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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen.

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

Readings:

Isaiah 62:1-5

Psalm 36:5-10

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

John 2:1-11

Tearing Back the Heavens: Sermon for the Baptism of the Lord

As I began to ponder these readings at the start of 2021 and the start of this week, there were two things that my mind associated with these passages. One was Call the Midwife, the wonderful British series on Netflix that my husband and I have become absolutely besotted with during the COVID19 pandemic. The other is a book that I began reading last week called The Work of Love: Creation as Kenosis, a series of essays edited by Anglican priest/scientist John Polkinghorne.

The former is a touching bit of entertainment. The latter is a work that combines theology and science in attempting to make sense of God’s ongoing work of creation in history. But they both share one common viewpoint: there is no new life without cost.

In Call the Midwife, young mothers in the postwar East End of London labor—usually with the assistance of midwives’ encouragement as their only pain relief, to bring their babies into the world—a world that is filled often with poverty and misery as well as the strength of the human spirit. As I learned when I became a mother, even with all the advantages of modern medicine, there is a real reason why they call childbirth “labor.” And as I learned in the years afterward, all of parenting should rightly be called “labor,” too. The labor that brings life new life into being is not simply a static moment in time, nor does it occur without pain and suffering as well as joy and love. All is bound up together, and is ongoing.

In The Work of Love, and in the work of W. H. Vanstone, whose writing inspired the essays within, multiple writers attempt to illuminate the ways in which science and theology shape our understanding of a God who is ever-creating, ever engaged with the world that was and is and is to come. As organisms evolve, their evolution cannot be explained by natural laws or selection alone, for, as anyone who ever watched the movie Jurassic Park knows, randomness is also shot through all creation, and some may attribute that randomness to God.

Science aligns with scripture in revealing to us a dynamic picture of a world involved in continuous and incessant change. Creation—the creation of new life—is not limited to a single moment in time, but is ongoing—as our friends in New Zealand insist in their prayer to God who IS CREATING the heavens and the Earth. God's action as Creator is both past and present as well as future: it is continuous. The scientific perspective of a cosmos, and in particular that of the biological world, as developing continuously in time. So it is in nature, and so it is within us, God IS creating ever anew within us, and asking us to be partners in that creation is one of God’s greatest compliments to us.

And any time there is change, any time there is transformation, there can also be resistance. Thus I and all of us were brought up short by the events of Wednesday in our nation’s capitol. We witnessed the forces of resistance to change, specifically the forces who cling to notions of superiority based on race and privilege, abandon their claims to lawfulness and order and instead engage in destruction, violence, and subversion.

I went from contemplating the beauty of the opening words of Genesis to seeing the ugliest impulses generated in our political life play out before my horrified eyes. Unbidden, the opening words of Psalm 130 echoed through my head and heart as I watched the chaos in our national capitol unfold: “Out of the depths have I called to You O Lord: Lord hear my voice!”

As I watched the forces of chaos, conspiracy, and division rampage through the halls of democracy, all I could think of was the depth of the waters into which our nation was treading. But sometimes profound shocks can lead to a shaking off of the willingness to accept the banal, everyday evils that creep and infiltrate into our moral framework.

Deep waters, which in Genesis are the canvas upon which creation springs forth, became a murky symbol of loss of control and danger. From my TV screen, I heard person after person, on both sides of the aisle as the events of the day spiraled more and more out of control, protest that “this is not who we are.”

But we can’t fool ourselves. When violence, intimidation and murder are elicited from a mob this easily, we must face the uncomfortable truth that, yes, somewhere within us, this IS who we are.

But it is NOT who we are called to be.

In our gospel reading, Jesus leads us by example into the waters of baptism to give us the courage and endurance to strain toward who we are called to be. In Christ, we are called to be one people, united by our common heritage as being beloved children of God. The waters of baptism are the waters of creation, of new life that is centered in hope, faith, and embracing the miracle of the panoply of life all around us. The waters of creation from which we all spring, the waters of baptism which are the gates to eternal life for which we all thirst, call us to resistance against the anarchy, intimidation, and mob rule that swirled violently around us, and continues to threaten unless confronted.

