In the calendar of Bible readings that we use, we’ve been reading bits of the first and second letters to Timothy for several weeks. Timothy was a companion of the apostle Paul, the great early church leader who traveled around the ancient world founding churches. Timothy is named as a co-author in six of Paul’s letters. In Philippians, Paul writes, “I have no one like him.” 

The Biblical letters known as First and Second Timothy appear to be letters from Paul to Timothy. They are not. The author includes lots of details, trying to sound like Paul, but there are also MANY hints that this is NOT Paul. This is somebody writing after Paul’s death, in Paul’s name, to say some stuff they wish Paul had said – like that women should be quiet and submissive. They’re basically forgeries or deepfakes, and I’m not a big fan! (I found a good summary video about that, if anyone’s interested.) 

However. There’s one thing I think these letters do well, and that’s their emphasis on the importance of young people to the church. Today’s passage reads in part, “Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing… how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you.” This echoes an earlier passage from the first letter to Timothy: “Don’t let anyone look down on you because you are young. Instead, set an example for the believers through your speech, behavior, love, and faith.” (1 Timothy 4:12)

Possibly the best thing these letters do is invite us to take young people seriously in church. Their hearts, their lives, their questions, their hopes, their fears, their faith. That’s a long-time core value for me, because I’m here doing what I do because some faithful adults took me and my faith seriously when I was a teenager. 

I could tell that story sometime, but I have a different story to tell right now. My family and I arrived at St. Dunstan’s in January of 2011 – almost fifteen years ago! At the time there were some big kids, like Rob’s older kids, who were around but not very active in the church, because there wasn’t much for them here. Our kids were one and five at the time, and they joined Simon and Isaac Gildrie-Voyles, who were maybe three and six, as the “regular” little kids at church. A couple years later, Cecilie and James showed up, with little Linus and Olive. There were other kids who were here for a while, or participated sometimes. Every year, I go into my photo software and create a little album of some of the best photos of church life that year, and in those early years there are some pictures of kids doing kid stuff at church – Christmas pageants, camp, and so on. 

And then we hit 2016. I don’t know why it was 2016, but it was. Sarah and Max showed up late in 2015. And then the Mayers came, with Zoe and Grace. Leonora came, with Anselm and Evangeline. The Behrens came, with Rachel and Levi. Andi showed up, with tiny Magdalena. And there were kids born into the church too – Mary’s kids and Rob’s younger kids, and Lorne and Blythe. I’m not suggesting that the households that have joined us since 2016 are any less important! It was just really interesting to look back at the photos, and realize that that really was a pivotal year. The year we hit critical mass – enough kids who were around often, to start doing stuff with them regularly. 

And one of the things we started was a youth group. 

When our youth group started – under the determined, faithful volunteer leadership of Sharon Henes, now moved to Connecticut, and JonMichael Rasmus – it was really really small. First we had two kids, then three. 

But kids invited their friends; almost right from the start we had kids in the mix who didn’t attend church here – kids like Alice and Tatum, who became deeply faithful members and still come back to join us for drama camps or mission trips when they can. 

Today our youth program has consistent relationships with 32 youth and young adults. That doesn’t mean there are 30+ kids over there every Friday evening – though it’s not uncommon for there to be 20+, across the middle and high school groups. But it does very much mean that more than thirty young people turn to this group, this space we’ve created, the faithful adults who invite and tend that space, as one of the things that anchor them in the demands and complexities of their lives. 

You’re going to hear a lot about the youth program over the next few weeks – because during Giving Campaign season we talk about the budget, and when we talk about the budget, we’re talking about the youth program, and our ongoing decision to stretch ourselves and see what’s possible. The scary thing about talking about the youth program is the fear that some people may feel put off by it. Because they don’t have an immediate connection, it’s not for them or their loved ones, so they may feel that when we talk about the youth program, that means that they’re less valued, less supported. And even for people who like the youth program, it could be easy to feel like it’s just for the youth, and doesn’t have much to do with the rest of the parish. 

I’d like to make the case today that the youth program is good for all of us, and for St. Dunstan’s as a faith community. A few months ago I took on the task of noticing ways the youth program benefits and feeds the church as a whole. There was a lot to notice. First, there’s stuff they do that helps and blesses us. Back in August I asked for help rearranging the furniture in the Nave, and four or five of our youth just took that on and got it done. 

Linus Ballard recently sang a solo for us as a musical offering; I’ve heard from so many people who loved that. This past summer Iona and Zoe took on organizing the costume collection; they did so much, so fast, that it kind of blew my mind, and they’re working on maintaining it, too. When I need child care help for a gathering, our youth are a ready pool of potential helpers, and often already know the kids they’ll be tending. In Sunday worship, we have two regular youth officiants, in addition to our amazing acolyte corps. As part of our recent work on emergency planning, Ruth Parks needed help identifying safe hiding places around our buildings; she worked with a group of our youth and found them to be great partners in that project – they’re familiar with this kind of thing from their schools, and they know ALL the best hiding places here! 

Then there are the ways the youth group brings folks together from the wider congregation, with events and opportunities for everybody. The youth role in our summer Drama Camp for younger kids has grown year by year until our high schoolers are substantially running big parts of it. The after-church all-ages Trick or Treat coming up in a couple of weeks is another example. So is our annual bake sale for GSAFE in early December. This year the youth group invited folks to a bonfire on Labor Day weekend for the first time, and more than forty people came out! It was a really amazing time to gather, connect, share s’mores and sing together. 

Then there are the ways the youth program draws people into the parish. Kids and their parents want to be here because they see opportunities for meaningful involvement in church, all the way through middle and high school. Younger kids see big kids participating, contributing, leading – and they want to grow up and become those big kids. I also hear from folks who don’t have kids, or whose kids are grown, that they value the joy and liveliness they sense here, and being part of a community that has – and values – young people. 

And those folks who come here, and stay here, because of the presence of kids and youth, bring so much as well. We have a lot of amazing adults in this church because of our youth group. 

Then there’s the leadership our youth offer us, and their care for our common life. Max doesn’t just keep an eye on the play corner; he’s keeping an eye on all of us and our safety as we worship. 

Isaac has been an amazing addition to our vestry, with lots of insight to share; you’ll hear from him in a couple of weeks, and you’ll see what I mean. As we keep up our commitment to putting out our Pride signs – made by the youth –  every June, folks beyond the parish tell us that they see and value that message. I hear things like, “I don’t go to church, but if I did…” 

Last spring, the high school retreat focused on mutual aid, and the kids came up with the idea of offering a fun special event for youth in the wider community that might be lonely and disconnected. On Sunday, November 2, our youth are hosting a big Capture the Flag game on our church property, as a first experiment in fulfilling that intention. Our youth minister Isa applied for a diocesan grant to fund the event. I’m on the committee that reads those applications. I don’t vote on applications from my own parish, but I can tell you that ours was the only proposal from a youth group, and that the team was really excited to get it, and to fund it, because it came from young people wanting to make a difference for their community. 

Our youth program gives so much back to our parish as a whole, in all kinds of ways. And: it does matter to the youth, too! Youth group isn’t just something we do for fun, although it is fun. It’s also sometimes really demanding, because it’s hard to be a tween or teenager, and kids are dealing with tough stuff, and Isa and JonMichael and our other helpers are choosing to be in that with them, with love and hope and creativity and courage. 

Between a third and a half of the youth who participate aren’t part of this parish; they were invited by friends, or found their own way to us. Our program serves queer kids, and neurodiverse kids, and kids from all kinds of backgrounds. When I was there with the Middler group in September, during the prayer and sharing time, one kid talked about feeling like they don’t have really good, solid friends at school. And the response from the group was instant and loud: WE’RE YOUR FRIENDS! 

It is expensive running a youth program. Most churches our size, and our budget, don’t have a quarter-time youth minister on staff. It’s a financial stretch for us to do this- though our diocese, recognizing the importance of what we’re doing, has been helping. Still: It’s expensive – the staff salary, the pizza and snacks, the special events, trips and camps – it all adds up. However, when a church chooses not to invest in kids and youth, that’s also expensive in the long run, as the congregation dwindles and fades. 

We are a church with a youth group, not a youth group with a church. There are lots of good things that are part of our life together and our shared engagement with the wider world. Long-term, deeply sustaining things; new, vital, exciting things. We’ll hear about some not-so-youth-y parts of our life as a parish in the coming weeks, too. 

And: The youth program is so much more than just something that happens in the other building on Friday evenings. It’s become one of the engines that gives energy and drive to this church, in a really special way. I feel joyful and hopeful and curious to see where that leads us together, in the coming months and years – raising up these young people among us who from childhood have known the sacred writings that instruct us in salvation, and who set an example for the believers through their speech, behavior, love, and faith.

Today’s Gospel is more complicated than it seems. This story is often preached as a invitation to gratitude. I don’t have a problem with gratitude! I feel grateful for many things on a daily basis. Gratitude is theologically appropriate and psychologically beneficial. But! It’s not at all clear to me that the nine who are healed in this story, but don’t return to Jesus, are ungrateful.

Let me offer some quick but essential context. These ten men have some kind of skin disease; it might or might not be the disease that we call leprosy, today. Way, way back in early Bible times, people understood that skin diseases can be contagious, can spread between people, even though they didn’t understand why. There weren’t doctors or public health officials, so the leaders they did have – religious leaders – had to be both of those things. The thirteenth chapter of the Book of Leviticus, the third book of the Bible, describes in somewhat unpleasant detail exactly what the priests should look for, when examining a skin ailment. If someone had a serious skin infection of some kind, they had to live on the edge of the community, avoiding contact with others; and the priest would check them every week to see if the infection was healing. If their skin cleared up, they could return to their home and family and normal life – but they had to get the all-clear from the priests to do that. This is public health before public health; it sounds cruel, but it’s better than letting leprosy run rampant through a village. 

This religious handling of illness and health is the reason our Gospel text describes this healing as being made clean. This isn’t just physical restoration, but social and spiritual cleansing.

So! These ten men seem to have formed their own little micro-community, since they’re not allowed to come close to other people; notice they keep their distance from Jesus. They hear that this famous teacher and healer is passing through, so they come to meet him. They call out for him to have mercy, and Jesus tells them, Go, show yourselves to the priests. 

