Category Archives: Sermons

Sermons, Stories

Sermon, July 9

Children’s sermon

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

Who knows what a yoke is? … [show pictures] Something an animal wears when it’s working, pulling or carrying a heavy load. It’s not fun. It’s hard and uncomfortable.

So why is Jesus talking about yokes? Well, he’s not talking about yokes LITERALLY, he’s talking about yokes FIGURATIVELY.

Jesus was one of the Jewish people, God’s first people, the people Israel. The Jewish people and their faith had existed for a couple of thousand years already by the time Jesus was born. Their holy book was the first part of our holy book: the Torah, the five books of the Law, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And in those books there were 613 commandments: Laws or rules God gave God’s people about how they should live. You know some of those laws as the Ten Best Ways. But there were lots of others too!  They covered things like special holy festivals, foods they shouldn’t eat, how they should treat the land, business deals, and keeping the day of rest to honor God.

613 is a lot of laws. And by Jesus’ time, there were many religious teachers who had studied the Torah deeply, and decided which part of the Law was the most important. Those teachers, called rabbis, would tell their followers, THIS is the way to follow our faith, THESE are the most important practices. And it would be different – different rabbis would put importance on different practices, because of how they understood God and the Torah.  And people called that the rabbi’s “yoke.” The rabbi’s teaching about how people should live in God’s ways, which of those 613 laws they should focus on – that was the rabbi’s “yoke,” the burden of faithfulness they put on their followers.

Now, Jesus was God’s Son, but he was also a rabbi – a person who knows the Scriptures deeply and teaches people how to follow them. Once someone came to Jesus to ask him which commandments he thinks are most important. He’s treating Jesus like a rabbi; he’s basically asking him, Rabbi, what is your yoke? And Jesus says, Love God with your whole self, and love your neighbor as much as you love yourself.

That’s Jesus’s yoke. That’s the heart of the law, for Jesus and those who want to follow him. The Sabbath and particular foods and so on aren’t a big deal. This is the heart of it all: Love God, love your neighbor. So this is Jesus’ yoke, his teaching as a rabbi.  When he says, Come to me, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light, THIS is what he means. He means, If you take me as your rabbi and follow me, this is what I ask you to: Love God, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Now, is it EASY to love God and love your neighbor, all the time? With your whole heart? (No!….) So why would Jesus say, My yoke is easy and my burden is light? Well, I think one thing he means is, it’s SIMPLE. Jesus’ yoke is not complicated. Other rabbis might have given their followers much more complicated, difficult sets of rules to follow. With Jesus’ yoke, you have to think about it and live it out every day; but it’s not hard to remember that we’re supposed to love God and love other people. So it is simple. 

For another thing, “easy” might not be the right word. Remember Jesus didn’t speak English. He spoke Aramaic, and this part of the Bible was first written down in Greek, and then it was translated into English. So “easy” might really not be the right word. I looked up the Greek word a little bit to see what it means. And it doesn’t mean “easy” like, oh, it’s a snap. Like “Easy as falling of a log.” The Greek word – chrestos – means something more like, appropriate, manageable. Something it’s reasonable to ask you to do. It also means helpful and kind. I like the idea that Jesus is asking us to live in a way that is helpful and kind.

So we could hear Jesus saying, My yoke, my way following God, is manageable, and helpful, and kind. It’s not supposed to be impossible. It’s supposed to be something you can remember easily and carry in your heart, and try to follow, day by day.

Grownups’ Sermon

Now, I’d like to say a few words about our Genesis story.

Our lectionary readings this summer take us through the great stories of Genesis, the beginning of God’s covenant with humanity. Last Sunday, with our 4th of July readings, we skipped an important chapter: the binding of Isaac.

When I said I didn’t want to write a sermon on vacation, I DEFINITELY didn’t want to write a sermon on one of the harder stories in the Old Testament. – at least one of the hardest ones the lectionary gives us! …  But instead of taking opportunity to ignore it, I’m going back to it, a little bit, today.

I know the story of the Binding of Isaac is a least favorite for some of you, and I don’t blame you; it’s an awful story. Why would God promise Abraham and Sarah a son, fulfill their deep and lifelong hopes with a baby, and then order Abraham to kill the child to prove his devotion to God? The fact that God, at the last possible moment, stops Abraham and tells him to sacrifice a ram instead, doesn’t fix the story at all. It just makes God seem manipulative and capricious.

I’ve spent some time digging into how people of faith, both Christians and Jews, have made sense of this difficult story over the ages. And while I don’t think there’s any way to tie a pretty bow on it, I do have a few thoughts.

I think one of the big challenges in our engagement with this text is that there is a huge gulf between our cultural and religious world, and the world of the text’s original audience. I believe that one of the core issues being worked out here is that the religion of Israel, the religion of Yahweh, did NOT demand child-sacrifice.

Some of the religions practiced by neighboring peoples DID sacrifice children, so this was a really important line to draw, early in the story of Yahweh’s covenant relationship with Abraham and his descendants. And as you can imagine, that was a BIG deal for the Israelites. To them, this story said, This God DOES NOT want you to kill your children. To US, this story says, God might play weird head games with you about killing your children! So we are just a long way from the people who needed this story. I don’t know what to do about that, besides remind us about it.

Another thing I think is important to say about this text – and about other stories from Scripture in which awful things happen – is that the text does not think this is OK. That’s why I don’t want to try to talk you out of your revulsion: the AUTHOR of the text wants you to be revolted. I am certain of that. Because the story emphasizes how much Abraham loves his son; and because of the moment in the story when little Isaac looks up at his father and asks, “Father, where is the ram for the sacrifice?” If a modern author wrote that scene, we would understand that they were trying to elicit our gut response to the complete terrible wrongness of what is happening here. So is the author of this text.  I am sure of it. 

And I’d say that the same applies to a lot of the more cruel and horrific stories in the Hebrew Bible. The voice of the author doesn’t think those things are OK. Again, if we read a modern novel about the horrors of World War II, we know that the fact that the author describes those events doesn’t mean they approve of them. But when we read about dismemberments and mass executions in the Bible, we think, Oh, because it’s in the Bible, that must mean it’s OK with God and with the people who wrote about it.

I don’t know how much of that is because the lectionary gives us the Biblical text in little choppy pieces that make it hard to understand what’s really going on, and how much of it is because of our modernist bias that makes it hard for us to recognize that the people who compiled and edited the Hebrew Scriptures were actually pretty damn astute. But next time you read the Binding of Isaac or another awful story from Scripture, try reading it from the assumption that the person who wrote it down also thought it was horrible, and see where that leads you.

Which brings me to the final thing I want to say: The Binding of Isaac is part of a longer arc of story, and much of its meaning is tied up in those longer narrative arcs. There’s a narrative context that sets up this story: Abraham and Sarah are elderly and childless; they long for a son; God promises a son, if they will trust God and enter a new covenant; there’s the whole Hagar and Ishmael story; and so on. And the narrative continues beyond the binding of Isaac. The lesson we have today, about Rebecca, is in many ways the resolution of Isaac’s story.

Isaac walks away from Mount Moriah, from the Binding story, with his relationship with his father broken. The text of Genesis 22 has Abraham leave the mountain alone. It doesn’t say what Isaac did, but he’s not there. And just a couple of verses after the end of the Binding story, Sarah, Isaac’s mother, dies. Jewish interpreters of scripture have long assumed that Sarah died because she heard what her husband, Abraham, had done.

Whether her death was immediate or not, the text DOES imply that Abraham was not living with Sarah when she died. Abraham comes from somewhere else to mourn her, and to negotiate buying a piece of land to bury her. (Read the bargaining scene in chapter 23 sometime, it’s amazing.)

So the Binding of Isaac shattered this family. Abraham’s relationships with both wife and son were broken, because God asked him to do something unthinkable, and he said yes. At the beginning of chapter 24, anticipating death,  Abraham makes one last bid to provide for – or control? – his estranged son. He makes his servant promise to go find Isaac a wife from his homeland, from among his kin. Even in that scene, Isaac isn’t there. Abraham is doing this for him – or to him? – in his absence.  Imagine a father who did something so awful that his son left home! Moved out, cut off communications! And now on his deathbed that father wants to make sure his son marries the right kind of girl? How welcome do you think that would be?

And yet, and yet – God uses it for good. Abraham’s servant takes his task very seriously. Arriving outside the town of Nahor, he makes his camels kneel down near the well.  He knows that women and young girls will come out to get water in the evening, and he prays: Lord God, let the girl who offers to give me water, and to water my camels – let that girl be the girl you have chosen for Isaac.  And it happens – just so.