Repeatedly in so short a passage as we see in our gospel today, border after border, barrier after barrier will be ruptured, but ruptured not in the name of violence and oppression, but in the name of LOVE and true justice. The Jordan River itself is the boundary between the wilderness and the promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey. It is on that border, that marginal space, that John the Baptist stands, enticing the people to repent and be baptized.

What’s fascinating to not here is that our reading today takes place beginning a mere four verses into Mark’s gospel. Jesus here is a cipher—John gets the more thorough treatment: we hear him described by how he dresses and what he does. What he says gets described, even if not quoted directly. Jesus gets no description at all. Jesus is silent. What Jesus sees is described, but that is only possible if someone else saw it too.

If Mark were a journalist, he wouldn’t be a very good one. If Mark were a cameraman for an NFL game, he would be fired, because his camera is on the tight end, dutifully blocking away on the end of the offensive line, instead of the quarterback, and the quarterback has just decided to keep the ball and call his own number.

So, if we are to learn anything about the incident, we have to focus on that tell-tale line: “He saw the heavens torn apart.” In the Jewish depiction of the world, the heavens weren’t just a place of fluffy clouds. The heavens set a cap on the universe. The barrier between heaven and earth was there for the protection of humanity, for the establishment of order.

In the Jewish scriptures, when the heavens were torn apart, as in Isaiah 64, it was so that God could come down-- and mixed into the hope for this was a healthy dose of fear. The Jewish cosmology perceived the sky as a dome that held back flood waters and the armies of heaven, when they were stirred. Tearing open that dome would destroy the order and categorical purity of the universe. Similarly, this was also akin to the curtain in the Temple that set apart the holy of holies to be torn in two, for it was said that to enter through the curtain was to enter back into the first day of creation—a place outside of time and space, before the universe itself was formed (taking us back to our first reading). This, of course, is related as happening after Jesus’s death on the cross.

For the heavens to be torn open, God would be tearing the roof off the universe for the purpose of coming down—a prospect that reorders the barricades of power in the human world as much as in heaven. And so what then traverses the gap in the dome?

The Holy Spirit. It “descends like a dove upon Jesus,” we are told. Those of us who are familiar with doves have seen their heavy bodies descend onto the lip of a birdbath or upon a branch—it’s like watching a heavy cargo helicopter touch down. But the Greek here doesn’t say the dove alights on Jesus—it implies that the Holy Spirit ENTERS into Jesus.

Thus we are reminded that the Incarnation represents a rupture, a breaking through of God’s power and glory and power into our walled off little reality. Here is the subversive heart of Christianity. The incarnation is not about order. The incarnation is about reordering, and about opening ourselves to the in-breaking of the Holy Spirit in all its power and unpredictability. The in-breaking of God destabilizes all our attempts to hold God at a distance, to control God to fit our own needs, to make God our wish-fulfilling servant rather than the other way around.

God’s in-breaking into the human experience as represented here today by Jesus's baptism reminds us that God's justice destabilizes notions of human justice and order. Jesus submits to baptism in the Jordan not because he needs to confess his sins but so that he can align fully in sympathy for and alongside us, frail fragile human beings who do need to confess our sins and repent.

Jesus’s ministry on earth is ever oriented away from pacification of evil or tamping down our proper response to injustice and oppression. No, far from it—Jesus comes to set the captives free, to proclaim liberty and favor tot the oppressed, to heal those suffering in body or spirit rather than casting them out or claiming that they deserve their fate as some sort of punishment. Jesus is a Man for Others. Jesus becomes flesh to show us how to orient our priorities toward the Other in our midst too—to really perceive their suffering, to respond with compassion and empathy, and to work for God’s justice to be implanted on earth. God's justice emerges as a call or a demand for responsibility to the Other.