It seems to me like it’s a significant act of faith that they turn around and set out, even though Jesus hasn’t obviously done anything yet. But as they go, their bodies are restored; they are made clean. 

Nine of them – we presume – continue on to present themselves to the priests. Which is the right and necessary thing for them to do! It’s the only way for their physical healing to be fulfilled by being restored to community and normalcy. There’s no reason for Jesus to be so snarky about them, here. 

I wonder if Jesus didn’t expect any of the ten to return. And when one of them does rush back – praising God loudly, throwing himself at Jesus’ feet, generally making a scene – he has to do something with that disruption. So he makes it into a little teaching moment about gratitude… even though the other nine, wherever they are, are probably also plenty grateful and expressing that in a religiously appropriate way. 

If the point isn’t gratitude – or isn’t only gratitude – what else is going on here? Both Luke’s Jesus and Luke himself make a point of the fact that the one who turned back is an outsider – a Samaritan. Which makes perfect sense, actually! Samaritans lived – and still live – in the region that used to be the northern Kingdom of Israel. They see themselves as descended from Moses, and sharing the same history and God as the Jewish people; but they believe that a mountain in their region is the holiest site on earth, not the Great Temple in Jerusalem. Tensions between Samaritans and Jews were high, after attacks on each other’s holy places in the decades before Jesus’ birth. So, this Samaritan was never going to go show himself to the Jewish priests. That wasn’t his faith, and he would not be welcome. 

Jesus wants his disciples, and the crowd that gathers whenever he stops to teach and preach and heal, to notice that the tenth man is grateful – but also to notice that he’s a foreigner. The Greek word is allogenes, literally “from somewhere else.” To put it in the simplest terms possible, Jesus wants his audience to take away two thoughts: Hey, I should thank God when good things happen, and, Hey, sometimes foreigners aren’t so bad. They can be just like us – or even better! 

Jesus’ calling his hearers’ attention to the righteousness of this foreigner is aligned with one of the great themes of the Bible. The Old Testament, the Scriptures from before the time of Jesus, are very clear that God’s people are to treat the stranger, the alien, the immigrant with respect and care, because they have been strangers and aliens – in Egypt in their early history, in exile in Babylon much later. The New Testament in turn is incredibly clear that God does not have a favorite kind of people; that followers of Christ are all one, irrespective of language, race, class, nationality, gender; that we’re called to love our neighbors, and that love is what makes someone a neighbor, not proximity or affinity. 

It’s easy to take for granted that we all know and understand this. But our lessons today point towards our faithful obligation towards the other, whether defined by ethnicity, language, national origin or immigration status. And even when we know where our church stands, it can be helpful to talk about why – especially when some of those others, those neighbors, are in danger. 

Last month was Treaty Day for southern Wisconsin. The UW Madison website explains, “In a treaty signed on September 15, 1832, the Ho-Chunk nation ceded Teejop (Four Lakes) [and much of southern Wisconsin] to the United States [government]… [That treaty is] what allows non-Ho-Chunk people to reside in Madison today… 

It was signed under duress…, and required [the Ho-Chunk] to leave Teejop. The treaty began more than forty years of attempted ethnic cleansing when soldiers and many settlers repeatedly used violence and threats to [try to] force the Ho-Chunk from Wisconsin.”

I don’t know of anyone in our congregation who claims indigenous identity or tribal affiliation. That means that through the lens of Treaty Day, we are ALL people from somewhere else. 

And yet we’re seeing open hostility from a whole lot of other from-somewhere-else type folks, towards more recent arrivals – or those perceived as such. That hostility, in the highest levels of our government, is making some of our great American cities feel like war zones – not because of the residents, but because of the masked and armed outsiders thronging the streets, raiding apartment buildings and workplaces, seizing civilians with little or belated accountability to the rule of law, threatening those who protest or resist with escalating violence.  

Every week, when we pray for all nations and peoples, I pray for all migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers. Sometimes loudly, sometimes quietly, but always. There are so many reasons people leave one place and come to another – for study, for safety, for freedom, for work and opportunity. (Significant chunks of our economy depend on immigrant workers.) It’s often a mix of factors that drive a person or household to pull up stakes and set out for somewhere else. But it’s always hard, and risky, and it’s probably always at least a little sad. Deserving of compassion.

Latino New Testament scholar Eric Barreto writes, “The experience of the foreigner is unenviable. On the one hand, the foreigner’s new home is never quite home. Many will dream of returning to the land of their birth, but… for most, returning home is a dream; it is pure nostalgia that can easily rot into resentment, decline into despair. Their new home is their true home, [but] it may never feel that way.” 

Barreto continues by pointing out the centrality of the foreigner – and the experience of being in a place where you don’t belong – to God’s people in Scripture and history. He argues that to devalue and decry the presence of foreigners among us today, our more recently from-somewhere-else neighbors, is to turn away from part of our core faith story, to settle for an incomplete Gospel. He concludes, “The foreigner is a vital presence among us. The foreigner is a reminder of the pain of displacement many of us have felt. The foreigner is a reminder that God’s promises know no boundaries or borders, that God’s grace will not abide by the arbitrary lines we draw between ourselves and others.”

I have to confess to a failure of empathy here. I find it somewhat hard to understand those who feel resentful or threatened by the presence of more-recently-from-somewhere-else folks among us, because to me it mostly seems like a blessing. My parents are coming up for Thanksgiving week, as they often do, and as always, our planning for the week involves quite a bit of conversation – and some difficult choices – about where to EAT. The amazing Lebanese place over in Middleton? The new Mexican breakfast place down off Fish Hatchery? The South Indian place across from PetSmart with the excellent dosas? Taigu Noodle, down the road, run by the amazing Hong Gao, who leads the Chinese choir that practices here on Saturdays?  

Look, there’s a lot more to the complexity and ambiguity of the immigrant experience, and to being a truly diverse and affirming city, than having lots of interesting restaurants. Food is superficial; but it is also a real and meaningful way to notice how much we are enriched by our diversity. 

Last week I saw a snippet of video of ICE activity on the east side of Madison. In the comments under the video, several people were saying, Come to my town – naming other towns and cities in Wisconsin, implying that they’d like to see their immigrant neighbors tossed into unmarked vans and driven away.

One commenter said, Come to Beaver Dam. Beaver Dam is a small city is about 50 minutes northeast of here; its population is about 12% Latino. My friend Mike Tess is the pastor of the Episcopal Church there. Mike is a gringo like me, but he has a deep commitment to learning Spanish so that he can be in relationship with folks in his community, and potentially welcome them into his church. (He wants to take a group from our diocese to Mexico for a language immersion course next summer – let me know if you’re interested!) Imagine being a Latino person living in Beaver Dam, interacting with white community members, as you must, and not knowing: Is this somebody like my friend Mike, a person of warmth and curiosity? Or is this somebody like that person in the comments, who wants you gone, and doesn’t much care what becomes of you? 

The prophet Jeremiah writes to his fellow Judeans in exile in Babylon, “Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare.” I learned this text as, In its peace you shall find your peace. The Hebrew word there is shalom, a beautiful, dense word that means peace and welfare and flourishing, all wrapped together. 

Seek the peace of the city where you dwell as exiles, for in its peace you shall find your peace. This is a favorite passage, for me. I hear it as an invitation to citizenship in the fullest sense; to loving our neighbors by participating in civic life in ways that extend shalom to all. 

And I hear it as addressed to me, to us, even though Jeremiah is speaking here to exiles, to people-from-somewhere-else, about how to live in a place where they don’t belong. Because in the Christianity that has formed me, our true belonging, our deepest loyalties, are not to any city, state, or nation, but to God. 

We’re a few weeks out from Christ the King Sunday – a holy day created in the aftermath of World War I, to remind Christians to set aside nationalistic pride and ethnic antagonisms, remember that we are all first and foremost citizens of the kingdom of God, and live as gracious strangers, wherever we find ourselves. It’s an understanding of Christianity that’s almost diametrically opposed to the mindset of white Christian nationalism, espoused by some of our fellow Americans – some of my fellow pastors! – who see close alignment among Christian identity, Whiteness, and strong identification as American, for a certain definition of America. I find it a difficult ideology to understand, because the way of Jesus as we encounter it in the Gospels has nothing to do with either whiteness or America – and urges us to see ourselves as part of a body that transcends race and place. 

We belong here; we belong to, and with, one another. At the same time, we’re all strangers, all people from somewhere else, not only in the literal sense of our varied immigrant histories but in the theological and ecclesiological sense of belonging to something – to Someone – that rightly relativizes and releases other identities and loyalties. 

Seek the peace of the city where you dwell. 

Love your neighbors; pay attention to what’s happening to them, especially when they’re in need or at risk. 

Seek the peace of the city where you dwell. 

See in those recently from-somewhere-else a reminder that God’s grace will not abide by the arbitrary lines we draw between ourselves and others.

Seek the peace of the city where you dwell. 

Let the Bible’s commitment to welcome for the stranger discipline us to hospitality and to courage. 

Seek the peace of the city where you dwell,

For in its peace we shall find our peace. 

Amen. 

So there’s one big thing in this story that can be distracting or even scary. It’s the idea that when the rich man dies, he is sent to a place of suffering. A place of flames where he’s desperately thirsty and can’t get relief. That’s pretty scary, right? 

Some of you/the grownups might have grown up in churches that talked a lot about how our beliefs and actions in life might mean we go to Heaven – or Hell – when we die. 

(You may have noticed that’s NOT stuff we talk about a lot here!)

In the story that Jesus tells, the places where the rich man and Lazarus end up when they die are not Heaven and Hell. 

In Jesus’ time people had a lot of different ideas about what happened after you die – just like today. 

Some people thought nothing happened. 

Some people thought you would sleep for a long, long time. 

Some people thought that you’d go to the land of the dead. Some parts of that land were really beautiful and lush and comfortable – like the valleys of Abraham. And some parts of it were terrible and dry and scorched. And there’s a chasm – a great big split in the ground – between those two places.

Jesus is using that idea to tell this story. 

