Category Archives: Sermons

Sermons

Sermon, May 8

 

 

 

 

Today, the fourth Sunday of Easter, is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. But who is this good shepherd? 

Well: the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, says that God the Creator, the God of Israel, the Living One, is the good shepherd.We hear that in Psalm 23: “The Lord, ADONAI, is my shepherd; I need nothing more. God gives me rest in green meadows, near calm waters; God guides me along safe paths; and even when I walk through dangerous places, God’s shepherd’s staff guards and comforts me.”

And we hear it other places too – like the 34th chapter of the book of the prophet Ezekiel: “Thus says the Lord God:… As shepherds seek out their flocks.., so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness…. They shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, says the Lord God.”

The word Sheep occurs 190 times in the Old Testament, in the New Revised Standard Version; the word Shepherd appears 97 times. Those numbers are a mix of stories about actual sheep and shepherds, and metaphorical uses like those I’ve just quoted. 

Why so many sheep? 

Well: Tending sheep and goats – what anthropologists call pastoralism – was the culturally foundational way of life of God’s people Israel. Even as they settled into agriculture, urbanization, trade and so on, they still thought of themselves as a sheep-herding people at heart. Maybe a good analogy is the way small family farms have a kind of symbolic status as “the real American way of life,” even though very few Americans have lived that way for a long time. 

So: In the Old Testament, God the Father is the good shepherd. And in the New Testament, Jesus, God the Son, takes on that role. We hear that in today’s text from the Gospel of John, when Jesus says: “My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand.” This is just a portion of a longer speech in which Jesus describes himself as the Good Shepherd; the lectionary gives us a piece of it on this Sunday each year of our three-year cycle. 

Jesus knew the Hebrew scriptures well; he is riffing on texts like Ezekiel and Psalm 23, here, as he describes himself as the good shepherd who will tend his sheep, even at cost of his own life. 

So, then, who are the sheep? In the Old Testament, the sheep are the people Israel, God’s chosen flock. In this passage from John’s Gospel, and elsewhere in the New Testament, the sheep are Jesus’ followers – all those who respond to the voice of the Good Shepherd.

But also: Jesus himself is a sheep. Or at least: a lamb. The idea of Jesus as a sacrificial lamb may have begun because his execution was close to the Jewish feast of Passover. In the Passover story – the Exodus story – God tells the people Israel, enslaved in Egypt, to kill a perfect lamb and use its blood to mark the doors of their homes. The lamb’s blood will protect them from the angel of death, as it swoops across Egypt, to pressure Pharaoh to set God’s people free. The New Testament writers explore the image of Jesus as Passover lamb, whose blood saves God’s people from bondage and death. 

The book of the Revelation of John in particular leans in hard to the idea of Jesus as Passover Lamb – AND as the true Shepherd of God’s people.  In our text today it puts them side by side:  “The Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd.” A lamb who is also a shepherd? It’s an intentional paradox. 

These early church leaders and writers are playing with this pastoral imagery that pervades their tradition, to find ways to talk about who they are coming to understand Jesus to be. Fully God and fully human. At once both sheep and shepherd.

But Jesus isn’t the only one for whom sheepness and shepherdness are a little jumbled up. It can happen with God’s people too. 

Most of us – maybe all of us? – don’t have a lot of contact with sheep. We tend to think of them as sort of an undifferentiated fluffy white mass. Our cultural associations with sheep involve unthinking conformity – consider the word “sheeple.” But the scriptural tradition thinks there are differences among sheep. That among sheep as among people there are leaders and followers, winners and losers, those who help and those who harm. 

In that text from Ezekiel, God speaking through the prophet accuses Israel’s leaders of being lazy, cruel, self-serving shepherds. But God also accuses the sheep of harming one another. Some of the sheep have been greedy, at the expense of others. To them, God says, “Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.”

And then there’s Peter’s role – the apostle Peter, who becomes the greatest leader of the early church. Last week we heard the risen Jesus telling Peter – three times – to  show his love for Jesus by tending Jesus’ sheep. So who is Peter, then? The lead sheep – the bellwether? A junior shepherd, serving by the divine Good Shepherd? A little of both? 

Either way, in this week’s reading from the book of the Acts of the Apostles, stories of the early church after Jesus returned to God, we see Peter tending Jesus’ flock, fulfilling that call, by responding quickly and compassionately to the people who come from Joppa to seek his help, as they grieve the loss of a beloved pillar of their community. Sheep can hurt each other… or help each other. 

We are God’s sheep, Jesus’ flock. But we’re not an undifferentiated fluffy mass. We’re not sheeple. I’ve heard many a sermon on the stupidity of sheep. I’m pretty sure I’ve preached one myself. But that’s not an emphasis in the Bible.

What does the Bible tell us about sheep, and thus, about ourselves? That we’re vulnerable – to dangerous environments, to predators, to bad shepherds who profit off of us instead of caring for us. To being scattered or lost or stolen. 

That we’re interdependent. When there’s lots of lush grass and fresh water, we all flourish. When resources are scarce, we don’t. 

That left to ourselves, we’ll hurt each other. The stronger sheep will bully the weaker sheep and push them away from food or water. 

That we need to be tended. Found and gathered. Guided. Fed. Protected. Comforted. That deep down, we know the voice of our true Shepherd, and will respond and follow. 

All of that seems true to me. All of that makes me feel pretty sheep-ish. 

I’m glad to know that we are in the ultimate care of the Good Shepherd. That someone is watching over us, guarding and guiding. But trusting in the Good Shepherd doesn’t mean that I, and we, don’t have our own sheeply responsibilities. We, too, will face moments when we’re called to show our love of Jesus by tending Jesus’ sheep. We, too, will face moments when the stronger sheep are ganging up on the weaker sheep, and we have to choose sides – or walk away, which is also choosing a side. 

But I’ll tell you one more thing about sheep – something the Bible doesn’t bother to talk about because it takes it for granted: Sheep are tough. 

Pastoralism is a way to live in environments too harsh or hilly for agriculture. Sheep can handle high altitudes, cold weather, and rough terrain. They graze on steep hill and mountainsides, where there’s no way you could grow crops. Sheep are mobile; when one area is grazed out they move on to the next area. The wool that makes them so useful to humans also protects them from bitter cold and wind. 

Sheep find what they need, in dry and craggy places, in the valley of the shadow of death, and turn it into wool and milk and lambs. They appreciate a nice flat, green pasture… but they don’t absolutely need one. 

I lived around sheep for one summer, in 2000. I was hired to help with a project in Eskdale, in northern England. It’s a beautiful green valley surrounded by very steep, rocky hills. And – yep – it’s sheep country. 

I remember jokes about how Eskdale sheep – a hardy breed called Herdwicks – would develop legs that were shorter on one side, from constantly grazing on steep hillsides. 

I’d honestly kind of forgotten the Eskdale Herdwicks until this week. I found some photos online that brought back memories. My favorite is a sheep standing tall against the sky on the lichen-covered boulders of Hardknott Pass. I remember Hardknott Pass; we hiked up it one day. The road over that pass is the steepest road in Great Britain, ascending 1200 feet at a 33% grade. Challenging for humans and cars. No sweat for sheep. 

The world doesn’t feel like a place of green pastures and still waters at the moment. Bossy sheep and bad shepherds abound.

I think what I need from Good Shepherd Sunday this year is the reminder that with a loving Shepherd to guard and guide them, sheep can handle a lot. Sheep can stick together and find what they need, in harsh environments and hard seasons. 

May the Lamb who is our loving Shepherd protect us, tend us, and equip us for the landscape ahead. 

Amen. Alleluia. 

Baptism, Church Seasons & Holy Days, Saints, Sermons, Theology & Doctrine

Easter sermon

He was wounded for our transgressions,
crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the punishment that made us whole,
and by his bruises we are healed… 

This Lent, Father Tom McAlpine – a retired priest and Old Testament scholar who makes his home at St. Dunstan’s – invited us into deep study of a set of texts from the book of the prophet Isaiah. 

These texts are called the Servant Songs, and they probably date from about 500 years before the time of Jesus – with the rest of Second Isaiah.

I’ve just quoted part of the fourth and last Servant Song, found in Isaiah chapter 53.  If you’ve hung around churches for a while, you’ve heard bits of the fourth Song, especially during Holy Week.

“Like a lamb that is led to the slaughter,
so he did not open his mouth… and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all…

Even if you don’t remember hearing the words of the Fourth Song directly, its vocabulary and ideas are woven into the worship and theology of the church in so many ways. 

