This was a week when I wished we had that sign board out front for sermon titles, like some churches do, because I actually had a title before I had anything else: How We Know the Good. How We Know the Good – how we recognize good things, good thoughts, good choices, good paths. It’s a fundamental issue in religion and ethics – we can have the best intentions in the world to act rightly, but if we can’t somehow identify or discern what is right and good, we can’t follow through on our intentions.

Today’s lectionary texts point us at two ways that we can know the good. The first is the human conscience. Conscience is the word we give to our God-given capacity to know the good. Like a compass pointing to north, our conscience points to the right path, to what is true, and just, and good. It guides us in uncertainty, goads us when we are wrongly comfortable, and reminds us when something in our lives is amiss, in need of amendment, change, or healing. In our text from the book of the prophet Jeremiah, God speaks through the prophet to tell the people: No longer will the law of holiness, your way of living as God’s people, exist outside of you, a Law that must be written and taught. Instead I will put my law inside of you; I will engrave it on your hearts; and I will be your God, and you shall be my people. No longer shall the people have to 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, says the LORD.

Jeremiah’s image of God’s law of goodness written on the hearts of God’s people, so that we simply know God’s ways without being taught – that idea becomes a central concept in Anglican theological anthropology. Theological anthropology just means, how we think about humans in light of how we think about God. And Christian traditions vary widely in their theological anthropology. For instance, it’s one of our areas of difference from our Lutheran brothers and sisters, with whom we otherwise share a great deal. Among Christian traditions, Anglicans and Episcopalians have a relatively positive view of humanity. For Anglicans, knowing good from evil is a fundamental part of human nature, one of the ways in which we were created in God’s likeness, revealed and redeemed in Jesus Christ’s incarnation as a human being. While other Reformation theologians stressed human sinfulness, the Anglican reformers saw humans as possessing reason and conscience, God-given capacities for moral knowing, which make it possible to see and choose the good. True, we see wrongly and choose badly, often; but in spite of our failings, humans are capable of acting rightly. The 16th-century Anglican theologian Richard Hooker wrote, “Reason… may rightly discerne the thing which is good.” And the 20th-century Anglican theologian Kenneth Kirk wrote, ‘”The Soul, however tainted or corrupted by sin, retains an innate power both of perceiving what is good and right, and of aspiring to it.”

Listen, talking Anglican moral theology may seem scholarly and abstruse. But I think that sense of a human capacity to know the good is in the DNA of our faith in a way that you’ll recognize once you start to look for it. Our shared conviction that the human heart is not a traitor leading us to damnation, but can actually be a faithful compass pointing us towards God’s desires, that conviction is what’s made it possible for us to re-examine and revise the the church’s historic teachings on ordaining women and gay people, for example.

So, we Episcopalians, Christians in the Anglican tradition, believe that conscience is inborn, a birthright. But conscience is also formed and nurtured by community. You might think of it like our capacity for language – we are hard-wired for it, it’s fundamental to our nature, but we still need a linguistic community to activate it. Our conscience is shaped and developed in the context of our moral communities – family, church, and society. Of course, as people of faith, we see the church as a primary site of moral formation; and of course as liturgical Christians, we see regular participation in our rites of word and sacrament as the key to our ongoing growth as moral agents.

The liturgy we’re using right now, for example, teaches us to notice and celebrate the small blessings of life – those loud-boiling test tubes! – and give thanks for them. To look to God as the Source of all things. To pray and strive for the welfare of others, near and far, and to work and pray for the good of the city where we dwell. To be mindful of our failures of love, and to seek healing and amendment of life. To be people of peace. To be people of generosity, who offer back a portion of what we are given. To hold before ourselves Jesus’ example of courageous self-giving love, and his passion for the redemption of the world. To be people of forgiveness. To trust God for what we truly need. To recognize and treasure our unity, even in our differences. And to serve God in the world with strength, courage, gladness, and singleness of heart. And that’s just the words of the liturgy, apart from the Scriptures and the sermon of the day, which occasionally makes a worthwhile point.

There is indeed some rich moral teaching in our liturgies, to be absorbed week by week, year by year, decade by decade. But it’s all rather broad-brush, isn’t it? Not a lot of specifics about how to apply these principles. Those of you who have come to the Episcopal Church from other branches of the noble tree of Christianity may have noticed that we are not real heavy on teaching particular moral rules. That’s not just 21st century Episcopal wishy-washiness. It’s actually part and parcel of that basic Anglican theological anthropology. Instead of teaching moral rules, what you ought to do in such and such a situation, we focus on forming a moral community, in which individuals develop their capacity to recognize the good and do what is right. We proclaim a few bedrock commitments, but when it comes to how we live them out in given cases, we tend to trust reason informed by conscience. As the former Archbishop of Canterbury once wrote, “Only I can answer the question, ‘What ought I to do?'” (Rowan Williams, p. 296).

Listening to your conscience takes effort. Otherwise we’d never do anything wrong. It takes mindfulness and self-knowledge. It’s easier when we’re not stressed or angry or exhausted – though sometimes clarity can strike like a lighting bolt in those moments, too. We’re apt to ignore that still small voice inside us because we’re comfortable, or busy, or anxious, or prideful, or because we feel too responsible … But if we look inside ourselves, the compass is there, needle faithfully pointing the way even as we cast about for a path.

But. But.

Let’s look at this Gospel parable. Jesus says, In a certain city there was a judge, who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, ‘Grant me justice against my opponent.’ For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, ‘Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming.'” Luke, our Gospel writer, sees this as a story about our call to be persistent. He introduces it as “a parable about the need to pray always and not to lose heart.” And he adds a coda to the story itself – a couple of sayings of Jesus: God will grant justice to God’s chosen ones who cry to God day and night; yet when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?