He is not answering The Big Question about what happens after we die, here. There are a couple of other places in the Gospels where he seems to be trying to say something about that – like when he says, In my Father’s house there are many mansions. But it seems like what happens after we die is pretty hard to explain. And he’s not trying to explain it, here.

That’s not what this story is about at all. 

The point of this story is not that the rich man should have been kind to Lazarus TO AVOID PUNISHMENT AFTER HE DIED. 

That is not the reason he should have been kind!

God does not want us to do kind and right and just things because we are afraid. 

That was the church’s idea, I think. 

Fear is not a healthy heart-reason to do good things. 

The point is that the rich man should have been kind to Lazarus because it was the right thing to do.

It was what all the teachings and traditions of his faith told him – 

As well as just basic empathy and humanity! 

So, the point of this story isn’t to make us worry about burning for eternity! But what IS the point of the story? 

What does Jesus want to make people think about, here? 

One thing he wants us to think about is what can happen inside of people who have too much money.

Is that a strange idea – too much money? … 

Right before he tells this story, Jesus says, “You cannot serve both God and money.” Only what he really says is, “You cannot serve God and Mammon.” 

What’s Mammon? 

Mammon is an interesting word that shows up a few times in the Bible. It means wealth, like a lot of money – a LOT of money.

But it doesn’t just mean money. 

It means money that people are treating like a god. 

Mammon means that people are putting money at the center of their lives, instead of God or other people or the wellbeing of their community and world. 

The great reformer Martin Luther wrote about Mammon. He said, “Many a person thinks they have God and everything they need when they have money and property. They trust in those things, and boast of them so stubbornly and boldly that they don’t care about anybody or anything else. A person like that fixes their whole heart on their god Mammon, that is, money and possessions. Mammon is the most common idol on earth.”

I know people who have enough money to share and are very generous and thoughtful about sharing.

I don’t think I know anybody who is super duper rich. But it does seem like people who are super duper rich are not always very happy? … 

Jesus wants us to notice how Mammon is at the center of the rich man’s life. His wealth lets him make everything around him just the way he wants it – his home, his clothes, his food. 

Maybe he gets so used to having everything exactly the way he likes it, that when there’s something unpleasant – like a poor, sick man lying on the ground – he just doesn’t even see it.

It’s like he’s wearing special Mammon glasses. 

There is a lot going on in this story, even though it seems pretty simple, and there are a lot of things it might leave us thinking about or wondering. 

But maybe the thing Jesus would want us to hear in this story today is actually a word of consolation and reassurance. 

It could be easy to hear this story as telling us that we’re supposed to reach out and help people who are struggling or alone or in need… 

And then to feel guilty or ashamed or overwhelmed. 

Because we know about A LOT of suffering!! … 

I know the grownups and the big kids hear about news from all over the world. People hurt and sick and hungry and afraid in Gaza, Sudan, Ukraine, Haiti. 

We hear scary or sad news from across our country, too. Acts of violence, communities under threat, ecological disasters. 

I don’t know what grade they start showing you news in your classrooms, but at some point even our younger kids start hearing about some of this stuff – from school, or from other kids, or from their parents and older siblings talking about it at home. 

A lot of us feel an obligation to stay informed. We’re citizens of a powerful nation; there’s not much that happens in the world where our country doesn’t bear some kind of responsibility. So, in turn, we feel responsible – to learn, pray, advocate, donate, vote. 

That is the righteous work of citizenship and community. 

 And also: it’s much more than the folks who first heard Jesus tell this story would have had to deal with.

They didn’t have a 24-hour news cycle.

They didn’t have Instagram reels from war zones. 

They might hear, eventually, about a famine in that country, or a plague in that region, or a battle over there. 

But most of the suffering people knew about was the suffering they could see. The needs and struggles right there in their community, in their neighborhood. 

The rich man in the story isn’t reading about Lazarus in the newspaper. He’s literally walking past him – maybe stepping over him! – on a daily basis. 

So much information comes at us about human suffering around the country, around the world. 

I think sometimes it can be really too much for us.  

We get overwhelmed, discouraged, paralyzed. Numb. 

Sometimes it might even have an impact on our capacity to see and respond to the needs and struggles that ARE close at hand. That we could reach out and touch. 

Nobody, nobody in this congregation, 

if someone were literally bleeding and starving on your doorstep, 

would just step over him and do nothing. 

Nobody. 

But maybe we need permission 

to lift our eyes from our doorstep, but NOT TOO FAR. 

What’s the human suffering… on my block? 

Within a mile of my home, my work, my school? 

To read our local papers, and wonder: what are the ways people are struggling or suffering in my city, my town, right here?

Sometimes people could feel like focusing more locally means they’re ceding responsibility or closing their eyes and hearts to big needs elsewhere. We all need to find our own balance, and feel deeply inside us what we need to carry and stand for. 

But there are good reasons to think locally about how to connect and help and serve. I’ve learned this from folks with a lot more wisdom and experience about how to respond to needs, tend folks’ humanity, and build towards a better future, so my list of reasons is not going to be comprehensive! But here are a few. 

Responding to local needs may mean we’re more able to make a real difference, because we have a better understanding of the stakeholders and the needs and constraints and possibilities.

Responding to local needs can build networks and relationships that will help us better respond to other situations in the future. 

Responding to local needs is wise – shrewd! – in a time when some of our friends and neighbors are under threat and living with a lot of fear – because local, real-life connections can be safer and more trustworthy ways to connect and help. 

In our Godly Play classroom we ask, I wonder where you are in this story? If the person in Jesus’ story that you feel closest to is Lazarus – if you are down or struggling, in pain or in need – I hope this community will respond to you with compassion and care. 

Maybe what we need to hear in Jesus’ story today is permission not to try to carry the weight of the whole world – that’s the consolation, the reassurance I mentioned. 

And instead, an invitation to look for who and what is hurting, in our neighborhoods and networks, and to ask ourselves and each other what we can do about it.

How we can help, even a little – not because we’re afraid of eternal flames, but because that’s the kind of people God made us to be. 

Not to step over a suffering neighbor, 

but to step into our shared humanity. 

May it be so. 

We are living in complicated times. Difficult times. Unprecedented times. I hear it so often – I say it so often – that the words start to feel like ashes in my mouth. And yet: it’s true. These are bitterly, deeply, foundation-crackingly complicated times in which to live. 

There are moments and places and circumstances where things feel crystal clear. Things like our desire to protect our trans and nonbinary friends, loved ones, selves; our determination to stand with immigrant neighbors; our outrage about threats to access to healthcare, huge cuts to lifesaving research, protections for the environment we all share.

AND there are also moments and places and circumstances when things feel incredibly murky – around and within us. Maybe you feel trapped in daily choices, compromises and constraints. Maybe it feels like your bedrock values, the ones that have led you to be who you are and do what you do, now have to be whispered – if not entirely silenced – instead of shouted from the rooftops. Maybe you struggle with knowing how to feel, let alone what to do or say. 

I’m hearing hints of this murkiness from folks who work for the federal government. From folks who work in education and health care. From folks with any kind of public profile or platform. From people just struggling with how to read the news and then get up and go on with their day. 

These kinds of conversations have reminded me of the idea of moral injury. Moral injury happens when life injures your sense of being able to trust your leaders and do what’s right. The concept arose out of studies of healthcare personnel prevented from providing care by institutional constraints, and military veterans who had experienced their leaders, friends, or selves doing things that felt wrong, in the moment or in retrospect. A PTSD diagnosis didn’t fully capture the moral anguish these folks expressed. 

The International Centre for Moral Injury states that moral injury “involves a profound sense of broken trust in ourselves, our leaders, governments and institutions to act in just and morally ‘good’ ways,” and the experience of “sustained and enduring negative moral emotions – guilt, shame, contempt and anger – that results from the betrayal, violation or suppression of deeply held or shared moral values.” (All citations from Wikipedia, Moral Injury entry.) 

Moral injury seems like a pretty good name for some of the internal murkiness – and associated distress! – that people are naming to me. Today’s Epistle from the first letter of Timothy urges Christians to pray for our political leaders, “so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life.” Pragmatic advice from a community at risk of political persecution – but I know that some of you struggle with how to respond to our liturgy’s invitation to pray for all those in authority, every Sunday. 

I know, too, that many have grappled deeply with how to feel, let alone what to say, in the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk – whom some folks knew of as a Christian motivational speaker, and others knew as an incendiary voice who built his movement on targeting marginalized groups and stoking fear to mobilize outrage. Activist Gwen Snyder commented on Bluesky, “I think it is corrosive on a spiritual level to live in a world where we are so unused to justice that a political assassination feels [to some people] like cause for celebration.” Disciples of Christ pastor and writer Derek Penwell captured some of this corrosive confusion, writing, “Jesus says love your enemies. The timeline says humiliate them. I’m not trying to referee the news; I’m just trying to shepherd my own heart while the barometer drops. I’m stuck between the Sermon on the Mount and the comments section.”

Into all this disorienting murkiness, the Gospel of Luke drops this incredibly murky parable.

Some of Jesus’ parables have really clear messages! Like the lost and found parables: God loves us and will always seek us out! Good news! Some parables are a lot more perplexing, and this one is close to the top of that list. Not just for me! Every commentary I’ve looked at says some version of, Whoo. This one’s a doozy. 

Jesus tells different kinds of parables. They don’t all work the same way. For example, I often remind us not to assume that the king or the boss in every parable is a stand-in for God. Sometimes yes; sometimes no. Here, I think, no. This is a wisdom parable, not a kingdom parable – meaning it’s about the world as it is, not the world as God means it to be.

I suspect that the parable as Jesus told it ends somewhere before the word “Whoever.” It’s not clear whether that last little bouquet of sayings belongs with this parable, or not. Sometimes the Gospel writers added explanations to the parables, to make it clearer what they thought Jesus was talking about. Luke, here, is working with a source document consisting of a bunch of stories and sayings of Jesus. Sometimes he’s just trying to figure out how to string it together and fit it all into the Gospel narrative he gets from Mark. So these sayings may not match this parable at all. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jesus’ version ended with these words: “People who belong to this world are more clever in dealing with their peers than are people who belong to the light.” Or in the more poetic language of the NRSV translation: “The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” 

Let’s make sure we understand the story. There’s a boss, a rich man, a master, and there’s his business manager, sometimes called his steward. And the boss gets word that the manager has been wasting his money. 