It’s a little hard to know what to make of the fourth Song in its original context. The idea of someone innocent suffering on behalf of others, in a way that somehow frees or absolves those others, is distinctive here. It has loose parallels elsewhere in the Old Testament, but nothing terribly close.

If your immediate reaction is to think that this text is unusual because it’s pointing towards Jesus, let’s tap the brakes. I don’t believe that Judaism is only fulfilled in Jesus. That all these pre-Christian texts and traditions just sat around waiting for their true and full meaning to arrive when Jesus was born. I don’t believe that and I invite you to not believe it with me. 

The Fourth Song meant something in its original context and it means something for Jews today.  That does not keep it from meaning something else, something additional, for Christians. And it has, and does. 

Textual study makes it very clear that early Christians interpreted Jesus’ life and death through the words of of the Fourth Song. There are hints, too, that Jesus himself understood his mission through these ancient and evocative words. Jesus knew the Old Testament – the Hebrew Bible – very well. Perhaps he found in this song a poetic description of his call to suffer and die among and for God’s people. Much as one might hear a song of love or anger on the radio and think, That’s it. That’s exactly what it’s like. 

The Fourth Song speaks of death – but I’m bringing it up today because I want to talk about life.  About resurrection – Jesus’s, and ours. 

We think of resurrection – the Church’s fancy word for rising from the dead – as something that happens after we die. And the Bible and the church do speak about a new life in God for the faithful departed. I trust and hope in that promise. 

But the Christian Scriptures also describe baptism as a dying and rising with Christ.  At the Last Supper, Jesus describes his coming crucifixion as a baptism (Mk 10:38) – although he was also baptized with water in the Jordan River by his cousin John, much earlier in the Gospels. 

And early Christian writers repeatedly describe Christian baptism as a death to the old self, and a rising to new life in Christ. In the letter to the Romans, the apostle Paul writes, “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” And the author of the letter to the church in Colossae writes,  “So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God… for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”  (Colossians 3:1, 3)

Our baptismal rite reflects this understanding, when we say, “We thank you, Father, for the water of Baptism. In it we are buried with Christ in his death. By it we share in his resurrection. Through it we are reborn by the Holy Spirit.”

What is it like to think of myself as already dead?

What is it like to think of myself as already fully and eternally alive?

The Fourth Song of Isaiah and the Christian scriptures talk about this dying – and rising – as purposeful. It accomplishes something. In the Fourth Song, the Servant is not resurrected, but their death is redemptive:  “The righteous one, my servant, shall make many righteous.” 

Jesus says about himself: “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.” (John 12:24)

The how of Jesus Christ’s redemptive death remains a mystery despite millennia of theologizing. That is another sermon for another time. Today we are talking resurrection. New life. Christ’s life in us. 

The resurrection we celebrate at Easter isn’t just Jesus’s.  It’s also ours. And it’s not just meant to free us from the power of death. We are baptized to become a certain kind of people. We are freed from death to live a certain kind of life. 

Our Prayer Book gestures at some of what that means – we’ll dwell with that shortly as we renew our baptismal vows. 

In our study of the Fourth Song and how Christians understand it, we read a little of the work of Rowan Williams, the theologian and former Archbishop of Canterbury, writing about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Bonhoeffer was a German theologian who was killed by the Nazis for his involvement with the resistance movement. He wrote about what it really means to be a follower of Jesus. What our life in Christ is all about – in times of war, chaos and terror. 

Williams, reflecting on Bonhoeffer’s writings, life and death, argues that our life in Christ Jesus is fundamentally a life lived for the good of others. He writes, “The other person I encounter is already the one with whom Christ is in solidarity, and the death I must endure is the death of anything in me that stops me acknowledging that and acting accordingly…. We are to stand in the place where the other lives, so that we are vulnerable to what the other is vulnerable to; we are to risk what the other risks…”

Williams continues, [To follow Jesus Christ,] “we must learn to ask how we may act so as to relinquish whatever fashions, conventions and securities prevent us from standing with another, whatever self-images protect us from seeing the reality of another, whatever generalities block our attention to the particularity of another.” (Christ the Heart of Creation, Williams, 2018)

I want to be clear here that in their focus on life in Christ as a life lived for others, Williams and Bonhoeffer aren’t talking about letting someone harm you or take advantage of you. They’re talking about seeing and standing with those who are under threat or pushed to the margins in the world as it is. 

And I want to acknowledge that Bonhoeffer, Williams – and I – all speak and write from the position of people who could roll along pretty comfortably with the cultural and economic status quo. Some of those hearing my voice right now may feel yourself outside the “we” of the texts I just read. What you need are people ready to see you and stand with you. To risk what you risk, simply by being. 

There’s a prayer we prayed, here, last Sunday – a prayer we pray every Palm Sunday, as we begin our walk through the great story of Jesus’ death and resurrection.It says, “Mercifully grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the way of life and peace…” 

This year, our work with the Fourth Song and its meaning for Christians has me asking myself: Whose life? Whose peace? 

I wonder if the author of that prayer – William Reed Huntington, in the late 1800s – actually had the Fourth Song, Isaiah 53, in mind. “Upon him was the punishment that made us whole” – that’s actually the Hebrew word Shalom, often translated as peace – “And by his bruises we are healed.” – it’s not a big step from healing to life. 

Shalom and healing, life and peace. 

The Servant’s death was for the healing and peace of others. Jesus’ life, death, and rising were for the life and peace of others.  It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that as God’s baptized and resurrected people, the life and peace we are to be about is not our own… but others’.

As the author C.S. Lewis once remarked, “If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”

Bonhoeffer wrote, “My life is outside myself, beyond my disposal. My life is another, a stranger; Jesus Christ.” 

What is it like to think of myself as already dead?

What is it like to think of myself as already fully and eternally alive?

What makes this an Easter sermon, beloved friends, is that Jesus’ story doesn’t end at the tomb. Bonhoeffer’s story doesn’t end at the gallows.  Martin Luther King, Jr.’s story doesn’t end on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel.  Last night, at the Easter Vigil, we called on the saints, the holy martyrs, the faithful departed, to stand with us as we marched towards Easter. So many names. So many prayers for us, for our world, our lives, our discipleship, uttered – even now – in the presence of the One who is first and last. 

Love wins.

Life wins.

Whatever we spend, comes back to us – in this world, or another. 

Whatever it costs, it’s worth it. 

Whatever we pour out for the life and peace of another draws us deeper into Christ. 

For we are already dead,  and our life is hid with Christ in God. 

Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. 

Sermons

Sermon, March 20

A note about the readings: Today’s Epistle is transferred from next Sunday, March 27 (Lent 4C), because we will not read the Epistle next week due to our Scripture Drama. 

Today’s Old Testament lesson gives us the call of Moses – Israel’s great leader who led them out of bondage in Egypt and through a long wilderness journey. I’m always tickled by God saying, “I have heard my people’s cry, I have come to deliver them, I’m sending … YOU!” And Moses saying, “You have the wrong guy.” 

But this year my attention is caught by this sentence:  “I have come down to deliver [My people] from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey” – so far so good –

“To the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.”

That’s… a whole lot of people to already be living in the land that God plans to give to the Israelites. 

Two weeks ago, on the first Sunday in Lent, we heard a portion of Deuteronomy – a book that presents itself as Moses’ last words to his people before his death and their crossing over into this land, the land they believe God intends as their new home. 

That passage had resonances with our Thanksgiving myth. The people told to honor their first harvest season in this new land that God has given them by making an offering to God, then celebrating with a great feast. 

The only thing missing from the story are helpful native peoples… because the Israelites were supposed to wipe them all out. 

How do we deal with the places where the Bible says that God wants God’s people to destroy other nations? 

I find those texts to be in tension with some really central themes of Scripture – like that when God calls a particular people, be it the the Israelites, later known as the Jews, or the Christians, followers of Jesus, it’s so that they can bless other peoples, not destroy them. 

Both the Bible and archaeology tell us that the Israelites spent a long, long time being one small nation among other nations. There are lots of stories of conflict with neighboring peoples in the Old Testament. 

From that angle it makes some sense that as people compiled texts and traditions into their holy book, some language crept in there about how God definitely wanted them to destroy all those troublesome neighbors. 

There’s more to unpack and wrestle with there.  I don’t want to make it too simple. But there is room to faithfully question whether God has ever called God’s people to commit genocide. 

In March of 1848, a revolution was stirring in what is now Germany. The working classes and middle classes were joining forces against the ruling elites, to call for more democratic government and constitutional reforms protecting the rights of ordinary citizens. 

