The Circle Game: Sermon for Proper 13C

It’s funny—even if you don’t like math very much, we spend a lot of our time obsessing over numbers, from the moment of our birth, when eager parents start counting fingers and toes and other appendages to the number of birthdays we have had. Then there’s numbers about weight and height, which most of us also have a profound ambivalence about all our lives, either because they are too big or too small. Through childhood we long to be older, and somewhere around age 25 many of us want the aging thing to stop altogether.

In our economic lives, there are a lot of numbers we obsess over. For many people right now are deeply worried about inflation rates, which here in the US are currently at a gulp-inducing 9.1 percent. And that is bad, especially for older people on fixed incomes or people working at the bottom of the economic ladder. But this is not simply a national problem—and so if we look outside our own blinkered view, we see that a vast majority of the industrialized world is suffering from inflation—the UK’s rate is currently 9.4%, the European Union area is at 8.9%, Spain is at 10.8%, Brazil is at 11.89%, Russia is at 15.9%, Argentina is at 64%, and Turkey is at a whopping 78.62%. ANNUALLY. Yikes.

Same thing about the price of gasoline, which we Americans love to shriek about. However, we are actually quite blessed. At the start of July, the cost in the US was currently $1.30 per liter or $4.92 a gallon, and it has fallen since. Compare that to Canada, at $6.01 per gallon, Germany at $7.53, France at $8.59, the UK at 8.78, and the Netherlands at $9.61.

There’s even fascinating numbers about our spending habits. For instance, in 2021 the average American spent an estimated $2,130 a year on coffee, and $1,528 on the year’s cell phone bill.

Those are some astounding numbers. Then there are some fun numbers. 

I don’t know if you heard, but the Mega Millions lottery prize—which hadn’t had a winner since April 30 and apparently was finally won on Friday-- was at over $1.28 billion. BILLION. As in a thousand millions. And ONE ticket, sold just north of Chicago, had all the right numbers: 13, 36, 45, 57, 67 and a Mega Ball of 14. If the winner chooses a one-time cash payment they will receive $742 million dollars, otherwise it’s annual payments for the next few decades. The odds of winning are 302,575,350 to 1.

That’s a lot of numbers.

Even if you are normally a lottery agnostic, as many of us are, especially when we think about those odds, a lot of us like to have a little flutter when the pot gets that high. We daydream on what we might spend it on. But the fact is there is just no way you could spend that kind of money without almost killing yourself in the process.

Having lived in the smallest bedroom (WITH my Baby Sister) in a too-small house most growing up, it’s tempting to think about buying a bigger one, or buying one for your kids or for your mama. But then I remember something a wise man named George Carlin explained when I was a kid:

You got your stuff with you? I’ll bet you do. Guys have stuff in their pockets; women have stuff in their purses…. Stuff is important. You gotta take care of your stuff. You gotta have a place for your stuff. That’s what life is all about, tryin’ to find a place for your stuff! That’s all your house is; a place to keep your stuff. If you didn’t have so much stuff, you wouldn’t need a house. You could just walk around all the time.

 

A house is just a pile of stuff with a cover on it. You can see that when you’re taking off in an airplane. You look down and see all the little piles of stuff. Everybody’s got his own little pile of stuff.

 

So now you got a houseful of stuff. And, even though you might like your house, you gotta move. Gotta get a bigger house. Why? Too much stuff! And that means you gotta move all your stuff. Or maybe, put some of your stuff in storage. Storage! Imagine that. There’s a whole industry based on keepin’ an eye on other people’s stuff.(1)

Our readings this week warn about being more concerned about your stuff than about living a life with purpose.

Jesus does not always portray money as evil—look at how the Samaritan was willing to spend more than two full days’ wages tending to a helpless stranger a couple of weeks ago. The hoarding of money, however, he repeatedly condemns. And by the way, if you pay attention, parables with the phrase “rich man” in the Bible are almost ALWAYS criticizing not wealth, specifically, but a lack of support for the poor through the hoarding of resources by a very few.

There are numerous ways to use wealth for good—one of the easiest is using it to support your parish, your denomination, and various charities that are specifically engaged in trying to make the world a better place for all creatures great and small. But—and this is crucial in both Jesus’s time as well as our own current culture: Money can also be a way of lying to ourselves, telling ourselves that we are not dependent upon anyone but ourselves.

Take the rich fool in our parable. His love of money has cut him off from consideration of any other person, much less God. So he starts talking to himself. And even in his interior monologue, the rich fool only mentions himself. He uses the possessive pronoun repeatedly: “MY fruit, MY barn, MY goods, and even my SOUL.” 

Then who interrupts that interior monologue but God Godself, who calls the man a fool and declares that at this very night the man’s soul will be demanded of him. Once again here we get the language of debt, and it is GOD who is the creditor. We may hold our souls in life, but they are merely here on loan--they are God’s possession eternally. The rich fool has allowed his wealth to isolate him so much that the only person he has to lie to is himself. He has forgotten about anyone else and the obligations he bears to the world around him. He has also forgotten about God. 

