The Rev. Miranda K. Hassett, St. Dunstan’s Church, Madison, WI

Today we come to the end of the church’s season of Epiphany, as we receive the Gospel of the Transfiguration. Epiphany always begins with two holy stories from the Gospels, the books that tell the life of Jesus. First, the three Wise Men, those patient seekers, who saw a remarkable future for a seemingly-ordinary child, and honored him with royal gifts. And second, the baptism of Jesus, now an adult – that moment when those gathered beside the Jordan saw the Spirit descend like a dove upon the stranger in the water, and heard a voice from heaven proclaim, This is my beloved son!

And we conclude the season with one more story of revelation, of seeing truth beyond what’s readily visible – Jesus’ closest friends follow him off to a nearby hillside, probably expecting to spend some time in quiet prayer. Instead they see their friend and teacher transfigured before them, dazzling white, shining bright; and then obscured by a dark cloud of holy mystery.

All of these keystone stories of Epiphany are stories of people having their eyes opened to see the holiness in what’s right in front of them – the scruffy radical from Nazareth. It is an experience that can be joyful, strange, and/or terrifying.

We use another text of revelation, of transfiguration, in the season of Epiphany – Canticle 11, the Third Song of Isaiah. We use it as our Song of Praise in this season. Here is the text:

Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you. For behold, darkness covers the land; deep gloom enshrouds the people. But over you the Lord will rise, and his glory will appear upon you. Nations will stream to your light, and kings to the brightness of your dawning. Your gates will always be open; by day or by night they will never be shut. They will call you, The City of the Lord, the Zion of the Holy One of Israel. Violence will no more be heard in your land, ruin or destruction within your borders. You will call your walls, Salvation, and all your portals, Praise.  The sun will no more be your light by day; by night you will not need the brightness of the moon. The Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God will be your glory.

This text comes from near the end of the book of Isaiah. It is part of a long prophetic hymn about the restoration of Israel after decades of conquest, destruction, and exile. It holds out the promise and hope of a new season of peace, prosperity, and righteousness. The chapters that follow offer beautiful verses like this: “You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord… You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her…. You shall be called, ‘Sought Out, A City Not Forsaken.’”

All these rich and lovely images of restoration and peace focus on Jerusalem, the great City of the people Israel. Jerusalem was both the religious and political capital, the site of the great Temple, the heart of the people.  Jerusalem stands symbolically for the whole nation – rebuilding Jerusalem is rebuilding the people Israel; peace and prosperity for Jerusalem mean peace and prosperity for the whole land and its inhabitants.

In casting this beautiful image of a restored Jerusalem, the prophet, inspired by the spirit of God, isn’t just seeing beyond the ruins left by conquest; he is seeing beyond the squalor and poverty of normal life in a great city, even at the best of times. Big cities, always and everywhere, have some things in common. They’re always places of great cultural mixing, folks from all over rubbing shoulders – resulting in terrific food, art and music; and also intergroup hatreds and gang violence. Cities are always places of extreme population density, meaning crowdedness and discomfort and lack of privacy; meaning also the rapid spread of whatever diseases the human race is dealing with at the time: bubonic plague, HIV, measles. Cities are always places of extreme poverty – because if you’re poor in the country, at least you can build a shack and grow a little food; but if you’re poor in the city, you can literally have nothing. Nothing but your own labor or your own body with which to try to earn enough to stay alive. And of course population density and poverty mean that cities have also always been places of crime and danger.

What I’m saying is, even before Jerusalem was conquered by her enemies  in the 6th century, the great city was no vision of loveliness, justice and peace. She was a city. Messy and risky and smelly. Like any great city today.

Canticle 11 offers us a vision of a city transformed – you might even say transfigured. Its violence and its poverty swept away; shining with the light of God, a beacon to all those dwelling in darkness, near and far.

Who here knows the name Brandon Stanton?  …  Okay, who here has heard of Humans of New York? …

Humans of New York, or HONY, is a photoblog, posted on Facebook and Instagram. It’s the work of a photographer named Brandon Stanton. He approaches people on the streets of New York City – notorious as one of the world’s most unfriendly places – and asks if he can take their photo.  And if they say yes, he uses the process of taking the photograph as a doorway into conversation. He asks them things like, Tell me about a person you admire. Or, What’s your biggest struggle right now? Or, What’s your biggest regret in life? Your biggest hope?

And he publishes a photo, or two, of each subject, and a few evocative sentences from whatever that person shared in conversation. A bright-eyed child says he wants to be an architect when he grows up. A white-haired lady holding an umbrella printed with kittens talks about her husband’s dying advice. An elderly couple remembers a night of dancing, a half-century ago. A young woman – the photo only shows her hands – talks about bathing her dying sister. An unshaven man perched in a doorway, with garbage bags of his possessions at his feet, shares memories of his father.

The photos and the words are remarkable. And so is the response. If you read things on the Internet with any regularity, you know the cardinal rule: Don’t read the comments. The comments on any story are often where the hate and irrationality and nastiness spill out, regardless of the substance of the story. But the comments on the Humans of New York posts are amazing. Partly because Brandon has established policies and norms about nasty or unkind posts; but more because the way Brandon presents his subjects invites the viewer to see and respond to their humanity. To affirm the hopes of a child, the beauty of an uncertain young woman, the value of a scarred and weary man. Unlike almost anywhere else on the Internet, the comments on HONY are uplifting. People offering affirmation, praise, hope, prayers, words of encouragement, offers of help.

Think about what it’s like to be on the sidewalk of a big, big city – remember or imagine; we’ve all seen those movies. Crushed among strangers, avoiding eye contact. Trying not to see, not to be seen, just keep moving and get on with your business. HONY, Brandon, breaks that open. Strips away the strangeness of the stranger. Reveals our shared humanity, and calls forth our compassionate response.

And amazing things can happen when we see each other. On January 19, Brandon took a picture of a young man,  an African-American middle school student named Vidal. Vidal goes to school in a high-crime part of Brooklyn – as Brandon says, “not the best place to be a kid.” Brandon asked Vidal to tell him about a person he admires. Vidal told Brandon about the principal at his school, Mrs. Lopez, and her compassionate response when kids get in trouble. Vidal said, “One time she made every student stand up, and she told each one of us that we matter.”