For we are called as Christians to follow Jesus into the waters of baptism, and to ourselves be opened to the power of the Holy Spirit within our own lives. It’s an amazing journey parents commit their children to when they are baptized, and not to be taken lightly. It will require the remainder of our lives to be shaped by, and it’s one that lays out for us the requirements for living a fully human, fully God-directed life—a life of integrity. A life of resistance to evil. A life described in our baptismal covenant as requiring faith, a commitment to learning and intellectual rigor, a determination that the good of community and the protection of the vulnerable within that community is the greatest obligation of the command to love God.

It is seeking to serve Christ in all persons, especially those the world despises, and that we might be prone to despise ourselves. It is about understanding that when people riot in the name of “law and order,” what they are really trying to impose is peace without justice, a peace founded on injustice and the denial of rights to others in the name of protecting their own rights. What they are trying to impose is oppression and tyranny. It is a mockery of true justice, a demand for control that merely seeks to overpower and terrify rather than enlighten.

This is not a gospel passage for the faint-hearted. But neither are the times in which we live. Jesus is transformed by his experience in the Jordan to immediately get up and do battle with evil, for here is what the next 2 verses after our gospel reading say: And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness for forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.

Now is not the time to embrace the powerful ongoing creation within us that began at our baptism. Now is the time to reject the demagoguery that seeks to conquer the power of the people through division in favor of remembering the shared sacrifice, integrity, justice and compassion that is the foundation of virtue, generosity, and decency.

Perhaps we can begin to instead embrace the transformative power of God to aid us and to enact creation within us in becoming a beloved community, guided by values of shared burdens, shared dreams, and shared sacrifice for the common good. The Spirit is calling us to reclaim our humanity—in the name of Jesus to stand for right, integrity and honor. Creation and its drive for life over the forces of death is washing over us anew. Let us wade into the waters of a new creation, and labor for a new birth of freedom and justice in our communities.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 online worship service at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, in time of COVID19 restrictions.

Readings:

Genesis 1:1-5

Psalm 29

Acts 19:1-7

Mark 1:4-11

Prayer 2067: In Honor of Deaconness Anna Alexander

Almighty God, Guardian of Our Souls,
on wings of mercy you have borne us up
through the changes and chances of our lives,
in joy and in struggle,
and we offer your our abundant gratitude
for your blessings without end.
Strengthen our steps
in pursuit of your justice and peace;
give us courage to confront oppression at all times,
standing in unity with those
whose dignity and worth is denigrated.
Teach us to answer hatred with love,
ignorance with charity and instruction,
proclaiming the resilience of faith
against all resistance and hopelessness.
Kindle within our hearts a desire for wisdom,
and anoint us with a spirit of determination and love.
In Jesus's name, grant your grace
to all who seek You,
and pour your benediction upon those for whom we pray.

Amen.



Information of Deaconness Anna Alexander here and here.

Prayer, day 2026: On the Feast of Jonathan Myrick Daniels

O God,
You tenderly hold our souls in your hand:
hear our prayer.
Teach us, O God,
to act so that we are a blessing to others.
Bring forth in us perfect love,
in which we see all life as connected and mutually dependent.
Make us more prone to wonder than to wander,
grounding us in your Wisdom,
uplifted by grace.
Strengthen us
to offer our lives to one another,
and ground ourselves in your Beloved Community.

Cradle us to You in our pain, despair, or fear,
and brush away the tears of those who mourn,
O Loving One.
Open our eyes to the blessings we have
even in the midst of trouble.

Help us hold fast to your hand as little children,
trusting always that You are with us.
Hear the sighs of your beloveds,
and send your Spirit to comfort and bear up
those we now name.

Amen.
570, adapted in 1662

Prayer 1883: For the March for Our Lives

O God, our Refuge and our Strength,
our Shield and our Redeemer:
We raise our voices to you,
grateful for your love
which has guarded us through the night.

Strengthen our resolve to work for peace,
and our determination to resist the forces of violence and death
that profit from division.
Our trust is in You, O Holy One,
who has called us to unity in the name of right,
upheld by the love You implanted in us.

