Lost and Found: Sermon for Proper 19C, September 14, 2025

Parables of the Lost Coin and the Lost Sheep, Gary Roulette, 2013

Does God change God's mind?

There are those who claim God does not-- that God has already foreordained everything that happens-- and they often voice this idea, almost without thinking about what they are saying-- at the most inopportune times, such as when a calamity has occurred. "It's God's will," they will say, and sure, for some, that provides comfort. But I heard someone say that at a funeral for a toddler who had died in surgery. The parent erupted with a quiet fury and grief. "I don't believe in a God who would do such a thing." And I told him when we talked later that I didn't believe in that God either.

People who believe that God never changes God's mind also have a tendency to believe that God has already decided who is going to Heaven and who is going to Hell-- even before those people are born. To most of us, this exposes the enormous flaw in their thinking. First how can they discount the dozens of incidents in scripture and in experience when God is shown to be seeking us out, since God always initiates revelation?

Then there's this: If God already knows if we are going to be believers and disciples or stumbling blocks and unrepentant doers of evil, then what is the point of our lives? And frankly, is there really any need for God at all? Is there any sign of God's love, God's grace, or God's mercy if God can set in motion the eternal torment of millions of people without care? Is it any wonder that so many people have turned away from this very common depiction of God?

No. The foundational characteristic of God is love and care, seeking relationship with us, and seeking our flourishing. The intricate abundance of creation itself is testament to that. Stories like the one we hear in our reading from the Book of Exodus makes it clear that God does indeed change God's mind-- and also provides evidence that God has NOT foreordained everything that happens. It also implies that intercessory prayers are not just a waste of breath, as Moses pleads for his stubborn, and spiritually lazy, people. God does NOT, actually, lead us into temptation-- we can find it on our own, thank you very much. We humans have got it favorited in our spiritual GPS.

This is a word I think many of us desperately need to hear after a week from Hell, here in America. Wednesday, September 10 saw a heinous, repugnant, targeted assassination of a far right political activist, Charlie Kirk, on the campus of a university in one of the most conservative areas in Utah. It was a profoundly unAmerican and evil act. Jesus instructed us to pray for our enemies and those who hate us. Not deprive them of life.

That was bad enough. But consider that before that vile incident, there were 31 incidents of gun violence already that day, which resulted in 11 deaths and 21 injuries. After the assassination, there was another 27 incidents of gun violence all across this nation, with 9 dead and 22 injured. These numbers include an incident in St. Louis in which a 15-year-old was shot and injured at a McDonalds, and a ten year old child was shot and injured in his own bedroom when someone sprayed his apartment complex with more than 40 rounds in St. Joseph. These numbers exclude those killed by police without shooting anyone, of which there were 8 incidents and 8 deaths.

On a single day, 67 gun violence incidents, resulting in 29 deaths and 42 injured. And since 2022 firearms have been the number one cause of death in children ages 1-19. More than car crashes. More than cancer. And yet the elected leadership of this country lacks the will to act to reduce this scourge of gun violence, and we do not hold them accountable for it.

Did God foreordain or "allow" these things to happen? Of course not. In every case, human beings made the choice to buy a gun, pull a trigger, often multiple times, and attempt to take a life.

The stories from Exodus, and our Gospel, show a God who is deeply invested in God's relationship with God's people. A God deeply involved in human flourishing. A God who is affected when we choose to worship our own wills, when we set ourselves in the place of God, thinking we should have the power of life and death over other persons. A God who knew that those around the Israelites who worshipped human-made idols usually appeased those idols with acts of cruelty, even human sacrifice.

Trying to imitate those around them, the Israelites had made for themselves a golden calf, made by their own hands from their own golden jewelry and plate. They then claimed that that calf was God-- a God they could reduce into a small statue, a God they thought they could contain. A God who could be ignored most of the time while they did what they wanted. They worshipped a God of their own making. And that is always the danger, then or now. For far too many in this country, guns are a golden calf, and they are worshipped above human life.

No human-made system, no tool, no possession should be placed over our love and obedience to God, to the debt of forgiveness and mercy we owe God. Placed side-by-side, these two readings remind us to place our relationship with God first in our lives, and to make our relationships with each other centered around restoring the lost and the vulnerable to their place within our community, and being willing to sacrifice ourselves to do that.

God can change God's mind, and God calls us to change our hearts, especially our inaction in the face of violence, dehumanization, and exploitation of others.

Being a disciple means getting our priorities, and our hearts and wills, aligned with those of God: "thy kingdom come, thy will be done," we will pray soon. Love of God, and obedience to God's will for us to truly love each other, are to take priority over self-centeredness and estrangement. We are never to substitute the works of our hands or the systems we've devised as objects of worship in place of God, not economic theories, not money, not power, not tools or weapons, not tribalism, not our own delusions of grandeur and invincibility nor our fears and insecurities over the love and lordship of God in our lives.

Our gospel poses an important question for all of us: what is the value of a person, a single living, breathing human soul? What should we be willing to risk or to spend or regulate to prevent the loss of innocent life, or to reclaim those who have turned away from God's command that we love each other and instead worship one of the many modern idols like guns, or political power, or wealth, or prejudice, or contempt for creation? How can we truly take these questions seriously, and how might it affect our views on violence, on justice, on respecting the dignity and worth of every person?

Our gospel indeed insists that God does not, in fact, will anyone to be lost, anyone to be forsaken, and God will exert every effort into calling us back when we have turned aside and wandered off, or worshipped other things. Instead God is portrayed as a shepherd who leaves the 99 behind to go find the one who is lost. God is also portrayed as a woman who searches unceasingly for a single lost coin.

And so the emotional arc of today's readings shifts from rejection by the Israelites, anger by God, pleading by Moses, grumbling by the critics of Jesus, to God and the heavens rejoicing. Rejoicing, because Jesus, the Son of God, exemplifies the life of faith as one that reaches out to the lost, standing up for the vulnerable and oppressed, even to the point of self-sacrifice. That is the path of a disciple and believer in the peace he preached and the path he called us to follow.

Our communities, and our nation, are in crisis. We are in crisis because we have rejected the love that is at the center of human flourishing. We were made for God, and we were made for each other. The love and interdependence that sustains us, and all creation, requires us to melt down the golden calves that we've built, and instead recover our own humanity and will to stand together. Let us pray for that revival within ourselves. Pray, yes, for the strength to ACT-- then act to live our faith boldly and for the blessing and well-being of us all, friend or foe, saint or sinner, in the name of love, and in the name of our Savior.

Amen.

Readings:

Exodus 32:7-14
Psalm 51:1-11
1 Timothy 1:12-17
Luke 15:1-10

Preached at the 505 on September 13 and the 10:30 Eucharist on September 14, 2025 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville.