Rebecca is young, and lovely, and is distant kin to Abraham. She’s the kind of girl who would get water for a stranger’s camels. And she’s kind of girl who would say Yes to a husband, sight unseen, because it seems to be God’s will … or maybe because she’s desperately bored of her hometown and ready for a change. The text implies, I think, that she was not displeased with her husband when she met him – “Who is that man over there?…” And Isaac loves her, and finds comfort in his wife and his marriage. If a friend told you, ‘My new wife really fills the hole in my life that my mother left,’ you might worry about that a little bit – but you’d also understand. Isaac was alone, and grieving. With no one to care for him, or for him to care for. Rebecca does fill that hole. His marriage, his family, comfort him, and give him a fresh start, after the brokenness of his family of origin.

These chapters of Genesis show us broken relationships in a family; grief at the loss of a parent;  solace and hope in a new relationship. Father Tom gave us a image last week: God’s story; my story; one story. It puts me in mind of my favorite saying about reading: We read to know that we are not alone. Books can tell us that other people have shared our experiences. And when we find our experiences echoed in Scripture, we know that our experiences aren’t just part of other human stories; they’re part of God’s story. That’s why even in the darkest or saddest stories of Scripture, we may find a glimmer of grace.

Sermons

Readings from American History, July 2

Abigail Adams, writing to her husband, Founding Father John Adams, 1776:

“I long to hear that you have declared an independency. And, by the way, in the new code of laws which I suppose it will be necessary for you to make, I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors. Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of the husbands. Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation. That your sex are naturally tyrannical is a truth so thoroughly established as to admit of no dispute; but such of you as wish to be happy [should] willingly give up the harsh title of ‘master’ for the more tender and endearing one of ‘friend.’ Why, then, not put it out of the power of the vicious and the lawless to use us with cruelty and commit indignity with impunity? Men of sense in all ages abhor those customs which treat us only as the (servants) of your sex; regard us then as being placed by Providence under your protection, and in imitation of the Supreme Being make use of that power only for our happiness.”

Chief Seattle, in response to a government official’s offer to purchase the remaining Seattle land, 1845:

Our good father in Washington–for I presume he is now our father as well as yours–our great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so that our ancient enemies far to the northward will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men. Then in reality he will be our father and we his children. But can that ever be? Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people [grow] stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man’s God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness?

Sojourner Truth, 1851:

That little man in black there, he says women can’t have as much rights as men, ’cause Christ wasn’t a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him. If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

African-American orator Frederick Douglass, 1852:

This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the 4th of July. It is the birthday of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, is what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the clay, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act that day. …  I am not included within the pale of this glorious anniversary!  Your high independence only reveals the immeasurable distance between us. The blessings in which you, this day, rejoice, are not enjoyed in common. The rich inheritance of justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not be me. The sunlight that brought life and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This fourth of July is yours, not mine.  You may rejoice, I must mourn.

Women’s rights activist Amelia Bloomer, 1854:

We see no reason why it should be considered disreputable for a woman to be usefully employed… [Women] eat, they drink, they sleep, they dress, they dance and at last die, without having accomplished the great purposes of their creation. Can woman be content with this aimless, frivolous life?…While all other things both animals and vegetable perform their allotted parts in the universe of being, shall woman, a being created in God’s own image, endowed with reason and intellect, capable of the highest attainments and destined to an immortal existence, alone be an idler, a drone, and pervert the noble faculties of her being from the great purposes for which they were given? It will not always be thus; the public mind is undergoing a rapid change in its opinion of woman and is beginning to regard her sphere, rights and duties in altogether a different light from that which she has been viewed in the past ages. Woman herself is doing much to rend asunder the dark veil of error and prejudice which has so long blinded the world in regard to her true position; and we feel assured that, when a more thorough education is given to her and she is recognized as an intelligent being capable of self-government, and in all rights, responsibilities and duties man’s equal, we shall have a generation of women who will blush over the ignorance and folly of the present day.

President Abraham Lincoln’s second inaugural address, 1865:

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

Cuban activist and writer Jose Marti, Our America, 1891:

One must have faith in the best in men and distrust the worst. One must allow the best to be shown so that it reveals and prevails over the worst. Nations should have a pillory for whoever stirs up useless hate, and another for whoever fails to tell them the truth in time.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1932:

This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Martin Luther King, Jr., from his Letter from the Birmingham Jail, 1963:

I have not said to my people: “Get rid of your discontent.” Rather, I have tried to say that this normal and healthy discontent can be channeled into the creative outlet of nonviolent direct action. And now this approach is being termed extremist. But though I was initially disappointed at being categorized as an extremist, as I continued to think about the matter I gradually gained a measure of satisfaction from the label. Was not Jesus an extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?

Sermons, Stories

Sermon, June 25

Preached by the Rev. Thomas McAlpine, a priest associate at St. Dunstan’s. 

Sam Kamaleson, a pastor from the Indian subcontinent with whom I worked at World Vision, used to talk about God’s story (one hand) and my story (the other hand) becoming one story (fingers interlaced). Much easier said than done; today’s lessons give us an opportunity to think about it.

God’s story. Two weeks ago (Trinity Sunday) our first lesson was the creation story, seven days of God declaring this is good, that is good, the whole thing very good. It’s a very different perspective than the Babylonian (creation itself and humans in particular formed from the corpses of defeated gods of chaos) or the Greek (only a second-rate deity would be fool enough to deal with matter). No: creation is good, the material world is good.

We can pick up the story in Eucharistic Prayer C (BCP 370): “From the primal elements you brought forth the human race, and blessed us with memory, reason, and skill. You made us the rulers of creation. But we turned against you, and betrayed your trust; and we turned against one another.”

We should be, I think, surprised that the prayer doesn’t continue with “And so You pulled the plug on the whole thing” or “And so You decided to hang out with the dolphins for the next few thousand years.” Surprisingly, God calls Abraham and Sarah to be the beginning of a pilot project aimed at what the Jews call tikkun olam, repairing the world. God comes to Abraham and Sarah: what might we do together? God’s story + their story becoming one story. That’s the story contained in the Old Testament, the story rebooted when God takes on human flesh in Jesus, the story we enter with our baptism.

It’s probably fair to say that from Sarah’s perspective the project didn’t start out well. She had not borne Abraham an heir, to the point that, bowing to custom, she presented Abraham with her Egyptian slave Hagar so that she might produce an heir by proxy. Hagar conceived, and, understandably, passed up no chance to remind everyone that she was the birth mother of Abraham’s heir. So Sarah had an enemy, and there wasn’t a lot she could do about it. (I’m not sure ‘enemy’ is quite the right word. I’m using it broadly, to include, for example, the people whose posts we hide—or unfriend—on Facebook.) Until, finally, God promised her a son (last week’s reading), and delivered on that promise (just before this week’s reading). Now Sarah can do something about her enemy. Foreshadowing the treatment her people will receive from the Egyptians some generations later, she demands that Abraham expel Hagar and Ishmael. And Abraham does so—only after receiving God’s promise to look after Hagar and Ishmael.

And in the story we’ve just heard God keeps that promise to Hagar, preserving Ishmael’s imperiled life as God will preserve Isaac’s imperiled life in the next story. “Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him fast with your hand; for I will make him a great nation.”

The Jews, descended from Isaac, and the Arabs, descended from Ishmael, already in the OT are often at odds. And here Sarah’s God is providing a well for Ishmael. The Jews have a legend about that: “the angels appeared against Ishmael before God. They said, ‘Wilt Thou cause a well of water to spring up for him whose descendants will let Thy children of Israel perish with thirst?’ And God: “well, yes.”

God’s story + my story = one story. For Sarah in this episode, not so much, because she’s hit one of the really difficult bits: that someone is my enemy doesn’t mean they’re God’s enemy, that God listens to me when I pray Ps 86 (today’s psalm) and listens to my enemy when they pray Ps 86.

This is a difficult enough bit that the OT keeps coming back to it. Here are a couple more stories.

Some generations later Moses has led Israel out of Egypt, and Joshua has just brought the people across the Jordan to take possession of the promised land. Reading from the fifth chapter of Joshua:

Once when Joshua was by Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing before him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went to him and said to him, “Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” He replied, “Neither; but as commander of the army of the LORD I have now come.” (Jos 5:13-14 NRS)

“Are you one of us, or one of our adversaries?” “Neither.”

