Proper 16B- Armor of God

Ephesians 6:10-20:

10 Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and his powerful strength.11 Put on God’s armor so that you can make a stand against the tricks of the devil. 12 We aren’t fighting against human enemies but against rulers, authorities, forces of cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens. 13 Therefore, pick up the full armor of God so that you can stand your ground on the evil day and after you have done everything possible to still stand. 14 So stand with the belt of truth around your waist, justice as your breastplate,15 and put shoes on your feet so that you are ready to spread the good news of peace. 16 Above all, carry the shield of faith so that you can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. 17 Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word.

18 Offer prayers and petitions in the Spirit all the time. Stay alert by hanging in there and praying for all believers. 19 As for me, pray that when I open my mouth, I’ll get a message that confidently makes this secret plan[a] of the gospel known. 20 I’m an ambassador in chains for the sake of the gospel. Pray so that the Lord will give me the confidence to say what I have to say.

If you’ve ever been present at a baptism at an Episcopal, Catholic, or probably some other churches – or if you’ve just watched the Godfather – you might be familiar with a point in the service where the priest asks either those being baptized, or if it’s an infant being baptized, this question is posed to the parents and Godparents: “Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?” And if the people being asked are following the script and hoping for a baptism, they will respond: “I renounce them.”

And there is another similar question after that: “Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?” and again, those people respond, “I renounce them.”

There might have been a time or two that I’m meeting a family before the service to go over logistics and as I’m skimming through the service and the lines, a godparent will stop at these questions and ask: “Wait. What???” And I can’t entirely blame them because for a lot of Episcopalians, those 20 seconds of questioning are the most airtime they give to Satan and evil and any real effect they can have on us today. 

In a way, that’s an understandable reaction. We’re all aware of other churches out there who see demons hiding around every corner, or who seem like they’re more obsessed with Satan and evil than they are with Jesus and his gospel. There’s a certain strain of church that spends so much time denouncing the things and people they see as evil in this world — which generally boil down to “how dare we allow people to exist who don’t think and look and act exactly like we would prefer” — that they give short shrift to (or deny entirely) God’s overwhelming, creative, explosive love for all of God’s children.

We’ve also seen churches that use Satan as a bludgeon: the “love God OR ELSE” approach to theology. And that ‘or else’ can get pretty imaginative. That ‘or else’ can ignite fear, which is a very convenient emotion to ignite when you want to act in a certain way. 

We are not that sort of church and I’m not that sort of preacher. 

But if you were paying attention to our reading from Ephesians, Paul does write with more urgency around these evil forces acting against God, a real and present danger. He warns the church in Ephesus around what he calls “the tricks of the devil.” Like we are living in a cosmic battle between good and evil. 

If there is this big fight between good and evil, shouldn’t it be over by now? This is not what any of us signed up for. Don’t we sing every Easter “The strife is over, the battle won. The victory of life is done. The song of triumph has begun. Alleluia.” As the Rev. Dr. Amy Richter wrote “But for Paul, this means that we are living in a strange in-between time, between the victory of Christ on the cross and the final glorification of Christ when every knee shall bend in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord. Until that final glorification, we live in an overlapping of the old age and the new age, and the principalities and powers of the old age, even though they have been defeated, can still wreak havoc and cause harm.”

You’ll notice that Paul makes a distinction that the enemy isn’t fellow humans, but it’s powers above fellow humans: rulers, authorities, forces of cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evils. Today, we even have names for some of these particular evils: fascism, classism, or racism. Misogyny, homophobia or transphobia, just to name a few. Those are real threats that destroy creatures of God. 

We are all here in a safe place. I suspect, or at least I hope that you know that. I do what I can to make this a safe place. This is a place where you don’t have to hold back tears when the weight of the world is heavy on your shoulders. It’s a place where joys are celebrated and lifted up no matter the context. A place where we are all free to show our true colors, a place where your vulnerability will not be weaponized against you.

 But we don’t get to live every moment of our lives in these sorts of safe places. There are, unfortunately, places where our truest self isn’t welcome, maybe our truest self isn’t even tolerated. And when Paul was writing to the Ephesians, he didn't tell them to go out and be something they are not. He didn’t tell them to pretzel themselves 

What Paul gives us is the Armor of God: 

-the belt of truth

-the breastplate of justice

-shoes to go and share the good news of peace

-the shield of faith

-the helmet of salvation

-the sword of the Spirit

You’ll notice that 6 of the 7 parts of the armor of God are defensive pieces, not meant for us to dominate the world, but meant for us when we’re dominated over. 

The evil that Paul talked about still finds it’s way in the world through the bullies of the world. Whether it’s their own sin or misgivings, bullies can still elbow their way into high positions of power in nations, or the boardrooms or large corporations. Or they are just the local hooligans in our schools and neighborhoods. When we choose compassion, hope, forgiveness and life, we can renounce satan and all evil. We have the armor- let us go with confidence and grace. 

Proper 5B

Mark 3:20-35

20 Jesus entered a house. A crowd gathered again so that it was impossible for him and his followers even to eat. 21 When his family heard what was happening, they came to take control of him. They were saying, “He’s out of his mind!”

22 The legal experts came down from Jerusalem. Over and over they charged, “He’s possessed by Beelzebul. He throws out demons with the authority of the ruler of demons.”

23 When Jesus called them together he spoke to them in a parable: “How can Satan throw Satan out? 24 A kingdom involved in civil war will collapse. 25 And a house torn apart by divisions will collapse. 26 If Satan rebels against himself and is divided, then he can’t endure. He’s done for. 27 No one gets into the house of a strong person and steals anything without first tying up the strong person. Only then can the house be burglarized. 28 I assure you that human beings will be forgiven for everything, for all sins and insults of every kind. 29 But whoever insults the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. That person is guilty of a sin with consequences that last forever.” 30 He said this because the legal experts were saying, “He’s possessed by an evil spirit.”

31 His mother and brothers arrived. They stood outside and sent word to him, calling for him. 32 A crowd was seated around him, and those sent to him said, “Look, your mother, brothers, and sisters are outside looking for you.”

33 He replied, “Who is my mother? Who are my brothers?” 34 Looking around at those seated around him in a circle, he said, “Look, here are my mother and my brothers. 35 Whoever does God’s will is my brother, sister, and mother.”

“He’s out of his mind!” This is how Jesus’ family members describe Jesus at the beginning of our gospel reading. Other translations say “he lost his senses” and “he was getting carried away with himself”  After all, he is drawing quite a crowd for considerable reasons. He’s healing the sick, sometimes even on the sabbath. He’s casting out demons. He’s preaching a message of God’s forgiveness that upsets the applecart for the religious leaders. And all of this is attracting a growing crowd. 

