Monthly Archives: March 2024

Baptism, Church Seasons & Holy Days, Faith, Sermons

Easter Sermon, March 31

This morning we get to celebrate the baptism of two of our members! Any day is a good day to get baptized. But Easter is a really special time to be baptized, because there are such close connections between Easter and baptism.

Jesus was baptized, by his cousin John, but in the Gospels he talks about his death as another baptism – something he has to go through, to immerse himself in. The word baptism comes from a Greek word that just means “to dunk in water.” So Jesus immerses himself in the waters of death – just like someone going down into the baptismal waters – and comes out, renewed. 

A lot about baptism is mysterious. It’s one of the things we do because Jesus told us to do it, so we ultimately just don’t know what it means or what it does. But that connection with Jesus’ death and resurrection is part of the Church’s understanding: that in baptism we die with Jesus, and rise to new life in Jesus. 

For the first Christians, Easter was when they baptized people – they’d prepare for baptism in Lent, like Kai and Safa have, and then be baptized at Easter, as part of a big celebration of resurrection and new life and joy. So Easter is a very special time for baptism! 

I read something recently about how Easter is kind of like baptism for the whole church. Orthodox theologian Alexander Schmemann wrote, “Even though we are baptized, what we constantly lose and betray is precisely that which we received at baptism. Therefore Easter is our return every year to our own baptism, [and] Lent is our preparation for that return… Every Lent and Easter are, once again, the rediscovery and the recovery by us of what we were made through our own baptismal death and resurrection.” 

So Schmemann is saying that over time, our commitment to living in God’s ways, our clarity about our belonging and belovedness as part of God’s family, gets dented and dimmed by life. 

And Lent and Easter offer us an opportunity to come back to those things, to recover and rediscover, every year. We can’t get baptized again, but we can immerse ourselves in the heavy days of Holy Week and arrive at the fulfillment of Easter. I love that idea – that today isn’t just Kai and Safa’s baptismal day, but it’s a baptism day for all of us who are Kai and Safa’s baptismal community. 

One of the ways we act that out is by joining our baptismal candidates in recommitting ourselves to life as God’s people. Every time there’s a baptism and sometimes when there isn’t, we reaffirm the Baptismal Covenant – a responsive version of the Creed, and then those five questions where we respond, I will with God’s help! Those five questions were written for the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, and have become very beloved and important to people. They offer a good list of practices that will help us stay close to God and each other and ourselves, and be the people God calls us to be for the world. 

But there’s another part of the service we might not know as well, because it goes by fast, and because only the candidates and their families and sponsors say it, not the whole congregation. That’s the Three Renunciations and the Three Affirmations. You can see them on your Sunday supplement – in the first part of the baptismal liturgy. A bunch of questions that start with “Do you”! 

The Renunciations and Affirmations are very old; they seem to go back to pretty early in the Christian practice of baptism. Basically, before you step up to be baptized, somebody speaking for the church asks you: Do you RENOUNCE evil? … RENOUNCE is a fancy word that means, I’m done with this! I won’t have anything to do with it anymore, ever! 

And then they ask: Do you choose to follow Christ? Are you turning away from this one thing, and turning towards this other thing? … 

I want to talk a little more about those Renunciations. There have been many versions, over 1800 years or so. In the version in our prayer book the renunciations move from the cosmic, to the world we live in, to our own interior life: 

Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God? 

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?… 

Sometime about 300 years after the time of Jesus, a church leader named Cyril of Jerusalem described what happens at a baptism – kind of explaining what it meant to somebody who has been recently baptized. Here’s part of what he said: 

“Then they told you to you raise your hand, and you renounced Satan, as if he were actually present…. This shameless, impudent demon, the source of all evil, chases you as far as the fountain of salvation. But the demon disappears in the waters of salvation.

That is why you were ordered to raise your hand and say to Satan, as if he were actually present: “I renounce you, Satan,  wicked and cruel tyrant!” … 

And you asserted: “Henceforth, I am no longer in your power. For Christ destroyed that power by sharing with me a nature of flesh and blood. He destroyed death by dying; never again shall I be enslaved to you. I renounce you, crafty serpent full of deceit! I renounce you who lurk in ambush, who pretend friendship but have been the cause of every sin! I renounce you, Satan, author and helper of every evil!”

I think we should consider adding all that! It’s pretty exciting. 

Now, listen: I don’t know if I believe in Satan – the Devil – or not. But there is sure lot of badness in the world. People who do hurtful things – and not just by accident but on purpose. 

There are bad thoughts and ideas and words and forces and systems. Things that shape people’s lives; things that get into our hearts and minds, that hurt us and hurt other people and hurt the world. There’s not really any question that there’s a lot that’s bad and hurtful – a lot that is evil – in the world. 

That’s one thing people mean when they talk about Satan or the Devil: a way to put a name on all that badness and the ways it causes pain and suffering. 

That is what we’re renouncing, when we renounce Satan. 