Likes and Loves: Sermon for Trinity Sunday, year A, 2023

A pilot and a priest have died and are waiting in line outside the gates of Heaven for entry. When they reach the front of the line, St. Peter beckons the pilot forth.

"Who are you, so I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?" he asks.

"I am Steven Armstrong of Houston, Texas." St. Peter consults his list.

"Ah, Captain Armstrong! You were an airline pilot for Southwest Airlines for 32 years. Take these silk robes and this staff of gold; you may enter the Kingdom."

St. Peter then beckons the next person in line forth—the priest. He repeats the same question again: "Who are you, so I may know whether or not to admit you to the Kingdom of Heaven?"

The priest straightens out. "I am the Reverend Denise Ford of Stanford, Connecticut," she replies. "Episcopal priest for the past 32 years."

"Reverend Ford," St. Peter says as he flips through his list. "Pastor of the Trinity Church for the last 12 years, honest, supportive, kind, diligent in study and always willing to help. Ah, yes. Take these wool robes and this wooden staff and enter the Kingdom," St. Peter says. The priest shrugs and accepts them before entering.

Later, she finds St. Peter out fishing by a crystalline stream. "Sir, I'm just curious, but the man who stood in front of me outside the gates of Heaven was just a pilot, but he got silk robes and a gold staff. I preached and spoke the word of the Lord for most of my life, but I received these wool robes and this wooden staff. What gives?”

St. Peter turns to the priest. "Well, Mother, up here, we go by results. While you preached and gave your sermons, people slept.

"While he flew, and especially during landings, people prayed and called out to Jesus unceasingly."


Welcome to Trinity Sunday. It’s a day so dreaded for preaching that the Rev. Shug and I flipped a coin and I lost. I am hoping that I will neither bore you, put you to sleep, nor make you scream in terror over the next few minutes. It’s a pretty low bar, you might think. But Trinity Sunday is a day dedicated to a concept that is so famously difficult to preach about that seminarians are warned that no matter what they do, they might either bore their audience, put them to sleep, or commit heresy. All choices one normally would like to avoid.

So why do it? Even better, why have to do it every single year????

This is a question I also ask myself every year.

We start with understanding that the basic definition of the Trinity is that there are three “persons” within, but one God, and all three persons as equal.

But just putting it into words, which are finite in meaning on their surface means there are many ways we end up limiting God when we try to talk about God. For instance, I made a distinct choice there not to use the pronoun “him” just there, because God is beyond gender. God has no need for gender. Our *language* does, though, but if we constantly default to speaking of God as male, or female, we prioritize certain expectations about how God operates over others.

Some people claim that the Trinity doesn't even show up in the Hebrew scriptures. Untrue. But sometimes subtle. For instance, where was the Trinity in our creation story? You might discern it right there where God referred to "us" making God in "our" image. Some claim that the story in Genesis about three visitors who came to Abraham under the oaks of Mamre were actually the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. That's the basis for the painting on the cover of our bulletin at this service, by the way. When Jesus is baptized, the Son goes down into the water, the Father's voice rings out, and the Holy Spirit descends on Jesus like a dove.

But even artists struggle with to depict the Trinity. They often show the Holy Spirit as fire, or a dove. When I was younger I saw a medieval painting that showed one figure with three faces overlapping-- there were four eyes because the faces overlapped and three noses anti was truly the stuff of nightmares. Thank God a pope declared that one a heresy itself. Yuck.

Last night I used two different artistic representations in the bulletin for the 505. The first one depicted God as three male figures. The Holy Spirit was shown as a young African man in the foreground. The Son was depicted as an 8-year-old Middle-eastern boy. And the Father was depicted as an elderly Australian Aboriginal man. It’s a beautiful painting by a Welsh artist who deliberately depicts Biblical images as diverse races.

Then elsewhere in the bulletin I used an icon by Kelly Lattimore that updates the famous 14th century Russian icon of the Trinity as three angels sitting around a table that is on the cover of our bulletin today. Many people today love the original icon because it is actually ambiguous as to whether the characters are male or female—as it should be but is pretty much impossible to do, especially in art. Mr. Lattimore goes one step further and, like the painting I just mentioned, has his figures be recognizably from different continents—one is possibly Latin American, one is Asian, and one is African. He also depicts them as more obviously feminine.

As time has gone on, I have become persuaded that those of us in Lectionary-based churches are challenged each year on the Sunday after Pentecost to address the Trinity because it keeps us humble. It reminds us of the limitations of our ability to express great mysteries, whether in words or image or music. It reminds us that God is a great mystery—the greatest mystery of all—and yet also a mystery that at various times reveals Godself to us in our times of greatest need and greatest wonders and joys.

Language, for instance, contains notions of gender. In French and Spanish and German, nouns can be male, female, or neuter. English makes the neutral option kind of “less-than” and privileges a binary way of thinking about gender--one that is frankly not helpful to reflect the realist of gender expression in all of life. And that limitation has fueled the culture wars over people’s personal pronouns right now. Even though no one is aiming their pronouns, or living their lives, for God’s sake, *at” anyone else.

Especially as we enter Pride Month, that understanding right there might go a long way to cooling down the hatred we have been seeing lately directed at our LGBTQ kindred.

What I find fascinating is that people who resist giving people the dignity of being the final arbiter of who they are also espouse a Christianity that does not see God as Trinity—as three persons but one God, and all three persons as equal. They often privilege Jesus, since he was born a human male, or God, since God was often referred to as “Father.” The Holy Spirit is often waaaaaay too squishy to deal with for these folks, usually. I mean, hey, even artists usually depict the Holy Spirit as a bird or as fire rather than in a figural way. Language-wise, however, the words used 99% of the time for the Holy Spirit in both Greek and Hebrew are female. The words for “breath” and “spirit” are female in those original Biblical languages. So then, we are called to consider that the Trinity, mystery that it is, is also a powerful reminder to us that God is NOT gendered, either.

Further, by extension, we are being shown that God’s image is fully present in ALL people-- regardless of what gender—or no gender-- they claim. Thinking about the Trinity as containing a variety of genders or none at all also has deep implications for how we understand human beings. So NOW we might be getting an idea of why this yearly discussion might be useful, after all, for the world in which we live.