Fun fact: the same word is used for the prodigal son’s wasting or squandering of his inheritance, in the story that comes just before this one! We don’t know what the manager has been up to, but apparently it’s nothing that has made him any lasting friends, or provided for his future – no secret account in Turks and Caicos. 

The boss calls the manager in to see him. What’s this I’m hearing about you?!? Bring me the account books immediately, show me what you’ve been doing! And then turn in your keys; you’re out. 

Jesus’ storytelling is so wonderful as he gives us the manager’s internal monologue: What am I going to do!? I’m not strong enough to dig, to earn my keep by manual labor, and I’m too proud to beg. I know what I’ll do – so that when I’ve turned in my keys here, some people will still welcome me into their houses. 

And then he starts calling in the people who owe something to his master. Maybe tenant farmers who work on the master’s land, maybe just ordinary neighboring folks who have gotten into hardship and had to borrow from the local wealthy landlord. 

The manager opens the account books, where the record of what is owed is kept, and he starts changing the numbers. Jesus gives us a couple of examples – a man who owes nine hundred gallons of olive oil has it reduced to four hundred and fifty; a man who owes a thousand bushels of wheat has it reduced to 800. But we’re to assume that this happens over and over, with ten, twenty, fifty different debtors. 

Walk with me briefly into the weeds about these debts. It was and is against Jewish religious law to charge interest to other Jews. But we know from ancient records that people found ways to make a debt grow without calling it interest. The manager would likely also have taken a fee from every debt he handled. 

So we don’t know whether the cuts to these debts are reducing the principal, what was originally borrowed, or just taking off all the extra. If the manager is changing the debts back to the original amount – as some Biblical scholars think – then that’s very clever, because it leaves the master in a bind. It would be hard to publicly demand back all that that interest, forbidden by religious law. There’s a wonderful irony in that from the master’s point of view, this is yet more “squandering” on the part of the manager. 

The manager isn’t liberating the debtors entirely – he doesn’t just burn the files – but he is easing their burden somewhat. But he’s not doing it out of altruism. He’s doing it so that when he gets fired, in, like, ten minutes, he’s not public enemy number one. So that some people might give him a little food and let him sleep in their barn for a while. 

Who are we supposed to side with, here? The verses tacked on at the end include this question: “If you haven’t been faithful with someone else’s property, who will give you your own?” It’s easy to read this as a condemnation of the manager’s squanderings. But by making lucrative, predatory loans, the master has ALSO arguably been unfaithful with other people’s property. I suspect that Jesus himself did not care very much about people paying back their debts to the penny, especially in a brutally exploitative economic system that ground down the poor and enriched the wealthy and corrupted the middle management. And Jesus’ original audience, mostly working-class folks, probably empathized with the debtors – and appreciated the manager’s cleverness, even if his motives were skewed.

What are we supposed to make of this parable?…

In the translation we read today, the master commends the manager for his cleverness. In other translations, the original Greek word there – phronimos – is translated as shrewd. 

Shrewd is an interesting word. To call someone shrewd is a compliment, though sometimes a grudging one. It means someone’s good at understanding a situation and making things work out the way they want. But shrewdness is hardly a virtue – in fact it’s oddly amoral; we might equally note the shrewdness of allies or enemies. Likewise clever – it’s not necessarily praise. 

Phronimos, that Greek word, is sometimes translated as wise or wisdom. But it’s a very different wisdom from the more often-used Greek word sophia – wisdom as deep insight with a quality of moral rootedness and righteousness. Sophia-wisdom is associated with the holy, with God, with seeing things as God sees them. Phronimos is a much more contextual and ambiguous kind of wisdom – the wisdom of knowing which way the wind blows, and which side one’s bread is buttered on. 

What I’m hearing from friends, from family, from all of you who are both friends and family in this household of faith, is that the internal murkiness of this season is really hard. Living with moral injury, with ambiguity, with compromise and silence, with trying to make the best of a wide variety of bad situations – when it’s often really unclear what the best is, or what best is even possible. 

It feels bad and weird and gross. 

If, like me, you come from a middle-class white family, you may feel very deeply that standing up, being your authentic self, and speaking your truth – even if your voice shakes, as they say – is always the right and good thing to do. Your responsibility and your birthright. Holding back our words, keeping our opinions to ourselvses, can feel like fire shut up in our bones, in the words of our friend the prophet Jeremiah. 

Many of us face hard questions about how to be able to keep doing the most good we can, under our general and particular circumstances. And our information is imperfect; we just have to make our best guess, and try – and sometimes, that trying means that tolerating or participating in things that are deeply uncomfortable to us. That violate our values and sense of self. 

Back in May, I was invited to a gathering of clergy to talk about how to preach and pastor in these times. A number of Black church pastors were part of the group. Our Scripture theme was the turn from the Book of Genesis into the Book of Exodus. At the end of Genesis, Joseph has ingratiated himself with Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and he and his people, the Hebrews, are doing great, treated as part of the elite in Egyptian society. But a few generations pass and there’s a new Pharaoh, who doesn’t know or care about Joseph. And now the Hebrews, Joseph’s people, are enslaved, bitterly oppressed. 

At one point during our gathering, one of the Black clergy noted how surprised and distressed the white clergy seemed by our national circumstances. He leaned in and told us all – clearly, kindly – “We’ve always known we couldn’t trust Pharaoh.” 

It’s not news to us – he said, without saying – that the powers that be do not have our interests at heart. That the status quo was not built for our people’s flourishing, whether the party in power starts with an R or a D. 

One thing we can do – that white, middle-class “we” – in these frightening and murky times is to listen to those kinds of voices. To learn from people who have never assumed that they would be free to live as they please and speak their truth boldly. Who’ve had to be shrewd, clever, prudent, strategic – first to survive, then to build strength and move forward together.  

The little group here that’s been reading the work of 20th century Black theologian Howard Thurman together has appreciated grappling with and learning from Thurman’s mapping of the inner murkiness of life and ethics and humanity for Black folks in Jim Crow’s America. 

People who belong to this world are more shrewd in dealing with their peers than are people who belong to the light. We’re supposed to be people of the light, right? You are the light of the world; let your light shine, Jesus says elsewhere! But we also seem stuck being people of this world. And Jesus himself was, among other things, a man living in occupied territory. Shrewdness may not be a spiritual virtue – but if you read the Gospels with some understanding of the power relations of the time, you see Jesus being pretty shrewd. There’s a lot of strategic not-quite-saying things, a lot of ducking and dodging and plausible deniability – until the point when he’s ready for the final confrontation. Until he thinks his followers and his movement are ready to continue what he’s started without him. (If you’d like a fuller understanding of Jesus’ life and context, we’re planning a study on the Gospel of Matthew this winter; watch this space!) 

At the end of the parable, the master commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. Remember: The master in this story isn’t secretly God. But I still think it’s pretty interesting that Jesus ends the story with the master saying, You’re still fired, but that was pretty clever. 

And Jesus almost seems to echo the master’s grudging respect, as he observes – commends? – the shrewdness of the people of this world. He might be hinting that the people of light can be a little naive, a little idealistic, when it comes to doing what needs to be done in the murky reality in which we live. 

In Matthew’s Gospel Jesus tells his disciples that they’ll need to be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves. The word wise there, in the Greek, isn’t sophia. It’s phronimos. Shrewd as serpents.  A little sneaky, a little slippery. 

What we have in this quirky, murky parable, I think, is – not an endorsement, but an acknowledgment of the necessity of shrewdness. Sometimes squeezing some tiny bit of strategic goodness, or at least less-badness, out of a lousy situation is the best we can do. 

I want to be clear that I’m not telling people that I think you should be more quiet, more careful, more strategic. I’m speaking to the many of you who are already feeling like you have to be quiet, careful, and strategic – and are struggling with what that means for your conscience, your heart, and your soul.

It’s a murky season, beloveds. 

But the people of light can be shrewd when we have to. 

May God help us live in the tension of these times, and help us be both serpents and doves, shrewd and wise, light-bearers and world-dwellers. Amen.

Today the lectionary, our calendar of readings, brings us two well-known and important parables of Jesus: the lost sheep and the lost coin. But there’s a third parable that completes the set – the story known as the Prodigal Son. The lectionary breaks them up; we got that one in Lent earlier this year. But in Luke’s Gospel, it follows these two simpler stories. It’s printed in the Sunday Supplement for those who may not know it! In brief: there’s a man with two sons. The younger one demands his share of his father’s wealth, then leaves home and wastes the money on profligate living. When he’s flat broke, friendless, and feeding pigs for a living, he realizes that he could just go home. He thinks, “Even if Dad makes me live like one of the farmhands, I’d be better off than I am now.” So he heads for home, rehearsing his apology speech as he goes. His father sees him coming and RUNS to embrace him. The son starts his little speech: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you… But the father isn’t listening; he’s giving the servants orders to throw a party. Soon everyone’s celebrating – except the older son. He’s coming in from working in the fields when he hears music. When he finds out what’s going on, he’s furious. His father comes out to talk to him. The older son says, I’ve been working like a slave for you for all these years, and you’ve never held a party for me, but you do THIS for that irresponsible scumbag? And the father says, Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found. 

It’s a complicated story; there’s a lot going on! But we grappled with some of that back in March. Today we’re looking at the set of three lost and found stories that appear here together – only in the Gospel of Luke. The similarities are obvious. Something or someone is lost – a sheep, a coin, a son. Someone is seeking what is lost – the shepherd, a woman, a father who stands on the road scanning the horizon. 

And when the sheep, the coin, the son is found – there’s a celebration. A party! The shepherd brings home the wandering sheep, and calls together his friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost!” The woman finds the coin, and she, too, calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.” Surely the party costs more than the value of the lost coin! And the father tells the servants, “Quickly, bring out a robe—the best one—and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate, for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”

I’ve heard, read, and preached sermons on these parables that focus on the straying, and the seeking. Back in March, a friend shared a sermon on the Prodigal Son story that focused on the celebrating. I’m going to share some of his insight today – from a sermon preached by Eric Biddy, rector of St. Paul’s, Augusta, Georgia. Eric writes, “Luke often gives some interpretation for a parable in the setting, the context, that comes just before. And here, the setting is scandalized religious folks. ‘All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’ Jesus tells three parables in response to their complaints… I think this context of offended religious folks can help us see that the first point of the parable is not the ways that we are prodigal or resentful [like the sons]. Rather, the first and main point of the story is about the scandalous love, mercy, and joy of God.”