Schmemann writes, “To renounce Satan thus is not to reject a mythological being in whose existence one [may] not even believe. It is to reject an entire worldview made up of pride and self-affirmation… which has truly taken human life from God and made it into darkness, death and hell. And one can be sure that Satan will not forget this renunciation, this rejection, this challenge…  A war is declared!”

Cyril of Jerusalem says, “When you renounce Satan, you break off every agreement you have entered into with him, every covenant you have established with Hell…. Draw strength from the words you have spoken, and be watchful. For your adversary, the Devil, prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” 

In baptism, we choose sides. We state our intention to be people who are for good, and against evil. 

I saw a wonderful Facebook post earlier this week about how it’s OK to go to church even if you don’t believe. Alex Griffin, a Canadian Anglican priest, wrote, ”As a society, we are grieving and afraid as our world breaks before our eyes, but there is so much pressure to keep going and pretend that everything is fine. The rituals of church—and especially the rituals at church over the [days of Holy Week]—hold space for that grief…. 

If you’re looking for a space to grieve and be comforted, it’s okay to come… It probably won’t change your life, but you may just find the moment of solace that you need.” 

I know that for folks outside of church or on the edges of church, it can seem like all those people in the pews must have something rock-solid and clear inside of them that they call Faith. And getting from here to there might seem impossible.

The reality is, of course, that for folks who show up at church regularly, faith can be messy and murky. There are plenty of people in any congregation who are here because they feel drawn to something they don’t feel they really understand – because they’re looking for comfort and connection in community – because they want to believe, even if they feel unable to make the leap. 

There are also people here with a strong, clear faith – but even for folks like that, it’s kind of like the weather, you know? The sun is always shining, but there are plenty of hours and days when we can’t see it. And even when we can: sometimes its light creates great beauty; sometimes it feels harsh or glaring…. or faint and inadequate. 

But one of the things we can be clear about, together, even in seasons when it’s hard to see the sun, is being a community that is for good and against evil. Haphazardly, imperfectly, always learning more about our own complicity and ignorance, always working to build our capacity to show up for what matters in our community and the world… 

But: Striving to be on the side of hope, wholeness, and delight. 

Years ago, a member of our congregation – long since moved away – told me that that’s what’s important about St. Dunstan’s for him. That when the world gets heavy – politics, climate, human pain, there’s so much – when it all really starts to weigh him down, one of the things that eases the burden is knowing that he is part of this group of people that are trying to be helpers. 

I think that’s one of the most important things about church. And that’s not a step away from God at all. Right from the very first covenant between God and Abraham and Sarah, God says that God’s people are blessed to be a blessing. Called, chosen, set apart to be for the good of others, and the world. 

Wait, one more thing: Mark’s Gospel has a really strange ending. You might see some more stuff tacked onto the end of Mark’s Gospel in some Bibles, but this is how Mark ends his telling of the good news of Jesus Christ: “And they said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.” The women who come to tend Jesus’ body receive the good news of the resurrection – and they run away. Of course! How strange! How terrifying! Nobody’s going to believe them! 

And yet: We know that’s not how the story ends. We know, because the Gospel of Mark exists. So, the story got told.  

I really love this kind of open-ended, paradoxical ending. Because it invites us to wonder: How did these women, Mary and Salome and Mary, find their way through fear and confusion and grief, to being able to believe that love is stronger than death? And then to sharing that news, even if a lot of people thought they were stupid or delusional? 

And that question very quickly becomes a question that isn’t just about these women in Mark’s Gospel, but about me. About us. 

And about whether those spiritual forces of wickedness, those powers that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God, are going to hold us bound by fear, by what’s sensible and rational and normal, or whether we can find the boldness to claim mystery and possibility and joy. 

[In just a moment/Later this morning] we’re going to baptize Safa and Kai. But first, let’s take just a moment to do what the prayer book doesn’t invite us to do: To say the renunciations together. Because there is something very powerful about not just claiming our positive intentions – as we will in the Baptismal Covenant – but also reminding ourselves of what we turn away from, what we reject and resist. 

It’s traditional in many places to face West for the renunciations – and to hold out your hand. You can try that out if you like! … 

When a baptismal candidate answers these questions they say, “I renounce them!” Because it’s their day to make that choice. But let’s say “We renounce them!” Right now – because this is work we continue together. 

Beloved of God! Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?

We renounce them! 

Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?

We renounce them! 

Do you renounce all sinful desires that draw you from the love of God?

We renounce them! 

May God sustain us in these intentions, and bless, console, and empower us, as a people of courage, love, and joy, today and always. Amen. 

Worship

Bulletin for Sunday March 31st, 2024 Zoom Service

9AM ZOOM ONLINE GATHERING: WE USE SLIDES THAT INCLUDE MOST OF THIS INFORMATION, BUT SOME PREFER TO PRINT IT OUT AND FOLLOW ALONG ON PAPER!

The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda:  .

THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…1
1. Print it out!

2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).

3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window.

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Homily, Palm Sunday

Before we continue into the Passion Gospel, I want to offer a brief reflection on the Palm Gospel. Why are people waving palms at Jesus? Why are we waving palms at Jesus? 

