Category Archives: Sermons

Baptism, Faith, Sermons

Sermon, Jan. 11, 2026

When we are preparing to do a baptism, sometimes somebody asks what it means – a perfectly reasonable question! And there are libraries full of writing about what baptism is and does and means. But the ultimate answer is that we baptize because Jesus told us to baptize. 

There’s something about what John was doing, in his ministry of baptism for repentance and amendment of life, that was important enough that Jesus himself chose to undergo it. And then when Jesus sends his followers out to preach the Gospel and start churches, he tells them to baptize people, by water and the holy spirit, in the name of the Trinity.

So, early on, baptism becomes the Christian rite of initiation, the way somebody is welcomed into the assembly of the faithful. And likewise early on, baptism becomes connected with reciting the core teachings of the church, as a way to remind us all what the church believes, and to make sure that those being baptized are prepared to be part of a body that believes that stuff.

In the baptismal liturgy of the Episcopal Church, we say something called the Apostles Creed. It’s a little shorter than the creed we use most Sundays, but pretty similar. The creed we use most Sundays in Eucharistic liturgy is called the Nicene Creed – though technically it’s the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. That’s because the Creed took more or less the form we use today at a church council in Constantinople in 381, but those were only minor changes to the Creed agreed upon by church leaders gathered in the city of Nicaea – now in Turkey – in the year 325. 

Our bishop, Matt Gunter, recently wrote a reflection on the Nicene Creed that begins with concise explanation of why the Council of Nicaea was held. 

He writes, “[Jesus’] followers were convinced that his death and resurrection had reconfigured everything, bringing salvation from sin, death, and decay with the promise of a hitherto unimagined transformation of [humanity] and the world. Finding language to express that in ways that enabled people to experience that salvation and transformation was important. Was Jesus some sort of divine being sent by God at the mysterious heart of all reality? Was he something more? They had the scriptures, they had the church’s language of prayer and worship, and they had the baptismal formulae that were already the seeds of a creed… With all of that, theologians of the church struggled for decades – centuries – to make sense of and find a satisfactory way to articulate who [Jesus] was and why he mattered. Some ways of articulating that were deemed unsatisfactory, misguided, or even dangerous. This struggle and the debates it provoked became more public and more intense once Christianity was declared legal… [in the year] 313. Things came to a head with a priest in the city of Alexandria named Arius, who taught that, while Jesus was in some sense divine, he was still a… creature of God, [and that God] would surely not deign to be identified with the messy, chaotic material world by taking on mortal flesh. But his bishop, Alexander, preached otherwise – that Jesus was indeed the [earthly] incarnation of… God…  This set up an intense controversy. The Council of Nicaea was called by the Roman Emperor Constantine to address disputes about how to understand the person of Jesus and, thus, God, creation, humanity, and salvation.”

Astute listeners may be thinking: Wow, 325! The Creed just had its 1700th birthday last year!  How did you celebrate?…

I celebrated by listening to a talk on the Creed by Kathryn Tanner, one of the greatest theologians of our church, back in November. I really liked what she had to say; it made the Creed more interesting and more alive, for me. And I thought, I should turn this into a sermon sometime! And – because the Creed is kind of front and center in the baptismal liturgy – today is your lucky day. 

There’s some tiny little text above the Creed in our Epiphany booklets – because I’ve long felt that the Creed needed some explaining. Among other things, it says, “Many faithful people wonder about, or question, parts of the Creed – or all of it! If you have questions, know you’re in good company, and let’s talk.” I don’t get a lot of those questions, to be honest, but here are some questions I think people might have about the Creed. 

Question one might be: Am I supposed to know what all of this means? Because I don’t. Begotten, not made? Light from light? Of one being with the Father? There are a lot of terms and phrases in the Creed that I’ve always vaguely assumed had some specific technical or theological meaning. Like “true god from from true god” and “eternally begotten”. I figured they meant something specific and I just didn’t know what. 

Tanner says: Nope. This is just what happens when you create an important theological document by committee. The Council of Nicaea gathered church leaders from across the Christian world to try to come to consensus about core issues of diversity and dispute – especially, though not only, questions about the divinity of Jesus. The resulting statement is called a Creed because of the Latin word credere, meaning, to believe; it’s a statement of the Church’s consensus beliefs on these big issues. 

I’m sure many of us have had the experience of trying to craft a document – a statement, a report, a resolution – with a group of people with different views. It can be a real pain, right? Often the result doesn’t end up saying exactly what you wanted it to say, or as much as you wanted it to say, because other people had other opinions and priorities. What you end up with says less than everybody hoped it would say, in order to say something that everybody is willing to say. 

That’s what the Nicene Creed is. Tanner said: The Creed is vague and underspecified so that a group of people with diverse and emphatic theological views could all come to the table and sign off on it. If it got any more specific, then people would have started storming out of the room. The Creed’s language is poetic and open-ended in order to allow a variety of understandings to come together under its umbrella. It’s the most they could say, together.

The Creed is vague and metaphorical on purpose. It’s not that we’re missing something. And Tanner says that open-endedness is good, because it spurs further theological thinking and debate, in the centuries and millennia that follow. We keep wondering what it all means, what can we work out and what’s simply beyond human comprehension. 

Christians are not united by very specific theological positions, because those early, defining ecumenical Councils didn’t arrive at very specific theological positions. If they had tried to do that, they would have failed. Rather, says Tanner, Christians are united through processes of wondering and arguing. And that’s a good thing. You could almost say that some freedom of thought and conscience and practice is one of the core values at the heart of historic Christianity. 

Question two: Is this a checklist of things I’m supposed to believe? 

The Creed was not written to be a test of right belief for ordinary church members. It was written to get a bunch of bishops vaguely on the same page in the fourth century. It was also not created to be recited in worship every Sunday. Marion Hatchett, one of the core figures behind our current Book of Common Prayer, writes that in the early centuries, the Eucharistic Prayer functioned as a creed – the statement of faith shared every time the church gathered, to which people responded with a great AMEN. 

The Nicene or Apostle’s Creed have been used in baptismal liturgies and on feast days for a long time, but saying a creed every week seems have developed over the past few centuries. I found a statement from the Liturgical Commission of our sister church, the Church of England, arguing that using the Creed regularly in worship helps hand down the faith to subsequent generations, encourage theological exploration, and affirm unity with churches around the world. Sure. The thing is: I’m pretty sure there are more effective ways to do all of those things. For most of us, most of the time, the Creed is just something we march through on our way to the next more interesting part. 

In her talk, Tanner described the Creed as being like the Pledge of Allegiance. When we say it together in church, there isn’t time or space – any more than there is at the beginning of a school day – to unpack what it means or ask questions. Instead, it functions as a declaration of shared allegiance: we’re committing to something together – something that this set of ancient words gestures towards. 

Ultimately: Why do we say the Creed together in our Eucharistic services? Basically, because the rubrics – the instructions in the Book of Common Prayer – say that we have to.  

And maybe there’s something significant lurking there. Because the weekly recitation reminds us what kind of church this is. We are part of a church rooted in the teachings and practices of the early centuries of Christianity – which is what the Creed means when it says “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church”; that’s catholic with a small c, meaning, universal. As a church, we do the things that all churches did for the first millennium of Christianity. We have deep roots, even as we make many things new. And that rootedness is important, as ballast and belonging. 

Question three – or really more of a comment: The Creed doesn’t say the things that are important to me about church/God/faith. 

Tanner points out that the ecumenical councils were gathered around matters of division and dispute. The Creeds address and… somewhat settle… those core issues. But there were many, many things over which early Christianity was not divided. In his essay on the Creed, Bishop Matt lists some examples of matters on which the early church was pretty united: “The early church already took the teaching and example of Jesus seriously. They were contained in the scriptures, which were already read in worship every week. The church put love and compassion at the heart of its life and teaching. It organized social services for the poor, hungry, and needy. It founded hospitals. Its teaching reflected the example of Jesus in critiquing wealth, and violence. It advocated for hospitality to the stranger and foreigner. The dignity of traditionally marginalized groups like women, children, and the poor [and I would add, sexual & gender minorities] was honored in a way unprecedented in the ancient world… The church surely did not practice all of this perfectly, always, and everywhere. But none of the above was particularly controversial.”

I wish we had a Creed, a statement of faith, that reminded us of all that stuff week by week, The baptismal covenant, created for the most recent Book of Common Prayer, that we’ll say together in a few moments does some of this work, but I think there’s more we could say about the essentials of the Christian way, as our earliest faith-ancestors knew it and as we continue to strive to practice it today. 

Like: that there’s a Power greater than ourselves, that we call God, that works for good in the world, and that knows and loves us. 

That God came among us as Jesus, fully human and fully divine, and that something about his living and dying and rising among us extends salvation, rescue, healing, restoration, transformation, to us and the world. 

That Christians should try to live good lives. That much in our lives is unmanageable; that individually and together we get ourselves into messes that we need the help of a Higher Power to get out of. And that when we fall short of our intentions, we should repent, seek forgiveness from God and make amends with those we have harmed, and try to become people who will cause less harm in the future. 

That God doesn’t have a favorite kind of people, and neither should Christians. That we are obligated by our faith to welcome and honor and respond in love to everyone, regardless of gender, race, wealth or poverty, national origin or immigration status, health, illness or disability, criminal record, and so on. 

That God loves Creation and so should we. 

That we are called to help restore what is broken in the human and natural world, in the diverse ways given to each of us. To grapple with the the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God, in the words of the baptismal liturgy. 

That living like this is hard, and so it’s best for us to do it together, provoking one another to love and good deeds, in that line from the letter to the Hebrews that I love so much. Supporting one another; sharing resources with each other, and pooling our resources to do good for others. 

That being beloved by God, and living rightly in God’s ways, doesn’t mean we’ll always be wealthy or happy or safe. That there are things that are more important that death, things worth dying for. That we’re called to love our neighbors as we love ourselves, and that there’s no greater love than laying down life for a friend. 

That Love is as strong as death, and stronger. 

That more can be mended than we know, and that one day, God will wipe away all tears. 

Although churches always live out these convictions imperfectly, that’s a project to which I’m wiling to pledge my allegiance.

That’s an endeavor into which I’m glad to welcome Asher and Ezra today. 

We’ll continue with the baptismal liturgy. 

Some sources:

https://www.churchofengland.org/sites/default/files/2025-01/gs-misc-1408-the-use-of-the-nicene-creed.pdf

https://www.diowis.org/bishop-teachings/nicenecreed1700anniversary

Big Questions, scripture, Sermons

Sermon, Nov. 16

I’ll get to our readings in a moment. But I want to start today with our collect, because it might be my favorite. Collect is a funny word. We pronounce it differently from the more familiar word collect but it is essentially the same word. A collect – at the beginning of the Eucharistic liturgy, towards the end of Morning or Evening Prayer – collects or gathers the prayers and intentions and concerns and perhaps the wandering thoughts of the assembly, into the prayer of the church. Our prayer book contains one for every Sunday of the year, and there are others elsewhere. This collect is always used on the second to last Sunday of the church year – two Sundays before Advent, when a new year starts for the church – and it might be my favorite. Would ____ read it again for us? … 

This collect – like some of the wonderful Advent collects that we’ll read in coming weeks – goes all the way back to the origins of our way of faith, to Thomas Cranmer’s work creating the first English prayerbook, published in 1549. Reading Scripture was important to Cranmer and to the English Reformation. Before the Reformation, only certain parts of the Bible were read aloud in church, and generally in Latin, which most people did not understand. In the preface for that 1549 prayer book, Cranmer wrote about his hope that in this new pattern of worship, clergy will read “the whole Bible (or the greatest part thereof)” every year and thereby “be stirred up to godliness and.. more able to exhort others by wholesome doctrine,” and also that the people, “by daily hearing of holy Scripture read in the church,” should “continually profit more and more in the knowledge of God, and be the more inflamed with the love of true religion.”