This is far different from our discussion last week about a laborer praying for tomorrow’s bread today. That prayer is a prayer for enough. Especially on the heels of Jesus teaching us to pray for sustenance last week, this hoarding we see this week strikes a discordant note indeed. 

After all, the rich fool did not get this huge crop by himself—he has been blessed with fertile land and appropriate weather including rain. Note, in fact, that “the land produced abundantly.” Not the wealthy man. It is doubtful he did any of the labor to cause this huge crop, but far more likely others toiled for his profit while he is engaged in rumination on how to protect the treasure that has been handed to him.

One of the biggest practices Jesus sought to correct was an idea that one group of people was inherently better than another group of people simply by lofty ideas of one’s own personal purity. But holiness is not based on what you declare unclean, or lesser than, and then avoiding that thing. 

Holiness comes from what you give your heart to. Holiness comes from seeing yourself in a great interconnected circle with God and neighbor and dedicating yourself to the nourishing of good through seeing our obligations to others as blessings and opportunities to serve. Holiness comes from dedicating yourself to standing for others, and standing for God. Holiness comes not from greed, or miserliness, but through putting yourself at the service of empathy and love. It comes not from walling yourself off from the demands of love, but from embracing life and love with generosity and joy.

Holiness comes from giving your heart not to things, but to relationship with God and with each other. The rich fool has isolated himself from any consideration of others, and only thinks of himself. He prioritizes money and things over community, and over God. This is idolatry of the worst form.

Our lives are gifts. What we do with them should be a gift as well.

A week ago, the Newport Folk Festival was held in Newport, Rhode Island. This year’s festival was especially exciting, because for the first time in 20 years Joni Mitchell, a true songwriting and singing legend, was invited on stage by her young friend and fan Brandi Carlile, and actually performed a set. This is all the more remarkable because in 2015 Joni Mitchell suffered an aneurysm which nearly killed her and destroyed her ability to sing or play music. Through grit and dogged persistence--the same persistence that had helped her overcome being paralyzed with polio as a child--and through the love of a community of friends surrounding her, last week Joni Mitchell got up and sang some of her classic songs with help from a stage full of stars like Wynona Ryder and Marcus Mumford of Mumford and Sons. 

One of the songs that she sang was one that I loved as a child called The Circle Game. It talks about the changes a child goes through growing up from infancy to adulthood. 

There are numbers in this song: ten, sixteen, 20 years spin by, and the child learns about the world the entire time. And the chorus goes like this:

And the seasons, they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We're captive on the carousel of time
We can't return, we can only look
Behind, from where we came
And go round and round and round, in the circle game.

Joni’s song is beautiful. But as I watched clips of her singing it, I saw the circle as something else—the circle of love and compassion that grounds us, centers us, and heals us when we have been told all hope is lost. I saw the circle as all of those people who she drew to herself with her beautiful songs, and who gathered over the years to help her heal and encourage her—many of them gathered with her on that stage.

As Christian disciples, we have a center to our circle—and that is Jesus. Jesus reminds us that what is important is not how much wealth or possessions we have, but how much we engage with putting what we have to use for the good of our friends, families, churches, neighbors, and communities. How much we look after the least of those around us. That’s where true richness lies.

Jesus calls us to see the Circle of God’s kingdom in our lives, and to make that our priority. To treasure each other, and to treasure what we can do to promote God’s kingdom, God’s justice, and God’s boundless compassion and mercy for those around us. To make the circle bigger and bigger until everyone is included.

Let your life, and your resources, build the circle of God, and watch the joy rise up in your life. That’s the greatest gift of all.

Readings:

Hosea 11:1-11
Psalm 107:1-9, 43
Colossians 3:1-11
Luke 12:13-21

Citations:

1) George Carlin, Monologue about "Stuff," at YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac 

2) Video from Newport Folk Festival, July 24. 2022.

The Stone of Witness: Speaking to the Soul, July 28, 2022

Joshua said to all the people,
“See, this stone shall be a witness against us;
for it has heard all the words of the Lord that he spoke to us… "- Joshua 24:27a

 

This pale stone from St. Columba’s Bay
had lain beneath pilgrim feet for a thousand years before
singing its way to my notice; its delicate web of
fine green tracings draws the eye into the stone, its heft
surprising for a marble-cool thumbprint. Glossy
and silky to the touch, it bears witness

to the caress of tides and the melancholy
wandering of saints. What prayers has it heard
from all who have passed this way—what prayers
can I whisper to it as it slides between my fingers?

Two billion years it tumbled
to the ebb and flow of windswept tide.
From its holy home it now resides
in my pocket most days, a traveler and thus a stranger,
honed by the caress of the sea.

 

And now I recognize the toddler wisdom
in filling one’s pockets
with treasures from the ground: they witness
to the loving embrace of this Earth
carrying us tenderly around the Sun, grounding us
in wonder and awe, bearing testimony
to the holiness arching up beneath our feet.