I don’t want to be too quick to judge Jesus’ family here. I imagine some, probably most, of us here can relate to that feeling of watching a family member attract attention that you’re unsure about. (I won’t ask you to raise your hand because some of you might be here with the very family members you’ve been unsure about.) Maybe it’s just me and the family I was born into but I know you can love someone to pieces and still be a little embarrassed by them.  As the kids would say, that’s cringe. Jesus’ family is trying to save face and do a little damage control. I don’t think they’re entirely ashamed of him, they just want him to rein it in a bit. You know, get on the right side of the Pharisees and not cause too much trouble. They just want him to be more under control and manageable. 

And wanting to get things under control and manageable is about as relatable as it gets. Things that are under control and manageable won’t surprise us or challenge us. Things that are under control and manageable are domesticated and house-trained so we don’t need to worry too much about adjusting our lives to accommodate them. Things that are under control and manageable aren’t going to put a target on our back.  

But Jesus has no interest in remaining under control and manageable. It’s the scribes who then take the family’s dismissal and weaponize it against Jesus. They conclude that since his family thinks he’s out of his mind, he must therefore have Beelzebul in him. This accusation sets Jesus in a tizzy. It’s particularly insidious to Jesus- like telling a chef they don’t appreciate flavor.

Jesus tells them: “I assure you that human beings will be forgiven for everything, for all sins and insults of every kind. But whoever insults the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. That person is guilty of a sin with consequences that last forever.”

What does it mean to insult the Holy Spirit? Other translations even use the term that it’s ‘blaspheme against’ the Holy Spirit. If ALL other sins are forgivable, it seems wise to make a note about this one. So what could insulting the Holy Spirit look like?

Here’s my theory: In my 9 years of priesthood, I’ve had more than a few conversations with someone who believes that something they’ve done or something that’s been done to them is so egregious, they couldn’t possibly deserve the love of God and belonging in a church. Each time, it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart for two reasons. One is that I know, but I can never go into any detail because it would break pastoral confidence, that so many people sitting in our pews have very similar struggles.  ** But, two, it breaks my heart because I know God’s forgiveness definitely stretches far enough to cover this person. As the hymn says, there’s a wideness in God’s mercy. 

So I wonder if what it means to blaspheme the Holy Spirit is to believe, or to teach others to believe, that they are beyond God’s mercy and forgiveness, that they are unworthy of God’s love. To let someone think that there is no place for them in the Kingdom of God.  

To blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is to put limits on God, to contain grace in a way that fits our preconceived notions. To blaspheme against the Holy Spirit is to believe we know better than God. 

So you can see where Jesus calling out the scribes like this might’ve caused his family to pause. Jesus has floated into serious liability territory so maybe we won’t look so bad if we explain it away that he must be going crazy. What does it mean for us to be followers of this Jesus who his own family said is “out of his mind” or even crazy?

As presiding bishop Michael Curry preached “What the church needs, what the world needs, are some Christians who are as crazy as the Lord. Crazy enough to love like Jesus, to give like Jesus, to forgive like Jesus, to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God – like Jesus. Crazy enough to dare to change the world from the nightmare it often is  into something closer to the dream that God dreams for it. And for those of us who follow him, those of us who would be his disciples, those of us who would live as people of the Way? It might come as a shock, but those of us called to that live are called to craziness, too.”

Friends, let us be the ones out of our minds because there is something crazy about a God who loves us enough to forgive all, ALL, of our sins. There is something downright absurd about what we profess to believe in this space. And I get that temptation to make it less absurd: God sent his only son to be born among us and while here, he said to love our enemies, but surely he didn’t mean my enemies. Jesus gave us the power to forgive all sins but surely not those kinds of sins. Jesus implored us to love our neighbor but surely not those neighbors. 

But no. (And don’t call God Shirley.) That is clipping the wings of the Holy Spirit. Clipping the wings might make something more under control and manageable. But it also takes away power for good. The Holy Spirit may disrupt our lives, but it is taking us to a place of love. Let’s not be afraid to ride with it. 

Trinity Sunday, Year B

John 3:1-17

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

Wombs are comfortable places. Not that any of us really knows or remembers, but in the womb, the developing fetus is warm and well-fed on demand without even needing to swallow. For those of us (all of us, really) who have to worry about mundane things like eating, breathing, keeping our bodies at a livable temperature, keeping healthy, going to work, getting stuck in traffic — to say nothing of the more palpable dangers of modern life — existence in the womb is simple and easy, maybe even enviable compared to our daily slog.

And then, one day, triggered by something medicine still hasn’t identified, labor starts. (I know medicine doesn’t really know what causes labor to start because there were two periods in my life, of about three weeks each time, when I googled that question at least twice a day.) 

Then, the baby is born. Suddenly, the womb is gone and there’s a lot more to worry about. Almost immediately, the baby needs to coordinate their lungs with their diaphragm in order to breathe. There are new senses to absorb a big world — sight, sound, smell. The baby suddenly has to deal with hunger and hoping one of these big humans around them will respond appropriately, and then there is the whole mechanism of suckling and swallowing, something babies sometimes do in the womb but just for funsies, not for need. 

Babies have such a steep learning curve in learning to exist it’s almost comical. Sometimes, if a baby is born with a lot of hair, they’ll reach their hand up to their head and they have this grasp reflex and that hurts because it pulls the hair, but they don’t have the wherewithal to release their grasp so in their despair, the hair pulling only gets worse. 

Newborns are vulnerable. That’s a fact that almost seems cliche, but in fact many biologists have posited that human babies are particularly vulnerable because we need to be born earlier in our development than most other animals.

The idea is that if we gestated to the same stage of development as most other animal species are when they’re born, we’d be in the womb for 12 months rather than nine — but because humans are bipeds, and a mother’s hips can’t open wide enough to allow a 12-month-old head to get through, we come out “early” at nine months and finish that first stage of development outside the womb.

So even compared to other animals, newborn human babies are particularly vulnerable and particularly reliant on others. A newborn baby’s entire universe is their caregiver; in fact, for the first few months of life they can’t see more than a foot or two in front of their face because all they need to focus on is that caregiver. 

I wonder if any of this was in Jesus’ mind when he explained to Nicodemus that he needed to be born from above. That in being born from above, we would be fresh and at the mercy of the spirit. 

