All posts by Miranda Hassett

About our 2025 Draft Budget

This page contains the same content as the information that went out in our pledge packets in late October, 2024. 

St. Dunstan’s Draft Budget for 2025: Sustaining and Growing

Sustaining… 

Our parish leaders want to sustain our budget at its current level as much as possible. 

  • The early draft of our 2025 parish budget is about $346,000 – about a 1% increase over 2024. 
  • The increase is largely due to increased insurance rates and a cost of living increase for some staff, as recommended by our diocese, offset by some other changes like a reduced diocesan assessment. 
  • Our goal this year is to keep our budget as steady as possible while increasing our capacity to fully fund our common life, and to build towards the future. 

Your pledged giving will help sustain our parish’s mission and ministries. 

  • We adopted a deficit budget for 2024, knowing we could cover the deficit if necessary, but hoping to reduce the gap through generous giving and careful spending. 
  • In 2025 we hope to move towards fully funding our budget, with less reliance on reserve funds, gifts and grants. 
  • By sustaining our budget now, we seek to prepare financially to allow for future growth. 
  • We know that folks are hearing about – and being asked to help with – budget shortfalls in many settings right now. By keeping our parish budget as stable as possible, we seek to be responsible with and respectful of our shared resources. 

The goal of our giving campaign is to sustain our common life as a parish: shared prayer, worship, and learning, care for one another, serving our neighbors and the wider world, and boldly proclaiming God’s love for everybody, no exceptions. 

Growing…

We can keep our budget stable, while still moving forward. 

  • We continue to grow our common life by building community, deepening our learning and practices of faith, and extending our capacity for mutual care, care of others and care for God’s world.
  • We have already taken a bold step by adding a quarter-time youth minister role. One priority for this year and beyond is to grow our capacity to support that position, beyond special grants and gifts. This is our faithful response to the joy and solace that our youth find through this program, and the ways they give back to the parish. 
  • Growth is not just about numbers – but we rejoice in welcoming new members and discovering how they shape the church we are becoming. This will continue to be a priority and a delight! 
  • We are mindful of the need to grow our financial base beyond pledged income. This year, the Good Futures Accelerator team began the work of imagining ways of using underutilized parts of our church property to meet community needs and generate income.  The Place-Keeping Fund, a fund intended to help cover property-related expenses, is a different step in the same direction. Work on both fronts will continue in 2025 and beyond. 

Thank you for all the ways your presence, participation, and gifts have brought us to this moment, and will help us move towards God’s future, together. 

Goals for 2025

Our pledge goal for 2025 is $290,000. This is ambitious; it’s a big step up from our 2024 pledge total of $282,000. It reflects the hope of moving towards fully funding our budget. 

We know that just as St. Dunstan’s budget continues to be stretched by rising costs, so are your personal and household budgets. But even small pledge increases can add up, and new pledges can help us move towards our church’s financial goals. 

While we anticipate about $47,000 in income from other sources, including plate offerings, rental income, fund proceeds and diocesan grants, our main source of income is the pledged giving of members and friends of the parish. You regularly give 85% or more of our budgeted income.  THANK YOU!

When we pledge, we choose to be part of something bigger than ourselves. Every pledge, in any amount, is important and appreciated. You can invest in the ministry and community of St. Dunstan’s by returning your pledge card by November 17.   

 

St. Dunstan’s Money Story

In August, a group gathered to reflect on St. Dunstan’s “money story,” using the prompts from the Our Money Story reflection process that we’re sharing this fall. Here’s part of the report from that gathering. 

Ups and downs, but a throughline of generosity… 

We have gone through hard times in nearly seventy years as a parish, but there is an ebb and flow to our story which has kept us moving forward. Our history includes a legacy of very generous givers, who have helped carry us into this century. Big-picture economic and demographic changes, fear of deficits and other obstacles are part of our church’s money story today, but only a part. 

Generosity is a core word in our community’s money story. We have taken bold and hopeful steps in recent years. People are willing to put resources into something in the hope of helping it grow and thrive – and to build something together, not just maintain something the way it’s always been. 

A mission to care for one another, our neighbors, and our world…

Our community believes that money should be used to help others, and that God calls us to be a blessing.  At the same time, we know that we must care for ourselves and one another, in order to continue to care for others. People come here looking for something – community, healing, growth, connection with the Holy, a place to share their gifts. What we offer one another here, and what we become together, matters. 

Moving towards God’s future… 

St. Dunstan’s is a church that is choosing to have a future. But how we find – and fund! – that way forward is very much something to be explored, discerned and created together. Our annual pledging and budgeting process, and continued exploratory work towards longer-term financial sustainability, are both crucial aspects of our journey towards the future God wants for us.  

A report on Diocesan Convention…

Rev. Miranda and elected deputies Gail Jordan-Jones and Shirley Laedlein attended the first convention of our new, reunified diocese on October 4th and 5th. Since this was not just “diocesan convention as usual,” Gail wrote up a report on what she experienced and noticed. Shirley added a few thoughts, too – read to the end! Here’s Gail’s report.

“Earlier this month Shirley Laedlein and Gail Jordan-Jones joined Miranda as delegates for the very first Diocese of Wisconsin Annual Convention at the Holiday Inn Conference Center in Steven’s Point Wisconsin.  Tom McAlpine, Connie Ott and Sarah Errington were there as well (thank you!).  Connie brought yarn and knitting projects galore to give away in hopes those bundles of yarn would soon turn into plenty of warm hats and mittens!  Sarah Erlington spent her time helping Diocesan staff with the logistical details of the event.

As we began the conference, late Friday afternoon, there were various introductions and we learned that the chief planner of this very first ever state-wide diocesan convention resigned with about two weeks left til the event.  Her colleagues wished her well–although the timing was tough on everyone.  Hence, Sarah had lots of jobs at the convention.  Special shout-out to Sarah!
Friday night, there was a nice Build your own Taco buffet–followed by some remarks from the Presiding Bishop-Elect, the Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe.  We would hear from him again as the preacher at our Saturday Eucharist.  Between both opportunities to hear him we got a dose of his personal ideology about church doctrine and growth and his deep faith in the Trinity and our common humanity.  The Episcopal Church is in good hands.
After breakfast on Saturday, we all participated in our first joint Eucharist with the installation of our Bishop, the Rt. Rev. Matthew Gunter.  It was a special service with participation from the Oneida tribe and many parishes from around our newly reunited diocese.  The participants included our own Isaac Gildrie-Voyles!  Thanks, Evy, for the transportation services!
In the business sessions of the convention, we spent a fair amount of time voting for both Lay and Clerical members of the various offices and committees of our newly formed diocese.  Starting from scratch requires lots of people willing to serve–we were so grateful to all those who stepped up to give us a firm beginning.
The budget aspect of the meeting went quickly.  Those who scrutinize the budget had likely already done so and had their issues addressed.
We said our goodbyes and departed Steven’s Point reflecting on our experiences at this First meeting of the reunified Wisconsin Diocese.  It was an honor.”
Shirley Laedlein adds,
“First, I think that this was a well run event, and time management was good.  That’s especially impressive considering the changes in Diocesan staff.
Also, I was impressed with how everyone there seems invested in making this Diocese of Wisconsin work.  And Presiding Bishop Elect Sean Rowe seems very excited about what we are doing in Wisconsin.  In both his Friday remarks and Saturday homily, he implied that what we do here will be closely watched by the national church, and we may have an impact on how things are done in the future.  I find that exciting!
I found that people from all over the state are willing to meet each other and are eager to work together to find and carry out what God has planned for us.
Finally, I am SO delighted to have the Oneida parish be part of our diocese.  What they contribute in history and liturgy is impressive!  The sung Te Deum they contributed to the Eucharist was wonderful!  I believe we have a bright future.”

Homily, Oct. 20

Text from Job here. 

Let’s pause here and talk for a moment about Behemoth, the creature – monster? – described in this passage from the book of Job. Behemoth eats plants, hangs out in rivers and swamps, and is incredibly, perhaps terrifyingly strong – does that make anyone think of a real animal?… 

Yes! Behemoth seems to be sort of a super-hippo, perhaps based on what this author has heard about hippos from travelers to Egypt and beyond. 

Who’s seen pictures or videos of Moo Deng?…  Moo Deng is the new baby hippo who’s taken the Internet by storm. She’s a baby pygmy hippo, who lives at a zoo in Thailand. 

She is small and very cute, and doesn’t really match this Biblical description! But she’s definitely having a moment. There’s all kinds of Moo Deng memes, merch, and fan art on the Internet. 

Okay. Why are we talking about hippopotamuses? It’s a very fair question, not just to me but to God, and/or to the author of the Book of Job. For 36 chapters, Job has been crying out to God, demanding an explanation for his suffering, while various “friends” tell him he can’t talk to God like that. 

In chapter 38, God finally speaks up…. And then talks for four chapters. Four chapters of nature poetry. 