I don’t know when it became a custom to cut palm branches and wave them as part of a celebratory procession. But it’s described quite clearly in the first book of Maccabees, written maybe 150 years before the time of Jesus: “[The people entered Jerusalem] with praise and palm branches, and with harps and cymbals and stringed instruments… because a great enemy had been crushed.” (1 Macc 13:51). And then in Second Maccabees, the people use palms to honor their hero: “Carrying ivy-wreathed wands and beautiful branches and also fronds of palm, they offered hymns of thanksgiving to [the one who had purified their holy place].” (2 Macc 10:7). 

That all sounds a lot like what happens in the Palm Gospel, right? So: it’s a thing people did, to celebrate a triumph or honor an important leader. And we know from the writings of a Christian pilgrim named Egeria that by the 380s or so, Christians in Jerusalem were observing Palm Sunday with a procession waving palms. So, fairly early on, the church started to not just tell these holy stories at this special time of year, but to act them out, to some extent. 

Why palms? The simple answer is: Palms were around. There are various kinds of palm trees that grow all over the world. (Did you know that palms, as a family, are very old, and that palms are more closely related to grass than to other trees?) 

But you don’t see a lot of palms in Wisconsin, right? Generally speaking, palms like warmer places. 

So what happened when Christianity moved out of warmer parts of the world, to places where palms didn’t grow… and before you could order palms shipped to your church in Wisconsin? 

A friend shared some research on Facebook a few weeks back that got me thinking. I learned that in Ireland, where palms were not readily available, branches from local trees like yew, fir, spruce, and cypress were used. Those are all conifers – probably because in Ireland as in Wisconsin, Easter often arrives before our deciduous trees have leafed out! 

Palm Sunday became known as “Yew Sunday”… and one historian recalled that in his childhood in Ireland in the 1830s, yew was always called “palm.” That seems to have been true in parts of England as well. 

In other parts of Europe, Christians used willow wands instead of palm branches, when decorating for Palm Sunday. One source from 1530 describes “Palm” as “the yellow that groweth on wyllowes.” 

Has anybody ever seen a pussy willow, the kind of willow with the cute little gray fuzzy buds on it?… In some parts of Germany that was called “palmkätzchen,” meaning “palm kitten”! 

And in Finland, on Palm Sunday, children dress up as Easter Witches and go around to houses in their neighborhood trading decorated willow branches for candy! How does that sound?… 

This is all very charming but I think there’s something deeper here. The only really honest Palm Sunday I’ve ever had is the year Phil and I were in Uganda, and people WERE just cutting palm branches from the palm trees surrounding the church – as the crowd outside Jerusalem would have done, in Jesus’ time. 

I wonder if we went wrong somehow when we all started importing palms from Florida or South America for our Palm Sunday observances – spending money and resources to bring in something that doesn’t belong here. As if what kind of branches we were waving was important to how well we tell this story. 

Some churches have shifted away from palms to use whatever is local, and it’s not a new thought for me either. But I’m thinking about it a little more deeply this year, for both ecological and theological reasons. 

Ecologically speaking: It would make a very small difference if St. Dunstan’s stopped ordering palms that have to be shipped and refrigerated, using fossil fuels, to get them into our hands. But it would make a difference. 

Theologically speaking… It seems to me that when we go out of our way to use palms in our enactment of this story, we are treating them as a prop, like in the world of theater. When you’re preparing to perform a play, if the play calls for a sword, or a lion, or a palm, you come up with a sword, or a lion, or a palm. (Though if this were REALLY theater, we’d probably make some nice sturdy cardboard palms we could use again and again!) 

But what we do on Palm and Passion Sunday isn’t theater. Even though we have people reading lines, telling a story together with their voices – even acting out parts of it. 

It is close to theater. But it’s something else – in ways I’m struggling to put into words. Partly it’s that we are all participants, not audience, even though only some people read the voices. Partly it’s because this isn’t a story that some of us offer to others; it’s a story that belongs to all of us, that encompasses all of us. Partly it’s that, while many kinds of stories carry deep truth, this story makes a particular claim to truth, for us – on us. 

So. I wonder. I wonder if we would be entering the story more fully by using sprays of the yew and cypress and spruce that grow gladly on our church grounds. Maybe we could develop a custom of a spring pruning, the week before Palm Sunday.

Listen: If you’re thinking, but I *like* the palms, please know: I don’t want to shame anybody for feeling some resistance to this idea. I decided to order the palms, this year – and every previous year!  

And I understand the appeal of tradition, our attachment to what is familiar, what reminds us of childhood. I actually quite miss the long palms we used to order before we, along with many other churches, shifted to fair trade eco-palms a few years ago. I have happy memories of folding and plaiting those palms during long Passion Gospel readings. 

If this were a light decision, we would have made it already. 

But maybe we can think about it, today and over the coming months, and decide together before the turning of the year brings Palm Sunday around again, whether we’d like to root our annual encounter with this story in our ecology and climate, our place, our lives. To incarnate the story a notch more authentically. 