The revolution was ultimately quashed by military force. Discouraged and fearing reprisals, many young Germans who could afford emigrate, did – to places like Texas, Ohio, and Wisconsin. 

This wave of German immigrants, seeking a fresh start in a more free and democratic nation, became known as the Forty-Eighters. Among them were the Heim family – including two brothers, young men, Joseph and Anton, and Joseph’s fiancée Theresia. Arriving in New York in 1848, the Heims made their way to Wisconsin.

To a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey – the land of the Ho-Chunk, the Sauk, the Menominee, the Ojibwe, the Potawatomi, the Oneida. 

There Joseph, Anton, and Theresia bought some land from the US government, built a home, and started a farm. I’m standing on that land right now. The brick house over there – that’s the home the Heims built. 

Another of those big, overarching themes of Scripture is that God wants people to be free – not in bondage. God seems to care about human wellbeing, human thriving. 

Our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry likes to talk about our loving, liberating, and life-giving God. 

I believe God wanted to free the Israelites from enslavement in Egypt. I believe, too, that God wanted the Heims to be free from the oppressive circumstances they faced at home in Germany. To have a chance to build a better life for themselves and their children. 

And: All these stories of making home in a new place, a place of freedom and plenty: all these stories have to reckon with who was displaced or killed, to free up the “promised land” for those new arrivals. 

We have to read against the grain of these received stories to notice those losses, those costs. It is work. Because these powerful myths of journey and arrival and home-making – they either demonize the people who were there already, or ignore them entirely. 

From the mid-15th century to the present, the legal principle of the Doctrine of Discovery has asserted that Christian,“civilized” Europeans had the right to any territory occupied by non-Christian peoples. The native peoples of the Americas, of Australia, of Africa – their millennia of presence and stewardship of the land simply didn’t matter. 

The United States government did negotiate many treaties with Native peoples – including the 1832 treaty that forced the Ho-Chunk nation to leave this land. 

Those treaties give the appearance of taking Native land rights seriously – but they were also overwhelmingly unfair and coercive, and usually made in bad faith on the American side. And the fundamental mindset was that land wasn’t truly owned, truly used, until white people were living and farming on it. 

It’s work to learn about all this, to take it on board. It’s hard and uncomfortable. 

And if Paul’s right that being followers of Jesus means being ambassadors of reconciliation – it’s part of our call to faithful living. 

Reconciliation. The Greek word Paul used is katalasso. It was most literally a word for exchanging money between currencies, making sure the values came out even.

We still use the word “reconcile” in financial contexts:  to reconcile accounts means you compare them, explain any differences, and get them to match up.

But in Greek and in English, we also use this word for relationships. For coming back together, working through differences, finding resolution and, perhaps, a shared way forward. 

These are timely words and ideas for this season. Reconciliation and repentance. Acknowledging harm, making amends. Mending… 

The financial meaning of “reconciliation” feels oddly apt for the learning some of us have been doing, through our parish Land Acknowledgement Task Force and other opportunities. 

We are, indeed, comparing accounts: the account of the history of this place that begins with people like the Heims claiming and taming the wilderness, and the account that begins much earlier, with the deep memories of peoples who stewarded this land for centuries or millennia. 

Comparing these accounts, seeking to understanding the differences between them – that’s the work that led us, as a first step, to commit $3000 of our 2022 parish budget as an offering to the Native peoples of this region.

Today’s Gospel is a complicated little passage. Some people want to know what Jesus thinks of this recent news story – a tragedy, an abomination, a war crime. He responds, then shares a short parable. 

On the surface, the teaching and the story seem like a mismatch: Tragedies don’t happen to people because they’re extra sinful, BUT: if you don’t start bearing fruit, you’re gonna get chopped! … 

Let me offer a paraphrase that I think holds the pieces together better. Jesus says, Look, those people didn’t have it coming, any more than anybody else ever has it coming. Get that way of thinking out of your head. That’s not how things work.

Everyone is bound by sin. And death is coming for us all, eventually, one way or another. The question is: what will you do with the time you have? 

It’s very easy for us to read this Gospel text in terms of consequences – of punishment. The tower falls, the tree gets chopped down: bad things will happen… unless, maybe…! 

But I truly believe that what Jesus wants from us, and for us, is very different from dread and the kind of rigid and fearful righteousness that grows from fear of punishment. Rather, Jesus invites us to take an unflinching look at the brevity and uncertainty of life – and asks us: 

In a world where a random building might fall on you at any time, where you never know if this may be your last fruitful year: How will you live? What do you choose? 

May God bless us to be a blessing.

May God give us the fertilizer we need to bear fruit. 

May God strengthen us, each and all, to be ambassadors of reconciliation – to have skill and courage and hope for the work of mending, in its many shapes and sizes. 

May we find that work – however it manifests for us, each and all –  to be both our duty and our joy. Amen. 

Church Seasons & Holy Days, Kid-friendly, Sermons

Homily, All-Ages Worship, Feb. 27

Today we heard stories about two people who came so close to God that it made them GLOW. Like a light bulb! 

First was Moses. God chose Moses to be the great leader of God’s people. To lead them to freedom, after they had been enslaved in Egypt; though their long journey in the wilderness until they finally come to a land where they could settle. 

Who remembers how long that journey was? …  

During that wilderness time, Moses talks to God to learn how the people are supposed to live as God’s chosen people. And he teaches them. 

There’s a lot that happens in this story, isn’t there? Moses and God are talking up on the holy mountain, and I guess they lose track of time, and the people get impatient.  “Why are we just sitting here in the literal middle of nowhere? How do we know that there’s actually a god who is leading and protecting us? Maybe we should just make our own god…” 

That doesn’t work out so well, does it? … 

But at the end of the story, Moses comes down from the mountain after talking to God again, and his face SHINES.  So much that people feel afraid to go near him! So much that he wears a veil – a fabric covering – to hide the light. 

It seems like he’s been in God’s presence so much that a little of God’s divine glory has rubbed off on him. Or maybe it’s like glow in the dark stuff, where you have to hold it near a light source for a while to charge it before it will glow. Maybe Moses is a special kind of glow in the dark that is activated by being near God’s light. Maybe we all are!

And then we have a story about Jesus being up on a mountain, and coming close to God. Jesus’ friends, Peter and James and John, see him speaking to two men – Moses and Elijah, two great prophets and leaders of God’s people. 

When this story happens, Moses and Elijah had lived a long, long time ago, so I don’t know how Jesus’ friends knew who they were. They didn’t have photographs! Maybe Jesus told them. 

And God is there, too – God the Father, Creator, and Source. God is in the mysterious cloud, and in the Voice that says, “This is my Son, the chosen one; listen to him!” 

Now, Jesus is a human being, but Jesus is also God. So it seems like what happens here is that some of Jesus’ inner Godness shines out. And that made me think about a little project we did at my house recently. 

We found out that if you pour melted chocolate on something called a diffraction grating, then the chocolate becomes very special. 

Look, here’s the diffraction grating. And here’s some chocolate. It just looks like normal chocolate right now…. But when I tilt it so that a bright light is shining on it, you can see all these rainbows! It doesn’t look ordinary any more, does it? 

So maybe Jesus was a little like that. Most of the time when you looked at him you just saw an ordinary person. But when the light of God the Father and Creator shined directly on him, it made him shine too… 

So far we’ve been talking about special people: Moses and Jesus. 

But the apostle Paul says that these stories are about us, too. That coming close to God and shining with God’s light is for all of us. 

In one of his letters to the church in Corinth, Paul writes, “All of us with face unveiled are mirroring the Lord’s glory, and we are being transformed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Lord’s spirit.” (Hart) 

Paul is drawing together these two stories, here! He’s thinking about Moses’ veil. And he’s thinking about Jesus being transformed on the mountain top, so that he shines with holy light 

When Paul says “the Lord,” he means Jesus. So he’s saying, We can be mirrors that reflect Jesus’ glory, Jesus’ brightness, Jesus’ goodness. We can embrace that, without veiling our faces or hiding the light. And over time we might reflect Jesus better and better, as our lives and hearts match his life and his heart more and more. 

So, Paul says, Let God’s light shine through you! Reflect Jesus’ light! 

I wonder how we could do that? 

Maybe by trying to be patient, and kind, and understanding, like we heard in Paul’s letter about love, last week. 

Maybe by being generous to others without worrying about what will come back to us, and praying for our enemies, and loving people even when they’re kind of hard to love, like Jesus said in the part of his sermon that we heard last week. 