But this isn’t poetry about how a field of daffodils made somebody feel better once. This is about how strange and wild and fierce Nature can be. 

God begins with the cosmic – the depths of the sea, the homes of darkness and light, the rules that govern the movements of the stars, the sources of rain and snow. 

Then God moves on to some of God’s favorite animals: lions, ravens, mountain goats. Wild donkeys, who wander the wilderness; they scorn the tumult of the city, and don’t have to listen to the shouts of a human trying to get them to cooperate. 

Likewise the wild ox, who will not spend the night in your barn or help you plow your fields. 

There’s a terrific passage about ostriches and how stupid they are – they lay their eggs on the ground, where they can easily be crushed, and barely take care of their young; and yet when an ostrich runs – it laughs at horse and rider. 

After describing Behemoth, we get to Leviathan, some sort of sea-monster or super-crocodile. God is really pleased with Leviathan and spends a whole chapter describing how badass it is. 

And that’s it, really. Job says, Okay. I hear you, God. There’s a bigger picture here that I didn’t understand.

Job says, I repent in dust and ashes – a ritual expression of humility. He has dropped his charges against God. 

God goes on to tell Job’s friends that God is angry with them because they have not spoken rightly about God, as Job did! As puzzling and unsatisfactory as God’s response to Job may feel, at least we see Job’s rage prayers ratified, as God smacks down the friends’ smug assurance about what God is like. 

I love the fierce nature poetry of God’s answer to Job. But in what sense does God answer Job’s anger and anguish? 

Bible scholar Robert Alter writes: “Through that long chain of vividly arresting images… Job has been led to see the multifarious character of God’s vast creation, its unfathomable fusion of beauty and cruelty, and through this he has come to understand the incommensurability between his human notions of right and wrong and the structure of reality.” (577) God’s answer, then, invites Job into appreciation of the bigger picture beyond his personal pain. 

On the other hand, Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman writes, “After Job relates in great detail his anguish and pain and bewilderment, [God] responds, ‘Let me tell you about my crocodile.’ Any pastoral supervisor evaluating this act of ministry would say to [God], ‘You couldn’t stand the pain and you changed the subject.’” That’s fair. 

And yet. And yet. 

We do seek out mountains and beaches and stars. 

We do revel in the glory of a thunderstorm. 

We travel to volcanoes and glaciers. 

We’re drawn to the power and danger of apex predators.

My social media has been overwhelmed lately with people’s photos of the Northern Lights. Now, maybe 50% of that is the thrill of taking a cool photo and posting it online. But standing at the edge of a field in rural Wisconsin, looking up at the night sky, and knowing that the faint shimmering green you’re seeing is because there’s a storm on the Sun… can create a certain exhilarating sense of smallness. 

Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis points out that the natural phenomena God describes in Job are not useful to, and often not even friendly towards, humans. God describes a world, a universe, in which we – humanity – are neither center nor pinnacle. God loves the wild, the fierce, the mysterious. 

And – so do we, often. 

This remains true even in the deep shadow of the devastating impacts of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. As with every such event, it’s wise to consider the degree to which a natural disaster is also a human disaster: the product not only of natural systems intensified by climate change, but of poor planning and regulation, the failure of warning systems, political roadblocks to effective climate adaptation and adequate funding for relief work. 

There are no easy explanations for suffering, but part of the answer, surely, is that we choose poorly, individually and together. 

But even in the face of such loss, humans continue to find a strange consolation in the power and danger of creation. 

People will return and rebuild because they love the wooded wilds of the Blue Ridge mountains, and the moody glory of the ocean visible from vulnerable oceanfront homes in Florida. 

The thing about Moo Deng is that people don’t love her because she’s cute and cuddly.

People love her because she’s filled with rage.

She’s constantly trying to bite her keeper on the leg, or chase him around the enclosure. 

And it’s adorable, but also: Me too,  Moo Deng. Me too. 

God’s answer to Job does not explain or resolve Job’s pain, anger, and desolation. 

Go look at the stars, or Let’s talk about crocodiles, is not a good response to deep suffering. 

But it’s not the worst response, either? … 

There is an impulse here that we recognize. 

It’s something that sometimes helps, a little – turning our eyes and minds and hearts towards creatures and landscapes and cycles that are living their own vivid lives and care not at all about the things that overwhelm us. 

And there’s an invitation here, I think – embedded in the rich poetic tapestry of this text – to venture beyond the familiar and fallible moral frameworks of virtue and reward, into a sense of a sense of self and world and God that is stranger and riskier, less reassuring, more capacious and paradoxical.

Into the wild, fierce faith of Job. 

St. Dunstan’s Money Story

In August, a group gathered to reflect on St. Dunstan’s “money story,” using the prompts from the Our Money Story reflection process that we’re sharing this fall. Here’s the full report from that gathering. You can also watch and listen to a video of the same material here

The Setting for Our Money Story

St. Dunstan’s sits at the intersection of several very different neighborhoods, with a lot of socioeconomic diversity within a mile of our front doors. Our larger setting, Dane County, has a growing economy and population, but lack of affordable housing puts an intense squeeze on many households. Most of our members are economically stable, but there’s more economic diversity within our congregation than we might readily realize, as well. 

The setting for our money story also includes some widespread economic and generational trends. Churches have long been sustained financially by their more settled members, those in middle age and above. But we are beginning to lose our older generation of faithful and generous givers, and today’s younger generations may not be able to give at levels comparable to their elders, since basic expenses like health care, housing, and education cost many times more than in previous decades.

The Characters in Our Money Story

We can easily name long-time members – some departed, some still with us – who made big gifts to help St. Dunstan’s get established, make necessary changes, and move through difficult seasons. The generational transition as we lose some of those beloved folks is a source of both sadness and financial uncertainty. Strong voices over the decades have shaped a financial culture of giving beyond ourselves, and of using what we have, rather than having money “sit around.” Our leaders, formal and informal, have been bold in stepping up to what seems important – such as major renovations, youth ministry, outreach giving, and so on – even when it’s a financial stretch for us. 

The Plot and Conflict in Our Money Story

Reflecting on the past reminded us of some seasons of strain and conflict. Some remember that the 1995 capital campaign that built most of our main building was surrounded by conflict involving the rector at the time, who left soon after amid misconduct concerns. Many of us remember a season of scarcity and large budget deficits of $30,000 or more in the early 2010s, which led to a budget repair process in 2013 that helped us move towards balance. We also remember tensions, during that same season of deficit budgets 10 to 15 years ago, over funding the church’s core expenses and ministries versus sending funds out to help meet needs in the wider community.

But we also remembered the resilience and generosity that helped the parish survive those difficult seasons and even undertake a $1 million plus renovation in 2018-2019. Today it feels like there’s a clearer shared sense that both our common life, and the needs of our neighbors and the wider world, merit our shared generosity. 

One continued “subplot” is the lack of a substantial fund or endowment to help cover building and property expenses beyond minor maintenance and repair. For example, long-delayed maintenance on the 170-year-old farmhouse that we call the Rectory has caused many expenses to mount up. Some churches have large endowments or other funds that can be drawn on to address those kinds of needs. St. Dunstan’s does not, so we have to stretch, scramble, and borrow from our own reserves when a furnace goes out. In addition, when our annual budgets are stretched, it’s really hard to set aside much money for longer-term property maintenance and improvements. 

The main “plot” in our shared money story right now is probably the project of figuring out how to keep funding our common life as a congregation. Although every year we have many new and increased pledges, we are once again in a season of deficit budgets, due to the generational loss of many long-term sustaining members. We also continue to live with the long-term impact of Covid on every aspect of our common life, including our shared financial life. In balance with the strain of financial uncertainty, we also see a lot of vitality and potential for continued growth (numerical and spiritual!) in the life of the parish. Hopeful steps like hiring a part-time youth minister call us to stretch our budget to be able to sustain the good things happening here. 

Those in leadership have known for several years that we needed to begin some substantive work on exploring paths to sustainability for St. Dunstan’s, but surviving and adapting to the Covid pandemic delayed that work. Today, a core group is beginning some of that exploration, using the Good Futures Accelerator course as a tool. Our new Place-Keeping Fund is another approach to the same fundamental challenge.  

The Tone of Our Money Story

In reflecting on the tone of our money story – how we talk, act, and feel about money, together – several themes emerged. Generosity and gratitude are big themes. People give, with love and boldness, to the parish in general – and to specific ministries and projects that matter to them. And we are grateful, together, for what that makes possible. 

Health, trust, and transparency are another theme. We try to talk openly about our shared financial life. Money is taken seriously; we are realistic, but hopeful. 

There isn’t a current sense of conflict about money or how money is used in the parish. There seems to be a general sense that it’s important both to build and sustain this community, and to help fund what God is doing in the world around us. 