Because this isn’t just a matter of placing an order, or not. When I was talking about this a couple of weeks ago with Father John, he pointed out that when churches use the plants that grow nearby, then those plants carry that meaning for them all the time. Maybe we won’t start calling our arbor vitae trees “palms,” but maybe they will remind us of Palm Sunday, the things we do and say and reflect on, today and every year. And Father John reminded me that we have a word for that – for when something ordinary that we can see and touch every day, like the water of baptism or the bread and wine of Eucharist, becomes a container for the holy. We call it a sacrament.

I’d like to call this holy gathering onward into the gospel of the Passion. 

 

Shout out to my cousin Trelawney for sharing this wonderful research! Here are some of her sources… 

https://www.irishcultureandcustoms.com/…/PalmSunday.html

https://thefadingyear.wordpress.com/…/irish-folklore…/

https://pinguicula.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/palm.html

Worship

Bulletin for Sunday March 24th, 2024 Zoom Service

9AM ZOOM ONLINE GATHERING: WE USE SLIDES THAT INCLUDE MOST OF THIS INFORMATION, BUT SOME PREFER TO PRINT IT OUT AND FOLLOW ALONG ON PAPER!

The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda:  .

THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…1
1. Print it out!

2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).

3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window.LentVBulletinMarch1724YrBZoom

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April 2, Spring election

TUESDAY, APRIL 2 IS OUR SPRING ELECTION! Participation in our civic life is an important Christian responsibility. Please plan to vote for local and state officials, in addition to the presidential primary. There are also two important ballot questions on our ballots. For both, the Wisconsin Council of Churches election guide says, “A ‘Yes’ vote is favored by conservative and “election integrity” (meaning the most restrictive reading of voting laws) groups; “No” is favored by voter participation and access advocates.”  See the WCC’s full election guide, below.

