God With Us-- Sermon for the Eve of Christ's Nativity, December 24, 2023

Once, we knew we lived, and walked, with God.

In the beginning God placed us in a beautiful garden(1)—an orderly place, where everything had a name, and everything had a purpose, and everything, even the humans, had been placed there in this beautiful garden by God. We knew we lived with God because every day God would come and walk in the cool of the evening with us. (2) 

We’d stroll along, companionably, and talk about our day together. God would ask us what we had done: “Today we found a new plant over in the verge over there, and we were drawn to it by its amazing fragrance. Few flowers smelled anything like this plant, God, so we named it fuschia.” And our days were filled with wonder, and everything we saw and tasted and touched was a miracle. And God was very pleased. 

When we asked God what God had done that day, God would talk about very important matters, something like midwifing a new solar system in another galaxy,(3) or watching puffins play, or teaching chimpanzees how to use a stick to dig termites out of their mounds so they could eat them as a tasty treat. And always making sure to be home in time for our shared evening walk.

But our restless selves were not satisfied, and so we chose to move away from God and God’s loving companionship. We chafed to be independent. We chafed to make our own rules.(4) That garden and that companionship was tossed aside. (5) 

But God has been chasing after us ever since.

And when we are very honest with ourselves, we have felt something missing deep inside us.

We built monuments to ourselves in Babel, in Nineveh, in Athens, in Mesopotamia, pretending we didn’t need God. God kept visiting our ancestors all along the way, and maybe we’d walk beside God for a while, but always, always, we would decide we could choose our paths better, find an easier way. God even rescued us from slavery in Pharaoh’s courts, parting the waters of the sea like they’d been cracked open like an eggshell, but even then we complained and carped.(6) 

Out in the wilderness, where everything was as un-gardenlike as possible, where hunger and thirst and rattlesnakes dogged our every step, we grudgingly agreed to not only follow God’s cloud in the day and fire in the night and eat the food of angels and the fried chicken God rained down on the ground.(7) 

And in return, in order to keep us happy and safe, we agreed to follow God’s 10 Simple Rules—all of which boiled down to one word really: Love. Love of God and love of each other.(8)

We’d promise—and it would last for a little while. But then, like the trickster raven, we’d get distracted by something bright and shiny, or we’d want to be like the other scrabbling clans around us, or we’d decide we didn’t need a God so incredibly close to us, and we’d push God away and wander off again to do our own thing. Over and over.(9)

When we did turn to God, all God asked was to love us and have us love God and love each other and have some faith. All God asked for was for us to honor God’s presence in the midst of us—not for us a God who needed mountains like the Greeks or Ziggurats like the Babylonians or Teocalli like the Aztecs. All God wanted was to live in the midst of us, and for us to love God and each other. Really.

But we wanted control. We kept trying to put God in a box. David tried to build God a house of cedar, and his son Solomon actually achieved it. God said, "No, no, I’m happy living among you all, a tent is fine, really!"(10) But we wanted our God to be just as awe-inpiring as the neighbors’ gods. 

Each generation made that house bigger and bigger and bigger, and added porches and courtyards and antechambers dripping in gold and gemstones and ivory, all obscuring the fact that they thought they were further confining God out of their everyday lives. Soon, talking to God was reserved for only special days for a select few, and the rest of the time they could go about their business without even thinking about God shut behind those imposing walls and turrets.

But God would not be shut in a box. Not then. Not ever. God would not only be willing to be brought out like the fine china on special occasions or like a lucky rabbit’s foot when things got tough. Because here was the secret: even when we shut our eyes, even when we pushed God away, God was still there. Not forcing us, but waiting for us to see and trust in God.

See, God is always with us, loving us—even when we turn our heads, or our hearts, and insist on our own way—even when our own way is out there with the rattlesnakes and the desert wastes of our fearful hearts even when our own way looks more like a hell of our making. God comes to show us that love is justice and mercy in action—and calls us to embody that with joy and faith. So simple, yet so difficult.

And so it went on. God calling to us, setting before us God’s beautiful vision for which God had made us—and us resisting, mistaking selfishness for security and wealth and power for well-being. Which never worked, much as we wouldn’t admit it.

Finally, God decided that prophets and saints and sages and mystics and even angels just weren’t enough to get us to remember those days when we knew God was always with us.

God with us…..

That gave God an idea.

God, who is the literal embodiment of love and community, decided to actually become one of us. And not as some fire-bolt throwing, six-pack flaunting, bearded Titan; not as some pampered princeling with a fine pedigree and a fancy mansion. Oh no. God had had enough of boxes, even fancy ones. God wanted to show us that God is always loving and present to us—even in the least significant places.

God came to be one of us—and one of the least of us, because God had been trying to tell us all along that money, fame, political power, military might, and oppressing others in the name of our comfort were no way to fill the aching empty spaces in our hearts.

God came to us as the most helpless creature in the world—a human infant, born to a teenaged mother in an occupied territory under the thumb of one of the greatest empires the world has ever know. God came as a little child, to show us the qualities that really matter by embodying them:

Compassion for the lost and aching.
Healing for the hurting.
Wisdom and teaching.
Food for the hungry, given freely.
Empathy for the wayward.
Freedom for the oppressed.
Community and equality for all.
Self-sacrifice and virtue for everyone’s mutual benefit. Especially the forgotten.

A little child, wrapped in rags, lying in a manger—a feeding trough. He and his family looking, like all of us, for a home. Born TO us, born FOR us, living and teaching and loving among us.

Tonight, tonight, if we are very quiet, we can hear—if we are very still and intent—the slight rasp of angel wings as they flutter overhead just as they did to those ragged shepherds all those years ago, and we hear that promise, as much a promise as a plea:

Do not be afraid.
To you, and me, and to all of us is born this day a savior.
He will be called Emmanuel—God With Us.
He will be a Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace.

He will come to live among us, to walk alongside us, in every moment of our lives, no matter how much we try to shove him back in a box and only bring him out on Sundays.

No, our Savior is looking for a home. May we open the doors of our hearts, and spirits, and invite him in, that he may guide us in learning how to live a life of purpose, of joy and connection and life eternal, grounded in love. Jesus didn’t come to reward us for when we die. Jesus came to show us how to live. And it starts by remembering how to walk alongside him, allowing him to show us the way of virtue and love, every day of our lives.

