Prayer 4292

On this crisp morning,
let my heart sing a song of gratitude,
that I may like with eyes of wonder
upon this world of delicate beauty
your fingers have woven, O my God.

Let me sing out
the praise of your encompassing lovingkindness
sustaining all that is
in each moment.

Holy One, Shepherd of Our Souls,
guide us into deeper knowledge of you
and grant us the wisdom to live in love and faithfulness
with purity of heart and intention.

In your abundant compassion,
spread the awning of your mercy
over those for whom we pray.

Amen.

Known By Our Love: Sermon for Proper 24B, 22nd Sunday After Pentecost

What does it mean to have power? And what is the purpose of having power?

Is it so that you can have everything your own way? Is it to be able to lord it over others, and have people bow and scrape before you? Or is it so that you can do the most good for the greatest number of people you can? What if doing that good costs you something?

This is the dilemma Jesus and his apostles spread before us today.

It’s not like Jesus hasn’t tried to tell his closest followers that being Messiah means exactly the opposite of being the emperor of Rome. He’s described that he will be handed over, and suffer, and die. He will do this for the sake of the world—to destroy the forces of death and violence that we humans have set loose upon this world.

The words are literally sting hanging in the air, and James and John apparently have been nodding absently while cooking up a plot to grab the seats of honor “in glory.” Yet for weeks now, we have been hearing Jesus not just predict his passion and death, but also telling his disciples that those who are on the top will be on the bottom, and that those on the bottom will be on the top. One also wonders if they were thinking that the coming of Jesus’s kingdom is going to be as the result of an actual political coup. For the third time, Jesus tells what awaits them in Jerusalem, and for a third time the disciples miss the entire point.

For those of us who know what’s coming, there’s some irony here: we know who is going to end up on Jesus’s right and left at the end of this road: it leads to Calvary, to Golgotha, and it’s NOT two followers of Jesus, but rather, a thief and a murderer hanging on a cross on Jesus’s right and left. Mark picks up on that irony.

Jesus then asks if they really think they can “drink the cup that I drink”—a reference to a cup of suffering that Jeremiah foretold, the cup that Jesus will pray to be taken from him in Mark 14:36 when he is praying on the night before his betrayal. The “baptism” that Jesus will undergo is likewise one of fire and death and betrayal through which he will pass to resurrection. James and John affirm that they can—perhaps a bit too quickly. Again, it seems that they are not really listening, that they do not really understand Jesus.

And then, as soon as the other disciples hear of what James and John are attempting, they get upset—but not because they have gotten Jesus’s message about service, but because probably they too were dreaming of asking for those positions of power and glory.

Now, don’t think I am using the lucky gift of hindsight to make fun of the disciples or mock them. Instead, I think about how lucky we are to see that the disciples were, really JUST LIKE US.

Jesus has laid out for them three times exactly what risks they are taking following him, and exactly what risks he is taking for himself. Someone who goes around criticizing the power structures of the world ends up very often at the very least unpopular and at the very worst dead—because even people who get abused by those same power structures nonetheless often support them, because they can’t imagine there being any other way being any better, or they think, “Well I may be struggling, but this system at least ensures that I’m not on the absolute bottom, because I HATE those people on the bottom”—fill in the blank with any likely group—the poor, the refugee, people from a different country or race, whatever.

Maybe the disciples DO have a sense of impending danger, even while they seem to not fully understand what Jesus is saying. And it’s a common thing that when we feel endangered, we try to take care of ourselves, first. Let’s be honest, don’t we feel grateful when we’re on a plane and the flight attendant tells us that, in case of emergency, we should put our own masks on first? Yay, that’s what we wanted to hear anyway!

Yet that is exactly the opposite of what Jesus has been urging for these many weeks. When we think there’s not enough to go around, our first reaction unfortunately is not to share what we’ve got but to hoard up resources for ourselves—which further multiplies the suffering if there truly is a shortage of resources. That’s kind of the challenge Jesus put in front of that wealthy man last week. If you’ve got a lot, and those around you have nothing, and you let that stand in the way of truly following me, you need to rethink how exactly it is you follow all of those commandments we just talked about. There’s a reason why, my friends, in our confession we are called to truly consider and turn back from both the things we have done, and the things we have left undone.

So what does it mean to be a Christian? Does it mean committing ourselves to a life of giving up things, of denial, of sacrifice?

Well yes—in a way. Jesus calls us to give up the idea of our own powerlessness to work for change. Jesus calls us to denial of the forces that are built on hatred, of causing others to suffer for our benefit. Jesus calls us to sacrifice, but so that we can be investors in the growth of God’s kingdom and God’s message.

Jesus doesn’t ask for empty words of belief. Jesus asks for us to roll up our sleeves, and commit ourselves to following Jesus as the biggest love of our lives. That doesn’t mean everything will go smoothly in our live of faith—far from it, as Jesus insists again and again. But Jesus called us into community so we would have each other in those hard times. So that we would commit to each other as well as to Jesus in love. And when you love something, you dedicate everything you have to making it thrive. 

Jesus specifically doesn't call us to intimidate, or to use his name as a code word for domination. I thought of that when my spouse came home yesterday from getting groceries, and he told me there was a group of people from a local church in the parking lot there handing out Bibles-- and then he noticed that one of them was wearing a gun on their hip, right out there in the open. Would you take a Bible from that guy, from someone trying to intimidate others? What might someone who has little knowledge of Jesus assume about our Savior when seeing this?

Jesus is trying to explain to us this fact: that as his followers, who share in his baptism and his cup, we both live in the heart of God and in the broken places in the world. We are the church of St. Martin all together here, worshiping and giving thanks, but that we also have to be the church of St. Martin out there, where people need us to show us who God is in the face of poverty, exploitation, fear, and division. We discover who we are called to be in being brave enough to turn the values of the world on its head to reflect the love of God in a world that thirsts for it.

Maybe this leads to disillusionment for many—for that rich man last week, for the apostles this week, for us any time we feel uncomfortable with the living out of that commandment to love God and each other with all we’ve got when at the same time we are afraid what we’ve got isn’t enough for ourselves, which is what the forces of division and acquisitiveness want us to believe. Or we are being told that those around us simply want to take everything from us. We live bombarded by lies like that every day. But as Episcopal preacher Barbara Brown Taylor said, “Disillusionment is the loss of illusion—about ourselves, about the world, about God—and while it is almost always painful, it is not a bad thing to lose the lies we have mistaken for truth.”

We will close our worship today with one of my favorite hymns I remember from my childhood. Its simplicity is only outshone by the truth that simplicity bears.

We are ONE in the Spirit, we are ONE in the Lord,
And we pray that ALL UNITY will one day be restored.
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

And then, especially in this vitally important election season, and in this vitally important stewardship season, I know I am grateful for this verse:

We will work with each other, we will work side by side
And we’ll guard each one’s dignity and save each one’s pride
And they’ll know we are Christians by our love.

Love that expresses itself in caring for others, and working to bring that to fruition. In working to create a society that seeks the greatest good for the greatest number of people, that is grounded in unity rather than division and in love rather than hate.

To walk in love together, so that we change the world by that collective effort, and by that love.

To serve the world, rather than to seek power for our own ends. To challenge exploitation or neglect of the weak or the sick or the ignorant or the oppressed.

To challenge the idea that a few people are meant to lord it over the vast majority of others.

To refuse to get comfortable with the idea that some people deserve to suffer based on who they are or what they’ve done or where they’ve come from, and get numb to that very real suffering with the idea that we can’t do anything about it rather than admit we “won’t” do anything about it, no matter how small.

Our challenge is to BE the church in the world, each and every one of us as individuals, in what we say and what we do, and how we live, in serving the many people who need help or protection or community, so that we can make the case that the church IS visible and relevant in the issues facing the world today. That our paradoxical values are exactly what is needed in offering hope where there is despair, a willingness to engage in the questions alongside people rather than pretend we have all the answers, in being willing to love those who are ignored or overlooked or isolated, in willing to serve rather than to be served.

Being Christian is not about power—except for the power of love. It’s not about forcing others to live as we —it’s about living the best life we can live because that in and of itself is a blessing. May we declare ourselves able to share that baptism and that cup.

And they’ll know we are Christians by our love. Love in action, love in the cause we stand for—the redemption of the world through the power of love.

Amen.