WCCApril-Election-Bulletin-insert

Church Seasons & Holy Days, Sermons, Worship

Sermon, March 17

  1. Fifth Sunday in Lent
    1. Last “normal” Sunday in Lent
      1. Next Sun – Palm & Passion Sunday – we will read together the Gospel account of Jesus’ arrest, trial, and execution. 
      2. And that’s our gateway into Holy Week and all its rich and varied liturgies, arriving at last at Easter. 
    2. Gospel today points us forward – but I want to pause where we are, and reflect on how we’ve been worshiping together in Lent, and particularly on the Litany of Repentance that we use at the beginning of worship in this season. 
  2. The Litany of Repentance 
    1. Longstanding practice of the Church to begin worship in the season of Lent with some kind of “penitential order” – a piece of liturgy that invites self-reflection and offering up our sins to God. 
    2. The Prayer Book invites the use of the Decalogue – the Ten Commandments. You may have done that in other places, or here in earlier years. 
      1. This year we had them in the lectionary just weeks ago – the broadest outlines of the way of life that God asks of God’s people, during their wilderness journey. 
      2. Thou shalt not make any graven image, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not bear false witness, honor thy father and thy mother, honor the sabbath day, and so on. 
      3. Relevant and important, of course! But can also feel a little abstract. 
        1. I can always reflect on where covetousness, or bearing false witness, are part of my daily life.
        2. But I haven’t murdered anyone, or made any graven images, lately… 
    3. We use the Ash Weds litany. Written for this prayer book (the 1979) by one of the folks deeply involved in that project, Massey Shepherd. 
      1. I’ve been hearing it, praying it, it on Ash Weds my whole life, and I find it very powerful.
      2. Many of its biddings call my attention to the places where I fall short of my intentions, and God’s desires for me, in daily life. 
      3. Got permission from Bishop Miller some years back to use this at the beginning of Lent worship instead of the Decalogue. 
      4. Today I’d like to reflect on the Litany a little in light of the lectionary texts of the day. 
  3. When we pray the Litany of Penitence, and respond with recognition, acknowledgement, and repentance – visibly or inwardly – we are living in, living out, some small part of the vision of the prophet Jeremiah: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts… No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.” 
    1. This text seems to anticipate a change in the relationship between God and humanity, a movement from a law of external rules to a law of the heart. 
      1. A theme the apostle Paul develops in some of his letters, as he describes his own journey of faith. 
      2. But it is a mistake to map this onto the movement from Judaism to Christianity. 
        1. For one thing, Jeremiah is speaking 600 years before the time of Jesus. 
        2. For another thing: Judaism was also always intended to be a religion of the heart – and Christianity has often failed in the direction of acting like a religion of external rules. 
    2. Over the course of the Old Testament, God forms, and renews, covenants with God’s people over and over and over again. Again and again, God’s people fail, turn away, lose the plot; again and again, God calls them back, in anger, anguish, and love. 
    3. This is an unusually hopeful bit of the book of the prophet Jeremiah. Jeremiah spent his prophetic career trying to warn Judea’s rulers that they had strayed so far from God’s ways that they were facing certain doom. 
      1. That they were, in fact, about to be conquered, dragged into exile, with Jerusalem and the temple destroyed – which happens, in Jeremiah’s lifetime. 
      2. Punishment or natural consequences – splitting hairs…
    4. In today’s text God speaking through Jeremiah is addressing the reality that the Great Temple will be destroyed, and the Tablets of the Law, lost. 
      1. BUT that doesn’t mean God’s people will lose their connection, their covenant relationship, with God. Rather, they will need to take it in – and live it out – in new ways. To internalize it as a way of life that they can carry with them, in new places and circumstances. 
  1. I find it very powerful to pray the Ash Wednesday litany together, in this season. I sometimes wish we could keep doing it – though if we did it all the time I think we’d stop noticing it! 
    1. But during these Lenten weeks as we listen, reflect and respond, we are allowing ourselves to be formed by it, which is the point of liturgy, of praying in these set patterns week by week. 
    2. We hear, and receive, and respond, and become, slowly, incrementally, people who don’t have to be told God’s ways, but have them written in our hearts. 
  2. Let’s look, now, at this rather challenging text from the Gospel of John. 
    1. You may well wonder: Did those poor Greeks ever get to meet Jesus? It seems like they are left standing at the edge of the crowd, forgotten, as the story moves on. 
    2. Jesus’ response to Andrew and Philip isn’t as irrelevant as it sounds. Jesus hears the arrival of these Greeks as a sign that his earthly mission is all but fulfilled. 
      1. “Greeks” may literally mean people of Greek language and culture, here, but also, “Greek” is shorthand in the New Testament for any and all non-Jews – as in Paul’s famous text: In Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek. 
      2. The hope that Israel’s God will become known and honored among all peoples of the world has a deep history in the Hebrew Scriptures.
      3. An easy example: Song of faith from Isaiah that we sang in Epiphany: Nations will stream to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawning. 
      4. The Gospels understand Jesus as a next step in the fulfillment of that ancient hope. 
        1. In Luke, Zechariah sings that Jesus will be “A light to enlighten the nations.”
        2. Matthew tells the story of the magi, wise scholars from other nations who come to honor Jesus.
        3. And in John, these Greeks come seeking him – and Jesus understands this as a cue that it’s time to turn towards the cross, towards fulfilling the holy narrative that his followers will go on to share far and wide. The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. 
    3. Jesus continues: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”
      1. An echo of what we heard several weeks ago in the 8th chapter of Mark’s Gospel: “Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?” 
      2. The Greek word translated as life here isn’t zoe, which simply means life. In both Mark and John, Jesus uses the word psyche (psoo-kay), a many-layered word that can mean life-force or breath, or the soul as the seat of feelings and desires, or the essence of self apart from the body. 
        1. So, for example, when George Harrison sings about “the people who gain the world but lose their soul,” that’s  also a fine translation. 
        2. We’re not talking about literal physical life here, but a more encompassing sense of who you are and your way of living. 
    1. This is a hard teaching! The idea that if we love our life – if we try to save our life – we will lose it. 
      1. Let me make this personal: I love my life! There are things I don’t love about the larger world and the times we’re living in. But overall, I love the life I am getting to live, and feel grateful for it. 
        1. Do I think God doesn’t want me to love my work as the rector of St. Dunstan’s? My roles as daughter, wife, mother? Moments of deep sharing and growth with colleagues and friends; moments of rewarding, important work; moments of joy and wonder at God’s creation? 
          1. No, I think God wants those things for me. For us.
        2. I also don’t think Jesus really wants us to hate our lives. I think he’s using some poetic hyperbole here, as he does sometimes. 
          1. I’ve known folks going through seasons of hating their lives. It does not seem to me that that state of mind makes someone more open to God’s call. 
      2. What I think Jesus does mean is that we have to be open to laying things down, letting things go – possibly including BIG things –  to follow where God leads. That we should be careful not to love the good things in our lives so much that there’s no love left for other things – things at might lead us outside the comfort and pleasure of our lives as they are now. 
        1. One of the core messages of the Gospel – especially the part of the story we’re coming up on now – is that there are things worth giving up everything for. Worth dying for. 
          1. And if we want to be followers of Jesus, we can’t close the door on the possibility of being called into those moments or movements. We have to be people with the will and capacity to choose change, growth, transformation, that may take us outside our comfort zones.
    2. The reason I find the Ash Wednesday Litany so powerful is that for me, it does a great job of pointing out some of the places where my comfort with my life as it is, and various distractions and desires, could stand in the way of my discipleship – my readiness to go where Jesus calls me. 
      1. If I imagine my life as a kind of Venn diagram, the overlap of the circles is the stuff that God and I both care about, like doing my ministry here, with and for you, well; and doing my part to care for my loved ones. 
        1. Then on one side there’s the stuff I care about more than God does. In the language of the Litany, stuff like that intemperate love of worldly goods and comforts, and self-indulgent appetites and ways. And there’s always envy of those more fortunate than ourselves. 
        2. And on the other side there’s the stuff God cares about more than I do. Again in the language of the Litany: Indifference to human need and suffering. Lack of concern for those who come after. Prejudice and contempt towards those who differ from us. 
        3. I wonder which phrases resonate with you, hit you in the heart or gut, week by week? … 
        4. I wonder what dying to those urges, attachments, habits, could look like? 
        5. I wonder: If we could lay them down – plant them in the earth, like seeds – what fruit they might bear? 
    3. When we talked about this text at Zoom Compline on Wednesday evening, one of us wondered out loud: What life do you love? 
      1. I don’t how ready I am to lay down, set aside, or even substantially change my life, to follow where Jesus leads or calls. 
      2. But the Ash Wednesday Litany gives me words to reflect on some places where I love my life – where I might fight to keep my life as it is – for reasons that matter to me and not to God. 
      3. Growth in Christ means slowly, haltingly, year by year, expanding the overlap zone in that Venn diagram. 
  2. Which brings me – briefly, I promise – to a third text. Not Hebrews; he’s doing his own thing. But this morning’s Collect. It’s on the front of your Sunday Supplement. 
    1. The Sunday Collects are a set of prayers from the prayer book, assigned to each Sunday. They are tied to the church year – this is the collect for the fifth Sunday in Lent – but not to the lectionary scriptures, since that’s on a three-year cycle.
    2. The collects vary widely in age and, frankly, quality. Some of them are pretty boring. But I rather like this one. 
    3. It’s one of the old ones – there’s a version of it in a book called the Gelasian Sacramentary, from the 8th century or earlier. Thomas Cranmer translated it from Latin for the first English Book of Common Prayer in 1549. 
    4. Here’s the version from the 1662 version of the Prayer Book – quite similar to what’s in your bulletin today: 
      1. O ALMIGHTY God, who alone canst order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men, graunt unto thy people, that they maye love the thyng, whiche thou commaundest, and desyre, that whiche thou doest promes [promise]; that emong the sondery [sundry] and manifold chaunges of the worlde, oure heartes maye surely there bee fixed, whereas true joyes are to be founde; through Christe our Lorde.
    5. God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners…  I love the word “unruly” there – perhaps this wasn’t the original sense, but to me it has almost a playful feel. It makes me think of a classroom full of kindergartners who don’t want to do the assignment. Not necessarily bad or ill intentioned, just… unruly. And yes, my inner life feels like that sometimes! How about you? 
    6. Then the prayer says, “Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise…” This is such lovely, generous language to me – not punitive; not “Bend us to your will” or “Scare us into obedience.” Instead, the prayer asks for inward transformation into people who want what God wants, for ourselves, our neighbors, the world.
    7. I love the next part too: “that… our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found.” We’re not trying to avoid the fires of hell; we’re responding to the promise of holy joy. God’s purposes are for healing, renewal, goodness, and delight, and in this collect we pray to be able to see that and be drawn towards it. 
    8. It’s a good collect for Lent. It’s a good collect, perhaps, for daily or at least weekly use. 
    1. I prayed it on my own at the beginning of worship; let’s pray it together now… 
    2. Almighty God, you alone can bring into order the unruly wills and affections of sinners: Grant your people grace to love what you command and desire what you promise; that, among the swift and varied changes of the world, our hearts may surely there be fixed where true joys are to be found; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.  Amen.