Some centuries later the Northern Kingdom of Israel and Aram (modern Syria) are at war. In a legend from that period, the king of Aram learns that his recent raids have been unsuccessful because the prophet Elisha has been warning the Israelite king about them. He sends out a large force to surround Elisha’s city and capture Elisha. Elisha sees the force, and asks God to blind the soldiers. God does so, and Elisha leads them to the Israelite capital. At this point the Israelite king enters. Reading from the sixth chapter of 2 Kings:

When the king of Israel saw them he said to Elisha, “Father, shall I kill them? Shall I kill them?” He answered, “No! Did you capture with your sword and your bow those whom you want to kill? Set food and water before them so that they may eat and drink; and let them go to their master.” So he prepared for them a great feast; after they ate and drank, he sent them on their way, and they went to their master. And the Arameans no longer came raiding into the land of Israel. (2Ki 6:21-23 NRS)

So when Jesus talks about loving one’s enemies as an integral part of what God’s kingdom is about, this isn’t new. Jesus is simply reporting how he’s observed the Father acting “for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous”—not to mention Hagar, the reply to Joshua, Elisha’s treatment of the Aramean raiders.

So when Jesus sends his disciples out to announce this kingdom, he understandably anticipates opposition, because everyone knows that right-thinking people try to help their friends and hurt their enemies. Right-thinking people will take Barabbas over Jesus any day.

“But this love of enemies business can’t be that important to God. If it were, God would impose it.” But that takes us back to the creation story. God thinks that human freedom is good. God thinks that the church’s freedom is good. So God does what God can do, like the woman in one of Jesus’ parables, putting leaven in the dough in the hope of the whole thing rising. God continues to stretch out the now nail-pierced hand to us: how can we make My story and your story one story?

God’s story; my story; one story. There are many ways that invitation will come to us in the coming week. Some of them may have to do with how we choose to respond to our enemies. May our choices bring God joy.

Sermons, Spiritual Practices

Sermon, June 18

When have you felt welcome? What made you feel that way? In today’s passage from Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus sends out the Twelve to preach the Kingdom, to spread the good news that God is still present, still acting, still saving. The way he tells them to do it is really interesting. He says, Stay in people’s homes. Matthew says, ‘whoever is worthy,’ but in Luke’s parallel passage, Jesus says, Just stay with whoever will welcome you. Whoever lets you in, and gives you a corner to sleep in. (And honor their hospitality by staying with them until it’s time to move on; don’t move to a nicer house even if it’s offered!) Don’t bring money, or food, or even extra clothes or shoes. Don’t be self-sufficient. Depend on the kindness of strangers. Jesus knows this will be hard and scary! – “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves!” But he’s very clear about it.

We name welcoming as one of the discipleship practices of our congregation. Receiving one another, for the first or the thousandth time, with warmth and generosity. Embracing people in the fullness of who they are, the scars they carry, the gifts they bring. And we have an icon of welcome hanging near the door to our nave: this little icon, a reproduction of an icon that was painted for St. Francis house, our sister faith community over on campus. Iconographer Drazen Dupor painted that image for St. Francis House, based loosely on very famous icon of the Three Angels visiting Abraham and Sarah, today’s Old Testament passage. This story is especially significant in Christian thought because those three angels have long been seen as foreshadowing the Trinity. The scene becomes an icon of hospitality because of Abraham’s ready, no-questions-asked welcome for these three strange guests. It joins countless folktales from around the world of people who responded with kindness towards strangers who turned out to be powerful beings, and rewarded hospitality with blessings – in Abraham and Sarah’s case, their much-wanted, long-awaited child.

The artist told me something about this image that I really enjoy, a significant detail: the napkins are messy. He explained that according to Near Eastern tradition, at the end of the meal, if you’re the guest, and you fold your napkin and neatly place it on the table, it means that you still feel like a guest. Whereas if you just toss your napkin on the table any old how, it means that your hosts succeeded in making you feel like family. You felt truly welcomed. It’s hard to see in this small version, but the iconographer painted the napkins in this image as messy napkins. A detail that calls our attention to the grace and responsibility of being a guest, rather than a host.

This story from the book of Genesis is just one of many examples in Scripture when God comes to humanity as a guest. When God allows humans to set the table, and preside at the feast. Jesus is fundamentally God incarnate as a guest among us. And he’s constantly a guest at some feast or another. Even at the Last Supper, where we imagine him at the head of the table, it was not his table, not his home, not his food. Someone else prepared that meal and made that room available for Jesus and his friends, that evening. God makes Godself our guest, in Genesis, in Jesus; and in today’s Gospel Jesus tells his followers to do the same. Welcoming is well and good; a few verses later Jesus will promise God’s favor to those who practice hospitality. But here he his directions are: Go be a guest. Why?

It would be so easy to take today’s Scriptures and preach on the virtues and practices of hospitality and welcome. I feel the gravity of it, like a coin circling one of those big plastic funnels at a science museum. But this gospel is not calling us to hospitality. In the language of our Discipleship Practices – conveniently listed on our church fans – this lesson is about proclamation rather than about welcoming. About proclaiming, by word and example, the good news of God’s love and God’s hope for the world, to those outside our community of faith. Evangelism: which means that we take what this all means to us, how it’s touched our lives, given us strength or hope, whatever it is that keeps us coming back, and we carry that with us as part of the story we tell about ourselves, part of the answer we give when someone asks us, How are you? What’s giving you joy? What’s keeping you strong? Evangelism, which in its simplest shyest gentlest form simply means letting the people around you know that God has a place in your life.

Churches, at least mainline Protestant churches like the Episcopal Church, are by and large much more comfortable with welcoming than with proclamation. In fact we’d sort of like to think that the former can substitute for the latter. And for the people who actually walk up to our doors looking for a community with which to puzzle out this whole God business, maybe it can. But there are a whole lot of people wondering and seeking and struggling who are not going to walk up to these doors, for all kinds of reasons. They’ve been burned by church in the past, or simply found it boring and irrelevant. Or their lives have just never taken them close enough to church and faith for it to occur to them that they might find strength, solace, grace, purpose, in a community of faith and in relationship with the Divine. And there are people who are genuinely not in the market for a church, but who might still be looking for God.

Think about the task of evangelism that Jesus gives the disciples. It would have been much easier to go to each village, rent the Elks lodge, hold a big dinner, invite everybody, and then while they’re sitting there between dinner and dessert, and feel like they owe you their attention in exchange for the meal, that’s when you stand up and talk about Jesus.

Being the host is a position of power. Being the guest means making yourself beholden. Entering someone else’s home, and life, and story. When we are the guest – whether it’s at a meal in someone’s home, or out at a coffee shop, or hanging out at a community picnic, or any time when the setting and occasion are not our own – when we are the guest, we set aside the security of our own familiar space, and the comfort of being the people who called the meeting, with the implicit right to frame the conversation and set the agenda. When we’re the guest, we feel keenly that we can’t sit at someone’s table, eat their food, and then push back our plate and say, I’d like to tell you about Jesus. You can’t demand your host’s attention or cooperation. That’s not how hospitality works, for host or guest.

Jesus sends his disciples out to share the good news that God works for good for and around and within and among us; and to share that good news from the vulnerability, the beholden-ness, of being a guest. Just as he did. I think that approach was wise then; I think it may be even wiser now. We live in a capitalist society which has trained all of us to be keenly aware of when we are being sold something. Americans are very sensitive to being treated as marks, as potential sales. And generally speaking, we don’t much care for it. Even when I actually want to buy a sofa, having a saleswoman sidle up to me with a big smile makes me a little uncomfortable.

But if we can’t enter the conversation with our plans laid out and our speeches prepared, then what can we do? Well – we can listen to our hosts, or fellow guests. Their hopes, their hurts, their longings. We can be open to moments when we might speak God’s love into someone’s life, through relationship rather than agenda. Genuineness instead of preparedness. Presence instead of power. Small moments instead of big speeches. As Rob Chappell said last year, just saying, “I’ll pray about that,” says a lot.

It helps if you can manage to think of what you have to say about God in your life – your testimony, friends – as a gift instead of an imposition. It’s a truth you have to tell about yourself – and listen, I know y’all; I know that those stories range from “God saved my life” to “I’m not sure why I’m here or whether I believe any of this stuff but something keeps bringing me back.” All those stories are gifts; all those stories contain grace; they’re all worth telling. Trust me.