Let’s step back and remember who Jesus is talking to here: Nicodemus was a Pharisee, a leader and teacher of the Jewish people, deeply educated and well-versed in theology. He is both curious and cautious about Jesus: Curious because clearly no one can do what Jesus is doing apart from God, but also cautious enough to be aware that Jesus wasn’t exactly in the good graces of the local authorities — this particular dialogue takes place shortly after the whole disturbing-the-peace display in the temple, after all — and so he went to Jesus in the dead of night so he wouldn’t risk his reputation (or a run-in with said authorities) by engaging with Jesus.

So Nicodemus, this intelligent religious scholar, comes to Jesus with questions and leaves… well, with even more questions. Bewilderment. 

I grew up in an area where it wasn’t uncommon to be asked not just if you were a Christian but if you were, specifically, a “born again” Christian. 

Anyone who has spent some time in evangelical circles knows that the phrase “born again” comes with some serious baggage. Oftentimes, if someone asked me if I was born again, it was less of a question and more of an accusation. “Yeah, you’re a lifelong churchgoer, baptized into the faith, but are you really a Christian? Or are you just pretending to be Christian?” This religious rhetoric can be traced back to the Great Awakening of the 1740’s. 

And of course, growing up in the Episcopal Church, I never knew how to answer this question. Wasn’t I born okay the first time? It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s, finally traveling far enough away from home that no one cared if I called myself ‘born again’, where something dramatically shifted. I had new eyes to see how God was working in the world. I was newly astounded that the good news of the gospel was, in fact, good. Very very good. And I had more confidence in a loving creator God

It wasn’t until I came home, reflecting on all I had learned and who I was in that process that it occurred to me, “wait. Was I reborn?” 

I don’t know what triggers us to be born from above. As Jesus tells Nicodemus, “The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

I can’t give you an invitation to be born from above. What I can do is invite you out of the shadows and to risk the light. I can invite you to let go of all you think you know. I can invite you to trust Jesus in a way that will change so many things about you. 

Proper 14 A, August 13, 2022

by Brooklin Taylor, intern

Matthew 14:22-33 NRSV

Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead to the other side, while he dismissed the crowds. And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up the mountain by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone, but by this time the boat, battered by the waves, was far from the land, for the wind was against them. And early in the morning he came walking toward them on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified, saying, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Peter answered him, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.” He said, “Come.” So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus. But when he noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” When they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, “Truly you are the Son of God.”

It had been a long night, not only were the disciples exhausted miraculously feeding a huge group of people earlier that day, they had also received word that one of their friends, John the Baptist, had just been murdered for his subversion of the empire. An event that not only grieved them but filled them with fear, as well. Perhaps, Jesus did not want his disciples staying in the same place for too long with threats like that lingering in the air or perhaps he just really needed some alone time. Whatever the case, he sends them away on the boat ahead of him while he dismisses the crowds and takes some time to pray. But as evening came, the story says, …their boat, battered by the wind and waves was pulled out to sea because of a bad storm.

As the shore got further away and the wind continued to swirl, I imagine the hands of the disciples were bloodied as they clung for dear life to their ores that night trying to get back to where they came from. I imagine their arms were numb holding all that fear for so long. Maybe you know that kind of fear, the fear that sits as solid as a rock on their chest. Fear of the storm, fear of what might happen next, fear of their inability to handle it, fear of the unknown.

So, of course, when the disciples looked up and saw Jesus hovering over the water, like the spirit of God hovered over the waters of chaos in the Genesis story, they assumed he was a ghost representing their death.

But instead of announcing their end, Jesus gently moves towards them. “It’s me” he says, “Don’t be afraid. I see you in this storm and I am here.”

“Don’t be afraid.”… What a ridiculous statement. Fear is the only thing that makes sense to the disciples at this moment. In the middle of night, in the middle of the sea, in the middle of the storm, fear seemed like, as perhaps it does now for us, the only appropriate response.

Trauma studies tell us that there are 3 responses to fear in our brains. Flight, fight or freeze. There was no option for flight here in the middle of the raging sea that night, just as there doesn’t seem to be any way to get away from the many things that create fear in us today – global warming, extreme weather, isolation, pandemics, racism, etc. But in our story today, we see the other two fear responses embodied by the disciples - fight and freeze.

First, Peter shows us the fear response of fight - “Hey Jesus! If it actually is you, prove it. Make me come out to you on the water.” If you are who you say you are, “Make me do something extraordinary. Set me apart from these other men. Grant me an exemption from the laws that bind ordinary people” and I’ll believe it’s you. In the face of fear, Peter pumps himself up and asks Jesus to prove himself. Prove yourself to me Jesus, and then I will believe it is you… I have often responded to storms, out of fear, in this way.

I love how Jesus responds to Peter’s fear, to his pumped up-self-protective, uncertainty, he says, (gently) “OK, Come.” “Well come on then.” As if he knew Peter would have to make things a little more dramatic than they needed to be, Jesus moves toward Peter and welcomes him and his fear out on the water.

We know the story, Peter steps out, takes a few exceptional steps and is, of course, even more terrified than before so begins to sink… but Jesus is already there, reaching down toward him in the middle of the storm, pulling him up, keeping him from sinking. Matthew depicts Jesus asking Peter a question as he heaves him back into the boat. “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” Many people have read this question of Jesus as a rebuke of Peter for his fear I wonder if we have misheard Jesus’ tone of voice. Particularly because little faith is often seen as a good thing in Matthew (think mustard seed for example). What if this question not a moralizing of fear at all but rather “a comment on Peter’s grandstanding in the first place.”

“Why did you doubt? I was headed straight for you. I told you who I was.” I know you were afraid but I was already on my way… “if you had just kept your seat for one minute more I would have been sitting right next to you, you and all the others, with no need for that circus stunt out on the water.”

There is also another type of fear response embodied in the story – freeze. As the storm raged on all night, the wind stronger than they could bear, the other disciples, bloodied and worn and panicking, froze in the boat even at the sight of Jesus moving toward them. The dark night had been so chaotic on the sea that even the memory of Jesus’ miraculous provisions for the crowds earlier that day seemed like a lifetime ago. I am imagining the rest of the disciples gripping their oars so tight they can’t feel their arms. Panic filling their whole chest cavity.

I wonder if they even noticed Peter’s little exchange with Jesus as they clinched their eyes tight preparing for what appeared to be their fast-approaching death. Until they are jerked back to reality by the sound of Peter being flopped over the side of the boat and Jesus climbing in. I imagine him looking up, brushing the wet hair off his face, and grabbing his disciples hands, happy to be together again and the storm dies down.

What if this story is not about Peter getting out of the boat but what if it is about Jesus getting into it? Most often I have heard this story retold with a focus on Peter’s movement toward Jesus but to me, the story seems to be about Jesus’ movement toward his disciples with patience and grace for their fear. To me, this is a story not of morals but of movement. Not of heroes of the faith making their way to Christ but of Christ drawing near to his disciples, drawing near to us, in the midst of fear.