This whole section of Luke, these parables and sayings, is unique to Luke’s Gospel. Bible scholars think that he had access to a collection of Jesus’ sayings and teachings that the other Gospel writers didn’t have. He had to figure out how drop them into his account of Jesus’ life, which he does, in part, by just stringing a bunch of them together here in chapters 17 and 18. It’s possible – and in some cases seems likely – that he was trying to match up parables and sayings, so that it all made sense to him and to his audience. I visualize him with a bunch of index cards on his desk…

So. Maybe this is a parable about being faithful in prayer, even when it seems like you’re not getting results. Sure. That call to holy persistence would be in keeping with the message of this portion of the second letter to Timothy: Proclaim the message; be persistent whether the time is favorable or unfavorable; convince, rebuke, and encourage, with the utmost patience in teaching. Read from that angle, the story invites us to identify with the widow. Keep making noise. Be the squeaky wheel. Don’t give up. You will be heard, and answered.

But. Part of how the parables work is that they can be read from multiple angles. I fully believe that was Jesus’ intention, and that a lot of the time, in the Gospels, when a parable comes with a little explanation about what it means, that explanation comes from the Gospel writer. I suspect Jesus mostly just told the stories and left people to puzzle over them.

So in that light, think on this story again, and ask yourself, what if I’m the judge? …

Jesus points us towards the question of conscience in the way he describes the judge: he neither feared God nor had respect for people. So in contrast with the developed conscience of a practicing Jew or Christian, this guy doesn’t care what God thinks about his actions, and he doesn’t care about what happens to other people. And he’s a person in authority; his decisions influence the lives of others on a daily basis. And he has walled up his inner moral compass. He just doesn’t care.

But the widow makes him care. Because she won’t shut up. She keeps pressing her case, insisting that there’s an injustice that needs attention, until she wears him down. He finally hears her, and responds to her call, because she is so persistent – or to put it another way, because she is so annoying.

What if I’m the judge? What if I’m the one whose ears and mind and heart are closed, until someone’s persistence wears me down so that I finally, finally listen?

We are formed and nurtured by moral communities – our families, schools, churches. They train and calibrate our consciences for compassion, understanding, empathy.

But the human world is bigger than our moral communities. There are people whose lives we don’t easily understand. The constraints that bind them, the struggles that bear down on them, the griefs and needs that exhaust and frustrate them. Sometimes we look at others’ lives and find it hard to their motives and choices. Sometimes we look at others’ lives and know we should feel pity, but instead, feel judgment. We think, in our inmost hearts, I wouldn’t have let that happen to me. Why didn’t they make better choices? He brought it on himself. She should have known better.

Those thoughts are a sign that our conscience is overwhelmed, swamped by a situation that’s outside our moral universe. The communities and experiences that formed us didn’t prepare us to understand and respond to the full scope of human lives, needs, wrongs and injustices.

This is the second way we can know the good: by listening, when a person or community is persistently telling us that something is deeply wrong. What’s banging on the door of your conscience? Coming around every day to remind you that some situation you haven’t yet begun to care about still hasn’t gone away?

Here’s something that’s been nagging at my conscience. On September 21st, five days after police in Tulsa shot Terence Crutcher, one day after police in Charlotte shot Keith Scott, a new hashtag showed up on Twitter. A hashtag is a way to link people’s comments and posts, to have a broad conversation about the same issue or event. This hashtag was, WhiteChurchQuiet. The conversation it defined was a conversation among African-American Christians about feeling unheard and uncared-about. And it felt like a punch in the gut to me, and to many other white Christians.

Here are a few of the tweets, “Do you all really want social justice, or do you just want to talk about diversity so the good Lord knows you mean well? #WhiteChurchQuiet” “We ask, How long, O Lord? Maybe God is asking us the same question. #WhiteChurchQuiet” A quotation from Martin Luther King, Jr.: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. #WhiteChurchQuiet” A quotation from the Epistles, from 1 John: “If you don’t love the person you can see, how can you love the God you can’t see? #WhiteChurchQuiet”

The #WhiteChurchQuiet hashtag is a persistent widow for me. I’m not like the Unjust Judge; I might be worse. I do fear God and respect other people, but I’m still ignoring my brothers and sisters who are shouting for change, shouting for justice. I believe that, among the forces that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God, systemic racism is among the most vicious and powerful. My brothers and sisters, for whom Christ died, live in a very different Madison and a very different America than I do as a white person. My kids’ Black friends are growing up in the shadow of statistics about massive disparities in educational outcomes, future employment, and involvement with the criminal justice system. It’s not just and it’s not right. But talking about systemic racism has become so polarized that it’s scary to talk about it in church. I’m worried right now about who I’m upsetting. And so I become a poster child for WhiteChurchQuiet. Because I’m fearful, and because I don’t know what to say. I don’t have this figured out yet. Far from it. But I hear #WhiteChurchQuiet as the holy botheration of the indignant widow, for me. There’s something here that’s calling my conscience to re-calibrate, so that it can guide me in right response to the divisions and disparaties of our common life.

But there are plenty of persistent widows to go around. This past week a lot of American men have had a rude awakening to the commonplace realities of life as a girl and woman. Our political conversation has gone some places nobody expected or wanted it to go. And that’s uncorked the bottle of women’s stories of having their space invaded and their bodily autonomy violated. Author Kelly Oxford tweeted about her own experience of sexual assault, and invited other women to share theirs. She got millions of responses. At the peak she was receiving fifty per minute. I think women knew that these experiences are commonplace, though maybe we didn’t know just how commonplace, or how egregious they could be, or how young we are when it begins.

But a lot of men didn’t know. Most men don’t do stuff like that. And they had no idea that most women experience stuff like that. And it’s been genuinely heartening to see America’s men responding to this particular persistent widow – taking on board realities that were invisible to them before, and saying, That’s not okay. We all need to do better. We need to teach our daughters to yell, and our sons to ask, and we need to convince, rebuke, and encourage one another to treat every child of God with respect and care.

We know what’s good, what’s true, what’s just, first because God gives us the gift – and burden – of a conscience, born inside us, nestled against our beating hearts, nurtured by the people and communities around us. And when we run up against the limits of our moral knowing, of what our conscience has encountered, we can come to know the good by a second path: through the persistence of another’s voice, from outside the walls of our zone of comfort and familiarity, that breaks through the limits of our capacity for concern and compassion, and bother us into a broader view of the goodness God wants for all God’s children.

How shall we seek the good of the city where we dwell?