I love the four verbs Cranmer offers us here: read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. They map out a process for receiving Scripture that works just as well 500 years later. Read is straightforward enough. That’s usually the first step. Just read your passage of Scripture, maybe a couple of times – or listen to it read. But that’s just the beginning. 

Then we get mark. This is an archaic way to use the word, but it’s related to things we still say – like Mark my words! Or, Remarkable! It means something like notice or pay attention to. When we study a text together here in Zoom Compline or elsewhere, we often start by just listening for a word or phrase that catches your attention. I think that’s close to what mark means, here. What seizes you about this passage? What makes you pause and wonder? What do you want to underline, or write a star next to… or maybe a question mark? 

Then we get to learn! I’m not sure exactly what Cranmer had in mind here, but for me this is a great shorthand for doing a little study, a little research. Maybe it’s reading the footnotes in your study Bible, or looking at what comes before and after your passage, for context. I often glance at good old Wikipedia to remind me of what I learned in seminary about that particular book of the Bible, its major themes, when and where it might have been written, what scholars think about it. There are lots of other websites that offer simple study and commentary tools. I literally just learned this week that the Episcopal Church, our denomination, has a simple Bible study online for the readings for every Sunday of the church year. Doing a little study like this can help us understand a Scriptural text better, and sometimes that helps us receive what the text has for us. But I like that it comes third, here, after our own unfiltered experience of reading, noticing, and beginning to reflect on the text. 

Finally, inwardly digest. It’s a funny phrase, but also a meaningful one. When we digest food, in the literal sense, our digestive system takes what it can use and builds it into our body and our functioning. Digesting Scripture is much the same – we take in things that become part of us, who we are, how we operate. We encounter things that shape our worldview and how we think and live. Usually that is cumulative, over months and years, but now and then a text hits you just so and really gets in there right away!

We’ve been talking in both our Confirmation class and our New Members class about how Episcopalians read the Bible, so let me say a tiny bit about that here too. We encourage both personal and shared reading and study of the Bible, and look for meaning together, especially with people whose experiences differ from our own. We are interested in the complexity of the Bible, rather than pretending that it’s simple. We are interested in the humanness of the Bible – seeking to understand the people, times and cultures behind these texts – both as a tool for understanding Scripture itself, and as a way of coming closer to those faith-ancestors and their walks with God. We are interested, too, in the God-ness of the Bible. Where, in this very human text, we can catch glimpses of something more than human? Where does it read against the grain of what people tend to do, left to ourselves? What are the big, overarching themes and core values that feel challenging and compelling? 

Early on in the formation of the Church of England, our mother church, leaders developed a document called the Thirty-Nine Articles, a summary of the teachings of the church. (They’re in the back of the prayer book – as is Cranmer’s preface to the first English prayer book – if you want to take a look sometime.) Article VI begins, “Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation.” But the great foundational theologian of Anglicanism, Richard Hooker, writing just a few years later, seems to have found this wanting; he writes that the Bible “contains everything needed for salvation that is not apparent to reason.” For Hooker, our capacity to observe, reflect, question and analyze is a holy gift that God intends us to use. We read Scripture with active minds, wondering and seeking. And we don’t expect the Bible to speak to everything, or to settle everything. Hooker was clear that the Bible didn’t cover all the matters on which a Christian might seek guidance, and that even some things it does cover – like matters of worship and church structure – might rightly change with the times. All of that is woven into how Episcopalians engage with Scripture. 

With that: let’s look – briefly! – at today’s texts from late in the book of the prophet Isaiah, and the Gospel of Luke. You’ve heard them once; you may want to pull out your supplement and take another look. We have read them; what might we mark, on a second reading? In the Isaiah text, you might mark the vision of human flourishing – every baby healthy, every elder living to 100, stability and peace and plenty – a vision that three thousand years of human “progress” has still not brought to fulfillment. You might notice the zoologically surprising images: the lion eating straw like a cow; the wolf and the lamb sharing a meal, instead of the wolf making the lamb into a meal. In the Gospel text, I wouldn’t be surprised if what caught your attention was the list of disasters – plagues, wars, persecutions – that might make you wonder if Jesus was reading the news in 2025. 

What about learn? There’s plenty we might study and explore about each text. With the Isaiah passage, you might find out that the (very long!) book of Isaiah was likely written by the original prophet Isaiah and then one or two later prophets, building on his words and reinterpreting them in new contexts and seasons, a generation or two later. Maybe you think, Weren’t there more animals?, and you dig around and discover that this passage – Isaiah 65 – is quoting Isaiah chapter 11, the more complete “Peaceable Kingdom” passage, which we’ll hear in a few weeks. With the text from the Gospel of Luke, maybe you’ll learn that Jesus’ scary words here came to fruition in the decades after his death, when a revolt led the Roman army to destroy the Great Temple, in an attempt to subdue those rowdy Judeans – and that many of Jesus’ followers were arrested, jailed, tried and executed for their faith. Maybe you’ll visit the excellent website Working Preacher, and read pastor and scholar Kendra Mohn’s words about this passage: “The text is not meant to be predictive as much as meaning-making, for those who experienced [those events] and for those who come after… There is really no such thing as getting through unscathed. The question is how people of faith are to respond, and where we find our refuge.” 

With either or both texts, you might stumble on the wonderful, difficult word eschatology. Meaning, literally: Reflection on last things. Christians have spent two thousand years wondering about the teaching that Jesus Christ will return to establish God’s kingdom of righteousness and mercy on earth. Some pre-Christian texts also point towards ultimate renewal. In these late chapters of Isaiah, we move beyond the promise of return from exile and rebuilding Jerusalem to a more cosmic restoration: not just how things were before conquest, but how things were meant to be in the beginning, the fulfillment of God’s dream for creation. It’s a sharp turn from that vision to this Gospel passage. But destruction, loss, renewal and hope, are all bound up in eschatology, in our thinking and wondering about… where it’s all going, and how it all ends. In Advent, which begins two weeks from today, our readings often point towards last things as well, inviting us to prepare to celebrate Jesus’ coming as the babe in Bethlehem, AND Jesus coming again in great glory to judge both the living and the dead. 

How do we inwardly digest this beautiful, complicated tension between witnessing and anticipating the destruction of much that we have trusted in and held dear, and imagining a future of extravagant peace, wellbeing and joy? For me that tension, that paradox, feels strangely familiar; it resonates with the way the world feels right now – the dynamics of loss and restoration, terror and hope, grief and possibility, in a time that truly feels epochal, a pivot point in human history. 

Looking for a short reading for the beginning of 10AM worship today, I remembered a quotation from the very strange but oddly insightful podcast Welcome to Night Vale: “Beware the unraveling of all things, and support your local farmer.” Then – Googling “quotations about the end of the world,” as one does – I found this line from the great Protestant reformer Martin Luther: “Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree.” 

Maybe we bridge the tension between dread and hope in choosing to plant the apple tree – metaphorically or literally; we did in fact plant a couple of baby apple trees on our grounds this summer! Even in the face of the unraveling of all things, the world going to pieces, we prepare for better futures. We support our local farmers. We build community, grow food, share skills, work and rest and laugh together. We develop the root structure, the mycelial web, that may help us endure hard times, and be ready to grow fast and strong and fruitful when the season for flourishing arrives. 

Read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest. Cranmer’s version of the collect was a little longer; he wrote, “that by patience and comfort of thy holy word, we may embrace and ever hold fast…” and so on. By patience and comfort of thy holy word. Cranmer’s prayer was that Scripture, inwardly digested, might give us patience with the seasons of our lives and our world, and comfort in difficult and frightening times. May it be so. Amen. 

Rev. Bosco Peters offers some background on this collect:

https://liturgy.co.nz/reflections/ordinary33

Kendra Mohn on WorkingPreacher: 

https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-33-3/commentary-on-luke-215-19-6

Big Questions, scripture, Sermons

Sermon, Nov. 9

This Gospel takes a lot of explaining. First, who were the Sadducees? Our Gospel readings have taken a little hop; Jesus is suddenly in Jerusalem, during his last week, with tensions building and enemies plotting. The Sadducees seem to have been a religious group within Judaism who tended to be wealthy and influential. They were closely associated with the Great Temple in Jerusalem, which is why this meeting happens now. The Sadducees as a group didn’t last long after the destruction of the Great Temple in the year 70 CE, so we don’t know a lot about them except stuff that outsiders wrote. But notably for this little encounter, they did not believe in any kind of life after death. They’ve heard that Jesus – like the Pharisees – does teach that there’s life beyond this world, so they bring him a riddle to try to prove that the whole idea is stupid. 

I’ll come back to the riddle, but first: What’s this about Moses and a bush? There’s so much story here; go read the first few chapters of the Book of Exodus if it’s new to you! Moses was a great leader of God’s people in their early years, who led them out of slavery in Egypt. The bush story is before all that. As a young man Moses got into trouble and ran off into the desert. He got married and settled into a life of tending his father-in-law’s goats. One day he’s out with the flock and sees something burning. It’s a bush, on fire, but somehow not burning up. Then the bush calls out to him: “Moses! Moses!” Moses has been raised in the faith of his people, but this is his first direct encounter with the Living God – who speaks through the burning bush to say, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,” and then to command Moses to go back to Egypt and tell Pharaoh, the King, to let God’s people go. 

Jesus quotes this story to the Sadducees – who deeply respected the traditions of Moses – to argue that God’s syntax hints that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, great patriarchs of God’s people long-dead in this world, are alive with God somehow. 

Okay. Third piece of background. What is with this weird question the Sadducees ask!?! Whenever levirate marriage comes around, I get to put on my anthropologist hat for a minute. Within Jewish law and tradition, levirate marriage is laid out in the 25th chapter of the Book of Deuteronomy: “If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.” (Sidebar: Look up Deuteronomy chapter 25, verses 7-10 later, to see what happens if the brother doesn’t want to marry the widow.) 

This practice is best known to us from the Bible – it’s a key plot point in the Book of Ruth – but it’s not unique to ancient Judaism. It makes anthropological sense in strongly patriarchal cultures in which it’s important for every man to leave a son to carry on his lineage. It also provides some protection for widowed women, who otherwise may have no property or security. This is marriage in its most functional form: as a safeguard for property and inheritance rights. Love, or even companionable cohabitation, is beside the point. Which isn’t to say that love didn’t matter – there are romance stories in the Bible! – but that the laws around marriage and inheritance were not very interested in feelings. 

The practice of levirate marriage was falling into disfavor in most Jewish communities by the 3rd century or earlier, and likely was never common – Jewish law allowed both parties to refuse. But it was indisputably part of the law of Moses. So the Sadducees bring this riddle to Jesus, with the intention of arguing that the idea of life after death is clearly ridiculous. 

Okay. Now that we more or less know what’s going on, there are a couple of things I’d like note in Jesus’ response. Because there’s interesting stuff here beyond a clever reply. 

For one thing, we get a glimpse here of Feminist Jesus. Levirate marriage was the law, but there’s evidence in Scripture itself that people did not like it. Men didn’t want to have to take on the responsibility of housing and feeding some random woman, possibly older, possibly with daughters to marry off, which was expensive. They didn’t want to take on the obligation of trying to have a son with this woman, to honor their dead brother’s memory. We don’t really have Biblical hints of how women felt about it, but I’m pretty sure it was weird and unpleasant at best, frightening and degrading at worst. 

The woman in the Sadducees’ riddle is fully hypothetical. But you can still imagine her getting more and more dismayed as she’s passed from brother to brother to brother, as each one dies. Then Jesus says, That’s not how any of this works, and the hypothetical woman says, Oh, thank God!

Jesus says, In the resurrection, people neither marry nor are given in marriage. For people for whom such things are a struggle, a burden, a constraint, this was and is good news. In whatever comes next, they can be simply their selves, whole and free, without cultural roles and expectations. Let me be clear: for us today, getting and staying married is usually a relatively free choice, and congruent with our feelings and desires. In the ancient world, marriage probably housed some degree of mutual affection much of the time, but it was also a matter of familial, social, and economic necessity to a degree that’s hard for most of us to comprehend. 