Matthew’s gospel doesn’t tell us how this mission turned out, how it all went for those disciples sent forth as sheep among wolves. But Luke does, in his telling. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus sends out not twelve but seventy disciples, empty-handed, unprepared, to find someone who’ll house them and feed them, and look for opportunities to talk about God. And Luke says, They returned with joy.

They returned with joy. Amen.

Church Seasons & Holy Days, Sermons

Sermon, June 11

Today churches around the world – Anglican and Episcopal, Orthodox, Catholic, and others – celebrate the feast day dedicated to the Holy Trinity. To celebrating and – often – attempting some explanation of our Christian doctrine that God is One but also Three: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The setting-aside of the Sunday after Pentecost to honor the Trinity goes back at least a thousand years. If you Google it, the simple historical explanation that everyone’s church websites have is that the observance of Trinity Sunday was instituted by Archbishop Thomas Becket of Canterbury in the 12th century. That seemed both too tidy and incomplete, so I tried to dig a little deeper online and found this sentence in a book review in a 1954 religion journal: “Much is made of the alleged origin of the feast of Trinity Sunday at Canterbury under Thomas Becket. Actually, the office… had been followed in the English monasteries (and doubtless elsewhere) from the time of St. Dunstan.”

Our hymnal is full of hymns to the Trinity that poetically explore the mystery of God in three persons. We’ll sing several of them today. The fact is, the Trinity is really a better subject for poetry than for exposition. It’s notoriously hard to explain clearly. Every year amongst my clergy acquaintances on Facebook, there’s a round of finger-shaking: “Make sure you don’t commit heresy!” I can’t get too worked up about it, myself. Both heresy and doctrine are creations of the Church, a human institution. And the words we use – Trinity, Father, Son, Holy Spirit – they’re just words. The doctrine of the Trinity is an effort to capture the mystery of God in human language and concepts. To eff the ineffable, if you will.

But that’s not to say I think the truth behind the words is unimportant. I think it’s very important – so important that we should be mindful of how the words we use can obscure the truth we’re trying to name. What do Christians mean when we name God as a Trinity? Christians have come to understand God as One, and yet also Three.

And the Three are not interchangeable but have distinct personhoods: God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the Ground of all being, the One who holds all time, all space, in the palm of their hand…. God at God’s biggest, beyond all knowledge and all thought.

God, the Incarnate, the Immanent. The movement of Divine thought into substance, who was with God in the beginning, by whom all things were made. Emmanuel, God-With-Us, who comes into the immediacy and mess of human life, walks with us, eats with us, shares the experience of being embodied, limited, breakable. Is broken. But not ended, because although one of us he is also still God.

God, the Spirit, breath, wind, flame, wisdom, whisper, shout. The still small voice. The presence gentle as a dove. The Wind that moved over the face of the waters, when as yet there was nothing but that primordial sea. The Holy Spirit: how we name the Divine When it stirs something within or among us, Inspiring, converting, healing, transforming, making possible.

Creator, Incarnate One, Divine Breath. Father, Son, Spirit. Two of our Scriptures today use that set of names, what’s called the Trinitarian formula: The Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. A huge part of the conflict between early Christianity and Judaism was the notion that Jesus was somehow also God, which challenged Judaism’s deep belief in only one God. Early Christians had to wrestle with their language, to make room in monotheism for a God who is somehow, mysteriously, more than One. By the 50s or 60s, when Paul wrote the second letter to the Corinthians, early church leaders had worked out this way of naming God as Three in One. (The Gospel of Matthew was likely written down a couple of decades later. It’s hard to know whether Jesus actually spoke the Trinitarian formula himself, or whether Matthew gives him those words that had become central to Christian baptism and teaching by the time Matthew is writing.)

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit… The terms Father and Son come to us directly from Jesus. Interestingly, Father was not a dominant metaphor for God in the Old Testament. God is named as a Father a few times, but God is much more often a husband, sometimes a mother, sometimes a master. It’s Jesus who gives Father language to Christianity, by naming God as his Father and teaching his followers to do the same. There’s a sticky translation issue here – Jesus used an Aramaic word for Father, Abba. That was a familiar word, not a formal word – You’d actually call your father “Abba,” Whereas to call your father “Father” sounds odd to most of us. But we don’t have a good equivalent to “Abba” in American English. “Daddy” is a little too childish, “Dad” maybe a little too informal, though it may be our best option. In any event, the term “Father” in our cultural context carries some sense of formality and distance, and that’s a pity, because that wasn’t Jesus’ intention in giving us this way to name God. He wants us to think of ourselves as children of a loving father – a loving daddy? – who cares for each of us, is always ready to hear our concerns and share our celebrations, always waiting for us to wander home.

The Father; the Son. That’s straightforward enough; the Gospels name Jesus as the Son of God – though not in the way of Greek mythology, for example, that led to many half-gods wandering around the earth. Jesus is God’s Son is a less literal, and a more eternal and fundamental, way. The first chapter of the Gospel of John picks up the threads of the Creation story, as John tries to describe who and what Jesus is:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son.” Gazing into the mystery that John’s Gospel poetry evokes, it becomes clear that the Sonship and the Fatherhood that we name in the Trinity are only the best effort humanity and divinity could make together, at a certain moment in our shared story, to describe what’s going on inside of God.

And then there’s the Holy Spirit, which has the benefit of seeming elusive and confusing right up front, unlike Father and Son, which sound misleadingly concrete. The Spirit is announced and named by Jesus, but Pentecost is not the Spirit’s first appearance; there are times in the Old Testament too when the Spirit of God is named as an agent or an aspect of God.

That’s the question, really – always has been. What are these different things that we name with these clumsy terms, Father, Son, Holy Spirit? Are they manifestations, avatars? Are they different colorful masks worn by one God? That would be much simpler than what Christians came to understand, and have struggled to believe ever since: This isn’t just one God wearing different costumes. These are three distinct Persons within One God. If you’d like a glimpse at the historical struggle to define and defend that paradox, read the Athanasian Creed sometime; it’s on page 864 in the Book of Common Prayer.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The truth behind the words matters: the truth that relationship is at the core of everything. That Divinity is community. That the heart of God is not a oneness sufficient to itself, but a plurality dancing with itself. So we, created in God’s image, are made for diversity, for relationship, for belonging. That is a truth that matters deeply right now. Always does, really.

The truth behind the words is powerful, paradoxical, and gracious. The words themselves… have their limitations. Human concepts come with human baggage. Few serious theologians would assert that God is actually male, but our language has led us to imagine God as an old guy with a beard, for millennia. Using the language of a patriarchal society to name God has served to reinforce patriarchy, for a long, long time. In addition to those big-picture issues, naming God as Father is really hard for some people because of their family history. We are simple animals, really; if the father we have known in real life was unloving or even abusive, then when we hear God named as Father, we cannot help having our experiences contaminate God.

I can’t see abandoning the Trinitarian formula, Father, Son, and Holy Spirt, because it’s so deeply rooted in Scripture and tradition. But when we recognize that those terms were just one attempt to wrap human language around divine mystery, it frees us up to try other formulas, other language. You’ll sometimes hear Trinitarian formulas that focus on how humans have experienced those three Persons. Maker, Redeemer, Sustainer. The One who creates, the One who befriends, the One who inspires. The anti-heresy brigade frets about modalism: the heresy that the Trinity is after all only one God acting in three different ways, as one human being might cook dinner, do the laundry, and feed the dog. What I like about those formulas, Maker, Redeemer, Sustainer, and others, is that they remind us of the kinds of things God does. They remind me to give thanks for, and look for, God’s ongoing presence and action in the world. So maybe we could all just promise not to commit the modalist heresy and to remember that there are three Persons in the Trinity? Okay?

Just the other day, my son Griffin and I were talking about pronouns. We both have friends who prefer the use of the non-gendered pronoun “they”, and we’re working to get used to that, because we respect our friends. And it dawned on us both that if you met God at the GSAFE banquet, where your name tag says both your name and your preferred pronouns, God’s name tag would say “they/theirs.” Because God is gender non-binary – not a boy or a girl – and God is plural. I’m trying that on, using “they” as my God-pronoun. It breaks open my thinking a little, makes me notice and wonder, and that’s a good thing.

The Trinity is beautiful, and holy, and true, and we really don’t understand it at all. But we celebrate it, with gratitude – the mystery and the truth of community in the heart of God, who is our Source, our Grace, our Love, our Table, our Food, our Host, our Light, our Tree, our Treasure, Our Life, our Truth, our Way. Amen.