Praying from the Inside Out: Sermon for Proper 12C

(1)

You know, there are times when it is hard as a preacher to decide which text calls out to be preached.

This week is not one of those times.

I mean-- whew! Did you get a load of that passage from Hosea? Hmmm.... preach about a prophet being forced to make his life into performance art to make a point about his people's unfaithfulness-- and that word "whoredom" smacking us right in the face? No thank you.

Then, our epistle, and 15 years as a middle school teacher finding out that kids confused circumcision with sterilization tells me to back away from that one too. Nope.

So it was rather easy to settle on the gospel today, with its topic of prayer. Because I have found that, no matter how many times we talk about it, prayer is one of those things that can be very hard, and cannot be investigated enough. Because there's a lot of difficulty around prayer.

As I look over this pericope in 2022, I have to be honest: there are times that I just feel too tired, too worn out, too overwhelmed to pray. I may be exhausted, or feel spiritually dry. I’m not in the right headspace, or heart space. I don’t have the right attitude or discipline.

That’s why it is important to remember that we never pray alone. As disciples, the mere fact that we are here together in worship reminds us that prayer is a communal act. The fact that we Episcopalians speak of “common” prayer reminds us how foundational it is to always remember that our prayers join with others. To remember that our prayer with others includes everything from our opening words, through hymn singing, through hearing the word of God, through the prayers of the people, through sharing the peace with those who are visiting as well as those we know. Our common prayer continues through the Great Thanksgiving, in which we recount God’s saving help to humanity all throughout history; through sharing in the bread and wine; all the way through to the dismissal and then continues right out into the street and the rest of the week. 

All of that is prayer, and it is prayer done as a community.

Jesus doesn’t say we have to have any of the right attitudes, the right disciplines, the perfect words. I think of this prayer by St. Teresa:

Teach me, if Thou wilt, to pray:
If Thou wilt not, make me dry.
Give me love abundantly
Or unfruitful let me stay.
Sov’reign Master, I obey.
Peace I find not save with Thee.
What wilt Thou have done with me? (2)

So maybe we are brought up short when we want to pray, and so we look for a formula, which Jesus here provides. But Jesus teaches us here that to pray is to first acknowledge that God is God, and we are not. In other words, we start with praise. Praise that God is holy, from God’s very name outward. 

In fact, Jesus starts with reminding us that God is in intimate relationship with us. Jesus calls God Father, and we can too-- or Mother, or Friend, or Lover, or Beloved, or Creator. If any of those words has negative meaning for you, use another. Just remember that God loved you before you even knew the word "God." Jesus even points out that God always wants us to have good things, just like a loving parent wants to give their children eggs instead of snakes or scorpions.

And you know, I had an experience this week about that. I was getting into our pool, and just as I was getting ready to swim some laps suddenly saw something swim by and realized there was a snake in my pool. 

Let me tell you, I walked on water better than Peter ever did. I practically levitated outta that pool, and stood there gasping on the deck as this reptile took a victory lap in MY pool. And being the church nerd I am, I thought of this gospel passage and prayed for God to change that snake into an egg. But no such luck. I had to scoop the critter out myself and deposit him elsewhere. And sometimes our prayers remind us that we can't just ask God to perform magic tricks to get us out of confronting our fears and doing the dirty work. And after all, God loves that snake and much as God loves me.

Now, you will notice that the version we get here in Luke's gospel is pretty short, and has a lot of things missing that we are used to saying. And there are dozens if not hundreds of versions of this prayer just in the English language alone. I am convinced it s a good thing to occasional pray one of those other versions from time to time, and to sit down an examine the version we most often say, just to remind ourselves what is actually in there-- and what is not. To remind ourselves that words count.

The New Zealand Prayer Book (3), for instance, has an expansive version of the Lord’s Prayer, as one would expected from a province that seeks to reflect the cultures of three distinct groups of people. 

It has about 15-20 words just to take the place of that word "Father" that we get in our gospel. It even uses a trinitarian formation. I encourage you to look up this prayer and spend some time with it. Here's one thing that's interesting--How much of that prayer is praise? More than half of it. We get almost two-thirds of the way through that prayer before we ask God for anything. I think that is a wonderful reminder to us all, too, about prayer not just a wish-fulfillment.

Jesus reminds us that our purpose in following God is not to get God to do our bidding, but for us to surrender to God. One of the most beautiful hymns I still treasure from my childhood sitting next to my grandma in her Baptist church says it best:

All to Jesus I surrender, All to Him I freely give;
I will ever love and trust him; In his presence daily live.
I surrender all--- I surrender all
All to Thee, my blessed Savior, I surrender all. (4)

God’s kingdom coming means a time when we do not anesthetize ourselves to the suffering of others by clinging to a system that is designed to sort everything into a small category of winners and la large host of losers in various degrees. God’s kingdom is one where we don’t keep trying to get God to do our bidding, but we surrender with joy to God as our only sovereign, our Creator who continually calls us into living as if we really believed that we are made in the image of God—in the image of one whose wisdom and love sustains everything around us, throughout the universe and across time and space. God’s kingdom is built on our surrender, but it is joyful because, as this prayer teaches us, our entire lives are an edifice, either resilient or fragile. Our entire lives are an edifice, resilient and resplendent, if they rest upon trust in God.