Grant us courage and eloquence
against the power of the lie,
and against the ravening jackals who feed on fear,
that we may live in justice, security, and abundance.

Lord Jesus, You have called us into communion with each other:
let us live fully into your commandments
to love each other and love God
with our entire being.

Holy One, we give You thanks
for the children who lead us into hope,
and remind us to look for your divine image in everyone we encounter.
We ask also that you envelop within your loving care
all those whose needs we bring before You.

Amen.


Photo: Lenten crosses decorate the entryways of homes all throughout Costa Rica. I thought about the symboliss of this image as I was unable to participate in one of the Marches for Our Lives taking place all ove the US.

Prayer, day 1775: On the 62nd anniversary of the start of the Montgomery Bus Boycott

Beloved God, you have held us under the shadow of your wing throughout the night:
we emerge strengthened to do your will. 

Holy One, You have laid out a path for us founded upon love and charity:
let us seek to build your kingdom today.
Let us walk in equality with our brothers and sisters;
for all are precious in your sight.  

Divine Light, let us never be silent in the face of injustice,
but be empowered by love to sing forth freedom into the world.
Let our eyes be fixed upon justice;
let us uphold each other as fellow children of You, our Savior and our God. 

May we never forget the loving-kindness You have showered upon us,
for your mercy and grace know no bounds.
Let us seek to be instruments of peace before those who brandish the sword, and practice soul force in the face of oppression. 

Let the light of your countenance shine upon us;
keep us as the apple of your eye.
Anoint us with your blessing and benediction, O God,
and grant your peace to those we now name.

Amen.
683

Inspired by Psalm 17

From Strangers to Kindred: Sermon for Proper 15, Year A

This week, my son, who has a very eclectic taste in music, was listening carefully to the Simon and Garfunkel song “The Sound of Silence.” He asked me what it was about, and I talked about it being written during the protest era for civil rights in the 1960s.

I started really listening to the lyrics of this song again, and what struck me is the power of the sound of silence, particularly when that silence is in the face of hatred and prejudice. We live in a time of distractions by the neon gods we ourselves have made, things that distract us, things that entertain us, things that we try to use to fill the holes in our lives that should be filled by real, honest relationships with each other. Silence, like a well, can swallow hopes and dreams when no one dares to break it and speak the truth. Silence can infect our common life together and spread like a malignant force, encouraging complacency in the face of injustice and oppression.

Our gospel account of the Canaanite woman asking Jesus to heal her daughter reminds us that silence often gets you nowhere. Society at that time expected her to be silent, as a woman and as a Canaanite speaking to a Jewish man. Canaanites and Jews had been enemies for as long as people could remember. Yet in her interaction with Jesus, powered by love, she does not stay silent but pleads for healing for her child. And in her approach to Jesus, she betrays a deep understanding of who this man was, regardless of her different ethnicity and religious background. The Canaanite woman asks for healing for her child, will not be denied, and actually argues back to make her case. Only one who believes that Jesus could actually do something, that he is a powerful healer, would be so determined.  

Her actions are also deeply liturgical. She uses the language of intercession, words that we repeat in our prayers of the people and in the Kyrie eleison: “Lord, have mercy.” She kneels before him, humbly yet defiantly, demanding that he see truly see her. And yet, unlike other stories we hear in scripture when confronted by people who seek healing, Jesus at first does not respond to her, and then when he does, he insultingly rejects her request. Yet, this unnamed woman alone of all the people who interact with Jesus in the Bible manages to go head to head with Jesus in a debate, and win. When he insults her, she doesn’t deny it, but turns his words to her advantage. Powered by love, she resolutely keeps demanding that Jesus see her and her daughter as worthy of acknowledgment, and of the blessing of wholeness. Although at first Jesus answers rudely to our ears, her great faith and love eventually turns his heart—and that faith makes her daughter well.