And so, we are stuck with using analogies to describe God. Even “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit”—or, if you are old school “Holy Ghost—are imperfect analogies. So we use that formula, but also perhaps consider others, acknowledging all are imperfect. Alternatives include:

There’s “Abba, Christ, Paraclete,” for the Greek-minded.
Source, Word, and Spirit.
Earth-maker, Pain-bearer, Life-Giver, from the New Zealand Prayer Book.
Wisdom of God, Love of God, Grace of God, from a common blessing.
Majesty, Word, Spirit.
Creator, Redeemer, Sanctifier
The Lover, the Beloved, and Love Overflowing (from St. Augustine)

We struggle as we use a variety of ways to talk about what God is “like.” That’s fine—except analogical thinking is in short supply nowadays. It’s not being encouraged in our schools or in a public sphere. Too many people believe that things have to be black or white, up or down, right or wrong. And it’s okay to think that way—if you are a child. As we get older, though, most of us begin to observe that life doesn’t come at us in two options, just like ice cream doesn’t come in just two flavors. As long as we remember that whatever we think God is “like”—whether that’s a three leaf clover or a raindrop or three heavenly beings seated around a table, that God is still MORE yet, besides. God is like…. And off we go, metaphors and similes coming fast and furious. And yet God is so much more besides.

As I mentioned last week, we returned the Creed to our liturgy last week, after the Great Fifty Day Feast of Easter ended. This was a deliberate choice. The Creed came about to try to describe the Trinity, and how it worked, so it’s good to hear it again with new ears. I hope you do. Because if you DO hear it anew, and actually examine what is in the Creed. You will notice that there are a BUNCH of analogies in it to try to describe the three Persons of the Trinity and yet maintain their full equality: "God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten not made, one in being..." Think of that again: to recognize the differences among each person of the Trinity, and yet to honor them as equal. Perhaps practicing this with God would help us practice this with each other.

Wouldn’t that be great?

To recognize that despite all the diversity of the way God touches our lives, that ultimately that diversity is still all part of ONE God. That diversity in unity is a strength. A blessing. A gift for living our own lives with each other.

Just as the Trinity is intimately bound up in each other to ultimately be One, so were we created by God. As we begin Pride month, Trinity Sunday calls us to remember that love is the most powerful force in the universe, and we should always stand for MORE love, not less. Or consider that the Rev. Shug and I are wearing our orange stoles to symbolize our hope to work to end gun violence. If we truly took seriously our invitation into the Trinity’s divine dance of love as children of God, would this madness even be possible?

Sure, some might scoff. Not everybody will do it. But how would it change the world if those of us here and those all around who profess to follow Christ would take the power of that Trinitarian love and mutual support seriously?

What would that be like? Isn’t it worth it to try?

St. Patrick was a missionary to the Irish, and we will hear part of one of his poems to the Trinity in one of our songs today. One of the ways he is depicted in icons is holding a shamrock, which he used to try to explain the Holy Trinity to the Celts in Ireland (which is also a heresy if you stop there, but hey, you have to start somewhere….) He was so good at this that the Celts place the idea of the Trinity at the center of their spirituality. And so perhaps we can learn something from them.

In Celtic Christianity, the concept of the Trinity reminds us that the heart of God is about relationship. It’s not about like—it’s about love. It’s about friendship. It’s about community. It’s about those three persons in the Trinity bound together in love, dancing around each other, taking turns stepping forward or stepping back so that different aspects are revealed about God as is right or necessary. That the heart of God is love, and that we, as God’s children, are drawn into that love. That, if we are made in God’s image, just as the three persons in the Trinity depend upon each other and rely upon each, so too we are called to give up our ridiculous notions of isolation and stubborn pride and realize and even celebrate how much we are made for each other. To love each other. To affirm each other. To see our differences as strengths, not as something that separates us, or worse, calls us to attack each other. 

The Trinity models for us what it is like to love and understand each other at the deepest level. As the great proponent of Celtic spirituality John O’Donohue wrote about the love at the center of the Trinity, and our relationship with that One God:

In this love, you are understood as you are without mask or pretension. The superficial and functional lies and half-truths of social acquaintance fall away, you can be as you really are. Love allows understanding to dawn, and understanding is precious. Where you are understood, you are at home. Understanding nourishes belonging. When you really feel understood, you feel free to release yourself into the trust and shelter of the other person’s soul. This recognition is described in a beautiful line from Pablo Neruda: “You are like nobody since I love you.” This art of love discloses the special and sacred identity of the other person. Love is the only light that can truly read the secret signature of the other person’s individuality and soul. Love alone is literate in the world of origin; it can decipher identity and destiny.

…The Christian concept of God as Trinity is the most sublime articulation of otherness and intimacy, an eternal interflow of friendship. This perspective discloses the beautiful fulfillment of our immortal longing in the words of Jesus, who said, Behold, I call you friends. Jesus, as the son of God, is the first Other in the universe; he is the prism of all difference. He is the secret [soul friend] of every individual. In friendship with him, we enter the tender beauty and affection of the Trinity. In the embrace of this eternal friendship, we dare to be free. (4)

Remembering that we are all beloved of God, all marvelously and wonderfully made by God, made for love in all its true, generous expressions, may we give thanks for being invited into the beautiful mystery of the Trinity, who invites us into the dance of life, or creation, and of celebrating difference and diversity.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 on Saturday June 3 and the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist on June 4 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Genesis 1:1-2:4a

Psalm 8

2 Corinthians 13:11-13

Matthew 28:16-20

Citations:

1) Holy Trinity icon by Andrei Rublev, ca 1425. 

2) "Christ with Three Faces" image of the Trinity by the Netherlandish school ca 1500. 

3) Kelly Lattimore's icon of the Holy Trinity (used by permission-- all rights reserved). 

4) St. Patrick icon with a shamrock.

5) John O'Donohue, Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom, pp. 14-15, kindle version.

Loving the Neighbor: Speaking to the Soul for July 7, 2022

Luke 10:25-37

But wanting to justify himself, the lawyer asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?"

He thought he was being clever, that lawyer. He wanted the teacher to explain to him the limitations of his obligation to others. So then Jesus told a story, as he was wont to do.

He chose his characters to shock, but not directly provoke—if he had wanted to do that, he would have made the two righteous passersby a judge and a lawyer. But Jesus wasn’t just speaking to the lawyer—he was speaking before a rapt crowd, and he had a point to make about the obligations that bind any community together. However, it was still shocking—the idea that a Samaritan, an outsider, one whose heritage and religion were impure in the eyes of good Jews—could also be “good” and do the compassionate and righteous thing.

We hear this story today and we don’t hear that tension in what was then the oxymoronic term of “Good Samaritan.” “Samaritan” in our understanding has become shorthand for a “do-gooder,” the same way we now misunderstand “prodigal” when we speak of the Prodigal Son. We also forget the risk that Samaritan was taking in caring for someone who, if conscious, might have treated him with contempt, merely because of a 700-year-old-feud.

The poet e.e. cummings captures the emotion from the perspective of the Samaritan in his wonderful poem “a man who had fallen among thieves,” which updates the story into modern times. He imagines a dozen “staunch and leal” citizens scurrying away from the man laying by the roadside, appalled by the gore of the scene—and their unvoiced contempt for the victim. But the narrator is moved to pity, despite himself, and acts to carry the man to safety:

Brushing from whom the stiffened puke
i put him all into my arms
and staggered banged with terror through
a million billion trillion stars.