For this prayer is a prayer of trust:

Trust that we have a real relationship with God. Trust that our relationship with God began before we even knew the word God, and that that relationship will continue even beyond our earthly lives.

Trust that God is our Maker, our Father, our Mother, Creator, Source, Friend, Lover-- the One who tenderly loves us each the best, whatever word that most means that to you. Think of it. Has anyone seen the images from the James Webb telescope the last few weeks? The marvels we can now see from this amazing universe made and sustained by God? And here's an even greater wonder: The same God who made each of those nebula and constellation and black hole looked around this amazing universe and decided the universe needs one of you just as badly. God loves us eternally-- and even plants the dust of stars within our bones and sinews.

We pray because we trust that God will sustain each of us. In giving us the bread we need today so that we may have strength tomorrow, that we may use that strength to help make God’s kingdom of love, mercy, justice and grace visible upon this beautiful Earth that, as our beloved, living home, sustains us and embraces us in each and every second of our lives.

Trust that God forgives us our sins. We may flinch at the thought of sitting down and really examining ourselves to see what sins we have committed, or supported with our silences. Or we may take account of our sins frequently, and feel the weight of guilt and shame. Yet, when we acknowledge that we have sinned, and determine to amend our lives and work to restore our relationships through honesty and responsibility, we find God’s forgiveness always there, cooling and soothing the parched walls of our shattered hearts.

And then notice what our translation says: Since we have been forgives our sins, we can forgive everyone indebted to us. What does it mean to consider a sin against us as a debt? I think this provides a precious insight into human nature. Don’t we consider that those who have hurt us owe us something—an apology, compensation, a period of grovelling? There’s a phrase that’s sometimes used when lauding someone who has done something heroic, like the delivery driver who ran into a burning home and rescured five children single-handedly. We often say we owe them a debt of gratitude. 

Reciprocally, if we trust in God as our ultimate home and heart, we can also use the gratitude we feel at God’s abundant grace to ourselves embody forgiveness and grace to others who have wronged us. We can pay off our debt of gratitude by paying that forgiveness forward. By doing so, we free ourselves from the chains or resentments and anger at the hurt we have endured, and we have once again taken seriously the obligation laid upon us by the blessing of being created in the image of God.

So why does Jesus have us end here in Luke’s version with praying not to be led to the time of trial? Well, if we have taken seriously the cataloguing of our sins and our clinging to old resentments and grievances, we already have a sneaking suspicion that a time of trial is something at which we most likely will fail. Just as we trust in God to give us the bread we need for today, we trust in God to not simply throw tests at us to see if we will pass or fail. One translation, the one that we pray at our main service each Sunday, actually asks God not to lead us into temptation. I always scoff at that line in my heart when we say it. Because if one thing is certain, it’s that we don’t need to God to lead us to temptation, we can find it just fine all on our own. See also the phrase: “The Devil Made Me Do It.” Thus, again here we are called to trust in God to offer us guidance and lead us aright when we ourselves wander into the quicksand.

Praying this prayer, then, is a prayer for strength to be soft where the world is hard,
To be strong enough to be forgiving and merciful where the world is merciless,
To be reflective of God’s abundant love and wisdom in a world that too often seeks to hit first rather than see the woundedness around each of us and offer good things rather than adding bad to bad, like offering a child a snake or a scorpion.

Praying as Jesus taught us is a reminder that there are actions which count as prayer, starting with listening. Sometimes, the best prayer of all is when we say nothing, but merely invite God into our hearts and into our lives. We don’t have to do all the talking.

Sometimes prayer is not merely in words at all. The beloved poet Mary Oliver started her poem “Six Recognitions of the Lord” with this observation:
“I know a lot of fancy words.
I tear them from my heart and my tongue.
Then I pray.”

Amen.

This was preached at the Saturday 505 Eucharist and the Sunday 10:30 Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO, on July 23-24, 2022, the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost.

Readings:

Hosea 1:2-10
Psalm 85
Colossians 2:6-15, (16-19)
Luke 11:1-13

Citations:

1) The Lord's Prayer in Catalan, wall hanging from La Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, my photo.

2) St. Teresa of Jesus, Works of St. Teresa, Vol. 3, p. 280.

3) From A New Zealand Prayer Book: He Karakia Mihinare o Aotearoa.

4) Verse 1 of "I Surrender All," by Judson W. Van De Venter (1855-1939).

5) Image of the Southern Ring Nebula from the James Webb telescope, NASA/ESA found at https://time.com/6196675/five-james-webb-telescope-images-explained/

6) Mary Oliver, from Thirst, 2006.

