Category Archives: Sermons

Giving Campaign, Sermons

Homily, Oct. 23

Reading: Joel 2:23-28, selected verses

I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you.

You shall eat in plenty and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, who has dealt wondrously with you. And my people shall never again be put to shame.

You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel,
and that I, the Lord, am your God and there is no other.

Then afterward I will pour out my spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions… 

I want to speak a little about the last point of our parish mission statement: Listen and respond to each other. 

It’s hard to turn that into a Ministry Moment because in many ways it feels like that’s been the core work of the past almost-three years. It’s been part of everything we do. 

Starting from spring 2020, asking, What’s most important to keep doing, to hold ourselves together, somehow? – to today: How do we build and sustain the different spaces of worship and fellowship and formation we need – online and in person, masked and unmasked, kids, youth, adults and elders, separately and together? 

This reading from Joel is the Old Testament reading assigned for this Sunday. It sounds a lot like other prophetic texts – including Jeremiah, whom we’ve been reading most recently.

There’s a sense here of recovery after disaster. I hear echoes of last week’s text from the book of Jeremiah – the promise that God’s conquered and exiled people will return and rebuild, and that God’s ways will be planted in their hearts. 

But close listeners and readers may notice that the disaster behind Joel’s writing isn’t an invading army. It’s a locust swarm. 

What is a locust? 

From the website Safehaven Pest Control, surely a reliable source: “Locusts are grasshoppers that develop gregarious tendencies.” “Gregarious” is a fancy word for “social” or “tending to swarm.”

Basically, locusts are something that grasshoppers turn into under certain environmental conditions. They become huge groups that travel across the landscape, eating all the plants. (Anybody remember that chapter in Little House on the Prairie?) 

Old Testament scholar Robert Alter writes, “Plagues of locusts… were known catastrophic events in the Near East. Vast swarms of the voracious insects would eat everything in their path, leaving the fields bare of produce.” 

Locust swarms are still an issue. There were some terrible ones in East Africa in 2020.

Joel is a short book, three chapters, and beautifully written. We don’t know a lot about its context or date. I think it’s clear that this writer knew the other great prophetic writings, because he’s intentionally evoking texts that predict invasion by enemy armies as an expression of God’s judgment or rebuke. Only for Joel, the army has six legs. 

Joel chapter one, verse six: “A nation has come up against my land, vast and countless; its teeth are the teeth of a lion.” 

Alter says, “In biblical poetry, warriors are often compared to ravening lions. Here, the gnawing insects are tiny… but the effect of their vast voracious numbers is as devastating as the rending fangs of a lion.” 

A few verses later Joel describes the impact of the swarm: “The field is ravaged, the soil mourns… the farmers are shamed, the wine-makers wail, over wheat and over barley, for the field’s harvest is gone, the vine withers, the fig tree droops. Pomegranate, palm, and apple—all the trees of the field are dried up; surely, joy withers away among the people.” 

Joel explores the ripple effects too: the livestock starve along with the humans; the Temple is empty, for there is no food to make offerings.

Joel may hit closer to home for us than Jeremiah or Isaiah’s predictions of invasion and conquest. The enemy here isn’t Babylonians or Assyrians. It’s bugs. Just a thing that happens sometimes. Like a viral pandemic… and its many ripple effects, including inflation and stock market woes. 

Joel doesn’t minimize the costs. But he also casts a hopeful vision for a future beyond this catastrophe, as he speaks for God: “I will repay you for the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the hopper, the destroyer, and the cutter, my great army, which I sent against you.”

There will once again be enough. The people will know that God is among them, claiming them, caring for them. 

But we are talking about renewal, not just restoration. God’s Spirit will be poured out upon young and old alike, irrespective of gender.

And that divine Spirit will open people’s eyes and hearts and minds to new ideas and possibilities:  Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your elders shall dream dreams and your young ones see visions. 

If that sounds familiar it’s because Peter quotes it in the Pentecost story, which we read every year, to describe the work of the Holy Spirit. 

Okay, enough Bible; bring it back, Miranda. 

This year we’re returning to the discipleship practices we named together back in 2016, to dwell with them a little month by month. Our current practice is Abiding. A fine Bible-y word that means: staying put with intention. 

Abiding means patiently nurturing a community of trust, solidarity, fidelity, and love. 

Abiding means cultivating and sustaining friendships across differences of age, circumstance, and conviction, while respecting and learning from our differences. 

Abiding means taking care of each other, in formal and informal ways, and in good times and bad. 

It means sharing our struggles and sorrows as well as our joys, and allowing our companions in faith to care and pray for us. 

Abiding means listening and responding to each other… and to God at work among us. 

When we wrote all this down in 2016, we had no idea what a challenge to our mutual abiding awaited us in 2020. And 2021. And 2022.

But here we are. A different “we” in many ways. We have lost people; we have gained people. We’ve all changed. 

But there’s so much that I’m hopeful or excited about, for St Dunstan’s in 2023 and beyond. And a lot of it is about abiding. 

There’s our Aging Together group that’s meeting on Zoom… and a brand-new group sharing ideas for raising faithful kids. 

There are plans afoot to explore the power of lament, and to dive into the challenge of our feelings of grief and helplessness about climate change. 

We’re working on plans for continued learning and restorative actions with respect to our Native neighbors. 

We’re continuing and building our programs for kids and youth – including calling our next Confirmation cohort! So exciting. 

2023 WILL be the year that we undertake some long-delayed wondering together about how to use funds set aside from our 2018 capital campaign to do something for our neighbors in need. 

And we have some interesting and important work to do, exploring how to be a church with both online and in-person members.  

That may feel normal at this point, but there is a lot still to figure out. to do it well for the longer term. But what a holy project – I know God will bless it. 

All that said: Do I wish we weren’t presenting another deficit budget? Sure. There are big forces at work creating financial crunches for lots of churches; we are not alone in this. And we are OK in the short term. But your parish leaders are not just assuming things will keep working out. 

I am – we are – committed to spending some real time and energy in 2023 and beyond exploring pathways to greater long-term financial stability for St. Dunstan’s. That will likely include both ongoing conversation about this congregation’s capacity and willingness to give, and exploration of possibilities outside this congregation… which we can’t yet begin to imagine. 

Your Rector and your parish leaders are mindful about these budget deficits. And: I feel like we’ve been discerning clearly where God is calling us. 

I don’t think we’re being reckless, in investing in the things we’ve been investing in, as a parish. 

I think we’re being faithful. And I can see the fruit of that faithfulness everywhere I look. 

So I am trusting in the restoration and renewal that I see happening. 

I believe that God’s spirit IS being poured out upon us, beloved friends. And that we know that because we see our young ones prophesying, speaking God’s words with holy joy, and our youth casting visions, and our elders dreaming dreams. 

Let’s keep dreaming – and planning. Listening and responding. Abiding, in faith, and in hope, and in love. Amen. 

Sermons, Spiritual Practices

Sermon, Sept. 11

When I was a child, sometimes at bedtime my mother would try to sing me an old song  based on the lost sheep story, called The Ninety and Nine…

  1. There were ninety and nine that safely lay
    In the shelter of the fold;
    But one was out on the hills away,
    Far off from the gates of gold.
    Away on the mountains wild and bare;
    Away from the tender Shepherd’s care….
  2. Out in the desert He heard its cry;
    ’Twas sick and helpless and ready to die.

I hated this song. When she started to sing it, I would protest and make her stop. The plight of the lost sheep was simply too sad. Sick and helpless and ready to die? You want me to sleep, right? 

The parables in today’s Gospel, and the parable that follows them, the story of the Prodigal Son, are some of the best-known and best-loved of Jesus’ stories. They offer up clearly and beautifully what might just be core of the Gospel:God’s yearning, insistent, inexhaustible love and longing for the one (the many) who have strayed, gone missing, broken away, left the sweetness and safety of God’s pastures.

We wander. Or maybe, like the Prodigal Son, we march off defiantly. Or maybe, like the coin, we just get left behind. And God seeks, driven by a heart more loving than we can comprehend.

The heart of the seeker. Our first text today, from the prophet Jeremiah, seems at odds with the Gospel. God’s message here seems to be: You have turned from me and wandered away; well, too bad. Destruction is coming. Have fun with that. 

As is so often the case, though, the selected text isn’t giving us the full picture. It skips verse 19, in which Jeremiah gives voice to God’s agony, anticipating the suffering of God’s people: 

“My anguish, my anguish! I writhe in pain! Oh, the walls of my heart!
My heart is beating wildly; I cannot keep silent;
for I hear the sound of the trumpet,
the alarm of war.”

In chapter 3, just a few verses earlier, God speaks through Jeremiah to plead with God’s people:  “Return, faithless Israel, says the Lord.
I will not look on you in anger,
for I am merciful, I will not be angry for ever. …

I thought I would set you among my children,
and give you a pleasant land…

And I thought you would call me, My Father,
and would not turn from following me.
Instead, you have been faithless to me, O house of Israel. 

Return, O faithless children, and I will heal your faithlessness!”  