Brandon got interested and visited the school, and ended up profiling the principal and teachers, and their hard, passionate work to create hopeful futures for kids from poor and under-served neighborhoods. Turns out Mrs. Lopez had a dream for her students. She wanted to take every incoming 6th grade class to tour Harvard University. Many of the kids have never left New York, and she wanted them to know what it feels like to stand on the campus of one of the world’s great universities. To imagine that they could belong there.  But of course, that trip is expensive – a stretch for the budget of a small school and its families. Brandon wondered whether he could use the popularity of HONY to get them some help with that project. He created an online fundraising campaign for the school. His goal was to raise $100,000, enough to fund the program for three years. The campaign hit $100,000 within an hour, and raised $700,000 in the first four days, from 25,000 donors all over the country and the world.

The total on the campaign – which is still going – now stands at $1.3 million dollars. Incredible wealth for a high-poverty middle school in Brooklyn, which will enable them to open a lot of doors for their kids. You might have seen that just last week, Brandon, Vidal, and Mrs. Lopez took a trip to Washington, D.C., to visit President Obama.

Amazing things become possible when we see each other.

Through Brandon’s lens, New York is a city transfigured. A city Not Forsaken; a city with walls of salvation, and gates of praise; a city ablaze with the Presence of God. No longer reduced to its dirt and crowdedness, poverty and crime. A place where human hopes dwell, a place where people love and dream and remember. A place where people can, sometimes, take the risk of seeing each other, and responding to each other, to the beauty of our shared humanity.

In the Gospel of the Transfiguration, Peter, James, and John, and we with them,  witness the dazzling fulness of divine grace present in their friend Jesus, who usually just looks like an ordinary guy. And what about the rest of us ordinary folk? If a city can be transfigured into a haven of plenty and peace – if a man can be transfigured into a icon of God’s glory – can you or I be transfigured too? Do we, might we, shine with divine light, once in a while?

Paul thinks so. In today’s Epistle, in language so beautiful that it’s been woven into our Eucharistic preface for Epiphany, he writes, ‘For it is the God who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’

God shines in our hearts; and makes us shine with the light that comes from encountering the fulness of divine love made known to us in Christ Jesus. Elsewhere, in the letter to the Romans, Paul writes,  “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2) Our translators here have gone for the rhyme, conformed/transformed. But that word, transformed? It’s the same Greek verb as “transfigured,” in today’s Gospel. Be transfigured by the renewing of your mind.  

When our guest iconographer was with us last month, he talked about holy images in Eastern Christianity and traditions about how the faces are painted. They’re not painted as if there were a light over here, casting highlights and shadows. Instead, they shine gently with their own light. In the understanding of the iconographic tradition, holy people glow from within. Holy people glow from the inside. God shines in our hearts.

But it can be hard to see that light, to notice that glow, in each other, and maybe especially in ourselves. We need a mountaintop moment when the veil of ordinary sight is ripped away and we see clearly, for a moment, the staggering beauty of something so familiar, so humble. We need poets like the voice of Canticle 11 to cast a vision of what could be, if we scrubbed the streets and threw open the gates and lived into our wildest hopes. We need a new way of seeing, a fresh lens, like Brandon’s work with HONY, to help us notice that that stranger on a park bench, or a doorway, or the next office over has a story, and a heart, and a beauty all his own.

I think one of the holiest things we can do, as a church, as a community of faith, is to look at each other with those eyes. Witness to the light that shines from your neighbor’s face, and life; and name it, speak it. Because we often can’t see our own light.  Be the Humans of New York comments section for each other: offering affirmation and praise, hope and prayers, words of encouragement, offers of help.

And I think another of the holiest things we can do as a church, as a gathering of God’s people in this time and place, is to look at the world with those eyes. With eyes that see beauty and hope and possibility in the mess and struggle and ugliness around us. With eyes that see even in stranger the truth of our common humanity, the light of divine grace stirring in each soul. With eyes that are eager to see, that search passionately and persistently, for glints and sparks and divine twinkles that show us God’s transfiguring and transforming grace always already at work, waiting for us to notice, and catch up, and join in.

It’s the custom in the Episcopal Church, on Annual Meeting Sunday, for the Rector to present a little speech on where the church has been in the past year, and where she thinks it’s going. And it’s our custom at St. Dunstan’s, as at many churches, for that speech to be my sermon, so that you don’t have to listen to me give TWO fifteen-minute talks in one morning.

I could probably spend 15 minutes just talking about everything we’ve changed in 2014.  2014 was a year of a lot of transitions and new approaches. We hired our office coordinator Pamela in March, and she’s already become essential. We got new accounting and member database software, and then a new office computer that can run it all better. Anyone who’s been through software transitions can guess how many hours that’s taken! We upgraded our Internet service here at the church – a long-overdue transition. I spend a lot less time waiting for pages to load than I used to, and we can actually stream video, and show some of the infinite world of content – some of which is actually useful and relevant – on our awesome new TV & Roku setup in the Meeting Room. We found a new home for our elderly commercial dishwasher – you can visit it over at Sector 67 Makerspace, if you miss it – and we bought a new dishwasher which is used several times a week. We changed over most of the light bulbs in this building to LED technology, to reduce our energy use and, we hope, give us longer bulb life!

And then there’s all the new stuff we did in 2014. Our growth, numerical and spiritual, called for new spaces and opportunities to grow more and go deeper. We began to offer some kind of teaching or sharing time every Sunday at 9am. Our growing Sunday School now meets twice a month. We added a summer Vacation Bible School, which was wildly successful. And our Sandbox Worship began in the fall of 2013 but became a weekly gathering in March of 2014.

Many of you may not be aware of a lot of these changes. New lightbulbs, or the fact that your giving statement is generated by Quickbooks instead of ACS… who knew? But believe me when I tell you that all of these changes have taken a lot of time and energy, for your church staff and many volunteers, too. I’m looking forward to a year in which all these changes can settle out and become our new normal. But as much energy as they took, and as crazy as we maybe were to pack so many into one year, they were all necessary, for various reasons. We replaced things and models and arrangements that weren’t serving us well anymore – too old, too big, too expensive, too slow, too limited. We’re moving forward with greater flexibility, focus, and efficiency, better able to become whatever God has in mind for St. Dunstan’s in the 21st century.