Throughout Matthew’s gospel, the plea “Have mercy on me, Son of David!” is used by people asking Jesus to be healed. In each case of healing, Jesus makes it clear that their healing comes about through their faith, and this Canaanite woman is no different. Her faith is so great that she believes that Jesus can heal an outsider’s daughter regardless of distance. Her powerful love for her daughter and her faith in Jesus overcomes all obstacles, and wins her the healing for which she prays. Love wins.

Here is where also we see the tie with the claims in Romans by Paul—God’s grace and mercy is for everyone, and no one is left out, not Gentile or Jew or anyone. Where we might expect Jesus to proclaim this himself, here we see an outsider CLAIM this for herself and her daughter. The teacher is taught something by the student he is inclined to disdain. This epiphany to Jesus reminds us again that he was fully human as well as fully the Son of God, and could learn things and be surprised by them.

It also reminds us that far too often are we prone to see others of different backgrounds as the enemy when in fact they are our brothers and sisters, with just claims upon us that should stir just responses, grounded in empathy and mercy rather than resentment. God’s grace and mercy are universal, not limited to just people who hold the correct sets of beliefs or lineage. The healing of the Canaanite woman’s daughter, brought about by her, yes, “dogged persistence” and great faith fueled by love, bears this out.

This woman was not willing to stay behind the barriers that were placed between her and her dreams for her daughter to be restored to wholeness. Her assigned gender role, her religion, her ethnicity and her location all were supposed to serve to prevent her encounter with Jesus. Yet she relentlessly breaks through every one. She learns of his approach, and goes out to meet him in the margins in between Jewish and Gentile territory, and loudly places her claim upon Jesus’s help, refusing to let anything get in her way.

Our communities today are in desperate need of healing, and it seems at times that there are just too many barriers that are placed in the way for that healing to begin. To some of us, it is obvious that there is a demon that has seized some of our brethren, and especially the events of the last few days from Charlottesville to Barcelona have raised the specter of fascism, prejudice, religious divisions, and hatred.

In the face of this threat, some people choose silence, wrongly equating silence with peace. But the kind of peace silence would create leaves the wound in our communities in place. It does not lead to healing. It leaves far too many groups feeling abandoned, isolated, and physically threatened by those whose deadly ideologies. Too many people who already HAVE a voice and take their voices for granted, and just like Jesus’s disciples, they don’t want to hear the voices of those they consider to be a stranger, or worse, an enemy, claiming the need for healing and reconciliation from them. They want to portray those protesting against the open or hidden cultivation of hate-filled ideologies as being the ones who are out-of-bounds, as strangers, as enemies.

Yet the fact that some of us march in the streets gives me hope, for such actions cannot be rooted in destruction or despair. Instead, I am convinced these protests are acts of faith just as strong as the faith of that Canaanite woman. Faith that we CAN be better than this. Faith that we can overcome our divisions and meet together at the margins. Faith that, here in the US, we can live into our nation’s motto of E pluribus unum—from many, one.

What would it be like if we allowed the surprising faith of those on the margins, despite all the odds, to grow into the spaces that currently divide us, and help create bridges and unification instead? If even Jesus can grow into new understanding through the claims of the Other and overcome his initial rejection, can’t we have hope that as disciples of Jesus we can look at our own refusal to see the full beauty of God in others, and learn how to do better? We CAN defeat the forces of hate if we remember the power of the love that drove that woman to her knees before Jesus, demanding that he see her and hear her cry for healing as a child of God as well.

We talk an awful lot about feelings nowadays in our society. And that’s fine—except when we talk about or privilege feelings above reason, facts, or the quest for justice. Feelings of superiority and inferiority, fears of losing status or rights if others gain them drive much of the current backlash against the drive for full civil rights for oppressed or marginalized peoples within our society and throughout the world. Yet rights, like blessings, are not diminished by more people having them: it’s not pie, as the punchline goes. Rather the extension of rights and equality to others makes the continued possession of rights by those who already enjoy them MORE secure, as equality leads to justice and freedom for all—the very bedrock principles we espouse but still struggle have yet to fully achieve for all.