God is desperate to restore relationship, to save God’s children from the consequences of their own foolishness. The heart of the seeker: God’s anger, yes, but also God’s anguish, and God’s persistent, relentless, unshakeable love. 

Last week we read together Psalm 139, a powerful poem about being sought by God: 

“Lord, you have searched me out and known me; *

you know my sitting down and my rising up;

you discern my thoughts from afar…

Where can I go then from your Spirit? *

where can I flee from your presence?

If I climb up to heaven, you are there; *

if I make the grave my bed, you are there also.

If I take the wings of the morning *

and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,

Even there your hand will lead me *

and your right hand hold me fast.”

 

Sought, known, held, wherever we may go… 

The lost sheep, the lost coin, the lost child. There have been debates over these parables, over whether the Seeker’s actions make sense. Are the 99 sheep left somewhere safe, while the shepherd goes off seeking the one? Does the woman burn more fuel seeking the lost coin than the coin is even worth?

I don’t think it actually matters, within the world of the parable. Jesus isn’t talking about cost-benefit analysis. He’s talking about the heart of God. That knows our weakness, our smallness, our vulnerability. That follows, wherever we wander; that reaches out, as often as we turn away; that searches every dark corner – never, ever, ever giving up on us. 

Our strongest human relationships give us some small glimpse of the depth and persistence of that kind of love. The love of God, the heart of the Seeker. 

But what of the heart of the sought? The heart of the one who wanders? The lost one? 

I notice, this year, that there’s kind of a continuum of agency in these parables. At one end there’s the Prodigal Son. He means to leave. He’s confident he can do better on his own. 

I appreciate the emotional honesty of Psalm 139.  Even in describing God’s relentless love, the poet seems to be pushing back a bit: Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? Could you just give me some space? …. 

That great divine gift of free will, of intellect and choice, makes us prone to wander, prone to leave the God we love, as one of our hymns puts it. 

In the middle of that continuum is the lost sheep. The sheep didn’t make a deliberate choice to leave the care of the shepherd, the safety of the flock. It just… went that way instead of this way, or got a little wrapped up in a luscious patch of grass and didn’t notice when everyone else moved on. 

I wonder how the lost sheep feels, during the long hours before the shepherd shows up. Is it in denial, that sheep? I don’t need any help, everything’s under control. This is fine. Is it overwhelmed, but still trying to solve its own problems? I’m sure if I just work a little harder, I can get loose from this bramble bush and run away from that wolf!… Is it still trying to figure out how it got here? I just took a few steps away from the path… how did this happen? Just a few little steps, but suddenly I am not where I meant to be at all.  And it’s getting dark…

The prodigal child walks away; the sheep wanders. And then at the other end of the continuum, there’s the coin. The coin didn’t make a choice to leave. It didn’t stray from the flock.  When a coin gets lost, it’s not the coin’s fault. It’s separated from its fellows, and away from its rightful place, because of circumstances and other people’s actions. 

There are lots of ways people get neglected or disconnected, pushed to the edges or left behind. A few years ago, Lutheran pastor and writer Emmy Kegler wrote a memoir called One Coin Found. Spoiler: She’s the coin. 

She writes about her journey as an LGBTQ+ Christian who grew up loving God and loving the Bible – while also being told that she could not be what she knew herself to be, and be right with God. When the church of her childhood lost Emmy, God found her.  

She writes:  “We too are lost and dusty coins. We have gone unnoticed, rusted from others’ indifference, misspent and misused – and our friends and leaders did not see our neglect. But God, in big and little ways, has picked up a woman’s broom and swept every corner of creation. God, in big and little ways, has tucked up her skirts and flattened herself on the floor, dug through dust bunnies and checked every dress pocket. God has found us, dustier and rustier and without any luster, and held us up to the light to say: No matter how you rolled away or what corner you were dropped in, you are mine.”

Emmy is just one of many who have preached and prayed, worked and struggled, dreamed and built their way towards churches that affirm the wholeness and dignity of folks like her. I know so many LGBTQ+ Christians raised in churches that would not name their hearts and bodies, loves and lives as holy. And who have clung fiercely and bravely to the conviction that God loves them and that they belong among God’s people.

I feel humbled by their – by your – courage and love and persistence. It seems to me that the very least a church can do in response is celebrate those coins that were left behind or tossed aside – but refused to stay lost. That’s why we made the effort to have a table at PrideFest again this year – as a witness and a celebration. That’s why we’re learning to share our pronouns, and pay attention to others’ pronouns – an extension of care and respect as fundamental as getting someone’s name right. 

LGBTQ+ Christians – and those who might like to be Christian if they knew they were safe – aren’t the only ones who can get pushed to the edges or lost in the shadows, in church life and culture. Mental illness or addiction, poverty, loneliness or relationship struggles can all make it feel like it’s not safe or welcome to bring your whole self to church. To speak your heart’s deepest prayers out loud. 

Turning back to the parables for a moment: I want to note that “sinner” is a vocabulary Jesus is borrowing from those who are challenging him, here. There’s nothing wrong with the sheep or the coin; they’re just – lost. Apart, alone, at risk. Jesus does care a lot about people changing their hearts and turning back towards God. But Jesus also cares a lot about people who are lost, getting found. The word the church translates as “salvation” or “saved” can also be translated as rescued, delivered, healed, restored. 

These are parables, stories, about God. But we’re called to love with God’s love, to the best of our ability. So they’re also parables about us, as God’s people, as God’s church. And our vocation to seek, and to welcome. 

This year we’ll be revisiting the practices of discipleship we named together back in 2016 – through a series of conversations to help us figure out how we feel called to follow Jesus, as the people of St. Dunstan’s Church. And the first practice on the list is Welcoming. 

In the document that summarizes our work, we say: “We follow the example of Jesus Christ through an ongoing, intentional practice of welcome, of strangers, guests, and one another, in the fulness of our stories, struggles, differences and gifts.”

That ongoing practice of welcome goes a long way beyond the first “Hello, glad to meet you!” There is deeper welcome to do – deeper listening, receiving, affirming, connecting – even in decades-old friendships. And welcome is not superficial or trivial. It is real work, sometimes hard work. And always holy work. 

One more thing I noticed about these familiar stories, this year: The incompleteness of the 99 and the 9. The Bible mostly uses a decimal number system, based on tens, as we do. In such a system, there’s a not-quiteness to nines.

Do the nine coins, or the ninety-nine sheep, know that they’re missing someone? Maybe they do, maybe they don’t. But they are. Someone isn’t there. And some fullness, some all-ness is lacking. Those nines ache for their missing ones. 

As God’s people, as God’s church, we seek, we welcome, we celebrate, with humility and hope. Sometimes we have apologies and amends to make, for harm done by our or other churches – and we strive to do that too.  Sometimes we have learning and growing to do, to be a flock that can be truly safe and welcoming – and we strive to do that too.  Because each coin found, each sheep restored to the flock brings us to a new completeness.

I didn’t sing the lost sheep song to my kids. But those hard, sad words, the lost sheep’s desperate condition – that’s the middle of the story, not the end. What comes next is the really important part. When the lost gets found.

Gentle hands untangle wool from the thorns, lift the sheep,  wash its wounds, hold it close. Carry it home in joy. 

This is how the song ends, if I would ever have let my mother get this far: 

And all through the mountains, thunder-riv’n,
And up from the rocky steep,
There arose a glad cry to the gate of heav’n,
“Rejoice! I have found My sheep!”
And the angels echoed around the throne,
“Rejoice, for the Lord brings back His own!”

Amen. 

Sermons

Sermon, August 14

Earlier this summer, your rector – that’s me – and your vestry, the elected leadership body of this church, sent out a survey about your Covid and church experiences, and what you need and hope for, going forward. 

About fifty of us filled it out. I think we probably captured an approximation of what the congregation is thinking and feeling. 

I’ve been looking at the results, with help from a couple of vestry members, and I think it’s useful to share some of what we see, since these findings are helping shape our thinking and planning .

The first thing to know is that the past two and a half years have been hard on just about everybody – but in different ways. 

It actually reminds me a little of today’s Hebrews lesson about the heroes of the faith before the time of Jesus – “They were stoned to death, they were sawn in two, they were killed by the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, persecuted, tormented… They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground.”

I don’t think any of us have been killed by the sword, or forced to live in caves in the ground.  But it’s been a lot… And importantly, it’s been a lot in many different ways. 

Some of us are doing fine. Many of us are more or less OK. Many are struggling or suffering, even if they say they’re OK.  

People taking the survey spoke about Covid risk, medical vulnerability, and fear. They spoke about loneliness, isolation and mental health. They spoke about lost relationships, opportunities, and social skills. About the hurt of feeling that their church community vanished in March of 2020. About the overwhelm of the world and its problems. 

On the other hand, there is a widespread sense that St. Dunstan’s matters, as a church and as a community, and that people’s connections with the church and with one another through the church are part of how people are holding things together and moving forward. 

People really value having both in-person and Zoom options; that allows them to maintain and deepen connections, even when their needs and circumstances are different. And folks really value the new relationships they’ve formed, and new members who have joined, in our season of pandemic worship. 