I wish I could tell you that we’re done. That we’ve changed what we needed to change and upgraded what we needed to upgrade and begun what we needed to begin, and we’re good to go. But I can’t tell you that. We are living in a time of great change, for the world, for the church.  This is the decade in which the Episcopal Church, as a body, finally has to face and respond to the epochal changes in culture, faith, and economy that have transformed the face of American society and religion over the past half-century. That’s the urgency behind the work of the Task Force for Re-Imagining the Episcopal Church, or TREC. TREC was called into being by our last national church gathering, the General Convention in 2012. They recently released their final report, in preparation for this summer’s General Convention, at which I will serve as a deputy from our diocese.

The simplest way to explain their work is to quote a little from the report itself. (You can download the full report here.) 

“The members of the Task Force for Reimagining The Episcopal Church believe that the Holy Spirit is calling our Church to participate in God’s mission in a faithful and life-giving way in a changing world…. 

[We must learn how to form Christian community and practice Christian witness in environments where the culture no longer supports Christian identity, practice, and belonging as it once did.]

The Task Force spent two years in discussions with thousands of Episcopalians about their hopes, dreams, ideas, and concerns for the Church and about our collective mission to serve Christ. We also reviewed broad research on the identity and mission of The Episcopal Church in which thousands more participated. We studied how other churches and even non-religious organizations have innovated to pursue their missions in a changing world. We conferred, we listened and read, and we prayed. 

In this final report, we present our recommendations for changes in the Church’s structures, governance, and administration, to serve God’s mission in the world.” 

TREC urgently calls the attention of all Episcopalians to the fact that big, big changes have gone on outside the church, and that big, big changes are needed inside the church, for us to adapt and flourish in this new reality. We’re not talking about moving a service time from 7:30 to 8am, or rearranging the chairs, or updating the website, though all of those things may be good changes to make. We’re talking about rethinking what it means to be church. What it means to belong. What it means to follow. What it means to serve.

I find it both terrifying and comforting to be reminded that the changes we’re dealing with at St. Dunstan’s – different patterns of belonging and giving and participating, different things people are seeking in a faith community – that’s not just us. It’s the whole Episcopal Church – and more: it’s the Protestants and the Catholics and even the Evangelicals, friends. Everybody in the church as it has been is striving to get a handle on the church as it is becoming.

Which brings me back to the TREC report. Because a lot of what it contains are recommendations for General Convention to deal with: resolutions about how we elect bishops, for example. But early on in the report, they lay out a call to the Church as a whole, and to all its member parishes and people. A set of simple yet transformational practices that they believe were the heart of the Christian way since the days of Jesus, and that still have the power to renew us today:

Follow Jesus together into the neighborhood, and travel lightly. 

The TREC report uses a portion of Luke 10 as its keystone Scripture, and I’d love to study that Scripture with all of you sometime; your Vestry read and reflected on it together this week. But it’s not one of our readings today, and in the interests of having this be at least 30% sermon, I do want to pull in today’s Scriptures. Fortunately, they connect pretty well with the TREC practices. Follow Jesus together into the neighborhood, and travel lightly. Let’s take a look, piece by piece.

Follow Jesus together.

The TREC report says, “Christianity is an embodied way of life, not just an institution or set of ideas. The Episcopal Church has a distinct and rich heritage of interpreting and expressing the Way of Jesus, [how to live as Christians in the world.] The renewal of our Church will come only through discerning the shape of that Way and practicing it together in the power of the Spirit.”

Today’s Gospel from John brings us, quite simply, a story of following Jesus together. Jesus calls Philip. Philip knows Andrew and Peter, who have already begun to follow Jesus. Philip goes and calls his friend Nathanael, shares what he’s heard and seen from this new rabbi, and urges him to follow Jesus too. All of these young men are taking a risk – doing something new and strange and daring, leaving home, following this rabbi, questioning the status quo, risking trouble with both religious and political authorities.

But they’re doing it TOGETHER. With friends. When you’re starting something new, or hard, or new and hard, having friends beside you makes all the difference in the world, doesn’t it?

Follow Jesus together. What might that look like for us here at St. Dunstan’s? I think it looks like deepening our bonds of friendship and mutual care. Spending time together. Having real conversations. Bearing one another’s burdens. Sharing in both weeping and laughter. Listening and responding to one another, in the language of our parish mission statement. Building up the “together”. And building up, too, our shared sense of what it means to follow Jesus. Exploring Christianity as an way of life. Talking and wondering and sharing and praying – together – about what lived faith looks like and feels like for us. When are we conscious of bringing our faith into our daily life? – or of needing our faith? I anticipate with hope some holy conversations in the months and years ahead, as we explore what living faith means for us, individually and together.

Follow Jesus together, into the neighborhood. 

The TREC report says, “Jesus sends us together into the places where ordinary life unfolds. We are sent to [share the good news of God’s Kingdom and share in God’s work] of peacemaking and healing…. For many churches now disconnected from neighbors, this will mean attempting small experiments in [listening and in] sharing God’s peace [with our neighbors].”

The word “neighbors” here is used with a literalism that challenges us: the people who live near your church. Most churches are fairly disengaged from their immediate neighbors and the issues and concerns of their neighborhoods. TREC challenges us to re-engage, to look, listen, and learn. To seek out where God may have work for us to do, or may already be at work among our neighbors, and to join in that work.

Looking outside our church walls can be overwhelming. There are SO many issues, and SO many needs. SO many voices telling us that we live in terrible times. Watching the news can make us feel that we, like Samuel, are living in a time when the word of the Lord is rare, and hopeful visions are few and far between. But don’t let the news mislead or overwhelm you. There are good things happening in the world, in the big picture and over the long term. There are many ways in which human life has substantively improved in the past century. Maybe the realization that God is still at work in the world can turn our despair to hope, our discouragement to courage.

Yes, there are many voices that clamor in our ears, about the needs and struggles of our neighbors, near and far. What young Samuel discovered is that sometimes the voice that wakes and calls and stirs you turns out to be the voice of God. In the months and years ahead, let’s ask God’s Holy Spirit to help us listen with discerning ears to the voices around us, to discover together where God is calling us into new or deeper engagement with the world around us.

Follow Jesus together, into the neighborhood, and travel lightly. 

Travel lightly. 

Jesus, in sending out his disciples to preach and heal, told them to carry no bag or purse, not even an extra pair of shoes. The TREC report says, “Jesus sends us out empty-handed so that we might rely upon God’s abundance, which sometimes comes to us through the hospitality of our neighbors. We must hold [our inherited institutions and practices] loosely as we make space for alternative patterns of organizing our life together. We must discern what of our traditions is life-giving and what unduly weighs us down. Traveling lightly means going in vulnerability, risking being changed by God and our neighbors.”