So: You may be happily married and quite like the idea of getting to hang around with your spouse in whatever life comes after this. What I hear Jesus saying is that in resurrection life, people will no longer be bound. Free to play divine shuffleboard or attend angelic choir practice with whatever fellow children of the resurrection they vibe with. 

It’s just a small step from what Jesus says here about life beyond death, to thinking about our fundamental being-ness in God’s eyes. If people aren’t married in the resurrection, presumably they’re also not enslaved, or closeted, or closed in by any of the many other things that can define and limit us. And if people are their full and free selves before God in the resurrection, that suggests that that’s how God sees us, and loves us, in the here and now. What good and gracious news for everyone who may struggle to have room to have a self, to be a person, amidst all that binds and burdens them. And of course this isn’t just Feminist Jesus but pro-human Jesus; folks who identify as men are also often bound by roles and expectations. 

The second thing I’d like to pull out from today’s Gospel has to do with life after death. The Rite I funeral liturgy in our prayer book refers to belief in the resurrection of the dead as a reasonable and holy hope, a wonderful 18th century phrase. A reasonable and holy hope… but you could just as easily say that it’s an unreasonable hope. That our loved ones have some kind of continued life after they die is something that people can very much want to believe… and can really struggle to believe, sometimes at the same time.

I suspect that that’s always been true. Sometimes we assume folks in olden days were more naive and credulous than our modern selves. But death was not more mysterious to people in Jesus’ time than it is to us. The sick and aged would die at home, among family, and bodies would be tended by loved ones. Infant mortality and death in childbirth were common. 

People knew what death looked like, felt like, smelled like, much more than most of us do. Jesus’ insistence that death was somehow not the end would not have been easier for folks to believe back then than it is for us now, with death largely handled by various discreet professionals. 

The Sadducees here are trying to make Jesus look ridiculous, but he points out the ridiculousness of their premise: that life beyond this world is just an extension of life in this world, more of the same. A few weeks back we heard Jesus’ story about the rich man and Lazarus, from Luke chapter 16. When Lazarus, the poor man, dies, he is carried by angels to the bosom of Abraham, while the rich man who ignored his need is sent to Hades to burn in torment. I said then, and I’ll say again now, that this is not Jesus telling people what happens after you die. This is Jesus telling a story to make a point. But there are places in the Gospels where it seems like Jesus is trying to say something about the life beyond this life, and this is one of them. And I get the impression that it’s kind of hard to explain. 

Notice that Jesus doesn’t use the word Heaven, here, though it’s so easy for us to read that in, complete with fluffy clouds and the aforementioned heavenly choirs. Instead he talks about the life beyond this life as an age, an aeon in the New Testament Greek; and simply as the resurrection, the English word used to translate the wonderful Greek word anastasis, meaning to rise up or come back to life. 

In the age of resurrection, we will be like angels and children of God. Like the other places where Jesus gestures towards life beyond this world, this feels frustratingly elusive. Tell me more, Jesus. Will there be shuffleboard? Will there be karaoke? How about chocolate? 

And… will the person I miss so much be there to greet me?   

The way Jesus talks about life after death raises big questions about both life and death. In next week’s Gospel we’ll hear Jesus say something a little perplexing, as he warns his followers about future persecution: “They will put some of you to death… But not a hair of your head will perish.” Wait – I’m going to be put to death, but “not a hair of my head will perish” – a hyperbole that suggests perfect safety? Here, and elsewhere, it seems that there are different kinds of death. Dying in this world – dying to this world – isn’t dying in some ultimate and final sense.

Likewise, life in this world is not the fulness of life. Theologian Arthur McGill writes,  “The ‘eternal life’ that Jesus brings… [is] not just another form of ordinary life, which is somehow freed from death and made interminable. Rather, eternal life is a new and unique order of life, an elevation and transfiguration of the ordinary, a share in the divine life.” 

As the apostle Paul writes in the first letter to the Corinthians, “Listen, I will tell you a mystery! We will not all die, but we will all be changed… For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.” Our funeral liturgy expresses this mystery beautifully in the Eucharistic preface: “For to your faithful people, O Lord, life is changed, not ended.”

With two thousand years of theology and science at my back, I don’t feel that I can really do any better than Paul at putting words to strange and elusive hope of the resurrection of the dead.  The belief that those who have left this life and this world are living some new kind of life, in the nearer presence of God, can’t be proved or explained. It’s one of the things we try to take on faith, no more and no less than those who first heard Jesus speak. 

I often try to say a little of this when I speak at funerals – about the frustrating yet hopeful mystery of Jesus’ promise of life beyond the grave. It’s good to talk about it now, too, while our saint altar stands before us, with images of great saints of the church and with the names and photos of those we remember with love, those we ache to hold once more. 

In the age of resurrection, we will be like angels and children of God. We don’t know what that means – or even if it’s true – and we won’t know, until it’s our turn. 

But in this season of spooky skeletons and remembrance altars, 

In this season when the veil between worlds feels thin, 

In this season when deepening dark and falling leaves make us think of losses and endings, 

In this season when so many are holding their beloved dead close – or struggling with how distant they seem… 

I pray that we may feel a breath of comfort of consolation.

Of reasonable and holy hope, 

That for God’s beloved children life is indeed changed, not ended.

That there is an After, a Beyond, a More, among the saints in light. Amen. 

 

 

Arthur C. McGill (1926-1980), ‘Suffering: A Test of Theological Method’

Baptism, Faith, scripture, Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon, October 5

When I knew we would be having baptisms today, and I looked ahead at the readings appointed by the calendar of Scriptures that we follow, I thought: This might just be the worst possible Gospel reading for a baptism. 

Welcome to following Jesus – a life of thankless drudgery! 

So over the past week and a half I’ve been thinking about this text, trying to pry some grace out of it. I’ll let you decide if I succeeded. 

I don’t think that the immediate context for this passage helps us make any sense of it. As I see it, at this particular point in Luke’s Gospel, he’s basically trying to cram in the rest of the sayings and teachings of Jesus that he knows about, before turning to the triumphal entry to Jerusalem and the culmination of the story. I don’t think this passage is particularly related to what comes just before or just after it. 

But! That doesn’t mean it stands alone. In fact it has a couple of sibling passages elsewhere in Luke’s Gospel. I think they’re siblings to this passage because they also talk about servants or slaves at the dinner table. I put them in the Sunday Supplement. Would somebody read Luke 12, verses 35 to 38? 

Luke 12:35-38

Jesus said, “Be dressed for service and keep your lamps lit. Be like people waiting for their master to come home from a wedding celebration, who can immediately open the door for him when he arrives and knocks on the door. Happy are those servants whom the master finds waiting up when he arrives. I assure you that, when he arrives, he will dress himself to serve, seat them at the table as honored guests, and wait on them. Happy are those whom the master finds alert, even if he comes at midnight or just before dawn.”

That complicates things, doesn’t it? It almost seems like the opposite of today’s text – like if the servants do a really great job, then the master WILL say, Sit down, let me bring you dinner!…  

By the way: If you read some of these passages in different translations, you might notice that some use the word servant and some use the word slave. The Greek word is doulos, and it can mean either servant – someone working for pay – or slave – someone owned by a master – or possibly a debt-slave, somewhere in between, somebody bound to work in order to pay off money that they owe. It’s a little confusing and frustrating that the Biblical text doesn’t distinguish these things. We know a fair bit about slavery in the Roman Empire, but it’s not entirely clear what practices would have been among Judeans in Jesus’ time. But it’s safe to say you’d rather be the master than the doulos, generally speaking.  

Okay, now let’s hear Luke 22, verses 24 to 27. This happens around the table at the Last Supper… 

Luke 22:24-27

An argument broke out among the disciples over which one of them should be regarded as the greatest. But Jesus said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles rule over their subjects, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But that’s not the way it will be with you. Instead, the greatest among you must become like a person of lower status and the leader like a servant. So which one is greater, the one who is seated at the table or the one who serves at the table? Isn’t it the one who is seated at the table? But I am among you as one who serves.”

(In the same story in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus says, “For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve.”) 

Now, in this one, it seems like Jesus is kind of arguing with the whole idea that the most important person is the master who’s sitting down to his meal. Instead he’s saying that the real greatness is in the servant or slave who’s helping at the table, bringing in the serving platters and clearing away the dirty plates.

Who’s been to a Maundy Thursday service? … Do you remember something special and a little strange that we do at that service? …  

We do that because in John’s Gospel, at his final meal with his friends, Jesus wraps a towel around himself and gets a basin of water and washes his friends’ feet. That would usually be something that a pretty low-ranking servant or slave would do, because it could be kind of gross. It makes the disciples uncomfortable to let Jesus do this for them! 

And when he’s done, he tells them, “You call me Teacher and Lord – and you are right, for that is what I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have set you an example, that you should do as I have done to you.” Now, that’s in a different Gospel – but it’s at least a cousin to these passages from Luke, right?

After I preached about Jesus’ parable of the dishonest manager, a couple of weeks ago, the one who reduced everybody’s debts before he got fired, I got a wonderful email from one of you with some further wonderings about that complicated story. One thing she wondered was whether it’s possible to read the manager’s actions as pointing towards a world without mastery, without bondage. Towards the end of systems of power and exploitation. To use 20th century Black theological Howard Thurman’s terms, a world not divided into the heirs and the disinherited. 

We don’t need new oppressors; we need a new world. 

It’s not hard to find that, in the other two passages from Luke that we just read. In the one from chapter 12, the master is so happy to find the servants waiting up for him that he does something really surprising – he flips the script; he ties on an apron and serves them at table as honored guests. And in the one from chapter 22, Jesus breaks open this whole idea that the person being served is more important, has more authority and status, than the person who’s bringing them their meal or filling their water. He says, In the way I’m showing you, the path of greatness is the path of service. Of showing care to others instead of lifting yourself up or bossing anybody around. 

But can we find that theme of taking apart the idea of mastery, of status and authority, in this passage? At first glance it doesn’t seem like it. But I think it’s there – and reading its sibling passages helps us find it. 

Notice that Jesus is asking his followers a question: What would you do? What would you do if your servant came in after a day working in the fields? Would you say, Good to see you; have a seat, it’s dinner time! Or would you say, Finally, you’re here; I’m starving; put on your apron and make me dinner! 

Jesus is drawing out their assumptions, based on their familiarity with how things work, maybe their experience in their own households. Jesus’ first followers were mostly not wealthy, but in economies of extreme poverty, even people who don’t have very much often have household servants of some sort, people who have even less and have to work just to have food and a roof over their head. 

Jesus’ question assumes a sort of lower middle class farmstead, not a house of wealth – because there’s only one servant who does everything, instead of field hands and household helpers. 

So, Jesus is asking the disciples to think about a familiar situation: How do things work in the house you grew up in, or you friends’ houses? The script is not graciously flipped. The servant or slave stays in their role and has to keep working, fulfilling orders and expectations. Because we’re dealing here with the real world, not with God’s way of doing things. 

When Jesus says, “In the same way,” he gets to the point he wants to make. He pivots from the disciples’ experiences and assumptions, to what it really means to follow him, to be part of what God is doing and showing through Jesus. And in that moment, the master disappears. 

There’s just a servant saying, I’m only doing my duty. That passage from chapter 22 should help us share Jesus’ vision here: all servants, no master, and Jesus among them. He’s telling the disciples: This movement you’ve joined doesn’t have a hierarchy, a ladder to climb. You don’t work your way up to the top where you get to boss everybody else around. This is a whole different mindset, a whole different heart-set, where the driving question isn’t, How can I get ahead?, but, How can I serve? How can I help? Where can I be part of goodness? 

I think that’s what the mustard seed part is about, too! When the disciples ask Jesus to increase their faith, they’re thinking of the whole business as some kind of Faith Olympics. It often frustrates me in the Gospels that we don’t know how Jesus said things. I think his response here is wry but playful: “If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.” Imagine trees whizzing around in the air because the disciples are just SO FAITHFUL! 