The quotation about Dunstan came from this article:

Review: Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden Deel VI, De Tachtigjarige Oorlog 1609-1648.  Reviewed Work: Algemene Geschiedenis der Nederlanden Deel VI, De Tachtigjarige Oorlog 1609-1648. Review by: G. N. Clark, The English Historical Review Vol. 69, No. 271 (Apr., 1954), pp. 318-320

Big Questions, Sermons

Sermon, May 28

Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith.

That’s how two verses from the fifth chapter of the first letter of Peter, today’s Epistle, are rendered in our Book of Common Prayer. Who knows where they appear? … That’s right; this is one of the short Scripture texts offered in Compline, our nighttime prayers. I didn’t grow up saying Compline with my youth group every Friday night, like our kids do. But I’ve still used the rite many, many times over the course of 42 years as an Episcopalian. And through repetition, this short passage sunk into my mind and heart, becoming one of the snippets of Scripture that I have on instant recall. (This reminds me of the joke about the Episcopalian who finally read the Bible and was surprised by how much it quotes the Prayer Book!…)

Be sober, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour. Resist him, firm in your faith. These verses stuck with me not just by virtue of repetition, but also because they’re memorable. The earnest warning, and the evocative image of the Devil as a predator prowling around the flock, waiting to catch a sheep alone, sick, weak. Vulnerable. Whether or not you believe in the Devil as a sort of CEO of global evil operations, evil is an active force in the world, and in human hearts and lives. I recognize this text as true: there are temptations, ideas, actions and inactions, that would draw me away from my sacred call to love of God and love of neighbor. Those temptations, those forces lurk around me, looking for an opportunity. They have their best chance when I’m tired and drained, or angry, or afraid, or hurting. When I don’t have my trust in God’s ultimate goodness and my own belovedness wrapped around me like a warm blanket, or like armor.

The adversary prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour… This text stuck with me too because it’s scary. Not just because of that vivid image, but because it seems to be putting a lot of pressure and responsibility on me. Be sober and disciplined. Keep alert. Resist the Devil, steadfast in your faith. Face down the lion. Me? With my puny clawless hands, my soft underbelly? It’s not the most comforting thought with which to end the day and lay oneself down to sleep.

But then, sometime in the past decade, like the archetypal Episcopalian in the joke, I actually read the Bible. And I discovered two things. First, the passage in the Compline rite is incomplete. It breaks in the middle of verse 9, which reads in full: “Resist [the Devil], steadfast in your faith, for you know that your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.” Second, the “you”s through this whole passage are PLURAL. A distinction that English doesn’t make very clearly, but Greek does. The author of this letter is addressing churches here, not individuals. The translation of the Bible that we generally use for Sunday Scriptures, the New Revised Standard Version, makes this a little clearer than the version in the prayer book – “Discipline yourselves.”

But it’s not just that the author is addressing more than one person, but that he’s addressing a community. In fact, one strong theme of this letter is to take care of each other. I found at least four times in this letter when the author tells the members of these churches, Just love each other, OK? In chapter 1: Love one another deeply from the heart. In chapter 2: Love the family of believers. In chapter 3: Have unity of spirit, sympathy, love for one another, a tender heart, and a humble mind. And in chapter 4: Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining.

The author of this letter – maybe the apostle Peter, maybe a later church leader writing in Peter’s name – this author has taken to heart Jesus’ prayer for his followers, in today’s Gospel: That they all may be one. He knows, as Jesus knew, that Jesus’ followers are going to need each other. That the Way to which they, and we, are called is hard to follow on your own. It’s too nuanced, too open-ended, too profound, too risky. We need a community of faith to encourage each other. To hold one another accountable. To support each other when we’re confused or hurting.

In fact, this author is actually pretty focused on that last point: the church’s response to suffering. He’s writing to Christians who are struggling with difficult times, and are wondering: If God loves us so much, if Jesus’ saving death and resurrection transformed reality, how come terrible stuff still happens? Why isn’t life easier now? How do we deal with suffering, as Christians? That is still, absolutely, one of the core questions of faithful living. And this letter offers one answer. It’s not a fully satisfying answer, because he can’t promise an end to suffering. But it’s also one of the only true and lasting answers that humanity has found, in millennia of wrestling with the reality of human pain: Don’t face it alone, and don’t leave others to face it alone. Look out for each other. As spiritual writer Anne Lamott says, It’s our job to sit with people and bring them juice, until it’s our turn to have someone sit with us and bring us juice.

To say that suffering is an enduring part of human life is not to say that all suffering is inevitable. If we lived in a world of peace, where everyone had enough to eat and access to medical care, then a substantial percentage of the world’s suffering would be eliminated. But not all suffering is avoidable, even in an ideal world. Some of it is built into the human condition. To being embodied, being mortal; to loving each other, or not loving each other enough.

And it turns out that both the wisdom of the ages and modern psychological research confirm that one of the best ways to cope with suffering is to have the support and companionship of others. Psychologists name this as the “common humanity” factor; the sense that you see your struggles as part of the human experience, not something that isolates you or sets you apart. In the words of 1 Peter, to know that “your brothers and sisters in all the world are undergoing the same kinds of suffering.” And they have found that that awareness is a major source of resilience and comfort, for people going through a hard time. It’s really good to know it’s not just you. It’s really good to know that somebody else went through this and came out the other side. It’s really good to know that somebody understands.

But how do we find those companions, that fellowship of common experience? When we’re going through something hard – trouble at work, a loved one’s illness, family conflict, depression, infertility – we tend to keep it close. Those things are tender, personal, not public. Maybe a close friend or family member is carrying it with us. But it’s hardly a conversation for the office or the bus, the gym or the business lunch.

One of the things church can be is a place to find that fellowship. I learned this from you, friends: when we’ve talked about why church matters to you, why you keep showing up, many of you have mentioned moments in your lives when you were facing something new and hard, and you discovered there were people in your church who knew what that was like – because they’d been through something hard too, the same kind of hard thing or maybe not the same. But it gave them that sympathy, that tender heart that 1 Peter names, to be able to hear you and let you know you’re not alone. I’ve seen it happen, too – I’ve witnessed the holy moments when someone says, for example, Being a single mom is really hard, and people around the table who are five or ten or twenty years farther down that road nod and say, Yeah, it is. And we’re here for you. We’ll listen, we’ll pray, we’ll help.

Church is different from the office or the bus. We don’t always get it right, but our hope is to be place where it’s safe to name your hurts and sorrows and fears. Where you can feel and know that you’re not alone: others in your faith family have walked the road that you’re just starting down. You’re not alone: the griefs and struggles that are new to you are not new to the community of the faithful – as our Scriptures, prayers and stories bear witness. You’re not alone: God’s loving presence is always as near as your next breath, and when you can’t feel that, or believe in it, you can feel the care of the people who become the icons and vessels of God’s presence.

Friends, I’ve even pondered the idea of creating a list, with your help – a sort of “I’ve been there” list that I would keep, of the people in the parish who’ve been through cancer treatments, caregiving for a loved one, advocating for a child with special needs, infertility, addiction, the list could go on and on. So that when I find out that someone is facing one of these situations for the first time, I could help them find a friend in this household of faith – a companion, which means, a person with whom you break bread.

The author of First Peter is on to something. Suffering, whether persecution of the church as a whole or the human hurts and disappointments of its members, will always be part of the picture. It’s intrinsic in having bodies that break, lives that end, hearts and minds that love and grieve and yearn.  Be sober, be watchful. The adversary, the one who corrupts and destroys, prowls around the flock, waiting to catch a sheep alone, sick, weak. Vulnerable.

What do we do about it? We keep watch – together, not alone. We resist evil – together, not alone. We insist that suffering connects us rather that isolating us. We nurture sympathy, tender hearts and humble minds. We practice hospitality towards one another without complaining. We persist in the slow necessary life-giving work of loving each other deeply, from the heart.

Church Seasons & Holy Days, Sermons

Sermon, May 21

smallDunstanClassbookAre you ready for a tour? A tour of the life of St. Dunstan, our patron saint.

It begins at the back of the church, with this stone from Glastonbury Abbey. Glastonbury is a city in the west of England. An abbey is a church that is also a place where monks or nuns live – people who have devoted themselves to religious life and live in a community focused on prayer, study, and shared work.  This stone from the ruins of Glastonbury was a gift to our church by Archbishop Michael Ramsey, the leader of our sister church, the Church of England. He visited Madison and St. Dunstan’s in 1975.