Teach Us to Pry: Speaking to the Soul, July 21, 2022

Luke 11:1-13

Teach us to pray, they asked,
as the first evening star winked into view,
and the Teacher began:
Creator and Sustainer,
we center ourselves in your love,
remembering your gift of life to us. We place
ourselves within your tender embrace. Make us reverent
before the Holiness that sustains all that is,
and calls us Beloved.
                                Open
our hearts to the power of wisdom and compassion,
that the kingdom take root in each heart. We trust
your abundance is greater than our hunger;
we ask for today’s bread enough, and provision for
tomorrow. Nourish us
with your grace and forgiveness,
for we know our sins only too well.
                                Help us turn
away from sin
to a life of justice and pardon,
answering forgiveness’s gift with our own clemency,
that we may ourselves pour forth
that grace to those who have done us harm.
                              Show us the path
away from temptation, O Loving One, who
delivers us safely home,
whose reign and radiance and righteousness
are everlasting.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on July 21, 2022.

The Soul's Expression

With stammering lips and insufficient sound.
I strive and struggle to deliver right
That music of my nature, day and night
With dream and thought and feeling, interwound,
And inly answering all the senses round
With octaves of a mystic depth and height,
Which step out grandly to the infinite
From the dark edges of the sensual ground!
The song of soul I struggle to outwear
Through portals of the sense, sublime and whole,
And utter all myself into the air:
But if I did it,-- as the thunder-roll
Braeks its own cloud,-- my flesh would perish there,
Before that dread apocalypse of soul.


--Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861), Romantic-era British poet, author, and activist, spouse of Robert Browning

The Prayer of Mary and Martha: Speaking to the Soul, July 14, 2022

Almighty God,
we ask that you bless our endeavors today.
May we sit at your feet
and drink in your wisdom, Blessed Teacher,
that we may ourselves be transformed as disciples
and follow in your Way.
May we also seek to serve others
with gratitude for the chance to care for those
who lead us in the ways of peace and justice.
Let us unite within ourselves
the desire to learn and the willingness to serve,
and uplift the examples of both Mary and Martha
in their work for the kingdom of God.
Give us Martha hands
and Mary hearts,
seeking to serve you
and be guided by your Word and Wisdom
opening our minds and spirits
to serve you however we can.
Unite within us knowledge and action,
for we know that work without learning
and learning without work gain nothing.
Let us proclaim your glory
in words and actions this day:
make us your hands
and your loving wisdom
in the world.
Amen.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul July 14, 2022. 

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.

The Heart of the Lamb: Sermon for Proper 9C

Last week, Jesus warned his followers that they needed to be ready to sacrifice their old lives if they wanted to follow him. Today we see him commissioning the seventy (two) followers to go out and help proclaim the Good News.

Jesus, we are told, is “intending to go” to Jerusalem, but visiting places throughout Galilee on the way (and from Galilee into Samaria, which is important to remember when we get to the story of the “Good” Samaritan in a couple of weeks). Jesus sends out his followers to prepare the way of the Lord. So he commissions 70, or 72, of his followers to go in his name first. This is a reminder that ministry and witness is not merely the work of professionals—all Christian disciples are called to help communicate the good news to a word that is starving for it. There certainly are field a-plenty awaiting the planting of a bountiful harvest.

As baptized Christians, we ALL act in persona Christi, in the person and place of Christ—not just those who are ordained. As Teresa of Avila famously insisted, Christ has no body now in the world but ours—no hands, no feet, no eyes to look with love on the world but ours. We ARE the Body of Christ.

And sure, witnessing to Christ makes disciples vulnerable. Even though many will reject the disciples, even more will hear and listen, thus the harvest is plentiful.

Perhaps Jesus sends them out so early so they will understand what the risks are of being disciples and witnesses. They will be exposed and vulnerable. They will have to depend upon the kindness of strangers. They will have to depend upon and trust God. They luckily will not be alone, but they may not be warmly welcomed. These things were difficult then, and they are difficult now—our society is not built to reinforce trust.

The risk they are taking is stark—they are not just sheep among wolves, but lambs-- babies who are defenseless.

Disciples, then and now, must rely upon others. Galilee and Samaria are hardly wealthy areas, so the hospitality they are given will hardly be lavish—but it therefore most certainly will be heartfelt. Those who are willing to share what they have when first asked do not deserve to be dishonored by their guests moving along when something better is offered to them, thus they are to stay put in the same place the entire time they are in a village.

The list of what they are NOT supposed to take is pretty long—especially in comparison to what they ARE to bring: peace, and healing. This is their Good News. And isn’t this what we see the world around us hungering for, even now?

First of all, peace. Even before they know anything about the house they’ve just entered or the beliefs of those living there. Peace that is shared. Peace that is more than peace—it’s shalom. It’s well-being, completeness, a greeting, a farewell, and everything in between. Peace, based on justice and mercy, takes a random group of strangers and forms them into community.

Their ministry, and ours, is one of healing and restoration, and announcing that the kingdom is already among the people we meet. This is the second part of our mutual proclamation.