The theme that connects the two chunks of today’s Gospel is that discipleship, following Jesus’ ways, isn’t about greatness, accomplishment, recognition. 

It’s about finding and doing your part in God’s holy work. 

This is never going to be my favorite Scripture passage. But after wrestling with it enough, I discovered that it actually kind of echoes some of the things that God has taught me, over the years. Things that I need to be reminded about enough that they have a place in my rule of life, the set of intentions for myself that I read through day by day. Like reminding myself to resist the mindset of productivity; that I haven’t had to earn a gold star in decades. Like a quotation from Bishop Craig Loya of Minnesota that I think about a lot: “Lean into what you believe is the genuine life of your community, and don’t worry too much about outcomes.” 

One corollary of all that is that I get to rest sometimes. Because the survival and thriving of this church isn’t dependent on my accomplishments, my diligence, my skill. I do my part – and I try to do my best. But it doesn’t all depend on me. I’m a servant, not the boss. I’m not in charge; I don’ know the big picture. I’m somewhere on the lower rungs of middle management, at best. 

I have the incredible privilege of getting to live a life focused on cultivating a faith community and tending the people who come through these doors (physical or virtual). Maybe that makes it easier for me to think about my daily work through the lens of servanthood. But I bet lots of us have had moments when somebody thanked you or praised you for something, and it made you a little uncomfortable or even mad. 

Because whatever they were thanking you or praising you for, wasn’t something you did to be thanked or praised. Maybe it’s the thing that talent or skill or experience or love drives you to do. Maybe it’s something that just felt like the normal, decent human thing to do. In German there’s a saying, “Nicht zu danken”; it means, Not to thank. It’s something you can say when somebody thanks you for something that you just kind of don’t want to be thanked for – because that’s just what you do, or because you’d like whatever small act of decency you just committed to be normal and unremarkable. Maybe Nicht zu danken is a way to say, “We have only done what we were supposed to do.” 

What do we baptize people into? Not thankless drudgery. But being servants, together, of something bigger than any of us. Into doing what’s ours to do with grace and in hope, knowing we work side by side with Jesus, who came among us as one who serves. 

Current Events, scripture, Sermons

Sermon, September 7

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it?” 

This is one of those Gospel passages that might make people reconsider whether they really want to be Christians! Jesus often uses hyperbole to get people’s attention. For example, in another famous passage, I don’t think he actually wants most people to gouge out their eyes. 

It is true that Jesus is not very interested in possessions or wealth, and has a keen eye for the way possessions and wealth can distort people’s lives and hearts. So when he recommends here and elsewhere that people should consider just giving everything away, he might mean it – in a “I really think you’d be better off if you did” kind of way.

But that’s not the main point of this little passage. This is a passage about counting the cost. 

About assessing what a project, an endeavor, a commitment, is likely to demand from you, before you begin. 

About choosing to try to follow Jesus with eyes open about where it may lead you. Because it’s not going to be all rainbows and puppy dogs and s’mores around the campfire. 

Jesus is not recommending hating your family as a way of life. But he wants his followers to be prepared for the possibility that committing to him and his way may impact even their most intimate and stable relationships. I know some of you are living that, bravely trying to talk with loved ones about how you understand the teachings and call of Jesus.

Following Jesus may lead you to take stands that make you and others uncomfortable – including, sometimes, people close to you. People whose feelings or opinions matter to you. That’s the situation faced by the apostle Paul, in the letter to Philemon. 

Philemon wasn’t part of Paul’s family. But it was a relationship that was important to Paul. Philemon was a local leader who hosted and oversaw one of the churches in his city, Colossae. He was probably a Roman Gentile Christian, rather than a Jewish convert. He was evidently a person of wealth and standing – a useful guy to know. 

Paul’s life work was traveling the ancient Near East, founding, teaching, encouraging, and sometimes correcting the new Christian communities of the region. His relationships with local leaders were crucial. Paul didn’t want his friendship with Philemon to break down, for a whole host of reasons. 

But Paul finds himself in an awkward situation. Philemon owns slaves, which was common for wealthy Romans. It seems that during one of Paul’s visits to Philemon’s church, one of his slaves, a young man named Onesimus, met Paul. Sometime after that, it seems, Onesimus stole some money from Philemon and ran away. The details are vague, but that seems like the simplest way to read between the lines of what Paul says here. 

Onesimus visits Paul in prison – which is pretty interesting! At this point Paul is in prison in Rome, awaiting trial and execution for his faith. I googled, how far is it from Rome to Colossae?, thinking, it’s probably closer than I think. Friends: it’s 1300 miles! Whether by land or by sea, it’s not close. It makes sense that Onesimus wanted to get far away from Colossae, and Rome was the capital of the world; but it took some effort to get there. 

Seeking out Paul in prison suggests more than a casual acquaintanceship. I wonder if Paul and Onesimus had talked, before; if Paul had, in fact, given Onesimus reason to start thinking that maybe his life had more meaning and value before God than his current enslavement. 

So. Onesimus visits Paul, and their relationship deepens, to the point where Paul refers to him as his son. And Onesimus becomes a Christian. But: Paul needs to smooth things over with Philemon, somehow – without sacrificing Onesimus. 

Not all the letters in the New Testament that are written in Paul’s name, were really written by Paul. But some of them were, including this one. And if you read them, you get such a sense of Paul as a human being, as a personality.

I love talking about this letter. I’m going to keep it brief and invite you to do your own close reading. The full text is here; it’s not long! Read it again, later, and notice how hard Paul is working to thread the needle. He wants to soothe Philemon’s indignation and get him to accept Onesimus back as a free member of his household and church. It is a big ask, and to be honest Paul is not particularly subtle about how he plays it. He lays on the praise: “When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus…” And: “Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.” He plays for pity: “I, Paul, do this as an old man, and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus…” He reminds Philemon of his debt to Paul as his teacher: “I say nothing about your owing me even your own self.” Well – except you did say it, didn’t you, Paul? And he hints that if he survives this ordeal and gets out of prison, he might swing through Colossae and stay for a visit – a great opportunity to see how his son Onesimus is getting on. 

Paul lays it on thick – and it works. I feel pretty confident of that, because we have the letter. That means it was read and saved and shared. The alternative is that Philemon reads it, says some choice words, and tosses it into the fire immediately. 

I have written letters and emails like this. Not often, but often enough to recognize the kind of work Paul is doing here. 

He’s trying to do so much in one letter, a few precious paragraphs: to mend and maintain a relationship, to fundamentally change someone’s perspective, to bring someone along, even though it means some loss or sacrifice. I wonder how many drafts Paul wrote, before this final version? 

Following Jesus can mean being Paul, pulling out all the stops, using every ounce of your famous eloquence, to try to persuade someone to do the right thing. Effort, vulnerability, and risk. 

Following Jesus can mean being Philemon, being asked to do something you REALLY don’t want to do, something inconvenient or costly or annoying, because it’s what Jesus wants from you. 

Our first reading today from the book of the prophet Jeremiah offers us the vision of God shaping God’s people like a potter at the wheel. If the pot becomes misshapen, or just isn’t taking the form God wants, God can take it off the wheel, squeeze it together again into a ball of clay, and start over. God is speaking through Jeremiah to remind God’s people that God’s covenant relationship with them does not mean they can do whatever they want. Indeed, it means they are supposed to show forth in their manner of life, individually and together, what kind of God they serve – a God of justice, mercy, peace, and human and ecological flourishing. When that’s not what’s happening, God might just squash the pot and start over. 

This reading resonates with me right now because I recently joined a pottery studio. About every decade, since high school, I suddenly want to do pottery for a little while. And that hit me recently. So I joined this studio; but it’s been nine years since I last worked with clay. I had a lot of re-learning to do. I have worked on the wheel, like Jeremiah’s potter, but I’m more of a hand-builder. A few weeks back when I first started trying to put something together, the clay was just so floppy. It wouldn’t stand up or hold its shape. 

I had to read up and remember that with clay, you really have to manage how wet it is. Roll out your slab with the slab roller, and then let it sit for a little while, so it loses some moisture to the air and the absorbent table top. THEN you can cut your pieces and they’ll actually hold a shape. BUT that’s not all, because the other thing I had to re-learn is that I really need to be able to go to the studio two days in a row. Because you make your piece, and then you cover it very loosely with cling wrap, so it starts to dry out but not too fast. That second day is when you clean it up, because it’s harder now, but still soft enough to work with it. This stage is called “leather hard,” and in this stage you can carve it, or punch a hole through it, or use a damp sponge to smooth out rough edges. Once you’ve done that, you let it dry out all the way before firing it. That’s called greenware – and greenware is really fragile. You can’t work greenware; it’ll fall apart in your hands. 

So. I’m definitely extending Jeremiah’s metaphor here. But I’ve been thinking about all this as a kind of hands-on analogy for what kind of clay I want to be, for God. Not too flexible and floppy, but also not rigid and brittle. Right in that middle zone, workable, able to hold a shape, but also to be smoothed and given nuance and detail. Like Philemon – already formed as a Christian, mature in his faith in some ways, but not a completed piece yet, not ready for the kiln. With some important shaping and finishing still ahead, through Paul’s teaching and urging. 

Counting the cost could mean assessing what a new path or a new endeavor could mean in terms of resources, relationships, or status. But sometimes just being willing to change can feel like a huge step, a huge sacrifice. Letting God the potter continue to form us, smooth our rough edges, strengthen our connections, make us more beautiful and more useful.

Sit down first and consider. It’s the kind of advice we give to young people. Don’t rush into things. Think about the risks, the stakes. Read the fine print. Know what you’re getting into. 

It’s good advice. But there’s also something fundamentally unrealistic – something un-human – about it. If we could see, before we began, what our chosen career path would demand from us, in effort and stress and cost, we might never begin. If we could see, before we began, the cumulative costs of entering into any human relationship, we might choose to spend our lives alone. The best case scenarios involve loss and grief. 

The trouble with counting the cost is that there are so many unknowns – like love, and joy, and doing good for others even when it’s costly. Next week we’ll hear Jesus tell stories about God’s reckless love, defying human commonsense to seek out and welcome the lost. Is it a paradox to say that the Jesus of today’s Gospel is asking us to undertake a sober, measured consideration of our own willingness and capacity to become people of extravagant, foolhardy love? 

Last week, Bishop Craig Loya of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota shared a letter of comfort and encouragement to his clergy, reeling in the wake of the tragedy in Minneapolis. It’s a good word for Paul, for Philemon, for us. Bishop Craig invoked the Biblical image of Rachel weeping over her lost children, then wrote, “Now is the time for us to show up looking, sounding, and acting like the real Jesus in the world. Now is the time for us to remember that the stakes of the gospel are high, and that following Jesus asks something big of each of us. Now is the time to remember that [our] Eucharistic communities… are not nice gatherings offering maudlin spiritual comfort, but are in the business of subverting the world’s violence with God’s irresistible love. When we [stand] with clarity and courage, not everyone will be happy about it, and not everyone will want to come along. The inclusive gospel of Jesus… draws clear lines about what God does and does not tolerate. It is our job to keep pointing clearly and unambiguously to what God promises, and to what God asks of us. It’s our job to put up signs on the road that point to God’s promised reign of peace, so that our whole church becomes sign posters, ushering the whole world into a future where Rachel weeps no more.”

Amen. May it be so. 

Big Questions, Intergenerational Church, Sermons

Homily, August 24

Read our script of the story of Balaam from the book of Numbers here!

Balaam was a prophet. What’s a prophet? Well, we almost have a definition in our first reading today. It describes God calling Jeremiah to become a prophet: somebody charged with speaking God’s words to rulers and people. God says, “You shall go to all to whom I send you, and you shall speak whatever I command you. I have put my words in your mouth.” 

Prophets were powerful! It’s not that their words make things happen, but they proclaim what’s going to happen – or, sometimes, what’s going to happen UNLESS there are some big changes around here. 