While we like having multiple ways to participate, there’s also a desire to cultivate connections across our worshipping communities. Some people miss friends who are worshipping in a different way… or just wonder what the other group is up to. Some simply want to feel more integrated as a church. It’s similar to the pre-pandemic dynamics of having 8 o’clock and 10 o’clock congregations – only somewhat more so. 

This fall and winter we’ll experiment with some opportunities that could bring together folks from both our Zoom and in-person congregations.Your ideas are welcome! 

Another finding of the survey is that we continue to have a variety of feelings about the appropriate response to ongoing Covid risks. 

For example: Eleven people said they were uncomfortable returning to in-person church because of concerns about catching Covid, and four people said they don’t want to attend in-person church because they dislike having to wear masks. I don’t want to weigh those numbers against each other. I just want us to hear that we are not of one mind. And while I think the intensity of feeling about all this has eased a little with the passage of time, it still feels loaded. Even within groups who know and trust one another, it can be hard for people at different points of the continuum to voice their feelings and needs. It’s easy to feel judged. 

What I hope you hear is that your parish leadership continue to wrestle prayerfully with all this, and hold balance and maintain options as best we can. I’m sure there will be times in the months ahead when we have to make decisions that don’t sit well with everyone. And believe me when I say that the ongoing uncertainty is such that I genuinely have no idea what those decisions may be. I just ask you to continue to pray for us, and bear with us. 

The survey gave us encouraging news on that front. We learned that about 94% of the fifty respondents feel that they can trust parish leadership. About 90% feel that they understand the decisions we’ve been making. About 88% feel that their needs and feelings have been heard and considered – even if the decisions haven’t always been what they would have preferred. 

Those numbers mean a lot to your parish leaders. We have been trying really hard to listen well, communicate well, and be worthy of your trust. It’s good to know that those efforts have been seen. That said, if you’re one of those who feels less heard, and you would welcome further conversation, please reach out. You can always email . 

At the end of the survey we asked a more open-ended question about the impact of Covid, and Covid response, on people’s lives. One person commented: “Some say COVID is the greatest collective trauma we’ve experienced in a generation.” Another observed, “Covid and the politicized responses to Covid have been part of an emerging liminal situation for which we don’t yet have a useful description.” “Liminal” is a word from my former field of cultural anthropology – it means a time of transition and emergence, when the way things were before don’t apply anymore, but the new reality hasn’t yet taken shape or settled in. 

Those people are aptly interpreting the present time, to borrow Jesus’ words from our Gospel. Recall that Jesus’ original audience were living under military occupation by the Roman Empire, and an economic system that dragged the poor ever deeper into poverty. There were simmering extremist movements, and occasional revolts, brutally crushed. 

Like the first Christians, we too live in profoundly uncertain times. There are big pressures at work on and within our societies, governments, and economies. It feels particularly difficult right now to imagine or predict what things will be like in five years or ten or twenty. 

Jesus is upset, here. He says so, in so many words. He’s speaking from urgency, maybe from fear, from whatever you call the feeling that you’re trying to tell your best friends something really important and they have no idea what you’re talking about. 

When he says, I come to bring not peace, but division! – when he describes family conflict, father against son, mother against daughter – he’s not saying this is something he WANTS. This is Jesus naming a difficult reality, like the prophets of old. This is description and prediction: The world is coming into a time of crisis, and lots of things are going to break, including families. Those who choose to follow him, in the chaotic years ahead, will face conflict and loss, even among their dearest ones. 

I’ve spoken to so many people over the past few years who are struggling with or grieving broken family relationships – close-to-home manifestations of the deep fault lines in our nation. Within church community, the bonds of mutual care that hold us together across differing worldviews have been frayed by the experience of the pandemic, too. I think we’re doing better than many places, and I want to believe that we’re through the worst of the strain. But when I pause to think about it, I grieve the divisions that Covid has created or deepened. The things we are asking about on that survey are things we didn’t have to think about, three years ago. And now we do.

But we’re not alone. There’s comfort in that. We are known, and loved, and held, by a grace beyond our comprehension. And we have many, many sibling churches navigating the same terrain.

This week I read a piece by the rector of the Church of the Redeemer in Cincinnati, Ohio, the Rev. Philip DeVaul. It really echoes the mingled sorrow and hope, yearning and hesitation, that came through in our survey responses. It’s so clear and so pertinent that I’m just going to read you most of it, changing a few words so that it speaks to us here at St. Dunstan’s. 

DeVaul writes, “It’s a tale of two churches…

Read the rest of this excellent essay here! 

Sermons, Youth

Sermon, August 7

Today’s Isaiah passage comes to us from around 740 BCE. David’s once unified kingdom has split in two. Isaiah is a prophet in and for Judah, the southern kingdom, with its capital at Jerusalem. Within fifteen years, the Northern Kingdom – known as Israel or Samaria – will be conquered by the Assyrian Empire, its people killed or exiled. 

The word of God that Isaiah is given to speak is a word of warning about military threat from without, and corruption and injustice within. In this passage, Isaiah refers to Judah as Sodom and Gomorrah. That story, of two cities destroyed by God as a judgment on their behavior, was already ancient in Isaiah’s time. It has nothing to do with homosexuality, though some of you may have heard that in the past. Instead it’s a story about a city who had so lost its bearings that it responded to guests with violence rather than hospitality. Isaiah is saying that Judah has similarly lost its bearings – and is risking God’s judgment. 

In some other prophetic texts we’ve heard God’s people called back to the right worship of their God. In this passage, it seems like worship is the thing that’s going well. They’re bringing offerings to the Temple, they’re keeping the appointed holy days, they’re saying their prayers. 

But, say God and Isaiah, their hands are full of blood. Their piety only exhausts God, when there is so much pain and injustice among them. 

The implication is that unless things change – unless God’s people cease to do evil and learn to do good – then God will punish God’s people for their failure to follow God’s ways of mercy and righteousness. That punishment will take the form of military conquest and exile, as it will – very soon – for their northern neighbors. 

The idea that the calamities that befall God’s people are God’s punishment is widespread in the prophetic books of the Bible. But theologically, we don’t really need the concept of a punishing God to understand what happens to Judah – or to us. You just need to look squarely at systemic evils and how they work. The way they can rot a whole society, weakening the foundations even as they cause untold suffering among those affected.  

You can read Isaiah’s message here as threat – or as simple prediction. If you don’t correct the rot… the structure will grow weaker and weaker. Eventual collapse is inevitable, one way or another. 

Last weekend our high school youth got to take a hard look at some of the deep problems of our society. Eleven kids and five adults traveled to Racine for our four-day mission trip. On Thursday and Friday, we learned about, and helped out at, the Racine Hospitality Center, which serves hot meals and offers other services to those in need in downtown Racine. We prepped and served lunch, sorted clothing donations, did outdoor cleanup, and other tasks. 

It felt good to do what we did. We could see the impact of our efforts. And at the same time: the kids asked questions with no easy answers. 

The people we fed will be hungry again tomorrow. The mountains of donated clothes made us reflect on our habits of overconsumption and the destructiveness of fast fashion. The plazas and parks we tidied probably have this weekend’s beer cans on them right now. And we couldn’t help noticing that while most of us were white, most of the Hospitality Center guests were people of color.

On Saturday we drove up to Milwaukee and worked with staff from Lutheran Social Services to clean and paint an apartment, which will become the home for a refugee family, from Afghanistan or elsewhere. It was hard work, but it felt really good to scrub away the grease and grime from the kitchen, and to wash and paint the walls. And again, we found ourselves having questions with no easy answers. 

Looking at the broken bathroom, the tiny kitchen with rotting cabinets, we wanted better for the people who will live here. But the housing crisis means that agencies resettling refugees have to work with any landlord who will work with them. Refugees have no credit history; they may not have jobs. Lots of landlords aren’t interested in them as tenants. The ones who are willing… may not always have the nicest properties to offer. And yet, it’s what’s available. 

The Hospitality Center and Lutheran Social Services are doing the best they can under a lot of constraints. They simply don’t have the resources to lift people out of poverty and addiction, shift the entrenched dynamics of racism, or place each refugee family in a comfortable and stable home. They would if they could. We could hear those leaders’ frustration at how little they can do. But real change, deep change, is far beyond their scope – without a whole lot of support and action from the rest of us. 

The prophet’s call urges us to face the reality of what’s happening in our cities, our country – hold it up against God’s intentions – and acknowledge how far off we are, together.  Then begin the work of repair – somewhere, somehow. 

Isaiah is speaking at a societal level. But the same applies to our own lives and souls. Sometimes, in order to get unstuck or move towards greater wholeness, we need to face the bad news about ourselves. What writer Francis Spufford names as the Human Propensity to Eff Things Up.  We are all works in progress – we have places we need to grow and change, things we need to turn away from and towards. 

That’s truly hard work, and takes active discernment. We get a lot of messages from our culture, from people around us, from advertising, and so on, that wants to tell us what’s wrong with us. Maybe it’s your body. Or how your brain works. Or your gender or affections. We should not assume that any of that speaks with God’s voice. 