Jesus offers an important bit of advice for all of us: if you are rejected, don’t take it personally. It’s really rejection of Jesus, and of his message. The image of shaking the dust off your sandals also carries with it some risk of misinterpretation. Almost every time I have heard someone quote use this image, they have used it to justify cutting someone off, as a harsh judgment, almost like saying “You are dead to me.” That type of sentiment implies that we can just give up on people who don’t agree with us, or who don’t immediately jump on our bandwagons. It means we can call it quits for today—but tomorrow, we go back and try again.

That is, after all, how the life of grace works. God never gives up on us, no matter how outrageous our failures, our vanities, our pride.

Here’s why I want to lodge a complaint with the organizers of the common lectionary at this point. Our pericope ends with Jesus telling the happy disciples to not be so happy about their success, but that their “names are written in heaven.” And sitting here in the 21st century, I for one feel like we have had more than enough of that kind of Christianity—the kind that says that belief in Jesus is all about saving yourself, rather than engaging with those around us, with caring for the vulnerable, including this beautiful Earth that is our only home. Nope. Just make sure you aren’t going to burn in hellfire for all eternity, and it’s all good, too many people say. That not the Way of a Lamb, either—it’s just the Way of the Wolf, gobbling up anything to fill up its own belly.

But the last word we hear is often one we remember, so here is my complaint—it is misleading. But listen to the next words, in vv. 21-24:

“At that very moment, Jesus overflowed with joy from the Holy Spirit and said, I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you've hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and shown them to babies. Indeed, Father, this brings you happiness. My Father has handed all things over to me. No one knows who the son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son wants to reveal him.” Turning to the disciples, he said privately, “Happy are the eyes that see what you see. I assure you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see and hear what you hear, but they didn't.”

Jesus himself is overjoyed, we learn. So we, too, can be overjoyed when we share the good news of God’s kingdom with others—as long as we realize it is not to our credit but to our joy, an act of love and not of pride.

Perhaps these verses that were omitted today hold the key for what we can take away from the gospel section before us. Too often, we get wrapped up in arguments over arguing with those who don’t agree with us theologically. We start drawing swords over questions that are esoteric, we get distracted by details so that we love sight of the forest. We make things harder than they need to be. Our job is to speak God’s peace to those we encounter, to testify to the love of God for each of us, and for this world. We are sent out to heal, to reconcile, to restore what has been disordered with love and compassion, not self-righteousness or seeking glory for ourselves.

So what are we to do, as we spend this weekend celebrating independence, often while forgetting that the sacrifices and LOVE for each other that brought us here? Forgetting that freedom is a mockery when it is used to oppress others. Too many of the powerful are trying to convince us that we can be free through the exploitation of those around us.

But that’s the Way of the Wolf. Jesus calls us to be lambs, to bear with each other in justice, in gratitude, and in love. Lambs know that their security rests in staying united as one flock under one shepherd—and he is the Prince of Peace, not the God of the Belly.

Speaking peace in humble homes, living in gratitude, loving God and your neighbor even when everything about them makes you uncomfortable. As the prophet Micah summed it up: Do justice, Love mercy, Walk humbly with your God, who accompanies us at the first sign of our yes to God. These are the things that defeat the forces of evil in the world and promise us a new birth of freedom, liberty in love, and justice for all in word and deed.

This sermon was preached at the 505 on July 2 and the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO.

Joy in the Morning: Speaking to the Soul for June 30, 2022

This Sunday we will hear Psalm 30, which contains one of my favorite images and reminders in the psalter. It is this: “Weeping may spend the night, but joy comes in the morning.”

Besides being a most necessary reminder as many of us have been battered by the rough winds of public events these last many weeks, this verse also has a literary association I love. One of my favorite humorous authors from the time I was a youngster was P. G. Wodehouse, who wrote a series of hilarious short stories about a young British man in the 1920s and his valet. These two characters were known as Bertie Wooster and Jeeves.

Bertie was always getting into some kind of scrape, being a young man with a superfluity of money and a paucity of intelligence. Jeeves, Bertie’s “servant” although his intellectual superior, was aways getting Wooster out of one scrape or another, often involving a girl or an aunt, often quoting great British literature just for good measure, all the while maintaining a firm line on the young master’s fashion experimentation.

One of the first collections of these short stories I ever read by P. G Wodehouse was entitled Jeeves in the Morning, a punning reference to that verse in Psalm 30. The stories in its pages were hilarious, the use of language and imagery masterful. I was hooked.

And I was fascinated by something so hilarious being associated with a psalm that portrays such honest anxiety and grief. At first it puzzled me. But years later I learned that this Bible verse may have held special significance for Mr. Wodehouse. For all of his genius, he could be a bit of a bumbler too—and in the early days of World War II he bumbled right into the hands of the Germans as they seized large swaths of Europe, and he was held in custody for some weeks.

These were, as one can imagine, dark times in Mr. Wodehouse’s long life. To distract himself while in custody, he got permission to work on his ideas for some humorous short stories—and when he walked free at last, he had written the bulk of the collection known in the UK as Joy in the Morning. I imagine working on this collection of madcap tales kept his mind from dwelling on the dangers of his situation in Nazi custody.