Readings:

Job 38:1-7, (34-41)
Psalm 104:1-9, 25, 37b
Hebrews 5:1-10
Mark 10:35-45

Preached at St. Martin's Church in Ellisville MO on October 20, 2024.

Image: The Red Vineyard, Vincent Van Gogh, 1888

Spirits in a Material World, Sermon for Proper 23B

Back in the 1980s, MTV ruled the airwaves. The empowerment of youth was a constant theme, and gender expectations were often turned on their heads: Cyndi Lauper took a song written for a male voice and laughed her way through “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.” Robert Palmer took a song written for a female voice and stood in a Savile Row suit in front of mini-skirted writhing supermodels pretending to be his backup band claiming innocence as he crooned to a randy date “I Didn’t Mean to Turn You On.”

Dire Straits, a group of decidedly unglamorous blues rockers from England, created the theme song for MTV with the song “Money for Nothing,” about a real-life conversation their frontman heard between two deliverymen in an appliance store.

As the workers watched music videos, they resent their existence delivering expensive machinery to yuppies and consider that their career choices might be a dead end. Instead, they moan after the glamorous life of a pop star:

“Look at them yo-yos
That’s the way you do it
You play the guitar on your MTV
Aw, that ain’t working
That’s the way you do it
Money for nothing and your chicks for free.”(1)

And we all laughed (including the programmers at MTV itself, as they put the video into heavy rotation)—because we heard our parents complain exactly the same thing to us every hour that we had MTV going full blast.

And the queen of MTV was Madonna, who, like many female stars of the visual medium, had started out as a dancer until someone plopped a mic in front of her, lacquered her blond hair in crunchy waves, and cut all the hems, sleeves, and necklines off her outfits. Her life was filled with glamour and provocation—especially viewed with alarm by our parents. She wore religious jewelry, and her name brought to mind the mother of Jesus, but she sang about NOT being a virgin. She was a fashion icon, a middling actress, a serial dater, and provocateur. She reinvented herself more often than a Transformer, which back then was a just a silly cartoon out of Japan.

We were a generation raised on sarcasm, visual puns, and irony.

And one of Madonna's most ironic videos that we adored came out in 1985, when she rolled out a new song called “Material Girl.” In the video, instead of wearing the torn dresses and studded leather accessories that previously had been her costume, suddenly here she was gliding down a staircase from a soundstage straight outta Marilyn Monroe’s hit film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

A chorus line of handsome men in Armani tuxes fawningly danced around her as she sang of only dating men who could keep her in the lap of luxury as she is showered in cash, furs, and diamonds. The video was a story within a story, however, because in the reality off the set, she claims to be unimpressed by the expensive gifts of her suitors. The rich guy backing her video figures this out, and instead woos her with wildflowers and drives her off the set in a broken-down truck he buys off a handyman. And off they drive into the soundstage of true love.

The truth is that we DO just wanna have fun after working all day, especially with a sharp dressed man. We DO want exciting dates. And we DO live in a material world.

But the irony is that we also long for meaning, for purpose, and for real community and connection.

This is hardly a new issue. And talking about it without irony is fraught with tension.

We see this in our gospel reading today. Jesus continues, as he has for the last many weeks, toward Jerusalem and his passion and resurrection, and his disciples are struggling to accept the harshness of the fate that is awaiting him. The time Jesus and those disciples lived in was just as much a material world as now—only with lots fewer option. The vast majority of people in Roman-occupied Israel were abjectly poor. Then there were a few wealthy people. Nothing in between. On top of them were the Roman overlords, sucking the country dry of anything of real value.

Most of Jesus’s followers fell into that category of the working poor. Fishermen, handymen, day laborers, most of them. They knew what suffering was. So, the idea of a messiah who would suffer and die seemed hardly reassuring.

In the midst of Jesus repeatedly explaining how this would lead to the kingdom of God, today we have the sudden appearance of a rich man running up and kneeling at Jesus’s feet. The man runs up and kneels before Jesus. He then addresses Jesus with an honorific, one that gets brushed aside. Jesus is not swayed by flattery. What must I DO, the man asks, to inherit eternal life? How, in other words, can I add eternal life to my stack of possessions? Jesus responds by listing things NOT to do—did you notice that? Don’t cheat, don’t lie, don’t steal—he even throws “don’t defraud” in there even though that’s not actually from the 10 Commandments.

As Jesus so often does, he draws people into not just recalling the law but drawing out what it means to follow that law in practical terms.

Here we have a call story—but one that fails, at least at the time. The rich man wants “eternal life,” but uses language thinking it is something he can acquire or inherit. In other words, he wants the benefits of discipleship but doesn’t understand the transformative nature of it.

Notice also how many times Mark notes that Jesus looks directly at those in this story. Looks, and looks deeply, really seeing into who they are. But for the first time, in Mark’s gospel, we are told that Jesus not only LOOKS at the man but sees him and loves him.

LOVES him.

You only lack one thing, Jesus says. And that is to follow me. Jesus is telling that man, you are weighed down by your chasing after material wealth. It is standing in the way of committing to being a disciple. And the man, understandably, is shocked at Jesus’s suggestion, and goes away sadly.

This seems like a harsh, even frightening tale if we see ourselves as that wealthy man. Do we really have to give up EVERYTHING to follow Jesus?

But perhaps we can admit there is some truth in the idea that the word “possession” has two meanings. The first is something that we own. But there’s another meaning especially if we are familiar with scripture. Possession can also mean those who are controlled by some powerful force—that kind of possession. And even though we no longer believe in demon possession that kind of possession and that dislocated us from living a well-rounded life certainly is a huge issue even now. If we are totally honest with ourselves, we know that there are times when our possessions and the drive for more of them, possess us and prevents us from committing completely to loving relationships with each other, and with God.

But if ever there was a story for our time, this might be it. Think about the culture of the late 20th century that we grew up in. The drive for acquisition ruled—and yet also was often subtly critiqued, even in popular media. For every “Material Girl,” there was an also a reminder that we were also souls, or “Spirits Living in the Material World.” For every Ferris Bueller resentful that he didn’t get a car for his birthday, there was his friend Cameron Fry who’s emotionally controlling father loved a sports car more than his own son. For every Gordon Gecko tycoon crooning “greed is good,” there were workers fighting against totalitarianism in Poland by proclaiming their solidarity with one another.

Countless preachers in today’s America preach that Jesus is a wish-fulfilment genie: simply say you believe, and you shall be saved. No mention of following Jesus, of emulating Jesus, or sharing in the ongoing work of Jesus for the sake of the world—just say you believe, check off that box, and continue on with your life of chasing after worldly success, fortune, fame, whatever.

This creates a disconnect, making one’s own salvation the point of claiming to be Christian. This acquisitive mindset actually subverts the gospel good news and Jesus makes that clear here: to be able to follow Jesus, we have to let go of the things that stand in the way of our full commitment. That could be wealth, as in the case here. Or it could be anger, resentment, selfishness, or any of a host of other things.

In our gospel passage, the man’s possessions themselves are not the issue. His clinging to them over the call of Jesus to follow him IS the issue. And a little part of him knows it. Because for all the stuff he owns and that owns him, he still KNOWS there is something missing. That is why he approaches Jesus to begin with.

And so, we must ask ourselves: what things stand in the way of our own commitment to really following Jesus? How can we grow deeper into trusting God with all that we have and are? We ARE, after all, spirits living in a material world. And we can use those material things for good and still keep a roof over our heads. We can walk in love with Jesus and support the mission and ministry of Christ in a world that desperately needs him. We can do both.

One of the greatest things I learned in my teaching career is that not everyone is ready for the lesson you have prepared at the same time. Some kids were—but others might require more than one opportunity. And I think that’s another thing we can take away from this story. Nothing says that the man doesn’t come back later, and that he doesn’t come to a healthier balance between his obsessing with possessions and the loving call of Jesus to be able to follow him in action as well as in labels.

So perhaps we can use this uncomfortable story to reflect on all the times Jesus has called us to deeper relationship, but we have drawn back. What things possess us and hamper our deeper relationship with God and with each other? It could be cynicism. It could be fear. It could be our too-busy lives and never allowing ourselves a chance to sit in silence with ourselves, much less with God. It could be, like our friend Job, a string of unimaginable losses that make us wonder if God is punishing us, when we know God doesn’t act that way.