I believe we each have  an inner compass – that we have the capacity to know, deep down, where our lives need mending. But that knowledge can be clouded by circumstances, by other voices, by shame, by fear. If you feel like you need help discerning and naming, there are such resources; let’s talk. 

There is something deeply holy about seeking out and receiving the bad news about ourselves – as individuals or as a society. In fact it’s foundational. It’s the first step of metanoia, the ongoing transformation of heart and soul, mind and life that is at the heart of the Christian way. 

But if actively seeking out what’s wrong or broken, corrupt or amiss, doesn’t sound like much fun to you – that’s fair. Maybe it’s not the right time for you.  Maybe what God wants for you right now is gentleness and rest. Maybe you’re already doing this work – on the inside or the outside. 

But even when the time is right, it is tough to look at heavy truths about ourselves and our communities and country. 

Which brings me back to the Gospel. Or at least the first part of it.

Do not be afraid, little flock, for your Father delights to give you the kingdom. 

There’s so much kindness embedded in those words! Jesus is speaking to his disciples, who are worried about how much they may have to give up to follow him, and the opposition and violence they will face.  Earlier in the same passage, he tells them, “Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Why, even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not; you are of more value than many sparrows.”

Anyone remember the old gospel hymn – “I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free; His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me?” 

Jesus is telling his friends and followers that they are known, and loved. That no matter what they face, they’ll never be alone. That they don’t have to trust in the things that make us feel secure – money, possessions, social status – because they are held by something stronger and safer than any earthly security. 

Fear not. Take courage. Don’t be afraid. That message shows up again and again in the Bible. It’s one of the most consistent messages of God and God’s messengers to humanity. 

I wonder what it would be like, not to be afraid.

To be able to face the places in our own lives where our Human Propensity to Eff things Up is doing its thing – the places where we are called to, and yearn for, renewal and amendment of life. 

Recently I helped someone close to me with an interaction with someone who owed an apology and didn’t want to give one. We felt frustration but also some compassion – because it seemed that for this person, the idea of acknowledging that they had crossed a line and acted inappropriately felt vulnerable and frightening. 

When we feel the call to change – from within or without – we may fear loss, uncertainty, the hard work of change itself. What would it be like to come to all that unafraid? 

What would it be like not to be afraid when we face the rotten foundations of our society, our common life? To face our own embeddedness in systems that elevate some and oppress others? The work of unlearning and relearning history, language, assumptions about other people? What would it be like to feel so secure in our belonging and belovedness that we could approach that work gladly, with curiosity and hope? To tackle it as if it were as simple as Isaiah makes it sound: Seek justice! Cease doing evil! Learn to do good! 

I wonder. 

Jesus tells his followers that fear shouldn’t hold us back from going where God sends us. Literally or figuratively; whether the journey, the work, is out there or in here. We are known and loved and held.

Don’t be afraid, little flock.

May it be so. 

Intergenerational Church, Sermons, Spiritual Practices

Homily, July 24

A homily about prayer for All-Ages Worship, based on Luke 11:1-13. 

What does it mean to pray? 

At church it might feel like praying is when we read certain things out of our booklets. But that’s only one kind of prayer.

Or maybe it’s when we place our flowers and stones in the prayer gardens. But that’s also only one kind of prayer. 

Prayer means so many things! 

Anne Lamott says anything you say from your heart to God – out loud or inside yourself! – is a prayer.

But prayer isn’t just talking.  Listening is an important part of prayer, too. 

Prayer can look like coloring or knitting or walking… It can look like laughing, or crying. It can look like sitting very still. It can look like dancing.

In the Gospel today Jesus’ friends ask him how to pray. They want to know if there’s a right way to do it. And Jesus gives them an example: “Here’s a way to pray!” 

I think he was just trying to show them that prayer can be very simple.  Not that this is the ONE RIGHT PRAYER. But his friends wrote it down, and passed it on, and over time people started calling it the Lord’s Prayer, and using it in worship, and in their daily prayers too.

The Lord’s Prayer is an example of what’s good and what’s bad about worshiping the way our kind of church worships: with set prayers that we read off a page, or memorize. The bad is that it can get boring. Too familiar.  Sometimes we’re not really praying it at all; our mouths are just saying the words. The good is that it’s always there for us. It’s an anchor. When it’s hard to find our own words, we can use these ones. 

At our church we say the Lord’s Prayer using lots of versions! Everyone can pick which one they want to use. But we still know we’re all praying the same prayer together. I know for some people it feels like a lot for their ears – maybe too much! For other people it lets them pray from their heart, whether their words match everyone else’s or not. 

We started doing this because we were using the “contemporary version” of the Lord’s Prayer from our Prayer Book – the one that starts, “Our Father in heaven…”

But some people liked the older version better – the one that starts “Our Father who art in heaven…” So they were praying that version instead. 

When I noticed this, I remembered that at General Convention, when all the Episcopalians from the United States and the Caribbean and parts of Europe and Latin America and the indigenous churches all get together, people are invited to pray in the language of their heart. It’s amazing to be in a room with two thousand people all praying this same prayer, the prayer Jesus gave to his friends, but in so many different ways! 

So we started doing it that way too. 

Today there’s a new version in your Sunday Supplement, one I learned from a member of our parish. It’s based on the Message version of the Bible. It has some beautiful and surprising language and you might like to try it out, when we pray the Lord’s Prayer later on! 

So what’s in this prayer, the simple prayer Jesus gave his friends? Let’s take a quick look – and as we go, I’ll show you the signs from ASL, American Sign Language, that some of us like to use. 

First, we pray as God’s beloved children, calling God Father or Mother. If those are difficult words for you, you could use another name for God that brings you close in love. 

Then we say, May your Name be held holy! We pray for God’s goodness and glory to be seen and known. The sign for Holy is like wiping something clean so it can shine. 

Then we pray, Let your kingdom come! The Message version says, Set the world right! The sign for Come is just like calling someone with your hands. 

Then we pray, Give us the food we need for the day. We’re not praying for a Mercedes Benz here, or a Playstation 5. We’re praying for our most basic needs. Just enough. The ASL sign we use here is Feed or Eat. 

Then we pray for forgiveness of our sins. That the things we’ve done that we shouldn’t have done, or the things we didn’t do and should have done, will be wiped away, in God’s kindness – and that we’ll do better next time. And we pray for help forgiving other people, too.  The sign we use there is like sending someone on their way. You’re free! Go in peace! 

Then – in Luke’s version of this prayer, which is very short! – we pray that we won’t face tough situations and hard times. We use three different ASL signs here! We ask for God to strengthen us … And to spare us… look, two fists together, but then one escapes! And we ask God to save us, to set us free from the grip of evil. For the ASL sign, pretend your wrists are tied together – but then someone cuts the rope!

Then we hold up all our prayers to the God who rules the Universe in love… Amen. 

But then what happens? What happens AFTER we pray?

Praying isn’t like ordering in a restaurant, where you ask for mac and cheese, and in ten minutes, they bring you mac and cheese. 

But Jesus tells us to keep knocking, keep asking, keep seeking. And he says that God knows how to give us what we need. 

I bet some of us can think of times when we prayed for or about something, and it did happen, and we were glad and grateful.

I bet there are a lot more times when we didn’t even notice when our prayers were answered – because it’s easy not to notice when you stop being sad or anxious about something. 

We can also think of times when what we were praying for, didn’t happen the way we hoped it would.  When we prayed for an egg and feel like we got a scorpion. 

That could be another whole sermon. Let me just say that I don’t think everything that happens is God’s will. The world is not the way it is meant to be. 

Sometimes, though, the response to our prayers just doesn’t look like what we expected.

At Drama Camp this week, we worked with the story of Tobit, from the Apocrypha in the Bible. Among other things, Tobit is a story about prayer. Early in the story, Tobit, who has suffered many tragedies, prays for God to end his misery. At the same moment, a young woman named Sarah is praying to be freed from her own shame and suffering. And God decides to take care of both situations at once. 

The way the story unfolds from there involves a journey, a dog, a demon, an angel in disguise, and fish guts. I can’t possibly summarize it. Look it up, or ask a kid! But there is, eventually, a happy ending for both Tobit and Sarah. 

Sometimes the resolution of our struggles or yearnings takes the long way round. I’ve lived that. Maybe you have too. 

Now it’s almost time for us to pray together, friends!…

Current Events, Sermons

Homily, July 3

Susan B. Anthony, Declaration of Rights of the Women, July 4, 1876: “It was the boast of the founders of the republic, that the rights for which they contended were the rights of human nature. If these rights are ignored in the case of one-half the people, the nation is surely preparing for its downfall. Governments try themselves. The recognition of a governing and a governed class is incompatible with the first principles of freedom… Now, at the close of a hundred years, as the hour-hand of the great clock that marks the centuries points to 1876, we declare our faith in the principles of self-government; our full equality with man in natural rights; that woman was made first for her own happiness, with the absolute right to herself – to all the opportunities and advantages life affords for her complete development; and we deny that dogma of the centuries, incorporated in the codes of all nations – that woman was made for man – her best interests, in all cases, to be sacrificed to his will. We ask of our rulers, at this hour, no special favors, no special privileges, no special legislation. We ask justice, we ask equality, we ask that all the civil and political rights that belong to citizens of the United States, be guaranteed to us and our daughters forever.”