Joy to the world! Jesus Christ is born this night. All he asks is that we live among him, and allow him to a home inside our hearts, that we may walk beside him. Tonight, and every night. God with us. Emmanuel.

Preached at the 8:00 pm Christmas Eve Choral Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Readings:

Isaiah 9:2-7

Psalm 96

Titus 2:11-14

Luke 2:1-14(15-20)

Citations:

(1) Genesis 2:8-19

(2) Genesis 3:8 a

(3) Job 9:7-10 

(4) Genesis 2:15-17; Genesis 3:1-5

(5) Genesis 2:24-25

(6) Genesis 11:4; Genesis 10:6-12; Jonah 3:1-3; 

(7) Exodus 13:3-10; Exodus 16:2-16

(8) Exodus 20:1-17; Matthew 22:36-40

(9) 1 Kings 12:26-30; Judges 2:11-13; 1 Kings 11:33-34; 2 Kings 23:8-14

(10) 2 Samuel 7:1-11

The Wisdom of Love: Sermon for Proper 9A

I am pretty certain that, if you don’t remember hearing them and studying them before, the readings we just heard may have you a bit mystified. Our gospel itself is puzzling—except maybe for the last bit which at least offers some hope. But if you look closer, our readings today are about two things: the wisdom of God, and the love of God. Scratch that—it’s all actually one thing. God’s wisdom IS God’s love- love which ignores human expectations or limits.

Today’s passage from the prophet Zechariah might ring a bell. It predicts that the Messiah will enter Zion, or Jerusalem, riding on a donkey’s colt—and if you think back to Palm Sunday, that is exactly what Jesus did as he triumphantly entered the city to the waving of palm branches and shouts of “Hosanna!” Anyone hearing that in Zachariah’s time would have considered a leader doing such a thing to be incredibly foolish—it’s like someone trying to race in a Formula 1 event while driving a minivan. Great leaders should ride impressive animals—not donkeys.

This detail, though, has an important purpose: the reign of this Messiah will not be based on military strength, one where “might makes right.” Instead, his humility reveals God’s wisdom and values: that prisoners will be set free, and that hopes will be fulfilled rather than lying empty and unfulfilled. This God does not seek dominion but restoration—not overawing people with might, but working to relieve burdens and enabling a culture of shared plenty, of gratitude and rejoicing.

Then there’s the reading from the Song of Solomon, a passage known as “Springtime Rhapsody” a beautiful collection of very frank love poems that most of us hardly ever remember is even IN the Bible. And here’s why it gets skipped over when it comes time for Bible study or preaching: it’s kinda steamy. It’s like Danielle Steele was suddenly invited to turn in a couple of chapters to Holy Writ. Strangely, God is not mentioned anywhere within its verses—instead, we get a conversation between two lovers. This is also unusual because it gives the woman her own voice, and she admits her passion for her beloved—in fact, in a world in which women were often silent, she is the one telling the story. Hers are the opening words in chapter one, imagining the kiss of her sweetheart.

According to our puritanical forebears, this passage isn’t about desire and human passion in all its enthusiasm, bodies bursting to discover each other. Nope. According to our 16th and 17thcentury friends, this passage is about “the Church’s love for Christ” and “Christ’s love for His Church,” with Christ as the bridegroom. This understanding is based upon the idea that the covenant between God and God’s people is similar to the covenant of marriage.

I’m not sure about that. First of all, marriage was much more often NOT about love throughout most of human history than it was about the security of property and inheritance. But there is a second and more obvious problem here: that of faithfulness and passion on the part of the Church.

While I am certain that this passage could be interpreted as Christ’s never-ending, deep, passionate love for the Church, too often the Church seems to fail to return the favor, if you know what I mean. Fallible, distractible, self-deluding, foolish, frightened, wounded humans that we are, too often we are concerned about our own wants, needs, power-madness, and concern about authority to truly love Christ to the depth that we should-- especially if one takes this passage as a guide. But we can do better. We just have to remember that real love puts the Beloved Other ahead of its own selfish satisfaction, and takes delight and finds completion and true bliss in that self-giving love.

Our failure to love stems from a conflict within ourselves- between our worldly concerns versus our spiritual aspirations. What if we were to unite these understanding rather than untie them? For we fail to love each other for the same reason we fail to love God—because we get afraid, because we lose faith in our ability to give of ourselves. Yet the Song of Songs holds out the hope that love CAN be mutual and deep and intimate. Our love for each other can be deep and lasting. Our love for God can fill us completely, and our longing for intimacy is one we need to set free in our relationship with God.

Our failure to love stems from a conflict within ourselves- between our worldly concerns versus our spiritual aspirations. This leads us to our passage in Romans, which then meshes well with our gospel. Paul talks frankly about knowing what he SHOULD do, which is to act lovingly in the world, but being unable to follow through due to his weakness to sin, which leads him to act selfishly.

Paul almost sounds like a member of a twelve-step group here, admitting his powerlessness over his addiction to sin. And that may be a really good analogy to make to describe the power that sin can wield in our lives, especially when we lull ourselves into taking our eyes off the horizon of love that we have to work toward in our lives as children of God. Real love, and true holiness, do not come naturally. Yet there is hope. Paul cries out: “Who will rescue me?” and immediately, he gives the answer: God, through the Incarnate One, our Savior Jesus Christ. He then continues to point out that our intellectual assent to be disciples is often at war with our own weaknesses.

What all our readings are seeking to do is remind us that what is considered wise or clever in the eyes of the world is usually the exact opposite of what God’s wisdom is.

Our gospel passage takes this up especially at the end. And what is absolutely vital is that here. Jesus is speaking, literally, as the Wisdom of God, personified. And there’s an interesting tie to the Song of Solomon here: in the Hebrew scripture, Wisdom was personified as female—possibly because wisdom gets rejected as an authority as much as women did, then, and now.

Jesus is actually paraphrasing a passage from the Book of Ecclesiaticus, known as a wisdom work that appears in some Bibles.