Jesus sees us and looks on us with eyes of love. He sees that we have filled our hands and our hearts with things that do not truly satisfy. May we hear his call to be brave enough to free ourselves from the fears, hesitations, grievances, and, yes, sometimes, stuff that doesn’t truly satisfy. May we release those things from their hold over us, so that we may be free to follow Jesus more fully, starting today.


Amen.


Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church in Ellisville, MO om October 12-13, 2024.

Readings for Proper 23B
Job 23:1-9, 16-17
Psalm 22:1-15
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:17-31


Citations:
1) Mark Knopfler and Sting, "Money for Nothing," from the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms, 1985.

Image: Madonna and dancers from her video for "Material Girl."

Walking in Love With Creation: Sermon for the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi (transferred)

A long time ago, almost 800 years, there lived a man named Francis. He left behind family and wealth to become a repairer of churches, a deacon, and a friar who organized a new religious order based on humility and poverty in solidarity with the poor.

One day Francis was walking in the woods, traveling from one city to another as he recruited people to join his order. Above his head he heard hundreds of birds in the trees, singing and cheeping and doing all the bird-like things they could, with gusto. He heard in their joyfully noise a message of praise to God. The story goes that he called to the birds, and they flew down from the trees and gathered about his feet, and he began preaching to them:

“My little sisters, many are the bonds which unite us to God. And your duty is to praise Him everywhere and always, because He has let you free to fly wherever you will, and has given you a double and threefold covering and the beautiful plumage you wear.

“Praise Him likewise for the food He provides for you without your working for it, for the songs He has taught you, for your numbers that His blessing has multiplied, for your species which He preserved in the ark of olden times, and for the realm of the air He has reserved for you.

“God sustains you without your having to reap or sow. He gives you fountains and streams to drink from, mountains and hills in which to take refuge, and tall trees in which to build your nests. Although you do not know how to sew or spin, He gives to you and your little ones the clothing you need.

“How the Creator must love you to grant you such favors! So, my sister birds, do not be ungrateful, but continually praise God, who showers blessings upon you.”

It is said that the birds listened attentively, and that when he dismissed them to fly away they formed the shape of the cross in flight. He later joked that animals were more attentive congregations than many human ones he had encountered.

His love for creation as a testimony to the loving provision of God for all of us is something too many of us still have difficulty embracing. We live in a time when our planet is warning us about our lack of care for creation, whether through benign neglect or through outright exploitation of the Earth and her resources. As we look at the historic flooding caused by Hurricane Helene in places that had thought they were safe from climate change, and as we watch the formation of more, even stronger storms in the Gulf of Mexico and all around the world, some of us still view nature as an adversary to be conquered than a gift and revelation of God’s abiding love for us and for all God’s creatures.

This last week (on October 4, actually), it is our tradition to commemorate the Feast of St. Francis of Assisi, who is remembered as one who extolled the integrity, the oneness of creation, one who saw all of the universe, from the Sun and the Moon to even the tiniest creatures, as giving praise to the God and Creator of All. Our readings today reflect that spirit of the joyful honoring of creation that Francis taught.

Francis believed that creation revealed the glory and wisdom of God. There are stories of Francis moving earthworms aside so that he wouldn’t step on them, or of him saving a town that was being terrorized by a ravenous wolf by calling the wolf brother and treating it with such tenderness that it laid down at his feet and ravaged the town no more. No animals, from crickets and bees to falcons and pheasants, were too insignificant that Francis couldn’t see God’s generous love to us in the example of each creature.

In our gospel today, Jesus reminds us of the tender care he offers us, urging us to lay aside the striving of he world and lean into our trust in Jesus, whose burdens upon us are insignificant to the fears and anxieties of the world. In our passage from Psalm 121, we hear the voice of God reassuring us that God’s care and love for us never pauses, never ceases. And in our reading from Job, God lists wild animals not known in the ancient world for their wisdom and nonetheless asserts God's providential care. That generous, abundant provision is not just for domestic animals, as we humans sometimes emphasize, but on all creatures, especially wild beasts that roam free Jesus tenderly reminds us about the joy and beauty present in the most common things we tend to overlook in our distracted race through each day. In calling us to trust and awareness of all for which we could be grateful, Jesus calls us to live in each moment joyfully, bathed in God’s love.

Because it is so hard to fully live into each moment, we instead too often fall into the trap of feeling isolated from each other. That false sense of isolation leads to anxiety like Jesus was addressing, and that anxiety fools us into believing we are separate from one another. We see the effects of this belief right now in our city and throughout society. Anxiety and fear and isolation make us forget God’s promise of love and care.

Yet God’s promises to us are written into the very bonds of love that bind us to God, to each other, and to every living thing on the earth. That covenant that God established after the Great Flood was not just with Noah, but with both humans and all creation, plants and birds and all that lives, which, some scientists maintain, includes our very planet itself as a living organism, if one takes a broad enough view. The covenant story we heard from Genesis reminds us that creation is a full partner in our relationship with God, and gives God praise and glory.

Jesus reminds us that God’s love restores and renews us, so long as we center ourselves within each moment enough to feel that shared love. It is there in the joyful songs of birds whose welcome sings the morning into being. It is there in the lowliest, tiniest wildflower growing in a roadside ditch, turning its hopeful face toward the sun.

Instead of worry, Jesus calls us back to mindfulness, an important spiritual practice in many world religions. And not just any mindfulness, but the mindfulness of remembering how fully and thoroughly God loves us and through that love binds us together. Coming back to awareness of our unity with all living things is a wonderful place to start.

We see here in this anecdote that Jesus was a keen observer of the beauty of creation, and that he had spent time savoring the awareness of the birds singing and building their nests, and the sight of wildflowers—what some might call weeds—cloaking the fields and hills in beauty in a myriad of colors, all the hues of the rainbow mentioned in our first reading. Both the rainbow and the raiment of the most humble flower are signs to us of the promise God maintains with us and with all creation to love us and care for us always—not just in the distant past but right now and forever. Every living thing reminds us that God’s wondrous love bears the world into being and sustains it in every moment.

Luckily, we are also reminded of God’s love especially in the love and faithfulness of our companion animals, whose steadfast joy in us models to us the love and devotion we ourselves are made to exhibit toward our God.

At our pet blessing yesterday, those who gathered spoke of beloved canines and cats, fishes and rats—these creatures who show their devotion to us unswervingly. The very presence of all these living creatures in our lives remind us of God’s love. They remind us, also, that we are charged from the very first story in scripture with service to the earth and all the living things upon it and within it. Even the smallest creature has been placed on Earth to support the web of life on this planet, from humans to honeybees, and none is dispensable—not even wasps or mosquitos, who, I have to admit, are not my favorites. But we spoke of the ways that our pets’ devotion reminds us of the unswerving devotion and trust God’s abundant love elicits from us when we contemplate all the things for which we can be grateful in each day we live.

As we begin our stewardship campaign this year, I ask that you consider the way in which God has knit us into this huge community of creation, and consider the generous blessings of the natural world that make our lives possible. But I also ask that you remember how much the amazing community we have formed right here at St. Martin’s also finds ways to testify to God’s abundant love and grace each and every day, and ask each of you to recommit to supporting it

Our companion animals’ devotion exemplifies the devotion we owe God. Their love exemplifies the love we are called to bear for each other, no matter our differences.

St. Francis reminded us that all of creation participates in demonstrating God’s love—the same lesson Jesus taught us today in this gospel passage from Matthew. Each creature is a reminder of God’s blessing to and love for us. It is that holy and limitless love that binds all things together, just as mutual forces of gravity and attraction hold galaxies and stars in their courses as they dance through space. They walk alongside us as we seek to walk in love as Christ loved us, and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.


Amen.

Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO on October 5-6, 2024.

 Readings:

Job 39:1-18

Psalm 121

Matthew 11:25-30

Image: "God's Fool," statue of St. Francis in Sts. Peter and Paul Cemetery, from Naperville, IL

Labels and Clubs: Sermon for Proper 21B

I bet we can all remember when we reached certain milestones in our lives. I remember when I was finally tall enough to ride Zingo, the wooden roller coaster at Bell’s Amusement Park in Tulsa. I remember when I was finally old enough to join the Bluebirds. I remember when I won a part in the high school play. I remember when I auditioned for and landed a spot in the Tulsa Youth Symphony. Each of those milestones provided me with a sense of belonging. Each enlarged my sense of identity: grown-up kid, not a baby. Member of a group of girls who shared my own interests in the outdoors and admission into a sisterhood that worked in service to others. A budding performer. All of these were labels I embraced joyfully.