We get lots of guidance from the Bible about how to live as God’s people and as followers of Jesus. Today’s texts tell us that when we try to make those kinds of choices and live that kind of life,  it’s not JUST that we’re following God’s hopes for us. It’s not JUST that these choices help us be people who add to the amount of wholeness and love and joy in the world. 

It’s also that when we let ourselves reflect the light of Jesus, the light of God, we might shine a little light into somebody else’s life. That light might bless them or comfort them. 

And if they’re looking for God, that light, the light of God that you are reflecting, might help them start to find their way towards God. Like it says in the song we sometimes sing: Let your little light shine, shine, shine – there might be somebody down in the valley trying to get home! 

Today is the last Sunday in the season of Epiphany. We talk a lot about light in Epiphany! The light of the star that leads the Wise Ones to find the baby Jesus… the Light of God’s promises dawning on God’s people… the Light of God’s presence in the face of Jesus, shining on the mountaintop. 

Let’s end Epiphany by singing about letting our little lights shine, one more time… knowing that we don’t have to make the light; we just have to let God’s light shine through us… 

Church Seasons & Holy Days, Sermons

Sermon, Feb. 6

Our readings today are a messy hybrid of a couple of things. We read the Isaiah lesson and the Gospel for the fifth Sunday in Epiphany, but we also read the story of the presentation of Christ, the Gospel for the feast of Candlemas.

Candlemas falls on February 2nd, just like Groundhog Day. February 2nd falls not quite halfway between the winter solstice and the spring equinox. Both Groundhog Day and Candlemas are holidays of getting through the winter, in the parts of the world that are cold and dark right now. Groundhog Day celebrates the unlikely premise that signs of spring might start to show up, within the next six weeks! Candlemas is a festival of light; we bless candles in a custom that probably deep down has an element of sympathetic magic, of calling the Sun back. 

Candlemas is not celebrated on a Sunday in most churches, but there is a Candlemas story of our patronal saint, Dunstan. So we celebrate it here. Because something even a little bit special in early February can be welcome!… 

Let’s hear that story now, and then I’ll say a little more about the threads that tie all this together… 

It was wintertime in the year 910, over a thousand years ago. And it was a cold, stormy night, in the region around Glastonbury, in southwestern England. Still, the people of the town streamed into the church, because it was the holy feast of Candlemas. They brought candles to be blessed in the service, the candles that would light their homes in dark winter weeks ahead. 

Among the crowd that night was a young woman named Cynethrith. She was married and was expecting a child. She was a woman of great faith and piety, and she prayed daily that her child would help her country and her people. Because people were struggling not only with the long, hard winter, but also because they lived in a time of violence, poverty, sickness, corruption, and unjust rulers. 

Cynethrith crowded into the dark and drafty church with everyone else, and joined in the prayers and the songs and the lighting of candles. Suddenly a great storm wind shook the church; it rushed among the people and put out all the candles, every one. Nobody had matches or lighters in those days! To re-light the fires, somebody would have to run through the storm to the nearest cottage, where there would be a fire burning in the hearth.

The church was in total darkness. Adults cried out. Children wept. The priest begged everyone to stay calm. But then, suddenly, there was light again. The light of a single candle – the candle held by Cynethrith. Everyone stared in wonder.  Cynethrith’s candle had kindled a flame, from nothing. She shared that holy and mysterious flame to her neighbors, and they to theirs,  and so the whole church was lit again, and all was well. 

The lighting of Cynethrith’s candle was a sign of what her child would become: Saint Dunstan, monk, friend of kings, founder of monasteries, and Archbishop of Canterbury, a leader who would share and spread Christ’s light in difficult times. It was a sign, too, of her own role, as the mother of a saint, kindling God’s light in her son’s heart. 

In all these texts and stories – Isaiah, the Presentation Gospel, the calling of Peter, Cynethrith’s candle – I notice a strong theme of vocation.

Vocation is word that has a regular meaning and a churchy meaning. In daily life, people might use it interchangeably with “career” – a thing somebody trained to do, and does for most of their life. In the church, when we use “vocation,” we try to remember that the word comes from the word “call.” Your vocation is what God calls you to do. The apostle Paul has been reminding us that there are lots of kinds of vocations, lots of ways God calls people to use their gifts and skills, time and their passion, for God’s purposes and the common good. 

Your vocation might or might not be the same as what you get paid to do; for most people it isn’t. It might look obviously like faith- or God-work or it might not; for most people it doesn’t. It might be a big part of your life, or it might be something that fits in around the edges. It might be the same for most of your life, or it might change in different chapters; you might have to do some prayerful discernment about it, now and then. 

Isaiah’s vocation was the big, obviously God-y kind. In this story of his call to prophetic ministry, he sees a vision of God upon the divine throne, surrounded by angels; and he cries out in dismay, feeling unworthy. Then he hears God saying, “Whom shall I send?” – and responds: “Here I am; send me!” 

The angel touching Isaiah’s lips with a burning coal is described an act of cleansing. But it also fits the character of Isaiah’s prophetic work. Isaiah’s vocation is to speak God’s words to God’s people – and his burning message is neither comforting nor welcome. 

In the next few verses, God more or less tells Isaiah that the leaders and people will not heed Isaiah’s words; they won’t repent and change their unjust and faithless ways; and all of this is going to end with death, destruction, and exile. 

But Isaiah’s call to prophetic ministry still matters. Like the climate scientists and public heath officials of our times, he’s called to proclaim what’s happening and why – and how it could be otherwise – even if the people seem unwilling or unable to collectively act for change. 

Even if those in power are too invested in things as they are to make courageous and costly changes. And eventually, Isaiah’s prophetic vocation will involve comfort and encouragement for those who survive that season of crisis, and become the renewed people of God. 

Simon Peter reacts to Jesus’ call much as Isaiah does: I’m not worthy! With an undertone, perhaps, of, Please let me just keep living my ordinary life!  Jesus tells him, Don’t be afraid – and invites him into a new vocation: catching people instead of fish, gathering people into fellowship in the way of Jesus. Peter follows this call, first as a disciple, one of Jesus’ inner circle of close friends, and then as an important leader in the early church. 

Peter’s impulse to stick with the fish is understandable – especially when we know the rest of his story. His time with Jesus is rich and beautiful and confusing and frightening – culminating in watching his friend be crucified, then the confusion of the empty tomb, then a renewal of call on a quiet morning beach. 

Texts from the early church indicate that Peter was executed for his faith in Jesus, probably in the year 64, by the emperor Nero.

In contrast with Isaiah and Peter, who were probably young men, our two Candlemas stories focus on the vocation of babies: Jesus, the Light of revelation to all nations, and Dunstan, still in the womb, but destined to share God’s light in his time and place as well. 

Let it be noted that both of these were challenging vocations! Jesus lives out his mission in the face of rising opposition that leads to his death.

Dunstan, in contrast, lives to be nearly 80 – quite an accomplishment in 10th century England. But he has some near misses along the way. His agenda of making life more fair and livable for ordinary people, and reforming the church so that faith was more accessible and meaningful instead of just another tool of power, – that work often put him at odds with other leaders. He had to flee the country or go into hiding on several occasions. 

Scripture and church practice tend to hold up the big dramatic stories of people whose whole lives were committed to following God’s ways  against stark opposition. People who were persecuted or even killed for speaking God’s words or doing God’s work. People like Isaiah and Jesus, Peter and Dunstan. 

But I notice some other vocations, in these stories. Some other people who are also following God’s holy call in their lives. Consider Simeon and Anna – holy elders. Simeon’s call was to wait and watch for the consolation of Israel. Such a beautiful phrase! Put another way: Simeon’s vocation was to hold hope. To keep on believing that however things might seem, God’s people were not abandoned or forgotten. 

Sometimes a community needs people like that. Bearers of hope. In seasons when it’s hard to be hopeful, we need someone among us who has the capacity to keep looking for the consolation of God’s people. Someone who can stubbornly believe that all is not lost. 

And then there’s Anna – named as a prophet. Perhaps hers was a vocation of prayer, of conversation with God, speaking and listening. I bet she watched the people coming into the Temple, day in and day out. I bet she prayed for them, holding them in God’s light in her heart. 

Simeon and Anna’s reaction to the infant Jesus – their recognition of hope and redemption in this six-week-old baby – is a sign of Jesus’ specialness. He is not like any other baby. 

But part of me secretly wants to believe that EVERY time a young couple brought their baby to the temple to dedicate them to God, Simeon would grab the child and says, THIS CHILD – God is going to work in the world through THIS CHILD! And Anna would start telling anyone who would listen about how beloved and beautiful and important THIS baby is. 