Traveling lightly is very much what Paul is talking about in this portion of the first letter to the church in Corinth. Paul is writing this letter in a time when he expects Jesus’ return, and the end of the world as we know it, pretty much any day now.

A few verses earlier he used the phrase, “In view of the impending crisis…” In Paul’s later letters he begins to shift gears, to offer teachings on how to live as followers of Christ for the long haul. But there’s a theme here that carries on in Paul’s letters and in Christian thought over the millennia – what the Buddhists call non-attachment. “Let those who buy be as though they had no possessions, and let those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.” Paul says, if you’re invested in the way things are, you’re less ready for the way things are becoming, less open to the unknown future that is even now taking shape in the present.

I don’t think “traveling light” for us, in the here and now, means ignoring our spouses or burying our emotions. But the Episcopal Church as a whole is undertaking the needful work of discerning how to “travel lightly” into the 21st century, changing or laying to rest practices and structures and patterns that weigh us down or hold us back. And we can ask those same questions in our parishes. No sacred cows; everything on the table. If there’s anything we do just because we’ve always done it, anything we have just because we have it, it’s worth taking a thoughtful and prayerful look at it together, and asking ourselves:

Is this blessing us, or our neighbors? Is it life-giving, energizing, joyful?  Could it be? Can we make it so? Can we name why it matters to us, and are those Gospel reasons or human reasons? Does concern with protecting or preserving it

make us fearful, or reluctant to follow a new call? Is it something that attracts and engages new members, or creates stumbling blocks and closes doors? Is there anything that needs to die, that we are called to name, and grieve, and lay to rest? Is there anything that wants to be born, that we are called to draw forth, and baptize, and nurture? If we spend a year or eighteen months asking those questions about everything, I absolutely believe we’d have a lot less baggage to carry forward and a lot more energy and enthusiasm for the journey.

Follow Jesus together, into the neighborhood, and travel lightly. 

The TREC report says, “We believe that, rather than an anxious focus on how to preserve our institution, a joyful focus on these basic practices [of Christianity as a] movement will hold the real key for moving us into God’s future.”

We are in a good place, St. Dunstan’s. We have such a concentration of good, loving, committed, smart, brave, curious, generous, interesting, amazing people here. I am so blessed to be your priest; I am so excited by what God is doing among us and with us.  We have our feet on solid ground financially, for the moment; we have the blessing of young and old  caring for each other and living our faith together; we have strong and joyful worship at the heart of our common life. This is a wonderful year to say, Where do we go from here? What do we become? To say, with Samuel, Speak, Lord, for your servant is listening! To hear, with Nathanael, the words of Jesus: You will see greater things than these! 

Seeking the way of Jesus, together – hearing God’s call in the many voices around us, and following it into deeper engagement with our neighbors – holding lightly the way things have been, in confidence that there is hope in the way things are becoming … let us follow Jesus together, into the neighborhood, and travel lightly.

Let us pray.

Lord Jesus, stay with us, as we walk in new paths; be our companion in the way, kindle our hearts, and awaken hope, that we may know you as you are revealed in Scripture and the breaking of bread. Grant this for the sake of your love. Amen.

On the second and third Sundays in Advent, our lectionary, or cycle of Bible readings, always gives us a good dose of John the Baptist. John appears in all four of our Gospels, proclaiming Jesus’ mission and baptizing Jesus at the beginning of his years of ministry and teaching, as told in those books. Matthew and Luke both begin their gospels with stories about Jesus’ parents and birth; Mark and John both begin with John the Baptist, the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare the way of the Lord.

It’s interesting to pause and reflect why our Advent lessons give us so much of John the Baptist.Two Sundays out of four, every Advent! I, personally, always resist it a little. I’d rather be in those first chapters of Matthew and Luke, working our way towards the stable, the star, the holy birth. I think the lectionary brings us John and his words because of the traditional understanding of Advent as a penitential season – a season to prepare our hearts and lives for God’s coming. The collect for the second Sunday of Advent says in part, “Merciful God, who sent your messengers the prophets to preach repentance and prepare the way for our salvation: Give us grace to heed their warnings and forsake our sins, that we may greet with joy the coming of Jesus Christ our Redeemer.” John stands in that lineage of Old Testament prophets, and with his predecessors, calls us across the ages to renewal of life.

I think, too, that we get so much John in the lectionary to help us avoid the temptation

of a sentimental over-focus on the sweet baby in the manger. The beauty and wonder of the Nativity story draws our eyes and our hearts. John the Baptist says to us, ‘Yes, yes, cute baby, great story; but do you realize who that child is going to grow up to be? The strange, beautiful, challenging truths he’s going to speak? Are you ready to face his violent death; are you ready to see him rise from the grave; are you ready to follow where he may lead you? The baby is only the beginning.’

But John has his own birth story, in the Gospel of Luke. You can read it here; it’s a wonderful story! 

Luke, perhaps the most literary of the four Gospel writers, knows the Old Testament very well. His story of John’s conception and birth – recorded only in his gospel – may be based on stories and memories that were passed on to him, and became part of his “orderly account.”  Luke’s story of John’s birth is quite *clearly* based, in part, on stories of wondrous births from the Hebrew Scriptures: Abraham and Sarah bearing a son in old age; Manoah questioning the angel; Hannah’s prayers and her triumphant song. Luke skillfully weaves together the themes and poetry of those older holy stories, and creates something new, and delightful.

In looking at the story of John this year, in its fulness – from Zechariah in the sanctuary

to his death in Herod’s prison – something dawned on me that I’d never considered before. John… is a PK. A PK – a preacher’s kid, or priest’s kid.

I don’t know how widespread the PK stereotypes are, but I certainly grew up with them.

Here’s the basic gist: PKs tend to be overly serious, and precociously churchy, as children. They’re at church all the time, because their mom or dad is at church all the time. And as kids they actually like it: acolyting, reading, helping out in the sacristy, all that stuff. As teens and young adults, they either stick with that, become youth group leaders, go to seminary right out of college, that sort of thing. OR they go the other direction, throw off their straightlaced youth and get as far away from church as possible; and undertake any number of lifestyle experiments, sometimes reckless, even self-destructive.