 

We have this custom of sharing readings from American history on the weekend of the Fourth of July.  It’s a way to mark the holiday without too simply endorsing it. I hesitated about doing it, this year, but when I looked at the readings, and sat with my own feelings a little, I decided we needed these voices. 

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a difficult couple of weeks for my patriotism. I’ve been forced to face the fact that, as educated and thoughtful and aware as I think I am, there’s a part of me that has always believed in the ideal of American progress. That has always assumed that as a nation, we’d keep marching in the direction of more rights, more freedoms, more human dignity for all. 

And that was a hopeful belief for me, because it was congruent with my values as a Christian – my belief in a God who does not have favorite kinds of people, a God who is about freedom from bondage, and about calling people from the margins to the center, and about human wholeness.

That hopeful belief is what was really shaken by the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe vs Wade – and by the direction that decision seems to point. 

The Roe decision is painful and frightening on its own terms. As far as anyone can tell, abortion is now illegal in Wisconsin, with basically no exceptions, due to an 1849 law still on the books. Over half the states in our nation will soon have banned abortion. 

I know we likely have a range of convictions and feelings about abortion here. It’s both a big polarized political issue, and a deeply sensitive human issue. Whatever your views, whatever your experiences, I hope you understand that many people with uteruses truly feel less free today than we did two weeks ago. To borrow some phrases from Susan B. Anthony – writing nearly 150 years ago! – we feel consigned to being a governed class, without the absolute right to ourselves. 

There’s so much that could be said about abortion. Let me say three things, very briefly. The first is that the Episcopal Church supports legal abortion. The second is that God asked for Mary’s consent before having her bear and birth Jesus Christ. 

The third is that the terrain of conceiving or not conceiving, birthing or not birthing, parenting or not parenting, is some of the most tender and delicate territory of our lives. We are so easily bruised, here. When we talk about all this, as perhaps we must, let us strive to listen, and to be kind. 

But the impact of overturning Roe is bigger than reproductive rights. It has shaken – shattered – any comfortable sense of progress. For one thing: There is a very real concern, now, that Obergefell is also under threat. If Obergefell isn’t a household name for you: It’s the Supreme Court case which secured a nationwide right to gay marriage.

It meant that same-sex couples were no longer dependent on geography and state governments for whether their marriages – and the many rights and privileges bound up with marriage – were legal.  

Obergefell was decided on June 26, 2015. I remember the day! I was at General Convention in Salt Lake City. There was a huge party at a local park. Lots of General Convention deputies joined the celebration. People were dancing. Rainbows everywhere. It was amazing. So much relief. So much joy. 

Now, it’s increasingly clear that many conservative leaders, and at least some Supreme Court justices, would like to overturn that decision as well. Every same-sex couple you know is watching and worrying and planning. Figuring out what to they need to do to protect their families, their livelihoods, their selves, in the coming months and years. 

As a faith community, part of our work in this season is to find out what it means to have the backs of our gay, lesbian, and gender-diverse members and households, and friends and neighbors too. Dancing in the park isn’t enough anymore. 

I believed that rights, once acknowledged by the Supreme Court of our nation, would remain secure. I should have known better. I’m an anthropologist, a student of human nature. I’ve studied the Bible closely. I know that history is full of pendulum swings.

Maybe it’s my naïveté, my whiteness, my privilege, that let me believe otherwise. Probably all of the above. I know plenty of people were never under any such illusions. Those of us who were, are sadder and wiser now – and, I hope, ready to listen and learn from those who have always known that the arc of history only bends towards justice if we all pull on it together with all our strength. 

How do we live now? What do we do? How do we show up for each other and ourselves and those burdened, or desperate, or at risk? 

Those are questions to be explored in both the short term and the longer term. Let me say again, as I did last week, that if you are looking for people to connect with, to share ideas about how to respond, together, to the times in which we find ourselves, let me know – and we’ll see what takes shape. 

I appreciate Paul’s paradoxical advice in today’s Epistle: Bear one another’s burdens; but also, Each will bear their own burden. I think what he means is: Figure out what your work is, and do it. Seek out your way among the many, many ways to work or march or give or serve or sing or study or make art or pray, as part of God’s holy movement for justice, compassion, and the flourishing of humanity and creation.

Do your work. But also, when you have a chance: help others. Lighten their load. 

What’s OUR work, at St. Dunstan’s? Well, that’s for us to continue to discern together.  But maybe part of our work needs to be digging in to who we think Jesus is, and what we think it means to follow him. 

If it’s been a tough couple of weeks for your patriotism, it probably has been for your Christianity too. There are people who claim the faith of Jesus at both extremes. And right now the Jesus who seems to be winning some of these big legal and cultural battles doesn’t look much like the Jesus we talk about around here. 

In today’s Gospel Jesus sends out his followers with a simple message to share: The Kingdom of God has come near. I always feel like I need a whole sermon to talk about the Kingdom of God. It can’t be simply explained or described. Jesus talks about it a lot – but he talks about it in stories. The Kingdom of God seems to be Jesus’ vocabulary for … an alternative way of being or seeing or living, or an alternate reality. Maybe it’s somewhere else, or maybe it’s here but hiding just behind our familiar reality. It’s not Heaven; it’s closer and stranger than that. 

In the Kingdom of God the last are first, and the lost matter more than the found. 

In the Kingdom of God small good things grow, even when big bad things threaten to overwhelm. 

The Kingdom of God is an intentional contrast with the powers and politics of this world. 

The Kingdom of God is not coercive or controlling. It does not shame or blame. It shines. It teases. It invites. 

That inviting mystery of the Kingdom of God is actually pretty important to my spirituality and my faithful living. I don’t claim to understand it! But it calls me. 

In the face of a Christianity that seems to want to become more and more deeply embedded in the structures and institutions of this world, I am drawn to a way of faith that invites us to imagine our way into a different kind of world.

In the face of a Christianity that seems to be so much about control and shame, I’m drawn to a Christianity that’s about kindness and possibility and play. 

In the face of a Christianity that makes laws, I’m drawn to a Christianity that tells stories. 

And even if I can’t believe in American history as an inevitable march from worse to better, I do still believe in a God at work in human history and human hearts.

Grant us wisdom, grant us courage, for the living of these days. Amen. 

Sermons

Sermon, June 12

Today is Trinity Sunday – the Sunday after Pentecost. The only Sunday named after a doctrine… which always threatens to be a particularly dry topic for preaching. 

The Trinity is the name for the church’s teaching that the God we worship is Three in One and One in Three – Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; the One who creates, redeems, and befriends. 

A late 5th century text known as the Athanasian Creed tries to put words around the paradoxes of the Trinity: 

“We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; neither confounding the Persons, nor dividing the Essence. 

For there is one Person of the Father; another of the Son; and another of the Holy Ghost. 

But the Divinity of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, is all one; the Glory equal, the Majesty coeternal. 

Such as the Father is; such is the Son; and such is the Holy Ghost. 

The Father uncreated; the Son uncreated; and the Holy Ghost uncreated. 

The Father unlimited; the Son unlimited; and the Holy Ghost unlimited. 

The Father eternal; the Son eternal; and the Holy Ghost eternal. And yet they are not three eternals; but one eternal. As also there are not three uncreated; nor three infinites, but one uncreated; and one infinite…”

It has a kind of beauty… but it doesn’t exactly clear anything up! 

I feel a certain pressure every year to offer you the church’s teaching about the Trinity. But I’m also always aware that we’re trying to stretch human language and concepts around divine realities that we do not fully comprehend. 

What catches my attention about our Trinity Sunday readings this year is the way they point to the ongoing role of the Holy Spirit in forming, guiding, and teaching God’s people. Today’s readings kind of send us back a week to Pentecost – and to the Holy Spirit! 

The text from Proverbs about Lady Wisdom invites us to hear the voice of the Spirit in this pre-Christian text. The assigned portion focuses on her role assisting God in Creation, but in the full passage, she is encouraging people to heed her voice:

“I have good advice and sound wisdom;
I have insight, I have strength.
By me kings reign, and rulers decree what is just…  

I love those who love me,
and those who seek me diligently find me.”

A few verses later she’s inviting passers-by into her home for a banquet: “She has sent out her young women, she calls from the highest places in the town,
‘You that are foolish, turn in here!’
To those without sense she says,
‘Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Forsake foolishness, and live, and walk in the way of insight.’” 

Lady Wisdom is one of several ways Jewish thought and sacred writings have described a companion or emanation of the One God. The Christian understanding of the Holy Spirit builds on those ideas. 

I like holding that image of Lady Wisdom, laying a banquet and urgently inviting us to come partake, in my mind as we read what Jesus says about the Holy Spirit in John’s Gospel today.  