The history of our collect: 

https://liturgy.co.nz/reflections/easter5

WorkingPreacher commentary on Jeremiah:

https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-in-lent-2/commentary-on-jeremiah-3131-34-21

Worship

Bulletin for Sunday March 17th, 2024 Zoom Service

9AM ZOOM ONLINE GATHERING: WE USE SLIDES THAT INCLUDE MOST OF THIS INFORMATION, BUT SOME PREFER TO PRINT IT OUT AND FOLLOW ALONG ON PAPER!

The link for the Zoom gatherings is available in our weekly E-news, in our Facebook group St. Dunstan’s MadCity, or by emailing Rev. Miranda:  .

THREE WAYS TO USE AN ONLINE BULLETIN…1
1. Print it out!

2. Open the bulletin on one device (smartphone or tablet) while joining Zoom worship on another device (tablet or computer).

3. On a computer, open the bulletin in a separate browser window or download and open separately, and view it next to your Zoom window.LentVBulletinMarch1724YrBZoom

Big Questions, Church Seasons & Holy Days, Sermons

Sermon, March 10

Read the lectionary texts here! 

The story of the bronze serpent on a pole, from Numbers chapter 21, is one of those weird stories from the Bible that generally get left out of the Sunday morning lectionary, our calendar of assigned readings. BUT Jesus refers to it, in the single most famous passage from the Gospel of John – possibly from any of the Gospels. So here we are. 

What is going on in this story? Last week we heard God give Moses the Ten Commandments that were to guide the Israelites in their way of life as God’s people. LITERALLY number two was: You shall not make for yourself an idol – that is, an object that looks like an animal, that you then worship or treat as holy. I guess if God tells you to break a commandment, you break a commandment??