Last week – just a few verses before this text – we heard Jesus say, “Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple,” and advising people to sit down and consider whether they really have what it takes to follow the way of Jesus.  

Whether they’re ready for everything that it could cost them – family harmony, earthly wealth and security, even their lives. It’s a pretty big pivot from all that caution, to all these parties. 

Yet these passages don’t clash, exactly. The invitation to join Jesus’ mission to seek and find the lost is deadly serious. Let’s peel away – if we can – the layers of religious rhetoric that treat lost as a shorthand for not Christian. Look at the people Jesus hangs around with: people who are pushed to the margins, seen as unimportant at best, unwanted and unclean at worst. For the sheep in the story, lost means alone and in danger from harsh terrain, weather, and predators. For the coin in the story, lost means that its value may never be seen and shared, that it won’t get to fulfill its purpose. For the sons in the story, lost means broken relationships, broken hearts, broken lives. 

When those are the stakes, the risks, the costs – then of course you throw a party when lost is found. When danger finds safety, loneliness finds belonging, pointlessness finds purpose. Last week I said that following Jesus isn’t all rainbows and puppy dogs and s’mores around the campfire. But sometimes it is! 

Eric writes, “[God’s] constant love for us and for others saves us and unsettles us, but it also throws a party. And that party I think gives us another chance to locate ourselves in [the] story [of the two sons]. Because, sure, we are used to finding ourselves here as people who know we need mercy, or who resent the mercy given to others. But I think that we together, as the church, might be the party that God’s outrageous love throws, out of sheer delight of being with us. There is more here than just the salvation of individual souls. There is also a communal party that is a kind of spilling out of the father’s love and joy… At that party we are certainly not the father, the source of mercy and grace. We are the partiers, sharing and sharing in that mercy, love, and grace.”

Maybe last week and this week’s Gospel texts together invite us to hold two things together: both the seriousness and urgency of following the way of Jesus – and the possibility, indeed the responsibility, of joy. 

There’s not much joy in today’s Old Testament lesson from the book of the prophet Jeremiah – or the Psalm that echoes its themes of intransigence and calamity. Writing this sermon, I pulled out the folder from my seminary Old Testament classes, twenty years ago, to remind myself of Jeremiah’s story. 

Jeremiah was called to prophetic ministry, speaking God’s words to God’s people, in a particularly tumultuous time for Judea and Jerusalem. The Northern Kingdom of Israel had already been conquered; Judea has become a vassal state of the Assyria, under their authority, forced to send their wealth to feed the appetite of the empire. Jeremiah begins his prophetic ministry in the year 627 before the time of Jesus. He preaches through the religious reforms of King Josiah, and Josiah’s death. Through the Babylonian Empire taking over from the Assyrians, and the installation of King Jehoiakim as a puppet king for Babylon. Jeremiah preaches through Jehoiakim’s rebellion against Babylon, his defeat and death, and the first deportation, when the Babylonians took most of the upper classes away from Judea to live in exile, with the intention of further subduing the territory. Jeremiah preaches through King Zedekiah’s rebellion against Babylon, through Babylon’s invasion of Judea and destruction of Jerusalem in the year 587, and through the second deportation, in which most of the surviving population are dragged away from their homeland, their holy land. Jeremiah himself is taken to Egypt by a small group of survivors, but continues to correspond with the exiles in Babylon. 

My Old Testament professor, Ellen Davis, described Jeremiah as prophesying over Jerusalem as her night comes down. The looming destruction of Jerusalem and Judea – as we see it in the terrifying poetry of today’s reading – is the central theme of the first 30 chapters. The text is full of oracles of warning and judgment: Turn back now, return to God’s ways! Though Jeremiah seems to have little hope that this will happen, and rightly so. 

In this passage, Jeremiah has a vision of the future – a vision that will be catastrophically fulfilled by Babylon’s invasion, years later: darkness, death, and desolation. Cities ruined, land abandoned and barren. A future that feels inevitable because the people and leaders are skilled in doing evil, but do not know how to do good. 

The Psalm picks up that theme: The foolish have said in their hearts, “There is no God” – meaning, here, that it doesn’t matter what I do, because there’s no power, no moral standard, to hold me to account. All are corrupt and commit abominable acts; everyone has proved faithless; there is none who does good – no, not one.  

There’s a kind of grace in encountering texts like this, sometimes – anybody else feel that? Because it makes us feel less alone in the chaos and bleakness of our times. When we feel untethered, unprotected, un-led – at least Jeremiah and the poet of this Psalm are right there with us?… 

Later in Jeremiah’s work – after the worst has happened – there is a shift in tone, towards imagining a future for God’s people beyond destruction and exile. This part of the book is sometimes beautifully called the Book of Consolation. In a few weeks, we’ll hear about Jeremiah buying a field while Jerusalem is under siege – a gesture of absurd hope. We’ll hear Jeremiah’s counsel to the exiles in Babylon: Live. Don’t give up. Your story isn’t over. It reminds me of a favorite line in a favorite song, Tom Rosenthal’s Throw the Fear: Keep watering the plants, love. 

Keep watering the plants, love. A gentle invitation to keep putting one foot in front of another. Not exactly a party. But: not giving in to despair, either. Holding onto life, love, the possibility of joy. And there are passages in the Book of Consolation that do imagine future celebration – like these verses from chapters 31: “Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O daughter Israel! Again you shall adorn yourself with your tambourines and go forth in the dance of the merrymakers!”

Which is all just to say that the Book of Jeremiah is one great big lost and found story. God’s people had wandered off like that wayward sheep: torn by thorns, menaced by lions and wolves, endangered by storms and the harsh, stony landscape itself. Lost. 

But God does not forget them. 

God seeks them out, and promises to bring them home. 

God throws a party. 

Eric Biddy writes, “…This is what it means to be members of the party that is the church. We are not those who have lived so righteously that we have deserved an [invitation]… We are those who were dead and have come to life again, to share in the scandalous joy and mercy that has brought us back to life, and to new and deeper life.To be a community made by this outrageous grace of God makes us a little odd. It should mean that at times our convictions and habits surprise and affront some of our neighbors. Because it means that we live by the currency of mercy, rather than esteem; of forgiveness rather than debt; of hope rather than reputation. It means that we think by the logic of resurrection, where what has seemed dead can come to life as long as the love of God keeps spilling out of all the containers within which we try to enclose it.” 

There are a lot of metaphors for the church – the local parish church like this one, or the capital-C Church, the whole messy body of Christ’s people throughout the world. Maybe the church is like a family, or a household. The church is like a city, or a building, or a ship. 

I’m taken by this idea of the church as a party. An ongoing celebration. Rejoice with me! Because somebody or something lost is always being found. And part of what attracts me about this idea is how strange and challenging it feels to think of church as a party, church as a place for the intentional cultivation of joy, when we’re living through such difficult times. When we’ve lived through a difficult freaking week! Is it OK to laugh? To be playful? To be planning parties and talent shows and community meals? 

I think it’s okay, and more than okay. I think it’s necessary. My smart friend Kyle Oliver says, Joy is a catalyst for change, not a reward. Louie Crew, who spent decades patiently nudging the Episcopal Church towards inclusion for LGBTQ+ folks, lived by the motto, Joy anyway! Alongside the undoubted seriousness of striving to follow Jesus in difficult times, we need joy. We need the release of laughter, the comfort of friendly companionship. We need to feel cared for and celebrated, and we need opportunities to care for and celebrate others. We need the work that joy does inside us and among us. 

Eric concludes, “We have been brought back to life whether we deserved it or not, and we keep hoping for the same among others, even our enemies, whether they deserve it or not.”

We have to celebrate and rejoice, because what was lost has been found.

Joy anyway, beloveds.

Amen. 

Did anybody notice that part of the Gospel sounded familiar? Maybe when Jesus said, “Give us the bread we need for today. Forgive us our sins…”? 

Did that remind you of something we do in church?… 

Do you know what that prayer is called?…

It’s called The Lord’s Prayer because Jesus, who we sometimes call The Lord, taught it to his friends. 

Anybody remember praying it with everybody saying the same words together at the same time? …  (Anybody see the movie Sinners?…) 

We used to do it that way here, too. A couple of things made us start to change, maybe seven or eight years ago. We were using the version that starts, Our Father in heaven… Instead of the version with the fancy old language that starts, Our Father who art in heaven… Because the fancy old language can be kind of confusing! Like, what does art mean? … But in the prayer it doesn’t mean that. It’s a fancy way to say is.

But! Some people like the fancy old language. Including some of our youth – big kids who have grown up and graduated now, like Simon and Florence. They sat in the front row, and they prayed with the fancy old words, and I could hear them. So people were already praying in a couple of different ways.

Then… I went to General Convention, which is a GREAT BIG gathering of Episcopalians from all over the place, to meet and talk and argue and worship together. And at General Convention, in worship, they tell us, Please pray this prayer in the language of your heart. Because not everybody there speaks English – or even if they do, it might not be their heart-language. 

So I got to see what it felt like to be in a room with a thousand other people who were praying the Lord’s Prayer in English and Spanish and Swahili and Creole and Navajo and French and ASL and so on. It was pretty cool!

So in our worship here, we started to say, Please pray in the language of your hearts. And we put a Spanish version in our bulletin, because Spanish might be some people’s heart-language here. And I put in another version that I liked to use, because it talked about God in different ways and just gave me some fresh words. And since then we’ve added or swapped in some other versions too. On All Ages Worship Sunday we sometimes add a few ASL signs to pray with our bodies too. 

I bet some people like the way we do it and I bet some people find it a little overwhelming! I understand that all those voices saying different things could be hard for some people’s ears. I think if you need to gently cover your ears and maybe close your eyes to get enough quiet inside yourself to pray, that’s OK. 