I love realizing that John the Baptist was a PK because it fits. It fits so well. Imagine little John shadowing his daddy Zechariah as he performed his duties as a priest. Helping with the incense, the oil, the bread, learning the prayers and gestures, memorizing the Scriptures and the songs. Maybe he even snuck into the sanctuary, the holy of holies, once or twice; surely, surely he peeped in, driven by a child’s curiosity and a PK’s piety. I bet he was one of those kids who played “temple” at home,with sticks and stones and simple clay figures. He grew up steeped in the language and symbols, the formalized holiness, of the Great Temple, the heart of first-century Judaism. John could have become a priest himself. He came from a priestly family. I’m sure he had the skills, and he clearly had a heart that was open to God.

But… John swung the other way. He rejected the Temple, the symbol and center of his parents’ and his people’s faith. Perhaps, as Jesus did, he saw that the faith of the Temple wasn’t moving hearts from despair to hope, wasn’t moving the world from oppression to justice.

And John didn’t just, you know, quit going to church and become a carpenter or an accountant or something.  He set himself up as a prophet of a different kind of faith. He drew upon the Hebrew Scriptures, which he no doubt knew backwards and forwards, and he cast himself as a latter-day prophet. Living in the wilderness, wearing rags and animal hides, eating whatever he could find, thoroughly rejecting his parents’ middle-class respectability and establishment piety. John preached faith without a temple,

without costly offerings of livestock or a priest to pronounce purity. He said: Change your heart. Change your life. Be fair and just and kind. That’s harder than it sounds, but DO IT.  Let your life bear witness that your heart has been transformed. Then you’ll be ready for what God is about to do. You don’t need a huge ornate building; you don’t need priests in fancy clothes; you don’t need particular prayers or songs or gestures. You just need to look unflinchingly at your own daily life, hold it up against God’s call to live with justice and compassion, and do what you need to do.

All of that, I think, makes John an interesting icon for the Episcopal Church in the 21st century. We are a church of formal worship, not entirely unlike the great Temple. We have our songs and prayers, incense and holy vessels and priests in fancy robes, and oh, do we have our traditions. We have been steeped in the rituals of holiness; we have experienced the ancient grace of those patterns and ways of worship. I hope we won’t walk away from them; I believe they have power and purpose.

And yet: the wilderness of our times, the yearnings and struggles of our society, call us, I think, to be like John: grounded in those traditions, but ready, eager, hungry for something new, for the breaking-in of holiness in our time and place.

Can we find inspiration in John the Baptist, the Wild Man, the Prophet? Are we willing to leave the temple to walk the wilderness, sustaining ourselves however we can, while we seek God’s word and God’s call?  Are we open to a faith that goes deeper than words and gestures, that sinks into hearts, touches lives, and fuels the transformation of the world?

Come, Lord Jesus!

Preached by the Rev. Miranda Hassett on Sunday, December 7, 2014. Here are this Sunday’s lessons. 

Good news. That’s what we’re given. That’s what we’re called to share. Good news.

From today’s Isaiah text: Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings!From today’s Gospel:  The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Good news – evangelion in Greek: Ev like the Eu in Eucharist, meaning good; Angello like the word “Angel”, meaning message or news. In Old English, evangelion becomes goodspel – meaning good story, good message. Goodspel gets shortened to Gospel, our familiar word, the word we use for the good news we’ve been given, the good news we are called to share. Good news.

Let’s look at the good news of our lessons today, the second Sunday in Advent. In Isaiah 40, the voice of the prophet consoles a people in distress: Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her that she has served her term.

And a few verses later: God will feed the flock like a shepherd; God will gather the lambs in his arms, and carry them in his bosom, and gently lead the mother sheep. Good news!

But lest we forget, the prophet also reminds us: All people are grass, their constancy is like the flower of the field. The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people are grass. Life is short, folks. We will all wither and fade, maybe sooner than we think. Good news? …

What about our Epistle today? What good news does the second letter of Peter have for us? The patience of God, who longs to give us all time to repent and live lives worthy of the Gospel. The call to live with holiness and godliness, while we await the coming of a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness is at home. Good news! Except possibly for the part about the heavens and the earth being dissolved with fire. Good news? …

And then there’s the beginning of Mark’s Gospel. World’s most concise introduction: The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Jesus, the kind healer, the wise teacher, the courageous advocate: Jesus is the Son of God! God’s love incarnate among us! Good news! But Mark’s story doesn’t begin with Jesus; it begins with John, the crazy wilderness preacher. Mark doesn’t tell us much about John’s preaching, but Matthew and Luke do, and by their testimony, John had some sharp words. Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near! You brood of vipers! Who warned you flee from the wrath to come? One who is more powerful than I is coming after me. His winnowing-fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing-floor and will gather his wheat into the granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire. Change your hearts, change your lives, renounce your complicity with injustice, and then maybe you’ll be ready for the new thing that is being born. Bear fruit worthy of repentance! Good news?…

Let me point out that people had to go out of their way to hear John’s preaching. He wasn’t like the typical campus preacher who stands on a busy corner with a megaphone. His pulpit was outside Jerusalem, near the Jordan River, a muddy seasonal stream. People had to seek him out, to take the time to walk out to hear him. People had to decide that this nutcase, who dressed in ragged hides, who ate whatever he could find, including grasshoppers, that this nutcase was speaking to them, their hearts, their souls. That his extreme and challenging words were something they needed to hear. Were, maybe, somehow, good news.

Good news. Good news in the Bible is… complicated. Good news in our Christian faith is complicated. It has that man on the cross at its center –  hardly reassuring or heart-warming. This good news, this Gospel, has at its heart sacrifice, pain, and loss. The good news of Isaiah 40 encompasses coming to terms with our own limitations. The good news of 2 Peter assumes that we can anticipate with joy the the destruction of everything we know, in anticipation of a new and better everything. The good news of John the Baptist calls his hearers to dive into the swirling brown waters of the river Jordan and cleanse themselves of sin and injustice. Good news is not necessarily easy. Good news is not necessarily nice.

My son’s been playing a song on the guitar lately – Rain, by a band called Bishop Allen – and it’s been stuck in my head for the past couple of weeks: “Oh, let this rain come down and wash this world away, oh let the sky be gray, cause if it’s ever gonna get any better, it’s gotta get worse for a day.” Alan Jones, former dean of Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco, said something much the same: “Of all the choices we have to make, there is none harder than having to give up something good for the sake of something better.”

God’s good news asks something of us. Asks us to hold lightly our present certainties and comforts. Asks us to risk the known for the possibilities of the unknown. Asks us to open our eyes and ears and hearts to other voices, new visions, deeper truths and bigger hopes.