The visible presence of more youth and families have changed the tone and feeling of church and of giving. There is a sense of hope and possibility. 

However, anxiety and uncertainty are also part of the tone of our money story right now. Can we keep doing the things that matter to us? What changes will we have to make, to be able to move froward? Because those questions can feel overwhelming or frightening, the tone of our money story can also sometimes be avoidant, focusing on the present instead of the longer term, or apologetic (“we don’t want to ask for more but we have to”). 

How We Understand God’s Money Story

We believe God’s dream for the world includes hope, wholeness, and delight for all God’s children. Everyone should have enough, and there should be mutual flourishing, for humans and our non-human neighbors and ecology. Nobody’s success should come at the cost of someone else’s suffering. 

We remember the Biblical theme of jubilee – a financial reset that means unburdening and liberation. We wonder about God’s currency: how does God measure a successful transaction or a healthy budget? God’s money story seems very different from one of the dominant money stories of America, that money equals success equals goodness/worth. 

The Big Themes of Our Money Story

We have gone through hard times as a parish but there is an ebb and flow to our story which has kept us moving forward. Our history includes a long line of very generous givers – a legacy that has carried us into this century. People in our community inspire, lead, and guide our story. Economic changes, fear of deficits and other obstacles are part of our story today, but only a part. 

Our community believes that money should be used to help others and that God calls us to be a blessing. At the same time, we know that we must care for and sustain ourselves in order to continue to care for others. While maintaining our longstanding commitment to giving and serving beyond our church walls, St. Dunstan’s today has a strong sense that this community itself matters. People come here looking for something – community, healing, growth, a place to share their gifts. What we offer one another, and what we become together, matters. 

Generosity is a core word in our community’s money story. People are willing to invest – to put resources into something in the hope of helping it grow and thrive – and to build something together, not just maintain something the way it’s always been. We are willing to be bold and hopeful, together – and that has mostly worked out for us, so far!

St. Dunstan’s is a church that is choosing to have a future. But how we find (and fund!) that way forward is very much something to be explored, discovered, discerned and created, together. The next few years will be really important for us, and there’s work to do. 

Sermon, Oct. 13

From the introduction to Job by scholar and translator Robert Alter:
“The Book of Job is in several ways the most mysterious book of the Hebrew Bible. Formally, as a sustained debate in poetry, it resembles no other text in the canon…” (That means it’s not like anything else in the Bible!)

… “Theologically, as a radical challenge to the doctrine of reward for the righteous and punishment for the wicked, it dissents from a consensus view of biblical writers” – that means a lot of other Biblical texts assume that this is how things work, though there’s some grappling with it elsewhere too! – 

Alter again: That dissent is “compounded by its equally radical rejection of the anthropocentric conception of creation that is expressed in biblical texts from Genesis onward…” I’ll say more about that next week. Upshot: the world, the universe, were not created to serve humanity, we’re not the center of it all, as many other Biblical texts assume. (Alter, the Writings, p. 457) 

It’s a remarkable book in lots of ways! Who wrote it and when? … 

Part of the broad category of Wisdom literature in the Bible & across the the Ancient Near East. Texts from other cultures also struggling with why people suffer and what it all means, though Job has its own perspective. It’s Job’s friends that sound the most like other Wisdom literature texts, with their advice – “just turn from evil and do good” – while Job himself – and eventually God – push back. 

As is common in the wisdom literature, there’s very little here about Israel’s covenant history or the specific obligations of the Law. You could say that Job is a deeply faithful book but not a very religious book, per se, in that it’s not very interested in worship or practice. 

Dating: Linguistic evidence places it probably 500 years before the time of Jesus, give or take half a century or so. 

Beyond that: We know nothing about the author of the Book of Job. But Alter suspects – based on the quality of the poetry and the uniqueness of the voice – that this is one author, though the text has been altered and some portions were added later. 

Alter: “One should probably think of [this author] as a writer working alone— a bold dissenting thinker and a poet of genius who produced a book of such power that Hebrew readers soon came to feel they couldn’t do without it, however vehement its swerve from the views of the biblical majority.” (458) 

What’s the relationship of all this poetry with the preface we heard last week? – in which God brags about how pious Job is, and Satan says, He only worships you because you’ve given him everything he wants; let me at him and we’ll see how long it takes for him to turn from you!… 

Alter notes the “palpable discrepancy” between the frame story and the core text. He thinks this is a much older folktale that this author uses to set the scene and get us into the meat of what he really wants to explore – the experience and meaning of suffering. 

Ultimately it’s easy to set the folktale aside because you don’t need it. You don’t need a pissing context between God and Satan to have someone lose their home, their family, everything except their life. People face that kind of agony all the time. 

The book of Job is remarkable because it explores the meaning of suffering though tens of thousands of words of incredible poetry. Alter: “Its astounding poetry eclipses all other biblical poetry, working in the same formal system but in a style that is often distinct [both in vocabulary and images] from its biblical counterparts.”

Alter notes Job’s linguistic and metaphorical breadth and creativity – this author someone who’s really stretching the bounds of language in order to create incredibly rich expressive text. Think of Shakespeare, or Gerard Manley Hopkins. 

The book is also notable for its passages about nature, in some of Job’s speeches and especially in God’s response, which we’ll hear a tiny bit of next Sunday. This author is someone who paid close attention to the natural world, including the wild and frightening parts of it – not just a stroll through the garden. 

I’ve done a terrible thing in creating this script, by simplifying and clarifying the language. I did that because I wanted us to be able to easily hear and follow the debate about the meaning of Job’s suffering, which is often a little more elusive in the Biblical text. 

But go read some of the poetry of Job, sometime soon! 

Listen, now, to Job’s first few lines, in Alter’s translation: 

“Annul the day that I was born, 

And the night that said, “A man is conceived.” 

That day, let it be darkness. 

Let God above not seek it out, nor brightness shine upon it.

Let darkness, death’s shadow, foul it; 

Let a cloud-mass rest upon it; 

Let day-gloom dismay it. 

That night, let murk overtake it.

Let it not join in the days of the year, 

Let it not enter the number of months.

Let its twilight stars go dark. 

Let it hope for day in vain, 

And let it not see the eyelids of dawn.”  (3:2-9)

Alter says of Job’s poetry: “Anguish has rarely been given more powerful expression.” 

That amazing poetry isn’t for its own sake. It’s in the service of diving into the problem of theodicy. (Spell it) 

Theodicy: The problem of evil and suffering: how do we make sense of these things if we believe in a good God who is actively involved in the world? It is one of the big questions, and it’s the question at the heart of the book of Job. 

Job’s friends have lots of answers, but they’re not very satisfying. 

Working on the script: my attention drawn to the friend who tells Job, You just don’t know God. Questions his faith. 

But I think Job is the person with the strongest faith, here. 

With the friends, I almost wonder whether what they think is their faith in God, is actually a kind of naive belief in a clockwork universe where people get what they deserve. It doesn’t take a lot of sustained attention to reality to know that people don’t get what they deserve. But Job’s friends cling to this idea SO HARD: “You must have secret sins, because that’s the only possible explanation.” The thing about a moral universe like that – where everyone’s fortunes in life are determined by their behavior – is you don’t really need God to run it. You don’t even need AI; we were building computers that sophisticated by the 1960s. 

Job is the person here who sees reality most clearly. And Job is the person with the strongest faith, the deepest conviction that there is actually a God out there somewhere, even when he feels utterly betrayed and abandoned. The most familiar passage of Job for many folks comes from chapter 19. It’s used – without attribution – as one of the texts at the beginning of the funeral rite: “As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives and that at the last he will stand upon the earth. After my awaking, God will raise me up; and in my body I shall see God. I myself shall see, and my eyes behold the Holy One, who is my friend and not a stranger.”

This is beautiful. It’s also a paraphrase of the Biblical text, making it substantially more hopeful and tender towards God. 

Job is not tender towards God. Job is furious at God. 

He denies God’s justice, God’s compassion, God’s availability to humanity, period. And yet: Job is very, very sure that however distant and unresponsive God seems right now, God is. And he believes that he will, someday, get to see God with his own eyes. 

In working on this script, it was hard to end it, without resolution. 

We’re still in the middle of the book; there is more to come! But still, as a writer and as a pastor, I wanted to be able to offer some closure, some sense of grace and peace beginning to emerge. But one of the big messages of the Book of Job is, I think, that the point at which suffering resolves into meaning is often elusive. Sometimes terrible things stay terrible. No silver linings in sight. 

We know nothing about the author of the book of Job, but I wonder if we can reasonably guess that they had experienced great loss. And that this book is an expression of their conviction that God is present, even in the unthinkable. 

In November, I’ll invite folks to join me in a seasonal study group on prayer – what it is, what it can be. I’ve got a few things we might read and discuss: a lovely, light book by a friend that’s kind of an overview and introduction. A beautiful book about praying our way into Advent, with art and poetry. And I just ordered a brand new book called Rage Prayers. Sounds very promising! 