“I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, they will guide you into all the truth; for they will not speak on their own, but will speak whatever they hear, and they will declare to you the things that are to come.” 

I’m sure libraries could be filled with interpretations of those intriguing verses. But a plain sense reading seems to suggest that Jesus expects that the Church’s understanding of the full meaning of God’s redeeming love will grow and change. 

Jesus says, You don’t know everything now; and even what you do know, or think you know, may change in the years and centuries to come, guided by the Spirit. 

Christianity is, after all, founded on metanoia – a transformation of heart and mind that bears fruit in our lives. That transformation, change, renewal, conversion, can be sudden and dramatic and / or slow and lifelong. And as Jesus says here, becoming a Christian – a follower of Jesus – isn’t the end of that renewal, that opening of mind and heart.  It may be just the beginning. 

That’s why Learn and Turn are two of the core practices of the Way of Love offered by our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry;  and why Wondering and Turning are two of the discipleship practices we name and strive to practice here at St. Dunstan’s. 

We expect our understandings of God, humanity, self and world to change. We are cautious about it. As I said a couple of weeks ago: New isn’t better just because it’s new. But neither is old! 

In the Anglican tradition, our foundational theologian, Richard Hooker, suggested we use a threefold approach to discerning what is true and right: Scripture, tradition, and reason. 

Hooker lived in the 16th century, a time of rapid change and expanding knowledge. He believed we could best discern what is right, good, and true through holding these things in balance and seeing how they inform each other: the truths revealed in Scripture, the truths passed down to us by tradition, and the truths we discover by the use of human reason – which Hooker meant in a more holistic sense than we might think: using our capacity to think, analyze, and wonder to reflect on what our senses and our experiences have to show us. 

It’s Pride Month right now. Pride is celebrated annually in June, in commemoration of the Stonewall Riots of 1969. The purpose of Pride month is to recognize and celebrate LGBTQ+ people, and to reaffirm shared commitments to work for equal justice and equal opportunity. 

Honoring Pride in Madison is a little weird because Madison’s Pride celebration is in August. But I’m hearing from our young people that they’re talking about Pride at school, seeing Pride-themed posts on social media and Pride products in stores. So maybe it’s important to acknowledge Pride here, too. 

Our capacity to learn, listen, wonder and turn is how our denomination, the Episcopal Church, has come to hold a fully inclusive position with respect to LGBTQ+ people, while some other churches continue to feel bound by what they understand to be the gender and sexuality norms of the Bible. (Though I would argue that the Bible’s witness on those matters is rather more complicated than it might seem on the surface.) 

Since the ‘70s and ‘80s, the Episcopal Church has been actively learning from gay and lesbian Episcopalians – laypeople, deacons and priests, and eventually bishops. In 2012 the Episcopal Church’s General Convention resolved that transgender people, too, have an equal place in the life, worship and governance of the church, including access to ordination. 

As a church we’re learning – slowly – to acknowledge and embrace people who find themselves in other places on the spectrums of gender and sexuality, as well. 

How did we get here? How did we move from being a church that asks its LGBTQ+ members – who have always been there – to live with silence, secrecy, and celibacy, to a church that – in some places, on our good days – fully includes and celebrates them? 

Well: We studied Scripture together. There’s an amazing study document called To Set Our Hope On Christ, created in 2005 by some of the Episcopal Church’s top scholars, that explores how to read the Bible faithfully and find in it support for the goodness of a variety of sexual orientations and gender identities. It’s just one example, but it’s a great starting point for the curious. 

We looked to our tradition with fresh eyes. We discovered that heterosexual marriage is perhaps not as central an institution in Christian history as we had been led to believe… and that among the boldest and brightest witnesses to God’s love down through the ages have been many saints whose gender expression, partnerships, or manner of life did not conform to the expectations and norms of their time or ours. 

And we listened to, and reflected on, experience – our own and others’. My first job after seminary was in the Diocese of New Hampshire. The bishop at the time – since retired – was Gene Robison. Gene was the first openly gay and partnered man to be elected as a bishop in the Episcopal Church. His election in 2003 was a big deal. Things got messy. In some corners, things got ugly. 

It was 2008 when we moved to New Hampshire. But now and then somebody would still tell me their story about that time. New Hampshire is a small diocese in a small state. Gene had been on the previous bishop’s staff. A lot of people knew him. 

What people kept telling me was: Of course we knew Gene was gay. We knew his husband. But we called him to be our bishop because we thought he should be our bishop. We saw in him the gifts we needed in our leader. We weren’t trying to make a splash by electing the first openly gay bishop. We were just following the Holy Spirit. 

So many versions of that story are part of our church’s journey. Leading us deeper and deeper into the apostle Peter’s epiphany: I truly understand that God doesn’t have favorite kinds of people. 

I need to say that our church has not arrived. We have a ton of work to do to live into our intentions and commitments. But that’s often how the Holy Spirit works. 

They lead you to a new understanding or conviction… and then it takes time to reorganize your thinking and your life, or that of your organization, to align with what you have come to know. 

And sometimes, beloved in Christ, sometimes the Holy Spirit doesn’t lead us to new certainties. Sometimes they lead us to new uncertainties. That can be even harder, friends – embracing the holy unknown. Loosing our grip on things we thought were fixed or settled can be very disorienting. 

And yet: Our God is a God of paradox, mystery, transformation. Much more can be mended than we know. 

I wonder what else we have to learn. 

I wonder what holy truths we’re not yet ready to bear… but might be, someday. 

I wonder where Lady Wisdom, the Spirit of Truth, has laid out a banquet, and is standing in her doorway calling out to us: “Come, and eat, and walk in the way of insight!”

 

Sermons, Uncategorized

Sermon, May 29

Before the readings: 

We’re celebrating the Feast of the Ascension today. Ascension is technically a Thursday – and we’ve sometimes done a special Ascension service – but this year we’re observing it on Sunday, as many churches do.

Ascension is a fancy word for “going up.” What we remember and honor today is the time when the risen Christ, who has been spending time with his friends and followers, gives them their final instructions – tells them to wait for the coming of the Holy Spirit – and leaves to return to God the Father. 

We know that God doesn’t actually live above the sky, but there’s a very deep-seated and ancient impulse to think of God that way, so Jesus appears to ascend – go up – into the sky, out of sight. My favorite images of the Ascension are the ones with Jesus’ feet dangling down from the top of the frame. 

The lectionary does something odd but understandable for Ascension. It gives us the very end of the Gospel of Luke… and the very beginning of the book of the Acts of the Apostles. Those passages overlap: they both tell the Ascension story. 

The Gospel of Luke and the Book of the Acts of the Apostles have the same author. That’s widely accepted by Biblical scholars. But Luke didn’t just cut and paste. There are differences. 

Luke has done a lot research and gathered all the information he can, to put together his accounts of the life of Jesus and the early church. So we might think of him as a historian. But he’s not a historian in the modern sense. It doesn’t bother Luke that he has Jesus saying slightly different things, in these two scenes. 

Maybe the best analogy is to modern authors like Hilary Mantel who do a lot of research so they can write about real people and real events, but then do their historical writing as a novel, a story, to catch readers’ attention and bring them along. 

Let’s receive those texts now… 

 

What do you notice?… 

I feel like the Luke version feels a little like an episode of a TV show at the end of a season when the writers don’t know yet if it’s going to be renewed. Trying to wrap things up so that it feels complete, but also leaving some threads they can pick up if they DO get another season.

And they DID – so the Acts version is more forward-looking. It leans into what happens next – in the next 28 chapters and fifteen years or so. 

Maybe the biggest difference is the two men in the Acts version. We’re meant to understand that these are angels – their sudden appearance, their white garments. In Luke’s Easter Gospel, there are also two men in white clothes who appear suddenly – to tell the women who have come to the tomb that Jesus is not here, but has risen. 

Why leave those angelic messengers out of the Luke version? It might make you wonder if that particular detail really happened. It might make you think: what does this do, in the story? 

What it does in the story is get the disciples to stop staring up… and start looking around, and out… at THEIR work in the world, the work Jesus has charged them with: being his witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. 

Being witnesses. The word used there in Greek means both of the things it means for us in English. Somebody who sees a thing happen, and can tell other people about it. Or: Somebody who is a witness in a legal sense – who testifies at a trial to what they have seen and know to be true. 

It means a third thing too, because the Greek word here is martus. It’s the root of the English word martyr, someone who proves the strength of their convictions by being willing to die for them. 

We have that word because so many in the early generations of Christians, in times of persecution, were called to face death for their faith in Jesus. 

So being a witness, in this particular Christian sense, isn’t just about knowing and telling. It’s also about being willing to put yourself on the line – to take a costly stand – for what you know to be right and true and good.

Jesus’ friends, watching him disappear into the clouds, might not know – yet – that that kind of courage and commitment will be asked of them. But Luke certainly does. By the time he’s telling this story, Peter, Paul, and many other Christians have become witnesses to Christ Jesus at cost of their lives. 