We use this phrase in our Prayers of the People – Work and pray for the good of the city where we dwell, for in its peace we shall find our peace. Today the lectionary brings us those words in context, late in the book of the prophet Jeremiah. Jerusalem and the whole land are conquered by Babylon, as Jeremiah had predicted, and many of the people are taken into exile in Babylon. This passage is part of a letter that Jeremiah sent to those exiles. He was writing to counter the words of false prophets, who were telling the Jewish exiles that Babylon would soon be destroyed and they would be able to go home. Instead, Jeremiah says, You’re going to be there for a while. Build houses. Plant gardens. Have families. And seek the welfare of the city where God has sent you, for in its welfare, in its peace, you will find your own.

I’m glad to have the chance to explain the text and its context. I want to make sure we understand that the city mentioned there isn’t necessarily Madison. Maybe it’s Middleton. Verona. Mount Horeb. Maybe it’s Dane County. Or Wisconsin. Or the United States. It’s … wherever we find ourselves. Where we live and work, rest and play. Where we abide. Where we know the struggles, and have the chance to be part of the solutions.

How shall we seek the good of the city where we dwell? I added these words to our weekly Prayers maybe 18 months ago. Before that we had prayers for the world and the nation, but I noticed how much our prayers and actions were focused on local issues, local needs, and I thought, We need a particular place for those prayers and intentions. These words from Jeremiah came to mind, and fit so well. I treasure this text because it holds up the paradox of belonging and not belonging that’s central to life as a person of faith. Our loyalties are first and foremost to God’s kingdom and God’s ethics, which are often in tension with the ethics and norms of the world. Yet we’re called to engagement, not disengagement; to love, not condemnation.

Jeremiah wrote these words in a very particular moment; but I think I can defend using this random snippet of Old Testament prophecy as part of our weekly intercessions in Christian worship. Because what Jeremiah says here about how the exiles should live in Babylon is a lot like the way Jesus and the Apostles direct the first Christians to think and live: Be not conformed to the world, know yourselves as a people set apart, a people whose homeland is elsewhere, not even of this world; but live in this world as Jesus did: loving, grieving, celebrating, helping, healing, feeding, showing up, speaking out.

It was pretty easy for the earliest Christians to remember this because they felt like exiles; their way of faith put them at odds with other religious groups and with the cultural and political order around them. The Old Testament tells us that the people Israel, the faith-ancestors of both today’s Christians and Jews, had times of peace and prosperity when they were tempted to forget that they were first and foremost God’s people, not as a self-made and self-sufficient nation. Times when God had to remind them that they didn’t belong where they were in any deep or lasting way. The books of the Torah remind the Jews again and again that they were aliens and slaves in the land of Egypt. And the great festivals of the Jewish calendar, Passover, Sukkoth, Purim, remind them too of their times of being outsiders, wanderers and exiles.

Jews living today carry the collective memories of millennia of living – and dying – as an oppressed minority. They are not likely to forget that their loyalties are never simply to any earthly kingdom. But we Christians, well, our faith became the religion of empire 1600 years ago. That chapter of unquestioned dominance for our way of faith is waning now, and we’re struggling, in many respects, to remember – to reconstruct from the wisdom of our faith ancestors – how not to belong. How to be outsiders, exiles, whose identities and loyalties come from somewhere else than the place in which we find ourselves, but who work and pray faithfully for the good of the city where we dwell.

I think that’s why Jesus in his wisdom gave his followers so many stories and examples of strangers and outsiders being the ones who truly recognize God’s power and mercy. Like the Samaritan in today’s Gospel. Please note, the other nine guys are all doing what Jesus told them to do – going to show themselves to the Jewish religious authorities, to be certified as healed and clean from their disease, and free to resume normal life. Familiar rites, institutions and theologies take over. We have no reason to believe that they thought much about Jesus, after that day. The Samaritan is outside of that religious system. So where does he take his gratitude? He takes it back to the man who seems to him to have brought about his healing: Jesus. It’s his very outsiderness that makes him able to see clearly how God is at work.

The theme is familiar because Jesus tells it, and shows it, again and again. Listen to those on the outside, and remember, hold onto, your own outsider-ness; you often get the broadest view from the cheapest seats.

How shall we seek the good of the city where we dwell?

It’s pretty hard sometimes, and exhausting. We’re in one of those seasons right now. There’s so much going on in the life of our nation, let alone the larger world, that makes people feel angry, fearful, confused. Overwhelmed. Outraged. Despairing. We can be tempted to disengage. To think, like the exiles in Babylon: I don’t really belong here, and this place and its problems are just not my problem.

I read a short essay on this topic a few months ago that I really, really loved. And I’m going to share a little of it with you now. It’s written by a bear, who blogs and tweets regularly. Well, okay. It’s probably actually a person, but it sure sounds like a bear. She wrote this essay in response to the Pulse nightclub shooting back in June. And she’s basically reflecting on the struggle to keep striving for the good of the forest where she dwells. Listen.

“I wish doing things to make everything better for everyone in the forest was as easy as thinking about doing things to make everything better for everyone in the forest. It is not, though. In fact, it is actually very difficult for me to do things in the forest that feel like they affect anyone or anything beyond [me] or my immediate forest surroundings…I have tried, certainly, but the things I want changed seem to stay the same, no matter how much effort and dedication I put toward the changes I want to see. That is one of the more frustrating aspects of this: the one thing I do have control of [myself and my surroundings] are the only things I can effectively change. However, changing [myself] does not make the terribleness of the bad things that can happen in the forest change, go away, or get better. What I can change does not matter for the things I want to change. Sometimes I wonder if I should mind [my own bearness] and nothing else. I wonder if it is possible that all creatures of the forest are meant to simply mind their own personal creatureness… I am a bear, and I can only control my bearness, and I just have to accept that and move on with my bearness. But… I do not like that.  Some [creatures] fight just to make others feel like their otherness is wrong, bad, and worthless… And some [creatures] actually hurt and destroy [others], which is not fair or nice or necessary… I have to be a part of all of those relationships of the forest. I cannot just tend to my own bearness while [others] are hurt or hindered or hushed… If another creature cannot be the creature it is or wants to be because it is being unfairly stopped or even hurt, how could I not intervene? … [pause] I know that not everyone can tend their everyoneness, and sometimes they need help with tending their everyoneness.”