Job’s friends keep telling him to silence his rage prayers. That he can’t talk to God like that. But he can. We can. You can. Job refuses their rebukes, again and again – insists on his right to cry out to the Holy in anger and pain. One of the big gifts of this strange, difficult, beautiful book of the Bible is its utter conviction that prayer doesn’t have to be polite. That we can scream and weep and break things. That there’s nothing we can say or do that will make the Holy One turn away from us. 

God heard Job; God will hear you. 

Sermon, October 6

This was a tough week to figure out what to preach on! There’s a lot of strange and difficult stuff here. There’s beginning of the book of Job – a piece of folklore probably much older than the rest of the book, in which an unknown author living perhaps 500 years before Jesus takes this darkly funny story of God allowing Satan to torment someone to prove his piety, and uses it as the jumping-off point for a staggeringly profound and unique work of ancient theology written completely in dialogic poetry. I’ll talk more about Job next week, I promise! 

Then there’s the first bit of the letter to the Hebrews, which is interestingly preoccupied by the relationships among Jesus, the angels, and humanity. The project of Hebrews – which is really more of a sermon or theological essay than a letter – is to explore the meaning of Jesus’ death on the cross through the ritual practices of worship at the Great Temple in Jerusalem. It’s interesting stuff but requires a lot of context to follow, and we are not its intended audience. It was likely written for early Jewish Christians and seekers who were trying to fit Jesus into their existing religious framework. 

There’s plenty of meat there for a sermon. But then… there’s this Gospel. Let me tell you, the temptation to just edit out the divorce talk and focus on the little children is strong! But this week I read a short commentary that convinced me to talk about the whole thing. The commentary – on the Working Preacher website – was written by Phil Ruge-Jones, who’s a Lutheran pastor in Eau Claire and a Biblical storyteller. 

Phil’s specialty as a Biblical storyteller is the Gospel of Mark. He has memorized and told the entire Gospel – there are videos online. That commitment to Mark’s voice and Mark’s witness gives Phil a valuable lens on how any given passage fits into Jesus’ overall message as Mark understands it. 

In his commentary, Pastor Phil names the elephant in room immediately. He says, “Beware this week. As soon as you read the word ‘divorce’ aloud, a whole sermon will appear in people’s heads. Some will hear… sermons that were launched at them or someone they loved… Others will conjure up [judgment] based on this single word.” 

This is exactly why it’s tempting to skip these verses! I know that talking about divorce stirs up a lot of stuff for a lot of people. Pain, shame, defensiveness, judgment, fear, and more. I know people for whom divorce has been liberation, even salvation. I know people for whom divorce has been a bitter loss, a deep wound. And many experiences of divorce are complex mixtures of hurt and healing, grief and relief. Regardless of folks’ experiences: NOBODY wants me to try to preach about divorce. 

So let’s step back from divorce to the setting for this passage. Pastor Phil notes, “Our lectionary still has us in the section of Mark where Jesus is leading the disciples toward Jerusalem. He is also trying to help the disciples find their way into what God desires. Interestingly, he is not calling them to acts of spiritual prowess. Rather, he is asking them to live well in their common human condition and in such mundane realities as family, wealth, and their gathered community. Jesus has consistently asked them to use what they have in service of those who are most vulnerable: children, the poor, those denied status.”

Three weeks ago, in our Gospel, in Mark chapter 8, we heard Jesus say, What good does it do anyone to gain the whole world and lose their soul? Two weeks ago, in chapter 9, we heard Jesus rebuke the disciples for arguing about who’s the greatest, saying, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all,” and reminding them that greatness looks like welcoming those who are unimportant by the world’s standards. 

Last Sunday, still in Mark 9, we heard Jesus caution the disciples against being too eager to say who’s in and who’s out – “Whoever isn’t against us is for us!” And urging his followers to stay salty. 

In today’s text, the beginning of chapter 10, he’s preaching again, and some Pharisees have a question for him. Jesus and the Pharisees had a lot in common!  They were both interested in calling ordinary people into renewed relationship with God. They clashed a lot because of the overlap in their missions. And it’s helpful for us to understand that arguing about how to interpret and apply Scripture is a really core practice in Judaism, past and present. For example: The Talmud, a core source of Jewish law and theology, consists of a block of Scripture surrounded on the page by the commentary of generations of rabbis, debating with each other about what the text means. I think we tend to read these encounters in the Gospels as hostile when this kind of religious sparring was very normal. 

I’m not sure why the Pharisees ask Jesus about divorce. Maybe it’s because they’ve gotten mixed messages about whether he’s really strict or really lenient in his teaching – he is kinda both! – so they’re trying to suss it out. Maybe it’s because divorce is a difficult, tender issue, and they want to see if they can corner him into saying something awkward that will upset people. 

What Jesus does is actually really interesting. He knows the Law perfectly well; he knows that Moses, the great interpreter of God’s laws for God’s people, allowed for divorce. But, Pastor Phil writes, “Jesus relativizes the law of God in light of the story of God. (Repeat.) Jesus argues that God’s creational desire for integrity in our relationships remains. While Moses might have made allowances in some cases, this does not nullify God’s original intent.”

Jesus says: the Law is secondary to God’s intentions for humanity and creation. God’s underlying purpose and desire for the cosmos is for right relationship, mutual flourishing and joy – whether that’s between nations and peoples, between humanity and the non-human created order, between members of a household or partners in a marriage. 

For all kinds of reasons: right relationship and mutual flourishing often fail, and so, God through Moses permitted divorce, among other concessions. But that doesn’t change what God wants for us: wholeness together, for many different togethers. 

One of the reasons mutual flourishing often fails is the development of social structures that give some power over others, because of wealth, anatomy, skin color, etcetera. Pastor Phil notes something about the dialogue in today’s Gospel that I had never noticed: what Jesus does with the pronouns. The Pharisees want to keep their question abstract, theoretical. They ask, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?” They say, “Moses allowed a man to write a certificate of dismissal and to divorce her.”

Jesus is having none of it. He says, “What did Moses command you?” He says, “Because of your hardness of heart [Moses] wrote this commandment for you.” He refuses to let this be abstract. In Judaism at the time, a man could divorce a woman, but not the reverse. Jesus’ questioners are men.

So Jesus is saying: Moses made an allowance for divorce because dudes like you didn’t want to commit to love and to cherish, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, until you are parted by death. You want to be able to nope out if you start to find her annoying or boring or burdensome, or just spot someone you like better….  

And that’s cruel, because the way things work here and now, she has no protection and no livelihood, outside of a father or husband. So: Yeah, divorce is legal, because some of you are jerks. That’s a paraphrase and expansion of what Jesus says, but I think it’s the gist. 

Then Jesus goes home, and talks more with his disciples. So maybe this next scene with the little children is the next morning – or maybe it’s a thing that happened a lot, and this passage records what Jesus had to say about it. There’s no obvious connection with the divorce conversation… but then again, maybe there is. A social system in which women are often made vulnerable is also a social system in which children are often made vulnerable – true in Jesus’ time, true today. WayForward Resources, our local food pantry and resource center, regularly reminds us of the high numbers of children among their clients. And I think that, in both parts of this text, Mark wants us to hear Jesus’ insistence that his way is a way that cares for and honors those seen as less important, or pushed to the edges.

When Jesus holds up little children – literally and metaphorically – and says things like, “Whoever welcomes a little child in my name welcomes me,” and “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it,” he is profoundly challenging a social order in which adult men made most of the decisions affecting the welfare of others. Pastor Phil writes, “Marriage, as well as relationships between adults and children…, are proposed as spheres where we can live toward the other in the promise of our divine image.” 

It’s an election year, beloveds. I know that’s on many of our hearts and minds. I don’t talk about it a lot when I’m standing up here. I think it’s more important for us to pray through this season together, than for you to hear me hold forth about what I think. 

But our way of faith does have some big things to say, in seasons like this. And this year, here we are in our Sunday readings, deep in these chapters of Mark’s Gospel where Jesus keeps talking about the fact that wealth and power don’t mean you’re God’s favorite. About the ways our hardness of heart have distorted God’s intentions for our common life. About mercy, justice, love of neighbor, as the path to true greatness. About how a community that seeks to follow Jesus needs to look to those often pushed to the edges, and call them to the center, to care for them and learn from them. About how we can continue to live toward the other, toward one another, in the promise of our divine image. 

Jesus didn’t live in a democracy. But for us, using our votes and voices as citizens is a really important way we can practice our faith and love our neighbors. Who’s vulnerable in our world today? Where does your faith inform – or challenge – your opinions and convictions on the big issues in the public square? How does this election season call you as a person of faith, as a follower of Jesus, to show up and speak up?

May God guard us, guide us, and empower us, for the living of these days. Amen. 