It was allegedly composed about 200-175 BC by a scribe named Ben Sira in Jerusalem, which means Jesus could have known of it. Speaking as Wisdom, a traditionally female character in scripture, we hear Jesus tracing much the same argument as the author of Ecclesiasticus:

51:23 Draw near to me, you who are untaught, and lodge in my school.
51:24 Why do you say you are lacking in these things, and why are your souls very thirsty?
51:25 I opened my mouth and said, Get these things for yourselves without money.
51:26 Put your neck under the yoke, and let your souls receive instruction; it is to be found close by.
51:27 See with your eyes that I have labored little and found myself much rest.

The wisdom that Jesus seeks to give us makes the need for asuffocating load of regulations pointless—those same regulations Jesus’s opponents loved to enforce on others as the self-righteously religious. Jesus’ load is in fact quite light compared with the heavy burdens the scribes and Pharisees place upon others: “They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them.”

The wisdom of God does not seek to punish but to enlighten. In place of oppression, it offers love and cooperation. And I believe this speaks of a need in our time as much as in the time of Jesus. Just like now, self-identified “religious folk” were especially good at pointing the finger at others and justifying themselves. They would use the 613 commandments in Torah to denigrate and oppress others, laying burdens upon their backs, while overlooking the parts of the Law that would require themselves to be burdened or to sacrifice what they wanted to do.

And boy, does that resonate for today. How many people do you know who justify lying, cheating, violence, misogyny, or turning a blind eye to the suffering or poverty of others in the name of their own comfort—yet who will scream about how “sinners” who act or love differently than they do deserve being cast out, oppressed, dehumanized, and punished? As if being in a marginalized group isn’t hard enough? And they justify it more often than not in the name of “religion.”

Yet Jesus, speaking as Wisdom herself in our gospel verses, identifies with the oppressed and marginalized. Jesus, speaking as the Wisdom of God, invites all to come unto him, especially those who are weary and feeling burdened by the numerous strictures of the religious leaders.

How is Jesus’s yoke “easy?” First, a yoke is meant to be shared—it works by two creatures sharing the burden and pulling side by side. And rather than lay burdens about hundreds of laws on our backs, Jesus offers to get into the yoke alongside us and help us bear the burdens of being a disciple—a burden that is already lighter because it is based on love, not fear. Christ’s yoke is easy because he takes away the yoke of the Law by making us wise in love and generosity.

That is certainly an easier burden in comparison to the way the religious leaders were apply the law to those around them.

Yet the most important thing to remember is that Jesus refers to a yoke, and not just a harness. And a yoke is meant to be shared. Christ’s yoke is the yoke of Love. And sharing burdens with each other—in the name of love—is all we need, as the Beatles sang. All those great songs of our youth insist the same thing: “Lean On Me,” by Bill Withers. “He Ain’t Heavy—He’s My Brother” by the Hollies. “Climb on a Back That’s Strong,” by Shawn Colvin. “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” by Simon and Garfunkle.

What matters is our care and empathy for each other. As we live in Christian community, we are yoked to Jesus and to each other, and we all pull together. We share each others’ burdens. We literally “pull for each other.” As Jane Siberry wrote in her song “The Life is the Red Wagon:”

The life is the red wagon rolling along
The life is the red wagon simple and strong
…oh, it's no big deal
But when the feet are dragging
you pull for me, and I pull for you,
you pull for me, and I pull for you…

Have you ever experienced the grace of someone pulling for you when you feel that you just can’t go on? Have you ever received a random act of kindness? That’s living life under the Wisdom of God.

We have a lot in common with the cultural landscape of Jesus’s time. Believe it or not. Just think: we have those who seek to divide and conquer, and they are not unashamed of using religion to further their schemes, and to oppress and denigrate marginalized groups by pulling little bits of scripture from here and there to justify their hatefulness and sense of superiority.

We see legal systems being used to oppress people—to take away their ability to be redeemed for injury, to allow a small minority to try to impose their wills on others because they have the ability to buy their way into the system.

Jesus would be the first one to object to this scheme. If your faith causes you to hate and judge and hurt others, you are doing it wrong. As Jesus points out, those “others” were exactly the people he hung out with, ate with, and taught among. Even more than that, those are the ones to whom he encouraged to take up his yoke. So that he could pull alongside them and help carry their burdens. Not condemn them.

Throughout the gospels, Jesus consistently points out that the wisdom of God, and the way it orders our lives, turns worldly wisdom upside down. He is very clear to go even further: the “wisdom” of the world is very often absolutely contrary to the wisdom and ways of God, as he himself exemplifies. Jesus, as the Wisdom of God personified, lives and acts in very specific ways to show US how to live and act.

The way of wisdom, the way of welcome into God’s household, is also the way of mercy, grace, and above all, love. It’s the wisdom that is embodied in our baptismal covenant. This is the wisdom of welcome, beloveds, that we are called to commit to as disciples. Wisdom that doesn’t seek advantage or calculation, but, always and everywhere, serving each other in purity, gentleness, and love.

We worship a God whose wisdom is often seen as foolishness in the eyes of that very same world. A God who tells us to love people the world sees as broken, and love them fully.

May we all be so wise.

Preached at the 505 afternoon service on July 7, and the 10:30 am service of Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO, on July 8, 2023.

Readings:

Zechariah 9:9-12
Song of Solomon 2:8-13
Romans 7:15-25a
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

The Marks We Need to See: Sermon for Easter 2A

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.”

Our gospel writer known as John has a plethora of stories, and can’t be bothered to tell them to us there are so many, but THIS is the story the lectionary writers choose EVERY SINGLE Year for the 2nd Sunday in Easter?

And this one has more questions in it than answers, which of course is not surprising, but still. I am wondering if, like me, you may have heard this reading 50 times, but you have some questions.

For instance: where did Jesus go between Easter morning when Mary Magdalene thinks he is the gardener, and Easter evening, when he proves to the disciples that when he says “I am the door,” he means “No door can hold me out?”

And why was Thomas not there in the room? We’ve heard him speak only two other times in John’s telling of the gospel of Jesus. The first was in chapter 11, when Jesus decides to go to resurrect Lazarus, just two miles from Jerusalem, where the leaders there are trying to find any opportunity to kill Jesus, and Thomas moans morosely to the other disciples, “Let us also go, so that we may die with him.”