Labels can also be limiting. I remember being told I could not use the computer in my high school classroom or play baseball with my neighborhood pals because I was a girl. I remember being told that I would never go to college because we were a working class family. I remember being told that I was just a dirty little Okie kid one time when I visited California.

Jesus draws our attention to labels in today’s gospel passage. First, John expects praise for shutting down someone who was doing the good work of healing people, but were doing it without the proper credentials, you might say. John claimed these do-gooders were not members of the "Jesus Club." Then Jesus addresses people within the community he is forming who act in ways that negate his call to guide and care for one another—who may be actually leading others astray, and doing that in Jesus’s name. Jesus’s name is in danger of becoming a label, not a way of living and doing good.

Funny how we still see these same questions about labels and identities today. In fact, arguments about identity are some of the most dangerous in our common life together. Labels and affiliations can be used as clubc against one another. But it shouldn't be that way.

The question of doing things in Jesus’s name is an interesting one to the original hearers of this gospel passage. Remember, the original followers of Jesus did NOT use the word “Christian.” When the movement finally got big enough to need an identifier, the term was simply “those who belonged to the Way,” according to Acts 9:2. Acts 11:26 states that the first time disciples of Jesus were called “Christians” was in Antioch in Syria, one of the most ancient churches outside the actual Holy Land.

The deeper meaning about the transition from the first term to the second is subtle, but telling. Notice that the phrase first used starts with the description of belonging—reminding us that Jesus formed a community of believers to help support each other, and to support each other specifically in ministering to the world around them. When the name began to collectively shift to “Christians,” the implication is that Jesus’s followers are now specifically bearing his Name and acting in his name. This placed a heavy responsibility upon them to bear that name with humility and with grace, keeping in mind that a life lives publicly as a Christian, then and now, is in itself a profound testimony about Jesus and his Good News.

The question, therefore, in the first section of the gospel is whether the kind of example Christians are called to set as followers and embodiers of Jesus’s teaching can be found outside the Christian community. Have we ever known people who, while not professing the name of Jesus, or even while professing no faith at all, have nonetheless embodied the kind of lovingkindness and humility that Jesus calls his followers to model? Of course. Think of it: without Mahatma Gandhi, there might have been no Martin Luther King, Jr., whose study of Gandhi’s nonviolent resistance to British colonial rule in India informed his own passionate commitment to non-violent protest, what king called the use of “soul force.” It is here that we should note that Gandhi’s first name was not “Mahatma” but Mohandas. Mahatma is an honorific which means “great-souled.”

In our first reading, Queen Esther reveals that she is a Jew-- a label that could have gotten her killed under the scheme of her husband's advisor, Haman. She claims that label and is wmpowered by it.

Reflecting on our gospel story, the disciples are worried about someone doing God's work without having the official label of "follower of Jesus." And yet, haven't many of us known about the opposite, who do evil and hide it under the name of Christ?

I imagine we all have known people who do great harm to Christianity by loudly professing to be Christian yet whose lives reveal a shocking lack of compassion, empathy, loving-kindness and reconciliation. Some of the meanest people I have known in my life, angry, bitter, judgmental, grievance-filled prunes, have professed to be good, upstanding Christian people—and loudly proclaimed it too, all the while treating others, especially vulnerable people, with contempt and carelessness.

There’s a church sign I once saw on a marquee: “I’d rather be with a kind atheist than a hateful Christian.” That hurts that it can be true. Bbutwe'cve all known people like that, haven't we?

I wonder: is it the label that is so important, or is it the action? 

Is it truly even possible to be a Christian and be hateful? 

Can someone call themselves “Christian” if they refuse the inner transformation that accompanies truly giving one’s life over to the love of God as we experience it in the life and example of Jesus, who is God in human flesh? Why would God bother to take on a human life at all if it was not to show us how to live a God-centered life?

For much of the last many millennia, at least in the West since the removal of prohibitions on Christianity by the Emperor Constantine, the title “Christian” has been associated with power and influence. Funny how a once-ragtag group of some of the least influential people in their own backwater region of the Roman Empire suddenly shifted to being powerful and connected.

Even here in America, which was founded during the Enlightenment, and which, thanks to Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, officially proclaimed the separation of church and state as a governing principle, persons seeking influence and elected office usually did not do well if they proclaimed themselves to not be Christians. Heck, it took this country until 1960 to elect a Roman Catholic to the presidency, and friends, that WAS an actual point of contention. During the Cold war, since refusal to believe in God was associated with communism, proclaiming oneself a Christian became an unspoken prerequisite to higher office. Churches were places not so much where people were formed as disciples but as places where people were seen, and where they networked and conducted business deals—kind of what the golf course is now for much of corporate America.

In too much of the world, attaching the label of “Christian” to someone or something went from being less about taking on a discipline of service and self-denial, and more about opening up the doors of the corridors of power. And so it has been and so it has remained—until very recently. Christianity, too often, has become a club—and remember that the second meaning of the word club is “a tool to beat someone with.”

I was recently told by a person online that if I didn’t believe that each and every word in the Bible should be interpreted as he did, that “I could not be a Christian.” He was pretty mean about it too. I gently reminded him that, fortunately for both of us, that wasn’t his decision to make. Tra- la- la! You are NOT the decider!

Labels DO matter—and undoubtedly they matter too much. Labels are, after all, a way of stereotyping—and that becomes a way to not see the human being bearing that label. We are now in the midst of one of the most bitter partisan contests in our lifetimes. And we are at a dangerous point in our country where labels have gotten to where they matter more than the belief systems they are supposed to represent. We look for a single letter after a candidate’s name, we talk about whether they are “red” or “blue,” and then we get blinded to what those letter and colors actually stand for. Worse, too many of us have now doubled down so that anyone on the other side is not just someone with whom we disagree, but someone who is immediately assumed to be “the enemy.”

And so what is Jesus saying to us right now? Maybe it’s to look beyond the labels that divide us. Look, there it is: right there: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”

Wow—what would it be like if we took that line right there to heart?

Jesus reinforces this viewpoint in the last sentence we heard today as well: Be at peace with one another.” Not a fake peace, where we refuse to discuss the things that matter. Not the false peace that avoids engaging with those different from us and closes us off from each other. But a real peace, in which we don’t worry about labels and dividing us one from another, but coming together in good will and open-heartedness, putting down our clubs, and instead working together for the common good. Looking for the way we can build each other up rather than oppress and cast out others.

Especially in the days and weeks and months ahead, may we all try to let our lives testify to the goodness of God, and welcome anyone who truly beings about healing and reconciliation, no matter what labels they do it under. Let’s be for each other, rather than against each other. And even though there are plenty of other things to do each Sunday, let’s recommit, as this new program year begins, to show up for each other, here and throughout the week, and for our own deepening of our faith in Jesus. Putting aside all that we use to divide us or to let ourselves off the hook for doing the work, as James has been reminding us this last month.

No labels. No clubs. Just community.


Amen.

Preached at St. Martin's Episcopal Church on September 28-29, 2024.

Readings:

Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
Psalm 124 
James 5:13-20
Mark 9:38-50

Following the Instructions, Following Jesus: Sermon for Ascension Sunday B

We are in the midst of a season of transitions. We've had some several changes in our own parish in the last few months: beloved parishioners whose health required them to move closer to relatives; others who have had hospital or rehabilitation stays; parishioners who have passed away. I will preside over my uncle’s burial tomorrow, and this summer we will lay my brother to rest. Yet there are also wonderful transitions happening all around us. We also have new members who have come to join us, as well, or who are seeking baptism, and we are blessed by their presence and their commitment to walking the path of faith alongside us.

For those of you who are students, or who have children or grandchildren who are students, there's prom, which my sister helped supervise at her school district last night, and I hope she is soundly asleep right now. And after prom, of course there are graduations. My dear friend Pamela's daughter Annabel graduated last week with her juris doctor degree from the University of California at Davis, and I look forward to seeing how she will use her knowledge of the law to make the world a better place, for I am certain that that is her intention. There are high school students preparing in a few short weeks to head off to college, and college students who are preparing to come home for the summer.