Phil Ruge-Jones’s commentary on this Gospel: 

https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-27-2/commentary-on-mark-102-16-6

Homily, Sunday, Sept. 29

Jesus said to his friends, “Salt is good; but if salt loses its saltiness, how will it become salty again? Keep salt in yourselves and keep peace with each other.”

Let’s wonder together about what that might mean! 

What is salt? ….

Jesus says salt is good. I wonder why! 

Do YOU think salt is good? … 

How do you use salt at your house?

Do you know about any other ways to use salt?

– Melting ice… 

Do you know what it means to dissolve salt in water? …

Anybody ever gargle with salt water when you have a sore throat or a canker sore? … 

Or use a saline spray or saline drops for their nose or their eyes? 

People have been using salt to clean things and care for wounds, for thousands and thousands of years. And now that we have science to study how salt works, it turns out they were right! Salt kills a lot of bacteria. It sucks the water out of their cells so they shrivel up and die!!

Salt doesn’t work on all bacteria or other kinds of tiny things that can make us sick. So we have more effective cleaners, now. 

But people still use saline solution – which means, salt dissolved in water – for some things, like our noses and eyes and mouths, because it’s pretty gentle for our bodies. 

(Please don’t just mix salt and water and put it up your nose! Saline solution from the store is clean and safe to use.) 

 

Does anybody like pickles?

Does anybody like bacon? 

How about cheese? …

Besides taking care of our bodies, another way salt is useful is in preserving food! 

Pickles and cheese and bacon, or salted meat in general, are very old and very important. 

Think about people living a long, long, long time ago, without refrigerators or stoves or electricity at all. 

People living in warm places where food can go bad quickly.

What happens when food goes bad?…

  • It can get gross so you don’t want to eat it
  • It could make you sick if you do eat it

So for people living long, long ago: If you milk your goat, or you kill a chicken, or you pick some vegetables, you have to use them RIGHT AWAY… 

Or you have to find a way to preserve them, to do something to the food so it doesn’t go bad quickly. 

Long, long, long ago, people started to figure out some ways to do that. And salt is a really important tool. 

It kills bacteria so it helps preserve foods, and it tastes good, too. 

Pickling is a way of making vegetables last a long time. 

Salt-curing meat is a way to make meat last a long time. 

Cheese is a way to make milk last a long time. 

And all of those processes use salt. A lot of salt!

Salt really changed human history, because our long, long, long ago ancestors could save food. They could spend less time looking for food. They could travel farther. They could trade their pickles and cheese with other groups, and used those connections to learn and share. 

Where does salt come from? … 

(The ocean, or rock salt that can be mined in certain places.) 

  • Seeing salt gatherers in Tanzania

Today it’s easy to get salt. You can even get all kinds of fancy salt. 

But in those long, long, long ago times, salt was hard to get and pretty special and valuable. 

Salt was sometimes used as a kind of money. 

In some times and places salt has even been as valuable as gold!

Cities and nations that had access to salt could get really rich. 

In my research, everything I looked at said that salt was actually REALLY REALLY important for the development of human civilization around the world! 

Because salt was so important in real life, it also became an important symbol. 

Have you noticed how when something is really important to people, they start to stick ideas to it? 

One idea that people stuck to salt was the idea of something lasting forever. 

Because salt was good for preserving food, in some cultures it started to be a symbol of permanence, of eternity. 

Another idea that people stuck to salt was the idea of purification.

That’s like making something clean, but in a more symbolic way. 

Because salt was good for cleaning wounds, in some cultures it started to be seen as having the power to drive out bad energy or evil spirits, or for healing the part of us that isn’t our bodies, after somebody has done or experienced something bad. 

In some churches, when somebody is baptized, they give them a tiny bit of salt, as a symbol of purity… 

And I have heard of people, even Episcopalians!, using salt to help purify a space where something bad happened. 

So: Salt has a lot of uses, and a lot of meanings – a lot of ideas stuck to it!

Let’s look back at what Jesus says. 

Salt is good.

Now we know a lot of different ways salt is good, right? …

If salt loses its saltiness, how will it become salty again? 

How could salt lose its saltiness? In science classes we learn that salt – the kind we use every day – is made of two elements, sodium and chlorine. You can’t really un-salt salt. 

But in those long-ago times, people weren’t getting salt from the grocery store. In Judea their salt probably came from seawater, because the coast was nearby. 

So that salt might have other stuff in it – other chemicals, a little grit, a little gunk. If that salt got wet, the actual salt might dissolve into the water and flow away, and leave that other stuff behind. That would be your not-so-salty salt, that’s not good for much anymore. 

Then Jesus says, 

Keep salt in yourselves and keep peace with each other.

This is from the gospel of Mark, the earliest version of the story of Jesus. Another version of the story, Matthew, has Jesus say this to his friends and followers: You are the salt of the land.  (5:13)

Start popcorn circulating??? 

I wonder what Jesus means by, Keep salt in yourselves! 

I wonder what Jesus means by, You are the salt of the land! 

We live 2000 years later, but we are friends and followers of Jesus, too. When he says these things, he’s talking to us.  

Why does Jesus want us to be salty? What does that mean?? 

Well, there are those ideas that got stuck to salt. 

Maybe Jesus wants us to help preserve the world, like salt preserves food. 

We could be people who help fight decay and keep things whole and good. 

Maybe Jesus wants us to help purify the world, like salt cleaning wounds. 

We could be people who look for the hurt places, and try to help heal and restore… and we could look for what’s causing hurt and harm, and fight to change those things. 

Either of those could make sense. Even both of them. 

Symbols can mean lots of things at the same time.

But I think there might be one more thing.

Because I think Jesus is talking about food and flavor.

Jesus liked food. People used to get mad at him because he enjoyed a good meal. 

I am sending around some popcorn. 

One kind has salt, and one kind doesn’t have salt. 

Which one do you like better?… 

How would you describe the difference? … 

The salty popcorn tastes brighter, to me. It makes my mouth pay attention. It’s more interesting and more satisfying to eat. 

With the unsalted popcorn I don’t think I’d eat very much. It’s kind of boring. 

(Some people have to eat less salt for health reasons!) 

I wonder if, together, we can be people who do for the world what that salt does for the popcorn. Make it a better, brighter place, that’s more fun and interesting and alive. 

Now, the word salty means something in slang today. What does it mean to be salty? …

(Grumpy, sassy…) 

I wonder if sometimes we have to be that kind of salty for Jesus, too!

Last weekend we went to see a show by a group called Bread and Puppet Theater. They use big cardboard puppets to make art about the problems and possibilities of the world. 

Phil and Iona got to help with the show, that was cool!

In one act, the leader shared a quote from the head of Amnesty International, a global human rights organization. 

She said: “We are really as close to the abyss as we have ever been.”  We are really as close to the abyss as we have ever been.

That means: we live in strange, scary times. 

Like Jesus lived in strange, scary times. 

Like Esther lived in strange, scary times.

But Esther had an important role to play, a job to do, in times like that, and maybe we do too. 

The Bread and Puppet performers showed us some Anti-Abyss Calisthenics – that means exercises!

And I want to show you a couple of them. 

Because I think they are also about ways to be salty for Jesus.

This is the first one: “Hey!” 

Like you just saw something bad happen and you’re going to SPEAK UP about it!… 

Let’s try it!… 

And this is another Anti-Abyss exercise: Aaaah.

They didn’t explain things at the performance, they just showed us and let us think about it. 

I think this is a movement about finding our goodness, and sharing it with others. Finding our peace, and sharing it. Finding our hope, and sharing it. 

So let’s practice those again:  

Hey!

Aaaah. 

Keep salt in yourselves, friends! Be the salt of the land! 

Amen. 

Sermon, Sept. 15

My sermon was written as an outline this week so this version is a little sketchy, but you get the idea! 

Proverbs, the Biblical book: A collection of proverbs – sayings about life and how to live it – from the ancient Near East. There are six or more sets or sections within the book, anthologized in the time of Exile or even later. Focus on teaching and instruction. Fundamentally pragmatic sense of wisdom as something that helps you understand self and others, make good choices, and live a better life. To the extent that God is present, mostly as the originator and maintainer of a system in which good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people… even if it sometimes takes a while. 

Artfully written and poetic. Mostly couplets, two-line forms. Lots of evocative metaphors. An example: “Bread got through fraud is sweet to a man, but in the end it fills his mouth with gravel” (20:17) Using this image to say that what you get dishonestly may seem great at first, but…! 

Some are shrewd and funny; some offer genuine insight. Many boil down to, “Work hard and make good choices,” which I guess is the kind of thing parents and grandparents have always told children and grandchildren? 

Chapters 10 to 22 claim to be the wisdom of King Solomon, in particular – some of the 3000 proverbs that he composed, according to 1 Kings.

Proverbs, the thing: A proverb is a short saying that condenses some general truth, guidance, or advice. Wisdom distilled into something portable and concise. 