If you find yourself in either of those places, fighting or freezing in your fear today, know that you are not alone. Jesus is drawing near to you. Because as Nadia Bolz Weber says: “The truth of the story is that my abundance of faith or lack of faith does not deter God from drawing close.  That even if you are scared to death you can say Lord Save Me and the hand of God will find you in even the darkest waters.”

To close, I would like to add one more fear response to the flight, fight or freeze. Its called “flock”. Its the response we begin to see embodied at the very end of our story - when those in the boat worshipped and confessed the presence of God in their midst.

This before the sun came up this morning. I had the privilege of smushing into a filled hospital room around the bed of a dying man I didn’t know. It was my honor to be there and lead them in prayer. It was the middle of night so I probably I didn’t have the right words or do the right things but somehow, in the moment my hands effortlessly joined together with the strangers in that room, I was reminded of the presence of God who is with us even in the midst of our fear.

In our dark, long, chaotic, nights of fear it’s completely understandable to respond by fleeing, by fighting or even by freezing. But, I invite you to take a moment and though it might feel a little weird for a second, grab the hand of the people sitting closest to you (pause) and recognize that we are all in this boat together. This is our flock. and Jesus has come near. Perhaps that is enough to make the storm cease. Amen.

Lent 5a

Click Here for lectionary readings

Can we talk about hope? When I say ‘hope’ I don’t mean passive wishful thinking. I don’t mean hope in being naively optimistic. I mean a spiritual hope, rooted in the promise of a loving God. 

To hope doesn’t mean we can expect to get what we want and to hope doesn’t mean we can expect to go back to the way things were before. 

Hope is an embrace of the unknown knowing God is in fact present.  

We just heard the story of the prophet Ezekiel being led to a valley of dry bones. Ezekiel says that the Israel people have lost hope. They see the suffering and they can only conclude that their best days are behind them. But God has the power to give life to the driest and deadest things imaginable. Of course it’s not just God- it’s God through Ezekiel, and Ezekiel has that hope that God’s not done here yet and he prophesied as much. That’s when we hear about sinews and flesh reanimating these dry bones- it’s a scene you can imagine a special effects team in Hollywood having a field day with. 

Likewise in the Gospel of John we heard about Jesus raising to life his friend Lazarus. Of course this miracle doesn’t come quickly or easily. When Jesus learns about the death of Lazarus, he weeps. 

But that story isn’t over yet. He stands before the stinky tomb and tells Lazarus to come out. It’s a pretty audacious request to ask a man who died 4 days ago to do something. But like Ezekiel, Jesus has confidence that God is truly present and capable. 

St. Julian of Norwich was a woman who lived in the middle ages in England. She authored the oldest known book written in English by a woman called “Revelations of Divine Love.” She lived a lot of her life as an anchoress, which means that for years, she chose to live all day, every day, 24/7, alone in a room set up on church grounds. This room had two windows. One window looked into the church, so she could participate in worship. The other window faced the street where she could interact with the public, pray with them and offer them spiritual guidance. 

It was early in Julian of Norwich’s life, 1348-1349, that the Black Death ravaged England. Julian watched as this disease brought death to her community. Modern scholars, studying records from the time, think that the Black Death killed between 30 and 60 percent of the population of England during just that two-year period.

Just imagine that for a second. Imagine that kind of plague sweeping through Lebanon, leaving 6 in 10 people dead. Imagine the grief, the social and economic upheaval, the sheer chaos of a plague that swept through town like wildfire and killed more than half of the population within the span of weeks or months.

Julian herself fell ill in 1373, probably not from the bubonic plague, but from a sickness that was so terrible that a priest was sent to her room to administer Last Rites. And it was as she was in the room, nearing death, that she received a series of visions from God — and then miraculously recovered from her illness. She wrote down the visions she had received, including her most quoted line: “All shall be well. All shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well.”

Think about that. Julian had every reason to curse God, watching the world fall apart around her, watching her own health fall to pieces.

Keep in mind that in the 14th century they didn’t really understand the cause of disease… and there was no shortage of preachers who claimed that the Black Death was God’s punishment for the world’s sins: for worldliness, or fornication, or heresy or even left-handedness. And as people dropped like flies, that seemed pretty easy to believe. Even decades after, it’s pretty easy to imagine people’s fear that God wasn’t finished punishing them, that any year now he would send another plague to finish off the ones that managed to survive the first one.

And yet, there sits Julian, alone in her anchorite’s room, writing that “all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” 

This wasn’t pie in the sky. She wasn’t wearing rose-colored glasses. She knew, as much as anyone ever has, that for a lot of the people around her all wouldn’t be well. Just like Ezekiel, she had watched her town turn into a valley of dry bones.

But she still knew that God is faithful and just, that even as sickness and death surrounded her that God was with her.

That’s what hope is.

God’s not done with us yet. God is finding ways to breathe life into these dry bones. When bones are so dry, maybe the thing they need is some wetness through tears. Remember that detail when Jesus saw that Lazarus was really dead: Jesus wept. He wept so much that those around him saw it as clear evidence of his love for him. Those must have been some tears. 

That’s significant. John’s Gospel goes to great pains, throughout the Gospel narrative, to portray that Jesus knows exactly what’s coming and exactly what he’s doing. And yet, even knowing that he’s about to raise Lazarus from the dead, Jesus weeps for his fallen friend. He grieves with real tears that I’m sure all of us can relate to. 

But with how real his grief is, grief is never the final resting place. Because we are a people of hope. And people of hope live knowing, as Anne Lammott puts it, “grace always bats last.’

One detail we miss because of where the lectionary ends our gospel readings (and it’s a long reading- we’re all grateful is does cut off, but the books of the bible weren’t written to be parceled our): In the gospel of John, there are 7 miracles or signs of Jesus’ divinity. The turning water into wine, feeding the 5,000, healing of the blind man that we heard about last week. Yada yada yada- typical God walking among us acts. The last of these 7 is what we heard about today: Jesus bringing Lazarus back from the dead. With how miraculous and impressive this sign was, it was also the sign that tipped the opinion of the Jewish leaders: Jesus needed to go.  Jesus needed to be turned over to authorities or else the Roman empire was going to be threatened by the whole Jewish community and punish them accordingly. 

A week from today is Palm Sunday, which kicks off Holy Week. Through all of the services offered that week, starting with our Palm Sunday passion narrative, then Maundy Thursday’s remembering of Jesus’ final commandments to love one another, then to Good Friday where we remember the day Jesus was crucified, we will walk through the days and hours that lead to Jesus’ crucifixion and there will be many points in the story where hope defies all logic. But even Holy Week ends in Easter. 

