The Magic of Love: Speaking to the Soul, March 29, 2021

I loved the Harry Potter books, despite my being an adult when they were published. I was teaching middle school at the time, and I had young children. I got to see the books through their eyes, and it was lovely. We would actually talk about the word play in the books, and kids didn’t stop to think how nerdy it might be to talk about the influence of foreign languages on the names and spells, or on the etymology and mythology and puns behind the words.

We all want to believe in magic. Even adults. After all, who wouldn’t want to be able to solve problems with just a thought or a wave of a stick or a few syllables. If they rhyme, all the better!

Yes, we may congratulate ourselves on our modernity, but really, superstition is still a huge influencer of human behavior. We want talismans, charms, or potions, magic pills that melt fat away. We look for the four-leaf clover. We may carry a rabbit’s foot or avoid certain colors of M & Ms. Black cats, broken mirrors, spilled salt, stepping on the baseline between home plate and first or on the cracks in the sidewalk? Here comes trouble.

The Bible mentions that pharaoh had magicians who could match Moses trick for trick when he was demanding freedom for the Hebrew children—at least until it came to the plagues of the gnats and the boils. But one of the verses we will heard recently as a Gospel reading has become a kind of talisman in the popular understanding: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

I would guess that John 3:16 is one of the most quoted verses in all of scripture. It is also an important link between other readings as we finish our walk through Lent. God’s gift of Jesus to the world as God’s son draws those who see Jesus’s light to a life with God by believing —only through faith (vv. 16-17). Yet the verse misused becomes a type of false talisman— something people worship instead of treating as a link to God’s love.

One of my personal, petty frustrations about how this verse can be misleadingly applied is seen in the ways that John 3:16 pops-up on television. There it is, held up on a large placard in the end zone. Often there is a hip, ALWAYS male, tattooed, preacher intoning that, if you feel lost, all you have to do is pray something similar to the sentiment in John 3:16, and you shall be saved—just like that. Presumably you can then go about your business having checked-off the box to keep your soul from hell, the implication being that nothing else is required. A formula is NOT enough.

John 3:16 is not a magic trick to be used to evade responsibility for one’s shortcomings, nor is it a “get-out-of-hell-free” card. There is no magic formula that helps one evade the consequences of actions that lead a person astray—something all of us have done. Our wrongdoings should rightly elicit remorse and a determination to change behavior for both our own sake and that of those around us. Fear of hell or damnation ought not be elevated to the sole role in the lifelong conversation between God and our souls.

God loved the world—and everyone in it—so much that God withheld nothing from us in seeking to help us live the most fully human lives we could live. Not even God’s own son. We are not called to summon Jesus like a wish-fulfilling genie. We are called to follow him and walk in his ways. All in the name of love.

Love—self-emptying, other-affirming, self-sacrificing love– IS the most powerful magic in the universe, as even the Harry Potter books pointed out. And the most potent magic of love is found in the fact that we ALL are borne up by the grace of it, and be changed forever by that self-giving, no-holds back love that Jesus offers.

This was first published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on March 29, 2021.

Springing-Up: Speaking to the Soul, March 25, 2021

John 12:20-33

Finally the blue sky finally unfurled itself before our wondering eyes—but it sure seems like it has been raining for weeks. And for all that we are told that

April showers
Bring May flowers,

it’s just as true around here that

March rain brings flood
and icy cold mud.

Today, though, we have been rewarded: I have seen the first buds on the redbud tree in our front garden. The redbud is grandchild to the wee, timorous stick brought across two states from Oklahoma in a bucket by my dad, who has been gone these last fifteen years.

These nascent buds are beautiful, though transitory. Those same blossoms must fall to the ground to make way for the heart-shaped leaves that will soon provide a canopy of cool shade. Then, in November those leaves too will die and drift to the ground.

So, also, we are reminded in a recent Lenten gospel that the solitary grain of wheat must fall to the ground and be buried before it can bring forth fruit. Otherwise, it remains a single grain—the original Greek here actually says, “Remains alone.”

Jesus, through his upcoming passion, will also be nailed on a cross, facing death and feeling abandoned and alone.

We know this will happen.

We also know that that cross will then awaken the world to the greatest power on earth—the power of love that does not hold our frailties and sins against us, but calls us to a new life in love. We know that the cross is not the end for Jesus, but just the beginning of victory. This is what is known in religious lingo as “the Paschal mystery.” Dying leads to rising. And around again.

So the image of the grain of wheat says something first of all about Jesus as the Christ, but second of all it says something about us. Christ transforms death through his own death on the cross, and then rises again to bring light and hope into this divided world. We become faithful by dying to our own divisions and fears and embracing love as Jesus spread his arms of love on the cross.