I love Simeon and Anna so much, and I see their faces in many of the faces of this congregation. Loving and faithful and prayerful, and eager to love and encourage our youngest members in their lives of faith. 

And let’s not forget Mary and Joseph, and Cynethrith too – and the ordinary, holy vocation of being one of a child’s faithful grownups, whether you’re a parent or not. Being one of the people who tries, in amongst the chaos and busy-ness and exhaustion and all the the other things that have to be taught and learned, to raise young people who love all that is true and noble, just and pure, lovable and gracious. 

There are so many vocations! That’s one reason why we’re doing these Epiphany Commissionings in this season – to hold up the varied ways we use our gifts and skills, time and passion for God’s purposes and the common good. So far we’ve prayed for all involved with education and the pursuit of knowledge; for those who are in transition, seeking or discerning; for those engaged in business and commerce. Today we’ll pray for those engaged in expressive and creative work, and in the weeks ahead we’ll pray for public servants, caregivers, and the retired. I hope that just about everybody finds themselves in there somewhere – maybe several times! 

Let these commissioning prayers today, and throughout this season, be our response to these holy stories… our affirmation of our own, and one another’s, rich variety of vocations. And may we really mean it when we pledge one another our prayers, encouragement, and support. 

Let’s continue with today’s Commissioning! … 

Saints, Sermons

Homily, January 30

Our Scripture drama today was based on Acts 9:1-21. 

We may know the main character of the story we just heard better by another name:  Paul. Saul was probably his Hebrew name – like Israel’s first king. Paul or Paulus was probably the name he used in Greco-Roman contexts – which was most of his ministry. So, Saul to Paul was probably not a name change, but a change in what he went by.

Saul or Paul was an incredibly important figure in early Christianity! He indeed ends up suffering a lot for his faith in Jesus, too – and eventually dies for it. But first: He spends thirty years founding churches, traveling around preaching and teaching, and writing letters to remind those young churches how they’re supposed to be acting. At least seven of the Epistles – the letters of the early church – that are included in the Bible were written by Paul, including some that are really important for our understanding of what it means to be a Christian. 

That stuff about how the church is like a body?… That’s Paul! That stuff you hear at weddings about how true, holy love, is patient, and kind, and so on? That’s Paul! That passage about how neither death, or life, nor things present, nor things to come, etcetera, can separate us from the love of God in Christ? That’s Paul! I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me? That’s Paul!  Whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, … think about these things? That’s Paul! Do not be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind? That’s Paul! There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus? That’s Paul! I could go on, but you get the idea! 

Paul is so, so important for the growth and spread and identity of early Christianity. So this story of how Paul became a Christian is important, too.  As Paul himself says in his first letter to the church in Corinth, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and God’s grace towards me has not been in vain.” (1 Cor 15)

This month’s Skill for Faithful Living is Friendship. In StoryChurch, we’ve been reading some books about friends and friendship. Last Sunday we read two books about people who help their friends see things in a new way. 

A very hungry lion accepts a rabbit’s invitation to lunch, planning to eat the rabbit, and then discovers that he really likes carrot stew. Much to the relief of all the animals in the neighborhood! There’s a hint in the story that what the lion likes isn’t just the stew, but also having friends that welcome him… instead of running away from him! 

In another book, Michael Bird Boy teaches Boss Lady to use bees to make real honey in her factory and get rid of pollution that was hurting the countryside. 

There are lots of ways friendship can be a holy gift. One of them is that sometimes our friends help us change – in ways we need to change. They help us see things in a new light, or try a new way of being, that’s better for us and for those around us. Or sometimes we might be given the opportunity to help a friend change – lovingly, wisely, carefully. People can change. Even people we don’t expect – like Paul. 

When I look at this story through the lens of friendship, I really notice Ananias. Look: Presumably Jesus could have healed Paul’s blindness without help. But that’s not what happened. Instead Jesus asked Ananias to help complete the miracle. 

Does Ananias want to do that?… 

Ananias’ reluctance is very real. There are people we don’t want to help. People who have hurt us personally; or people who stand for things we hate or fear. Jesus was asking a lot, in asking Ananias to be kind to Paul. Ananias does it – not because he wants the best for Paul, but because he loves Jesus. 

The miracle that happens to Paul – 5hat makes him a Christian, and then such an important leader for the early church – that miracle really has two parts. First there’s the Road to Damascus moment – the blinding light and the voice. And then there’s the moment when Ananias lays his hands on Paul and prays over him, and his temporary blindness is healed. 

There were several days between those two events, and we don’t know exactly when Paul’s heart was really turned towards Jesus. But it could be that it was Ananias’ willingness to extend friendship that really fulfilled what was happening inside of Paul. Like the rabbits welcoming that lion into their home! 

Today I give thanks for the ministry of the apostle Paul. But I also give thanks for Ananias, who appears so briefly in the story, but who has such an important role, and who shows us the power and potential of holy friendship.

God, help us be holy friends, too. Amen. 

Annual Meeting, Creation Care, Outreach, Sermons

Sermon, January 23

Today is Annual Meeting Sunday for St. Dunstan’s. Episcopal churches do this every year. Later today at 1PM people will gather on Zoom – we’ll get back to doing it in person one of these years! – and we’ll elect our vestry members and other positions, and receive this year’s budget, and some other updates on priorities, projects and finances.  Anyone who considers themself a member of St. Dunstan’s is welcome to join us – or even if you’re not sure you’re a member yet but are just interested in how we do business. 

On Annual Meeting Sunday I like to have my sermon be a reflection on where I think the church is and where we’re going. And I always hope that the readings assigned for that Sunday, on the calendar we share with many other churches, give me something to talk about. Well, this year, when I looked at the lessons assigned for today, there wasn’t just one or two that seemed to fit… they ALL did. So we’re hearing all the lessons today – it’s a lot of Scripture! And after each lesson I’ll say a little bit about what call or affirmation it bears for us.

I want to get one thing out of the way before we continue. When we get to talking about the finances, later today, you’ll hear that we’re starting this year with a deficit budget. Our best guess right now is our expenses might be about $11,000 more than our income, in 2022. 

The Finance Committee and Vestry didn’t try to squeeze our budget to narrow that gap any further, for a couple of reasons. For one thing, we had a $9000 budget deficit last year, which mostly worked itself out over the course of the year. For another thing, more than half our pledging households increased their pledges for this year. That feels like a mandate to keep doing what we’re doing. 

We do have some work to do on the longer-term financial stability of St. Dunstan’s. If you have an interest in that, whether it’s planned giving or creative uses of our facilities or new kinds of partnerships, let me know; that’s a team I’d like to start building, this year. But for the time being: Your Finance Committee and Vestry feel confident about moving forward with this budget, and the priorities it represents, in faith and hope. 

Let’s continue with the assigned readings for this Sunday – and let’s hear them as words from God to us, the people of St. Dunstan’s, for this day and this year. 

The First Reading: Nehemiah 8: 1-3, 5-6, 8-12 (Click to read!)

This is a text from a time of rebuilding. Judea and Jerusalem had been conquered, almost 150 years earlier. Many people had been killed; most of the rest of God’s people had been taken into exile in Babylon, among strangers and far from their homeland. After fifty years, a new emperor decided to let those who wanted return home, and provided resources for them to start rebuilding Jerusalem. 

The time of rebuilding was complicated. There were different priorities about what should be restored first. Should we rebuild the walls so we feel safe? Should we rebuild the Temple so we feel centered? The people who were left in the land resented the returnees. People wanted different things. People needed different things. It must have been a challenging time to be a leader. 

This text echoes another scene that took place not quite 200 years earlier, before the Exile. Rummaging around in the Great Temple, the High Priest Hilkiah finds the book of the Law of God – the Torah – and brings it to the young king Josiah. When Josiah hears the words of the book of the Law, he realizes how far his people have fallen from God’s plan for them. He calls an assembly of all the people, and reads them the Torah. And Josiah recommits himself to the covenant relationship between God and God’s people.  

The text tells us that “all the people join in the covenant,” but Josiah’s reform seems to be largely top-down. Josiah orders that images of other gods and their places of worship be destroyed. Josiah commands people to observe the holy feast of Passover. Maybe that’s why Josiah’s changes didn’t really change things. 

What happens in Nehemiah’s time is the same – and different. Nehemiah the governor, and Ezra the priest, call the people together and read them the book of the Law of God. It’s not clear why they do it at this particular time. Maybe it’s just that the walls and the Temple are both rebuilt, and enough people have returned to sort of have a nation again, and it’s just time to remind everyone of who and whose they are. 