All shall be well. All shall be well. And all manner of things shall be well. 

Lent 2a

Christ and Nicodemus by James Tissot, ca. 1886-1894

by the Rev. Iva Staats

John 3:1-17

There was a Pharisee named Nicodemus, a leader of the Jews. He came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God; for no one can do these signs that you do apart from the presence of God.” Jesus answered him, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” Jesus answered, “Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be astonished that I said to you, ‘You must be born from above.’ The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered him, “Are you a teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things?

“Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen; yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

“Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

We bear witness time and again in scripture, example after example of sudden and abrupt conversions, epiphanies that do not leave any element of revelation or revealing to the imagination.

These conversions are so sudden and intense they often leave the converted physically altered in some manner after their encounter with God. Moses’ face shone as he descended the mountain with the stone tablets. Jacob walked forever with a limp after he wrestled with God. And Saul is temporarily blinded when he is struck down on the road to Damascus as he becomes Paul, converted from oppressor to follower of Christ. Certainly, too, there are innumerable examples of the alleviation of physical symptoms and conversion which abound in scripture: lepers and lame, blind, paralyzed, possessed and hemorrhagic; when they are relieved of their afflictions the same is often true of their confusion and misdirection. And gracious, who could forget Jonah? What in the world did he smell like after he spent three days inside a whale? I can’t help but think that tunic just had to go into the trash after he completes God’s work in Nineveh and even then, he probably couldn’t shake that smell for years!

And then...there’s Nicodemus. Do we have any idea where he stands at the end of his encounter with Jesus? Does he ever understand being born of water and the Spirit? Does he ever get it? We all, including Nicodemus, seem to be left without a definitive answer about the trajectory of his life after this encounter with the living God. Was Nicodemus changed? Converted? We may even feel anxious on Nicodemus’ behalf about our lack of answers. It seems that the text leaves us hanging, and that perhaps Jesus is even a bit to blame. Couldn’t he have spoken less enigmatically to Nicodemus? Perhaps, but maybe Jesus met Nicodemus with exactly what Nicodemus needed and was capable of absorbing at the time. Perhaps the gift of Jesus is in the wondering, both for Nicodemus and for us—sometimes learning to sit in the wilderness instead of demanding answers is the gift. The unknowing may just be the irresistibility. And, maybe we should take a closer look at the story, including a couple spoiler alerts, before we make assumptions about its eventual outcome—for which I do have a theory, but more on that in a minute.

Nicodemus is, at best, tentative and perhaps even skeptical. He comes to Jesus in the under the thick cloak of a dark night. By day, Nicodemus’ loyalties were as a devoted and respectable member of the religious establishment. Ironically, Nicodemus outwardly comes to reassure Jesus that he recognizes in him the gifts of God’s presence because of the visible signs that he has performed by the light of day;

“Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God.” And then, Jesus answers a question that if you read the text closely, Nicodemus never actually asks, it is as though Jesus anticipates the “But...” that Nicodemus never gets to. So, what is it that Jesus senses in this pious man that makes him turn the conversation a different direction? Perhaps Jesus senses Nicodemus’ desire to see God’s will, the manifestation of God’s Kingdom, and that not all things that are real are only perceived by the five senses. Jesus plunges Nicodemus further into darkness in his offering of being born in the water and the Spirit. Yet, in the darkness, Nicodemus remains courageous enough to ask. He remains courageous enough to say that he doesn’t understand. Brene Brown says that “courage starts with showing up and letting ourselves be seen.” He wasn’t quite sure he believed just yet, but he was courageous enough to let himself be seen by Jesus. Jesus gives him the space to not understand; he gives Nicodemus the grace and the gift of the wondering. He gives the gift of the unknowing and the wilderness.

Being born is a process. It is a process of moving from the dark into the light. It is a process of moving from the familiar and safe to the unknown. It is arduous and painful for both the mother and the one being born. It takes time. There are myriad changes that take place in a stepwise and predictable manner that result in the transformation of being born, in emerging into the light. I daresay, that it even requires some courageousness on the part of the unborn, the being born, not unlike our friend and brother Nicodemus. After his encounter with Jesus, deep down and ever so slightly, something begins to turn and shift within Nicodemus. Being born is plunging ourselves further into the mystery of the Incarnation with all of our questions and doubts, and taking a step toward emerging into the light. The path only begins at the font. Nicodemus’s rebirth happens over the course of a long journey, which began under the cover of darkness when he took a chance on Jesus. He was courageous enough to venture into the dark seeking the light, and to leave his initial encounter with Jesus without his questions answered. The encounter ends without a conclusion; the text does not tell us precisely his demeanor as he takes leave of Jesus that night either, but infers that Nicodemus wandered back off into that same darkness in which he arrived, ostensibly still confused, perhaps frustrated but almost certainly still shaking his head with a furrowed brow.

How do we know of the shift in Nicodemus? What evidence do we have of his conversion, his rebirth? Well, the gospel writer could’ve certainly left us in the dark about Nicodemus’ faith journey, but he doesn’t. Here’s your spoiler alert: after his encounter with Jesus, Nicodemus returns to his position within the Jewish religious establishment. By chapter seven of John, Nicodemus sits amidst the Pharisaic counsel that sends the Temple police to arrest Jesus for his blasphemy. When they return to the council without having done so, they are ridiculed by others while Nicodemus gives an ambivalent and lukewarm defense of Jesus by citing Jewish law: “Our law does not judge people without giving them a hearing to find out what they are doing, does it?” It seems there are glimmers, shards of light breaking into Nicodemus’ heart, yet he remains unwilling to condemn nor commit. Nicodemus then again fades off into the background of the text.

Where does his journey end? It ends at the foot of the cross and it is here that his birth from above by water and the Spirit is laid bare. Joseph of Arimathea appears by name in all four gospels to petition Pilate for the release of Jesus’ body to his care for burial. But, it is only in the gospel of John that he is accompanied by one Nicodemus who brings about one hundred pounds of myrrh and aloes to assist Joseph of Arimathea in this work. The gospel writer even takes care to point toward Nicodemus’ inauspicious beginnings, pointing out even at that juncture that Nicodemus “had first come to Jesus by night.” It seems that the gospel writer thinks Nicodemus’ gradual and unfolding journey toward the cross, toward the light, and his courage to start by asking questions in the dark is pertinent to our own journey during Lent.