God tells Jeremiah, “Today I appoint you over nations and over kingdoms, to pluck up and to pull down, to destroy and to overthrow, to build and to plant.” That sounds a lot like what King Balak wants Balaam to do to God’s people – to use his prophetic powers to destroy and overthrow! 

Balaam is interesting because he’s not one of God’s people; he’s an outsider. But he seems to receive – and speak – God’s word nonetheless. Balaam may have been kind of a famous prophet in his time, known throughout the ancient Near East. There’s an inscription that was discovered in Jordan, dating from around 800 years before the time of Jesus, that mentions Balaam son of Beor and describes him as a powerful seer whose visions determine the fates of nations! So that’s a pretty cool piece of evidence from outside of the Bible that there was a prophet Balaam who was widely known and respected. 

In this story, God’s people, the Hebrews, have escaped bondage in Egypt. They’ve been wandered the wilderness for a long time, looking for a place where they can settle and make home. They make camp in a quiet river valley. But King Balak of Moab doesn’t want them settling in his neighborhood. 

Maybe there are real fears here – maybe resources are scarce, maybe there are reasons to worry about adding population. And: people OFTEN get upset about new people moving into their neighborhood, especially if those new people look different, speak a different language, maybe have a different religion. That still very much happens, right? … 

(If you’d like to learn more about what that looks like here and now, the local League of Women Voters has a forum coming up on immigration issues in Dane County on September 9 … it’s in our Enews!) 

The Bible has a very strong and consistent message about welcome for the stranger. In the Old Testament, there’s the repeated reminder, “For we were strangers in Egypt.” The Hebrews were outsiders in Egypt and were treated badly – enslaved, oppressed, and killed. What they carry away from that experience is a deep ethical commitment to never treat other people the same way they were treated. 

In the New Testament, there are lots of teachings pointing in the same direction. In the 25th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says that when we welcome the stranger, we’re welcoming him. The Letter to the Hebrews, which we’ve been reading through in this season in the lectionary, says, “Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.”

Peter and Paul, great leaders of the early church, contribute to this theme as well. The book of Acts tells us about the moment Peter comes to understand that nobody is outside of God’s love: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality!” Which means: God doesn’t have a favorite kind of people! 

And the letters of Paul contain his repeated refrain: “There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, but we are all one in Christ Jesus.” Our differences of identity, ethnicity, language, background, gender, status, are less than our unity, our belonging to one another in God’s household the Church.

So, as Christians, we inherit strong and consistent guidance from Scripture about how to respond when we are the “locals” and others show up as strangers or outsiders. We’re supposed to handle it like Mr. Rogers (who was an elder in the Presbyterian church): I’ve always wanted to have a neighbor just like you; I’ve always wanted to live in a neighborhood with you; won’t you be my neighbor? 

But there’s something even deeper in this story than the question of how we’re supposed to act when new people show up in our neighborhoods or cities. And that is the common human frustration that our enemies are not also God’s enemies. 

King Balak is SO MAD that God won’t curse people just because Balak doesn’t like them! That God blesses them instead!! 

At our Drama Camp this year, we worked with this story and the story of Judith, who cuts off the head of the enemy general Holofernes to save her city and her nation. These are stories about enemies. And over dinner, each night, we spent a little time wondering what Jesus meant when he said, Love your enemies. 

Love your enemies. In this story, it’s easy to say that Balak should love his enemies. The Hebrews aren’t even really enemies! He hasn’t even met them. He just thinks they’re a problem. Maybe if they all had a good talk about how to be neighbors and share the land, things would be fine!

But what about the Hebrews, in this story? Or the town at risk of invasion, in the Judith story? Or any place where those who are vulnerable or marginalized are threatened by those with more status and power? How are you supposed to love your enemies when somebody’s trying to hurt you, or somebody you love? 

There’s a whole book exploring all this – exploring Christian enmity – out in the Gathering Area if you’d like to borrow it. It’s called How To Have An Enemy. Here are a few thoughts from that book to chew on.

First: When Jesus says, Love your enemies, Jesus expects us to have enemies. He is not asking his followers to be so nice and accommodating that we get along with everybody all the time. 

As Christians, there are things we’re called to stand for. We’re supposed to live in ways that will put us at odds with others sometimes. We’re going to have enemies! We’re just supposed to try to love them. 

Second: Loving our enemies doesn’t mean letting them do whatever they want, including letting them hurt us or others. That’s true for a couple of important reasons. It’s true because the greatest commandment is to love God, and the second greatest commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves. 

Loving our enemies doesn’t mean we put them first, ahead of the people God has put in our lives to care about and care for. It means bringing our enemies’ wellbeing into consideration  ALONGSIDE our wellbeing and our neighbors’ and community’s wellbeing.

The other reason we shouldn’t just let our enemies do whatever they want is that it’s not good for people to hurt other people. 

When people bully or beat or even kill others because it’s their job, or somebody told them they have to: it’s not good for their heart or their soul. And loving our enemies means we’re not free not to care what happens to them. So sometimes our responsibility to our enemies might be to try and save them from the corrosive effects of their own violence.

Third: I think loving our enemies has to mean that we hope for an outcome where they are also OK – in the long term, in the big picture. Not because they get to do whatever they want. But because the situation of enmity is somehow healed or resolved. 

For example, for me, that means praying that people who feel fearful and angry about trans kids and trans people in general might come to a place where they don’t feel fearful or angry anymore. And then the people I love will be safer too. 

This kind of hope isn’t the same as hoping that somebody wins. It means hoping that somehow, eventually, we can move forward together… without sacrificing things that really matter to get there.  

We’ve got a small, lively group here at church that’s reading civil rights leader and theologian Howard Thurman’s book Jesus and the Disinherited. Through Thurman’s work, we’ve been talking about how the solution to oppression is not flipping the social order so that the people who were suffering get to make other people suffer. We don’t need new oppressors. We need a new world. We need to unmake the power relationships that allow some to dominate and harm others. 

Loving our enemies means committing to the hope that there’s a better future for all of us – somehow – and striving to imagine, seek, and build towards it. May it be so. 

Big Questions, Current Events, scripture, Sermons

Sermon, July 20

So what’s your favorite summer fruit?…

I don’t know what was in the basket in Amos’ vision, but for me one hallmark of summer fruit is that you’ve got to use it fast. We got some peaches this week from the folks who drive a truck up from the south, and Phil and I had to chat about how many to buy, knowing that even when they’re perfectly ripe, we can only eat them so fast. And if those peaches, or plums, or berries, sit around a little too long… you get bruises and fruit flies and puddles of goop. Summer fruit is a glorious thing while it lasts. But within days, or hours, it becomes a disgusting mess, no good to anybody. Eat it, freeze it, can it, but do something fast. 

Our text from the prophet Amos doesn’t really explain the meaning of the fruit. Old Testament scholar Tyler Mayfield says it’s based in part on wordplay: the word for “summer fruit” sounds very similar to the word for “end.” Just as ripe fruit can spoil quickly, the kingdom of Israel is approaching an end. 

Just one chapter earlier, Amos had another vision. God showed him a plumb line. Raise your hand if you know what a plumb line is?… Sometimes called a plumb bob. It’s a very ancient tool that’s still used by builders and surveyors today. You have a weight, usually lead, on the end of a string. And you let it hang. And once it stops swinging, gravity means you’ll have a straight up and down line that you can use to make sure your wall isn’t leaning. 

God tells Amos, I am setting a plumb line in the middle of my people Israel. As with the fruit, the image in the vision isn’t really explained, but we understand that something is askew, crooked, bent. The foundations are bad, or the build is shoddy. The structure cannot stand. Summer fruit and plumb line both point to the same deep truth about God’s people in Amos’ time: Something was deeply wrong –  rotten, askew – with terrible consequences in the near future. 

The book of Amos is part of the Old Testament; it’s one of the prophetic books, books that record the words of the prophets who spoke to God’s people on God’s behalf. The most famous passage of Amos comes from chapter 5: “Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream!” That famous line follows God’s frustration at a people who make offerings and hold festivals but don’t honor God by how they order society: “I reject your festivals; I won’t even look at your offerings of fatted animals; take away the noise of your songs!” It’s part of God’s call to stop making a show of faithfulness while wallowing in injustice. Amos, speaking for God, says, “Doom to you who turn justice into poison, and throw righteousness to the ground!… Seek good and not evil, that you may live; hate evil, love good, and establish justice at the city gate!…”

Amos was a shepherd and arborist who felt called by God to leave his home in the southern region of Tekoa to go speak God’s words to the leaders and people of Israel in the mid-eighth century before the time of Jesus. David’s united kingdom had split some time earlier, into a southern kingdom, Judah or Judea, with Jerusalem as its capital, and the northern kingdom, called Israel. Israel was enjoying a brief period of peace and prosperity… and apparently the wealthy and powerful used this moment to accumulate wealth and cheat the poor. We hear God’s accusation through Amos in today’s reading: “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land!” God accuses the wealthy of being impatient with keeping holy times of rest, eager to get back to cheating the poor with false weights and poor-quality products, “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.” 

Amos declares, “The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely I will never forget any of their deeds. Shall not the land tremble on this account, and everyone mourn who lives in it?…”

Prophets are called by God to speak God’s word in times when things are rotten or askew. God appoints a prophet to call the leaders and the people to repent, restore, repair, renew, to avoid the consequences of their current actions and their current path. Being a prophet is not an easy vocation! Right after the plumb line passage, someone tattles on Amos to the king, telling him that Amos is being a real downer and possibly committing treason. Amos is advised to run away and go prophesy in his home territory, for his words are not welcome in Israel. Other Biblical prophets are persecuted, exiled, or even killed. 

There are also beautifully comforting passages in the prophetic books, that offer assurance of God’s continued care and promise a future beyond suffering. The peaceable kingdom from Isaiah – the lion snuggling with the lamb – is one famous and glorious example. There’s a line we learn in seminary that’s often quoted in sermons: Prophets are called to comfort the afflicted, and afflict the comfortable. But, you know, it’s not uncommon for the prophets of the Bible to afflict the afflicted, too – by saying, You had this coming. You brought this on yourselves. And that brings me to something I want to explore here: the concept of judgment. 

God’s judgment, divine judgment, is an important theme in Amos and elsewhere in the prophetic literature. And it’s an idea that I suspect a lot of us are pretty ambivalent about. On the one hand, I bet some of you prayed today’s Psalm pretty hard. The idea that God is watching, that cruel and evil deeds are noted, and that eventually, there will be consequences for leaders whom we see as evil and dangerous, has an understandable appeal. But we’ve also heard God’s judgment thrown around as a weapon and a threat against people we love. 

What are we talking about when we talk about God’s judgment? 

I think there are several axes that this concept moves along; we need at least a three-dimensional model! First, there’s individual versus collective judgment. Does judgment, and the suffering that may follow, result more from our individual choices and sins, or from the way we organize our common life, the injustice and suffering that we tolerate together? And does it land on people individually, or on the community or nation as a whole? 

Second, there’s the question of judgment in this world or the next. Do our bad actions (or failures to act), whether individual or collective, bring down punishment or consequences in the short to medium term? Or does the reckoning happen after we die? There are many jokes and cartoons that hinge on someone coming face to face with St. Peter at the pearly gates to Heaven, and discovering exactly what is written about them in the Book of Life. But that’s not a particularly Biblical idea. 

Third, and importantly, when divine judgment is not in our favor, there’s the question of whether the suffering that follows is a punishment, per se – something extra sent by God, the proverbial lighting bolt – or simply the consequences of our bad actions. The summer fruit rots; the crooked wall falls. 

We hear a lot from evangelical Christianity about individual punishment in the afterlife, in the form of damnation to hell. That’s actually a long way from the dominant concept of judgment in the prophetic literature. The prophets are much more concerned with collective judgment, though they’re also very aware of the role of leaders in creating or tolerating an unjust or rotten society. 