And thus, we also face some practicalities: the taking apart and putting together of dorm rooms and apartments and living spaces. So I have a question: Who here among us has ever attempted to put together a piece of furniture from IKEA, or from any foreign country in which the instruction manual, if you have one at all, reads as if it was written by a Martian?

I asked this because our daughter Lauren recently regifted us with an IKEA bed that we had originally bought for her when she was living in Chicago. She gave us this bed about a month ago. It may surprise none of you to know that this bed is still sitting in pieces in one of our spare bedrooms. Why is it in pieces, you might ask? Because even though we made sure that we had every piece that we needed for the bed’s structural integrity, we forgot about the special tools, and we forgot about the instructions. And since it has been years since we last put that bed together, we no longer have the memory of how we did it the first, second and third times we assembled it.

We've got all the pieces we need, but it is possible we may spend the rest of our lives trying to put this bed together. And every time I walk past the open door of that bedroom and see that bed in pieces, it occurs to me that it is the perfect metaphor for our lives as disciples, made especially more poignant on this Ascension Sunday.

In our readings today we hear Luke's two accounts of Jesus bodily ascension into heaven. Now, unfortunately, we get them in reverse chronological order. As you may know, the author of Luke wrote both he gospel, and then a sequel: the Acts of the Apostles. Both of these documents were addressed to a person Luke called “Theophilus,”-- which is a symbolic name that literally means “Lover of God.” So both of these writings are addressed to us.

With a strict economy of words, Luke's gospel account ends with reminding us that Jesus, one last time, explained all the scriptures to his followers, and then took his disciples to Bethany, a town two miles outside of the gates of Jerusalem, said farewell, and ascended into heaven. In the gospel account, they respond to this shocking event with great joy, worship, and witness in the Temple.

Apparently, Luke was dissatisfied with this terse description, for he begins his sequel with that same event, but in more detail. The account in Acts specifies that Jesus’ post-Resurrection sojourn among his friends lasted 40 days, 40 always being a significant number of periods of learning and transition in scripture. We also hear Jesus’s instructions not to leave Jerusalem just yet, and actually informing us, his readers, about political questions the disciples had for Jesus. Then Jesus ascends on a cloud, while his friends and followers stood there gaping and staring up at the sky for so long that God finally had to send two angels to nudge them out of their shock. Our reading closes with the implication that the angels are telling them to get to work.

With that, the incarnation of Jesus in human flesh is complete here on Earth. Yet Jesus’s bodily ascension into heaven is a pivotal point, because he continues as both human and divine, seated at the right hand of God. In ascending, Jesus brings his embodiment into the community of the Trinity. Human experience, human joy, human suffering, now enter into the very existence of God. When Jesus intercedes with us when we pray, for instance, he does so as the Son of God and the Son of Man.

But Jesus’s ascension is also a huge turning point in the lives of those who are disciples of Jesus, who call themselves followers of Jesus, for those who were yet living to witness it and those of us in the centuries since who have only second-hand accounts like the reading from the Book of Acts to go by. What does the Ascension mean for us today, symbolically and practically? And that leads us to the heart of the matter for us to consider yet again: why was it necessary for the Son of God to become incarnate as Jesus of Nazareth in the first place?

Over the first few years, when people expected Jesus back at any moment, the answer was very particular and specific. Jesus came to take our sinful nature upon himself in a transaction: Jesus removed our sins supposedly so that we could go to heaven when we die—heaven, where, Jesus reminds us in a gospel passage commonly read at funerals, God’s mansion has many swelling places and Jesus goes to prepare a place for us. And that was fine—when, like children, Jesus’s followers depended upon Jesus as their teacher and their savior to do everything for them.

Yet even during Jesus’s earthly ministry, he repeatedly insisted that his presence among us was NOT merely transactional. In fact he came to demonstrate to his followers that God’s love for us and for creation is NOT a transaction, that god was NOT keeping a great big ledger book ticking off every unkind thought that entered our heads. One of the greatest concepts Jesus emphasized was that we can’t earn our way into salvation. The insistence that grace, not merit, brings us within the embrace of God was a core teaching of Jesus—one that unfortunately gets drowned out too much in the loudest parts of Christendom, where depictions of hellfire and brimstone are excellent ways to distract us from the WORK we as disciples are called to do right here on Earth.

Jesus ascends bodily into heaven because HIS specific work here was finished. That may shock us—how can it be, with all the wars, and disease, and suffering, and genocides, that Jesus’s work on Earth is done?

The answer is simple: because Jesus’s work was NEVER just transactional. Jesus’s work was transformative, and relational. ALWAYS. And the transformation he most centered on was with US. To teach us how to LIVE, and live with each other. Not how to continue on in the ways of the world turning a blind eye to the need around us. The transformation Jesus calls us to continue as his followers is now, because eternal life is NOW.

The heart of Jesus’s ministry on earth was not to teach us how to die, but how to live. Specifically, Jesus’s own life among us was meant to show us how to live a God-centered life—and most of the time, that didn’t simply mean spending time in worship—in fact, during his life Jesus dissuaded his followers from worshiping him. Instead, he called his disciples to FOLLOW him—to emulate him as they could. Jesus insisted that a faithful life was not about separating people into camps of the worthy and the unworthy, sinners, and saints, but to go out and DO as Jesus did in the world to the best of our ability. To both embody Christ’s love and compassion in ourselves, and to see Christ’s face in others. Jesus gives us both the proper tools, and the complete instructions.

The fact that much of the world claims not to see that same love and presence is an indication that we, as Jesus’s followers and witnesses, need to take Jesus’s instructions to us more seriously. The instruction manual has been right there all along. It’s up to us now. But luckily Jesus is still with us, for he is still a Risen, living Savior, calling us to keep learning, to keep growing, to keep being symbols of hope and reconciliation contrary to the tug and pull of human systems based on oppression, exploitation, and callousness that washes over our modern societies in all their structures. The instructions are simple: to oppose systems and leaders who build their power and influence on oppression, dishonesty and contempt, and instead embody God’s love for the life and hope of a better world.

The Ascension reminds us that Jesus’s instructions were quite clear, and that Jesus’s Ascension has real significance for us as disciples. Those instructions, as we were reminded last week, were, are, and aways shall be based on one commandment: LOVE. Not as an emotion, but as an action and a way of life, not just for those we know but for those we don’t know, not just for those WE decide are worthy but for everyone, especially those we would like to turn our backs upon. Turning our backs on people or on the care of the world is NOT God’s way—it is exactly the kind of thing Jesus repeatedly told us to STOP doing.

The Ascension removes our training wheels and anoints us to continue Jesus’s work of reconciliation and healing in the world, of witnessing physically in all we do to the goodness and love of God. Jesus has given us all the knowledge we need, and modelled for us a concrete example of what a God-centered life, a fully human life, entails. That life is 99% witness and living and loving as Jesus did, which is the hard but oh so rewarding and transformative part of a Christian life. Worship, as important as it is, means nothing if it does not energize and empower us to build our lives around Jesus’s instructions.

Christ has risen, and has ascended! Alleluia! Now we get to follow the instructions and BE Christ for the sake of the world and for the sake of living lives of wonder, purpose, and transformation. Thanks be to God!

Readings:

Acts 1:1-11 

Psalm 47

Ephesians 1:15-23

Luke 24:44-53

Preached at the 505 and the 10:30 am main service of Holy Eucharist, May 11-12, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

God's Concerto: Sermon for Easter 6B

This weekend, Bill and I were able to hear Yo-Yo Ma perform live with the St. Louis Symphony. Together, they gave a stirring performance of Sir Edward Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E minor. Bill and I and hundreds of others in the audience sat enthralled as we watched the master cellist bring to life the beauty of this musical composition. Because this was a special, gala performance, Bill and I were not in our usual seats, in the second row right in front of the cello section, which is my favorite spot, as someone who played cello starting in 4th grade, through youth symphony and a college music scholarship myself. Instead we were all the way over on the very edge of the fifth row at the rear of the first violin section.

But no matter. Perhaps this was even a blessing, since if I had been sitting right in front of the great master, I might not have been able to take my eyes off Mr. Ma to perceive the entire experience. There were moments I could even close my eyes and focus on the skillful weaving of sound and silence, of melody and harmony, of soloist and ensemble, of individual sound and combined chords that is music.