This is what all of scripture and God’s revelation has been trying to get through our thick skulls all along.

Our faith doesn’t tell us how to die.

It tells us how to live.

It doesn’t tell us what to give up.

It tells us what we will gain.

It doesn’t tell us that the world is broken.

It tells us how to make the world better. Hope springs up where love reigns.

Let us begin.

This was first published at the Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul, March 25, 2021.

Better Sheep: Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Easter C (Shepherd Sunday)

We all know today’s psalm. We’ve heard it in movies and on TV shows and at funerals. We've heard it in funerals in movies and on TV. We’ve prayed it in times of stress, or maybe, as I often do, to go to sleep at night. Although most of us go automatically to the KJV of it, with its magisterial language, translators are continually rewording it, trying to get the nuances of the psalm right.

For instance, listen to these different interpretations of the first verse alone:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. (NKJV)
Yahweh is my shepherd; I lack nothing, (New Jerusalem)
O God, You are my shepherd; I shall not be in want. (St. Helena Psalter)
O my Beloved, You are my shepherd, I shall not want; (Nan C. Merrill, Psalms for Praying)
The Lord takes care of me as his sheep; I will not be without any good thing. (Bible in Basic English) 
God is my Shepherd! I don’t need a thing! (The Message)

Just this year, Robert Alter completed his sweeping translation and commentary of the entire Hebrew Scriptures, and his version goes like this:

The Lord is my shepherd,
I shall not want.
In grass meadows He makes me lie down,
by quiet waters guides me.
My life He brings back.
He leads me on pathways of justice
for His name’s sake.
Though I walk in the vale of death’s shadow,
I fear no harm,
For You are with me.
Your rod and Your staff—
It is they that console me.
You set out a table before me
in the face of my foes.
You moisten my head with oil,
my cup overflows.
Let but goodness and kindness pursue me
all the days of my life.
And I shall dwell in the house of the LORD
for many long days.(1)

The image of the shepherd who is devoted to his or her flock is an image for leadership and governance throughout scriptures. When it is applied to God, it becomes yet another startling metaphor for its listeners, who knew that shepherds were humble folk, and most of the time when we think of God, “humble” doesn’t immediately come to mind. But maybe it should.

Too often, we think of God and emphasize might, power, vengeance. Smiting. I love that scene in Bruce Almighty when an infuriated Bruce yells up at heaven, “Smite me, O mighty SMITERRR!” Of course, he then gets smacked by a semi, but only so that he and God can have a talk—so he will stop bleating long enough to listen TO the Shepherd’s voice.

God’s insistence on being associated with the concerned, caring shepherd who knows us intimately and loves us deeply is one that we need to hear and treasure no matter how many times we have heard those words in the 23rd Psalm or every year during the Great 50 Days of Easter. Notice, though, that God goes from being talked about in the third person to be addressed personally in the second parson a third of the way in. This is a personal relationship. But you’ll notice that the relationship isn’t just one way—it’s up to the sheep to follow the shepherd, not wander too far off, listen when he or she calls.

I have written daily prayers for nearly every day for almost seven years now, and several times I have written prayers based on the 23rd Psalm. One of the ones that I have written that has gotten shared the most is this one, because I wrote it with that mutual nature of the relationship in mind:

O Lord, You are our shepherd;
help us to be better sheep.

When You give us green pastures,
help us to be grateful and not refuse to eat.

When You lead us beside still waters,
help us quiet our souls and be refreshed.

When our cups run over,
help us not to obsess about the mess
but shout for joy at the abundance
you give us always. 

When You lead us to right pathways,
help us not to be hardheaded and go astray.

When we are in the darkest valley,
help us to remember that You are ALWAYS with us.

When you spread a table before us
in the presence of our enemies,
help us invite them to join us,
that their hearts may be turned by love.

Help us to stop bleating long enough
to hear Your voice calling us to You.

May we remember that your goodness and mercy
follow all of us all the days of our lives.
Amen.

In our gospel reading, we again hear Jesus describe his followers as sheep—last week, Jesus told Peter three times to care for or feed Jesus’s sheep as a sign of Peter’s love for Jesus. Sheep that know their shepherd’s voice and recognize it as the voice of one who will do anything to save them. We NEED to remember that—especially when we feel lost, or not good enough. The voice of the one who loves us is always calling for us, but especially at times like those.

I love that image of the shepherd—because it’s another metaphor for God that isn’t necessarily male. In fact, it definitely has a certain mothering quality to it, one I hope we have all experienced and we have all emulated for someone else in our lives, whether we are actual mothers or not, whether our mothers are with us or not, whether our mothers were always there for us or not. Hearing the voice of love, with tender love and care, calling us back from where we have gotten lost.