The prophets are not at all concerned with an afterlife; that simply wasn’t a very important idea in pre-Christian Judaism. They anticipate consequences in this world – though sometimes those consequences may take a generation or two to mature. 

The second book of Kings tells us about King Hezekiah: the prophet Isaiah tells him that his kingdom will be conquered, and his people, even his own children, taken into exile – but none of this will happen during Hezekiah’s lifetime. Hezekiah literally tells himself, There will be peace and security during MY life… so who cares? I think of that so often with respect to the climate crisis. 

So the prophetic concept of divine judgment is collective or corporate, and happens in this world, this life, though the timing can be mysterious. As for punishment versus consequences: that’s interesting. In the Old Testament, texts about judgment are often retrospective, trying to make sense of why bad things happened. How did we get here? Where did we go wrong? How did we bring this down on ourselves? Why is God angry with us? 

Often, the Old Testament names terrible events as God’s punishment for the people’s wrongdoing. As something God has brought upon them to discipline and correct them, to get them to recommit to living the way God has called God’s people to live. 

But often, it’s easy to see that suffering as a natural consequence rather than a punishment per se. For example, there’s the situation Amos rails against: leaders who are much more interested in enriching themselves than in building and tending a nation that manifests God’s purposes – justice, mercy, nobody hungry or desperate or excluded, dignity and safety for everybody. When leaders abandon that work, the foundations weaken; the nation becomes rotten, askew, vulnerable to disaster, attack, collapse. Which happened to the kingdom of Israel. 

What’s our relationship with the biblical concept of judgment? Thinking about that question this week, it’s really hard not to think about the floods in Texas, and the lives lost there. 

In the immediate aftermath of the disaster, a couple of notably bad takes emerged. Some people were quick to say that if people in Texas don’t like climate disasters, they should have voted differently in the last presidential election. Those voices weren’t invoking divine judgment, but it’s buried somewhere in that “eff around and find out” perspective. On the other hand, there were the usual voices saying that it’s inappropriate to talk about what went wrong, insisting that we limit ourselves to thoughts and prayers. The Biblical prophets also encountered leaders reluctant to heed warnings or change their ways. 

No person of good conscience thinks the children who died at Camp Mystic, or anyone else who lost their lives that terrible night, deserved what happened to them.The idea of divine judgment as individual punishment is clearly not helpful here. Not just because it’s awful, but also because it shrugs off any shared accountability. If I’m still standing, I must be OK! 

In many ways this is exactly the kind of event that we see Biblical prophets interpreting through the lens of divine judgment. It’s collective rather than individual, affecting a whole region – and implicating a whole state, a whole nation. It’s this-worldly, not an afterlife situation. And it’s pretty easy to see it as the consequence of intensifying weather due to human-caused climate change, and the choices and actions of leaders from the federal down to the very local level. Many layers of failure helped turn this natural disaster into a human tragedy. To point to just one: The guy at the regional National Weather Service office whose job was to coordinate local warnings in that area took Elon Musk’s early retirement offer a few months earlier. The NWS did their job that night; the right alerts went out. But the guy with couple decades’ experience working with local officials, the guy who knew how to tell folks, This could be a biggie, send out the cavalry, was gone, because of DOGE’s purge of federal employees. 

Would his presence have made a difference? There’s no way to know. That’s just one of so many ways that night could have gone differently. It didn’t have to be this way. 

This isn’t just an intellectual exercise in whether we can map a Biblical concept onto current events. Is divine judgment a useful framework for us? Does it help us make sense of calamity? 

I think it might. First, because there were (and are) prophets. We don’t serve a God who just spots a sinner and squashes them like a bug, end of story. In the Bible, when things were going badly wrong among God’s people, when things were dangerously rotten or askew, God sent prophets to try to tell leaders and people that the path they’re on leads towards struggle and suffering. Amos says, “Seek good and not evil, that you may live; hate evil, love good, and establish justice at the city gate!” Chapter four of Amos rehearses all the bad things that have already happened to God’s people, and their refusal to learn from them, with God’s frustrated, anguished refrain: “Seek me and live!” The Bible is full of texts like that, God speaking through prophets and saints to call God’s people back to better paths. 

The prophetic books are also full of texts describing in detail exactly where leaders and people are going wrong. Buying the needy for a pair of sandals is the tip of the iceberg. Judgment goes hand in hand with a reckoning: what happened, and why? Peeling back layers of responsibility, things done and left undone. Afflicting the afflicted by naming names and calling for accountability, with the goal of understanding and amending. Whether the calamity has already happened or can yet be prevented: there are things to learn, here, and things to repair. There’s a better path. Always. 

God sent the prophets; God sends voices in our time – investigative reporters, scientists, whistleblowers, community leaders, poets, occasionally even pastors. God gives us those people, those voices, so that we can heed, and learn, and change, and live. Because God wants better for us, and from us. 

And that points towards something else really important about divine judgment: it’s nested within the much bigger truth of divine love, divine mercy. The author of the letter to the Colossians talks about Jesus as this embodiment of God’s desire to reconcile and make peace with all people and all things in heaven and earth. 

Scripture and the experience of the holy ones through the ages bear testimony to that deep desire of God’s heart – to call us out of the harmful patterns we create for ourselves and each other, to reconcile and restore, to heal, welcome and celebrate. As we hear other prophetic texts in the coming weeks, I invite you to notice the recurring theme of God’s yearning, frustrated love. 

Judgment isn’t a lightning bolt. It’s more like someone who really knows you and really loves you, sitting you down at the kitchen table with a mug of tea and saying, Hey. I’m worried about you. Some of the stuff you’re doing is not good for you. I’m afraid you’re not safe. Except the you is all of us, and the stuff is big and complex and systemic and hard to change. We live in difficult, complicated times – as did our faith ancestors. 

Judgment is a hard, heavy word. It sounds like a door slamming; but in the Biblical context, it’s more like a door opening. The Biblical concept of judgment insists on interpretability: there’s something to understand here, something to learn, even in what may seem senseless and overwhelming. It insists on agency and possibility: if we can understand and learn, we can change course towards a better future. And it insists on relationship: even in calamity and disaster, we are held and loved by a Mercy larger than the universe. 

scripture, Sermons

Guest sermon, June 22

Our guest preacher on Zoom, Gail Sosinsky Wickman, shared a wonderful reflection on the prophet Elijah and the ambiguity of this story from 1 Kings. 

Good morning. Every time I reread the scriptures for today, Elijah’s story left me uneasy. What I’d like to do this morning is share the struggles I have had with this passage.

This week’s bit of 1 Kings starts with Jezebel making the most convoluted, difficult-to-read death threat I have ever come across in literature. Our passage ends with verse 15a, which immediately made me wonder what is in 15b, so I am going to bring in the previous action and follow through with the ending because extending the story helped me come to grips with it. 

In the action before Jezebel’s death threat, Elijah is having his big showdown with the prophets of Baal. This is a great story. We have a land suffering from drought due to the people’s wicked ways, and Elijah proposes a contest. He calls for the 450 prophets of Baal and the 400 prophets of Ashera to meet him at Mount Carmel. I cannot tell you what happened to the 400 prophets of Ashera. The passage never mentions them again. Anyway, the crowds gather, and Elijah proposes that two bulls be brought for sacrifice. Each side will build an altar, prepare the wood and lay the pieces of the bull on it, but put no fire to the wood. Instead they will pray, and whichever god sends fire is the one to follow. 

The 450 prophets of Baal went first. They built the altar, laid out the offering and prayed. All Morning Long. Nothing happened. 

About noon, Elijah starts with the trash talk – “Maybe he’s wandered off. Maybe he’s asleep. Maybe he’s using the toilet.” 

So the 450 prophets step up their game and start cutting themselves and bleeding all over and praying louder. Still nothing.

Then it is Elijah’s turn. First, he builds an altar of 12 stones, one for each tribe of Israel. Then he lays the wood out, then he butchers the bull and lays it out, then he digs a big trench around the altar, enough for two measures of grain, which one source says means that it took two measures to plant the area. From the context, it was a big trench. Then he adds insult to injury and has 4 jars of water poured over the sacrifice. And a second time. And a third. The passage doesn’t say it, but that’s 12 jars of water, like the 12 tribes of Israel. Anyway, the sacrifice is so waterlogged that the surrounding trench is full. Elijah says a simple prayer, and BOOM!

“Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench.”

The people fell on their faces and acknowledged God’s power. Don’t you just want to end the story there? Dramatic, observable proof of God’s power and the people being transformed? But it doesn’t end there.

40 Elijah said to them, “Seize the prophets of Baal; do not let one of them escape.” Then they seized them, and Elijah brought them down to the Wadi Kishon and killed them there.

This bothers me. The 450 prophets of Baal had just seen dramatic, observable proof of God’s power. Didn’t any of them want to convert? One of the most cherished parts of my faith is the belief in redemption. It’s not offered here. Instead, depending on the version, the prophets are killed, slain, executed, put to death, or slaughtered. 450 worn out, bloodied, disheartened contest losers. 

What comes next makes me think that Elijah was bothered by it, too. He sends King Ahab off to get something to eat, climbs to the top of Mount Carmel and “bowed himself down upon the earth and put his face between his knees.” He’s curled into the fetal position. He is so utterly worn out that he sends his servant to watch for the signs of rain. It’s like he can’t even muster the strength to go look for the fulfillment of God’s promised rain.

So Israel finally gets some rain and Ahab hurries home to tell Jezebel what happened. Now Elijah might have thought that all would be well. He had been there for that dramatic, observable proof of God’s power and the people had fallen on their faces. Why wouldn’t it convince Jezebel?

This part reminded me of the past few years when it seems like you can have 47 peer reviewed studies and 100% reproducible experimental results supporting that something is true, and you are still going to have people say, “Nah. Not gonna believe it.” Unfortunately for Elijah, this was Jezebel. She uttered her convoluted death threat and like any sensible human being, he runs for his life.

Elijah heads into the wilderness and sits under a broom tree. Not exactly an oasis of delight, but shade. And he prays. “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.” I read commentaries that said no one is really sure what Elijah means when he compares himself to his ancestors. I read a commentary that says he is comparing himself to previous prophets, particularly Moses. What it brought to my mind, and this is just me, is the scorched earth policy in so much of Joshua – kill ‘em all, even the animals. Even if Elijah did not personally wield the sword, 450 deaths is a lot to feel responsible for.

Eventually, he falls asleep, only to be awoken by an angel who tells him to eat and drink. There is no surprise from Elijah, but he did just see God’s fire consume beef, wood, stone, dust and water. He sleeps again, and this time when he wakes the angel tells him to eat up because he won’t be eating for the next 40 days. Again, there is no emotion, no reaction, no words from Elijah until he gets to Mount Horeb and shelters in a cave. 

In that cave, God comes to him and asks, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

10 He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”

I get the sense that these thoughts have been running through his head over and over again for the past 40 days and nights. 

Then comes the highlight of this text, my favorite part. God is going to be walking past, and Elijah is supposed to come out of the cave to find him. First, there is wind so strong it shatters mountains – but God was not in the wind. Then there was the earthquake shaking the ground – but God was not in the earthquake. Then there was fire – but God was not in the fire.

Then there was sheer silence, and Elijah went to entrance of the cave because that’s where God was. 

This section, too, has a number of translations. Some call the silence a gentle whisper, a still small voice, gentle blowing, a gentle breeze. I personally like the sheer silence, that idea that there is nothing there to get in the way of experiencing God. 

This section always speaks to me, but it is especially evocative now. We live in a time of Loud and Big – military parades, 11 million protesters, AI Bots working overtime to drive everyone on social media farther and farther apart. It’s overwhelming. It’s only when I strip all the noise away that I am ready to receive God’s presence. 

Again, don’t you just want to end here? God and Elijah have this beautiful moment in the stillness?

But God asks again, “What are you doing here, Elijah?” 