It’s a funny phrase: Tending our everyone-ness. But it’s the phrase I’ve kept thinking about, over the months since I first read the bear’s musings. Tending our everyone-ness. Our capacity to recognize the other, the stranger, the outsider, as also a child of the forest and a child of God. In our Discipleship Practices, we call this Reconciling: living as people who know that we are all one in God’s eyes. That there is no such thing as other people.

There is a paradox here, for the exiles in Babylon and for us: it’s our otherness, our commitments as people of faith, that drive us to tend our everyone-ness, to respond to our neighbors in love. It’s the paradox of Jeremiah’s call to the exiles: Remember who you are, but don’t keep yourselves apart. Strive for the welfare of the city where you live as exiles. Be an active part of the common good, wherever you find yourselves. Tend your everyone-ness.

How shall we seek the good of the city where we dwell?

Of course, the biggest thing straining our capacity to tend our everyone-ness right now is the election season. Some of us are angry, hopeful, fearful, determined, defensive. All of us are weary. How does Jeremiah’s call speak to us right now?

Some of you probably feel tempted to say, A pox on both their houses!… You’re so fed up that you’re ready to disengage entirely. I believe that faithful stewardship of what God has given us as citizens of a democracy, however flawed, involves informing ourselves and voting. If the candidates and the process make you queasy, try thinking past the election; look at the candidates’ policy priorities, think about the vision for the country they’re promoting, and weigh that against your values and convictions as a Christian. Make your choice on that basis. People of good conscience may arrive at different conclusions. But striving for the good of the city where we dwell demands that we take the impact of our votes seriously.

Some of you are deeply engaged, and fiercely passionate, for your candidate and/or against the other candidate. Tending your everyone-ness is even harder for you, friends, than for those who are just exhausted and ready to tune out. Because for you, it means trying to keep loving those on the other side. Setting aside judgment in favor of curiosity and compassion. What brought them to stand where they stand? How is their path like and unlike the path that brought me to stand where I stand? It is hard to look at someone who holds views you find hateful and tell yourself, This is a human being whom God loves. It’s hard. But it’s not optional.

On November 9th we will be the United States. We will still have to live with each other. We are going to need a lot of active, intentional, loving tending of our everyone-ness, after this divisive and exhausting season. In times of struggle, threat, anger, fear, uncertainty, it’s tempting to pull back into ourselves. To hunker down in the places where we feel safe, with the people who’ll affirm our opinions. To mind our own bearness.

But the hopeful, the faithful response, is to keep pushing outwards. To keep reconciling. To tend our everyone-ness. To work and pray, faithfully, for the good of the city where we dwell. For in its peace, friends, someday, somehow, we shall find our peace.

The bear’s wise words may be read in full here:

https://helloiamabear.com/2016/06/13/i-do-not-want-to-feel-helpless/

Months ago – around the time the Supreme Court unexpectedly dropped to eight members – somebody out there commented that it appears to be the final season of America. Not in the apocalyptic sense, but in the television sense. America in 2016 feels like a TV show in its final days, in which the producers are throwing in all kinds of unlikely and bizarre plot twists, that strain our suspension of disbelief and our capacity to care about what happens to the main characters, and have caused many folks to tune out entirely.

Let me be clear: I’m not suggesting that our current national roller-coaster ride is in fact being created or manipulated by some shadowy interest group. But unlike most of the swirling conspiracy theories, the fatigue, confusion, and frustration many of us feel are very real. This is a tough time. A lot of issues feel polarized and charged right now – not only, but especially, around this year’s presidential election. People on both the left and the right feel conflicted about their own votes, and struggle with the uncomfortable fact that even people who share our convictions and hopes are considering casting their votes differently, in ways that could have huge consequences for our republic and our common good.

What I’m trying to say is that 2016 has been a heck of a year for arguing with strangers on the Internet. Right? Because we’re all anxious, and conflicted, and scared, so we get shouty; but we don’t want to get shouty with people we know, with co-workers or friends or family. The Internet seems like a safe outlet – but then the rage and poisonous hate-speech online becomes its own toxic feedback loop and spills back over into real life.

Into the midst of that, on this Sunday 64 days out from Election Day, comes the Letter to Philemon. Philemon is one of the shortest books in the Bible. It’s a letter, written by the apostle Paul – there’s a broad consensus that this really is Paul’s voice. Paul is writing from prison, during one of his several incarcerations. He’s writing to a man named Philemon, who was a wealthy church leader in the church in Colossae. Philemon hosted a church community in his home. Paul is writing to Philemon about Onesimus. Onesimus used to be Philemon’s slave. Slavery was very common in the ancient world. Onesimus was likely a household slave of some sort. His name is Greek – it means “useful”. That sounds like a name he was given by a master, rather than a parent.

Onesimus might have been born into slavery, or sold into slavery because of poverty or debts. He might have a native of the region, or he or his parents might have come from the edges of the empire as spoils of conquest – Africa, Germany, Britain. You can picture Onesimus with almost any color skin or hair. But picture him as a young man, because of the way he becomes like a son to Paul. And picture him as unhappy or angry in his slavery, unhappy or angry enough to run away, despite the fact that the punishment for runaway slaves could include anything from a severe beating to execution. We don’t know how Onesimus connected with Paul. Maybe he had had met Paul in the past, and sought him out; maybe Onesimus was captured and imprisoned, and met Paul there.

The situation Paul is writing about is unfamiliar to us. But what Paul is doing here is actually quite familiar. He is talking with a friend or acquaintance about an area of disagreement, on which they both feel strongly. Some of us dive into conversations like that on Facebook or email or in person, on a daily basis. Some of us avoid them entirely, but write whole volumes in our heads of what we *would* say if we did speak up. But we’re all familiar with this kind of writing and speaking.  And Paul’s careful, wise work here might actually give us some encouragement for having those difficult but important conversations face to face, with people we know, instead of shouting at strangers on the Internet or holding our fearful and angry thoughts within, where they eat away at us until we disconnect or explode. So let’s look at what Paul does, step by step.