As we hear the parable of the Good Samaritan today, though, we can look around and see the work of those who understand the universality of the definition of “neighbor” that Jesus is demanding of us. We see it every time bystanders leap into action against these episodes of gun violence that are more common than muggings on the road to Jericho. We unfortunately saw it on Monday, when “neighbors” identified and took care of the toddler left screaming in the streets of Highland Park, Illinois, a child orphaned in an instant when his parents died in yet another mass shooting. We see it in those who tried to shield others or help them get to safety as shots rang out to terrorize an entire community and an entire nation yet again—and on a day in which we celebrate our mutual connection as one nation, one community. Those who help each other in these times of extreme crisis don’t pause and think about the calculus of whether those who need aid are worthy or not, or members of our own community. They see a desperate need, they acknowledge their mutual obligation to confront suffering, and they respond, regardless.

Due to our uniquely American obsession with guns and violence, the question at the heart of Jesus’s 2,000-year-old parable is posed to each of us, daily, tragically. One can even wonder if the failure to ask ourselves the same question, and our failure to view each other through the lenses of mercy and compassion, lies at the heart of what makes these horrific events so commonplace. We speak so easily of rights, but shy away from mutuality or concepts of obligation that lie at the heart of community. The gospel is centered on this challenge to us.

Jesus makes it clear. Who is my neighbor?

Everyone.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on July 7, 2022.

Prayer 3407: For Courage and Determination Against Violence, III

O Eternal Wisdom,
that fashions all creation in love,
we bow before You
in gratitude and praise,
in trust and faithfulness.
Your Spirit has breathes life into each living thing;
even the trees and rocks declare your glory.

You have called us to be a priestly people,
to minister to the world
in the redeeming reconciling Name of Christ.
You have called us to judge ourselves by your law of love,
and to repent of our failures
of the times we have ruptured relationship
with You and each other.

We confess our wrongs
by our actions and by our inactions,
by our words and by our silences
by our betrayal of your call to us
through claims of weakness
or helplessness before violence and evil.
.
Help us to turn our feet into pathways of peace and justice,
to commit ourselves to testifying to your power
working in us through faith,
taking our share in your kingdom
through our love and determination to embody Christ.

Grant us courage and strength
to work as your disciples in the world:
to heal the breaches within our society,
to unite in love in the face of the forces of division and prejudice
and shine with the light of your truth.

Grant the favor of your blessing
upon all who call upon You, O God,
and rest your hand of comfort and healing
upon those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Prayer 3406: For Courage and Determination Against Violence, II

O God, your embrace has brought us safely to this new day;
may we rest ourselves within your mercy and love.

Forgive us, Lord, our headstrong and selfish ways
that lead to violence, exploitation, and cruelty.
Give us the wisdom and will
to lead ourselves into righteousness and peace,
as You have called us repeatedly
through the lips of prophets,
even at last
by sending your only Son,
whom we put on a cross,
himself a victim of our violence and fear.

Yet love is stronger than death,
and hope is stronger than fear,
and still we rise,
seeking to turn again and live by your will.

Awaken our hearts to receive your light
that we may instead dwell in hope, charity, and wisdom.

Give us the courage
to stand up to the forces of fear and hatred,
who profit from the bitter harvest they reap.

Comfort the mourning, O Holy God,
and, as our shepherd, gather the lost in your arms.
O God, our cry is to You and each other;
Send your healing Spirit over us, and all those for whom we pray.

Amen.

June 1, 2022: Four are killed in the Natalie building at St. Francis hospital in Tulsa, where a gunman aggrieved by his lingering back pain opened fire and killed his surgeon, another doctor, a patient, and a receptionist. He bought his AR-15 on the way to the shooting. It was the 233rd mass shooting of the year, coming a mere week after 19 children and two teachers were gunned down at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas.

Looking Within: Sermon for the Feast of the Ascension C (7th Sunday after Easter, tr.)

This week, I don’t know about you, but I have been thinking a lot about good-byes.

I have thought about this being Memorial Day, the day we give thanks for and honor those who have laid down their lives in defense of this country in our armed services, our Coast Guard, and our Merchant Marine; those who have been willing to give up their lives to protect others, which is particularly poignant this week. I've thought about their departures from their families to defend our country and other countries, and for their families' farewells to them after giving their lives for others.

I have thought about the feeling you get as you are getting ready to be parted from a loved one—maybe for a few days or weeks, or maybe longer. It’s the time of year for it, isn’t it? It’s graduation season-- a time when we acknowledge achievements but also the huge changes those accomplishments place upon our horizons, with some of our graduates getting ready to move to college or into careers that may take them far from us.

In our house, there have been lots of changes, just like in many of yours. Our son is getting ready to start his career next week, and he is getting ready to go back to Kansas to get ready for that today. Our middle daughter moved to Florida this spring for a new job. Our eldest changed jobs but thankfully is still here living in town.

It’s a time of vacations and journeys—as I have been enjoying my friend Maria’s travels of the Camino de Santiago in Portugal and Spain for these last several weeks, and thinking about how sometimes the journey IS the education rather than just a means of getting TO an education. I have been getting ready for my second summer at Sewanee for the month of June, and so getting ready to keep things running smoothly around here and so thankful for everyone who is helping me to do that.

I have been thinking about the way that these transitions and departures change us. Watching friends I love move to different places, and hoping that our friendships will still endure across distances and the lack of daily presence, hoping that we will still be able to maintain the depth of connection when the whir and demands of life might make it easy to move our friendship more to the periphery, regardless of all the ways technology can keep us connected. Even when friends leave after a visit, the bittersweet feeling of parting.

Our relationships shape us, for good or for ill, and even the difficult relationships have much to teach us, and with God’s help, offer us a chance to practice grace—this much I have learned in my years on this Earth.

Our relationships change and grow throughout the time we have them. Some are fleeting. Some endure, like our relationships with friends and spouses and parents and siblings and cousins. There are great songs about this tender subject, like the Finn Brothers’ “Disembodied Voices,” where they remember talking to each other up and down the hall from their separate bedrooms at night as boys, or the song “Won’t Give In,” where lead singer-songwriter Neil Finn imagines a best man speech in which he talks about the promises we make to those we love to hold fast to “the people we call our own.” 

In her song, “Only a Dream,” the beautifully gifted singer-songwriter Mary-Chapin Carpenter remembered growing up with her elder sister and how she protected and comforted her even during their parents’ unhappy marriage, assuring her in the night that the things that scared her were “only a dream.” In the final verse, she remembers the day her sister left for college:

The day you left home you got an early start
I watched your car back out in the dark
I opened the door to your room down the hall
I turned on the light
And all that I saw
Was a bed and a desk and couple of tacks
No sign of someone who expects to be back
It must have been one hell of a suitcase you packed.