These past couple of weeks I’ve been noticing how many proverbs circulate in my household and our world! We learn them from our parents. A few from my family of origin: Pretty is as pretty does. That’s why God makes Fords and Chevys…  We learn them from our friends. I’m particularly fond of “Clear is kind,” from Cecilie B… We pick them up from the culture. “The morning is wiser than the evening” – Regina Spektor song.

But! It’s not that simple. Just because something makes a snappy saying doesn’t mean it’s true or wise. “God won’t give you anything you can’t handle” is one that particularly annoys me. First, because it implies that anything bad that happens to you is God’s intention for you, which I do not believe. And second, because it’s manifestly untrue. People are dealt situations they can’t handle all the time. That’s why God tells to look out for one another.

When I was in my teens – series of fantasy books popular at the time – line: “No evil ever came of a thing done for love.” I loved that; carried that around for a while.  … Then at some point in my late teens or 20s, I thought, Wait. That’s actually not true at all. Evil comes from things done for love all the time. 

Some of the proverbs we’ve inherited might be a little conditional in their application. For example: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all” – That’s meant for situations like discouraging gossip, or not telling your friend that her new dress looks awful. But it can be misapplied to discourage people from speaking up about actual bad stuff. Contrast that with Proverbs 10:10: “The one who rebukes boldly makes peace!” 

Turning back to the Biblical book of Proverbs… it’s really interesting to read through! There are proverbs that still work, all these centuries later… Robert Alter: some of the proverbs “appear to derive from shrewd and considered reflection on moral behavior and human nature.” (351) 

One of my long-time favorites: “Better a meal of vegetables with love than a fatted ox with hatred.” (15:17) – better to live simply with love, than to have material plenty but no peace in your family or heart. One I read this week for the first time: “Like one who takes away a garment on a cold day, or pours vinegar on a wound, is one who sings songs to a heavy heart.” (25:20). Now, singing to someone sad could be nice, but I think the implication here is of somebody being aggressively cheerful at someone else who’s really burdened or struggling. We’ve all been there, and yeah, it’s rough. 

“A fool takes no pleasure in understanding, but only in expressing personal opinion.” (18:2) – We all know one of those… 

We had a youth retreat on relationships, last winter – Proverbs (and Sirach, another Biblical Wisdom book) had a lot of useful material! Proverbs 17.9: “One who forgives an affront fosters friendship, but one who dwells on disputes will alienate a friend…. 18: Some friends play at friendship, but a true friend sticks closer than one’s nearest kin…” Working with the youth: lots we could relate to! 

There are proverbs that we maybe CAN’T relate to so much, but that give us a glimpse into life 3000 years ago… “Cheating scales are the Lord’s loathing, and a true weight-stone His pleasure” (11:1) – several versions. Reflect a time when weighing things out was a key part of any transaction, and false weights was a major form of economic dishonesty. “If you find honey, eat just enough – too much of it, and you will vomit.” (25:16) Probably about more than just honey, but still makes me curious about the backstory.

And there are proverbs that make us grateful that times have changed… 11:22 – “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without good sense…” OK. 13:24 – “Those who spare the rod hate their children, but those who love them are diligent to discipline them…” Meaning: You have beat your children to raise them right. Some of y’all were raised like that. But that’s not how most folks choose to parent today. 

And of course there’s a whole boatload of stuff that only sounds wise, but doesn’t actually hold up if you give it a hard look. A biggie: Proverbs’ confidence that if you work hard and do what’s right, you’ll get ahead in life. Robert Alter: “[Proverbs]… evinces great confidence in a rational moral order that dependably produces concrete rewards for virtue and wisdom.” That is just… not reliably true!! But we still speak and act as if it were, sometimes – thereby adding to human suffering.The book of Job, which comes along later this fall, will bring us some wonderfully complex wrestling with the idea that good people always have good lives.

Let me pause here for a brief detour into the book of Ecclesiastes, or Qohelet; I’ll use the Hebrew name because it’s less confusing, since there’s another Biblical book called Ecclesiasticus. Every adult here has heard a few verses from Qohelet: To every thing there is a season… Let people finish the sentence. That’s a lovely passage and some durable wisdom, I think. That life has different seasons can be a helpful reminder sometimes. 

But the book as a whole is interestingly ambiguous in terms of what lasting wisdom it offers. Qohelet written centuries after King Solomon, but presents itself as the voice of Solomon, late in life, reflecting back on life – and forward towards death. 

There’s a core word, throughout the text, that’s traditionally translated as Vanity – not in the sense of excessive pride in one’s own appearance, but in the sense of something futile or pointless. Listen to part of the first chapter… 

“The words of the Teacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.
Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher,
vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What do people gain from all the toil
at which they toil under the sun?… 
I, the Teacher, when king over Israel in Jerusalem, applied my mind to seek and to search out by wisdom all that is done under heaven. It is an unhappy business that God has given to human beings to be busy with. I saw all the deeds that are done under the sun; and see, all is vanity and a chasing after wind.
What is crooked cannot be made straight,
and what is lacking cannot be counted.

I said to myself, ‘I have acquired great wisdom, surpassing all who were over Jerusalem before me; and my mind has had great experience of wisdom and knowledge.’… [But] I perceived that this also is but a chasing after wind.
For in much wisdom is much vexation,
and those who increase knowledge increase sorrow…”

It is a loss that Qohelet is barely in our Sunday lectionary. It’s such a human text. Many of us have those thoughts and feelings at times. What is the point of it all? Where is the deeper meaning? And yet we might quickly find ourselves arguing with Qohelet’s sense that because death comes for us all, nothing matters and everything is pointless. I would love to do a study on Qohelet. I think there’s a struggle at the heart of that text with which we could be in fruitful conversation. But for now, let me just hold it up as another example of something that feels or sounds wise… and yet is missing something, at its heart. 

Proverbs are meant to distill wisdom – and there are different things that we call “wisdom.” Last week, we saw that Solomon’s “wisdom” included prudence, political savvy, strategic effectiveness. 

James – wonderful, vivid passage today on how much our tongues and our words can get us in trouble – follows that immediately with a passage we’ll hear next week, in which he says there are two types of wisdom: An “earthly, unspiritual, devilish” wisdom that has to do with envy and selfish ambition. And a wisdom from above, that is pure, peaceful, gentle, obedient, filled with mercy and good actions, fair, and genuine. You can recognize that kind of wisdom, says James, in a good life, and a spirit of gentleness. A person formed by this kind of holy wisdom will sow the seeds of justice through their peaceful acts. That sounds like somebody I want to be around. 

If we are lucky, and pay attention, we may meet a few people in life in whom we can see this kind of wisdom… and we might stumble upon and gather a few proverbs that capture that kind of wisdom. Bits and pieces we can carry with us to ground us and guide us. 

Beside my desk in my office, I have a cork board that’s covered with a lot of things – some proverb-length, some longer – that I have found to be true and reliable enough to use as touchstones, and that contain something of which I need to be reminded – something that’s not already built into my worldview and way of being. For example, there’s a simple prayer of gratitude and openness from Dag Hammarskjold – you can learn about him on our prayer table today: For all that has been: Thanks! For all that will be: Yes! 

There are other thing I carry inside me as sayings or songs – like the one that goes: You don’t have to know the way; the Way knows the way. These things meaningfully capture something important that helps me be a better priest and a better person. 

But I have wrestled a little, in these weeks of exploring the theme and the literature of Wisdom, with whether all this is God-y enough. Have I ditched my responsibility of calling us to turn our hearts towards the Love at the heart of the universe, in favor of insightful aphorisms and good advice? 

And yet! There is ALL THIS wisdom literature in the Bible. It’s a big chunk of the book, if you add it all up. And there are repeated reminders that Wisdom – true wisdom –  is a gift from God, even an emanation or aspect of God; and that the pursuit of wisdom is a holy and righteous path. 

God says through the prophet Isaiah, My thoughts are not your thoughts; but the Wisdom texts of the Bible suggest that there’s at least some overlap in the Venn diagram of God’s thoughts and our thoughts! 

And the fact that God gives us this capacity to become wise – to recognize and to share wisdom – true wisdom, the kind of wisdom James is talking about that’s peaceful and gentle and merciful and fair and genuine and just – the fact that God gives us that capacity is just such a beautiful sign of the intimacy and partnership that God wants with us. We were never made to be puppets or subjects, unquestioningly following divine degrees. We were made to be children, and co-workers, and friends of God, in the holy work of ordering all things well. 

Sermon, Sept. 1

Today we begin a foray into the Wisdom Literature of the Bible. The Wisdom literature is a type or genre of text – like history, novel, love poem, prophesy, self-help, memoir, … 

What makes something wisdom literature? 