This time, the people seem to matter as much as the leaders. Notice some of the details from the text. Those reading from the book gave interpretation, so that the people could understand what was being read. The people listened attentively, and wept at what they heard – grieving at the long years they’ve spent away from their calling as God’s holy nation. I love how Nehemiah and Ezra respond: Don’t grieve! This day, when we remember who we are – this day is holy. Celebrate! Feast! The joy of the Lord is your strength! And the people eat and drink, and share, and rejoice, because they had understood the words that were declared to them. 

What call or affirmation might we hear in this text? Studying this text felt really joyful for me this week. I felt a lot of recognition and resonance. We too are in a time of rebuilding – and will be for a while. Experimenting our way into ways of worshipping and gathering and living out God’s call together that are flexible and resilient and hopeful enough to work, in this new season. The contrast between Josiah and Nehemiah reaffirms my conviction that we’re all in this together. That whatever new ways of being we find our way into will work because we listen to each other, and seek understanding, and weep and rejoice together. 

Let me say one more thing before we continue. In response to the remaining texts, I’m going to talk about some possible projects and ministry directions that I think God is inviting us further into, this year and beyond. I want to say that I know that what some folks need right now is just the reliability of a holy space (virtual or otherwise), a loving set of people, a place to ask questions, a place where it’s OK to let people know when you hurt. For those folks, the most important work of the next year might be our continued rebuilding and regathering. And that’s OK. It’s better than OK.

There are people who are drawn to church partly because they’re seeking a community to work on mending the world with.  And that’s one of church’s most important jobs. But SO IS being a place of consolation and kindness and connection and rest. Nobody should feel any shame if bold new ministry initiatives make you feel like pulling the covers up over your head, right now. OK? OK. 

Let’s receive our Psalm.

Psalm 19 – click to read! 

Did anybody notice the jump in this ancient sacred poem? The place where it seems to suddenly change gears? … Verses 1 through 6 are a reflection on creation – and specifically, on the wonders of the heavens. I get a strong sense of somebody sitting on a hillside and watching the sun set and the stars come out, and just thinking about how amazing it all is. Feeling awe and gratitude at the beauty and reliability of nightfall and dawn, sunrise and sunset. 

The poet – maybe David, maybe somebody else – is thinking about how God did a really good job creating the universe. Creating these patterns and systems that make life possible and delight the eye and mind and heart. And it’s that mindset of wonder that makes sense of the pivot at verse 7. God’s perfect law revives the soul! God’s stable rule guides the simple!

Beholding Creation, with loving attention, moves the poet first to praise God, Creator, Source, and Sustainer of all things; and then to prayer – deeply personal prayer. Asking God to help them stay aligned with God’s ways. The poet has a particular concern: they know they’re prone to pride, to thinking themself better or wiser or more important than they are. So they ask God to help them avoid that pitfall… and then commend themself to God’s care. 

What call or affirmation might we hear in this text? Care of creation is important to us, here at St. Dunstan’s. We try to learn about God by learning about the natural world. We try to love God by loving the natural world. This ancient poem anchors and encourages us. 

Gazing at a sunset, dipping your toes in big water, studying an interesting bug – all of this can be part of our spiritual life, our walk with God. Our delight, wonder, awe, fascination – our concern and our grief –  when we contemplate creation can move us to worship. To praise; to conviction; to repentance and amendment of life.  To remembering how small we really are, and yet how important our call to tend with love. 

This year, let’s do more of that. Let’s feed the birds and tap our walnut trees and cut our carbon emissions and call our elected officials and keep becoming a church that loves God by loving the world. Let’s seek ways to build the community of hope and grief and solidarity and possibility that many of us need, as we face deepening climate crisis. 

1 Corinthians 12:12 -31a

Paul’s metaphor of the church as a human body is truly inspired. We can immediately see the foolishness of a foot saying, “I’m not part of the body because I’m not a hand.” Or the head saying to the feet, “I don’t need you.” We understand that it takes different parts that are good at different things to make a functioning whole, in our bodies. And that some of the parts that we don’t think are very pleasant or presentable – or that we don’t really think about at all, like, say, the spleen – are actually pretty important. 

And Paul tells us: Churches are like that too. You are the body of Christ and parts of each other! And just as in a body, if one part suffers, the whole body suffers, so within a church; we should be guided by mutual concern. 

Then he returns to the theme we heard earlier in this chapter: that within the church, there are lots of important roles. Prophets, teachers, helpers and healers, leaders, speakers in tongues and interpreters. Earlier he mentioned some others: People of wisdom; people of knowledge; people of deep faith; people of discernment; people of prophetic insight and passion. Paul doesn’t mention some roles that seem pretty central to me – music leader, coffee maker, website maintenance, youth group leader, and such. But we always can add to his list! And all of those capacities are gifts of the Holy Spirit, given by God to help the church be a community where people can find welcome and grace, healing and direction, and ways to do good together. 

What call or affirmation might we hear in this text? I think that at St. Dunstan’s we do a pretty good job of making space for people to share their gifts and skills and interests – and trusting that we can be the church God means us to be by doing the things that people are good at and like to do. Speaking as a leader, your interests and energy are one of the top things that I look to for guidance about what we should be doing, where we should be leaning in or pulling back. I believe that God shapes and guides and cares for our church through the people God sends to be part of the church. 

When we finished our renovation in late 2019, I figured we’d take a few months to get settled and do normal things, and then put some attention into asking each other: Now what? Where are our interests and energies leading us next? And then Covid hit, and survival and mutual care became our priorities for… two years and counting. 

But I think it’s time to stop postponing that shared wondering. We have new members who have joined us in the past few years. We have new skills, interests and passions among our longer-term members, too.  

This week the E-News had a link to a Gift and Skill Inventory, a simple online form. I would love for everyone hearing my voice to fill it out. Kids and adults, new and long-term members; friends of the parish, too. If multiple people share a computer, you should be able to fill it out as many times as you need to. We’ll keep sending out the link and reminding you about it for the next few weeks. 

Let’s take stock of what we care about, what we’re good at, what we like to do. At the very least, we might find some fun opportunities for skill and knowledge sharing. At the most, we might discover a constellation of interests and commitments and skills among us that we didn’t know was there, and that points towards new ministry possibilities. 

Luke 4:14-21 – click to read! 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus begins his mission. He reads from chapter 61 of the book of the prophet Isaiah, one of the great prophetic texts of God’s people.  And he declares: This is it. The year of the Lord’s favor. Look for liberation, and healing, and hope. Because big stuff is about to start happening. 

Look, I know I say this a lot, but:  Things were not great in first-century Judea. (Remembering that our faith-ancestors have survived hard times before can help us face hard times today. )

Back then, God’s people lived under the rule of strangers. There were armed terrorist groups running around. The wealthy were comfortable, but most people lived in poverty. There was very little effective health care, and lots of people died, all the time, from endemic disease, accidents, childbirth. (There’s a reason people kept mobbing Jesus seeking healing.) Many people felt helpless and hopeless. There was no real reason to think things would get better anytime soon. As Bishop Lee put it in a meeting this week: God’s wholesale remaking of the world was not evident, then, as it is not now.

Jesus’ proclamation – that God’s healing and justice were about to dawn – was no easier to receive then than it is today. In fact, the audience gets kind of mad about it. Who does this guy think he is?? This scene ends with people trying to throw Jesus off a cliff.

What call or affirmation might we hear in this text?

I hope I’m not taking my life in my hands by saying this, but: God’s liberation, and healing, and hope are still dawning. Even here, even now. And we can be part of that, as a church. 

One of our priorities this year is to start discerning, together, how to use our Community Project Fund: $70,000 that we set aside as part of our capital campaign, to do something for the wider community. It might be our project or it might be a partnership; it might be a one-time thing or seed money to start something bigger. We hope it’ll be something that gives interested St. Dunstan’s folk a way to be involved – to offer our time and energy, for the good of our neighbors, as well as our financial resources. 

I already felt pretty sure that this was the year to begin that work – to start talking and learning and praying together about what this project might be. This Gospel, on our Annual Meeting Sunday, feels like it seals the deal, to me. Jesus says: This is the time for people to be healed and freed from all that binds and burdens them. If we begin to seek the ways that we, as a church, can be part of that healing and unbinding, then maybe even 2022 could be the year of the Lord’s favor.  

Today’s readings offer us, almost, a charge for the year ahead. Return and rebuild, together. Welcome one another, deepen our relationships, share our gifts. Love and serve God through creation. And seek out new ways to join God’s work in the world. 