Dunstan was born around the year 909 – more than a thousand years ago! He grew up near Glastonbury and had his first religious training there. At that time the church was in disrepair, because it had been attacked in Viking raids. He dreamed of rebuilding and expanding the church. Later, as an adult, King Edmund made Dunstan Abbot of Glastonbury. In that capacity he raised funds to restore and expand the church and make it more of a center for worship, study, and faithful living. I hope he will watch over us and bless us as we discuss a capital campaign!

God, thank you for Dunstan’s work of building up your church. As we remember your saints, help us to be one too! 

Our next stop is actually in my pocket: two pennies. What do you see?  Do they look the same, or different? … When Dunstan was a child, coins in Britain weren’t all the same.  They might be made of different metals, and be different sizes, and have different images stamped on them. Imagine how hard it would be to buy and sell things, if there were all kinds of different coins around!

Dunstan is remembered for founding many churches and monasteries, but he wasn’t just interested in churches. He believed that healthy churches helped contributed to a healthy, peaceful, fair society. And he spent a lot of his life working with the king – and then the next king, and the next king – to help English society be more healthy, peaceful, and fair.

He pushed for things like a fair justice system, with the same kind of trial for rich and poor, and for the Angles and the Danes, the two groups of people who were living together at that time; a fair system of business that doesn’t allow the wealthy to cheat people; more opportunities for education for ordinary people; for local leaders who weren’t just there to make money for themselves and for whoever put them in power, but who cared about the welfare of their people; and finally, coins that were the same all over the kingdom – because that made it possible for people to buy and sell, fairly and easily, and also because it helped make everyone feel like they were part of the same kingdom, all in this together.

Dunstan lived a long time and served under many kings, some of whom shared his hopes for England, and some who didn’t. But he always did what he could to pursue those hopes for his people.

God, thank you for Dunstan’s work of building up his nation. As we remember your saints, help us to be one too! 

Our next stop is up here at the front of the church.  Dunstan loved music and art and craft, and held them as central parts of the life of the person and community of faith. In Dunstan’s time, all books were handwritten – they didn’t yet have machines to print many copies of a book. Imagine if every book was in somebody else’s handwriting! Some would be easy to read, and some wouldn’t be! Dunstan is especially remembered for bringing to England and establishing a clear, readable and consistent form of handwriting for the books that were being made in England in his time.

At the end of his life, when he retired, he went back to Glastonbury, worked with metal and played his harp. Our church, this church, has always had people who love to make things; I think that’s one of the ways we really are St. Dunstan’s Church!

One of the things Dunstan did as a metalworker was make bells.

He is the patron saint of bell-makers! Would you like to ring this bell? …

God, thank you for Dunstan’s love of beauty, craft, and creativity.  As we remember your saints, help us to be one too! 

Here’s the final stop on our tour: this icon of Dunstan, Archbishop, Monk, and Saint.  What do you see in this picture?… Do you think it’s like the other icons here, or different? …

Artists have made icons of St. Dunstan that look more like these other icons. But a few years ago when I was looking for one, I found this picture instead.

It’s from something called the Glastonbury Classbook, a book from Dunstan’s time – actually sometimes called the Classbook of St. Dunstan. It contained sermons, prayers, and other religious texts, and a few drawings – including this one, which may be a self-portrait by Dunstan. He might have drawn this picture himself – not this one, but the one that this is a photograph of.

Do you see the tiny words over the monk? They say, in Latin, “I ask, merciful Christ, that you protect me, Dunstan; do not permit great storms to swallow me up.”

The Bodleian Library, who holds the Glastonbury Classbook, makes high-quality images of its pages available, so I had this made for us, to be our image of blessed Dunstan. These other pictures put the saint at the center. But in his picture of himself, Dunstan put Jesus at the center.

God, thank you for Dunstan’s life of faithful and loving service to you and your son Jesus Christ. As we remember your saints, help us to be one too!

 

Sermons

Sermon, May 14

Our guest preacher, Hal Edmonson, is a native of Madison and an M.Div. student at Harvard Divinity School. His sermon is entitled, “Seeing and Believing, or, Why Jesus is Like a Moonwalking Bear.”

It was about an hour into the protest when I first saw Jesus. I was standing on the steps of Trinity Episcopal Church in Boston on a January morning. Twenty-thousand or so people crowded into Copley Square, demonstrating against the order banning citizens of six predominantly-Muslim countries, and effectively ending refugee resettlement in this country. The rage was palpable. The signs were witty, maybe, but the knuckles that held them were white hot with fury. And there, held aloft by someone a few feet ahead of me, I never found out who, was Christ. An icon, The Christ of Maryknoll. Jesus is there, on the other side of a barbed-wire fence. His mouth is hidden behind the wires, leaving only his eyes truly visible; His hands rest on the tangle of metal, and though the steel talons have left stigmata of their own, his fingers yet curl their way around them—not a spasm of agony, but an embrace; a sign, almost, of blessing. Providentially, perhaps, in the crowd that left almost no room to breathe, Christ stayed in front of me; when speakers thundered their denunciation, when chants got into some very not-safe-for-church language, and when the crowd tried to make space in the middle of those twenty-thousand for some of the Muslim organizers to pray, there He was, staring at me. Wondering.

He hasn’t stopped. It’s an image I can’t seem to shake. He’s there, floating into my field of vision whenever I’m watching the news, in prayer, in reading, even on my long runs along the Charles River. Which, for me, is really rather strange. I’m in seminary and not art school for a reason: I like words. A lot. I encounter God in the syntax of things, and trust the power of the word to wind its way down in to the dusty corners of the human heart, dwelling there until it is needed most. But I’m not an image guy —I still have nightmares about a particular Art History final in Junior Year of college.

Don’t get me wrong, I find art beautiful. But images don’t stick with me the same way that a line of poetry does. There is always something intolerably ambiguous about images. They lack clarity, for there are always details that I miss. Take this icon, for instance: you can’t see Jesus’ mouth. There’s so much there that could change the whole picture. Or, what do I make of those eyes? Are they convicting? Pitying? Crying out for help? Uttering words of comfort? There is too much uncertainty, defying my desire to pick apart the motivation until I decode it all. That, I think, is why this particular image has been haunting me: I want certainty. And it won’t give it to me.

Our readings for today, and the Gospel in particular, are among the most often quoted in the New Testament—and if we can be real for a moment, also probably among the ones that make we Episcopalians most uncomfortable—because these passages, too, seem to be all about certainty. “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life,” Jesus says. “None come to the Father but by me.” These are the words that launched a thousand missionary ships, used as the proof that salvation is beyond the hands of those who don’t see their place in the universe quite the same way. And what, for good or for ill, has come to define faith for many, many Christians—including, in the past or right now, probably a good number of us in this room: Belief, pure certainty, to the point that—like Stephen—we’d able to suffer and endure death on the strength of our conviction alone.

But the image of Christ in that icon has me wondering what it is that Jesus is really asking the disciples for, here. Remember that there weren’t really “Christians” yet. What we now consider to be truths, the distillation of them that we recite in the Nicene Creed, nobody had bothered to put together. Notice that Jesus doesn’t say what to believe in, as far as intellectual concepts. He’s a lot more cryptic. He says, “Believe in ME.” He doesn’t tell them the way, he says “I am the way.” I. Me. Myself. Jesus isn’t talking about all the theology and creeds that would eventually come to represent those things, or the scriptures that would tell about him. ’I’ doesn’t mean just what I do, or what I say, or what is accomplished on a cross, or in a tomb. It’s an all-of-the-above-and-then-some sort of situation. When Jesus says ‘I’, he means, well, that. He resists a reduction to some essence that is easier to digest. All of it, all of it, together, matters. Being the Incarnate Word of God is to defy simplification. Just as each of us have a core to our being that defies our worst moments, our most thoughtless words, and our greatest accomplishments, Jesus isn’t going to let himself be easily defined. Incarnation is to take on all the complexity, ambiguity, and irreducible beauty of humanity. To take any of that away is to take away the gift of incarnation itself. He is the way, accomplishing by the mere fact of his being a relationship between humanity and God that is inseparable. Following instructions isn’t quite enough. People are complicated, you see, even if you are, quite literally, God.

Which is a bummer, for the disciples, because they really want simple instructions. Thomas is hung up on this whole ‘way’ thing, and a number of commentators on the Greek point out that he’s confused by Jesus’ words—he’s picturing an actual road, going to a physical place, and probably thinking that if he’d had Google Maps, he could have skipped the whole following-Jesus-around-a-desert-thing. Phillip, meanwhile, wants Jesus to show him the Father, like, now, and that would satisfy him.