  • Concerned with everyday life and how to live it well. Deals with the human condition, writ large. 
  • Often makes playful use of metaphors from daily life. 
  • Not much interest in history, politics, or, frankly, religion.  
  • Focus on order and harmony – often, though not always. Wisdom literature can support or criticize the status quo… 
  • Wisdom literature is descriptive, but looks for the deeper underlying truths and patterns of things, naming the things we don’t always name. 
  • Wisdom literature does not appeal to revealed truth; it’s not grounded in what God has proclaimed to humanity, but in observation and reflection.
  • But in the Biblical context, Wisdom is closely identified with God; it’s described as a gift from God, sometimes even an aspect or emanation of God, as in the beautiful poem we read together. And growing in wisdom is one path of faithful human response to God. Source:  https://www.crivoice.org/wisdom.html

Biblical scholar Ellen Davis, in her book on the Song of Songs, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job, writes about the Wisdom literature – let me quote her at length: 

“The word ‘wisdom’ sounds slightly old-fashioned. We all know many smart people. Most of us admire people who have a good education… But stop for a moment and think: how many people do you know whom you would describe as wise? How many people can you say, without qualification, live their lives day by day, even moment by moment, in a way that glorifies God? …

For that is what ‘wisdom’ meant to the biblical writers: living in the world in such a way that God, and God’s intentions for the world, are acknowledged in all that we do. It sounds like a lofty goal, perhaps too lofty for ordinary people living busy lives. Such a goal of wisdom seems attainable only for great saints.… Yet this is not the understanding of the biblical writers… They consider wisdom within the grasp of every person who desires it wholeheartedly. Wisdom does not require any special intellectual gifts. The fruit  of wisdom, a well-ordered life and a peaceful mind, results not from a high IQ but from a [particular] disposition of the heart…

“So what is wisdom literature? It is spiritual guidance for ordinary people. Moreover, it comes from ordinary people, and this in itself makes the wisdom literature different from most of the rest of the Bible…. The sages make no claim to have received special revelation from God… Much of the instruction they offer is inherited from their fathers and mothers, both biological parents and ancestors in the faith.” 

The Wisdom literature, Davis says, offers “deep, imaginative reflection” – often in the form of poetry and extended metaphor – on the most commonplace realities of human existence: “birth and death, poverty and wealth, education and work, grief and joy, human love and love of God.” 

Another great Old Testament scholar, Walter Brueggeman, writes, “Wisdom teaching contains almost nothing of salvation miracles or covenantal commandments, only the slow, steady pondering of the gifts and demands of lived life…. Wisdom literature asks about ‘what works,’ what risks may be run, what realities can be trusted, and where the practice of human choice, human freedom, and human responsibility can be exercised.” (232, Reverberations of Faith) 

These texts, says Brueggeman, contrast the wise with fools who lack wisdom and believe that life is an “anything goes” proposition… but people who follow only their own wills and impulses will not discover the hidden shape of reality, or find the path of living that is most congruent with God’s purposes for the world and our lives.

There are whole books of the Bible that really fit the bill as wisdom literature, such as the Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Proverbs, Job, and the letter of James.

There are other books that have sections or passages that have that quality. For example, the Psalms sometimes duck into Wisdom literature territory. And Jesus sometimes ventures into Wisdom teaching. 

Let’s cast an eye over today’s lectionary, from the perspective of the Wisdom literature… 

In our 1 Kings lesson, Solomon, Bathsheba’s son, becomes king after his father David. God offers Solomon a gift, and Solomon asks for wisdom. 

Solomon is a complex figure – more on that next week – but I sympathize with how genuinely overwhelmed he sounds here. When he says he’s a little child, he’s not speaking literally – he was probably somewhere in his 20s? – but he does not feel prepared to rule. Having him become king was his mom’s idea. 

He knows that he’s in over his head and has no idea how to do this job… a kind of wisdom in itself! 

So God gifts him with wisdom – AND with riches and honor. The text invites us to see Solomon as a king favored by God, like his father David before him. 

Note that even here, wisdom is not the same as revelation! God doesn’t just plant wisdom in Solomon’s mind and heart.

Rather, God gives him understanding and discernment, so that he will be able to look at the needs of his people, and rule wisely. 

This is not a wisdom text; this is just more Biblical history. But it gives us Solomon the Wise, an important figure for the Biblical tradition. FOUR full books of the Bible are presented as containing Solomon’s words and wisdom, in addition to what’s recorded in the chronicles of his reign in 1 Kings. 

First there’s the Song of Songs, which is not Wisdom literature; it’s more of an extended love poem.

Then there’s the book of Proverbs; we’ll duck into that in a couple of weeks. It describes itself as the proverbs of Solomon. 

There’s Ecclesiastes, which claims its author is “the son of David, king in Jerusalem,” and has a number of echoes of Solomon’s life, though it was likely written several centuries after Solomon’s time.  

Ecclesiastes is the source of a very famous snippet of Biblical wisdom: “To every thing there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven…” 

Finally, there’s the book called the Wisdom of Solomon, which was written quite late, around the time of Jesus or a little earlier! – but also presents itself as the insights of King Solomon.

So, a whole lot of Biblical wisdom is attributed to Solomon, remembered perhaps as a greater sage than he was a king. 

Our second text, the poem of faith we read together, comes from the book I just mentioned, the Wisdom of Solomon. 

This is definitely wisdom literature even as it describes Wisdom itself – as a pure and beautiful hidden reality, available to holy souls who seek God. 

I don’t have a lot to say about this text except that I really love it! “In every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God, and prophets.” May we have many such among us! 

Then there’s James, the New Testament letter that we’ll be reading through over the next few weeks. James is one of my favorite epistles. The author names himself as James in the first verse. Ancient church tradition identifies the author as James, the brother of Jesus, who became the first bishop of the church in Jerusalem. And modern Biblical scholarship… says that’s not impossible. I like the idea, myself! – I really notice how much James sounds like Jesus. I like to think of him reinforcing and extending his brother’s teaching, in the decades after Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension. 

I love the Epistle of James because James has so many things to say that I need to hear, every time. He speaks to my heart and names my sins. He’s especially tough on the sins of superficiality and lukewarmness. It’s good to know that those were apparently struggles for first-century Christians, as well as 21st-century! 

We’ll hear from James over the next several weeks, but just in today’s short passage, we get these bangers: 

“Your anger does not produce God’s righteousness.” Ouch. 

Okay. Being mad about something doesn’t mean I’m either right, or righteous… and being mad in itself does not fix anything.

“Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves.” That image of looking at yourself in a mirror and then walking away and immediately forgetting what you look like! How many times have I named and confronted my sins, and then… just gone on my merry way? 

“Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.” 

… Yeah. 

James sounds like Jesus in part because a lot of Jesus’ teaching and preaching springs from the Wisdom tradition, though he gives it his own distinctive spin. In Mark’s Gospel today we have Jesus doing a little Wisdom teaching! “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile… since it enters not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer! It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”

That’s Wisdom teaching – playful use of a mundane reality (eating and pooping!) to talk about something more fundamental and universal: character and what makes somebody a good person. 

Notice that our Gospel reading skips a few verses. In those verses, Jesus accuses these religious leaders – the scribes and the Pharisees – of encouraging people to make big donations to the Temple instead of supporting their aging parents, even though “honor your father and mother” is one of the Ten Commandments given to Moses by God. So this is a scene where Jesus is arguing that Jewish religious practice has grown beyond God’s original intentions, and become a kind of superficial piety that doesn’t change hearts or lives. That is a tendency of religion in general – not something specific to Judaism. 

And God knows that 21st century folks can certainly be weird and moralistic about food and what you should and shouldn’t eat! 

So this teaching may still have something to say to us. Eat what your body and your soul need to eat; but that’s not what makes you a good or bad person. Your behavior, that comes out from inside of you, is what reveals who you really are. 

Wisdom literature, as I’ve been describing it, is a concept from Biblical scholarship, a description of a genre of text from the ancient world. But the wisdom literature of the Bible contains some thoughts and perspectives that we might still describe as wisdom, two or three thousand years later. 

Wisdom is tricky to describe. To some extent we know it when we see or hear it… though there’s a lot of stuff out there that sounds like wisdom, but maybe isn’t really so wise.

Where do WE find wisdom? What wisdom helps ground and guide us, in our daily lives?…. 

In 1934, the poet T. S. Eliot wrote, “Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?

Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

Today he might add, “Where is the information we have lost in content?”… 

It’s easy to think that Wisdom is rarer or more elusive today, amid the chaos of modern life. But one of the gifts of being in weekly conversation with an ancient text, as we are, is that we can see people thousands of years ago worrying about whether young people will make good choices, fretting about leaders who lack wisdom, and so on. 