May it be so. Amen.

scripture, Sermons

Sermon, January 9

I want to notice the first sentence of today’s Gospel. 

“As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah…”

Let’s back up: what else do we know about this crowd? 

The third chapter of Luke’s Gospel begins: In the fifteenth year of the reign of Emperor Tiberius, when Pontius Pilate was governor of Judea, and Herod was ruler of Galilee, [and some other historical details] …the word of God came to John son of Zechariah in the wilderness. 

Back in Luke chapter 1 we heard about John’s parents and his birth, including Zechariah’s song of hope over his infant son:  “You, child, will be called the prophet of the Most High; for you will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins.”

Well, now it’s Go Time for John to fulfill that mission. So: He went into all the region around the Jordan, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins… And crowds came out to be baptized by him. 

Baptized: dipped or dunked into the waters of the Jordan River, as an outward and physical sign of their inward desire to turn their hearts and lives towards God. 

John seems to be re-interpreting Jewish practices of immersion for purification and re-integration into community. He’s making those ritual baths into something messy and muddy and spontaneous. Not a response to specific circumstances or causes of ritual impurity – but a physical acting-out of your recognition that your life is fundamentally askew, and your desire to turn towards the path of holiness and mercy. 

This crowd asks John what that renewed life would look like: “What then should we do?” We had this part of the text back in Advent. And John says things like, Share your extra food and your extra clothing with people who don’t have enough. Don’t use your position to take. Do your work honestly and kindly. 

And that brings us to the first verse of today’s text: As the people were filled with expectation… 

So what do we know about this crowd? There were undoubtedly some folks there who were just curious – or suspicious – or hostile, there to heckle this weirdo preacher. But probably most of them were there because of something they heard, or hoped to hear, from John. People who felt like the existing order wasn’t serving them very well. People who felt disconnected or marginalized by institutional religion. People who felt hopeless; people who felt incongruously hopeful. Maybe people who felt a deep need for change in their own lives, that nothing else spoke to.

In short: They were people who were looking for something. That’s what that word means – the word translated as “filled with expectation.” Prosdokao in Greek. Waiting for, looking for, expecting. 

It’s a very Lucan word. We’re in Luke’s Gospel here – one of the four accounts of the life of Jesus. Unlike the others, Luke has a sequel – the book of Acts. We started our walk through Luke at the beginning of Advent, and we’ll mostly be in Luke for the rest of this year. 

There are two related words here – Prosdokao, and Prosdechomai, meaning to look for, wait for, receive, or accept.  Together they show up 18 times in Luke and Acts. They are used twelve times in the **entire** rest of the New Testament – the other Gospels, epistles and writings. So I think it’s safe to say that Luke likes this word – these twinned words. That it’s part of his focal vocabulary. (The way that “immediately” is for Mark.)

In this specific verse in Luke 3, the crowd’s sense of expectation is explicitly eschatological. Eschatology is a fine big 50 cent word. It means relating to the Eschaton, which means, The Last Days. The time when God will turn things upside down and right side up. When there will be a new heaven and a new earth, and God will wipe away all tears. When the lion will lie down with the lamb, and nobody will study war any more. 

This crowd is wondering whether John is the Messiah, the divine chosen one sent by God to save and restore God’s people, and bring about that new time of peace and prosperity. 

When Luke uses these waiting-and-expecting words, it’s not always with a sense of eschatological anticipation. Sometimes it’s more mundane. People waiting for Zechariah to come out of the temple; somebody expecting to be given a coin.

But by my count, a little over half the time, the words are used with that sense – of not just casual, but cosmic, waiting.  We’re not talking about waiting for the bus. We’re talking about waiting for the consolation of God’s people. We’re talking about waiting for God. 

Things were not great, in early first century Judea. There were lots of reasons to feel fearful and hopeless and disconnected. People were waiting for signs that God was still out there. That they hadn’t been abandoned or forgotten.That God was still acting in the world, in human lives and human hearts; that God still had a plan, despite how fundamentally askew everything seemed. 

Prosdokao. Expecting, waiting, looking for. Why might this be such a central word and concept for Luke?

One of my favorite things about Luke is Acts. The other Gospels end soon after Jesus rises from the dead. Luke tells the next several chapters of the story. He tells us how people’s lives were transformed – not just by meeting Jesus, but by meeting people who had met Jesus, and by meeting people who had met people who had met Jesus. And by hearing the story of his life and death and rising, and the things he said and did… 

Our Acts lesson today is part of that longer narrative. A period of persecution in Jerusalem drives many out to preach elsewhere. A young man named Philip goes to the city of Samaria to proclaim the Messiah to them; people listen eagerly.  

Then Peter and John – Jesus’ close friends, leaders in the Jerusalem church – come to Samaria to fulfill Philip’s mission by baptizing the new believers there.

There’s some stuff in here about the baptism in the name of Jesus versus the baptism of the Holy Spirit; we understand the church’s baptism as encompassing both of those, but apparently they were separate for a while early on in the church’s story. 

The point is: These early Christians, Philip and the others – they’ve lost so much. They lost Jesus – twice. They’ve probably lost family, friends, social standing, by being part of this controversial new movement. They’ve had to flee persecution, at risk of their lives. And they’re still so excited about what God is doing through Jesus Christ that when they talk about it, people can’t help but listen. 

This is why I think Acts matters to us.  It shows us how our earliest faith ancestors carried on, after Easter, after Ascension. 

In many ways those closest to Jesus did not see the fulfillment they longed for. Jesus didn’t become the God-King of a restored Israel. Instead he died a degrading and painful death.  And when he rose from the dead, it wasn’t to kick butt and take names, or even just to keep hanging out with them. Instead, he gave them some assignments, and left. Again. 

They could have been bitterly disappointed. But instead, they seem really joyful. And more: They seem – expectant. 

Luke may have been part of some of the events of Acts. He uses “we” in some parts of the narrative. Or that may just be a literary device, to add immediacy to stories he’s heard about from others. Either way he’s clearly close to these events, to the highs and lows of the first couple of decades of Christianity. 

And there are both highs and lows. Successes and failures. There’s persecution and disappointment and conflict and loss. Acts ends with the implied death of the apostle Paul, one of the central figures of both the book of Acts and of early Christianity. 

But through it all, Luke has seen and heard and experienced enough to believe that God’s people are NOT abandoned.That God IS at work in the world and in human lives and hearts. I think that sense of holy waiting is a hallmark of Luke because that’s how Luke felt. He’d seen strange, wonderful, holy stuff happen – and despite everything, he expected strange, wonderful, holy stuff would keep happening, long after he laid down his pen.  

All the expectant people of Luke and Acts, crowds and individuals who are waiting and looking for something… Zechariah and Elizabeth, Simeon and Anna who greet the infant Jesus in the temple, the crowds gathered to hear John, and others… They don’t get to see Rome overthrown, Israel restored, Creation renewed. What they receive is much more partial and fragmentary. Signs and promises, glimpses and glimmers that tell them that God is still out there. That all is not lost. That there’s still meaning, and possibility, and promise. 

What happens in Luke and Acts isn’t that people see all that their dreams come to pass. What happens is that they are formed more and more deeply as people of faithful expectation. People who’ve been shown enough – whether in concrete signs in the world, or in God’s quiet revelation deep in their hearts – that they’re able to continue on in hope. And even choose to step into the baptismal waters and seek to become part of the slow unfolding of God’s purposes.  

May these faith-ancestors encourage us in our own heavy times. May we, too, be formed to live as the expectant people of God. 

Church Seasons & Holy Days, Sermons

Christmas Day sermon

Prepared by the Rev.’d Thomas McAlpine. 

Readings here.

Good morning, and merry Christmas!

Our readings present us with an intriguing collage; let’s take a few minutes to ponder it.

The first reading, written when Jerusalem was under the heel of the Persian (Iranian) Empire, calls on the Lord to do something. The psalm, probably written when the Lord’s kingship was mirrored by the Davidic king in Jerusalem, but continuing in use when the Davidides were a distant memory, sounds the same notes: “Zion hears and is glad, and the cities of Judah rejoice, / because of your judgments, O Lord.” And the psalm imagines all this playing out in terms of the familiar contrast between the righteous and wicked: “The Lord loves those who hate evil; / he preserves the lives of his saints / and delivers them from the hand of the wicked.”