The second time is during Jesus’s Farewell Discourse, at the beginning of chapter 14, when Jesus urges his friends not to let their hearts be troubled even though he has just told Peter that he will deny even knowing Jesus three times that very night. As he announces he is leaving, he tells them they know the way to where he is going. Only Thomas is brave enough to pipe up: “No, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?” And Jesus then makes another of him vital “I am” statements, playing off the name for God. Jesus responds, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life.”

Remembering the first time Thomas is recorded as speaking sheds some light on why perhaps the disciples are hiding behind locked doors with all the rumors rattling around Jerusalem that Jesus may be dead or he may be alive despite what everybody saw with their own eyes. The disciples can’t bring themselves to leave, and yet they know that staying puts them at risk of joining Jesus on a cross or some other method of execution, perhaps death by stoning, which was the punishment for blasphemy at that time—the very death that the first martyr among the disciples, Stephen, will undergo for testifying about Jesus.

So to the first question. I imagine that Jesus, after letting Mary Magdalene know who he is, goes straight to his mother.

I personally, as a mother, hope that one of the stories omitted was Jesus returning to see his mother, calling her “Imma,” which means “Mama” rather than “Attha” which means “woman,” as we heard from the cross in John’s gospel. I believe this because I believe Jesus loved his mother, despite what some of the gospel writer depict. Read the Magnificat, and you know where Jesus got the courage to overturn those tables in the Temple. Consider a 14- or 15-year old girl embedded in a culture that made her a pawn having the audacity to consider and say yes to God despite what it could potentially cost her, and you see where Jesus gets the courage and resolution and passion for his earthly ministry.

I imagine that this meeting took place also because I also think of one of the last images in popular art of Mary with Jesus: that of the Pieta—whose name means “Pity,” or “Compassion.” After my mom took my brother and myself to Rome when I was seven, one of the things she carried back all through that journey was a smaller, about 8 inch high copy of the Pieta, a sculpture by Michelangelo that we had seen in the Vatican. Michaelangelo depicted the crucified Jesus sprawled across his grieving mother’s lap. 

I think of the Pieta, and I think that Jesus would have gone to his mother and given her a personal chance for that heartbreaking, traumatic image to not be the last image she had of her beloved first born. I think Jesus would have wanted to bring his mother’s broken heart to healing, because healing was the core of who he was. He would have wanted to show her his scars too, as a sign of his ongoing, resurrected life-- rather than leaving her with the image of his death.

I picture the risen Christ appearing before his mother in her house full of mourners just as he appears to these disciples in their locked room. Because if he did, he would hear her call him not “Jesus,” which is the Greek form of his name. No, Mary would breathlessly cry out his true name of “Yeshua,” which means “Salvation” in Aramaic.

Unlike Thomas, Mary would not ask to see the scars on his wrists and ankles and side. She would have been intimately familiar with those wounds as she held the body of her son sprawled across her lap. The marks she would want to see was the light of love in Jesus’s eyes as he embraced his mother. Even as those mourners sitting with her scatter in their confusion, Jesus and his mother embrace.

Then as to my second question of where was Thomas? Since I am not persuaded that Thomas has been treated fairly throughout the centuries with getting the adjective “doubting” permanently conjoined with his name, I imagine that Thomas wasn’t behind those locked doors because he was out on the streets looking for Jesus, as I wrote on Thursday for Episcopal Journal in my poem, “Thomas Speaks:”

What would you have done?
We all had heard Magdalene’s crazy tale,
but even after all the Master’s assurances,
it was fear that seized us.
My brothers and sisters shivering behind locked doors,
while I was out in the streets and the garden
looking for our risen Lord, hoping
to see him kneeling in some thicket,
speaking to God like a child speaks to his mother.
Why they should be more afraid of a missing corpse
than of the horrors of Golgotha I cannot say.
I was out looking for him,
looking, and scattering the resurrection news like seed.

I was the only one looking, hoping,
and yet the only one to not be found by him that night.
And so I missed his murmured “peace,”
his outpouring of Spirit and commission:
“Your forgiveness of sins forgives them;
your holding fast to someone holds them fast.”
But God knows we clung to each other in our grief,
and the whole town was muttering--
you could feel the rising fear lapping
at the foundations of our house.

An octave of days passed,
and this time I heard the melody of his voice
offering us peace once more.
I was like a man parched with thirst
offered sweet, cool spring water.
My mind whirled.
And so I confessed:
“Lord, I cannot be sure that it is you
Unless I myself see the wounds you bear.”
And touching them, I was able
to find my place on the map of the good news.

Our scars are proof of life and proof of God’s love.
The healing power of overcoming those wounds
make us who we truly are:
bearers of the image of Jesus,
the One who does wonders in our lives
by loving us, scars and all.
And with that promised peace,
holding each other fast in mercy and grace,
the world is changed.
And so I believe.


How might the world be changed if we were all out on the streets looking for the resurrected Jesus and proclaiming the good news of Christ to those we meet? What marks does the world need to see from us? What marks proclaim the good news of God’s amazing grace and abundant love, rather than reinforcing the worst impulses human beings have and are called to overcome by God?

You know, those of us in the church business as a profession traditionally refer to today as what is known as a “low Sunday.” That means “low attendance.” “Low Sundays” come after the cataclysmic celebrations of Christmas and Easter in particular. Those two celebrations are known for being times when there are lots of visitors, and lots of people who only attend worship on those two occasions each year. Some people make jokes about this. Some of these jokes are kindly meant, but many of them are not. Some of the jokes about those who come to church only on Christmas Day or Easter Sunday assume a sense of smug superiority over those new faces. And friends, that is certainly not kind, not is it welcoming.

Here's the thing: Easter can be extremely hard for some people. Easter talks about things that are unbelievable, for one. But going deeper, even if most of what you see is goofy Easter bunnies and Honeybaked Ham on a groaning dinner table covered in millions of calories, church is often at the center of Easter. Easter is notoriously one of two times every year when a lot of people who never go to church during the year drag out a pastel colored shirt and some slacks and a sport jacket, or a gauzy dress and if you are a lady from certain parts of the country a jaunty hat, and go to church. Some can’t bring themselves to do even this. A lot of people, in fact.