But instead, Jesus says you already have these things, in me—together in my words, in my works, and in the work of death and resurrection that is yet to come. None of them make sense without the others. They’ve missed the desert for the sand. What Jesus wants from them, in the end, isn’t their obedience, or their intellectual assent (though there are times when Jesus might have taken those too!). It’s their sight. It’s their willingness to see, look at the image right in front of them—the only image that can convey the fullness of Incarnation, to see what God’s mercy has wrought upon the earth, and the vision of the Kingdom that is coming, and is already here. Seeing, at least this time, is believing.

The trouble is, believing isn’t always seeing. There are these psychology test videos, maybe you’ve seen them, where there are two teams of people passing a ball back and forth, and you’re asked to count how many passes are completed. After about thirty seconds, the video freezes, and the narrator asks you how many passes were made, and then shows the correct answer. Then, she asks whether you noticed the moonwalking bear. And then you go back, and watch it slowly, and sure enough, there’s someone in a bear suit grooving their way across the floor. Our brains can only take in so much information, so we prioritize what to look for; we get the information we think we need, and filter out the rest. We’ve “succeeded” in the task before us, maybe, but if we failed to notice a moonwalking bear, what did we really see? It’s kind of the same with trying to believe in Jesus now. The world, same as it ever was, is overflowing with injustice. The demands on us to feed, to shelter, and to console are great. And it’s oh-so-easy to pray for just the things we think we need to do them, or to read the parts of scripture that seem to touch on them perfectly, that assure us we’re right, and doing our part, and so on. We’re much like the disciples, in that respect: we want the most efficient route possible. We want to know that we’ve done all we could, and followed our instructions.

But we miss things. We always do. We miss how easily, for instance, Christ-like compassion can slide into only showing compassion to those who are most Christ- like. We can miss the moments of weakness, and pain, and grief. We can get so caught up in the work of the world that it starts to become an idol in its own right. We can forget that we are called to a Christian life not on account of our own righteousness, but because we, too, are entangled with sin, and dependent upon God’s mercy.

That’s what happened to me, standing in that crowd in Copley Square, seething with anger and grief at the thought of families days away from being able to leave refugee camps only to be thrust back into limbo. I wanted to hold people accountable, to defeat them, to humiliate them with caustic poster-board signs. And there was this face of Christ staring back at me—not egging me on, just watching. Vanquish all your enemies, His eyes said; there will be new ones. Right all the wrongs; they won’t stay that way. Fortify your convictions as much as you want; God has a way of eluding your logic. I am the Way. I am the truth. I am the life.

It’s much easier to hate error than it is to love that truth. (I paraphrase here one of my favorite quotes from Michael Oakshotte, from his essay “Introduction to Leviathan”.)  Error is a lot more comprehensible, at least. But it matters that we keep this vision of our truth, of the whole person of Christ before us. Icons, obviously, are something I’ve gained a little appreciation for over the past couple of months, and I recommend you try praying with one if you never have. There are things to be learned from crucifixes, out of fashion though they are these days, or from paintings, or books that have been written imagining the bodies that Christ might have called His own. Precisely how one does this matters a lot less than that we keep looking, keep one eye on the image whenever we get caught up in words. It’s a discipline, you see. It takes practice. But one, I believe, that keeps us grounded. There will always be more work, more injustice, more pain. And in the moments of inevitable discouragement, when the certainty of prevailing is long gone, maybe what sustains isn’t inspiring words of scripture, or prayer, or self-care, but simply the image of the Word: the human form of Christ— limited, and frail, and broken, and because it is all these things, the reminder that God has already entered, irrevocably and fully, into our lives, is with us still, and that our salvation will not be on our own terms. Precisely the thing that frustrates me about images is their power: they keep teaching, keep drawing you out of yourself, inviting you to notice things that you never did before. Remember, in the work ahead, that in Christ, flesh is word, and word is flesh. Remember that image, even when it is unclear. Keep looking. You never know what you might have missed.

Sermons, Spiritual Practices

Sermon, May 7

Who’s heard of Napoleon? The French general? What if I told you that Napoleon was actually… taller than average? This week I read a thought-provoking cartoon written by artist Matthew Inman, for his site The Oatmeal. Matthew uses goofy images to share some of what cognitive scientists have learned about how people respond to new information. It turns out that the response depends on the information – specifically, whether the information challenges an existing idea that’s important to us, that feels central to our worldview. He offers some examples like the one about Napoleon that are pretty easy to take on board. We just think, “Huh. Okay.”

And then he offers a few examples that he suspects some of his readers will find more challenging or unsettling. Like, Jesus Christ was not born on December 25th. The Pledge of Allegiance was written by a socialist. Neither of those gave me much pause, but your mileage may vary. Or take a piece I read recently that revealed that Margaret Atwood, the author of the famous feminist dystopian novel The Handmaid’s Tale, once spoke up to support a fellow writer who’d been fired from his university job for harassing female students. There’s more friction, more discomfort, in taking in facts like these.

We are not equally open to new ideas. Some are just interesting new information that maybe changes our thinking or outlook a little, but is easy to integrate. Some new ideas stretch us, make us re-examine our assumptions. It might take some inner heavy lifting to take them on board. And some new ideas are so challenging that we shut down entirely. We lock up our minds. We build a wall. It doesn’t matter how persuasive the evidence is – whether that’s evidence in the form of data and facts, or the evidence of someone else’s life experience that casts a new light on our world and our thinking. In fact when something really challenges our deep-seated beliefs, more evidence may actually make us shut down even MORE, in a phenomenon called the backfire effect.

When we encounter a new idea that really shakes up our fundamental understandings, our brains respond the same way we would respond to a physical threat. Which is not by getting more flexible or thoughtful, but by flooding our systems with adrenaline, in preparation to FIGHT off the threat – or run away! In those moments, people get confused. Conflicted. Angry. Kind of like the Pharisees in the 9th and 10th chapters of the gospel of John.

Today’s Gospel is one of the times when we really need to know what came before it. If you start at chapter 10, verse 1, it’s easy to take this as just a theological speech, with no particular context or audience. But in fact the context and the audience are really important – and you know about them, if you were here on March 26. Because we had the 9th chapter of John, that Sunday, and we acted it out, just to make sure you’d remember it! There was a young man who was born blind – his eyes didn’t work. And then Jesus came along, and healed him! And that’s when the trouble began.

The leaders in his church, his synagogue, were confused and upset. This kind of healing is so unusual that it’s clearly a miracle. But does that mean that Jesus is using God’s power? Or is he using the Devil’s power instead, or dark magic? And if he is using God’s power – what does that mean? Because we have heard about this guy Jesus, and a lot of what he teaches is different from the way we understand the faith of our God and our ancestors! And if Jesus DOES have some uniquely close relationship with God, then what does that mean for the monotheism that is the non-negotiable heart of Judaism – there is only, always, ever, ONE God!…

The fact of Jesus’ healing of this young man is new information that is way at the fight or flight end of the spectrum for these Pharisees. Matthew Inman says, There’s no magic trick to get around these moment. All you can do is understand how it works, and when you notice it happening inside yourself, ride out that stress reaction and THEN give the new information a serious look and assess whether and how it should change your thinking. He concludes, “I’m not here to… tell you what to believe. I’m just here to tell you that it’s okay to stop. To listen. To change.” And that is exactly where today’s gospel starts: with Jesus trying to talk the Pharisees down a little bit. To get them to listen. Reflect. Wonder. Change.

We get this Gospel lesson today because at some point the Church named the fourth Sunday of Easter as Good Shepherd Sunday. Every year we have one of the passages where Jesus uses this image of himself as the Shepherd (or in this case, the Gate). And preachers usually preach on the image, the metaphor, and probably I will too, next time around. But once I realized that this is the end of that other story, I got more interested in the context and purpose of the conversation than its content.