The Gospel. I love the scene of the angel and heavenly military appearing to the shepherds: it’s the Good Lord handing out cigars scene. And the angel’s announcement promises the fulfillment of all the hopes voiced in Isaiah and the psalm: “to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord.” However: Jerusalem is now under the even heavier Roman heel, so that we might wonder whether what Jerusalem needs is this baby or Arnold Schwarzenegger making a Terminator-style entrance into our space-time coordinates. Some years later Jerusalem wondered this too, and opted for Barabbas for the now-grown Jesus who kept spouting nonsense like “love your enemies.” And with the events of Holy Week any self-serving understanding of the psalm’s “righteous/wicked” contrast went out the window, as the religious authorities handed Jesus over to the Romans and the disciples fled. And Jerusalem, who had for so long pleaded for the Lord’s intervention said, when the Lord showed up, no thank you. Now what?

All that’s the backstory for Paul’s words in Titus: “When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy.” Not because we got it right back then, or because we can be counted on to get it right now.

The Persian heel, the Roman heel, the many institutional and systemic heels today that grind down too many: the Lord responds not with Arnold, but with this baby. What does that tell us about how God understands power, about how God goes about getting things done?

Here’s the thing. Our culture treats the Christmas story as a sort of Rorschach, onto which we project all our assumptions and hopes. But the Christmas story is too specific for that: it affirms some of our hopes and overwrites most of our assumptions. To whom should the angel and heavenly military appear? To Caesar? To Herod? To the High Priest? God opts for the shepherds. Or, from Matthew’s account, Matthew describes Joseph as being a “righteous man,” and Joseph qua righteous man responds to Mary’s pregnancy with a plan to dismiss her quietly. So the first order of business is for an angel to have a quiet conversation with Joseph about what being righteous means. God would use the Christmas story, I think, to breathe life into our hopes and shake up our assumptions.

Luke tells us that “Mary treasured all these words and pondered them in her heart.” We might do the same.

Merry Christmas!

 

Church Seasons & Holy Days, Sermons

Sermon, Dec. 19

O Wisdom,  coming forth from the Most High, 

filling all creation and reigning to the ends of the earth; 

come and teach us the way of truth!
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

It’s the fourth Sunday in Advent. This coming Friday is Christmas Eve. Which means it’s almost the end of my favorite church season.

Christmas – the Feast of the Incarnation – has a profound theological significance for God’s people. The eternal Word of God becomes flesh and dwells among us – and not in pomp and power but as a child born to a poor family. Whether you find yourself able to believe the story as it comes to us, or whether you receive it as a parable about God’s yearning to be as close to us as an infant at the breast… there is power and beauty and hope in the Christmas Gospel. 

And yet… Advent is my favorite. Christmas is always just the littlest bit of a let-down. 

O Lord of Lords, and ruler of the House of Israel, 

you appeared to Moses in the fire of the burning bush, and gave him the law on Mount Sinai: 

come with your outstretched arm and ransom us.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Christmas is about the fulfillment of prophecy, of hope. Ancient promises come to birth.  Angels proclaim that God is doing a new thing. Shepherds and wizards honor the baby King, the Messiah, the Christ – which are Hebrew and Greek versions of the same word: The Anointed One, the one marked with oil as a sign of being set apart for God’s purposes. 

In Advent we turn back the clock, and wait. In our readings and hymns and prayers we remember the long yearning of God’s people for that Messiah, who would lead them and call them back to God’s ways. We remember John the Baptist and his lifelong vocation to call people to repentance and amendment of life, to prepare the way for Jesus.

We remember Mary, invited by God to become God’s mother, and her courageous Yes, and her song of fierce hope for a better world, one that reflects God’s priorities instead of humanity’s. 

Don’t let anybody tell you that Mary was meek and mild! She had a vision for a world transformed, and was willing to put herself, her body, her future on the line, to help fulfill God’s plans. She reminds me of the passionate hope and courage of some of the young folks I know today. 

Today’s readings invite us to stand with millennia of God’s people, crying out, Restore us, God! Gather your strength, come, and save us! Scatter the arrogant! Feed the hungry! Let your children around the world live in safety, in peace! 

O root of Jesse, standing as a sign among the nations; 

kings will keep silence before you for whom the nations long; 

come and save us and delay no longer!

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

The verses punctuating this sermon are called the O Antiphons. You might notice that they overlap with the Advent hymn “O come, O come, Emmanuel” – or you might not, because the wording is somewhat different. The hymn is based on these texts, which were probably written in Italy about 1500 years ago – they’re very old! 

There are seven O Antiphons, and by tradition they’re used for the seven days leading up to Christmas Eve. A sort of second countdown towards Christmas on top of Advent itself. 

Each O Antiphon names Jesus in a different way. O Sapientia, Wisdom! Evoking Old Testament texts that describe Wisdom as a breath of God, a feminine personification of God’s power, who befriends and guides humanity. 

O Adonai, Lord of Lords! – using an ancient name for God, recalling God’s self-revelation to Moses, as a Power greater than Pharaoh and his army. 

O radix Jesse and O Clavis David! – Root of Jesse, Key of David! David was Israel’s great king, a thousand years before Jesus. We met David this summer and we know he was far from perfect. But his name stands for a time of freedom, prosperity, unity, and peace for God’s people. For a thousand years Israel hoped for a new king like David – perhaps even a descendant of David, and of David’s father Jesse. 

O key of David and scepter of the House of Israel; 

you open and none can shut; you shut and none can open: 

come and free the captives from prison, and break down the walls of death.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

The key of David is my favorite image from the Antiphons; it comes from Isaiah, chapter 22. There’s a prophecy against an evil finance minister named Shebna? – the text says, and I quote, “The Lord is about to hurl you away violently, my man.”

Once God has yeeted Shebna into the desert, it continues, God will put another man, Eliakim, in his place – including putting him in charge of the keys of the palace. It’s an odd little passage – but the key symbolizes holy and righteous authority. 

Then there’s O Oriens! – O Morning Star, Star of the East! In Scripture and tradition, East is the direction of expectation and hope – probably, deep down, because east is the direction of sunrise. Churches generally have their altars pointing east – ours does. 

O Rex Gentium, King of the Nations! O Emmanuel, God with us! From Isaiah again: “Look, a young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.”

The O Antiphons point back in time, bringing forward the imagery of millennia of struggle, hope, and yearning. And they point forward, with urgent anticipation, giving us words for our struggle, hope, and yearning. 

O Morning Star, splendor of the light eternal 

and bright sun of righteousness: 

come and bring light to those who dwell in darkness and walk in the shadow of death.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus! 

This is, fundamentally, why Advent is my favorite, why I find it so real and so resonant. For this four weeks, the season in the church feels aligned with the season of the world, and the season of my heart. In Advent we cry out to God to mend what is broken and heal what is wounded, to overthrow the unjust and free those in bondage. 

We dare to shout: Restore us, God of hosts! Gather your power! Come and save! 

At the end of the Prayers of the People this season, we pray, “You have set before us the great hope that your kingdom shall come on earth;… Give us grace to discern the signs of its dawning.” And I do, I do; I can see glimpses of God at work in human hearts and human history. I have hope. 

At the same time, we remain deeply mired in callousness and cruelty, nihilism and violence – and the fundamentally flawed idea that there are kinds of people and that some matter more than others. 

We’re often exhausted and overwhelmed, angry or despairing. 

Christmas – certainly cultural Christmas, and sometimes church Christmas – says, Shhhh, can’t we just be happy for a minute? 

Advent says, Come stand next to me. Let’s holler together. 

O king of the nations, you alone can fulfil their desires;

cornerstone, binding all together: 

come and save the creatures you fashioned from the dust of the earth.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!

Advent is a season of double anticipation. I said that the first week, I say it every year. We anticipate Christmas, our annual celebration of the feast of the Incarnation; AND we anticipate – impatiently! – the fulfillment of God’s purposes for the world. Rescue, and restoration, and renewal. 

Theologians talk about how we live in the already/not yet – this in-between time, two thousand years and counting.  Christ’s birth and death and rising shifted something fundamental in reality, and yet, and yet…. We still struggle, suffer, yearn. We still wait.

Advent names and sacralizes that yearning, makes it holy. It doesn’t pretend that Christmas – or Easter for that matter – fixed everything. That it’s all joy and peace now.  Instead we can join our voices with Micah: May fearful and disconnected people live in safety and peace! With Mary: May the arrogant be brought down, and those trampled down be lifted up! With Zephaniah, last week: May corrupt and predatory leaders lose their power, and ordinary folks live in safety, with no one to make them afraid! 

What yearnings do we want to name before God, right now?…

Restore us, God! 

Gather your strength, come, and help us!

O Emmanuel, our King and Lawgiver, 

hope of the nations and their savior: 

come and save us, O Lord our God.
Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!