And for too many of these people, there is a reason why feeling that pull to cross the threshhold of a church is painful. The Big C, institutional Church, fallible and made up of fallible human beings as it is, has hurt them. It has told them that Christianity is about judging others and demanding sacrifices of their essential natures that those same judgmental ones would never even consider in their own lives. It’s a Christianity that looks for scapegoats while completely missing the irony that Jesus himself served exactly as that in the politics between the common people and the power of empire.

It’s a Christianity that decides that the people different than you are different than you due to sin, and that they need repentance. And then the next step is that it is a “Christianity” that tries to justify hating or marginalizing already marginalized people into repentance and thinking that that ever works, like we see in a plethora of bills in states across the country that target the poor, or minorities, or immigrants, or our LGBTQ kindred.

And all this is done in the name of the same Jesus we see today inviting people to see his wounds as signs of his realness. Or there are people who have been shamed for questioning, for doubting, like that’s a bad thing—just like poor old Thomas there, who gets that damning “Doubting” adjective permanently glued in front of his name forever, even though what he experiences is SO common and relatable, unlike all the apostles except for Judas.

Going back to church for those who have been hurt and marginalized by this kind of Christianity is more like returning to the scene of a crime than getting your spiritual batteries recharged. And those of us who identify ourselves as actively Christian thus are presented with our first chance to ourselves take part in the salvation of Jesus which bring healing and reconciliation. And we don’t even have to do it by glomming onto every stranger that walks through our doors, especially at Easter.

The good news of the time in which we live is that the world is our mission field, much like it was for those early disciples. The good news is that we, by our testimony, by just showing up and showing the marks of Jesus’s self-giving love, have it within our power to counter the narrative of exclusion and division and condemnation that passes for Christian belief in too much of the world outside our doors. We can and must be better than that, and do so visibly, embracing the vulnerability of Jesus in showing our marks, our scars, our empathy and common cause with those who are hurting.

The Church calls itself the Body of Christ for a reason. We call ourselves the Body of Christ because we ARE the living representation of who Jesus is to the world. Each and every one of us, and all of us collectively. And I am convinced that the marks the world needs to see are not the marks of a bully in the culture wars, othering people because we can get away with it. No, that is EXACTLY what put Jesus on the cross to begin with, and drives people away from a life of faith because they associate it with a life of exclusion, rejection, and casting people out rather than gathering them within the embrace of the outstretched arms of Jesus. By way of us.

What marks does the world need to see? The marks of love. The marks of compassion, like Mary holding the broken body of her baby boy on her lap. The wounds that tell the world that we are here to heal and reconcile no matter what it costs us, because that is exactly who Jesus was and IS. Present tense.

As I insisted last Sunday, we are an Easter people. We are a people who proclaim resurrection and eternal life in the name of a living God, a living Messiah, a living Holy Spirit. We can do it by showing the marks of Christ to a doubting world—a world that needs those marks now more than ever.

Amen.

Readings:

Acts 2:14a,22-32

Psalm 16

1 Peter 1:3-9

John 20:19-31

This was preached at the 505 on April 15 and the 10:30 Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Citations:

The poem, "Thomas Speaks," was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on April 13, 2023. Copyright Leslie Barnes Scoopmire. All rights reserved.

Amen.

The Story We Missed: Sermon for Easter 2B

Every year we hear this gospel on the 2nd Sunday of Easter. Maybe it’s because, just like the apostles, we have a hard time believing in the stories of the resurrection, even though we shouted “alleluias” with joy just a week ago. Another possible reason for the choice of this gospel every year might be that this pericope spans the night of Easter Sunday itself

and then skips ahead exactly one week later, just as we contemplate this story exactly one week after Easter Sunday.

Our reading today ends with a statement that there were many other signs and wonders that Jesus did, but that THIS story was chosen to aid us in our belief. One wonders at the idea that this story is meant to help us believe. Surely some of those other stories would have been more inspiring, more persuasive.

I personally, as a mother, hope that one of the stories omitted was Jesus returning to see his mother, calling her “Imma,” which means “Mama” rather than “Attha” which means “woman,” as we heard from the cross in John’s gospel. I believe this because I believe Jesus loved and adored his mother, despite what some of the gospel writers depict. 

Jesus is his mother's son. Read the Magnificat, and you know where Jesus got the courage to overturn those tables in the Temple. Consider a 14- or 15-year old girl embedded in a culture that made her a pawn or possession, having the audacity to consider and say yes to God despite what it could potentially cost her, and you see where Jesus gets the courage and resolution and passion for his earthly ministry.

I pray that this meeting took place also because I also think of one of the last images in popular art of Mary with Jesus: that of the Pieta—whose name means “Pity,” or “Compassion.” After my mom took my brother and myself to Rome when I was seven, one of the things she carried back all through that journey was a smaller, about 8 inch high copy of the Pieta, a sculpture by Michelangelo that we had seen in the Vatican. It was made out of marble, too-- and so it was NOT light.

In this statue, Michaelangelo depicted the crucified Jesus sprawled across his grieving mother’s lap. I think of the Pieta, and I think that Jesus would have gone to his mother and given her a personal chance for that image to not be the last image she had of her beloved first born. I think Jesus would have wanted to bring his mother’s broken heart to healing, because healing was the core of who he was and is. He would have wanted to show her his scars too, as a sign of his ongoing life, rather than leaving her with the image of his death.

I picture the risen Christ appearing before his mother in her house full of mourners just as he appears to these disciples in their locked room. Because if he did, he would hear her call him not Jesus which is the Greek form of his name. No, Mary would breathlessly cry out his true name of “Yeshua,” which means “Salvation” in Aramaic.

It is always important for us to remember that everything we read in scripture is not just translation, but it is often a translation of a translation of a translation in the New Testament especially, going backwards from English to Biblical Greek to possibly Hebrew and then Aramaic, the milk-language of Jesus and his followers.