What I like about it is that I have a chance to really say the words and think about them, instead of just kind of keeping pace with everybody else. Does anybody say the Pledge at school? That can get kind of automatic, right? You don’t really think about the words, you just say them because it’s time to say them and everybody else is saying them. For me, the way we pray the Lord’s Prayer here helps it not be like that. 

Let’s talk for a minute about what’s actually in the prayer. This version is very short and simple – I bet it’s a lot like what Jesus really said, and that other stuff has gotten added on over time. 

Jesus calls God Father, here and in other places. He wants his followers to think about God as a loving parent. Now, listen: Human parents are imperfect! Some people had a parent who might give their child a snake, or a scorpion, or nothing. 

That’s a hard truth. For people with that experience, part of your life work is healing from not being loved well when you were a kid, and becoming someone who can love well. I have deep respect for people who do that work. 

Calling God Father can be hard for people who maybe had a not so great human father. Same with Mother! What Jesus wants us to know is that God loves us the way we hope a parent will love their children. 

The part right after that is a little hard to understand! Today we read, “Uphold the holiness of your name.” Many versions say, “Hallowed be your name.” “Hallowed” is a fancy way to say, “make holy.” I think this part of the prayer is to honor God, and remind ourselves that we’re talking to God, not just another person. 

Then it says, “Bring in your kingdom.” Jesus talks a lot about the kingdom of God and the ways it’s different from the way we run things here on earth. This part of the prayer is important for me! I like to pray for this world to become more like God’s dream. 

Then we get to, “Give us the bread we need for today.” Notice how simple that is! Last week some of the kids heard a book about MORE and ENOUGH. This is a prayer about ENOUGH. We might WANT lots of things, but what we NEED is enough food to get us through till tomorrow. 

Then Jesus’ prayer says, “Forgive us our sins, for we also forgive everyone who has wronged us. And don’t lead us into temptation!” In this part of the prayer we ask God to help us live right. When we do things we wish we hadn’t done, or don’t do things we wish we had done, we ask God to forgive us – and we remind ourselves that we should try to forgive other people, because we mess up too. And we ask God to help keep us out of trouble! 

That’s it! We turn towards God. We ask for the world to get a little bit more like God means it to be. We ask for the most basic things we need, and for help living the way God calls us to live. 

Our friend JonMichael likes to point out that Jesus was probably just giving his friends an example – like, here’s one way to pray! – but his friends grabbed onto it, like, THIS IS THE ONE WAY CHRISTIANS SHOULD PRAY, EVERY DAY, FOREVER.

Because we pray it SO much, every Sunday, maybe every day for some of you, I’ve sometimes gotten pretty bored with the Lord’s Prayer. But right now it feels like kind of a relief. There’s so much to pray about, and this prayer covers a lot of ground, simply. 

You can read whole books about the Lord’s Prayer if you want to! But that’s a little bit about what it is, and why we do it the way we do. I have some pages here with a question – what do YOU think is important to pray about, every single day? I would love to see whatever you might write or draw as an answer. 

But I’m going to talk a little bit longer. This is more of me talking than I usually try to do on All Ages Sundays. But when I started working on today’s lessons, I realized that this is in what I call Big Questions territory. This particular Big Question being, Why don’t I get what I pray for? (Which ties in with a possibly even bigger question, What is prayer?, but we will not tackle that today!)

Why don’t we get what we pray for? It seems like, in this Gospel, Jesus says we will. He says, “Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.  Everyone who asks, receives!” Right? So how come I don’t always get what I ask for in prayer? 

It is a big question. I’ve thought about it myself; I’ve heard from other smart and wise people about how they understand it; I’ve talked with folks who are wrestling with it in their lives. I don’t think there’s one big answer. Here are some answers that I have found helpful. There are eight of them, if that’s helpful to you!

Number one: We’re praying for something we don’t need. Our culture tells us we need a lot of stuff that we really just want. Who knows the Janis Joplin song,  “O Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz? My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends…” Everybody else has fancy cars so she wants a fancy car too! It’s fine to want a fancy car… but does anybody need a fancy car? Sometimes we might pray for things that just aren’t really God’s department. 

Have you ever gone to a grown-up that loves you because, like, maybe you can’t get past a hard part in a video game you’re playing? And you can tell that they care that you’re upset, but they really don’t care about the problem in your video game? I think God feels like that about us some of the time.

Number two is related: We’re not praying for what we really need. That might sound the same as what I just said but it’s different. Maybe we’re praying, “Please let Stephanie be my friend again,” when the prayer underneath the prayer is, “Please help me find a friend I can trust and feel safe with.” Or, “Please buy me a Mercedes,” instead of, “Please help me feel good about myself. Please help me not be driven by envy and insecurity.” Sometimes if we can peel back what we think we need to what we really need, we might see how God is responding to that deeper need. 

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had somebody you love who really really wants something that you kinda hope they don’t get, because you don’t think it would be very good for them.

Number three: Maybe what we’re praying for breaks the rules. That’s a simple way to talk about something pretty mysterious. Here’s an example of what I mean. About a year and a half ago, we found out that our dog Kip had something wrong in his brain that meant that he was going to die, but probably not for a while. When we learned that, I didn’t start praying that that thing would go away. I prayed that we’d have some good time together, and that we’d be able to take good, kind care of him, and that it would be really clear when it was time to help him through death. 

And you know, I think we got what I prayed for. No pet lives forever. No person lives forever. Our bodies belong to this world; they break and wear out and wear down. I think maybe death seems like a much bigger deal to us than it does to God, because from God’s point of view we’re with God the whole time, during this life and after death. 

Now, listen: Sometimes I pray big fierce angry stubborn prayers! GOD, YOU FIX THIS RIGHT NOW. THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE. I don’t care what the rules are!! God doesn’t mind those prayers! God wants us to pray from our hearts! And sometimes, surprising, amazing, wonderful things happen. I know people who have experienced miracles. You should pray for what you truly, deeply hope for. But if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t mean God didn’t hear you, or doesn’t love you or the person you’re praying for. 

Number four! The world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be! This is important. Some people like to say, “Everything happens for a reason.” I understand that can be a really comforting thought sometimes – although I think we have to be really really careful about saying it to other people who are going through something hard. I think I know what people mean when they say that everything happens for a reason, and I would say it a little differently. I would say: God, and people acting on God’s behalf, can bring some good out of terrible situations. 

Two weeks ago my wonderful, loving brother-in-law, John, was up on a ladder trimming branches on his property, when a falling branch somehow swept the ladder out from under him. He fell, breaking his elbow, ankle, pelvis, and several ribs. I know many of you are holding him in prayer – thank you so much! 

I don’t believe this accident was God’s intention for John, that God did this to John to punish him, or teach him something, or build his character. He’s quite a character already. 

But I do believe God can bring good out of it. I’m praying for silver linings, for healing and hope and possibility. When I was writing this sermon on Wednesday, 81 people had donated to a fundraiser for John and his wife Kelsey, to help support them while John is out of work. The money helps, but it’s also really amazing to see that network of care – family, friends, churches, friends of friends, friends of family, friends of churches, and so on. The money helps meet practical needs, but all those people choosing to help somebody that a lot of them don’t even know really helps lift hearts and spirits. 

Which brings me to point five! Maybe our prayers aren’t answered because somebody else isn’t cooperating. This might sound a little woo, but there are times when I feel God tap me on the shoulder and tell me to give someone my time, or pay attention to something and see how I could help. And I have sure seen many of you find moments and opportunities where you can step in and be a helper, a companion, someone who makes a difference, who turns something around or at least nudges it in the right direction. We’re not God’s dolls or God’s puppets; we’re free. God asks us to help make good happen, sometimes. And sometimes we miss it, because we’re too tired or busy or overwhelmed or scared, or maybe we just don’t wanna. Lots of good things that could happen, don’t, for all kinds of ordinary human reasons. 

Point six: Our prayers are answered, but not in the way we’re looking for. I bet a lot of people have experienced this, though you might have to think to remember when. A prayer journal can be a good tool for looking back and seeing: Hey, I was praying really hard about this, or for that, a while ago, and now, that’s resolved, it’s come to some kind of peace, it’s not at the top of my list or the top of my mind. Maybe something happened out there, or maybe something changed inside of me; but somehow, that thing isn’t driving my thoughts and my prayers anymore. 

I don’t really keep a prayer journal but I do keep a list of people I’m praying for, and even with that I can see how things get resolved, or released, or just get less important, even when the outcome that our prayers were pointed at doesn’t happen. 

Point seven – out of eight: There’s a bigger picture we don’t understand. There’s a bigger picture we don’t understand. Now, if somebody said that to me when I’m struggling with something hard or sad, I might punch them. But I also do think it’s true. A couple of years ago I read the apocryphal book of 2 Esdras. 2 Esdras is DEEPLY weird, but there’s one verse I really like. Esdras asks an angel, “Why are our years few and evil?” And the angel answers, “Don’t be in a greater hurry than the Most High. You indeed are in a hurry for yourself, but the Most High is in a hurry on behalf of many.” Let me put that in simpler words: You’re focused on your own little circle of needs and concerns. But God is trying to work for good and right and mercy and peace and justice and healing throughout the whole cosmos, the whole world, the whole system. It’s not that that makes my concerns less important. It just reminds me to have a little perspective, and to try to trust that God is working for good in all things, even when I can’t see it. 

Point eight. If you found the others unsatisfying, you’ll hate this one! Point eight is: I have no idea. The whole business is a mystery. A few thousand years ago God told the prophet Isaiah, “My thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways.” And Paul writes something similar in his letter to the Romans: “God’s riches, wisdom, and knowledge are so deep! They are as mysterious as God’s judgments! All things are from God and through God and for God. May the glory be to God forever. Amen.” What I like about that is that thinking abut how big and mysterious God is doesn’t make Paul feel overwhelmed or scared or lost; it makes him want to praise God. Even when it’s frustrating that there aren’t easy answers or quick solutions, knowing that Someone ultimately wise and ultimately kind is watching over things and working through things, in ways I can’t begin to underhand, holds some kind of comfort for me. 

