- and I say that without my fingers crossed behind my back-- called to embody God’s essential goodness in the world-- to embody the love of God as has been and is being revealed in Christ Jesus. And when we fall short, we are called to own our sins, to repent, to turn and try again.

As our gospel today reminds us, Jesus makes it clear that, when we fail to live up to our call as children of God, we can receive God’s mercy and grace rather than God’s judgment, so that we can respond to the call to repent—to make an adjustment, maybe a big one or maybe just a small one—but often, just a small change is enough.

That’s why Lent is such a beautiful thing. It should never be seen as a time to beat ourselves up, or dwell on our own unworthiness, which then can become a convenient excuse for not trying in the first place. Rather, Lent calls us to acknowledge our sins and resistances to living out our calling, to own them and examine them, and then to turn anew, to hear the call of God for us to turn aside, to remember that the ground on which we stand is holy ground.

Our lives are the holy ground in which we meet God. And if we stop our scurrying around and our constant need for distraction, we just might hear God calling us, as God’s beloveds, to help make God’s presence in the world just a little more visible in what we say and what we do.

Listen! The beauty of Lent is that it reminds us of grace and calls us to slow down and listen. To hear that God is calling. Because make no mistake. God IS calling each and every one of us, and all of us as a community of faith, to embody the same grace that upholds us out into the darkness of the world. Let’s turn, and see that light flaring where we don’t expect it.

Let’s turn aside, listen, and say yes. Yes, because we ARE worthy. Yes, because we are upheld by grace. Yes, because we are empowered by that grace to act in the world in the name of liberation and salvation. Walking side by side with our Savior and Redeemer.

Amen.

Readings:
Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 63:1-8
1 Corinthians 10:1-13
Luke 13:1-9


Links/References:
1) Walter Brueggemann, Genesis:Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, pp. 1-5
2) Rabbi Sir Jonathan Sacks, Exodus: The Book of Redemption (Covenant and Conversation 2), pp. 1-6

Prayer 2247: Third Sunday of Lent C

Almighty One,
we gather before You
in reverence and humility,
our hearts seeking your light.

May we turn aside from our busyness
and see the flame of your presence before us,
on the holy ground of our lives.

May we re-member and embody
your Name of Love
as your witnesses,
and work for the liberation and care of your creation.

For You are the One who called creation into being;
who called Abram to embrace your covenant;
who called Jacob despite his youth;
who called Joseph even though the way seemed dark.

May we hear your loving entreaty to us
and turn again to your Way of Love,
trailing compassion and healing behind us.

Blessed One, strengthen us in mercy and justice,
and grant your comfort to those for whom we pray.

Amen.

God calling: Speaking to the Soul, January 17, 2018

One of my favorite “comfort movies” is a sweet little gem from 2000 starring Edward Norton (who also directed), Ben Stiller, and Jenna Elfman called Keeping the Faith.

The basic outline of the film is the friendship between Brian, a Roman Catholic priest, and Jake, an Orthodox rabbi, whose lives are turned upside down when their childhood friend Anna, a hotshot corporate executive on the rise, comes back into their lives after moving away when they were all in middle school. Immediately, a love triangle ensues, yet through all the emotional and romantic turbulence, we also get a surprising meditation on the persistence of call, and of the importance both of friendship and also of religious faith among a generation whose religious commitments are often (wrongly, in my opinion) denigrated as being shallow-to-nonexistent. For both Brian and Jake, their love for Anna causes them to question their call. Obviously, for Brian, his (unrequited) feelings for Anna are out of the question, and cause him to question his calling as a priest. Yet Jake, also, faces problems in his Orthodox congregation (and in his family) at his potential relationship with a non-Jewish woman. Each of them ends up re-examining their sense of call and vocation, Anna included.

In Year B, we have been given several stories about call during this season after Epiphany. Last Sunday, the second after Epiphany, is also known as "Call Sunday," since the readings include multiple stories of God calling individuals out by name and setting before them special tasks such as prophecy and discipleship. Even last Sunday’s responsorial psalm, 139, marvels at how intimately God calls us and makes us partners in the reconciliation of creation. The boy Samuel is called by God; the disciples are continuing to be called to follow Jesus.

This Sunday we will hear more stories about discipleship and call. We will hear Jonah finally giving in and traveling to Nineveh, the main city of the Assyrian Empire in what is now northern Iraq, to preach God’s call to repentance to the people there, even though Nineveh had been one of the traditional enemies of Israel. The story in Mark of God calling Simon and Andrew away from their nets as fishermen, promising instead to make them “fishers of people.”

Jesus’s call to Simon and Andrew seems to come out of the blue, startling and beautiful and enticing, much like the throbbingly purple winter iris I spotted while walking with my friend John this last week—a true Epiphany for this refugee from the Midwestern winter, a burst of intense beauty in what is usually a sere, severe time of the year, in my experience. That iris also kept faith with its call to testify to God’s beauty, choosing to bloom despite all that might call it to slumber instead.

How about you? Are you called?

Do you even want to admit it, if you are?

Let's face it: as the movie makes clear, start talking about God talking to you in this day and age, especially in 21st century America, and people start shaking the wrinkles out of the straitjacket. I imagine it's even worse in Europe, the former seat of Christendom. Just admitting to being a person of religious faith is at times a risk, socially and culturally.

For many of us, we walk a delicate line as we seek to take seriously the call of God in our lives. For years, I sought to answer the call I felt, but not so much that it would turn my life upside down either. In other words, I kept saying, "Here am I, LORD. Please don't ask me for too much." Until finally, that just didn’t work anymore.

God’s call can cause us to abandon our nets and our befuddled father, like Andrew and Simon did, and set out on a completely different life. Yet it can also cause us to seek to be a witness to God’s blessings in our lives in other, more subtle ways, calling us to minister to each other in our secular vocations, which in many ways is a more delicate balancing act than just throwing it all away and renouncing everything we have ever known. Call also involves recognizing and pointing to the presence of God among us each day, a task every bit as risky and daring as the dropping of one’s nets along the shores of Sea of Galilee and wandering off in at the word of the local holy man.

Most of us aren’t led to abandon everything in order to follow Jesus and let our lives testify to his impact in our lives. God is calling all of us as God’s beloved children to bear witness to God’s beauty out into a world that desperately needs that light. Do we dare answer, "Here am I, LORD, Your servant is listening?" Even if it comes out more like, "Here am I, LORD. I give in," that’s still such a leap of faith in any time and place, a flash of beauty and joy in our lives, God’s love of us breaking in to help us keep the faith in spite of ourselves.

This was first published at the Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on January 17, 2018.