Step zero: He probably thought for a good long while about how to address this awkward situation. Consider how difficult and delicate this was for Paul: Onesimus has come to him, learned from him, become a Christian, and a dear friend, like a son to Paul, who never had biological children. BUT by right of law, Onesimus belongs to Philemon, a wealthy and influential church leader, who has every reason to punish Onesimus – and blame Paul. Onesimus probably really didn’t want to go back to Philemon. But for Paul to say to Onesimus, “Go on your way, forget your master, you are free in Christ now,” would burn bridges Paul can’t afford to burn – not only with Philemon but with any wealthy slave-owning person who might otherwise be sympathetic to the Christian faith. According to the ethics of his time and place, but also very much according to his pragmatic desire to build the Christian movement, Paul needs to make things right with Philemon somehow. But he also cares for Onesimus’ welfare and future.

Paul might have taken some counsel from today’s Gospel, in which Jesus says that following him fully may sometimes lead to strained or broken relationships. (As I said a couple of weeks ago: Niceness is a not a Christian virtue.) Jesus goes on to offer a couple of images: a person building a tower, a king going to war. In both cases, he says, it’s wise to go into the endeavor with a realistic idea of what it could actually cost you. Discipleship, living our lives as followers of Jesus, at certain moments can be a costly and demanding project. Paul, facing one such moment, undoubtedly took some time to calculate the risks and plan his approach.

When we’re facing conversation across differences, taking time to think and pray and plan, and reflect on the concerns and experiences we bring to the table, can be really helpful.

Step one: Paul engages with a friend – or at least an acquaintance whom he addresses as a friend. He undertakes this difficult conversation about the intersection of faith and life with someone to whom he’s already connected – not some stranger from the Internet, but a person who has some reason to listen and care what Paul thinks. And he begins – and ends – by affirming the relationship, alluding both to his friendship with Philemon and to the wider web of relationships that bind them together. Verses 1 through 3: “From Paul, who is a prisoner for the cause of Christ Jesus, and our brother Timothy, to Philemon our dearly loved coworker,  Apphia our sister, Archippus our fellow soldier, and the church that meets in your house. May the grace and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you.” And at the very end, verses 23 to 25: “Epaphras, who is in prison with me for the cause of Christ Jesus, greets you, as well as my coworkers Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, and Luke. May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.”

When we’re facing conversation across differences, reminding ourselves that we’re connected by the bonds of friendship and community, and care about each other, can be really important.

Step two. Paul addresses Philemon on the basis of what they share, as followers of Jesus. In what Martin Luther once called “holy flattery,” Paul affirms their common framework, their shared hopes and commitments, and reminds Philemon of what a good Christian he is, before, during, and after talking about their awkward area of difference: Paul sees Onesimus as a beloved son, Philemon sees him as a runaway slave. Listen to Paul’s words as he reminds a wealthy man with a grievance of their shared faith in Jesus (verses 4 – 7): “Philemon, I thank my God every time I mention you in my prayers because I’ve heard of your love and faithfulness, which you have both for the Lord Jesus and for all God’s people. I pray that your partnership in the faith might become effective by an understanding of all that is good among us in Christ. I have great joy and encouragement because of your love, since the hearts of God’s people are refreshed by your actions, my brother…”

And then a few verses later, when Paul comes to the big ask – that Philemon welcome, forgive, and free Onesimus – he again talks about the kinship in Christ that he, Philemon, and Onesimus share: “Onesimus is a dearly loved brother to me. How much more can he become a brother to you, personally and spiritually in the Lord.”

When we’re facing conversation across differences, grounding our conversation in the values and hopes we hold in common can help us stay connected even when we’re disagreeing, and keep our eyes on the bigger picture.

Step three. Paul is dealing here with a specific, concrete issue. I think it’s really important that we have some clarity on the ethics of the Kingdom of God, in which we are called to citizenship – big complicated holy demanding words like liberation, justice, mercy. But conversations across differences tend to be most fruitful when we can talk about something real and immediate.  Elsewhere in his letters to the young churches, Paul gestures towards a position that slavery has no place among Christians – since we become a new community in Christ in which there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male and female (Gal 3:28). One imagines that that passage might really get Philemon’s hackles up.

Paul knows this isn’t the context for that kind of language. He doesn’t write to Philemon to say, “Listen, now that you’re a Christian, I think you should consider freeing all your slaves. It’s what Jesus would want.” Instead he writes to Philemon with a very specific request: Receive Onesimus back into your household as a brother in Christ. Listen to Paul’s appeal to Philemon. Notice how he plays up the fact that he’s old, and in prison; how he calls Onesimus “child,” “brother,” and “my own heart” – and the puns on Onesimus’ name (verses 11 – 16): “I, Paul—an old man, and now also a prisoner for Christ Jesus— appeal to you for my child Onesimus. I became his father in the faith during my time in prison. He was useless to you before, but now he is useful to both of us. I’m sending him back to you, which is like sending you my own heart…. Maybe this is the reason that Onesimus was separated from you for a while so that you might have him back forever— no longer as a slave but more than a slave—that is, as a dearly loved brother.”

Do I wish Paul had handled this differently? Sure! His tactful and deferential approach to the issue of slavery here helped Christians justify slavery for centuries. Both opponents and supporters of slavery appealed to this letter to support their positions during 18th and 19th century debates over slavery. I wish Paul had said more plainly what I believe he believed: that slavery was wrong, was a violation of the humanity of a child of God, a person for whom Christ died. Paul is compromising here, and it’s a compromise that we may, rightly, find unsatisfactory.

But Paul was trying to spread Christianity in a hostile world. He needed wealthy people to support the movement, for it to have chance to grow and spread. I’m sure he was anxious about alienating the wealthy, many of whom would have owned slaves. Having the elite classes decide that Christianity wasn’t for them, and was, in fact, rather troublesome, could have been terrible for the young churches.

You can look at Paul’s appeal to Philemon as letting temporal concerns constrain the truth of the Gospel. I think that’s a fair assessment. You can look at Paul’s appeal to Philemon as a strategic foot-in-the-door approach, based on a calculation that if Paul can get Philemon to follow the implications of his faith in this one instance, other ripple effects may follow. I think that’s a fair assessment too.