We humans seem driven to break things down into their constituent parts. And that is natural—that’s the way we learn how some things happen, and gives us an appreciation for even the smallest of things. And at first, my attention flitted from one sensory detail to another.

From my vantage point, my lack of ability to focus on the great Yo-Yo Ma visually, allowed me to experience a profound truth: the performance of a concerto, or any piece of music, is never about just one thing. Music starts with sounds—and silences. It is timeless yet held together logically in each specific moment. In between those sounds and silences there are sounds that are fortissimo, and sounds that are so soft you miss them. There’s the great master, playing the melody on his cello—and then that melody is handed off or harmonized or even held in opposition by the players of other instruments in the orchestra and the appreciation of the audience. 

Every single person on that stage is vitally important for the piece to flower into its fullest potential beauty—and since this is a world-renowned orchestra, everyone from the concertmaster to the last chair of the second violins to the lowly timpani player who spends 95% of his time counting silently are in their own rights incredible at their instruments and contributors to the whole. All this is held together by the depths of knowledge and the sensitivity of the conductor, who is himself actually being led by the soloist and his interpretation of the piece. Each performer is also a listener, responding to those around them. The production of the piece of music is collaborative, unified, organic, bound within a set duration of rhythm and time yet transcending those limitations to lodge in the imagination of all who receive the gift of that music.

We see the same truth from observing the soloist himself. He holds against his body a hollow wooden box, upon which wires have been fastened and tightened in specific ways. The length of those wires has been expanded by the addition of a stick upon which the strings can be shortened through pressure upon them at specific places along the stick. The great soloist pulls sound from that box through the use of his fingers, a bow made of wood and horsehair made grippy with cured tree sap. But the precise placement of the hands—perfected through thousands of hours of practice, produces nothing without the strength of the arms, the firm planting of the feet and gripping by the knees, yes, as well as the prodigious memory (for he used no sheet music for either his performance nor for his encore), but also, most importantly, with each breath and beat of his heart. 

Yet the training and control of the gift of his body is not enough, for—and this is clear with such a great artist as Yo-Yo Ma—the very beauty of his spirit and soul are just as much engaged in the depth and richness of the music he makes: his humanity, his generosity, his activism in the promotion of understanding between cultures and world peace. This humanitarianism is evident in the choice of this concerto, which itself was created by the composer as a plea for peace after the horrors and aftermath of World War I. Yet even if we are unfamiliar with the context of the particular piece of music being performed, as we attend carefully to the swirl of sound around us we begin to make sense of it, to discern certain phrases or themes that get repeated, and that expand through variation and expansion to form the whole, just as a vine is inseparable from branches, just as the wave is inseparable from the ocean.

What if we applied this organic understanding as appreciators of music as a metaphor for our common life together—our common life together, that itself makes music possible? Then the sounds and the silences produced in those brief moments on Friday night become holy reminders of God’s image in all of us, of the wonders of the human soul and imagination in seeking to create things of beauty like concertos and believing that the sounds and silences in music can actually call us to contemplate our mutual humanity and our place within the web of creation. 

The same hands that drew music from their respective instruments were being employed in the cause of beauty and peace, rather than division or hatred, as is implied in today’s psalm that insists that creation is joined in a concerto of praise and love for and by God. And the magic is, even though music works in partnership with time, even though it has a beginning in time and an ending in time, the beauty and sensation the music produces lingers long after the last note has faded away. All works together for the sake of the whole, and in so doing, becomes far greater than the sum of any of that concerto’s constituent parts.

It is, my friends, the same thing with our lives together in this world. Perhaps you have been sitting here wondering about why this preacher is droning on and on about a classical music performance and engaging in flights of fancy making everything perhaps more complicated than it has to be. Perhaps you have been sitting here during the last few minutes looking at the readings for this Sunday and wondering how many MORE times we can hear the word “love” repeated as often as the notes in a concerto during our readings? I mean what is this-- week three already of hearing the word “love” ricochet throughout the week’s chosen passages? Isn’t this constant harping on this theme indicative of a profound lack of imagination on the part of the lectionary developers and the authors of our scripture passages?

It is at this point I want to urge ourselves to step back a bit from the atomistic dismissal or cheapening by repetition of that word “love.” With our hearts, let us look to the whole, instead. Let us be led to begin to recognize the wonder and glory of the beating heart of the gospel that has been being presented to us by the various passages we have been reading and hearing not just in this season of Easter but throughout the scope of our lives as human beings and disciples and members of the ensemble of creation, if we attend properly. 

These last weeks we have been being presented with the core theme of the ministry of Jesus upon this Earth—a ministry that seeks to reveal to us who God is, and, getting a small glimpse of that, who that then makes us? Jesus became incarnate and lived and worked and healed and especially LOVED in order to get us to lift our eyes from our own narrow perceptions and divisions to instead focus on something as richly profound as the beauty, the glory, the unity of our existence. There is a beautiful theme or melody running through our lives that we are often too fragmented, too distracted, and yes, too afraid to acknowledge unless we do have it repetitively placed before us, over and over again.

That word “love” is a single note in the concerto that has been shot through the universe since God originally sang all that is into being.  Our psalm for today begins with the command, "Sing to the Lord a new song, for god has done marvelous things." Yes we are called to sing just as God sings – God sings this universe, this planet, this human family and all that lives and moves into being with the same lyricism and joy in the creative act that we get a glimpse of in the face of a musician who is a master at their craft. Moving from the parts to the whole of the gospel, and perceiving it organically as we seek to perceive any work of art or music leads us to one theme that rings out repeatedly, handed off and shared in the various genres of scripture—in stories, in analogies, in prophecies, in proverbs and parables, in poems and songs, and in bald-faced statements.

We may think that the end and purpose of religion, of being religious, is to love God. And some people emphasize what they describe as the “loving God” part so that they can somehow de-emphasize the loving each other part. Like that is less-than. Like that can be separated from the melody and theme of our existence as beloved children of God made in God’s image. But God insists that the way we love God best is to love one another.

We may look at the imperative of the gospel, and desperately try to find the limits of the demands God places on us through love. We may want to slice and dice and divide things into parts, or worse, “sides” that are in competition with each other. 

But the life of faith calls us into the truth of the Mobius strip that I used in the children's message a few moments ago. The Mobius strip shows that the two loves we are called to embody-- love of God and love of each other-- is actually ONE love. Trace your finger around a Mobius strip, and you see the two "sides" are all one continuous loop.

There is neither beginning or ending for God’s love for us, and we are called and created to love as God loves. Like a Mobius strip, in the faithful performance of our lives lived in concert with God and each other there really aren’t two sides of existence, the worldly and the spiritual, the sacred and profane, the Godly and the human, that compete with each other. There is just ONE side that flows together infinitely. There is one melody that binds all existence together, and calls us all to play our parts mindfully, intentionally, and collaboratively, understanding that we are all part of the whole, conducted by God.

God IS love, our readings insist again. God is relational. There is no personal love of God without lending your heart, your body, your very essence to The theme, the melody, is this: “love one another.” That commandment is repeated more than any other in scripture. It repeats in those specific words, that boldly and that insistently, fourteen times between the gospel of John and the letters of John. And when we take a step back, we see Jesus insistently MODELLING that commandment in all the spaces and actions in between. Love one another. Love one another. Love one another. Love one another. Love one another.

Love one another when they are similar to you. Love one another if they are wildly different from you. Love one another whether you judge them worthy or not. Love one another in words, but love one another in action. Love one another loudly when the world seeks to silence love, and love each other in the silences and the gaps when all that comes at us tries to drown out this thread, this melody that holds all things together. Love one another when it costs you nothing, but love one another even when it means laying down your life for another.

We humans are certainly driven to break things down into their constituent parts. We get too caught up in breaking things down into sides. Once again, this is how we try to make sense of all the data and sensation coming at us. But when we use that breaking down of things from the whole to the part in order to place limits on this foundational obligation in the life of faith we reduce the beauty of God’s love within us into discordant notes and cacophony, rather than the demandingly beautiful coherence and unity of playing our parts within God’s concerto of creation.

Readings:

Acts 10:44-48

Psalm 98

1 John 5:1-6

John 15:9-17

Preached at at 505 on May 4, 2024 and the 10:30 am Holy Eucharist on May 5, 2024 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville.