And all that… brings me to Ferguson, Missouri. To all the prayer and protest, conversation and debate, reflection and recrimination that has unfolded across our nation since an unarmed black teenager was shot and killed by a white police officer last August.

I have felt like two different people, the past couple of weeks. At work, as Pastor Miranda, I was preparing our Advent liturgies, and writing sermons, and setting up our big crafting event, and checking up on sick members, and casting the Christmas pageant. At home, and on Facebook and Twitter, I was aching, and praying, and weeping, and reading, and posting and re-posting. Ferguson, and everything Ferguson stands for, has been so much on my mind and in my heart. But I’ve barely mentioned it within these walls. It’s hard to talk about, so hard.

I know there are people here right now who are itching for me to preach to this, and when I finish, will wish I’d said more, gone further. I know there are people right now who are thinking, Oh, no; who don’t want to hear this, for so many reasons, some of which I sympathize with. Really. If I could convince myself that I could be faithful to the Gospel, to the good news we’re given and called to share, without touching Ferguson from this pulpit,

I would leave it alone. I would. Because I’m a coward. I don’t like making people uncomfortable. I don’t like being uncomfortable.

But I believe that sometimes God’s Good News is uncomfortable. I can’t avoid this. And if I had any doubts, Mike Kinman set them to rest for me. Mike Kinman is the dean of the Episcopal Cathedral in St. Louis. And I’ve come to trust the wisdom and clarity of his voice, in these conflicted and messy times. In mid-November he published an open letter to his clergy colleagues who want to know what they can do. And the first thing he says they can do is, Preach about it. Preach about Ferguson.

Kinman writes, “I need you not to let your congregation pretend that this has nothing to do with you. I need you, in your own words and with your own integrity from your own heart, to preach about race and privilege and the deep brokenness we have not just in Ferguson, not just in St. Louis, but all over our nation. To preach in a way that doesn’t jump too quickly to peace and reconciliation but holds a mirror up to your own congregation and your own city.”

Well. Okay. But, having decided to accept this call, what do I say? I wish I could just do what I do on Facebook: Post links to five or ten amazing short essays and articles that say what needs saying, speak to our doubts and questions and struggles, and point us forwards. But here I have to find my own words. Mostly.

Here is one important thing to say: Racism is a faith issue. Racism must be a faith issue for anyone who calls herself or himself a follower of Jesus, because Jesus consistently reached out to those who were outcast, marginalized or oppressed. Because Jesus, our Friend, Teacher, and Lord, was killed for being rabble-rousing scum. Because the first Christians, guided by the Holy Spirit, came to understand that in Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free; that the social distinctions that matter so much to us are nothing in the eyes of our loving God. Because at our baptisms, we promised, or our parents and godparents promised for us, to renounce all the evil powers of this world that corrupt and destroy the creatures of God; and every time we reaffirm our baptismal vows, we commit ourselves, with God’s help, to seeking and serving Christ in all persons, and respecting the dignity of every human being.

If you still don’t see racism as a faith issue, then please, reach out to me, and we’ll have coffee and talk it through. But I can’t stand down from this; I just can’t see the Gospel any other way.

Here is another important thing to say. Some of you probably have questions or doubts about what really happened and who is to blame in Mike Brown’s death or any of the other particular incidents that are part of our current national conversation. Maybe the single most important thing that white observers need to understand is that this isn’t about any given incident; it’s about a pattern. What our African-American brothers and sisters are telling us is, This kind of violence, and less deadly, but equally degrading, kinds of violence, are part of the everyday texture of their lives, in ways that we can’t begin to imagine. In ways so subtle and so entrenched that the people who are part of those systems of violence may have no idea, and certainly no intention to do harm. If that even might be true, doesn’t it deserve – demand – your attention, your concern?

So. What can we do? That’s where so many of our conversations end up, feeling confused, overwhelmed, hopeless, helpless: what can we do?

Here are some ideas for what you can do. I hope they’ll speak to you, wherever you are on all this.

First: READ. There’s been so much wise and sharp and cogent written, in the past few weeks, about race and racism in America, past, present, and future. In voices ranging from world-class Old Testament scholar Walter Brueggeman to comedian Chris Rock, from legal scholars to cognitive scientists, to the voices of ordinary folk, white and black, sharing their hurts and their hopes. Whether you are thinking about all this for the first time right now, or whether you’ve read every article, every commentary, in the past six months, there is something you can read that will deepen your understanding. I’ve pulled together a list of some links to pieces that have touched me, in the past week.

One helpful suggestion I’ve seen is to diversify your media. Read news sources and opinion pieces by people of color. Read The Root, Colorlines, or our local magazine, Umoja. More generally, read news that isn’t from your usual trusted sources, and broaden your perspective – not necessarily by believing everything you read, but by discovering how current events are seen by others whose experiences and perspectives differ from yours.

Here’s another thing you can do: TALK. Have deep conversations with trusted friends, others who are struggling to understand and to know how to respond. We’ll make space for some of those kinds of conversations here at St. Dunstan’s early in 2015. And have tentative conversations with strangers, people you wouldn’t usually talk with. Don’t dive right into the news; just … widen your circle. Think of someone in your life that you see or cross paths with regularly, but don’t know anything about. Another parent or a staff member at your child’s school. A maintenance worker in your office building. A person you buy produce from at the market. Ask them their name, have a few minutes’ conversation. Make your social world a little bigger, a little broader.

Here’s the third thing you can do: NOTICE. Notice the way things are. Notice the things you’ve always taken for granted. This is hard work; I went to graduate school to learn to do this.But you can do it, with some thoughtful attention. Notice patterns, dynamics, assumptions. For example, if you’ve got kids in a public school… what proportion of the students are people of color? what proportion of the teachers are? If those proportions are way off,  how might that feel, for kids and families of color? … Emily Scott, the pastor of St. Lydia’s Church in New York, writes about running a red light on her bike in front of a policeman – nothing happened to her, but a black man just behind her did the same thing, and got pulled over. Notice what’s happening around you. Notice vocabulary – like when we talk about neighborhoods in Madison, and use “bad” or “dangerous” as shorthand for “high percentage of people of color.” Notice what happens inside yourself, too. If you see a group of teenage boys goofing off in your neighborhood park, what feelings or fears rise up inside you – if they’re white? if they’re Latino? if they’re black?