This call to be witnesses is interestingly different from what Jesus tells the disciples in the gospel of Matthew – the text sometimes called the Great Commission. At the very end of Matthew, Jesus says, “Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

Matthew’s Jesus tells the disciples: Go make more Christians. Convert people. In Luke and Acts, Jesus tells the disciples: Bear witness. Tell and show people what you have learned from me. Luke’s Jesus leaves the outcome of that witnessing in God’s hands. 

Last week I read a piece by two young Christians, Hannah Bowman and Luke Melonakos-Harrison, about being witnesses to Christ in a time when a conservative Christian cultural and political agenda is threatening trans lives, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive freedom, and teaching the truth about race and racism.

Their article never uses the word witness but I think that what it means to be witnesses to Jesus, in these times, is exactly what they’re talking about.

Luke and Hannah write, 

“Solidarity requires that we translate our general values—our desire to love, protect, and support the LGBTQ community [or other communities under threat]—into specific actions sufficient to the threats we face now…. Churches should consider how they can—as a congregation or community—develop real relationships of mutual aid with affected individuals and families…. The church must be a community of real bodies, acting together as a material expression of the body of Christ in our society. …The question for the church must not be “how do we form willing, individual Christians into allies of the LGBTQ community [or other communities under threat]?” but instead “how do we become the broken body of Christ given up in acts of solidarity?””

How do we, together, become ready to put ourselves on the line – to become witnesses – for what we know to be right and true and good?  For what we have come to believe, and to hope for, in Christ? It’s a big question. But the book of Acts has one answer – an important answer. It’s in what happens in the very next verses.

After these two men in white tell them to stop staring at the sky, the disciples go back to Jerusalem. They regather in the upstairs room where they’ve gathered before. The core group gets back together – the men and women who have been Jesus’ closest companions along the way. And they spend a lot of time praying together. 

A few verses, and about ten days later, they’re still gathering for togetherness and shared prayer. Our Pentecost lesson for next week begins, “When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place.” 

Our former Bishop Steven Miller preached on this text once and it stuck with me. He pointed out that this sentence, that first sentence of the Pentecost story, Acts chapter 2, really stresses the group’s togetherness. All. Together. In one place. Three separate words in the original Greek. Luke really wanted to hammer this home. ALL. TOGETHER. In the same place. 

So what do the disciples do in response to Jesus’ call to be witnesses? They regroup. Literally. They regather in a familiar place. 

I’ll bet they did some checking in on those they hadn’t seen yet. Has anyone seen Thaddeus? How about Joseph Barsabbas? Does anyone know where Mary and Cleopas are staying? … 

More people would show up, day by day, and be welcomed. Everyone would share what’s been happening to them. How it’s all been feeling. Maybe how frightened they’ve been, and how sad. They’d wonder together: what next? Jesus seems to think there’s more for us to do… but right now, this is what we need: just to be together, all together, in one place. To regroup. To find each other and ourselves again. 

I’m listening to the wisdom of this text. I know there are people in this congregation for whom the question they bring with them to church is: How does faith matter, facing the things we’re facing? What is the good news here – for me, for my struggling neighbors?For the grieving and the outraged and the hopeless? And how can I, can we, offer or embody that good news? – Especially when the name of Jesus Christ is plastered all over movements that seem so far from his teaching and witness? 

And I know there are people in this congregation for whom the question they bring with them to church is: Does this place, these people, this God, have anything to offer to help me hold myself together, or hold my loved ones together? To help me survive, and maybe begin to heal? 

There are probably other big questions that people are carrying inside them too. And many may carry some of each. 

It’s been said that every preacher really only has one sermon. I suspect, with humility, that my one sermon is: God calls and empowers us to join God in striving for justice, mercy, peace, and human wholeness, individually and together, in ways small and large. That we are not here for solace only, but for strength; not for pardon only, but for renewal. 

But sometimes – Lord, sometimes just we need solace. Sometimes we just need to regroup. The past two years have been so hard. The past two WEEKS have been so hard. People keep gently suggesting that maybe this summer we should just… meet up around the firepit. Have a tea party on the patio. Go for walks together. Connect and reconnect. Rest and play, listen and share, and pray for and with one another. 

Whether we gather virtually or in person, we need to regroup. To find each other and ourselves again, all together in one place. To experience ourselves as the Body of Christ gathered. So that when the Holy Spirit shows up to send us forth as witnesses – we’re ready. 

Church Seasons & Holy Days, Saints, Sermons

Homily, May 22

It’s not a very nice story, is it?  For the story, the Devil is the embodiment of evil, who is always trying to trick and hurt human beings… so the story thinks it’s OK to trick and hurt the Devil. Maybe we would want to try to solve this problem another way!

This is an old story – but it’s probably not as old as St. Dunstan himself. Dunstan lived about 11 hundred years ago. He lived in a place that we call England, now… though then it was a group of little kingdoms that had just begun to think of themselves as being a country, together. It was an unstable, uncertain time, with a lot of violence and poverty. 

When he was a young man, Dunstan became a monk. That means he committed his life to serving God, living simply as part of a community of other monks. Later on he became a bishop, a leader in the church – and then Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of ALL the churches in England. He also served in the court of several English kings, helping and advising them – if they would let him. 

We know a fair amount about Dunstan’s life, from historical documents and other evidence. He died on May 19 in the year 988. Soon after his death, people began to honor him as a saint, and to tell stories meant to show how holy he was – like this story about Dunstan defeating the Devil! 

When the church calls someone a saint, it usually means that we think they followed God in ways that mattered to the people of their time and place. Let’s look at a couple of images – historical documents – to remember Dunstan today and think about his sainthood. 

Dunstan was one of the leaders in the English Benedictine Reform movement of the tenth century. Monasteries and convents – places where monks and nuns lived lives of prayer and study, devoted to God – were a really important part of society back then, as centers for for faith, education, medical care, and more. But centuries of war and struggle made it hard for those places to thrive and do what they were meant to do. 

Dunstan and his colleagues wanted to fix that. To make monasteries centers of true faith and learning again – and to start MORE monasteries, where they could train priests to serve God and God’s people.

This is a page of the Rule they used in their monasteries, based on the Rule of St. Benedict.  The Rule was a document that told the monks and nuns how they should live in community, with a balance of daily work, study, rest and prayer. 

The most important thing about this page is something you might not notice right away. Back then, not very many people knew how to read or write. And all the books were handwritten… Does everybody have the same handwriting?

Have you ever seen somebody’s handwriting that was hard for you to read? Maybe they had bad handwriting, or maybe they had GOOD handwriting but you just did’t know how to read it?… 

In Dunstan’s time, if you wanted to study and read about religion or science or travel or philosophy or poetry, anything – well, first, you had to be able to read the language it was written in, often Greek or Latin. Latin was the language of the Roman Empire. And long after the Romans were gone, it kept being used as the language of scholarship and literature and church, in lots of places. 

But even if you could read Latin, you also had to be able to read the handwriting, the script style, that the text was written in! It was hard for a lot of people, even educated people, to read books that came from previous centuries or from other places, because of those problems. So it was hard to study and learn and build up new knowledge. 

But starting not long before Dunstan was born, there was a movement across Europe to start using one form of writing, called Carolingian Miniscule. People wrote new books in this script, and they also rewrote older books in this script. So suddenly a lot more knowledge and culture could be read and shared! It was a big deal!

Scholars think they know Dunstan’s handwriting, from parts of a book called the Glastonbury Classbook. He wrote in his own version of Carolingian Minuscule, with some influence from the Irish monks who first trained him. 

Dunstan didn’t write this page. But it is in the Carolingian style. It’s hard for us to read – and the text is in Latin – but you can notice that the letter forms are very clear and regular. And if you look closely, you’ll see some other words on the page, written in between those nice neat lines. The written-in part is the same thing in Old English, the language ordinary people spoke. 

Those words were written in to help monks and nuns who didn’t know Latin, or only knew a little bit – so that they could also read this important text about how they were called to live. 

So both that Carolingian script – and the written-in Old English – show us that for Dunstan and other leaders of this movement, having more people be able to read and learn and understand was really important. I think that’s really cool! And it’s one of the ways Dunstan’s work mattered to the people of his time and place. 

Dunstan did the things he did – even when they were hard! – because he loved God and wanted to follow God’s will. Here’s the second image we’ll look at today. You may have seen it before. 

This is the icon of Dunstan that we like to use here.

It’s an image from that book I mentioned, the Glastonbury Classbook, and – here’s the part I think is really cool – it’s likely that Dunstan drew it himself. He was an artist, as well as a scribe, a writer of books. 

Usually our icons, our holy images, put the person we’re honoring right in the middle.  But in this picture Dunstan drew himself kneeling at the feet of Jesus Christ, on a throne. That’s how Dunstan drew himself so that is how we honor him – as a servant of Jesus. 

Look: you can see that he’s dressed as a monk, in a robe, and with his hair shaved on top – that’s called a tonsure. 

The words above him are a prayer: “I ask, merciful Christ, that you protect me, Dunstan;  A medieval drawing of a seated Christ, robed, with a monk bowing at his feetdo not permit the storms of the Underworld to swallow me.”