When we’re facing conversation across differences, it’s often helpful to focus on something specific and concrete, instead of hypotheticals or big abstract principals. Turns out the big abstract principals are embedded in the specific and the concrete, anyway.  Focusing on the particular – a situation, a policy – gives us the best chance to have our facts straight – and not only our facts but also our thoughts and feelings. And the best chance to be able to understand the other’s perspective and perhaps come to a common understanding, even if we still ultimately draw different conclusions.

Step four. Paul trusts Philemon with the outcome of this conversation. This is a hard one for me: if I’m going to try to change someone’s mind, I want to succeed. But Paul leaves this decision in Philemon’s hands.

Paul is pushy in this letter, no question. He is quite clear about what he thinks Philemon should do. But he doesn’t threaten him or order him – in fact, he makes a point of asking instead of commanding (vs. 8-9): “Though I have enough confidence in Christ to command you to do the right thing, I would rather appeal to you through love….” A few verses later he says that he considered just keeping Onesimus with him, but that he didn’t want to take the opportunity to make a righteous choice away from Philemon: “I didn’t want to do anything without your consent, so that your act of kindness would occur willingly and not under pressure.”

Now, “not under pressure” is a bit rich – Paul does pressure Philemon. He tells him how much he could gain by having Onesimus as a brother in Christ instead of a slave; he promises to pay back any money Onesimus owes to Philemon, whether from theft or the price of a slave’s freedom (verses 18-19) – and offers this little gem: “Of course, I won’t mention that you owe me your life.” And he hints that Philemon should expect Paul to visit soon, and see with his own eyes whether Philemon has received Onesimus in accordance with Paul’s hopes: “Also, one more thing—prepare a guest room for me.”

Paul is unabashed in asking Philemon to change his heart, to forgive and forget his grievance against Onesimus – in verses 20 – 21 he writes, “Yes, brother, I want this favor from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ. I’m writing to you, confident of your obedience and knowing that you will do more than what I ask.”

Paul is pushy, here. But he puts the outcome in Philemon’s hands in a very real way: He sends this letter with Onesimus. Or rather – he sends Onesimus with this letter. Consider the alternative: he could have corresponded with Philemon first, keeping Onesimus with him until he knew how this would go. Until he had a promise of safe return for this young man he has come to love so dearly.

But he doesn’t do that. He says his piece, and he puts the whole matter in Philemon’s hands, entrusts it to Philemon’s conscience. Again, we might question Paul’s choice here – if the gambit had failed, Onesimus would have borne the greatest cost. But sending Onesimus with the letter, instead of writing first, seems like a strategic demonstration of confidence in Philemon. Paul is saying with his actions, I know you’re going to do the right thing.

And it worked. We know it worked, because we have the letter. This was private correspondence, unlike Paul’s other letters, written to be read aloud in a community setting. If Philemon hadn’t responded to Paul’s appeal, surely this letter would have just been burned or thrown away. Instead it was preserved by Philemon’s family and church, passed down until it became part of the canon of Scripture. I believe that could only have happened if Philemon did was Paul asked: welcomed Onesimus as a brother in Christ. Philemon must have shared the letter. And if he shared the letter, surely he shared it as part of explaining why he was going to free Onesimus, rather than punishing him.

While the letter gives us a glimpse of the story, with no clear ending, I believe grace triumphed here. I believe liberation, justice, and mercy were lived out, in this particular situation.

When we’re facing conversation across differences, it helps a lot to respect the intellect and conscience of the other person. It’s so easy to forget this – especially on the Internet, but in person too – but very few of us are actually monsters. Very few of the people who live and vote and think differently from you actually wake up in the morning with the intention to hurt people and ruin the world. Coming to those difficult conversations with curiosity about how that person came to see things the way they do, will get us a lot farther than assuming they’re simply wrongheaded and evil.

Trusting the other person’s intellect and conscience also means these conversations take time. It means letting your conversation partner think about it, giving them time and space to change. Trusting the other person’s intellect and conscience also means being open the possibility that I might have some thinking to do, and maybe even some changing to do, as well.

It’s not really the final season of America. I have too much faith in God, and in us, to believe that. But it’s a complicated, charged season in the life of our country, to be sure. Hard conversations across differences are always possible, and right now they feel probable, or even inevitable. And not just around the election and the candidates, but around all kinds of things. On my Facebook wall, they’re usually public schools and/or systemic racism. In church, we sometimes run into moments when people’s hopes and priorities differ, and have to be reconciled. On this Labor Day weekend I note our lively national conversation about a just and livable economy for working people. There’s lots to disagree about. We are passionate people!

I’m grateful for Paul’s voice in Philemon, in this season. For the reminder to think before I speak. To have real conversations with real people. To affirm what we share, even in disagreement. To stay focused, and to respect my conversation partner. And – but – above all, to have those necessary hard conversations, with faithfulness, humility, and courage.

I looked at these readings and started thinking about them before taking a week’s vacation. Maybe laying down my priest identity for a while let my anthropologist identity come to the fore, because when I came back to actually write this sermon, I found I wanted to lead you in a bit of a word study. The word is, Nice.

Nice is a very anthropologically interesting word. Its most familiar/common meaning, what you’d probably say if I asked you, is something like agreeable, pleasant, friendly. But Nice is also a word we use to police behavior. To nudge one another towards following cultural and social expectations. Nice comes into play a lot in talk about gender norms – Nice girls don’t dress like that, or talk in a loud voice, or have strong opinions.

Nice comes into play when we talk about tradition and the way things are done. My favorite example comes from the film Bend it Like Beckham, or rather, from a little bonus video on the DVD of the film, in which the director, Gurinder Chadha, cooks several Indian dishes in her own kitchen under the supervision of her very traditional Indian mother and aunt. They disapprove of many of her choices as she cooks, telling her, if you chop the onions that way, “It won’t be nice.”

Nice comes into play when we talk about social order and appropriate behavior. It isn’t nice to make a fuss, to rock the boat, to be disruptive. It isn’t nice to say things that make people feel bad, or uncomfortable, or guilty. It certainly isn’t nice to disrupt business or traffic.