The fourth thing you can do is REFLECT. Reflecting goes hand in hand with noticing. And with reading. And with talking. When something gets uncomfortable, when you find yourself tempted to deflect the issue or blame somebody else, reflect on your own resistance. Dean Mike Kinman writes, “Feel the anger and the pain and ask Why? and don’t be satisfied with the initial answers that you give yourself … answers which will tend to reinforce your existing beliefs and stereotypes. Let your own anger, annoyance, confusion and weariness guide you to empathy  with the great anger, annoyance, confusion and weariness that our sisters and brothers of color experience every day.”

Use your discomfort as a tool for exploration, for digging deeper, for seeking understanding,  for undertaking change. Emily Scott writes, “Embrace feeling unsure most of the time.  [This work] is going to be messy and feel vulnerable and you’re going to see some things about yourself that you didn’t want to see.  … But that’s where the Holy Spirit does her thing. Wade in, because God calls us into the deep water.”

The fifth thing you can do is ACT. There are so many forms that action can take. I’m trusting that your own seeking will lead you to some steps that are right for you. Some big dramatic change needs to happen – but so much of the change we need is change in tiny, mundane, everyday behaviors and patterns and assumptions and choices… Small actions matter. Small change adds up.

And speaking of small change, one action I’ve seen suggested recently is to make a conscious choice to shift some of our spending to minority-owned businesses. The prosperity of the past seventy years of American life, and the recovery of the past five years, have both largely left African-American households behind. Intentionally patronizing minority-owned businesses is a simple way to try and share America’s promise more broadly.

Whatever actions you take, consider well these wise words from poet and blogger Scott Woods: “Look up what the word incremental means (I’ll give you a hint: it means bit by bit, tiny step by tiny step) – because if you’re holding out any hope and are actually working to create any change, you’re going to need it tattooed to your foreheads.”

And here is the sixth and last thing you can do, straight from Dean Mike Kinman’s list: PRAY. Mike writes, “This is definitely last but not least. Pray for us in St Louis, and know that we are praying for you. Pray not for an easy peace but pray for transformation. Pray for courage.  Pray for God’s Holy Spirit to move us in ways that we scarcely believe possible. Pray that all of us may use this moment in time as a great opportunity to show how deeply we trust in Jesus and the amazing things that Christ can do.”

Remember that we are bearers of, witnesses to, God’s good news. And that God’s good news asks something of us. Asks us to hold lightly our certainties and comforts. Asks us to risk the known for the possibilities of the unknown. Asks us to open our eyes and ears and hearts to other voices and bigger hopes. Pray, then, brothers and sisters – pray in the faith that God’s good news, demanding and complicated as is, is nonetheless, deeply, truly, incrementally… good.

Let us pray.

O God who created all peoples in your image, we thank you for the wonderful diversity of races and cultures in this world. Enrich our lives by ever-widening circles of fellowship, and show us your presence in those who differ most from us, until our knowledge of your love is made perfect in our love for all your children; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(BCP p. 840)

O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth. In the name of Christ we pray, Amen.

(BCP p. 815)

Preached by the Rev. Miranda K. Hassett on Sunday, November 23, 2014. 

So this is the assignment I gave myself this week. Compose a sermon that deals with the Parable of the Talents, one of the most complex, elusive, and contested parables in the Gospels; that deals also with the Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, with its beautiful themes of service to the poor and its terrifying language of damnation; touch on the Kingship of Christ; and keep it short, so we have plenty of time to eat pie/digest. Hah. I’ve always liked difficult assignments.

I could easily have skipped the Parable of the Talents; it’ll come around again. But I’ve become really fascinated by the way these two parables interact. They are the last two parables in this long speech of Jesus, in Matthew’s Gospel, about being ready, and how to live while you’re waiting. We are on the cusp of Jesus’ arrest and trial here, in Matthew’s narrative, and we should read these stories with a sense of the whirlwind of repressive violence about to catch up Jesus and all those close to him.

Listen.

It is as if a man, going on a journey, entrusted some money to his slaves – huge sums, more than they could earn in a lifetime, even if they were free men. And two of the slaves used the money to make more money; but one buried it, hiding it in the ground for safekeeping. And when the Master returned, he called the slaves to settle accounts. The two who had used the money to make more money earned the master’s praise: “Well done; enter into the joy of your master. ” But the third slave spoke the harsh truth to his master: “I knew that you were a hard man, reaping where you did not sow; so I hid the money, to keep it safe. Here you have what is yours. ” And the master was furious, and had that slave thrown into the outer darkness. For to all those who have, even more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.

When the Son of Man comes in glory, all the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people, as a shepherd separates sheep and goats. At his right hand, he will gather those who fed the hungry, gave drink to the thirsty, welcomed the stranger, clothed the naked, cared for the sick and visited the prisoner. And he will say to them, Just as you did these things for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did them for me; come, inherit the kingdom prepared for you. At his left hand, he will gather those who did not feed the hungry, care for the sick, or visit the prisoner. And they will go away into eternal punishment. It is fascinating to look at these parables together. I’ve never really done it before. The lectionary, our calendar of Sunday readings, gives them to us one at a time. And that week in between gives the preacher the luxury of forgetting or ignoring the ways the two stories overlap, and simultaneously tug against each other. After spending ten days mulling them over, off and on, noticing their resonances and their tensions, I’m increasingly convinced that they need to be told, and interpreted, together; that they are, in some deep sense, paired. At the same time, I’m quite convinced that I can’t begin to do justice to either, let alone both, in the space of twelve minutes or less. So prepare yourselves for some broad brushstrokes and unanswered questions.

First, what these two stories have in common: The message that there will be an accounting, a judgment, a sorting. And what we do with what we have, matters. How we use our wealth, our time, our skills and yes, our talents, will be weighed and measured. Both parables have a strong message that we should live in the present as people mindful of an ultimate future, with an awareness of the impact and import of our actions and choices. But maybe it would be more accurate to say that there will be two accountings. Because the Master of the slaves and the sheep-sorting King are not the same guy. I believe these parables are mirror images, their similarities intended to call our attention to the ways in which they are profoundly different.

Consider the punch line of the Talent parable: To all those who have, even more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. Or as Billie Holiday puts it: Them that’s got shall get; them that’s not, shall lose. Not all of Jesus’ parables are kingdom parables, parables about God’s reality and God’s intentions for the world. Some of them are parables about the world as it is, standing in the tradition of Wisdom literature that sees and names the deep patterns of human life and society.