Perhaps we would do well to strive to be a bit more like Nicodemus instead of internally clucking our tongues at his perceived lack of understanding. Perhaps he is not the emblematic representation small mindedness and narrow thinking. Perhaps he reminds us that the journey toward being born of water and the Spirit only begins at the font and in our courage to keep asking questions in the dark.

Amen.

Epiphany 3A

Matthew 4:12-23

When Jesus heard that John had been arrested, he withdrew to Galilee. He left Nazareth and made his home in Capernaum by the sea, in the territory of Zebulun and Naphtali, so that what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah might be fulfilled:

“Land of Zebulun, land of Naphtali,
on the road by the sea, across the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—

the people who sat in darkness
have seen a great light,

and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death
light has dawned.”

From that time Jesus began to proclaim, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.”

As he walked by the Sea of Galilee, he saw two brothers, Simon, who is called Peter, and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea—for they were fishermen. And he said to them, “Follow me, and I will make you fish for people.” Immediately they left their nets and followed him. As he went from there, he saw two other brothers, James son of Zebedee and his brother John, in the boat with their father Zebedee, mending their nets, and he called them. Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed him.

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.

About 13 years ago as a young adult just out of college, I lived in South Africa for a year serving in the Young Adult Service Corps. It was there that a neighbor invited me to her Bible study and I gladly accepted, not necessarily because I was that eager to study the Bible but more that I was eager to meet my neighbors- not only was I brand new in this town, and not only was I brand new in this country, I was brand new in this whole hemisphere. So I happily showed up to this Bible study where the next youngest person after me was older than my parents. 

This Bible study ended up being my first introduction to Lectio Divina, a meditative practice of entering scripture in creative ways. And I specifically remember one evening when this morning’s gospel reading was our focus in Lectio Divina. In one practice, we were invited to choose a character in the story to identify with and imagine the story through their eyes. In this gospel, we have John who’s just been imprisoned by Herod. We have Jesus who moves his ministry not away from Herod but boldly he continues his ministry right in Herod’s territory. And there’s Peter and Andrew and James and John, two sets of fishermen brothers who are called out to become fishers of men. 

So I sat there, sipping my Rooibos tea with milk, and listening to these older people with their thick South African accents, it hit me, I was the fish out of water. I was the one swimming on my merry little way when something bigger than myself pulled me to an unfamiliar place where I felt awkward and flailing. 

“Come with me and I will make you fishers of men.” 

Jesus called Andrew and Peter, John and James to a new life. Immediately they left their nets to follow him. Something pulled them away from their lives as fishermen and led them to a place of vulnerability and uncertainty. There’s nothing to indicate that Andrew, Peter, James and John really “got” this gospel they followed... in fact, they had many questions along the way, some of those pretty dumb questions.

The Gospel reading notes that James and John, the sons of Zebedee, are working on their father’s boat. It’s a minor side note in the Gospel narrative, but I think it’s important in pointing out what the four disciples here are walking away from. The life of a fisherman on the Sea of Galilee — the ongoing rhythm of going out onto the sea, catching a haul of fish, returning to shore, selling the fish, and repairing boats and nets — was not only the only life that these four men had ever known, but also more than likely the only life their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers had ever known.

This is the family business, something that had been passed down for generations — and yet, when Jesus comes by and asks them to follow him, they drop their nets and walk away from it, to follow a religious leader they don’t really know and a message they don’t yet fully comprehend. 

Even if it was a quick decision, I can’t imagine that it was an easy one. I picture Zebedee, standing in the boat with a puzzled look on his face while his sons walk away from the boat following this new prophet into God-knows-what and God-knows-where. Or maybe Peter and Andrew’s mother, pleading with them to stay just one more season to help their father out and then they can think about leaving. But the call of this strange, charismatic man preaching that the Kingdom of Heaven is drawing near, is so much stronger... so they drop their nets and leave with him.

I’d like you to hang onto that idea for a moment, because this story is also about someone who does go into the family business. Remember in the beginning of the story when we mentioned that John was in jail. He was sent there by King Herod — and, crucial context here, the King Herod in today’s Gospel reading, who is also known as “Herod Antipas,” is the son of the King Herod we met a few weeks ago during the Nativity and Epiphany stories. Herod Antipas is also going into the family business of ruling Galilee, which is part of Judea, as a vassal for the Roman Emperor.

Remember what this King Herod’s father did, just a few weeks ago in our liturgical calendar, when he felt threatened by the news of a Messiah: He retaliated by killing every single child in Bethlehem, forcing the Holy Family to flee to Egypt as refugees and wait there until he died.

And so too, when John the Baptizer switches over from preaching that a Messiah is coming to preaching that the Messiah is here, Herod Antipas, the son of King Herod, has a little freak-out. He tosses John in jail, ostensibly (as this gospel tells us later on) for criticizing Herod’s marriage but probably also to send a message to any would-be Messiah out there to keep their head down, lest that head end up on a plate. He’s a bit more politically-savvy than his dad — as the gospel later notes, he doesn’t have John killed because John is really popular and the people think he speaks for God — but it’s a message nonetheless. “I’m not going to let any would-be Messiah take away my gravy train.”

So what does Jesus do? Instead of fleeing away, he boldly heads into the heart of Herod’s territory, in Galilee — and not only keeps preaching in the synagogues and healing the sick, but actually intensifies his message. Note that the Gospel says that “from that time Jesus began to proclaim” to repent because the Kingdom of Heaven has come near. It apparently wasn’t part of his message before, but now it is. Things are happening… the ball is rolling… and there’s no stopping it now.

And it’s in this moment that he calls the four fishermen to follow him and fish for people, to bring people into the Kingdom of Heaven. He calls them out of the only life they’ve ever known, out of where they feel comfortable and know all of the rhythms and rituals of life, and into an unknown future where they don’t quite understand what’s happening and never quite feel at ease, but know that God is calling them to be a part of it.

And that’s what God calls us to do as well, sometimes. Maybe it’s not as radical as leaving behind the family business or the life you know. Maybe it’s something simpler, like striking up a conversation with a co-worker to invite them to come to church, or finding a way to serve the needy in our community. Maybe it’s taking on a new and uncomfortable habit, like praying the Daily Office or joining a small group Bible study. Or maybe it is a major life change that God is calling you to, to leave a place of comfort to find God in a place of discomfort and challenge. 

But there’s no doubt in my mind that God is in fact calling to each and every person here today, in some way and on some level — to go deeper and further in our lives with God, to find new challenges and new opportunities, to further the work of the Kingdom of Heaven here in Lebanon, here in the United States, here on earth. I pray that we will all listen to God’s call.