Niceness is very much in the eye of the beholder. One person’s “not nice” is another person’s heroic or prophetic. The Montgomery bus boycott was certainly not nice, in the eyes of the racist white society that it challenged. It was not nice to throw crates of perfectly good tea into Boston Harbor – think of the waste! the environmental impact! – and yet we regard the folks who did that not as punks but as patriots.

Anthropologically speaking, niceness about much more than being polite or friendly. It’s a word we use to maintain boundaries of respectability, police social norms, express disapproval of the inconvenient, messy, or disruptive. Back in 1964, Malvina Reynolds wrote a song called “It isn’t nice.” (By the way, Malvina was born 116 years ago this Tuesday – which means she was in her 60s when she was writing and performing various anthems of the civil rights movement!…)

The song says, “It isn’t nice to block the doorway, it isn’t nice to go to to jail. … There are nicer ways to do it, but the nice ways always fail. It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice, you told us once, you told us twice, but if that is Freedom’s price, we don’t mind. It isn’t nice to carry banners, or to sit in on the floor, or to shout our cry for freedom at the hotel and the store… It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice, you told us once, you told us twice, but if that is Freedom’s price, we don’t mind.”

This song, “It isn’t nice” has been stuck in my head this week – in part because this is the “It isn’t nice” Gospel. Jesus is teaching in a synagogue, a local place of worship. And a woman comes into the synagogue, who is crippled, bent over, with some disabling illness. And Jesus sees her and calls her over, and lays hands on her and heals her, And she stands up straight – that must have felt so good – and begins to praise God. Not “thank you God” but HALLELUJAH THANK YOU JESUS THANK YOU!

And then… the leader of the synagogue – my brother across the ages – starts to complain about what has happened. Here’s where Niceness comes into it. It isn’t nice to bother the Rabbi while he’s teaching. it isn’t nice to cure on the sabbath and disrupt our orderly worship. It isn’t nice for a woman to start loudly and emotionally praising God in the middle of the men’s nice intellectual conversation about Scripture.

Luke describes the leader as “indignant.” That’s how we feel when niceness is violated. When people do things that aren’t appropriate – respectful – nice. And he uses a word we use when our sense of niceness is violated: “Ought”. He can’t quite say that he’s sorry she was healed, so instead he criticizes how it happened: There are six days on which work ought to be done! She ought to have come on one of those days!

But Jesus “ought”s right back at him, makes one woman’s ailment a matter of historic, cosmic, and ethical significance: “Ought not this woman, a daughter of Abraham whom Satan bound for eighteen long years, be set free from this bondage on the Sabbath day?”

It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice, you told us once, you told us twice, but if that is freedom’s price, we don’t mind.

Now I’m going to tell you something really important. I learned this from a mentor back in the Diocese of New Hampshire, and I think of it often. Here it is: Niceness is not a Christian virtue.

Niceness is not a Christian virtue.

Now, some of the things we think we mean by niceness ARE Christian virtues. Mercy IS a Christian virtue. Compassion. Generosity. But not niceness. My friend in New Hampshire suggested that we work on substituting kindness for niceness. Kindness: a more everyday way of talking about mercy, about compassion, about caring for the welfare of our neighbor.

Kindness and niceness are superficially similar. In some situations the kind action and the nice action may be the same. But in other situations, they might not be. Because kindness is always concerned with the good of the other, full stop. And niceness … wants everyone to feel good, but also wants things to be nice.

Kindness was Jesus healing that woman as soon as he saw her. Niceness is what the synagogue leader wanted: Just come back tomorrow, this isn’t a good time. Niceness bundles up kindness with a bunch of other things – respectability and appropriateness and comfort – that the witness of Scripture tells us God is not very interested in. That, in fact, more often seem to come between us and God, between us and righteousness, than otherwise.

Niceness is not a Christian virtue. Prophets, saints, and Jesus himself have often been told their actions and words weren’t nice. Look at poor Jeremiah, called to prophesy as a young boy. His protest in today’s passage is because he knows he will not be well received. It is not nice for a young man – a boy – to go to his elders, religious and political leaders, and tell them they’re all wrong and that God’s judgment is coming to them. Not nice at all. But it’s what God is doing.

Because, in the vision of our Hebrews text, God is both a God of joy and generosity – of a heavenly city with its streets thronging with a perpetual angel festival, a God who bestows upon us freely the gift of a kingdom that cannot be shaken – and – and – a God who demands our reverence and awe, a God who is indeed a consuming fire. Consuming fires don’t care about nice.

The problem of this Gospel story for us – the story of the woman healed on the Sabbath – is how to read it so that it challenges us, instead of just making us feel smug. It’s too easy for us to read this story and simply think, Well, duh, compassion should win over pious rigidity. The synagogue leader was wrong wrong wrong.

Listen: the Sabbath was the heart of Jewish piety, one of the core practices that set the Jews apart from the society around them. The Sabbath honored God, provided rest for workers, meant time for family and song and prayer and play. Can anybody tell me you wouldn’t love to have one day a week in which you were not allowed to do any work? At all? There is nothing to sneer at about Sabbath observance.

And yet – it’s clear that the synagogue leader is mis-applying his piety. His sense of religious niceness keeps him from fully witnessing another’s pain, and fully rejoicing in another’s freedom. I believe the challenge this story has for us is to pay attention to the places where niceness, a human virtue, might be building a nice white picket fence around our capacity to exercise the holy virtues of mercy, generosity, and justice. Where our “niceness” glasses make it hard for us to see what God is doing. Or… to look at what humans are doing, with God’s eyes. This story asks us, Where might God’s purposes be in tension with our sense of order and propriety? And that should be an uncomfortable question.

My friend L and his teenage son are losing their apartment. They’ve been in this place for five years. He hasn’t always gotten the rent in right on time, but he’s been a good tenant. No trouble. But a new company has bought up his building – has bought up a whole chunk of the southwest side, in fact, about ten blocks south of the Hassett home. This has been one of the few neighborhoods in Madison where folks with lousy credit history could find a place to live. A lot of poor veterans were housed there; L was one of them. Most of the residents were African-American or Latino. For many of these households, losing these apartments means they are at risk of long-term homelessness. There simply may not be anywhere else.