I picture this scene as one of the regrettably omitted stories from John’s gospel because the word “salvation” is another word that has gotten twisted about in our modern religious language just a bit. Too many people hear that word and think that all it means is about what happens after we die, and two divergent tracks then appear, so that “salvation” becomes a kind of fork in the road.

The first track is that people are told salvation is about the afterlife. And they think of all those images of hellfire and brimstone and eternal torture for those condemned, images that even show up on Saturday Night Live--and what is more secular than Saturday Night Live, when you think about it? They think of those images, and even behind the cartoonish quality in popular culture they get scared, and then they turn this whole “following Jesus” thing from a relationship to a transaction, as we Americans are particularly prone to do.

We love transactions for the neatness of them. We especially love to get a “bargain.” And so, soon, salvation becomes a bargain with God, to see what the lowest price to get ourselves some of this “heaven” thing: 

“Do I just have to say I believe in you, God?” 

“Do I just have to get baptized?” 

“How about if I confine you to Sunday and go to church? Is that enough?” 

And we make these bargains in our relationships all the time, hoping to insulate ourselves from paying a cost too high to keep ourselves comfortable and keep our lives with its familiar shapes and concerns—most of which have nothing to do with God, or with how we spend our lives on Earth each and every day, clinging to our old ways and often our old hurt and old scars. And so for Christians, then Jesus becomes a kind of agent, like a real estate agent or insurance agent, who helps us make the deal with God. If we believe in him, he helps us out. Quid pro quo. This for that. Neat.

The other track we get when some of us hear the word “salvation” is for those of us who have a hard time imagining for certain what happens to us after we die, and so we lose interest. This is probably a broader swath of the population than we might think, especially for those of us brought up under some kind of Christian faith that used transactional theology because transactions are the bedrock of too many of our relationships. But there are people who do not spend their time wondering about what happens after we die. That’s off in the future, and they’re just surviving day to day. Or they’re trying to make THIS world a better place, not just for themselves but for everybody, and the concept of “salvation” as it is packaged just doesn’t seem to apply.

But let me suggest that the story we hear today is all about salvation—but salvation as Jesus insistently framed it. Throughout Jesus’s ministry and teaching, salvation isn’t about heaven or hell when we die, but about the way God can and DOES work in our lives. 

Salvation is about trusting in that power as a LIVED reality. It’s about leaning into that power right now, in the present moment and every moment of our lives, to let love heal us, broaden our perspective from the miserly and the afraid to the brave and empowered. 

The salvation that Jesus embodies, from his very name outward, is 

about healing, 

about reconciliation, 

and about awakening the divine spark within each and every one of us.

Salvation begins now, so that we too can carry on Jesus’s ministry of reconciliation as the very best, most joyful way to live our lives and to help heal the broken places in both ourselves and in the world around us.

And so, as our gospel still hasn’t moved us from the evening of Resurrection Day, and as we are just starting out in the early days yet of the Easter season that lasts 50 days, I hope we can think of Jesus tenderly caring for all of those he loves, including with his mother among his disciples. I hope we can proclaim his as seeking to heal the wounds all of us carry so that we can feel empowered to themselves engage in healing, in reconciling, in true salvation which builds bridges rather than divides. To love others enough to ever widen the circle of those who have been saved from emptiness, despair, fear, and hopelessness—all the things those disciples are feeling in that room when Jesus suddenly appears in the midst of them and breathes his peace all over them again. Because THAT is a true salvation.

Because here’s another thing about Easter: Easter can be extremely hard for some people. Easter talks about things that are unbelievable, for one. But going deeper, even if most of what you see is goofy Easter bunnies and debates over whether Peeps are actually “food” or instead sugary Styrofoam, good only for creating diaramas, “church” is often at the center of Easter. Easter is notoriously one of two times every year when a lot of people who never go to church during the year drag out a pastel colored shirt and some slacks and a sport jacket, or a gauzy dress and if you are a lady from certain parts of the country a jaunty hat, and go to church. Some can’t bring themselves to do even this. A lot of people, in fact.

And for too many of these people, there is a reason why feeling that pull to cross the threshhold of a church is painful. The Big C, institutional Church, fallible and made up of fallible human beings as it is, has hurt them. It has told them that Christianity is about judging others and demanding sacrifices of their essential natures that those same judgmental ones would never even consider in their own lives. It’s a Christianity that looks for scapegoats while completely missing the irony that Jesus himself served exactly as that in the politics between the common people and the power of empire.

It’s a false Christianity, that tries to justify hating certain people into repentance-- like that ever works! It's behind a bill brought up in Arkansas recently that sought to give medical professionals who identify as Christian the right to refuse to treat people if they suspect they are LGBTQ—all in the name of the same Jesus we see today inviting people to see his wounds as signs of his realness. Or there are people who have been shamed for questioning, for doubting, like that’s a bad thing—just like poor old Thomas there, who gets that damning “Doubting” adjective permanently glued in front of his name forever, even though what he experiences is SO common and relatable.

Going back to church for those who have been hurt and marginalized by this kind of Christianity is more like returning to the scene of a crime than getting your spiritual batteries recharged. And those of us who identify ourselves as actively Christian thus are presented with our first chance to ourselves take part in the salvation of Jesus which bring healing and reconciliation. And we don’t even have to do it by glomming onto every stranger that walks through our doors, especially at Easter.

We don’t have to do this work by starting at trying to scare people into belief-- and by that I mean a bargain with God so that they can avoid “hell.” We do this by revealing salvation as a life moving toward healing even for those who feel like they have no hope of being loved for who they are. We can start by actually SEEING everyone the same way that Jesus did—as beloved. Beloved as we all are and not excluded due to some checklist created by fearful people. Beloved even as we all are, even as we find our ways out of various wildernesses like addiction, racism, homophobia, taking advantage of others, or misogyny.

Jesus showed his own scars to his believers after resurrection because our scars are the signs that we all bear of what has shaped us, for good or for ill. We are all known by our scars—and with what we do with them. Do we use them as excuses to hurt others and leave scars of our own as we pass by? Or do we see them as signs that we have persevered and have healed? After Jesus shows his scars as a sign that the cross did not have the last word with him, Jesus commissions his followers—including you and me, even those of us who have to cross our fingers behind our backs at a lot of the claims made in the Creed to go out and continue his work.