In Jesus’s time and in our own, there are multiple man-made barriers that separate one group of people from each other, contrary to the common heritage we all share as beloved children of God. Our faith that we affirm in our baptismal covenant calls us to renounce the forces of evil and respect the dignity of every human being. Those are not just empty words. They are part of a sacred call and covenant which we reaffirm repeatedly throughout our lives not just at Pentecost or All Saints’ Day, but in our words and actions. We are called not only to believe in the healing and saving power of Jesus, but, as the motto of the Diocese of Missouri puts it, to make and be disciples of Jesus for the life of the world. A world that is too shattered by hate and violence.

The fact of the matter is, many of us in this particular section of the Jesus movement don’t talk much about what “being saved” means. We ARE Episcopalians, after all.

Here’s one part of it: God created us in freedom, and that freedom includes the freedom to love, and the freedom to hate. One part of this problem may lie in our difficulty with accepting that we NEED to be saved from our tendency to resent and fear each other. Another part comes from the other direction, internally in each one of us, where we cannot believe we are worthy of God’s love and attention, that God would be interested in us either as individuals or as members of communities that are struggling to find peace, justice, and hope.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu is not only a great theologian, but also a great leader in the struggle against hatred and division in South Africa and around the world. In his book God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time, he says this:


“MANY OF US can acknowledge that God cares about the world but can’t imagine that God would care about you or me individually. But our God marvelously, miraculously cares about each and every one of us. The Bible has this incredible image of you, of me, of all of us, each one, held as something precious, fragile in the palms of God’s hands. And that you and I exist only because God is forever blowing God’s breath into our being. And so God says to you, 'I love you. You are precious in your fragility and your vulnerability. Your being is a gift. I breathe into you and hold you as something precious.' But why, we ask in our disbelief and despair, would God care about me? The simple reason is that God loves you. God loves you as if you were the only person on earth. God, looking on us here, does not see us as a mass. God knows us each by name. God says, 'Your name is engraved on the palms of My hands.' You are so precious to God that the very hairs of your head are numbered. ‘Can a mother,’ God asks, ‘forget the child she bore?’”

As I pondered those those words, I thought of this unnamed woman in our gospel today. God loves us as a mother, as the very best mother any of us could ever hope for. God loves us as fiercely as that Canaanite mother loved her child. And like any mother, God has dreams for us of healing and wholeness and unity.

Archbishop Tutu concludes with these words to summarize the promise of the gospel for us today: “We are those precious things that God carries gently. God carries each one of us as if we were fragile because God knows that we are. You are precious to God. God cares for you."

These are simple words, yet they are powerful. They are words that, if we dare to hope and believe in them, call for the transformation ourselves, and then of the world around us, because if they are true of you and me, they are true of everyone. And that hatred that is spilling out into our streets here and across the worls is rooted in a denial of the truth of those words. Each one of those torch-carriers and bombers has lost sight of God’s love for them, and God’s love for every other living thing in creation. And yet God loves them, too, the lost as well as those who are trying to be found.

But the story of the Canaanite woman and Jesus remind us that ALL are beloved children of God, worthy of recognition, worthy of being heard when we cry out to God and to each other from the depths of our need. But we also have a part to play in tearing down the barriers of suspicion and fear that lead us to deny the humanity of others. We are called to recognize the beauty of God in ourselves, and in others. As Christians, we are called not to remain silent but to turn to God when we are in need of healing, and have faith that the power of God is more than enough to heal the wounds in ourselves and in our communities. The power of God is the power of love.

And love heals. If we will let it.

Our readings today promote the idea of justice, mercy, unity, and above all love as being the foundations of the beautiful dream God holds for each of us, and for ALL of us. As we have watched the protests against racist and fascist ideologies in Charlottesville and Boston and across the nation in the last many days, we can hear an echo of the Canaanite woman’s cry and make it our own:

Have mercy, Lord, for we stand before you in need of healing.
Have mercy, Lord, for we have denied our brothers and sisters and kindred the hearing and response their claims deserve.
Have mercy, Lord, for we have denied your goodness in ourselves, in each other, and in the world around us.
Heal the breaches that divide us, not through our silence, but through a willingness on our part to examine our hearts, and live into the promises of freedom that have hung over us, waiting to break through the clouds of injustice and prejudice for too long.