So, this could just be a list of eight excuses for God not to answer our prayers. But I think it’s more like a list of eight reasons why the whole idea of answered prayer is kind of complicated, maybe a lot more complicated than Jesus makes it sound in today’s reading. When we ask, maybe what we are asking for isn’t what God wants for us. When we knock, maybe the door that opens isn’t the one we’re knocking on; maybe we don’t even realize that a door opened over there somewhere. 

I think what Jesus really wants us to know is that God is not like a gumball machine, but God does hear, when we pray; and God cares, and God often responds, one way or another. So we should talk to God about the things we want and the things we think we need. And maybe we can also talk to God about how we can help with the things God wants, for us or our loved ones or our communities or the world. 

Today is Trinity Sunday – a day to celebrate the Church’s teaching that we know and serve one God in three Persons. When theologians talk about the Trinity, the word “Persons” has some specific technical meaning – but it also means more or less what we mean by “person” in everyday life. The Father, Son, and Spirit – Source, Word, and Breath – are not just different aspects or costumes God wears sometimes, but different People, within the unity of one God. It is paradoxical, and mysterious, and there have been so many arguments over it, and so many books written, over the course of church history. I’m more or less with Ann Lamott: “I don’t need to understand the hypostatic unity of the Trinity. I just need to turn my life over to whoever came up with redwood trees.”  Which is to say, I’m OK with not having the Trinity all figured out. But  that’s not to say that it’s not important to me. It is. 

This has been a troubling – a frightening – week in the news. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, better known as ICE, is under pressure from the White House to detain and deport as many undocumented immigrants as possible. Finding it difficult to meet their quotas with criminals and drug dealers, ICE is seeking out ordinary community members – folks who work in construction and agriculture and food service, and other jobs that we all depend on. ICE is staking out places where people come to do immigration check-ins, in compliance with federal policy, and then seizing people. They are reportedly seizing undocumented children from their foster homes. They’re raiding graduation ceremonies, hoping to seize family members gathered to celebrate their kids’ accomplishments. After ICE raids in Los Angeles, community members turned out to protest, and in response, the National Guard and Marines have been called in, raising the threat that military force could be used against American civilians, on the pretext that these protests against the kidnapping of neighbors amount to a “rebellion.” 

What does a Trinitarian faith do for us in times like these? 

When I look at what’s happening in Los Angeles – when I wonder what might happen in Dane County, and what I, and we, will do – it helps me to know that we are grounded in faith in a God who is making the universe and holds all in love. It helps me to know that we have Jesus Christ’s teaching and example to show us what it looks like to stand in love with, and for, our neighbors. It helps me to know that we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit within and among us. I’m trying to trust her to do the things that Scripture promises she will do, and that I have known her to do: Guide me, help me know which way to turn and what path to follow. Help me know when to listen closely – and when to speak up. Give me the courage to know and to do what is mine to do. 

Later this morning we’ll sing one of my very favorite hymns – I Bind Unto Myself Today, sometimes called St. Patrick’s Breastplate. I wrote about this hymn a few months ago for Earth & Altar, an online journal of all things Anglican; the editor-in-chief is another priest of this diocese, Chris Corbin. Check it out! 

We sing this hymn every year on Trinity Sunday because it’s a Trinitarian hymn. But there’s more to say about it. I’m going to share – and expand on – what I wrote for Earth & Altar, here. 

My first and deepest memories of this hymn are not in the jeweled light of stained glass windows at church, but in the comfortable darkness of my bed. My mother used to sing it to me at bedtime to help me fall sleep. I asked for it often, because it was long. I don’t know why she often agreed to my request, a transparent bargain to extend her presence in my room. Maybe she went along with it for the same reasons I’d later sing it to my children regularly: because a long, familiar song allows a certain amount of autopilot while your mind wanders; because singing a lengthy and detailed prayer of protection feels like a good way to commend a child to the night; because she liked it, as I do.

I did sing St. Patrick’s Breastplate at church too. We showed up just about every Sunday at St. George’s in Riverside, California until I was seven, when we moved and became regulars at St. John’s in Lafayette, Indiana. But yet again, my relationship with this hymn would deepen not in church but with my nose in a book. As a kid I read two different “chapter books” in which this ancient prayer formed a significant plot point. The first was The Spell of the Sorcerer’s Skull, one of John Bellairs’ spooky young adult novels. While my memory of it is hazy, I recall that before some boss battle with the forces of evil, the main character’s priest friend tells him to use the words to this hymn for protection. That’s the first time I remember realizing that the familiar hymn was something more than just a hymn. 

The second book was Madeleine L’Engle’s A Swiftly Tilting Planet, my favorite of her books. L’Engle uses what seems to be her own version of the first verse of Patrick’s prayer as part her story of a cosmic battle between good and evil through time. This version of the prayer lives in my heart alongside the hymn: 

At Tara in this fateful hour I call on heaven with all its power, and the sun with its brightness, and the snow with its whiteness, and the fire with all the strength it hath, and the lighting with its rapid wrath, and the winds with their swiftness along their path, and the sea with its deepness, and the rocks with their steepness, and the earth with its starkness; all these I place, by God’s almighty help and grace, between myself and the powers of darkness. 

For a child deep in the thrall of various fictional worlds more obviously enchanted than our own, it was an appealing idea: that this hymn, previously notable for its length, was actually something special and powerful, something bordering on the magical – although Bellairs and L’Engle, both Christians, were careful not to suggest that divine power could be commanded, only invoked or invited. 

The way this ancient hymn-prayer was used in these books is arguably more true to its origins than singing it at St. John’s, Lafayette, on an ordinary Sunday morning. The earliest written fragments of the Irish text behind the hymn date from the 9th century – the same time frame as the Book of Kells. In an 11th-century text, a more complete version of the prayer is accompanied by an account of its origin. That text explains that Saint Patrick, the great evangelist of Ireland, who lived in the fifth century, composed and sang this song-poem as a prayer for protection, when a local king was trying to attack him and his monks to stop them from spreading Christianity in Ireland. In my household we often refer to this hymn-prayer as the Lorica – a Latin word for a breastplate or body armor. In the early Irish Church, by analogy, that word also came to mean a prayer for protection. Hence the common name for this hymn, St. Patrick’s Breastplate. 

In the 19th century, the fiercely talented Anglo-Irish hymn-writer Cecil Frances Alexander translated the Irish text and turned it into a hymn. (She also wrote “All things bright and beautiful” and “Once in royal David’s city,” among others.) Her version appears as number 370 in our hymnal, minus a couple of verses that were too weird to make the cut. If you need a prayer against lust or evil wizards, you’ll have to find the original text online. 

The origin story of the text connects it with Tara, a site in the east of Ireland, north of Dublin. On our recent trip we had a chance to stop at Tara, briefly, and stand on that windy green hill, and look out over half of Ireland, and feel deep, deep history thrumming beneath our feet. The Hill of Tara is an ancient burial and ceremonial site, which has been seen as a place of power for 5000 years or more. Kings were crowned there for millennia, and it was an important pre-Christian holy site. Those associations – with the kingship and pre-Christian religion – explain why this was a significant site of confrontation for Patrick and his mission. 

We might have slightly mixed feelings about the hymn’s origin story, as part of the conquest of Irish indigenous religion by Christianity. But let’s notice how Celtic hymn is – how much it reflects the indigenous spirituality of the western British Isles: the sense of the natural world as immediately reflective of God’s grace and power. The detailed lists and layers that weave a dense fabric of prayer – in this hymn, the verses touch on not only the natural world but also moments in the life of Christ, the angels and saints, and aspects of God’s divine being and power. There’s the sense of space and sacred direction in the B-section, the verse that breaks format to invoke Christ on all sides of the singer or pray-er: Christ beneath me, Christ above me, Christ behind and before and beside me. 

The Lorica is specifically a prayer for protection. I bind unto myself today means, Let whoever tries to fight me find that they’re not just fighting me, but all God’s angel army, the powers of Creation, the good deeds of all righteous people, and so on – tapped into like batteries to power my personal holy deflector shield. I don’t remember the details of how this prayer worked in those books I read as a child, but it was an effective deterrent to the forces of evil. I envision the protagonists surrounded by some kind of glowing orb of holy shelter, while the powers that seek to corrupt and destroy the creatures of God reel back, dismayed. I don’t know that that’s how it works in the real world, but I also don’t know that that’s not how it works in the real world. There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophy.

I do know that praying the protection of the Trinity, with these fierce ancient words, reminds me that I am named and known and held by a Love stronger than anything that can come at me or those I love. Belonging to God doesn’t mean we’ll be always be safe – Christ Crucified should disabuse us of that notion. But Christ Risen points us towards trust in a loving Power stronger than the powers of death and destruction. 

When I became a parent, just about twenty years ago, it was my turn to sit in the dark and sing a child to sleep. Sometimes I would sing Hymn 370 – favored, as always, for its length, somber gentleness, and sense of wrapping God’s protection around a beloved child. Our two children tolerated us singing to them at bedtime for an astonishingly long time. We spent over a decade singing to a child, or two, for part of every evening. How many times did we sing the Lorica? Two thousand? Three?

I don’t sing the Lorica very often anymore – sometimes only when it comes around at church a couple of times a year. I miss singing my children to sleep, not least because it was a chance to sit in the dark and tell them how much I love them for half an hour every night, wrapping them in prayer like a warm blanket. 

There’s a lot to be fearful about, beloveds. In the face of many-layered threats to our health and dignity and work, our communities and neighbors and sacred landscapes, it helps me to know that we are grounded in faith in a God who is making the universe and holds all in love. It helps me to know that we have Jesus Christ to show us what it looks like to stand with, and for, our neighbors. It helps me to know that we are given the gift of the Holy Spirit to inspire, guide, and encourage us.

Writing about this hymn, last winter, got me thinking that I need to work it into my prayer life more regularly – to call on sun and moon, earth and sea, the vigilance of angels, the witness of the faithful departed, the great Name of the Trinity itself, to tend and guard all those whom I love and commend to God in prayer. 

Writing about this hymn, this week, made me want to offer it to all of you as well. This hymn is more than a hymn. It’s a cry from the heart in the face of danger. It’s a naming of what is good and strong and holy, a reminder that all is not lost. It calls on God to show us what is always already true: that we are held in love, and never forsaken. 