Them that’s got shall get, them that’s not shall lose: does that sound like God’s way of doing things, anywhere else in the Bible? It sounds to me very much like the human way of doing things. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. It was sure as heck happening in first-century Palestine. It is sure as heck happening in twenty-first-century America. The gap between rich and poor continues to widen. By many measures, we are the most unequal society in the developed world. I see that reality manifest every week in the stories of the folks who come to our doors seeking help. I’m sure our members who volunteer at MOM or Porchlight or IHN see it and hear it, too. If you want data instead of anecdotes, there’s plenty to be found. To look at one heartbreaking number, released this week: nearly one in every thirty children in America is homeless. Those rates have worsened even as our economy recovers. To those who have nothing, even the little that they have will be taken away. Is this God’s way of doing things? Is this harsh master meant to stand for God? Or is the slave who speaks truth to power, refuses to collude with corrupt systems of wealth creation, and blows the whistle on the master’s greed – should this slave remind us of the man who tells us this story, the man who, one chapter later, will himself stand before the seat of power, and be judged, condemned, and cast out? …

This parable has been read as a call to make the most of what you have. That’s a good message; I do believe that God wants us to make good use of our gifts, skills, time, and resources. But that very familiar reading of this parable makes God an unjust and greedy master, and endorses “them that’s got, shall get” as the divine order of things.

I can’t make peace with that interpretation. I don’t believe that was the story Jesus meant to tell. Consider the story he tells next.

In this story, the authority figure, the King on the throne, is identified as the Son of Man: a phrase Jesus seems to use to refer to himself, especially in his role as Messiah, the one who acts and speaks for God,… as God. The judgment here, then, is a divine, not a human, judgment. And the people gathered before the throne are not judged on whether they’ve doubled their wealth. They are judged, instead, on whether they’ve spent their gifts, skills, time, and resources responding with compassion and generosity to those in need.

Preachers and commentators sometimes fret that this parable teaches us works-righteousness – the idea that we can earn our own salvation by our acts of compassion, our righteous works, instead of receiving God’s grace as a free gift. But notice: in the parable, the people who lived with compassion didn’t know they were serving God by doing so. They ask, “When did I do something for you? ” They weren’t trying to get on Jesus’ good side; they had no idea. They just saw someone hungry, and fed her. As simple as that.

I admire people with that kind of spirit; sometimes I need a little more help. I turn to this parable on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis, to remind myself how to respond to those in need. People often call the church or come to our doors, people whose lives have gone off the rails and who don’t know where else to turn for help. Dealing with those requests is one of the hardest parts of my job. It’s hard because I’m busy and it takes a lot of time to hear people’s stories, to let them cry, to negotiate what I can offer and how to provide it. It’s hard because their stories are hard to hear. It’s hard because what I have to offer is so little, if anything. I can’t fix their situation. The most I can do is offer $100 towards rent or a gas card, and a little food from our kitchen, and a prayer. And all of that is demoralizing and painful and sad for ME. When I hear that someone is at the door seeking help, my heart doesn’t leap in my chest at the opportunity to serve a child of God in need. My heart sinks, because the need is so great, and mostly all I can do is say, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry all this has happened to you. And I’m so sorry that I can’t make it better. I can’t find you a place to live. I can’t give you a job with a living wage. I can’t fix your addiction problems, or your bad back. I can’t get your violent ex-husband to leave you alone. Here is the tiny, tiny bit I can do; and I’ll pray for you. It is hard, and sometimes I don’t want to do it. I just don’t want to.

This parable reminds me that in doing whatever I can, as little as it may be, I am serving Christ. It keeps me grounded. It helps me respond when I feel like I have nothing to give. I don’t think that’s the dreaded “works-righteousness”, because I’m not imagining a tally sheet somewhere (and if I did, I’d imagine myself perpetually in the red). The story simply remind me that the person standing before me belongs to Christ. It’s a touchstone for me, because it lays out so clearly what it looks like to follow a Savior who came as a servant of all.

That is not to say that this is an easy parable. Half of this crowd is shuffled off to eternal damnation. Judgment is a tough subject. I will happily put off the topics of judgment and hell for another sermon… and keep doing so indefinitely. And of course I’m running short on time today, so….

Returning to the relationship between these parables: can you see how they line up as twinned opposites, mirror images? There is a moment of judgment, of standing before the one in power and having your deeds weighed, your sums tallied. But one is a judgment in this world’s terms, success and prosperity as we measure it on this side. And the other measures success by having given away time, skill, resources, even self, in service to those who have nothing, and less than nothing. A life lived like that isn’t likely to double anybody’s wealth. But in this accounting, it’s the ones with empty hands who earn the Master’s praise.

Today is Christ the King Sunday, the Sunday of the church year when we honor, and puzzle over, the paradoxical sovereignty of Jesus. One of the pitfalls, maybe THE pitfall, of naming Jesus Christ as King, Lord, and Master, is that we tend to project onto him the trappings and dynamics of human power. In life, he had no use for all that. He wasn’t interested in pomp and praise, in wealth or glory. He got on his knees and washed his friends’ stinking feet and told them, This is what leadership looks like. Even in this parable, in which he seems to put himself on a throne, he turns right around and climbs down into the gutter, the sickbed, the jail cell.

But we struggle with his humility. Our images of wealth and power are so entrenched. As often as he climbs off the throne, we put him back on it; as often as he shakes off the purple robe, we wrap it around his shoulders again; as often as he says, Put down your swords, we call up another army to fight for him.

On this Christ the King Sunday, looking at these two parables, I invite you to try a thought experiment.

In Matthew’s Gospel, one parable leads into the next with this abrupt jump: “As for this worthless slave, throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. ” When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. ” What if we fill in the space between these two parables, like this? The third slave was bound and thrown into the darkness. In the darkness he suffered and died, at the hands of those who hated him for naming the injustice of their ways. But the story wasn’t over; and the slave wasn’t really a slave. (Philippians 2:6-9) He humbled himself, submitting even to death; therefore God raised him up in glory, freeing him from the power of the grave. In the fulness of time, he returned to the human world, surrounded by angels, aflame with divine power, to claim the throne of judgment and mercy, and to bring to fulfillment that Kingdom in which no sword is drawn but the sword of righteousness, no strength known but the strength of love, and no wealth measured but the wealth of kindness.

Come, Lord Jesus.