Weeping may indeed spend the night, but joy comes in the morning. If you are feeling grief or sorrow, feel that grief or sorrow. But you can also make your way through that pain because you have assurance that all of what we ourselves have experienced of tragedy in our lives, Christ himself also experienced—and emerged victorious. Weeping spending the night as part of our anxieties and our griefs—that time of day so accustomed to great emotion that one of the precious prayers in our tradition asks God to be with those “who work, or watch, or weep this night” (BCP, p. 134).

Weeping spends the night. But this night, and its weeping, WILL pass, as Psalm 30 assures us. And it will pass in the presence and companionship and protection of our Creator and our God, who accompanies us in all our ways.

Joy comes in the morning because of the assurance that faith provides, even when it is that darkest hour before the dawn, even if no way out is discernible in the moment. Because the sun will rise, and everything is more clear in the light of day.

An altered version of this essay was published at Episcopal Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on July 1, 2022.

Summer Lights: Speaking to the Soul for June 23, 2022

The sound of your thunder was in the whirlwind;
your lightnings lit up the world… -Psalm 77:18


The commonplaces of our childhood
still shimmer freshly in memory: the ozone tang
borne on the wind, petrichor
of a prairie thunderstorm boiling up on the horizon,
coral, vermilion, lavender backdrop
alabaster clouds blooming like smoke, heat
lightnings dazzling, dust cyclones dervishing
before the cooling rains drive them to ground.
The cottonwood leaves turn their leaves over in supplication,
a prayer for rain, the sizzling rattle
of willow leaf and branch bent in faithful contemplation over arroyos
tracing a line through fields of grain,
dancing before the cooling breeze.

And O as twilight approaches
the sudden blaze of fireflies rising from the freshened earth, reversing
the fall of Lucifer from heaven,
bearing light upward in the call of love—
our dad’s ever-present pocket-knife
would punch holes in mason jar lids
and we would dance through dewy grass,
chasing beetles swirling and eddying in our wake
now here, now there.
We’d gather our golden treasures
and throw ourselves down under the locust tree
rasping cicadas sirening a song of summer joy,
watching the semaphores of luminescence,
as we ate dinner outside in gauzy nightgowns and dusty feet,
then released with gratitude to continue their courtships,
drawing our eyes upward
to the lightshow of the Perseids
as we tumbled into bed.

Holding hands, my sister and I
would breathe our prayers to the God of the overlooked,
as we drifted off to sleep, sighing, “Jesus
loves the little children,
and the lighting bugs,
and the turtle’s red eye,
and the monarch butterfly,
and God’s wonders strewn across the night sky,”
and so to sleep, safe and sound,
summer lights flashing under the heart-shaped leaves
of redbuds, grace, and gratitude
jeweled with dewdrops.

And now we plead with monarchs
to reverse their decline, planting milkweed
as a treasured contribution
rather than a weed to be uprooted, stem and branch,
and holding fast to a faith,
and rejoice at the wonder
of a resurgent summer symphony
of fireflies defying
the dying of the light, knowing
that God walks among us in morning dew,
calling us to guard the precious summer light

that lights our way toward the heavenly mansions.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 23, 2022.

Naming Our Demons: Speaking to the Soul, June 16, 2022

We may not think we have any common ground with the story of Jesus’s healing of the man with a multitude of demons in this Sunday’s gospel passage of Luke 8:26-39. Most of us no longer believe in demons, so we think we have nothing to relate to in this story. It’s too pre-scientific. It’s too fantastic. But maybe we shrug off this story due to a lack of imagination, a lack of understanding of the importance of metaphor and analogy that Jesus certainly utilized in the stories he told, and that the gospel writers used in the stories they told about Jesus.

For instance, I notice that Jesus asks the demons—not the man, whose lack of conversation reveals his loss of identity except by his illness—what their name is. And they answer “Legion.”

Those hearing this story from Luke’s gospel at the time of its writing would probably have been interested in hearing another healing story about Jesus, but at that word, I imagine their ears pricked up and they suddenly became very alert. Jesus and his contemporaries KNEW what a legion was. Most of the people in the known world two thousand years ago, from Scotland to Egypt, knew what a legion was. A legion was an invading army—a force of six thousand Roman soldiers, shock troops who would roll over a weaker people and place them ruthlessly under Roman authority and keep them subjugated. Jesus himself would die at the hands of the Roman authorities who held the leashes of the legions.

With the revelation of the name “Legion,” suddenly there is another element mixed into this story to its original audience. Suddenly this is more than simply about uncleanliness or mere illness. It’s about oppression, and suffering to which everyone hearing the story can relate. By naming the forces holding that man captive as “Legion,” the point is driven home as to the helplessness he exhibited in the face of the occupying forces that had seized control of him-- body, mind, and spirit-- and had taken away his voice and cut him off from all that he held dear.