The new company is moving folks along because it has a very different vision for this neighborhood. Madison’s housing crisis means that it can be a very lucrative proposition to turn over rental housing from low-income tenants to young middle-class tenants. Between the university and Epic, demand – and rents – are high. Back in early June there was a story in the Wisconsin State Journal about this new company and its lead investor, and what they’re doing to L’s neighborhood. The article talks about one woman in particular, named Myra. She’s African-American, 62 years old, with some health problems. The head of the company called her situation “heartbreaking,” and said, “She’s like the freakin’ model tenant.” And yet, when her lease was reviewed to see if she could stay, the answer was that she did not meet their new criteria, and would have to move out. The reason given was that her grandchildren act unruly when they visit.

This wasn’t an entirely nice neighborhood, sure. There’s no question in my mind that it’ll be nicer, once the apartments all have new paint, and new appliances, and new young mostly-white tenants with full-time jobs and great credit histories. But will it be kinder?

I was talking with L about losing his home one day, and I was just thinking about him and his son, where they would go, whether they would be OK, but he started talking about his downstairs neighbor, an older lady who lived alone. He said that when his anxiety started to get too high, about money, about taking care of his son, whatever, he would pace, and she would hear him, and call him downstairs, and talk to him, and help him calm down. She’s being moved on too. All of them are. All of the folks who managed to make homes here, to make community here, in spite of peeling paint and late rents and litter.

What’s happening to L’s neighborhood will make it nicer. But it is not kind.

It’s easy to read this Gospel story, this moment that pits kindness against niceness, and feel a little smug. Feel like we’re securely in Jesus’s corner. We know that healing is more important than decorum. That freedom from bondage matters more than an orderly meeting that sticks to the agenda. We can send a contingent to the PRIDE parade, we can have thoughtful conversations about race and poverty. Well and good.

But, friends, the only reason we can feel smug, receiving this story, is that the niceness that matters to this synagogue leader is not the niceness that matters to us. The things that feel right, and orderly, and appropriate, and familiar, and proper, and safe, to him, are different from the things that feel that way to us. But we have those things. We have our nicenesses, too. And when our sense of nice is threatened, we get indignant. We start saying “ought.”

I think that instead of smugness, this Gospel story invites us into ongoing mild discomfort. The discomfort of realizing that our sense of Nice – and we’re Midwesterners; we’re big on Nice! – does not reliably track with God’s priorities. When something disturbs us, makes us uneasy or indignant, in our daily life or in our wider civic scene, this Gospel urges us to ask ourselves: Does it disturb me because it’s unkind? unjust? unloving? unmerciful? God cares about that, and so should we. Or it disturb us because it’s not nice? Because it violates our sense of respectability, order, and appropriateness?

And if after all it is our sense of nice that’s being challenged – then I think it’s incumbent upon us to hold that lightly. Because niceness can lead us astray. What Would Jesus Do? really can be a helpful question – as long as we remember that Jesus of the Gospels was almost unfailingly kind, but rarely bothered with nice.

Far from an invitation to smugness, this Gospel asks us, Where in our lives, in our world, might God’s holy purposes of healing and freeing from bondage be in tension with our sense of order and propriety? And that is an uncomfortable question.

Homily for our Service of Lessons & Music on the life of John the Baptist, December 13, 2015

It’s been a hard few weeks, in the world. Violence at home and abroad. Racist and inflammatory rhetoric in the public square. Anguish about our environment. I’ve heard a number of folks saying, I’m having a hard time with Advent this year. I’m having a hard time finding hope, trusting the promises. Can God’s light dawn in times this dark?

And I’ve heard other folks say, But that’s just what Advent is – that’s what Advent is for. A season to look around with open eyes – to see the struggle, to hear the clamor, and to know: God loves anyway. God redeems anyway. The years when the world’s brokenness weighs heavy on our hearts and minds – those are the years when we experience Advent most truly and fully.

Alfred Delp described Advent as not just a season in the church, but a season in the life of the world. He wrote about it from a Nazi prison in 1944. I stumbled on Alfred Delp’s essay on Advent in this book –Watch for the Light: Readings for Advent and Christmas. My first thought was, Sheesh, the essay for December 5 is really long. Then I read it. Then I thought, This is a sermon, and I want to preach it.

So I’m going to read you part of it – Delp’s words on Advent, and on John the Baptist as one of the central figures of Advent.

First, a few more words about Delp. He was 37 when he died, executed by the Nazi regime for speaking his convictions, not unlike John the Baptist. He had been a teacher in Jesuit schools since his youth. During the early part of World War II, he worked at a Jesuit magazine until the Nazis shut it down, then served two churches in Munich, where he was part of the network that secretly helped Jews escape from Germany. Delp was arrested in July 1944, in the crackdown on the Catholic resistance to the Nazis that followed an attempt to assassinate Hitler. Though he hadn’t been involved in the plot, Delp was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. He spent six months in prison, during which he wrote this essay on Advent, among other spiritual writings. On December 8, a Jesuit leader came to visit Delp in prison and received his final monastic vows, completing his commitment to the Order. Delp was executed by hanging on February 2, 1945. On his way to the gallows, he turned to the prison chaplain and whispered, “In half an hour, I’ll know more than you do.”

In Delp’s essay on Advent you’ll hear that he sees God as the source of the chaos and darkness of the times, at least to some degree. Here he stands firmly in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets, who tell Israel again and again that her struggles are a message from God – that if the rulers had been just and righteous, if the people had been faithful, then these calamities would not have fallen upon them. I am hesitant to say that the tragedies and brutalities of World War II represented God’s desire for humanity in any way. But Delp and the prophets who went before him have always faithfully named a simple and lasting truth: when we go wrong, things go wrong for us. Sometimes in big dramatic obvious ways, sometimes in subtle long-term ways. Call it God’s will, call it natural consequences, but when we, as a people, tolerate or even choose paths that lead us away from mercy, justice, righteousness, and peace,  when we go wrong, things go wrong for us.

Here are Delp’s words on Advent, and on John.

Rev. Miranda read portions of the introduction and the section on John the Baptist from Alfred Delp’s essay “The Shaking Reality of Advent.” A portion of the essay may be read online here.