Maybe that helps us sleep through the night, or get up in the morning. Maybe that helps us speak our truth or stand with our neighbors. Maybe that helps us persist, endure, even thrive, in strange and difficult times – with the power of lightning and wind, rock and sea, angels and saints, tomb and resurrection, the Three in One and One in Three, standing between ourselves and the powers of darkness. 

May it be so. Amen. 

Today is Pentecost –  the feast of the gift of the Holy Spirit to the first Christians, to give them the courage and joy and sense of purpose they needed to go forth and preach the Gospel. 

The Holy Spirit was not a new idea or way to encounter the Holy. There are lots of references to the Spirit of God at work in the Old Testament – literally beginning with the first verses of the Book of Genesis, when the spirit of God hovers over the waters of chaos before creation. In pre-Christian texts, God’s Spirit is described in various ways, as an emanation or aspect or servant of God. Seeing the Holy Spirit as one Person of a Trinitarian God – Father, Son, and Spirit – was a Christian innovation. Next Sunday is Trinity Sunday, so maybe more on that later! 

You’ll notice – if you haven’t before – that I use she/her pronouns for the Holy Spirit, as a counterbalance to the masculine God-language of our received traditions, and of Jesus’ habit of naming God the Source as Father. There are some good Scriptural foundations for treating the Holy Spirit as feminine, too. Ask me if you’re curious! 

It’s hard to pin down or sum up the role and work of the Holy Spirit. She’s kind of all over the place. She inspires and protects and guides and mends and transforms. She coaxes and comforts and convicts. Unlike God the Creator and Jesus, we have very little that’s spoken in her voice in Scripture; we know her more as a force than a Person. But she is a Person, with her own priorities and powers, just like God the Source and Christ the Word Incarnate. 

Still: Her mysterious and paradoxical nature mean that over the millennia, our faith-ancestors have tended to name and describe Her through metaphors and images. We have two of them in the Pentecost reading today – did you hear them?… (Fire and wind.) 

Let’s talk first about fire. After a week like this of hazy skies and poor air quality due to wildfires in Canada, we may feel very aware of the destructive potential of fire. But learning to control fire was crucial for humanity – and those writing down our Scriptures would have been mindful of that, as people who had to make and tend fires on a daily basis – not like us who just flip switches and turn knobs when we need heat or light! Fire meant warmth and survival in the cold; fire meant light and the possibility of spending time on craft, art, and study even when nights were long. And fire meant cooking – so easy for us to take for granted: that ability to take ingredients that were unpleasant and in many cases inedible or dangerous in their raw state, and turn them into food that is digestible and even delicious. Truly a transformative gift! I suspect all those aspects of the power and usefulness of fire are simmering, if you will, in the metaphor when the church describes experiencing the Holy Spirit like fire.

The flames of the Holy Spirit driving the apostles to preach also makes me think of the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah, who says that if he tries to hold in the prophetic words God has given him, it feels like fire inside his bones. I see that burning urgency to proclaim God’s message here, too. I wonder if you’ve ever felt like that – like there’s something you just HAVE to say. Maybe sometimes it’s something you wish you hadn’t said, later; maybe sometimes it’s something really important to say – something brave and important and true. 

The Pentecost story also describes the Holy Spirit as like a mighty wind that rushes in among the apostles. Wind is a great metaphor for the Holy Spirit because you can see what it does, but you can’t see the thing itself. Like blowing on a pinwheel – you can’t see what makes the pinwheel go, but it goes! 

On our trip to Ireland we visited the Burren, a unique landscape of exposed limestone highlands in the far west of the country. 

We learned there that when people build stone walls on the Burren – to confine sheep or mark boundaries – they build the walls loosely, with space between the stones, so the wind can blow through them. Otherwise strong winds off the ocean, unsoftened by trees, are more likely to blow the walls down. It sounds a little too metaphorical to be true – but earlier this spring Iona and I took an architecture tour in Chicago and marveled at Jeanne Gang’s amazing blue skyscraper, the St Regis, which was built with blow-through floors to reduce how much the building sways in the wind. I think I need to spend some time with the idea of the strength that lies in not being all solid and locked together, but having some space for the wind to blow through… 

In the third chapter of the Gospel of John, Jesus tells the seeker Nicodemus, “God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” I think that’s both interesting and puzzling! Jesus describes those who follow him or seek to know God through his life and teachings as being “born of the Spirit.” (As Paul says in our Epistle today: “All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God.”) But Jesus also seems to say here that even if you’re born of the Spirit, you still should not expect to know what the Spirit is up to. You may hear the sound of that Spirit-wind blowing, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it’s going. I find that kind of comforting, actually! Glad to know it’s not just me. 

I want to share one more image or idea about the Holy Spirit – one that I haven’t talked about before. It comes from the writings of Hildegard von Bingen – who lived in Germany in the 12th century.  I remember the late 1990s when Hildegard had an odd moment in popular culture and music. I found a Rolling Stone album review that described a Tori Amos album by saying it sounded a little like Hildegard von Bingen? 

But I’ve never studied Hildegard – which felt both astonishing and a little embarrassing when I read her bio: “Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine abbess and polymath [a fun word that means somebody who knows a lot about a lot of different things] active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages. [She was also an advisor to both popes and emperors.] She is one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony [that means music that follows one melody line]… She has been considered by a number of scholars to be the founder of scientific natural history in Germany… [She founded two independent religious communities for women…] Hildegard wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal works, as well as letters, hymns, [poems], and antiphons for the liturgy… She is [also] noted for the invention of a constructed language known as Lingua Ignota.” [Adapted from Wikipedia]

Doesn’t she sound like someone worth knowing about? I may have ordered a few books… 

One really central idea for Hildegard is the idea of viriditas, a word that comes from the Latin word for green. Viriditas is a greening life-force that pervades the world and gives life to living things. But it’s spiritual as well as biological – the wellspring of human vitality, inspiration, creativity and wellbeing, individually and collectively. Humans are like trees, says Hildegard, and viriditas is the sap that flows within us, that makes us green and living instead of dry and brittle and dead. And that greening, life-giving sap comes from God. 

Theologian Matthew Fox writes, “Hildegard teaches that the only sin in life is drying up. She wrote [to] bishops and abbots, telling them they were drying up, and should do whatever it takes to stay ‘wet and green and moist and juicy’.”

It’s not clear to me – as someone very new to her work – whether Hildegard herself connects viriditas directly with the Holy Spirit, though many of her readers make that connection. Possibly, although she was bold enough to develop her own theology, she felt more constrained about re-imagining the Church’s core teachings. 

But viriditas as she describes it sure has a lot in common with ways Scripture and the Church have described the Holy Spirit. There are many places in the Bible where God’s Spirit is described as the life force of Creation – like Psalm 104: “When you send out your Spirit, [all living things] are created, and you renew the face of the earth.” Hildegard writes, “This vigor that hugs the world, it is warm, it is moistening, it is firm, it is greening… this is so that all creatures might germinate and grow.”

Hildegard wrote poetry and hymns giving voice to the force of Viriditas: 

I shine in the water, 

I burn in the sun, and the moon, and the stars.

Mine is that mysterious force of the invisible wind.

I am the breath of all the living.

I am the one whose praise echoes on high.
I adorn all the earth.
I am the breeze that nurtures all things green.
I encourage blossoms to flourish with ripening fruits.
I am the rain that causes the grasses to laugh with the joy of life.
I call forth tears. 

I am the yearning for good.

Lovely. But Hildegard also understood that the deep, holy connection between humanity and the non-human living world doesn’t always work out well. She believed that care for our own souls, and care for the world, were deeply connected. 

And when humans grow disconnected from the greening life-force in our own souls, bad things happen. Eight hundred years ago, Hildegard wrote:

“[When] the greening power of the virtues faded away… all justice entered upon a period of decline. As a result, the greening power of life on Earth was reduced in every seed because the upper region of the air was altered in a way contrary to its first destiny. Summer now became subject to a contradictory chill while winter often experienced a paradoxical warmth. There occurred on Earth times of drought and dampness… As a result, many people asserted that the Last Day was near at hand.”

In the book of meditations on the Stations of the Cross that we use in Lent, there’s a poem from Hildegard on the same theme:  “Now in the people that were meant to green, there is no more life of any kind. There is only a shriveled barrenness. The winds are burdened by the utterly awful stink of evil, selfish goings-on. Thunderstorms menace. The air belches out the filthy uncleanliness of the peoples. There pours forth an unnatural, a loathsome darkness, that withers the green, and wizens the fruit that was to serve as food for the people.”

Many honor Hildegard’s wisdom today because she saw so keenly that deep connection between human and ecological wellbeing. For us, at Pentecost, her work offers a renewed way to think about the Holy Spirit’s action in the world and in us – as that greening sap that, when we welcome and nurture it, refreshes, connects, inspires and empowers us – not least towards care for creation. Hildegard wrote, “We shall awaken from our dullness and rise vigorously toward justice. If we fall in love with creation deeper and deeper, we will respond to its endangerment with passion.”

Pentecost completes Easter Season. Now we begin the longest season of the church year – variously called the Season After Pentecost, Ordinary Time, or in the language of our Godly Play curriculum, the Great Green Growing Season. May Hildegard’s viriditas, her recognition of the holy in all that springs towards life and growth and fruitfulness, offer us another way to notice and take delight in the Holy Spirit at work this season: sprouting of seed, bud becoming flower becoming fruit, song of bird and frog and bug and wind in trees. 

And may Hildegard’s insight also encourage us to attend to the connection between our souls, our human communities, and our non-human neighbors and surroundings – and to do whatever it takes to stay ‘green and moist and juicy’. Amen! 

 

SOME SOURCES: 

https://www.themarginalian.org/2025/01/07/hildegard-viriditas/

https://dailymeditationswithmatthewfox.org/2024/01/11/hildegard-on-greening-power-spirit-nature-humanitys-creativity/

https://www.globalsistersreport.org/news/spirituality/column/why-st-hildegards-spirituality-viriditas-extraordinary

https://fccucc.org/sermons/hildegard-of-bingen-our-greening-god/

https://www.cloisterseminars.org/blog/2015/4/18/viriditas-welcoming-spring