Twirl me about, twirl me around
Let me grow dizzy and fall to the ground
And when I look up at you looking down
Say it was only a dream.(1)

How often have we too stood staring sadly after the beloved ones as they drove around a corner, taillights and turn signal a final blaze goodbye; or watched their suitcase disappear around the corner of the jetway (before we had to say our goodbyes at the security gate); or settled the teen into the dorm room and almost started a fight just to make the leaving easier?

We accept that children from the moment of birth will continue to draw away and recede from us—even eventually recognize the good in that, remembering our own declaration of independence from parental hovering years ago.

I think about that as I hear these stories today about Jesus’s ascension. I think about how traumatized the apostles must have been over the whirl of the past forty days—they had watched their teacher be arrested, crucified, and buried—only to have him return to them after three days, resurrected. Of how they must have rejoiced at having their beloved friend back. But now here he is leaving again—and yet assuring them he will always be with them.

Is it any wonder they stand, gazing up at the sky, afraid to break the connection and tear their eyes and hearts away when all that means is that now, they truly do not know the way forward through their loss? We’ve all done the same. Change is hard, especially changes to the relationships that define us and protect us.

Biblical scholars believe that the same person who wrote the Gospel we call Luke also wrote the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. So it is interesting that today, as we celebrate Jesus’s Ascension, we have as our gospel the closing verses of Luke and the opening verses of Acts—and that they both recount the same event. Luke’s gospel closes with Jesus opening the apostles’ minds to the meaning and fulfillment of the scriptures, his final blessing upon them, and, in the midst of that blessing, his ascension to heaven.

We then hear Acts begin with the same event—but with some different details. The one that jumps out at me is the two angels appearing after Jesus has ascended. They bring the apostles back to earth, so to speak, with a forthright question: “Why are you standing around, staring up at heaven?”

Jesus promises the apostles the power of the Holy Spirit, and then he ascends into heaven, and that’s often where we get distracted. Right there with the apostles, we tend to focus on the image of Jesus flying up into heaven rather than think about what that leave-taking means.

It’s a scene that has been depicted in art thousands of times over the centuries, in icons, and paintings, and reliefs and stained-glass windows. One of the weirdest ways to depict the scene shows only Christ’s feet dangling at the top edge of the scene, as if he were doing an Olympic high dive in the wrong direction.

But even the angels who suddenly appear at that moment remind us that focusing on looking upward is pointless, a hindrance to getting about the holy charge that Christ has placed upon us of witnessing to his truth in the world. It’s an awesome responsibility and an honor. It's a sign of how very much Jesus loves us that’s every bit as breathtaking as his laying down his life for us on the cross. Jesus loves us so much that, by the power of the Holy Spirit, he commissions each and every one of his followers to be his ministers and to be his Body, to carry on his holy work of redemption, reconciliation, and healing into the world: to carry him and bear his image within ourselves for the sake of the world. And if we want to be worthy of bearing his name, we have to take up that holy responsibility with steadfastness and hope, with action rather than mere words.

It’s so easy, I know, to look to heaven to solve all of our problems. We will especially hear about people talking about “thoughts and prayers” this week as people of conscience are rocked with grief at another horrific school shooting, this time in Uvalde, Texas, and nineteen precious small children and two teachers murdered with weapons of war in neighborhood school--a place that is supposed to be a sanctuary and place of growth. I have wept as I thought about the goodbyes, the final chance to be with each other, that all those families have experienced—and all the thousands of families who likewise have been parted from their loved ones by the scourge of gun violence, and by our pretended helplessness to do anything about it except claim to look up to heaven and offer “thoughts and prayers.”

And I’ll be honest with you: I wore this orange gun violence stole last week, after the Tops Supermarket shooting in Buffalo and the shooting in Orange County at the Taiwanese church. And here I am again, but this time wearing it for 19 precious children and two teachers who put their bodies on the line, all massacred, and the husband of one of the teachers dead mere hours later from a literal broken heart. Twenty-two dead victims and their dozens of classmates wounded either physically or psychologically, and their families, and their town. I would give ANYTHING to not have to wear this stole and to have to preach about this. But the gospel demands it. The Christian life is one of engagement with the world in Jesus's name.

Memorial outside Robb Elementary in Uvalde Texas from The Guardian (UK).

Because we’ve been here too many times, watching these terrible losses with hearts breaking and demands for change that fade once the going gets tough and sacrifices are called for. Every single time, we hear people with a financial and partisan interest in the status quo murmur about praying to heaven, and then shrug off any responsibility or any intention to actually work for the common good to help prevent these horrors from being so easy and so common and so horrifying. It’s easy to claim free will when it suits us, but when times like these call for sacrifices for the common good, we can’t simply turn our eyes to heaven and shrug and claim such things are out of our hands. It’s easy—and it’s wrong.

That’s why I hope you think about what the ascension of Jesus means for you and me—whether you literally believe in it or not. I mean, it sound fantastic—Jesus being bodily carried into heaven, when there’s so much here on earth that still needs to be fixed! So we join with the apostles in our grief and cry, “How could he leave us? There’s so much here that still needs to be healed! Why doesn’t God do something?” And Jesus asks us, “There’s so much that needs to be healed! Why don’t they do something?”

The fact is, we are all in the same situation, those apostles 2000 years ago and us, right now. We can realize that Jesus’s ascension places the responsibility for witnessing to the resurrected life Jesus offers to us squarely on OUR shoulders. The responsibility to act is now OURS.

The story told in Acts is meant to build up our courage so that we may joyfully take up the mission he loves us enough to entrust to us: to take up our call not as observers but as disciples; to actively proclaim Jesus’s gospel of love and reconciliation in the world.

It’s about hearing that question directed at us: “Why are you standing there, looking up at heaven?”

This is a question posed in love and in encouragement. With Jesus’s ascension, WE are Christ’s Body in the world. It is up to us to literally embody Jesus’s gospel in our lives, our attitudes, our words, and our actions.

Being a Christian is NOT a spectator sport. Being a Christian calls us to not only transform OUR own lives, but to make visible to the world the possibility of its transformation and restoration. Being a Christian is a social and political act in the very best sense of those words. Politics isn’t a dirty word—it simply means our commitment to the body politic and its well-being. The foundation of politics, just like the foundation of the gospel, is not mere personal advantage but the common good—the same common good Jesus calls us to when he reminds us that the greatest commandment is to love God, and to love each other as much as we love ourselves, NO EXCEPTIONS. Politics is the heart of our lives together in groups big or small-- the commitment and the love we are called to practice and offer to each other and act of hope, bravery, and enduring willingness to see the potential and the beauty within this Earth and within every inhabitant of it. The gospel absolutely is political-- intended for our flourishing as one community of the children of God. It should NEVER be partisan.