This passage, Jesus’ extended metaphor of himself as the Good Shepherd, is the moment in the story of the healing of the blind man when Jesus and the Pharisees finally talk to each other. Before that, there was a lot of talking ABOUT Jesus, who he was and what to do about him. Some of them were saying, This man is not from God, for he performed this act of healing on the Sabbath, when God’s people are commanded to rest. Others were saying, How can a sinner perform such miracles? The Pharisees, this group of local religious leaders and scholars, were divided among themselves – and likely conflicted within themselves. And as the story moves along, their anxiety ratchets up, until they become pretty shrill and angry and panicky. (I have been in that mental space, 100%. Anybody else?) They cast out the Man Born Blind – and Jesus comes back around to affirm that young man in his stubborn faith in the One who gave him sight. And he offers one of his paradoxical pronouncements: “I came into this world to bring sight to those who do not see, and blindness to those who do see.” Some of the Pharisees are hanging around – and they say, “Wait. We’re not blind…?” They’re curious about Jesus, interested enough that they care what he thinks and what he has to say, even though he also upsets and challenges them.

Jesus says, “If you were really blind” – remember, folks, we’re talking about *figuratively* blind – “If you were really blind, nobody could blame you for your failures. But since you think you can see, you are culpable.” And then he starts talking about sheep. And gates. And bandits. And stuff. Reading this passage in light of chapter 9, and noticing the cues about the interaction between Jesus and the Pharisees, has really changed how I imagine the tone of this speech. A lot of sources assume that the “thieves and bandits” are an allusion to the Pharisees themselves, and that Jesus is attacking their leadership here, slamming them. But I think he’s actually trying to reassure them.

Here’s what I think he’s saying: “You have been fierce and valiant defenders of our faith. There have been thieves and bandits, over the centuries, who have tried to change or distort or destroy the faith of our God and our ancestors. There have been false prophets and false messiahs – so many. But I’m not one of them. I am the real thing. And you can know that by the evidence of your own eyes: because you saw how I tended one of my sheep, that young man whose eyes didn’t work, and how he responded to me, following my voice like a sheep who knows its shepherd. Those false prophets did what they did for their own gain, or to sow destruction and death. But God the Gatekeeper sent me here to give life to the sheep – abundant life.”

I think Jesus is trying to win them over, or at least to help them understand. And they don’t react like people who feel attacked. They react like people who are still trying to make sense of a big, hard, challenging new idea. That verse isn’t in today’s lesson but here’s how the scene ends: “Again they were divided because of these words. Many were saying, ‘He has a demon and is out of his mind!’ But others were saying, ‘These are not the words of one who has a demon….’”

Divided. Conflicted. Challenged, but fascinated. Struggling to make sense of an unfamiliar truth. I feel for them. I have absolutely been there. It’s a difficult space, that space between the old and the new ways of thinking. A hard space – but also a holy one. This is why Turning is one of the practices of discipleship that we name and affirm here at St. Dunstan’s: We follow the teaching of Jesus Christ by being open to repentance, transformation, and call. This is why “Seek opportunities to learn, turn, and amend” is on the personal Rule of Life I read to myself every morning. Because one of the most important things that makes the Church not just an especially peculiar and anachronistic social club is our conviction that God isn’t done with us yet. That we don’t have it all figured out on our own. That in the words of one of our hymns, the Lord has yet more light and truth to break forth from his Word. That there is deeper and farther to go into the mysteries of God and of our fellow human beings. Knowing that Turning is part of the life of faith is our way of telling ourselves and each other that it’s okay to stop. To listen. To change. Sometimes a new idea or perspective or truth will confuse us and unsettle us, even make us angry; but bit by bit, if we are faithful to the work, listening and wondering and attending to what God is showing us, will transform us into the image of Christ, in whom there is no falsity, and no fear.

In a moment we’ll perform the sacrament of baptism, one of our holiest rites, one of my greatest privileges. In this sacrament we are baptized into certainty: into belonging to a faithful God, marked as Christ’s own forever; into having a loving family of faith that will always welcome and support, no questions asked. But friends, we are also baptized into uncertainty. Into curiosity. Into growth, into change. Into seeking, wondering, repenting, turning. Baptized into life in God who is not done with us yet.

Matthew Inman’s comic may be read here. Language warning! 

Church Seasons & Holy Days, Sermons

Sermon, April 23

The Rev. Thomas McAlpine preached on Sunday, April 23. The lessons are here. 

Alleluia. Christ is risen. The Lord is risen indeed. Alleluia.

Today’s Gospel sets before us a rich feast; here we’ll only be able to sample a little of it.

The first thing we might notice is that the Evangelist describes a scene that’s heavy with fear. The doors are locked “for fear of the Jews.” Fear permeated all of what we call Holy Week: the Jewish leadership fearful of things getting out of hand, Pilate fearful of how it will look if he lets Jesus go, the disciples fleeing in fear at Jesus’ arrest…

And this lethal stew of fears is one of our obvious connections with the text. Today there is plenty to be afraid of, and plenty more that various voices are trying to make us afraid of. But in contrast to the emcee in Cabaret, the Church’s invitation is not to leave the troubles and fears outside, but to bring them in—and see what Jesus might do with them.

And in the Gospel Jesus appears. Not a ghost or a resuscitated carcass, his body is…unique. He eats, invites his friends to touch him, goes through locked doors, and often isn’t recognized at first glance. N. T. Wright makes the intriguing suggestion that this body isn’t less physical but more. Jesus walks through locked doors with the same naturalness that we walk through the mists.

There are hints in this first encounter of a new creation: he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit…” As in creation God breathed into our nostrils the breath of life, so here Jesus breaths the beginning of a new creation.

New creation: In the world that Scripture portrays there are two Big Bangs. The first at the beginning of creation: “Let there be light.” The second: that Easter morning.

But it doesn’t stop with new creation. Here’s where it’s important to let each Gospel writer tell their own story. Our Church Year follows Luke’s chronology: the Holy Spirit’s given on Pentecost, 50 days after Easter, & at that point the disciples engage in mission. In John’s chronology, it’s Easter that morning and Pentecost that evening. This Jesus wastes no time: “As the Father has sent me, so I send you.”

By the end of that encounter it looks like Jesus has done pretty much all he needs to do, and there’s no reason to think that he’ll show up again. And this creates a problem, because Thomas, one of the Twelve, was absent, and unwilling to accept the others’ testimony: “Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe.”

So there’s a whole week in which the other disciples are all “Alleluia” and Thomas is holding out for some evidence. And no one has reason to think that this difference is going to be resolved anytime soon.

So it looks to me as though there are two sorts of miracles in today’s Gospel: Jesus’ appearances and the Twelve still being together at the end of that week. It would have been so easy for Thomas to have been excluded. In the midst of that lethal stew of fears it would have been even easier. And everyone would have been the poorer: Thomas, not encountering the risen Jesus, the others not learning from Thomas’ striking confession “My Lord and my God!”

So here’s our other obvious connection with the text, for pretty much in every age there are issues that threaten to divide Christians. We all—in Paul’s language—“see through a glass, darkly,” and nevertheless find it quite easy to communicate—usually nonverbally—if you think or feel that you don’t belong here. The fears in our environment make that even easier.

Well—it’s hard to think of an issue more basic than whether Jesus is alive or still in the tomb. Yet there Thomas is with the other disciples at the end of the week.

I wish the Evangelist had spelled out how that happened. But I think the Evangelist has given us some clues. Here are three; you may see others.

·         Just a few days ago Jesus had washed the disciples’ feet and said “So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” My sister’s or brother’s feet matter more than my dignity, my perceptions. So perhaps that had something to do with the disciples’ being together at the end of the week.

·         Later Jesus had said “Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Love is easy and natural when we’re in agreement on the important stuff… So perhaps the disciples actually heard some of what Jesus was saying and so stayed together.

·         And later Jesus had said “You did not choose me but I chose you.” The disciples aren’t together because they chose to be together but because what they have in common is that Jesus chose them. (What if that’s true today? Take a look around the sanctuary. What if we’re together because the fundamental thing we have in common is that Jesus chose us?) So, perhaps they’re still together at the end of the week because it’s sunk in that being together is not a matter of their choice.

Whatever the combination of reasons, a week later they’re together, and Jesus again appears. Jesus gives Thomas what he needs; Thomas’ confession is a gift to that and subsequent generations.

One of the questions these stories of Jesus’ post-resurrection appearances deal with is how Jesus may be encountered by the readers, by us. So Luke’s story of the road to Emmaus presents a sort of mini-Eucharist, with Jesus explaining the Word, and then breaking bread at the Table. Word and Table. So John here suggests that encountering the risen Jesus has something to do with staying together—Thomas and all.

One final thing to notice: that last verse in our reading. It uses the plural, and so the KJV: “that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name.” And the story we’ve just heard may suggest what believing together might mean in the midst of disagreements: washing each other’s feet, loving each other, recognizing that we are together because what we finally have in common is that Jesus has called us.