14 He answered, “I have been very zealous for the Lord, the God of hosts, for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”

Nothing has changed! Elijah is still frightened for his life. He’s had a one-on-one with God, and all he talks about are his credentials and his worries. This, too, leaves me uneasy. I want to see him feel comforted, but that’s not what he says.

When we look at the last half verse, God tells Elijah to go to the wilderness of Damascus, which doesn’t sound so bad if you stop there. Maybe it’s a pleasant spot for a little respite, a little relaxation. Nope.

Remember how I was suspicious of the half verse? Here’s the rest of the story. 

15 Then the Lord said to him, “Go, return on your way to the wilderness of Damascus; when you arrive, you shall anoint Hazael as king over Aram. 16 Also you shall anoint Jehu son of Nimshi as king over Israel, and you shall anoint Elisha son of Shaphat of Abel-meholah as prophet in your place. 17 Whoever escapes from the sword of Hazael, Jehu shall kill, and whoever escapes from the sword of Jehu, Elisha shall kill. 18 Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”

Elijah is being thrown back into the political world and has a blood bath to look forward to. I want to shout, “Unfair! When does he get to rest? You were with him. You saw. You know.” As Elijah said, “Enough!” Yes, the ending bothers me.

After all the readings, this story still leaves me unsettled, but I think it is good to go over passages enough times that Holy Spirit can meet us in the reading. I think it’s important that we’re not just focusing on the parts of the Bible we like. Cherry picking is just a way of painting the picture of God we want to see. Mostly, I’ve discovered how grateful I am to be living under the New Covenant where everyone is invited to become God’s child and redemption is freely given. 

May we all be gifted this week with sheer silence and the presence of God. Amen. 

 

Saints, scripture, Sermons

Sermon, May 4

Today’s lectionary gives us important moments in the lives of two important people: Peter and Paul. Both became core figures in the early growth and spread of Christianity. Let’s start with Paul. At this point he’s using another name – Saul. Saul was both a Jew and a Roman citizen, meaning his family had some kind of tie to the Roman Empire. Saul is his Hebrew name, like the first king of Israel; Paul, or Paulus, is his Roman or Latin name, which he starts using more as his story moves along. 

Saul is maybe five years younger than Jesus. But he never meets Jesus during Jesus’ life. He grew up in the city of Tarsus, in modern-day Turkey. He came from a religious family with ties to the Pharisee camp of Judaism – a renewal movement to lead Jews to more active daily piety and practice. As a young man Paul studied in the Law in Jerusalem, as a student of Gamaliel, a great rabbi whom we met briefly last week. 

When the Christian movement starts to grow, in the months and years after Jesus’ death and resurrection, Saul is angry about it. Throughout the Gospels, we see a nuanced relationship between Jesus and the Pharisee movement. They share a desire to have people commit deeply to God and to living in God’s ways. But the Pharisees care a lot more about following the daily faith practices laid out in the Torah. And when the early Christians start saying that Jesus is God, the Pharisees don’t like that. The idea that there is only one real, true, eternal God – the God of Israel – is absolutely central to Judaism. And this thing the Christians are saying about how it’s OK because Jesus is not a second God but somehow a different part of the one God does not cut it with many Jewish leaders. Christians are rounded up, imprisoned, and in some cases, executed. Stephen becomes the first martyr, stoned to death for preaching Jesus. That’s where we first meet Saul, in Acts chapter 7: he’s watching the coats for the mob, so they won’t get their clothes bloody. Acts tells us, with chilling simplicity, “Saul approved of their killing him.” 

Then Saul decides to help stamp out the Christian movement. He gets himself deputized to go round up Christians in the city of Damascus, so he can bring them to Jerusalem in chains. When we see someone who harbors a real hatred of some group of people – an active hatred that drives their actions – we look for explanations, because that’s not how most of us live our lives. In the letter to the Galatians, Paul tells us in his own words what was going on in his mind and heart: “I was violently persecuting the church of God and was trying to destroy it. I advanced in Judaism beyond many among my people of the same age, for I was far more zealous for the traditions of my ancestors.” Paul says he was persecuting Christians because of his zeal – his eager, burning commitment – to Jewish teaching and practice. He saw Christianity as a profound threat to something he loved, already under threat from the cultural and religious dilution of the Roman Empire. His hatred was rooted in love – and in fear. 

And then: this happens. He’s on the road to Damascus, and a blinding light strikes him. He falls to the ground. A Voice speaks to him, names him: “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.” This moment and its aftermath completely change Saul’s heart and Saul’s life. Later in Acts, Paul retells this story; I expect he told it many times. In that re-telling, Paul says that the Voice also said, “It hurts you to kick against the goads.” A goad is a long stick with a pointed end used to control livestock – for example, to urge oxen along when pulling a cart or plow. To kick against the goad is to resist being steered to move in the desired direction. You can imagine how that could be painful for the animal! 

It hurts you to kick against the goads. There’s every reason for Jesus rebuke Paul in anger; look what he’s doing to Jesus’ friends! But instead Jesus names that Saul is in pain. That he’s fighting or resisting something within, perhaps something that underlies his fight with the Christians. 

Sometimes people’s hatred towards others is an externalization of something they hate inside themselves. I think of various leaders over the years who have been vocal in condemning the LGBTQ+ community, only to have it revealed that they themselves experienced same-sex attraction.

I don’t know exactly what kicking against the goads meant for Paul. But it meant something – enough to change his life; enough that he was still talking about it years later. And for me this detail just emphasizes the compassion that the Voice that is Jesus shows towards Saul, his persecutor, here in this pivotal moment for Paul and for the church. 

I love how the story continues – notice that Ananias also has a vision of Jesus, and also has to have his heart changed, to be willing to extent kindness to an enemy of the church! But I still need to talk abut Peter. The thing that’s hard about telling Paul’s story briefly is summing up his impact and importance for the early church! He spread the gospel of Jesus among non-Jews, founding many churches. He wrote letters and sermons that developed Christian teachings and shaped the growth of the movement. He mentored people and raised up other leaders. Eventually, he was most likely executed for his faith in Rome, in the year 66 or 67. But the impact of his life and voice and teachings extends to the present and beyond. 

And then there’s Peter. The thing that’s hard about telling Peter’s story briefly is sharing all the nuances of his walk with Jesus. The Gospel story today is more or less the end of John’s Gospel. People sometimes call it the Beach Breakfast Gospel. 

Peter and some of the others don’t really know what to do with themselves. Jesus died, and everything was over, and then Jesus was alive again, but everything still kind of seems to be over, so they figure they’ll go back to their old jobs as fishermen. You gotta earn a buck somehow. 

So they go out on the Sea of Tiberias – another name for the sea of Galilee, where they were fishing when Jesus first met them. They have a lousy night, but at first light, someone standing on the beach tells them, Try the other side of the boat. Stupid advice, but they do it, and immediately catch one hundred and fifty-three fish. That surprising change of fortune makes the penny drop; suddenly they realize that the stranger on the beach is no stranger at all. They come ashore, and Jesus has fish and bread cooking over a fire – doesn’t that sound amazing? He gives them bread and fish, and then… he has a little chat with Peter. 

Let me give you a few Peter highlights, before we circle back to this scene. When Peter first meets Jesus – after another miraculous catch of fish – Peter falls at Jesus’ feet, crying out, “Go away from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man!” There’s the story where the disciples are out on the sea in a boat and Jesus comes towards them, walking on the water; Peter wants to try it too, and jumps in, and it works for a second, but then he starts to panic and then he starts to sink, and Jesus has to grab him and pull him out of the lake, saying, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” 

There’s the time when Peter boldly tells Jesus, You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God; but then when Jesus starts to talk about how he’s going to be arrested and crucified, Peter takes him aside and tells him, “No, that’s not right at all.” Jesus takes Peter, James and John with him when he goes to meet with Moses and Elijah, holy leaders from ancient times, on a hilltop; Peter gets so excited that he wants to build little shrines for all three of them. Peter often asks the questions the other disciples want to ask, like, So, if somebody sins against me, how many times do I have to forgive them? And, So you say it’s hard for the rich to get into heaven. Well, we’re poor, and we left the little that we had to follow you. What are WE going to get, in Heaven? 

On the last evening before his arrest, when Jesus tries to wash the disciples’ feet to show them how to be people of humble service, Peter initially resists: I won’t let you do this for me! When Jesus says, “If you won’t let me wash you, you aren’t in this with me,” Peter says, “Well, then, don’t just wash my feet! Wash my hands and my head too!” And Jesus has to say, Look, Peter. People who have bathed recently only need their feet cleaned.. 

And when Jesus predicts that his disciples will betray and abandon him, Peter insists: I would never! I’ll stand by you even in the face of death! And indeed, when Jesus is arrested and most of his disciples flee, Peter follows at a distance to try to find out what will happen… but when people around him start asking him, Hey, aren’t you one of that guy’s disciples?, he emphatically denies it. I don’t even know the guy! 

What picture of Peter emerges from all this? He’s a big personality with big feelings. He’s loving and enthusiastic and impetuous and sometimes doesn’t read the room very well. He very much wants to get it all right, but it sometimes takes a while for an idea to get through his head. His Hebrew name is Simon, which means, Listen or Hear, but Jesus calls him Peter, Latin for Rock, and scholars wonder if that was a little joke. He’s deeply devoted to Jesus, but also gets freaked out sometimes and isn’t as brave as he wants to be. Fair! 

The Peter we see in today’s Gospel is consistent with all of this. I love the detail that he puts his clothes on before he jumps into the lake. They’re probably fishing naked to protect their clothing from wear and wet. Peter’s pausing to get dressed seems like a moment when thoughtfulness triumphs over impetuousness… until he jumps into the lake fully clothed. Oh, Peter. 

The night  Jesus’ arrest, people asked Peter, three times, if he was one of Jesus’ followers. Three times, Peter insisted that he was not. His fear overwhelmed his courage, his commitment. 

So, here, on the beach, three times, the risen Jesus asks Peter: Do you love me? It’s an opportunity for Peter to reverse his denials, to affirm his love. That may be fairly obvious to anyone who puts chapters 18 and 21 of the Gospel of John side by side, but it is not obvious to Peter in the moment. His feelings get hurt that Jesus keeps asking him the same question; he feels like Jesus isn’t taking his words and assurances seriously. (I wonder why not!) Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you! 

Jesus does know Peter, very well. I think that’s why Jesus gives Peter clear instructions about what loving Jesus should look like, for him, in the days and years ahead: Feed my lambs. Tend my sheep. Feed my sheep. In John’s Gospel, Jesus uses a lot of shepherd metaphors; the sheep and lambs here are clearly not literal livestock, but the community of those who believe in and follow Jesus. 

Now, attention to the needs of the group has not been a strength for Peter heretofore. He’s been very focused on his own spiritual growth, on being Jesus’ best student. Jesus is telling Peter, Your work from here on out is the work of servant leadership, of teaching and tending the community of believers. It’s a big reorientation for Peter – but it seems like he’s able to rise to it. We meet Peter again, in the book of Acts, as a core leader in the early church in Jerusalem, helping build, shape, and protect the growing Christian community and way of faith. 

Paul and Peter, Peter and Paul. I’ve heard them held up as different archetypes of the faith journey: Paul’s sudden conversion and transformation of life, Peter’s slow growth in faith and capacity to live from his beliefs. Over the years I’ve thought from time to time that my personal faith story is more of a Peter story. I’ve never really not belonged to a church, even as the place of faith in my life has changed over the decades. 

But I’ve had some Paul moments too – moments when my path, and my life, changed quite suddenly, in response to what I understand to be a nudge or interruption from God. And you know what: Peter had those moments too! What else can we call it than conversion, when he first walks away from his boat to follow Jesus? What else can we call this beach breakfast than yet another conversion to the role and work ahead of him – even knowing what it would cost him, at the end? 

If Peter had Paul moments of sudden conversation, I’ll bet Paul’s faith story is not just a story of sudden change, but also of long-term believing and seeking. Of his commitment to the God he’d loved and served since birth leading him – in spite of himself – to a new call and community. 