I think maybe wisdom has always been rare and elusive.  And one of the things about wisdom is that the more you have of it, the less likely you are to put yourself out there as a font of wisdom. People who go around talking about how wise they are, often turn out to be con men or cult leaders… 

And when I think of the folks in my life to whom I turn for wisdom, I think they would quickly say, Oh, I’m not that wise. I’m just smart enough to know what I don’t know… 

We associate wisdom with age, to some extent. Life has a way of piling up experiences that can lead to a broader and deeper perspective. But it’s not a simple correlation. Everyone over 70 isn’t wise… and everyone under 20 is not foolish. I’ve learned things from my children, and our children, that have changed me. 

As we keep reading our way through some Biblical Wisdom literature in the coming weeks, I’d like to share a little parish exercise in thinking about wisdom in our lives and our time.

Below are some questions for you to consider; I invite your responses over the next few weeks. You can comment in the chat or email me. I can also send these out by email or put them up in the Facebook group, if that’s helpful…  

Let us pray – a prayer for wisdom from our Book of Common Prayer. 

O God, by whom the meek are guided in judgment, and clarity rises up from confusion for the godly: Grant us, in all our doubts and uncertainties, the grace to ask what you would have us to do, that the Spirit of wisdom may save us from all false choices, and that in your light we may see light, and in your straight path may not stumble; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

QUESTIONS TO PONDER… 

How would you define wisdom – or are there other words you connect with the word “wisdom”? 

Is there a person you think of as wise? (This could be someone you know, or a public figure, writer, leader, past or present…) 

Are there life experiences you think have helped you develop wisdom? 

Wisdom sometimes takes the form of proverbs or sayings that people pass around or pass down. 

Are there wise proverbs or sayings that you think of often, or that have been passed down in your family? 

You may share responses on our Google form here!

Homily, August 25

We’re in John chapter 6 – the Bread Gospels.  We’ve been reading this for a while; today I’m finally going to (sort of) preach on it. Next week we’re finally back to Mark, the Gospel we’re mostly following this year! 

I’m going to share four things that I struggle with about John 6, as we’ve been receiving it, and two things I like. 

  1. The first frustrating thing is the way the lectionary spreads it over FIVE FULL WEEKS. 

It is really long – seventy verses – and detailed, and somewhat redundant! But at the same time, it is all one story. Jesus feeding the crowd leads into his preaching about bread, and the response of people who are curious… and then upset. 

John’s Gospel has several extended stories like this – the woman at the well; the young man born blind. Those are a little shorter – about forty verses each – but the lectionary gives them on one day, as one story. 

I don’t know why it breaks this one up so much. I know a lot of my fellow preachers have been really annoyed by it – have run out of things to say about bread.  Erin, our office coordinator, has been joking with me about using up all the bread hymns…

2. The second frustrating thing is the way the lectionary breaks this story from the story of the woman at the well in John 4. 

In that story, Jesus meets a woman who is getting water. He tells her: ‘Everyone who drinks the water from this well will be thirsty again, but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.’ And the woman says to him, ‘Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.’

That sounds a lot like parts of this story, right? 

The author of this Gospel means you to read that story, then read this story, and have them build on each other. But the lectionary gives us that story in Lent of Year A; we’re in late summer of Year B. Eighteen months apart – literally as far apart as it can be, in a three year cycle of reading.  (We’ll read it next in March 2026!!!) 

3. The third frustrating thing is the way John talks about “the Jews.” Not in the script today but in the Biblical text the people who question and argue with Jesus are just called “the Jews.” 

Which is odd because Jesus and his disciples were Jews! Other Gospels name particular groups and movements within Judaism who had beef with Jesus in various ways. John is written a little later; maybe Christianity has begun to really separate from Judaism. Or maybe John’s community had their own reasons to cast Jews in general as the enemy. 

But it’s not true to the real dynamics between Jesus and the groups who opposed him, and it’s led to a lot of violence by Christians against Jews over the millennia. 

4. The fourth frustrating thing is the way Jesus talks about eating his flesh and drinking his blood is, in fact, kind of gross, right? Eugh. And he kind of goes on and on about it. 

In the other Gospels he says what he says at the last supper – we hear it every Sunday: “Take, eat, this bread is my body, broken for you… Drink this, all of you; this cup is the new Covenant in my Blood, poured out for you and for many…” 

But John’s Jesus really leans into the cannibalism thing. It’s no wonder that it turns some people off and they decide to stop following him! 

I snuck it into the script version of the text that we just read, but I want us to understand that the idea of drinking someone’s blood is EXTRA upsetting in Judaism. God’s people the Jews have special, holy food rules that they follow, that are very important for them. And one of those rules, from way back in the time of Moses, was not to eat or drink blood. The way they kill animals for food reflects that rule.  And of course Jesus knew that.  So he is saying stuff he knows will upset people – perhaps including some of us! 

But this starts to lead me into some of the things I like about this passage. 

5. I like the way there’s a kind of riddle here. 

What do we call the part of our service where I say, or we say, “Take, eat, this bread is my body, broken for you… Drink this, all of you…”

That’s the Eucharist, right? Or in our books it might say the Great Thanksgiving. Which means the same thing. Or sometimes we say Communion. 

In the Eucharist we tell the story of the Last Supper that Jesus shared with his friends, before he was arrested and executed, and how he shared bread and wine with them and gave them a new meaning that night. And he also told them, Keep sharing a special holy meal like this! Do this and remember me! 

Which is why we do it, and remember him. 

That story is really important for Christians. And it’s in three of our four Gospels – Mark, Matthew, and Luke. 

BUT IT’S NOT IN JOHN’S GOSPEL. 

John doesn’t show us Jesus creating the Eucharist. Instead, on that final evening, John’s Jesus washes the disciple’s feet.

People have wondered: Did John not know about the Last Supper and the Eucharist? Did he disagree that it should be a core practice of the church? Why isn’t it in his Gospel? 

Except… it kind of is in his Gospel! It’s just here, instead of on his last evening with his friends. 

John has Jesus talking about eating his body and blood, just like at the Last Supper. But he’s not giving people bread and wine, to say: These things become kind of a holy extension of me; you don’t actually have to eat anything upsetting. 

I think this scene makes it very clear that John knew about the Eucharist and thought it was important. 

Maybe he even thought it was so important that people should be kind of weirded out by it. 

And I think it’s interesting to wonder about why John’s Gospel tells us about Eucharist this way, instead of telling us the Last Supper story, which he knew. 

That’s an interesting riddle, to me! 

6. The last thing I want to say about this story is something I kind of like and also kind of struggle with, as a preacher and pastor. 

In this story and in the story of the woman at the well, Jesus says, basically: 

You’re drinking regular water, or eating regular bread.  

You’ll get thirsty again, and hungry again.

I am offering you water and bread that will satisfy you, forever.

That will keep you from ever being thirsty, or hungry.

That will bubble up inside you like a fresh spring…

That will sustain you so completely that you’ll live forever. 

The problem with this is it’s just not true, right? 

Not in a literal or earthly sense. 

Even the disciples, who received Eucharist from Jesus’ own hands, got hungry again and had to eat more meals. 

When we take Communion here, we’re still pretty ready for those coffee hour snacks!

There’s a really strong theme in John’s Gospel where Jesus uses something from the real world to try and talk about how things are in God’s reality. He talks about being born again.

He talks about the wind, and how that’s like God’s spirit.

He talks about water, and thirst; about bread, and hunger.

He talks about blindness, and what it means to really see. 

And much more. 

And people get confused. They don’t understand.

Some of them get curious and want to know more.

Some of them get mad and leave. 

So I understand that John’s Jesus is talking about a different kind of hunger, and thirst. 

Not the way you feel when your body really needs a drink, 

But the way you feel when the part of you that isn’t your body really feels dry and shriveled and needs to be refreshed. 

Has anybody ever felt that way?… 

Not the way you feel when your body really needs some food, 

But the way you feel when the part of you that isn’t your body just doesn’t have any fuel… any enjoyment… and really needs something that can sustain you and give you delight. 

Has anybody ever felt that way?… 

I have felt those things. I know what it’s like to have the part of me that isn’t my body be thirsty, or hungry. I know what it feels like when the part of me that isn’t my body gets that refreshing drink, or that sustaining meal. 

But it is hard to talk about, outside of those metaphors. And I know those metaphors might not make much sense to a lot of people. Just like they didn’t in Jesus’ time. 

So, I like it when Jesus says that what he’s offering people is something that will refresh and sustain the not-body parts of them. Like a cold lemonade and a delicious sandwich when you’re really hot and thirsty and hungry. 

But I don’t know how to give that to someone who’s looking for it. I don’t even know how to find it reliably myself.  It’s not as simple as handing someone a plate of cheese or cookies at coffee hour! 

All I can do as a pastor is say what Jesus says, more or less: There is something, here, that can offer relief and satisfaction to the hungry heart or the thirsty soul. 

It’s not easy to find it, for all kinds of reasons. 

But it’s there, and Jesus – who is God – wants to give it to us. 

And I think that’s good news.

Lord, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty; 

Lord, give us this bread always. 

Amen.