All We Need Is Love: Sermon for Easter 5B

In 1967, human technology created numerous marvels. One perpetual favorite was automobiles, which I have been thinking about as we prepare for our car show and barbecue festival after this service. Car and Driver magazine’s fourth annual readers’ poll that year was revealing: the Corvette Sting Ray was voted overall favorite car—no surprise there. The Ford Mustang 390 GT, which had only been produced since 1964 and a half, won for the third consecutive time in its sport sedan division- “sedan!” Ha ha ha! The Porsche 911S with six cylinders and 180 horses, won what one might call the “pocket rocket” category. The VW Beetle 1500 reigned supreme in the imported economy car category.(1)

And speaking of Beatles, the little band from Liverpool bearing a different spelling of that name were doing quite well for themselves.

The year of 1967 also had numerous challenges and crises. The Vietnam War was fully engulfing southeast Asia, and Martin Luther King began making speeches about how that war especially impacted the poor and oppressed both in Vietnam And its neighboring countries, but also the poor and working class in America whose sons and daughters provided most of the troops. The Arab-Israel conflict erupted into open hostilities again that year in the so-called “Six Day War.” The island nation of Cyprus was being fought over by Turkey and Greece. American cities erupted and to civil unrest over continued issues in America with racial segregation and oppression.

Also that year, a producer named Aubrey Singer with the British Broadcasting Corporation had an innovative idea. Now that geosynchronous satellites made it possible, the idea was promoted to create a live broadcast from nations across the globe promoting peace and positivity. The broadcast was to be entitled our world. In the end 14 different national broadcasters were involved in the production after member nations from the Soviet Union backed out in protest over the six day war. Nations were encouraged to offer their best and most hopeful content. Britain was lucky that it had those boys from Liverpool, and so the Beatles were commissioned to create, produce, and perform live a song for this broadcast. 

With just a few of their friends, including members of The Rolling Stones, Crosby Stills and Nash, and Small Faces, they produced a little ditty that could not be misinterpreted, according to the words of their manager Brian Epstein. It went like this:

“There's nothing you can do that can't be done;
Nothing you can sing that can't be sung;
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It's easy!
Nothing you can make that can't be made;
No one you can save that can't be saved;
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time;
It's easy!

All you need is love. All you need is love.
All you need is love, love.
Love is all you need.”(2)



Our readings today remind us that John the Beatle’s message overlaps heavily with John the Evangelist’s message. Both were trying to address the question of how we live our best life—our most authentic life. And our readings today remind us that they both arrived at the same conclusion: Love IS all you need. John the Beatle just added catchy music. But the message remains the same. Love is all we need. And all we need is love.

In both our epistle and our gospel from John the Evangelist, we see two words used repeatedly: “love,” and “abide.” “Abide” is an old word; in the Old English, it means to remain, to wait for, and to dwell. As the word developed over time, its meaning broadened, to mean to live with and remain in the service of someone. The repeated use of these two words reminds us that, in God, the way of life IS the way of love.

What does this mean for us? To put it plainly: As children of God, we are made to love, to abide in love, as present as each breath we take.

To “abide with,” as we see it here, is to open ourselves to trust in God’s love, fully, and without fear. It is to be able to depend upon God completely, as in the words of the old hymn, number 662 in our hymnal:

Abide with me: fast falls the eventide;
The darkness deepens; Lord with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.(3)

Our epistle states it clearly: “God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.” And we hear almost the same phrasing in John 15:4-10, much of which is covered in our gospel passage today:

Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

This is where we turn from our personal relationship with God, to our relationship with others. We aren’t meant to simply absorb God’s love for ourselves, but to reflect that love so that our lives are a testimony for the world Jesus came to save through love.

We are made to abide with God, and open ourselves so that God abides within us, but that love also changes our orientation from an inward direction to an outward direction. We are not meant to try to keep that love for ourselves, but to share the joy that it brings us with those around us. Through this sharing, God’s love becomes most visible to the world, especially to those who do not know God. Again and again, Jesus reminds us that love is the core of our mission in the world.

The full expression of the love we experience in God empowers us to fully participate as partners in the life of God. That’s what we mean when we live fully into the Eucharistic life we celebrate together, all of us together as ministers of Christ. Every time we gather around this altar, we are empowered to act as Christ’s body in the world. All for love.

And that love is not a passive thing, not just an emotion or an attitude. The love we are called to embody is rooted in action. Concrete, deliberate, self-giving action that is the foundation of the life that is fully human and fully faithful, which perhaps could also be pronounced “faith-filled.” Because it’s also important to remember that the love that draws us to be sustained by God also calls us to sustain each other. The Christian life is not a life lived for ourselves, but a life lived FOR God and FOR others. If we are to abide in God, we are made partners with God in the work of bringing God’s creative power and love alive for those who do not yet know it.

Our readings and our experience with God through Christ convince us of this: that sharing in the love of God is sharing in God’s very being. That means that what we do and how we love or do not love will be the most visible means for those who do not know God to see God in action.

As Christians, we ARE the branches of Jesus, the true vine. That’s a heady responsibility. We are made branches of the vine through the love that God has for us through Christ, who is fully human and fully God all at once. Jesus is the Incarnation of God in human form to try to show us the way in which we are called to go to get back to our true natures as children of the Most High.

How do we live a good life—an authentic life? By understanding that Jesus calls us to remake our lives so that we are focused outside ourselves, but that in conceding everything that we believe matters, we gain all that actually does matter. It starts with turning rank and privilege and honor and prerogative upside-down. It starts with embodying kindness when we could respond with disdain; listening when we could turn away; honoring the dignity and worth of those society casts aside. And it starts with not kidding ourselves that this is easy. We begin this journey of love by understanding that we can’t take the hand of Christ until we unclench the fists and the hearts that world sometimes scares us into making, and relax into the light and love of God, for our sakes, yes—but for the sake of the world as well.

The greatest way the world will come to know Christ as we who call ourselves Christians do is through our actions. Our actions, especially as Christians, as those who “wear” the name of Christ out into the world, is often the only testimony the world has as to who Jesus is.

This is the challenge facing us each day. What, exactly, DO our actions tell the outside world about who Jesus is, and how Jesus forms and shapes our lives?

Jesus shows us, again and again, that we understand who we truly are as children beloved of God by loving beyond ourselves. By loving each other, and thereby loving God. Love is the ultimate act of bravery and faith, because it requires so much of us.

And yet it requires so little of us, because God has given us God’s utmost first. God has made the first move for us, by holding nothing back. That’s made clear when we hear this: “God’s love is revealed among us in this way: God sent God’s only Son into the world so that we might live and know God through Jesus.”

It is God’s love first that draws from us the response of love. Just as the song says, “There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done.” In calling us to abide in love, God doesn’t ask us to do anything we aren’t made to be capable of.

Jesus embodied love in action. We are therefore called and charged with the holiest of charges, to do exactly the same, in our speaking, acting, and the way that we see each other. God’s abundant love and mercy, that we taste and see and share here around this altar, does not exist merely to comfort us, but to fill us to overflowing so that we then show the world in our own actions a light so lovely that those around us want with all their hearts to know that light too.

God is love. God abides within us. And that love- for God and for those we encounter—is all we need to help heal the world.

Amen.

Readings:

Acts 8:26-40

Psalm 22:24-30

1 John 4:7-21

John 15:1-8

Preached at the 505 on April 27 and the 10:30 principal Holy Eucharist service on April 28, 2024, at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Citations:

1) "1967 Readers' Choice Winners: The Fourth Annual Car and Driver Readers' Choice Winners!" May, 1967, at Car and Driver magazine, https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a15143564/1967-readers-choice-winners/

2) "All You Need is Love," written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, performed for the first time on the Our World broadcast, June 25, 1967.

3) "Abide With Me," lyrics by Henry Francis Lyle.

Image is the cover for the single of "All You Need is Love, which ended up being included on the Yellow Submarine album.

The official video for "All You Need is Love:"

One Love, One Flock, One Shepherd: Sermon for Easter 4B (Shepherd Sunday)

The Good Shepherd, watercolor, Yu Jiade, Shanghai

Every year, on the fourth Sunday in Eastertide, we hear special readings centered on the images of sheep and shepherds, and this year is no different. And although shepherd are mentioned 118 times between the Book of Genesis to the Book of Revelation, we get the strongest passages of them repeatedly. I mean if I were to ask you where you remember shepherds being mentioned in scripture, I imagine many of you, or even people who do not attend church regularly, who probably mention the opening line of Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.”