This text is old, but the story behind it is much older. We can speculate a little about what experiences might underlie the story. God’s people have fled from Egypt and are in the wilderness, perhaps somewhere on what we now call the Sinai Peninsula. They have a long way to go before coming to the fertile region on the Mediterranean coast where they will eventually settle. And while they’re on this long, long journey, they have a run-in with some poisonous snakes. 

I expect many of us have been stung by a bee or wasp at some point. Maybe a few have even been bitten by a snake. Generally in these cases there’s a disagreement about who belongs where. 

I’ve watched a couple of seasons of the reality show Alone, where people who think of themselves as having good survival skills are dropped off in deep wilderness with minimal supplies, and compete for who can hang on the longest before tapping out or being pulled out for medical reasons. 

Both seasons I’ve watched, the contestants are in serious bear country. And while – spoiler! – there hasn’t been a dangerous bear encounter, if there were – you couldn’t really blame the bear. The humans are the ones out of place, in that situation. 

The wilderness is, by definition, a wild place where people don’t usually go. Inhabited by wild creatures adapted to that environment – whether that’s far northern forest or the rocky desert of the Sinai. 

Remember the triangular covenant – the relationship between humans and the land, including its creatures, is tied up with the relationship between humans and God. So: It is not surprising that during this wilderness time, God’s people stumble into an area that some local snakes reasonably regard as THEIR territory. There’s a disruption here, an ecological dislocation, and it has consequences. 

The story could have been: The wilderness was really terrible; we were hungry and thirsty and hot and cold and tired and miserable; there’s clearly a REASON nobody lives out here. And then we came into a region with a lot of poisonous snakes, and they were NOT happy to see us, and it got even worse. 

Instead, the text makes sense of this experience through the lens of punishment. Maybe because the people are so unhappy, they assume these snakebites are proof of God’s anger at them. 

Why bad things happen is not a one-sermon question. 

But this story offers an opportunity to talk about a piece of it. 

The idea that the bad things that happen are God’s punishment for things we’ve done wrong sounds pretty awful and frightening. But it has a lasting appeal. 

It’s a strong theme in big chunks of the Old Testament – although there can be some real nuance to whether the various bad things that befall God’s people are described truly as punishments, or as the natural consequences of various bad choices. 

I’m not bold enough to say that significant parts of Old Testament theology are simply wrong to understand God as deliberately sending harm to God’s people as a punishment for their misdeeds. But I do think there’s a gradual shift within the Hebrew Bible towards understanding God’s purposes for humanity as redemptive rather than retributive. 

And it’s definitely hard to square the idea of divine punishment with what Jesus has to say about God – including right here in chapter 3 of John’s Gospel: “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

Of course John’s Jesus goes on to say that those who don’t believe in him are judged – but the emphasis is on human choices, not divine retribution. Some people don’t want to follow Jesus because they don’t want to face, or change, their own harmful actions.

There are several times in the Gospels when people ask Jesus right out: Is this bad thing that happened, a punishment because somebody sinned? And Jesus says: That’s not how things work. 

Still: the idea of God punishing humanity has real staying power. It has an obvious appeal when we’re talking about our enemies or those with whom we disagree. Of course they had it coming, whatever “it” is! 

But it also has an appeal even for ourselves. 

The idea of punishment gives us an explanation for bad things that happen. I brought this on myself because I did X. And it gives us a sense of agency, of control. If this happened because of what I did, maybe I can make it stop happening, or prevent it from happening again, by what I do. 

A sense that there’s a reason for why this terrible thing is happening, and of agency or control, can feel really important when we’re facing big tragedies or struggles. I can definitely see the appeal, when the alternative is: Sometimes really bad stuff just happens, and there’s no good reason for it, and nothing you can do about it. 

As spiritual writer Annie Dillard puts it, “You can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials with God, or you can live as a particle crashing about and colliding in a welter of materials without God. But you cannot live outside the welter of colliding materials.”

There’s no opting out of the hurts and struggles and losses of life in this beautiful, broken world. I think often about a quotation from one of Sir Terry Pratchett’s books, A Hat Full of Sky. Speaking about a particular case of human suffering, the main character, Tiffany, says, “It shouldn’t be like this.” And an older, wiser character responds: “There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do.”

There isn’t a way things should be. There’s just what happens, and what we do. It’s not that Sir Terry didn’t have a sense of the good, the right, the just. He was a deeply thoughtful and compassionate person; his ethics shine through his goofy books, which is why so many people love them.

I think what he’s calling out here, in the voice of this character, is a tendency to spend our energy on outrage at the gap between what is and what we think should be. Instead of accepting what is, and focusing our energy on how to respond in a way that edges reality towards better. 

There’s an overlap here with contemplative spirituality. I preached a few weeks ago about my learning and new practices in that realm. “There’s just what happens, and what we do” is a call to attention, to listening to what is – and then discerning our response, from a place of clarity. 

This is probably not an everybody thing, but I also don’t think it’s just me: I do notice a real difference within myself when I shift my focus from arguing with the situation, whatever it may be, to accepting the situation and reflecting on my response. What is mine to do, here. 