I dream of a day when we can break through the silences that seek to cover over our divisions in the name of a false peace that is grounded in denial of justice to those oppressed by evil systems of exploitation.
I dream of the day when we too can sing of how good and pleasant it is when brethren live together in harmony, when we listen to each other with open hearts and recognize our common humanity.
I dream of a day when we live into taking seriously God’s promises of abundance, grace, and healing, and responding in kind to each other.

We can break through the silences that serve to divide us. God calls us to real unity, grounded in justice. If we have faith, and believe in the power of love to bring us together, strangers no longer, but beloved kindred in God.


(Preached at Christ Church Cathedral, August 20, 2017)

Prayer 1666: for renewal in the face of hatred and terror

Waterfall and rainbow, Yosemite.

Creator God,
whose Spirit moved over the waters of creation,
we thank You for our life and breath to sing your praise.

We ask your Spirit to move over us
and create clean, restored hearts,
purged of violence, prejudice, and hatred.
We ask the light and love of Christ to dwell within us,
that we be healers and helpers to those in pain.
May we stand resolutely
in the breaches of our common life,
renouncing terror, malice, and exploitation.

Spread the wings of your comfort, Lord,
over all those in pain or in mourning,
in fear or despair or awash in loss.
Be with the sick, the weary, and the abandoned;
may we act to ease their pain in your Holy Name.
Lord, we place our cares and concerns before You,
and ask your blessing on those whom we now name.

Amen.

Prayer 1665: for transformation

God of Love,
cast the mantle of your mercy over us,
and bring us to peace and harmony.

Help us cast away our sinful impulses to disunity and division,
our worship of self and power.
Lead us from the base instincts of fear and anger
that we may be wise, just, and compassionate.
Beloved Jesus, we have wandered far from You:
let us hear your call to us,
and open our hearts to your truth.

Lord, you are the champion of the dispossessed
and the hope of the hurting:
take us by the hand, we pray.
Pour out your Spirit of Holiness upon us, O God,
and bless and keep those in need of comfort.

Amen.

Prayer 1663: for courage and repentance

Grant us the courage to step out on the troubled waters.

Most Loving God,
You have generously given us life and breath:
may we use it to serve the cause of equity and truth.

Let us seek to love our neighbors as ourselves,
and fight alongside them against hatred,
for so we show our love for You,
O Merciful One.
Help us put on the armor of light
and cast off the works of darkness
as true disciples of your Word.
Let us renounce accomodation of evil,
confessing our feeding it through silence
or excusing it for our own comfort.

Let us not be so blinded by our own hurts or fears
that we lose compassion and empathy for others.
Lord of All Hope, create in us clean hearts,
and grant grace and peace to all for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer, day 1662: on the feast day of Jonathan Myrick Daniels, martyr for civil rights

On this day 3 years ago, we marched for peace and justice in Ferguson after the murder of Mike Brown, and I thought of the witness of Jonathan Daniels as county police pointed automatic weapons at us and watched us through scopes.
THIS is what the march looked like, and we were met with a military response.

O God,
You tenderly hold our souls in your hand:
hear our prayer.
Teach us, O God,
to act so that we are a blessing to others.
Bring forth in us perfect love,
in which we see all life as connected and mutually dependent.
Make us more prone to wonder than to wander,
grounding us in your Wisdom,
uplifted by grace.
Strengthen us
to offer our lives to one another,
and ground ourselves in your Beloved Community.

Cradle us to You in our pain, despair, or fear,
and brush away the tears of those who mourn,
O Loving One.
Open our eyes to the blessings we have
even in the midst of trouble.

Help us hold fast to your hand as little children,
trusting always that You are with us.
Hear the sighs of your beloveds,
and send your Spirit to comfort and bear up those we now name.

Amen.
570, adapted