As we grow in our relationship with God, we are empowered and loved by God to take up our own ministry in the world. To remember that we are now the face, hands, and healing heart of Jesus out in the world—to remember and to look within ourselves, where Jesus has been all along, and find the courage to tear our eyes away from heaven, to give thanks for the love and grace that God continually shows us, and take up our call to witness to the love that reaches out to the world, this hurting, wounded, beautiful world, through our own discipleship and gratitude for all that God has done for us, in times of joy as well as sorrow, in times of meeting as well as times of parting.

The Ascension of Jesus reminds us: it’s time to look within rather than toward heaven. Look within, and locate the beating heart of God placed inside of us at our birth—given to us not just for ourselves, but for those around us, friend, family, or stranger. And then act, for the good and protection and flourishing of those around us. Why do you stand looking up into heaven? Look within, instead. That’s where Jesus is—all along.

Amen.


Preached at the 505 on Saturday and the 8 and 10:30 am services on Sunday, May 28-29, 2022, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.


Readings:
Acts 1-11
Luke 24:44-53

Citations:

1) Mary Chapin Carpenter, "Only a Dream," from the album Come On, Come On, 1992.

Turning in the Wildeness: Sermon for Advent 2C

The gospel reading for this Sunday begins with a list of VIPs—men of power and influence. Movers and shakers. Men whose every word could command fear, subservience, and obedience.

Yet we go astray if we let our attention get drawn to the limelight. We would make a mistake if we allowed our gaze to turn toward the representatives of the Establishment, the powerful. Instead, as we prepare for the Incarnation, we remember that it takes place in obscurity. And, in order to get there, we have to pull our attention from the glittering thrones of power to the wilderness—and tune our ears to a voice coming from that wilderness.

The word for wilderness translated from the Greek here is “Eremos”—eremoß (er’-ay-mos) was used 10 times in Luke’s gospel. It has the connotation of a place of desolation. It has been variously translated into English as “wilds,” “wilderness,” “deserted place,” “desolate place,” and “open pasture.” The broadness of its meaning is indicated by its definition in a Greek-English lexicon as describing places which are solitary, lonely, desolate, uninhabited. It also describes a flock abandoned by a shepherd as in 15:9 when used in the metaphor of the 99 sheep. Interestingly, it is also used when describing a woman neglected by her husband from whom the husband withholds himself.

The very first Christians tended to be urban dwellers—yet for those who came from Judaism, the wilderness bore strong memories from the Torah and the histories of their people. At the surface, the wilderness was a place of chaos, disorder, fear, tempting, deprivation. It’s a place where a person by themselves faces serious danger of starvation, or accident, or exposure to the elements.

The wilderness is not a place we modern folk normally choose for ourselves if we see it as a place of barrenness. As in almost everything in life, it all comes down to perspective. That stripping away of every extra extravagance can also be clarifying. Preparation is key, of course, and respect for the power of the land must be acknowledged. Focus only on yourself, and the wilderness is overwhelming. Focus on how you are interconnected with the unspoiled landscape that stretches before you, and the wilderness can be a place of insight, spiritual renewal, and physical renewal.

Wilderness also has a positive side. It is a place that one enters by cutting off one’s past in an attempt to make a fresh start, and one is utterly vulnerable. But vulnerability, which is the power of hope encouraging us to try, leaves you open for good things—new vocations, new relationships, new perspectives.

The wilderness is a place for solitude, which is usually positive; but it also a place of abandonment and loneliness. It is place that clarifies your thoughts and purifies your soul; but also it is a place that can overwhelm you with its dangers if you treat it callously or with disregard. It is a place where one is immediately and blatantly reminded of the providential care of God—which is necessary because it is a place where resources are slim to nonexistent otherwise. It is therefore a place that encourages trust in God and the deepening of relationship with the holy, the sacred, the sublime.

For those who encountered John and later Jesus, the wilderness also was God’s favored place from which to show God’s care and concern. It’s where God made a covenant with Abraham, where Jacob wrestled with God and became Israel, where manna fell from heaven and humans ate the bread of angels. The wilderness is a place where the people of Israel were formed as a people during their exodus from Egypt. It is a place of crying out—but also, it is a place of hope.

And we need that voice of hope. As we continue in year two of this pandemic, we certainly have been thrust into a wilderness experience of our own—a wilderness where we have been tested and tried, a wilderness where we have been challenged to finds an inner strength and resilience. Where we have been challenged to see through the particularly western sin that the only thing that matters is our own personal freedom. Instead, perhaps the voice of God crying out in this wilderness is a reminder that we are bound up together, and that we cannot spurn concern for those around us.

The events of this week draw our special attention to another way in which we have been thrust into a wilderness. I stand before you today wearing this orange stole created for Bishops United Against Gun Violence because we had been plunged yet again into a continuing national nightmare. 

Yet another school shooting in Michigan took the lives of four young people, wounded many others, either physically or spiritually, and this one seems particularly egregious in the way that, like in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012, weapons whose main purpose is for killing human beings were knowingly provided to a young man who should never have been considered safe to have them, whose tendency toward violent thoughts and role-playing was already noted. Yet this young person not only received no intervention by his parents but was possibly enabled in his narcisstic, nihilistic belief that the only authority he answered to, even as a troubled adolescent, was himself.

The tragedy of the modern insistence on individualism is that it is a false idol, an idol of death and meaninglessness. Ultimately, it diminishes us and makes us feel vulnerable. It weakens, threatens, lashes out, and destroys. It makes everyone else around us a competitor for scarce resources, an enemy who is trying to deprive us of something if we don’t get there first. This viral pandemic continues because of the refusal of too many to look beyond the tiny circle of themselves and consider the impact of their actions upon others. The pandemic of gun violence continues for exactly the same reasons.

This wilderness of violence and nihilism is one of our own making. Can we hear the voice of one crying out a word from God from this wilderness? Can we hear it, acknowledge our need for turning around and choosing a different path? That is, after all, the meaning of repentance.

The words of Isaiah remind us that the wilderness, for all its barrenness, for all of its wild beasts, for all of its lack of comforts, is also a place where the horizons stretch on forever, after the mountains are levelled and the valleys are lifted. And once we experience that change of perspective, the view becomes so broad that “all flesh” can see God’s salvation.

God’s declaration comes out of the wilderness via John because that is where Israel was formed as a people and where the covenant with God was made and remade, again and again, through God’s steadfast grace and lovingkindness. Thus John’s proclamation is for repentance—a literal turning around to return to God.

The wilderness is a place for repentance, and we all like to think we have no need of that. But what if the path of repentance is also the path of liberation for all of us—liberation from the dangers that very much threaten each of us right now in our modern wildernesses?