Peter and Paul, Paul and Peter. Many differences; lots in common too.  Pillars of the early church; human, ordinary, stubborn, flawed; and so, so beloved. Like Mary of Bethany, whom I spoke about a few weeks ago, it’s moving to me just to dwell with the glimpses we get of their personalities and experiences; to remember that these were real people whose lives were transformed by their encounters with Jesus Christ. And it’s moving for me to see how much love is at the heart of each story. How much each person’s life was upended and transformed and sanctified by Jesus’ understanding, Jesus’ gentleness, Jesus’ challenge, Jesus’ call. By Jesus’ love. 

May we know ourselves thus loved.

May we be ready to hear ourselves thus called. 

Big Questions, Current Events, Sermons

Sermon, March 9

Anybody else ever watch the TV show Alone? … 

It’s a reality competition show. Ten people with various survival skills are dropped into the wilderness, with limited equipment. They have to build shelter, and find their own food. They have special radios that they can use to “tap out” at any time – or they may get pulled out if their health becomes too poor. Whoever holds out the longest gets $250,000. 

I’m fascinated by the show because of what happens inside of people as they go through this ordeal. Some people just tough it out as long as they can by force of will. But a lot of people are driven to some profound self-reflection, by the isolation and the hardship. People who thought they could conquer Nature learn they have to cooperate with it. People who thought they could rely on their skills are forced to face their own limits. People who thought they were totally self-sufficient discover that they are profoundly lonely.

In today’s Gospel for the first Sunday in Lent, we see Jesus at the end of his Alone journey in the Judean wilderness – which is plenty harsh and lonely. And the Devil knows Jesus is vulnerable right now, and takes his shot. Let me say a quick word about who the Devil is, here. This is not the red guy with horns and a tail; that’s a much later image. In the Old Testament, the Devil has a role, a purpose, of testing the righteous, like Job – to see if their faith and piety and good deeds are only skin deep. That’s very much what’s happening here. 

As I said last week, the weird stuff in the Bible doesn’t especially bother me; but if you find it easier to imagine Jesus driven to self-reflection, Alone-style, I think this story works fine that way, too. 

Let me say a bit more about the third character in this story – the wilderness herself. There is a lot of literal wilderness in this part of the world – dry, rocky, hilly, and empty. 

The reason many ancient peoples of this region were pastoralists, keeping flocks of sheep and goats, is that a lot of this territory was lousy for farming. So, the importance of wilderness in the Bible begins from the geology and ecology of the region. 

And then on top of those realities, there are layers and layers of meaning that build up because of the kinds of things that happen in the wilderness. Abraham and Sarah leave a settled life in response to God’s call and set off into the wilderness. Hagar is driven into the wilderness to die, and instead meets God there. Jacob wrestles with an angel. Moses leads God’s people for forty years – struggling, starving, quarreling, but also, slowly, becoming a new people shaped by God’s purposes. David flees to the wilderness to escape King Saul’s rage, and eventually storms back from the wilderness, strengthened by its privations, to claim a throne. The prophet Isaiah dwells deeply with images of ruined cities, overgrown with weeds and overrun with wild animals – and with visions of wilderness redeemed, the desert blooming, rejoicing with flowers, as God returns to redeem God’s people and dwell among them. 

The wilderness is a deeply meaningful place, for the Biblical tradition. You don’t go there unless you have to. It’s a place of struggle and danger, a place where everything is stripped away, a place where you might die. And it is also a place where people encounter the Divine. A place of becoming, a place where people discover their purpose.

I think our Gospels have all of that in mind when they tell us that Jesus went to the wilderness, immediately after his baptism, to prepare for his public ministry, for the demanding three years that he spends in the public eye before he is arrested and executed. 

So. Jesus has been in the wilderness for forty days – not coincidentally, the same length as our season of Lent – and the Devil comes to tempt him. I’d like to talk about those temptations, one by one – what they meant for Jesus, and also what they might mean for us. Because we have wilderness seasons – individually, and together. Times of struggle, scarcity, and fear. Times when we’re not sure we have what it takes to get through, or what it’s going to cost us to survive. This season in our common life feels pretty wilderness-y for a lot of us, for a lot of reasons. So let’s think about what happens in the wilderness… 

Luke tells us, “Jesus ate nothing at all during those [forty] days, and when they were over, he was famished. The devil said to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become a loaf of bread.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, ‘One does not live by bread alone.’” For Jesus, the temptation here is pretty clear: to use his power to meet his own needs. We’re invited to understand that this is something Jesus could actually do. But if he starts down this road – a loaf of bread here, some more comfortable sandals there, maybe a convenient roadside inn with a hot tub after a long day’s journey – it could become a slippery slope! 

What’s the equivalent temptation for us, in our wilderness seasons? Years ago, a wise clergy friend told me that for pastors, people like me, our version of this temptation is to, like, tie a bow around the hard things, and try to make them meaningful and pretty. She said: It’s hard for us to accept that sometimes a stone is just a stone. I’m glad she named that; I think about it now and then. People become pastors because they want to help people find meaning, and it takes discipline not to rush to platitudes and superficial reassurances, to be able to sit with people when meaning or healing or resolution seems distant or impossible. 

There are versions of this temptation for non-pastors too. Maybe it’s the toxic positivity that rejects all difficult emotions. Maybe it’s the denial and avoidance of anything uncomfortable or scary. 

It’s tricky, because real blessings can emerge from difficult times. I feel gratitude and hope about our life together as a church, right now: the ways people here are stepping up to strengthen our care for one another and our neighbors, deepen our theological and Scriptural grounding, make sure our young folks feel fully accepted and loved. 

And: This is a really hard time for a lot of you, in many ways. A lot of folks are dealing with uncertainty and stress and risk that just flat out sucks. As your pastor, I need to be able to hold both the good things and the bad things. Some of these stones just are not going to turn into bread.

Luke writes, “Then the devil led Jesus up and showed him in an instant all the kingdoms of the world. And the devil said to him, ‘To you I will give their glory and all this authority; for it has been given over to me, and I give it to anyone I please. If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’ Jesus answered him, ‘It is written, Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’”

For Jesus, I think this temptation is about checking his motives – and abdicating responsibility. The Devil thinks that maybe Jesus is the kind of guy who’s just in it for the acclaim and the glory – and would be happy not to have to actually run things or do anything hard. So the Devil says: You can have the throne; just put me in charge. 

Jesus refuses. Because he’s not in it for glory, actually. And because he knows what happens when the Devil is in charge. The hard work ahead is his work, and he claims it. 

How would we scale this temptation down to our little, ordinary lives? I think we can also wrestle with the temptation to cede our responsibility, our agency – a word which hear means our our capacity to act, to do things that matter, even if they are small things that matter in small ways. I know a lot of folks are struggling with overwhelm: not knowing where to focus, what actions are worth the time and effort, how to balance ordinary life stuff with everything that is out of the ordinary right now.

If that’s your predicament – it is certainly mine at times – there’s a lot of good advice out there. Pick a thread and follow it. Act locally. Build and build on relationships you already have, places you’re already involved. Find people doing work that matters to you, and ask how you can help or support. There are so many ways we can invest in the world we want to live in, the world that aligns with God’s intentions as best we understand them. 

You may have heard the wonderful saying of Rabbi Tarfon, about the work of tikkun olam, repairing the world: It is not your responsibility to finish the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. (Though I like to remind us that sometimes caring for ourselves or our loved ones is the work before us for a while. Another wise sage, Lemony Snicket, writes, “It is very easy to say that the important thing is to try your best, but if you are in real trouble the most important thing is not trying your best, but getting to safety.”) 

We need to be in ongoing dialogue with ourselves about what’s feasible and what’s appropriate for us. What is my work to do? 

If it would be helpful for us to convene some spaces of conversation where folks can wonder out loud about that stuff together, and share ideas, let me know; that could be fruitful. 

The important thing, I think, is to try not to get scared or overwhelmed or numbed into giving up our own authority, however local and limited it may be, and our agency, our capacity to act in the direction of our hopes. 

Luke writes, “Then the devil took Jesus to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’” Jesus answered him, “It is said, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'”

Note, friends, that the Devil is quoting Psalm 91, which is one of the psalms that says that if God loves you nothing bad will ever happen. The Psalms are sometimes wrong. 

What did this temptation mean for Jesus? I think Jesus knows from very early on that his path will lead him to death. I don’t think this temptation is about fearing death. It’s subtler than that. Jesus, as God temporarily confined to a human body, seems to have moments when he doesn’t know the plan, and struggles with exhaustion, fear, uncertainty, just like any of us. 

Here, the Devil is saying to Jesus, You’ve chosen a risky path. You sure must have a lot of confidence in the God you call Father, to believe that there’s some point to it all, that the Powers that Be won’t just crush you like a bug and your mission and message will be forgotten. Wouldn’t it be nice to have some assurance that God is actually on the job, here? To know you could really trust the Big Guy? Come on, just a little test; what could it hurt? 

But Jesus says: That’s stupid. I’m not going to put myself at risk for no good reason. I have work to do here. I have real risks to face – necessary risks. I admire Jesus’ clarity about his mission. And I wonder if, for a moment, this temptation got to him a little…  Wanting to know that it’s all going to be OK, somehow, despite everything, is so real. And that’s what the pinnacle-of-the-Temple temptation looks like, feels like, in my life: The desire to know that the people and things I love best are going to be all right. That God won’t let anything really bad happen to them. 

There’s a David Bowie song with the lyrics, “Give my children sunny smiles, give them moon and cloudless skies; I demand a better future, or I might just stop loving you.” I am almost certain Bowie wrote it as a prayer; I know it is when I sing along with it. I would very much like to be able to make some kind of deal with God, such that my dearest people, and my dearest church, will be safe, whatever else happens around us.

A side note that isn’t really a side note: Psalm 91, our psalm today, the one the Devil quotes, is one of the psalms used in Compline. When we started regular Zoom Compline during the first months of Covid lockdown, we found we had to edit out the verses of the psalm that say that even if ten thousand people die of plague all around you, God will keep YOU safe because God likes you best. It just didn’t sit well. 

I don’t think that’s the deal. It’s not the kind of world we live in. We’re not dolls in God’s dollhouse. Our agency, our responsibility, are real. We make choices. We shape the world. We can do real good; we can do real bad. When a lot of us work together, we can do BIG good and BIG bad. We’re able to inflict harm on one another, directly and indirectly, not because God wants to build our character through suffering, but because God made us free. I do believe God acts in the world, and in and through us, but that God chooses to make generous space for our freedom. 

When we talk about this in confirmation class – about how there can be a good and loving God and also a kind of messed-up world – I ask, Would it be good if parents were in total control of their children’s lives? Even good parents, who love their kids and mean well? Nobody has ever thought that that was a good idea. 

The 14th-century mystic Julian of Norwich was once reflecting on sin and all the problems it causes in the world, grieving in her heart: All should have been well! Then in a vision she hears Jesus say to her tenderly: All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well. I believe the truth of that vision. I believe that all is held in Love; that far more can be mended than we know. But that’s in the long term, and the big picture; all shall be well doesn’t mean in this world, or this lifetime. 

Here and now, we don’t get to know that everything’s going to turn out all right. Jesus had to undertake his mission, live out his call, without the assurance that everything was going to be OK, in human terms. So do I. So do we. 

The point of this whole story – the wilderness story, the Jesus story, the full scope of the Bible, four thousand years of humanity grappling with the God we know in Jesus Christ – is that God is in it with us. We are not abandoned in the mess; we’re not alone in the dark. 

There will be wilderness times – individually, and together. Times of struggle, scarcity, and fear. Times when we’re not sure we have what it takes to get through, or what it’s going to cost us to survive. There are stones that will stubbornly remain stones. 

And yet. 

People have always found purpose in the wilderness. 

People have always met the Holy in the wilderness. 

And every so often, rarely, beautifully, the wilderness blooms.