Yeshua, whose name means Salvation, is here, right now, showing us his scars and commissioning his followers to go out and offer healing and reconciliation to those they encounter by proclaiming God’s power in the lives of everyone. 

As disciples, we are called to spread the good news of healing and restoring hope--not by condemning people for their alleged sinfulness, but by embracing them just as God embraces us through our best times and our worst times. And here is where the layers of human translation have to be peeled back again, because many scholars point out that the earliest text specifically reads, “Of whomever you forgive the sins, they (the sins) are forgiven to them; whomever you hold fast [or embrace], they are held fast.’ We engage in the work of salvation when we hold fast to the people we meet, scars and all, and share God’s love that we have been given with them. That means we don’t do Jesus’s work by telling people they are irretrievably broken and rejected, as too many people hear in the mouths of preachers and spokespersons for the institutional Church.

Salvation is Jesus’s message and ministry, his “good news” that never gets stale. But it is not a transaction for us as individuals, but a transformation for us into a community of faith and generous, loving engagement with all of those around us.

We can with honesty and hope share our scars with those around us too—share our scars, and the healing grace we have received from God in our own specific lives. It begins by sharing the story too many have missed. It begins by unlocking the locked doors we hide behind, and wearing our scars as a sign of our healing, of our solidarity with Jesus in his work of transformation and hope. Known by our scars, proclaiming life beyond them-- that's the missing story so many need.

Amen.

Preached at the 10:30 am online Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in time of pandemic, April 11, 2021.

Readings:

Acts 4:32-35

Psalm 133

1 John 1:1-2:2

John 20:19-31

Attributions:

I am deeply indebted to The Rev. Barbara Brown Taylor for her article, "Easter Preaching and the Lost Language of Salvation," from the Journal for Preachers, Easter 2002, pp. 18-25.

Prayer 2981

O God,
you call us to wakefulness
from our dreams,
and from our resistance to your gospel of love:
help us to see
that the ground we stand upon is heaven itself,
holy and sacred to You,
that you call us to stand tall
on the solid rock of love turned outward.
Help us to see hell
as the place where hope is abandoned,
and to reach out our hands and hearts
to those whose hope is foundering.

We are one people,
made in your image:
You who delights in earthworms and whales,
who whispers the melody of rejoicing
into the hearts of sparrows and robins.
May we recover that wonder and joy
and let that light shine forth from within us,
all thanks to You, O Creator.

One in heart, one in fellowship,
may we share one another's burdens,
and lighten each other's load,
all to the glory of your Name, O Holy One.
Blessed One, draw within the shelter of your compassion
all those who call out in need or anxiety,
and draw within your embrace, Lord Christ,
those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Love Without Limits: Sermon for the Sixth Sunday of Easter, Year B

A couple of weeks ago, a beautiful story made its way around the internet. In April, Pope Francis was visiting with the children of a working-class parish in Rome. The children took turns asking the pope questions. One little boy, probably about 7 or 8, however, lost his nerve when he approached the microphone, and he started to cry. So the pope urged the little boy to come up to him and whisper his question. Pope Francis embraced him and they spoke to each other in whispers, and then the little boy returned to his seat. The Pope then said the little boy, named Emanuele, had given his permission for the Pope to share what was troubling him.

The little boy’s father had recently died, and had been a non-believer. However, even though a non-believer, he had had his four children baptized, and had been a good man and a beloved father. The boy’s tears for his father, which the Pope characterizes as “brave,” proved that Emanuele’s father had been a good person.

“Is my father in heaven?” the little boy worried.

“The one who decides who goes to heaven is God,” the Pope explained. “But what is God’s heart like with a dad like that? What? What do you think?” he asked the crowd of schoolchildren. He paused. “A Father’s heart. God has a dad’s heart. And with a dad who was not a believer, but who baptized his children, and gave his children that courage, do you think God would leave him far from himself? Do you think? Speak up, with courage.”

The crowd murmured, “No!”

“Does God abandon his children?” the Pope continued.

“No!” the crowd responded, stronger this time.

“Does God abandon his children when they are good?”

“No!” came the immediate response.

“There, Emanuele, is your answer,” the Pope said, looking at the little boy now in his seat. “God surely was proud of your father because it is easier as a believer to baptize your children than when you are not a believer. Surely this pleased God very much.”

The pope makes an important point here. We humans are the ones who try to limit and create barriers—and we are really good at doing that, even in the Church. In doing this, we diminish God and try to control God’s grace. This tends dangerously toward the original sin of Adam and Eve—of deciding that we know better than God does.This story has captured the hearts of thousands—especially those who have been told they are outside the circle of salvation because of some reason—whatever it is, it’s based on others’ judgment of sinfulness.

The Episcopal Church is certainly not immune to this kind of exclusionary thinking, either, Three years ago, when we last encountered these readings, national news picked up the story of a controversy over baptism that came out of the Diocese of Central Florida. Two men who were parishioners at the diocesan cathedral there in Orlando adopted a little boy, and of course wanted him to be baptized. However, at the last minute the baptism was postponed when some complained about baptizing the child of two gay men. Eventually, the baby WAS baptized—but the irony of this situation coming up at the same time we hear our lectionary readings decry denying baptism to anyone was not lost on many of us.

The question both the eunuch and Peter ask still obviously has relevance for today. For years, now, many denominations been wrestling with a much shorter version of Peter’s question: Who can deny baptism to those who ask (or in this case, whose parents ask)? How do we know that THIS incident isn’t the Holy Spirit moving among us?

The image the pope used in helping the children imagine God was that of a loving parent—a loving father, in this case, especially since that was what young Emanuele was missing most. In our gospel today, Jesus too, speaks of God as a father, one whose love is unfailing. “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love.”

This is a continuation of last week’s discussion about the vine. The fruit of the vine is love. The least mysterious thing about the mystery of the Trinity as we see it in our readings today is that love binds Father, Son, and Holy Spirit is a sacred dance: God loves Jesus, and Jesus loves God enough to come to us, and the Spirit empowers us through love to participate in the life of God Godself. We are drawn into that dance also through being loved and by loving. We are bound up in love with God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, which allows us to share in God’s will through our obedience to God’s commandments. And, as Jesus reminds us repeatedly through the gospels, the greatest commandment is love.