Perhaps this pandemic—both the viral one and the one of gun violence-- is the voice of God crying out in the wilderness that the way of selfishness, the way of clutching our possessions to us rather than embracing those around us, the way of contempt for each other is the crooked path. Perhaps the voice of God crying out in the wilderness right now is a call for us to return to the value of community and compassion, to seek justice for those around us because ultimately that increases the security and contentment of all.

Perhaps the voice of God calling to us out of this continued pandemic of virus and violence is a reminder that we were not meant to be separate and exposed, but we are instead actually a part of something larger than ourselves. A reminder than the Jesus John prepares the way for commands us repeatedly not to grab everything we can for ourselves but to love one another.

Because the good news is that repentance is possible because God is faithful in ways we struggle to be. God’s love is enduring far beyond our own fickle attachments. God calls us to draw our attention from ourselves to each other and all creation as a precious gift to remind us that we are not only never alone but beloved and precious, even as we struggle, stumble and go astray. For it is only when we cast aside our delusions that we don’t depend on each other can we see the image of God in each other.

There is a voice calling to us in this wilderness—and it’s a voice that is calling us back from the brink into being brave enough and strong enough to become a people of faith and hope. To become a people the world desperately needs right now.

Hear the voice crying out in the wilderness, calling US to discipleship and witness against the forces of fear and death; calling US to make straight the Lord’s pathways— straight into our hearts, if we open them in faith. May we hear that voice, and turn to God in trust. And then begin to walk the straight path of liberation. Freedom is waiting to be born.

Amen.

Preached at the 505 and at the 10:30 Eucharist, online and in person, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

Readings:

•  Malachi 3:1-4
• Philippians 1:3-11
• Luke 3:1-6
• Canticle 4 or 16

A Resurrected Creation: Sermon for Proper 28C: The 23rd Sunday after Pentecost

I stand before you today wearing a stole I was hoping I wouldn’t have to wear today. This orange stole was created to support Bishops Against Gun Violence, and I wear it today in mourning for the victims of yet another school shooting in Santa Clarita, California. I wear it in response to the murder of a mother and three of her four children in San Diego at the hands of her estranged husband -and a gun. 

I wear it in memory of all the “children born for calamity” that our passage from Isaiah brought to mind. As I was studying our scriptures in preparation for this sermon, that phrase hung heavy on my heart. 

It’s a problem all over the world—it’s true. On one of her latest albums, singer-songwriter Dar Williams wrote a song called “I Am the One Who Will Remember Everything,” which tells the story of a very young refugee boy who faces the constant possibility of being pressed into service as a child soldier, an illustration of a “child born for calamity” as Isaiah speaks about. Imagining herself in a refugee camp, she imagines seeing a little boy by himself: 

“Oh what have we here, he must be three or four, 
Shaken out of a boot on its way back to war 
And he’s not looking for a father or a mother, 
Just a seven-year-old brother, 
On this smudged line border camp of refugees, 
I am the one who will remember everything. 
I am the one who will remember everything. 

So where are we now, he must be five or six, 
Just running around, hungry kids, sharpened sticks. 
And he will grow with pain and fear and jealousy, 
Taken in by schools of zealotry, 
Who train orphans to make orphans evermore.
I am the one who will remember everything.” 

I was remembering this song, and hearing Dar sing it, and I was haunted by the knowledge of yet another school shooting-- the 30th school shooting this school year alone in America. Thirty. Then came the news of the massacre of that family in San Diego. It is this kind of thing that we long to see swept away in the new Jerusalem that Isaiah predicts where “never more will children be borne for calamity,” according to Isaiah’s sweeping vision of resurrection and renewal of all creation. 

In a world oriented to justice and peace, such as that described here at the end of Isaiah, these kinds of tragedies are unimaginable. In the new creation awaiting birth in our reading, such cruelty and abandonment of the innocent to the grist-mill of slaughter and abandonment would be unimaginable. We struggle under the weight of so many griefs, so many tragedies. And even worse than the tragedies themselves is the knowledge of so many of us refusing to attempt change, of too much shrugging of the shoulders and too many declarations of “That’s just the way the world is.” 

Isaiah 65 calls us to remembrance of our responsibility for the brokenness of the world—either through our selfish choices or through our easy acceptance of pain and suffering. Isaiah calls us to repentance—and then also to hope and resilience. 

The promise in Isaiah that God is setting creation aright should sound familiar—we hear it repeatedly throughout the latter part of the Book of Isaiah. The promise of creation, of the kingdom of God, is finally going to be fulfilled. This will be a time of peace, justice, and plenty. Jerusalem will be God’s city; in other words, the new Eden. The memories of war, violence, pain, and death will be wiped completely away. The laborers will enjoy the fruits of their labor, and blessings and mercy will be freely given to the people who inhabit on God’s holy mountain.

As we begin to close out the liturgical year, and approach the Feast of Christ the King next weekend, therefore, what could be better than to hear again these words from Easter Sunday, helping us to reframe our expectations of resurrection away from what happens to us after we die to what could happen to us right now if only we worked to bring the kingdom of God near? 

I am convinced, beloveds, that it’s important to hear Isaiah’s words about what the kingdom of God looks like—and to be willing to open our hearts and our hopes to the idea that maybe we could try to bring the kingdom of God into being. Maybe? Let’s face it—trying it our way for the last 100,000 years has not worked so well. Perhaps we could actually try God’s way.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Our gospel talks about wars, and cruelties, and destruction. And although those words were written for a very specific context that Luke’s readers were themselves experiencing at that very moment, we only have to open our eyes to see much of the same going on in our world today. A world that humans have shaped, and for which humans must take responsibility. A world where too many proclaim almost gleefully that the church, that body called to bring the kingdom of God into being, is dying. A world where many seem even to be entertaining the idea that God, or God’s absence, is somehow responsible for that suffering and that dying, which is completely backwards.

It’s also exactly the same line of thinking that the people in Isaiah’s time entertained. The start of Isaiah 65 begins begins with a frank account of how far astray the people have wandered from remembering where their priorities and loyalties should lie. Like a betrayed loved one, God speaks in 65:1-3: 
 “I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask, 
    to be found by those who did not seek me. 
I said, ‘Here I am, Here I am,’ 
    to a nation that did not call on my name. 
I held out my hands all day long 
   to a rebellious people, 
who walk in a way that is not good, 
   following their own devices; 
a people who provoke me 
   to my face continually…”

The mixture of frustration, heartbreak, and righteous anger in the face of rejection come through easily in these words. We get it exactly backward if we ignore the scriptural testimony that insists that every time we feel God’s absence, that we feel God’s abandonment, it is not through God’s actual leaving of us, but based on our wandering from God. 

That’s starkly stated at the beginning of Isaiah that sets the stage for our reading. The people were afraid that their religion was dying. And that’s similar to today’s situation too, I am convinced. That’s why I think I also get frustrated when I hear repeated, defeated proclamations—sometimes by leaders of the church!-- about “the dying of the church.” 