I learned about that prayer a few years ago, and I think it’s a really good prayer. 

It’s a prayer asking Jesus to help us feel his presence and love when we feel overwhelmed – when we feel like chaos or anxiety or struggle might just swallow us up. 

Praying a prayer like that isn’t like flipping a switch; the struggle or anxiety doesn’t just go away. But maybe it reminds us that we’re not alone with it. And that it won’t last forever. And sometimes pausing to pray can help us catch our breath, and unclench our fists, and notice that the earth is still under our feet, and there is still breath going in and out of our lungs, and that we are loved. 

This week when I read that prayer again, it came with a tune. Dunstan was a musician too – so maybe it was a little gift from our saint. 

Here’s how it goes… in Latin first: 

Memet clemens rogo, Christe, tuere / 

Tenarias me non sinas sorbsisse procellas.

Now in English: 

Kindly Christ, I pray thee, save my humble soul;

Let me not be swallowed by the storms of the netherworld! 

 

Merciful Christ,  Protect us, each and all; when the world feels like a storm that batters us, like waters rising to swallow us up, calm our hearts and give us peace. Amen. 

Sermons

Sermon, May 15

Love, like Death, hath all destroyed –

Rendered all distinctions void: 

Name, and sect, and party fall; 

Thou, O Christ, art all in all. 

That verse was written by Charles Wesley, the great 18th-century poet and hymn writer.  I came across it last week and it’s been knocking around in my head ever since. 

Love, like Death, hath all destroyed – rendered all distinctions void… 

In this provocative verse about Love, the Destroyer, Wesley is playing with this important thing Paul says in a couple of his letters: There is no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

It may be hard for us to fully understand what a radical statement this really was, in the first century. Even if we only focus on “neither Jew nor Greek”! “Greek” here means “Gentile” – non-Jews in general. The first Christians and church leaders were all Jewish, formed in the faith of the First Testament. And they initially understood the Way of Jesus as a new kind of Judaism. Opening the doors for non-Jews to join the movement – on equal terms! – was a big deal.  And like most big changes, it took time, and listening, and arguing, and praying, to get there. 

Today’s lesson from the Acts of the Apostles shows us one chapter of this story. When I first looked at the assigned passage last week, I felt annoyed. Because what we have here is Peter’s brief summary of a story that is told in full in the previous chapter – Acts 10. There are lots of details in that version that we miss, here. For example: The Gentile whom Peter visits isn’t just any Gentile. He’s a centurion, a leader in the Roman army that occupies Peter’s homeland. His name is Cornelius. And though he’s a Gentile, he’s a man of prayer and generosity. 

I don’t know why Peter doesn’t tell the church leaders in Jerusalem that his new convert is a Roman soldier. Maybe a Gentile is a Gentile and it doesn’t really matter. Or maybe it would have made it a bridge too far for some folks, so he just… neglects to mention it. 

There are other things that we miss in Peter’s retelling. Like the delightful detail that when the vision comes to him, he’s very hungry and waiting for lunch. Or the wonderful thing Peter says as all of this comes together for him in a lightbulb moment: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality! God has no preferences, no favorites; but in every nation or people, anyone who honors God and does good is acceptable to God.” 

Love, like Death, hath all destroyed! Rendered all distinctions void! … 

So at first, when I looked at today’s lesson, I was a little grumpy. I wanted the whole story, not this little Cliff’s Notes version. 

But then I noticed what’s happening here. This isn’t just a summary of what’s happened already. It’s the next chapter in the story – and it’s an important chapter. 

Peter’s heart has been changed.  He’s come to a new understanding about whom God is calling to join the Way of Jesus. But it’s not all up to Peter. He’s a leader in the nascent Christian community; but he’s not THE leader. 

There’s a group of apostles and elders in Jerusalem who are trying to guide the movement and keep it on track and faithful to the teachings and witness of Jesus. And while God has no preferences or favorites, people do. The Jerusalem leaders are skeptical about Gentile converts. This isn’t just bigotry; it’s partly that they honor and treasure their Jewish faith and heritage, and fear that it may be lost. We may grieve what Love destroys! 

They hear about what happens in Caesarea, this group of Gentiles whom Peter has actually baptized into the church! – and they call Peter back to Jerusalem to explain himself. Why did you go to uncircumcised men – to people outside God’s ancient covenant with the Jewish people – and eat with them?

I love the next verse: “Then Peter began to explain it to them, step by step.” 

What he’s doing here is actually a best practice for talking with someone with opposing views: Talk about your experiences. Don’t argue about the big ideas – Gentiles belong! Gentiles don’t belong! – but share what you have seen and heard, and how you came to understand things the way you do.

Peter tells them about what was going on outside of him, at Cornelius’s house: seeing this group of Gentiles seized by the Holy Spirit, in a way that looks a lot like what happened to the disciples at Pentecost. 

He also tells them about what was going on inside of him: He sees the Spirit at work, he remembers Jesus’ words, he knows God sent him to meet these people and witness this moment, and all of that becomes metanoia, a turning of the heart: Whom am I to hinder God? 

Peter’s conversion, his change of heart, matters. But Peter’s testimony to these leaders matters even more. Peter has some standing in this group, as one of Jesus’ closest friends, whom Jesus appointed as a church leader… But everyone also knows that Peter has a tendency to go off half-cocked, so that may work against him! 

When he’s finished speaking, the leaders are quiet for a while. Imagine the suspense in the room. And then someone says, “So God has given even to Gentiles a turning of the heart toward life.” And they celebrate. 

Love, like Death, hath all destroyed, rendered all distinctions void. Name and sect and party fall… 

In the vision of John of Patmos, in today’s Revelation text, the Holy One seated on the throne says, “See, I am making all things new.” And Jesus tells the disciples in today’s Gospel, “I am giving you a new commandment.” Our God is a god who brings forth new things and leads us to new understandings. 

It’s important to say that new stuff isn’t intrinsically better just because it’s new – just like old stuff isn’t better, or worse, just because it’s old. There’s plenty of bad new stuff in the world. But what we see here isn’t Peter seizing the new for new’s sake. He hears God nudge him to pay attention, to respond. I get nudges like that, though perhaps not as dramatically! Then Peter goes into the situation with eyes and ears open. And he weighs what he sees against the teachings of Jesus. This is a process of discernment – of seeking God’s will or God’s purposes. 

And once Peter discerns that God has called these Gentiles into the church – he doesn’t just tolerate them. He goes to bat for them. He makes their full inclusion part of his witness, his agenda. And he sticks with it for the long term. 

The question of Gentiles in the church comes back in Acts chapter 15 – which takes place as much as a decade later.  A group of Jewish Christians are telling everyone that for Gentiles to become Christian, they essentially have to first become Jews – including circumcision, a fairly drastic step. Basically, it’s been accepted that Gentiles can become Christian – but the question now is on what terms. Can they join the church as they are? Or do they have become something else, to be fully included? 

So there’s another gathering of church leaders in Jerusalem to talk it out and settle the matter. Peter is there, and he harks back to this experience and to what it taught him about God’s welcome for Gentiles: “In cleansing their hearts by faith God has made no distinction between them and us.”

There’s discussion and debate and it probably drags on for days. But finally James, the brother of Jesus, speaks up and settles the matter: “We should not burden those Gentiles who are turning to God.” The Church will be a church of both Jews and Gentiles, on more or less equal terms. 

The issue at stake in Acts is: who belongs in the church, and how. As people of the church, we continue to face those frontiers. There’s a movement in the Episcopal Church today to deepen our understanding and affirmation of transgender and non-binary people – perhaps finally coming to grips with Paul’s insight that in Christ there is no longer male and female. 

We’re working to not just welcome and include people of color, but reckon with the ways racism is embedded in our liturgies, institutions and culture. 

I think – I hope – that our larger church is beginning some real work on the the true welcome and inclusion of those living with mental illness; those with disabilities; and neurodivergent people.

I believe we will look more like the church God intends us to be when we have learned, together, to receive one another in the fullness of our humanity, without asking anyone to become something else first in order to be fully included. 

But what Peter models for us here isn’t just for church. This is a story about a group wrestling with who it’s for, and it’s an oddly timeless story – one we might find ourselves in at any time. I certainly have. 

Maybe you’re Peter, meeting someone who blows open your sense of who matters or who belongs. 

Maybe you’re one of the Jerusalem leaders, weighing the implications of changing standards and opening doors. 

Maybe you’re Cornelius, simply witnessing to your human worth to somebody who’s never really talked to someone like you before.

This oddly mundane story that’s threaded through the book of Acts, of an organization revising its membership requirements – it’s a reminder that holy work takes many forms.Sometimes it’s courageous witnessing. Sometimes it’s prayerful listening. Sometimes it’s the grind and stress of working for cultural and institutional change. Through it all, the Love that formed the universe and knows us each by name is working, working, working, beside and among and within us. 

Love, like Death, hath all destroyed –

Rendered all distinctions void: 

Name, and sect, and party fall; 

Thou, O Christ, art all in all. 

Amen. Alleluia.