Now I also am pretty certain, that, beside Miss Sherrie, and my spouse who grew up in the midst of the Navajo Reservation, not many of us would have much experience with actual sheep or lambs outside to the petting area in the children’s section of the St. Louis Zoo. And if you have ever been there, you might also have noticed that while sheep and lambs are certainly cute and fluffy, so adorable when they are being bottle or hand-fed, they produce some incredibly pungent poo even in an outdoor area. So see? They really are just like us humans. We can be cute, but we also can be mighty stinky and prone to head butting when things make us feel anxious.

The metaphor of a shepherd is also meant to remind us of two central claims echoed in our readings today especially our gospel and epistle, intimately related as they are: That at the heart of the life of faith is living in community, held together by the love of God and the love for each other. Herders of animals all know—and usually so do the herdees, themselves, that if the flock scatters, those on the fringes are easier to be picked off by predators, either animal or human.

Jesus called his friends and followers into community that was meant to be a tight as any well-tended flock. But the ingredient that was meant to hold the flock together was not fear or animal instinct. No, it was something infinitely better: love. But not the words. Love in action, as our readings, especially our epistle, emphasizes.

The Good Shepherd, mandala, Jhoti Sahi, India

It’s hard to be the kind of sheep that puts the needs of the flock first. It goes against our natures, sometimes, and our instinct to only think about now rather than the future. But Psalm 24 makes some specific comforting promises and uses images of comfort and encouragement.

The first 4 verses of Psalm 23 has the psalmist, and therefore us, imaginatively, on a journey with God; verses 5 and 6 depict God as a host at a wonderful feast of blessing. The image is of a dedicated, loving shepherd leading his flock into a fertile, verdant valley where the flocks can rest and have all needs fulfilled in peace and security; even if wolves lurk in the shadows, the sheep know that the strong hand of their shepherd will drive away any danger. Note that the right pathways have taken the sheep and their shepherd through the “valley of the shadow of death.” We are not promised that we will not face trials, even as we seek to follow God. The right pathways God wants us to follow may lead us into danger, even crisis, yet if we remember that God is with us and is OURS as well as we being God’s we cannot be afraid. Verse six uses covenantal language to emphasize that God’s promises are trustworthy and the foundation of all blessing.

Expanding upon this, our epistle continues imaginatively to pick up the theme.

Here’s the heart of it for me: “Let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action.” We cannot do everything. But we can do something. Every day.

Some scholars believe that the first letter of John is an expansion upon the messages in the gospel of John. Ironically, 1 John 3:16 expands upon John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him would have everlasting life.”

Yet what does it mean to have everlasting life? Is this promising us that if we believe in a personal Jesus, and avow our belief, we will get to live in heaven forever? Many, many people believe exactly that. Yet to me, that makes faith a transaction: I do X and God saves me from eternal torment. How can you really “have something if you only have it after you die? Yet that is what millions of people believe. But when you study scripture broadly, which a lectionary forces us to do, you begin to see a broader message emerge: having the eternal life is a present tense statement.

Yet what if it is our actions right now that bring us either eternal bliss and peace or eternal torment? What if we realized that every time we treat with contempt, or callousness, we are wrapping around ourselves what songwriter Aimee Mann reimagined via Charles Dickens as “Jacob Marley’s Chain?”

Well, today a friend told me this sorry tale
As he stood there trembling and turning pale
He said each day's harder to get on the scale
Sort of like Jacob Marley's chain

But it's not like life is such a vale of tears
It's just full of thoughts that act as souvenirs
For those tiny blunders made in yesteryear
That comprise Jacob Marley's chain

Well, I had a little metaphor to state my case
It encompassed the condition of the human race
But to my dismay, it left without a trace
Except for the sound of Jacob Marley's chain

Now there is no story left to tell
So I think I'd rather just go on to hell
Where there's a snowball's chance that the personnel
Might help to carry Jacob Marley's chain (1)

Ms. Mann makes a more subtle point than in Dickens’s fable: the chains we ourselves forge from our actions (for even refusing to act is a choice) are carried with us in this moment, right now, often as regret and guilt. Mann’s 4th verse regarding to preferring hell speaks to another difficulty of our modern times—that people who think themselves righteous often have little sympathy for those whose consciences are burdened by things they have done. It is often the other acknowledged “sinners” who have the most sympathy for their fellow sinners, and may help to carry those chains of regret and guilt, forged by being … human.

But both Dickens and Mann agree that we can unmake them, too. Rather than move from the negative, our scripture reading in this epistle points us to a brighter truth, rooted and grounded in the love that we have to declare our allegiance to if we are disciples of Christ: God’s love abides when we choose to let go of our chains of anxiety, and instead take care of each other, without wondering about whether they are “deserving”--or not. The first letter to John reminds us that God so loved the world, even when it did not and sometimes does not deserve it—and so we are drawn to behave in the same way if we allow God’s love to overflow within us, if we allow our cup to run over. We are reminded that our shepherd will supply our need—and that our shepherd expects us to help with that mission of abundance, total trust, and compassion, for we are, as St. Teresa of Avila reminded us, God’s hands and feet in the world. Love in action.

Some people have a hard time saying the word “love”—and some people cheapen it by throwing it around as a descriptor for anything pleasing: “ I love this hairdryer! I love this fabric softener! I love these shoes! I love this toilet paper!” My dad had a hard time saying “I love you” in words—at least where he though anyone might hear it. But he showed me he loved me in a million ways.

Or the time there was an ice storm while I was in high school, and at dismissal everyone’s cars were coated in an inch of solid ice—everyone’s cars except mine—as he came before he went to work on the afternoon shift and spent thirty minutes de-icing and opening my car, turning on the engine so it could warm up as he scraped the ice off of every window and door in case I needed to take some friends home who didn’t have daddies that could do that.

In the end, of course, love is about selflessness, not about self-gratification. It IS about being willing to lay down your preferences and comforts in the name of making the beloved’s happiness a guiding goal of your life and relationship. Consider in your own life which is better—to hear someone say “I love you” when their actions show nothing but self- involvement, or to not hear the words but to know that someone will act to care for you, to feed you, to shelter you, and to help you bear your burdens.

That’s the kind of love Jesus in his earthly existence exemplified for us—and often for people who were considered less-than, or undeserving.

Let’s face it, we are not sure if shepherds actually sat around telling their sheep they love them. But they certainly cared for them, watched over them, made sure they were sheltered, made sure they had green pastures and still waters, and stood between them and the wolves and hyenas and thieves who often were just watching for the flock to scatter so they could scoop off the stragglers or the weak.

The command that we love one another in action and deed, not only in words, is not a contract, an agreement of tit for tat, that gains us everlasting life in exchange for mouthing a few platitudes while leaving our precious hearts and lives undisturbed. God’s love as revealed in Christ cannot be hoarded for our own benefit, just as manna cannot be stored, but each day we, like the Israelites in the wilderness, rise and trust that God has prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies, even when those enemies are us.

Lovelessness and loneliness are overwhelming too many people in our world right now. Yet just before our reading, at verse 11. John makes a concise statement: “This is the message you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. “

What does a modern application of John urging us to love one another in deed and action lead us toward? Perhaps to a reconsideration of the violence, contempt, and hatred that plagues human life all around the world and in our own backyards. In the verse immediately preceding our reading today, John claims that hatred is basically equivalent to murder.

The cornerstone for the Christian life is Christ, and Christ is rooted in love and mercy. Therefore, if we are truly aligned with Christ, we too must align our lives in truth and action to that imitate that same love and mercy in our own lives. As beloved sheep, and ourselves called to be loving shepherds, enacating love in the world. For God’s sake, and our own. So that we will proclaim one love, one flock, one shepherd.

Readings:

Acts 4:5-12

Psalm 23

1 John 3:16-24

John 10:11-18

Preached at the 505 on April 20 and the main service of holy Eucharist on April 21 at St. Martin's Episcopal Church, Ellisville, MO.

Citations:

1) "Jacob Marley's Chain," written by Aimee Mann, from her album Whatever, 1993.