If the church is dying, we are called to see that the mission field lies before us, and that endless possibilities lie just outside our door to carry the gospel out into the hurting world! 

Hearken to this: We live a faith that proclaims death is NEVER the end! Rather than defeat, we are called to see the hope of resurrection! 

In Isaiah, God isn’t speaking about the end of religion so much as denouncing the end of faithlessness, and there’s an important difference in that. Yet after God lists the specific crimes of God’s people, nonetheless, God knows that there are some, few perhaps, who remain faithful, and for that faithful remnant God will continue faithful. It is then that this beautiful poem bursts forth about a new creation that is ongoing even as God’s listing of human faithlessness hangs over the scene. 

This capacity to forgive, forgive, forgive, to see beyond the worst things humans have ever done to the ongoing possibility of our redemption and repentance is one of the things that reminds us who are honest that were God is God, and we are not. Where humans carry grudges and vendettas and nurture injuries of long ago to our bosom as if they were some kind of boon companion, God always seeks us, always leaves open the door to repentance, reformation, and redemption. 

God makes it clear that what has brought this calamity of conquest and exile upon the people is their own faithlessness—their lack of care and concern for each other, certainly, but especially their lack of care for the oppressed and marginalized among the people. Worse, beyond the fact that they have abandoned principles of social justice, they have made a mockery of their religious practices—claiming to be faithful and holier than thou, but engaging in unclean practices and idolatry. 

 The word of warning from the prophet to the people regarding idolatry hits frighteningly close to home for us, too, in this time and time place, as we hear of yet another school shooting, another group of children killed, injured or traumatized upon the altar of gun worship, we cannot fail to understand that these words against idolatry speak to us right now, in a dozen different ways. 

Yet, all is not lost. To those who remain faithful, who see the scars and wounds being inflicted in society, God offers a word of comfort, consolation, and hope- even more of regeneration and resurrection- that word that is at the center of our faith as Christians. 

It is at this point that we see the beautiful vision of Isaiah 65:17-25. The Edenic vision laid before us in this joyful promise of ongoing creation and recreation, new life and resurrection is striking: long life, health, absence of strife, and utter contentment with abundant food and peace for all, and once again the kind of intimacy with God that is the subject of longing since the fall of humanity. Indeed, in this new Eden, the serpent is prevented from being able to do his dastardly work from the get-go, as it is already marginalized rather than given the freedom to live without the mark of its duplicitous ways already stamped upon it—in verse 25, it alone has dust as its food. 

This time, we won’t have the serpent to point the finger at, in other words. This time, God makes it clear that the first cause of bringing our common life together is our own commitment to justice, mercy, and real peace, which is always founded on equity and action, not merely the “lack of war.” Underlying all of this beautiful vision is the idea that we have a responsibility in bringing about this world. We hear the promise that infants will live to ripe old age—and are reminded that we are called by God as faithful people to love all children as much as we love our own as part of making that dream a reality. 

In other words, this new creation is dependent upon the transformation of our relationships, both with each other and with God. This resurrection is dependent upon our decision to put the love we are called to embody into action, in decisive and insistent ways. We are called to be a people of hope, a people who dream dreams, as we were reminded a couple of weeks ago—but also a people who act to make those dreams reality. Resurrection of creation does not happen unless we take what we profess on Saturday or Sunday and take it on the offensive—an offensive of love, mind you, but an offensive nonetheless-- throughout the week. 

There are three particular emphases in the description of a transformed heaven and earth in this reading: 1) rejoicing, both by the people and by God; 2) life itself is transformed so that all can flourish without one life being sacrificed for another; and 3)relationships themselves being transformed by virtue of the new life and community that will be formed as a result of God’s creating, energizing act. Indeed here, our relationship with God will be so transformed that “Before they call I will answer; while they are yet speaking I will hear.” 

The middle of our reading mentions that no more will one person enjoy the fruits of another person’s heritage. Leviticus 25 talks about the “Jubilee Year,” a year of rest and restoration that would occur every 49 years, kind of sabbath year of sabbath years. In that year, all bondservants would be freed, the land would be allowed to lie fallow and rest itself in its own sabbath, and any land that had been sold away from its owners would be restored so that no one would be deprived of their patrimony. 

Three major shifts will take place: God will take joy in this new work; justice, contentment, and peace will take the place of weeping, vulnerability, and injustice; and relationships and the order of nature will be transformed so that none must suffer or be deprived so that another may prosper. If we all understood that we are members of one community—the kingdom of God—we might not just be satisfied with a human calculus that divides our fellow human beings and children of God into circles of ”them” and “us”—which is unfortunately another way to say “losers” and “winners.” 

God is eternal. Love is eternal. How will we act in light of this knowledge? 

 Perhaps such a vision is exactly what we need, as more and more people talk about the “dying of the church,” as if that somehow lets all of us off the hook for living faithfully in this context. The joyful images of renewal Isaiah describes do not come without cost, without first a recession of faith and a loss of faithfulness. Isaiah 65 starts with a Dickensian admission that it really was the worst of times, and the best of times seems to be inconceivable. The first verses of that chapter detail a people who have lost their way in the darkness of their own willfulness. 

Yet after describing the waywardness of the people, Isaiah bursts forth with a vision of restoration so glorious that much of it is later recapitulated in the beautiful poem found in the twenty-first chapter of the Book of Revelation. It is no coincidence that Isaiah 65 is a reading that we also hear on Easter Sunday in the lectionary. The language is immediate and filled with NOW: God proclaims “I AM creating… I am about to create!” Those who believe that God is dead—open your eyes and see what CAN be! 

It becomes as simple as this: are we a resurrection-shaped people, or not? Is it possible for us to drop our thin veneer of cynicism to take seriously the idea that resurrection is at the very center of our faith? Isaiah 65 calls us to reclaim our faith with not just boldness but with joy. Real joy. Real hope. Real energy. 

Beloveds, the world is feverishly a-thirst for the message we bear as Christians who proclaim the God who we encounter: a God who calls us to love, who calls us to proclaim a jubilee of redemption against the machinery of hopelessness that only serves the cause of the oppressor, who calls us to walk in integrity and unity in the face of division and fear. A God who calls us into partnership in this new heaven and new earth, who strengthens us to see that what can be has been here all along. We only need the faith and the will to never, ever give up. It's time to start working toward that resurrected creation. 

Amen.


Preached at the 505 on November 16 and at 8:00 and 10:30 am on November 17, 2019 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.


Readings:
Isaiah 65:17-25Canticle 9 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13Luke 21:5-19

Notes:
"I Am the One Who Will Remember Everything," from In the Time of Gods, by Dar Williams, 2012.