So I have a story to share. I had just transferred from the middle school to the high school, and was asked to come up early in the summer to meet with some of my colleagues to discuss some curricular matters. But I had no one to watch my kids, so I brought them with me. Of course, one of them wandered off while I was in another room for a couple of minutes. And I didn’t know the building. Practically no staff was there. It was a brutally hot day. So after making sure that there was no pool in which my child could drown, I began going all over the building looking high and low for my child, while my one colleague watched my other two kids.

It seemed to go on forever. I went around the building on the outside (106 degrees!) and on the inside, calling my child’s name. I was finally at the point where I was going to call the police. There was one hallway that I had already been in, and it was hot because the air conditioning was shut off in it. Surely she wouldn’t have gone in there—it was miserable. I called my child’s name… and heard a tiny, reedy noise. But I knew that voice. My child knew my voice—and I knew hers. She had gotten locked in at the end of the hallway and could not get out of the stairwell, and thankfully wasn’t strong enough to open the door to the outside, where there was construction and traffic and a quarry beyond the back fence. I was so grateful-- and furious-- but mostly grateful.

When I finally got to my child, I asked her why she hadn’t answered me, and she said she hadn’t heard me because she was so busy calling my name. My much louder voice had cancelled hers out, but she kept calling me, because she knew I would not give up. And, oh, the relief once I had found her. She was my child.

The next morning as I was praying the Daily Office, I was struck by this image in verse 7 of Psalm 95:
For he is our God,
and we are the people of his pasture,
and the sheep of his hand.
O that today you would listen to his voice!

It is through the Shepherd’s voice that we are saved—together, as one flock, supporting each other. Salvation means being protected in the hand of Jesus, to be in his grip, never to be snatched away or pried loose. And we can support each other in trusting in that promise, in having faith enough to share when others are faltering.

This being what is known as “Shepherd Sunday,” we are reminded that Jesus’s sheep know him and his voice, the same way my daughter knew my voice even behind two locked doors. But this recognition works both ways. Jesus knows his sheep—and the sheep know Jesus. The joy that Jesus feels when some of his lost sheep are returned to him, as he describes in Luke 15:4-7, always makes me think of that tear-filled little voice echoing down a hot hallway after being lost for what felt like an eternity.

Maybe some of us don’t have these feeling of being lost—but I know many of us do, at one time or another. We may let our sense of loss and sometimes shame keep us from being able to listen to that loving voice of our shepherd calling to us, loving us no matter what. That’s one of the roles that communities of faith play—they aren’t a place where we are expected to be perfect. They are meant to be a place where we feel safe enough to come as we are, confess where we have gone astray, and then help each other hear that loving voice calling us back home.

As I continue to grieve the loss of Rachel Held Evans, I have been rereading her works, and this is what she says about that tendency we have to let the bleating voice drown out the voice of welcome, of love, and forgiveness that our shepherd uses to call to us. She talked about the blessing that communities of faith play in being supportive and safe, in accepting each other but also encouraging each other at the same time. In Searching for Sunday, she wrote:

We Christians don’t get to send our lives through the rinse cycle before showing up to church. We come as we are—no hiding, no acting, no fear. We come with our materialism, our pride, our petty grievances against our neighbors, our hypocritical disdain for those judgmental people in the church next door. We come with our fear of death, our desperation to be loved, our troubled marriages, our persistent doubts…. We come with our addictions—to substances, to work, to affirmation, to control, to food. We come with our differences, be they political, theological, racial, or socioeconomic. We come in search of sanctuary, a safe place to shed the masks and exhale.(2)

Many of us have experienced times when we have felt that God is far from us. Or we may feel that way due to the scars and wounds the world has inflicted upon us. We may feel unloved and unlovable, and treat ourselves as disposable- or allow others to treat us that way. It’s important to remember though, that it is not God who has wandered off.

A shepherd waterspout in Paris

But if we still ourselves, if we can stop our tremulous crying out just for a moment, we can hear the voice of the One Who Loves Us calling to us, welcoming us home, assuring us that we can never be snatched out of his hand, not even by our own wandering away, not even by the hurts that the world may inflict upon us. None of that matters. Listen-- the voice of Love calls to us, and holds us fast within his hand.

O Lord, You are our shepherd;
help us to be better sheep
And to listen for your voice.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on May 11, and the 8:00 and the 10:15 on May 12, 2019, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:
Psalm 23
John 10:22-30

Sources:
(1) Robert Alter, The Hebrew Bible: A Translation with Commentary, vol 3, The Writings, pp. 70-71.
(2) Rachel Held Evans, Searching for Sunday: Loving, Leaving, and Finding the Church, p. 77.