Seeing is Believing, a sermon for Epiphany 2A

John 1:29-42

John saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’ I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel.” And John testified, “I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

“What are you looking for?” This is Jesus’s first line in John’s Gospel. To the apostle who wrote the book of John, these were the first words of Jesus worth writing down: What are you looking for?

In our Gospel reading, John the Baptist is standing with two of his disciples, and sees Jesus walking by. John says, “Look, here is the Lamb of God” — and the disciples immediately say “ta-ta, Johnny” to John the Baptist and start following Jesus. 

If I were watching this whole exchange from the sidelines, I’d think that these disciples couldn’t possibly have been all that devoted to John’s message, if they just up and abandoned him at the first sight of something new. This suggests that they’re kinda flighty, maybe a little naïve or just lost souls searching for something, anything, to grasp on to.

So Jesus asks them the million-shekel question: “What are you looking for?” The subtext is clear: Why are you here? Why are you following me? What are you thinking you’re going to get out of this? Is it because John said “hey, that guy is pretty cool too,” so you just up and follow me around?

And their answer is… well, not really much of an answer, is it?

“Rabbi, where are you staying?”

Our clunky English kinda makes it look like they just want to know where he’s laying his head tonight: are you staying at the Hampton Inn or the Courtyard by Marriott? Do they have free breakfast? What’s the wi-fi like there?

But the Greek verb used there, meno, carries a bit more meaning: abide, remain, endure, continue, dwell, in the sense of permanence or stability. The two disciples aren’t asking for an address. They want to know what is the permanent, enduring dwelling place for the Lamb of God. Where can we always find him? Where is true north, so we can calibrate our compasses?

And because Jesus is the master of simple yet elusive responses, he answers “Come and see.” 

In the Zulu language of South Africa, the standard word for greeting is “sawubona.” It functions like their hello, but the literal translation of sawubona is “I see you.”

I see you, I acknowledge your existence, I invite you to see me too. And after one afternoon encountering Jesus, Andrew is excited enough to run back to his brother Simon (who, spoiler alert, will become a pretty important figure in the story later on) and tell him “we’ve found the Messiah!” And Andrew brings Simon to see Jesus, who gives him the name of Cephas (or, as we know him better, Peter), and the story proceeds from there.

There are a few things I want us to take out of this Gospel narrative today.

First, let’s go back to Jesus’s first line: “What are you looking for?” In the Gospel story that’s directed at John the Baptist’s two disciples, but it’s also directed at us: What are you looking for?

Are you looking for a confirmation of what you already know or hope to be true? Are you looking for a reminder of what the church taught you in your formative years? Are you looking to scratch a little deeper on a mystery that’s tickled you? There are countless things people are looking for when they come through the doors of any church and few of them are simple.

Or maybe you just don’t know what you’re looking for, or don’t know if you’re looking for the right thing at all. Maybe the next step for you isn’t to get all the answers, but just to start asking the right questions. That’s okay too.

But it’s important to ask the question, really sit and wrestle with it: “What are you looking for?”

Second, let’s take note of the importance of the encounter with Jesus in answering that question. Sure, the disciples start following Jesus because John the Baptist told them “look, there goes the Lamb of God,” but if he hadn’t been all that impressive, they probably wouldn’t have stuck around. Whatever the disciples may have thought they were looking for, whatever they thought the question was, it became pretty clear to them in just one afternoon spent in the presence of Jesus that there was something here. 

Or, as Audrey West puts it after Jesus says “come and see”:

“Indeed, this answer captures a primary message of John’s Gospel: If you want to know the word made flesh, come and see Jesus. If you want to know what love is like, come and see Jesus. If you want to experience God’s glory, to be filled with bread that never perishes, to quench your thirst with living water, to be born again, to abide in love, to behold the light of the world, to experience the way, the truth, and the life, to enter into life everlasting, . . . if you want to know God, come and see Jesus.”

We may not be able to have the same kind of face-to-face encounter with Jesus as the disciples did, but we also have multiple ways to encounter Jesus and come into his presence: in prayer, in fellowship with one another, in reading the Scriptures, and particularly in what we’re about to take part in, the sacrament of the Eucharist.

This is our chance to experience God’s glory, to feed our souls with living bread and quench our thirst with living water. It’s easy to go through the motions every week, but please take some time today during our Eucharistic prayer to really sit with the enormity of what we’re doing, the sacred and earthly aspects of the millennia-old ritual we’re taking part in. It’s an encounter with the living, eternal Christ.

And third, let’s take note of the disciples’ response to spending an afternoon with Jesus. They don’t just stick around in their own small assembly; they go back to their own community, to their family and friends, to tell them about what they’ve found. Andrew hurries back to his brother Simon to tell him that he’s found the Messiah!

And if not for Andrew running back to his brother Simon and bringing him into the fold — Simon, who would become Peter, the first leader in the early church and the one who held the Jesus Movement together after Christ’s ascension — our church wouldn’t be the same. God was just waiting for Peter, having anointed him like Isaiah since long before he was born, to fulfill God’s purposes for the church.

And the thing is that I doubt any of that was going through Andrew’s mind when he ran back home to tell his brother about meeting Jesus. Andrew probably wasn’t thinking, “My brother is just waiting to be a great spiritual leader and one of the most important people in history, and finally here’s his chance!” 

Simon Peter’s leadership probably came as a surprise to his brother. Heck, Simon Peter’s leadership probably came as a surprise to Simon Peter.

All of this is to say: when we invite more people into the fold, when we get excited about what Jesus is doing in our community and widen the circle to include others, who knows what kinds of blessings and gifts God is waiting to unlock? How many of us know someone who, when they came into the right circumstance or the right community, just blossomed into a completely different person? The more we expand our circle and our community, the more chances we’re giving God to do new and incredible things in our own lives, in our community, and in our world.

What are we looking for? What can we come and see in this community? Like Jesus, I’m not able to stand up here and give you easy, digestible answers. But I can journey with you. Let’s see together. After all, seeing is believing. 

Advent 4A, by Iva Staats

Matthew 1:18-25

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.” All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet:

“Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son,
and they shall name him Emmanuel,”

which means, “God is with us.” When Joseph awoke from sleep, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded him; he took her as his wife, but had no marital relations with her until she had borne a son; and he named him Jesus.

Send forth thy Spirit, O Lord: and renew the face of the Earth. Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of thy faithful people: and kindle in us the fire of thy love.  +Amen. 