Thus, Jesus again gives the disciples “his” commandment: That we love each other as Jesus has loved us. Yet this commandment isn’t all that “new:” This wording is very similar to that John 13:34-35, where Jesus says, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

Jesus then explains what this means: that we be willing to lay down our lives for our friends—and that includes Jesus as well as each other. We have been chosen by Jesus, not the other way around, and made the friends of Jesus by his sharing his knowledge of God with us, and then trusting us to use that knowledge to help establish God’s kingdom on earth. Jesus models his love for us in being willing to lay down his life for HIS friends- us. And perhaps “friend” is too mild of a word—in Greek, philos can better be translated as “loved one.” This is awe-inspiring- that each one of us continue to be loved and treasured by our living, risen Savior, who continues to live in each of us and in the Church—especially in our better moments. And when we fail, we are still loved, and strengthened to start again.

Our gospel makes it clear that that God’s victory is not won through might, or force, but through LOVE. And embodying that love that we receive from us is how we bear good fruit as branches of Jesus the True Vine. As Peter and the other disciples experienced in the Book of Acts, God’s Spirit of Love obeys no human limitations. The abundance of this love calls us to a life of courage allow the Spirit of God, the Spirit of Love, to move within our lives and help us break down those barriers to which we cling, barriers that we think will make us feel safe—but often only leave us feeling more alienated and isolated than ever.

Most of us have faced failures to love and to be loved at times in our lives, yet Jesus embodies a love that never fails. God’s love for us abides within us, and seeks to flip the poles of our existence that we can then not just mirror but embody God’s love in the world. And this IS possible, because we are loved and chosen specifically by being made in the image of God. In addition, we have the example and teachings of Jesus to remind us of WHO we really are, and to whom we really belong- not as servants, but as loved ones who, knowing how much we are loved, ourselves are willing to risk much by loving much.

The Spirit of Love still moves where she will, urging us to the knowledge that God shows no partiality. Our Risen Savior breathes the Spirit upon us so that we can bear Christ into the world as true disciples. My UCC friends have a slogan: God is still speaking.

God’s revelation to us did not end 2000 years ago on a cross, or even 400 years later when the Bible was assembled. Revelation of who God is and what love God calls us to continues, even today. One of the problems with the Biblical literalism that often undergirds is based on is that it denies the agency of God through the Holy Spirit in our lives today. And too often that outlook tries to draw bright lines about who is in, and who is out, who is a child of God and who is not, who is worthy of the name of “children of God”—and who is not. It also fossilizes Christ as a figure from the past who lived 2000 years ago but not now. It denies the ongoing power of the Holy Spirit to break through our knowledge to new understanding of who God is and who God calls us to be.

We are an Easter people. We proclaim a living, risen Savior. Either we believe that Jesus lives, and that the Holy Spirit was sent to us to continue to reveal who God is to us, or we deny a whole chunk of the Christian witness, then and certainly now.

Who decides—God, or us? Who are WE to deny baptism to anyone who asks? Who are we to limit God’s action and put fences around grace? Jesus reminds us again in our gospel that our lives are meant to be lived for others and for God, grounded in love. If we spend our lives worrying about whether we ourselves will get to heaven in the next life, we end up with our priorities going the wrong direction. We spend our lives then concerned about ourselves, rather than about others or about God.

Ultimately, it’s not up to us who goes to heaven, as the Pope pointed out. As we have heard repeatedly throughout the witness of scripture, God’s mercy is broader than our mercy. We can’t earn our way into salvation. Rather, salvation is rooted right here, right now. The kingdom of heaven is becoming—right now, right where we are. As disciples, we are called to the joy of working toward that kingdom, toward reconciliation, toward justice and mercy intertwined that leads to true peace. The fruitfulness we produce is a life lived grounded in love, which means directed outward to others. This is the life God has created all of us to live, since we are all children of God—you, me, Emanuele, and Emanuele’s father and even the Pope.

We are known as Christians by our love—by the fruit we produce to build up the kingdom of God, whose foundation in love. As Pope Francis pointed out, the fruit of the father’s life that we had before us in this short episode showed a life grounded in love, especially in love for his children that lives on in his children. That’s why the Pope calls him a good man. His life was fruitful, even if not formally grounded in faith.

Pope Francis reassured Emanuele and all of us that God never gives up on us. The witness of scripture throughout time is that God never gives up on us even though at times we may waver and give up on God. Again and again, we all fall short of doing what we ought to do. We embrace doing things that we shouldn’t that harm our relationship with others-- and with God.

God is not done with us yet, nor is God done revealing who God is in the world. As our psalm reminds us, we are called to sing a NEW song because God IS doing new things, right before our eyes. God is calling us to actually live into the words we profess, especially during Easter, that Christ IS Risen, and that God’s love never fails. Can we open our minds to the possibility that what we say is true, and that God is alive and active in the world? And then can we live that for others, for love’s sake?

As the old song goes, there’s a wideness in God’s mercy, like the wideness of the sea. That mercy manifests itself in God’s repeated pursuit of us, even when—especially when—we stray from obedience to God’s command to love. God chooses us as beloveds of God; as the Pope reminded young Emanuele, and God’s love will not admit defeat. And Alleluia for that!

Amen.

Readings:
Acts 10:44-48
Psalm 98
1 John 5:1-6
John 15:9-17

Links/References:
The story of Pope Francis and Emanuele can be found in many places, including at America Magazine: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/04/16/my-dad-heaven-little-boy-asks-pope .
Helpful commentary about the theology of the Pope's remarks is found here: https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2018/04/19/was-pope-francis-right-tell-child-his-atheist-dad-may-be-heaven .

Video of the encounter:

Photos:
(1) Pope Francis comforts Emanuele, from America Magazine.
(2) Jesus blesses the children, Greek icon.
(3) Psalm 139:1-2 illustration.
(4) Banner carried during march in St. Louis, October, 2014, by Leslie Scoopmire.