Demons are things that take away our sense of agency, that try to convince us that we are helpless and powerless. So let's name it: Our demons too, even in the year 2022, are legion. Our demons, just like those that afflicted this poor nameless person, are forces of oppression, chaos, and division. Our demons claim power by convincing us we are helpless before them. And just as Jesus demands their name before casting the demons out of the poor man who is held captive, it is important for us, too, to name our own demons as such—to name them, so that we may rebuke them and take up the fight against them in the name of love and community.

What if we understood our modern demons as those dysfunctions, illnesses, and delusions that destroy community? The names we use for these demons may be different; but they are, indeed legion. There’s alcoholism, drug addiction—meth, fentanyl, oxycontin being just the latest scourges-- or even mental illness, which remains stigmatized even as we struggle still to recognize it as a medical condition rather than a personal failure.

But it goes on. Our modern demons also include the institutional demons of gun violence, homelessness, indifference to the suffering of others, especially when it is inflicted in our name. Then there’s grinding poverty and demonization of the poor, racism, xenophobia, dehumanizing or even “demonizing” those who are different from us—and I would argue that another demon is our tolerance or claimed helplessness in the face of those demons.

There is one thing all these demons have in common: they destroy relationships and the ties of community. And putting back on our lens as disciples of Jesus, community is one of the holiest works and tasks that we are called to embody.

For Christians, community does not just mean the group of insiders in each parish or denomination. Christian community is understood as being OUTWARDLY focused. Each group of Christians is tasked with not existing for its own sake, but for the life of the world, to draw all the world into the radical idea that we are all God’s children, all beloved, all worthy of dignity and respect and peace and wholeness—what our Jewish friends encompass in a beautiful and often misunderstood word when we use it: shalom. Another name for God—and for the love-as-action-and-justice that conquers the demons that plague us.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 16, 2022.

Yearning for Peace-- Speaking to the Soul, June 9, 2022

Today, June 9, is the feast day of the sixth century St. Columba of Iona, also known as Colmcille in Ireland, the land of his birth. Born into the clan Neill, some claim that his name originally was “Crimthann,” meaning “fox,” but he comes down to us as “Columba,” which means “dove.” Perhaps this story is told because his life was held in tension as a negotiation between strife and peace, between the necessity for diplomacy as a result of his lineage and station, and his yen for a quiet, monastic life as a contemplative and poet.

In the middle of his life, it is said that Columba became embroiled in violent disputes between his kinsmen and King Diarmait, the high king, concluding with a relative of his accused of murder being dragged from his protection and slain by the High King’s men. The responsibility for both deaths weighed heavily upon Columba, it is said, and so he and twelve followers left Ireland in a reed boat covered with leather, and set out to Scotland, eventually making landfall on the tiny island of Iona, off the coast of southwestern Scotland in the Inner Hebrides. There he lived the rest of his days, founding a monastery that was his home base as an apostle to the Scottish Picts as well as a center of learning. He was said to be happiest in his simple cell there, near a cross dedicated to St. Martin, himself a soldier who turned to peace. Although Columba made his home on a remote island, he nonetheless remained engaged with the world around him.

Many poems and prayers are attributed to St. Columba, including this one:

Let me bless almighty God,
Whose power extends over sea and land,
Whose angels watch over all.

Let me study sacred books to calm my soul:

I pray for peace,
Kneeling at heaven’s gates.

Let me do my daily work,
Gathering seaweed, catching fish,
Giving food to the poor.

Let me say my daily prayers,
Sometimes chanting, sometimes quiet,
Always thanking God.

Delightful it is to live
On a peaceful isle, in a quiet cell,
Serving the King of kings.

This beautiful prayer lays out in its five stanzas five actions of the life of a disciple: blessing, study, work, prayer, and service, all dedicated to God, but in service to the world. In all we do, we start by blessing God, by opening our hearts to holy learning, by laboring for the least and most vulnerable among us, by seeking God’s presence and guidance daily in our prayer lives, dedicating all our effort, even our resting, to the inbreaking of God’s reign within us and over us.

The prop upholding all is a longing for peace, and this is where perhaps we can hear Columba’s prayer resounding in our own hearts today, as we ourselves have been awash in repeated news of violence, war, and division all about us in the last few weeks.

In thanksgiving for the life of St. Columba, may we all make our prayer a prayer for peace—peace we are willing to back up by action to protect each other from the scourge of violence. May we remember that silence in the face of evil is not, and never can be, considered peace.

Beloved Savior, settle your peace upon us,
peace beyond our ken,
peace that drops soft and slow
like the rays from the sun at the clouds’ parting.

Light us from within, Lord Jesus,
with the beauty of your gospel of grace and mercy,
that we may radiate your love
as a beacon to the world.

Help us be truly present
in each moment with You, O God,
that we may be filled with the wisdom
of compassion and charity,
walking in truth and integrity with each other.

Breathe upon us your Spirit, O God,
that we may be utterly at peace
and grounded within your love.
Trusting in your unfailing goodness,
we commend to your care those we lift before You.

Amen.

This was first published at Episcopal Journal and Cafe's Speaking to the Soul on June 9, 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.