There’s an overlap, too, with what some of us are reading in Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s book On Repentance and Repair. In the framework of the great Jewish thinker Maimonides, step one in the work of repentance is to acknowledge that you have caused harm. Ruttenberg points out that there’s also a step zero: coming to understand that you have caused harm. That can be a big journey in itself. It can demand open-hearted listening, deep emotional work, learning new perspectives, and more, to arrive at a place where you’re able to hear someone’s feedback or rebuke or invitation to amend something you have said or done. 

There’s a lot more to say about this book, but for now: The path onward isn’t arguing with the situation. It’s accepting the situation, and discerning what to do next.

Given this: what now? 

It is no picnic to live in this welter of colliding materials. To gaze unflinchingly on the wonder and ache of life in this world and know that purpose and meaning are shrouded in more mystery than we might prefer. To accept that humanity’s freedom and creation’s freedom and millennia of accumulated ideas and ways of being mean that we wake up each morning to an immensely complex muddle of fault and favor, consequence and possibility, inclination and choice, loss and belonging. 

Maybe it’s no coincidence that the church’s ancient posture of prayer is also, essentially, a shrug. 

The transactional, mechanistic mindset of punishment and reward makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t fix anything, and arguably makes some things worse, but it tells you where you stand. 

Maybe that’s why the Israelites kept the bronze snake. Much later, in the second book of the Kings of Israel, we hear that King Hezekiah undertook a big renovation of the Temple in Jerusalem. He had it repaired, and hauled out a bunch of junk, and re-established regular worship there. (2 Kings 18; 2 Chron 29). 

Among the things that were hauled out was the bronze serpent: “[Hezekiah] broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had made, for until those days the people of Israel had made offerings to it; it was called Nehushtan.” 

Nehushtan’s removal seems to have been part of a movement to  centralize religious practice at the Jerusalem temple and focus exclusively on Israel’s God, getting rid of other minor deities and cults. 

I find that interesting for its historical and anthropological aspects… but there’s also something here that makes deep sense spiritually and psychologically, if I may venture to speak outside my expertise! 

Keeping Nehushtan, worshipping Nehushtan, isn’t just worshiping a symbol of a time when God saved us. It’s holding on to a symbol of a time when we were really bad and God had to punish us. 

I can see how holding on to Nehushtan could appeal to a people trying to make sense of their history, the ups and downs, struggles and successes, in light of their understanding of themselves as God’s chosen people. 

I can also see how the things Nehushtan stands for could have an appeal for somebody at an individual level. 

There are lots of ways people may carry deep shame or a sense of deserving whatever hardship comes their way. People who’ve been scapegoated by a family system, people who’ve been treated in certain ways by a parent or partner, people who’ve been through particular kinds of suffering or struggle – may find a kind of safe haven in the idea that these things happened to them because they’re bad. The meaning and agency of the punishment paradigm can offer a kind of uncomfortable comfort. 

For folks marked by that kind of history, it can be real work to begin to take on board that you deserve grace and healing, and that a love worth having – human or holy – does not intentionally cause harm. 

I want to say one more thing about the bronze snake, our friend Nehushtan, and that’s to circle back to the analogy Jesus is making in our Gospel reading. When he talks about being lifted up like the serpent on the pole, he’s talking about his crucifixion – about the cross. 

A lot of Christianity tells the story of the cross in a way that’s actually pretty similar to the story about the snake. Humanity was and is a bunch of horrible, ungrateful wretches. So God sent the poisonous serpents of sin among us to chomp on us and make our lives even worse.

In order to appease God’s righteous anger, Jesus had to die on the cross. So we worship the cross, much like the bronze serpent. 

Christians wouldn’t say we worship the cross – rather, what it stands for – but that can be a fine line, let’s be honest! The cross is unarguably central to Christian symbolism and worship.

There are churches that really dwell on Jesus’ death on the cross as their core story, the place where they find meaning and truth.

There are churches that are really more comfortable with the empty tomb, the happy ending of Easter morning, and don’t want to think too much about the hard stuff before – or after. 

I like to think that at St. Dunstan’s, and in the Episcopal Church in general, we strike a pretty good balance of taking both Good Friday and Easter Sunday very seriously indeed. 

While the cross is perhaps less overwhelmingly central for us than for some other kinds of churches, it is central for us too. I mean – there it is. 

I would like the story of Nehushtan to lead us to reflect on what we think, what we feel, when we look at cross, or wear a cross, or sign the cross. 

Does the cross tell us that we are miserable wretches who only deserve God’s anger?

Does it remind us of moments when we have felt amazing grace? 

Does it tell us that we matter so much to God that God would pay any price to show us how beloved we are? 

Does it tell us that no matter the depths of pain, suffering, struggle, God is in it with us?

Does it tell us, in the words of Paul, that God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength?

Does it tell us, in the words of Dr. King, that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality – that right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant? 

Does it tell us that love wins?

I invite us to wonder and notice together, as we turn towards the cross in these final weeks of Lent. Amen.