***

So, I’d like to start this morning with a confession: I love words. No, really. There’s actually a label for folks like me. I am a logophile, a lover of words. Dictionary.com goes so far as to use the terminology: “word nerd” in its definition of logophile; I might actually take offense if it weren’t so painfully true, actually. I love to uncover a word’s origins and meanings. I love to study their comparative anatomy across languages and their evolutions over time. I am wooed by their lyrical qualities and intrigued by the nuances that are gained, lost, or simply lack an equivalent when subjected to translation and time. So, with that disclaimer in place, I’d love to invite you down the rabbit hole I explored this week as I prayed with the gospel lesson and embraced my true identity as a logophile. 

Obey…obedience…tricky words, really. In actuality, the English word “obey” did not appear until the early 1200’s. It came through Old French as a derivative of the Latin, oboedire, meaning literally, “listen to”; it is a combination of the prefix ob-, meaning to or toward, and audiere, to listen or hear, from which we get the word audience. So, rather naturally around the same time came the adjective- counterpart to the verb “obey”: obedient, or obeissance. Well, here’s where problems began to arise and the word’s fundamental meaning began to change. By the late 14th century. The word for obedient, perhaps simply by virtue of phonetic similarity, began to be confused with the word for abase, abaisance, meaning “diminish, make lower in value or status; to humble or belittle oneself; cause to feel shame.” Thus, as the two became intertwined, their meanings became conflated with one another and soon the meaning of obey had taken on the elements of our modern day understanding with tones equivalent to: “yielding to the authority of...”, “following the directions of...”, “executing the commands of...” and most simply “doing what you’re told...”.  So, in reality, the notions of obedience as blind and lacking agency are not the original meaning of the word “obey”. Our modern interpretation of obey is a polluted variant of the original word and meaning of “to listen toward”.

In actuality, the original meaning of the word “obey” is much more congruent to the ancient Hebrew word, Shema. Although imprecise and without a singular English equivalent, “Shema” enfolds elements of “hearing, understanding, internalizing and responding”.  Even more curious, there is not even a word in ancient Hebrew for our modern notions of “obedience”; of the 613 commandments within the Torah, all use the word Shema or alternatively, lishmoa, meaning reflective response. So, from the outset it would appear that the God of Israel did not desire or decree mindless submission; God seems to seek something greater than obedience, namely responsibility and relationship. 

So, I’m sure at this point, you are all beginning to wonder how exactly I ended up down this rabbit hole and exactly what it has to do with today’s lectionary readings, right? Well, it goes like this: many, if not most of the commentaries for this week’s Gospel reading focus on Joseph’s obedience, Joseph’s “yes”. After all, the prophecy of the Messiah coming from the house and lineage of David stops in its tracks without Joseph’s “yes”. Joseph was of the house and lineage of David. As important as Mary’s “yes” is to this equation also, Jesus’ inheritance does not come through the lineage of Mary, the God-bearer.  Joseph was pivotal to God’s plan and God’s plan hinged on Joseph’s obedience, Joseph’s listening.

Simultaneously, Joseph would not, really could not, have understood obedience within our modern framework and vernacular; he would have understood faith within this ancient posture of listening toward, of Shema. His perspective would’ve been within the song creation sings to its Creator and the message history delivers to those who strive to understand it within the Judaic rhythm of life. Joseph’s obedience was predicated on his Judaic understanding of Shema Yisrael, a prayer prayed twice a day by devout and righteous Jews, as we know from the text Joseph indeed was. He would’ve recited this prayer before lying down to sleep that night, undoubtedly with the weight of the world seemingly on his shoulders and shattered. His fiancé was pregnant. He knew he was not the father. Mary’s claims seemed at best ridiculous, at worst blasphemous. There were no good options. Levitical law dictates stoning if he calls attention to her illicit pregnancy and brings charges against her. At best, by dismissing her quietly, he relinquishes her to a life of prostitution or begging to support herself and her child. If he marries her, Joseph’s reputation will be tainted forever by Mary’s illegitimate pregnancy...and her outlandish claims. Joseph strives, seeks, longs, to do the right thing...again, the text reminds us that he is a righteous man. He considers long and hard how to respond. One cannot imagine that as he lies down that night to rest it is not from sheer exhaustion amidst the inner tumult and wrestling. Yet, he lies down within a posture of Shema.  

So as Joseph dreamed that night, and the angel approached, Joseph hears and listens within an internalized and intrinsic disposition described best by Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom: “'Listen. Concentrate. Give the word of God your most focused attention. Strive to understand. Engage all your faculties, intellectual and emotional. Make His will your own. For what He commands you to do is not irrational or arbitrary but for your welfare, the welfare of your people, and ultimately for the benefit of all humanity.” So, as Joseph wakes and did what the angel of the Lord commanded him to do, the gravity of such action takes on a whole new meaning within this context of Shema, a context that enfolds faith instead of blind obedience. In Judaism, faith is a form of listening. Joseph did not perceive himself obedient or disobedient, he could not conceptualize himself in those terms. God asked Joseph to be an active participant in the shaping of God’s plan by listening, interpreting and responding. Joseph responded with a “yes”, “yes, God, I hear you”, “yes, God, I understand you”, “yes, God, I trust you”, “yes, God, yes...”

So, this morning I would like to leave you with this quote by Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein: "The limits of my language are the limits of my mind. All I know is what I have words for." Perhaps part of the inbreaking of this Advent is expanding our vocabulary to know a new word: Shema, or at the very least reclaim our understanding of obey...and responding with “yes, God, I hear you...”, “yes, God, I understand you...”, “yes, God, I trust you...”, “yes, God, yes...”

Amen.

Advent 2A- Change or…

December 4, 2022

by the Rev. Cortney Dale

Matthew 3:1-12

In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea, proclaiming, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” This is the one of whom the prophet Isaiah spoke when he said,

“The voice of one crying out in the wilderness:
‘Prepare the way of the Lord,
make his paths straight.’”

Now John wore clothing of camel’s hair with a leather belt around his waist, and his food was locusts and wild honey. Then the people of Jerusalem and all Judea were going out to him, and all the region along the Jordan, and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

But when he saw many Pharisees and Sadducees coming for baptism, he said to them, “You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come? Bear fruit worthy of repentance. Do not presume to say to yourselves, ‘We have Abraham as our ancestor’; for I tell you, God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham. Even now the ax is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire.

“I baptize you with water for repentance, but one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. 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.”

“Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”

I don’t know a lot of people who appreciate being told to repent. Chances are, if someone has implored you to repent, there might’ve been a bullhorn involved from a stranger on a street corner. And when they told you to repent, they might’ve really meant they want you to fit their own narrow and dubious definition of Christian. It’s usually the opposite of a pleasant experience and I have yet to hear about anyone’s spiritual journey beginning with a bullhorn. 

So it’s hard to hear John the Baptist telling his audience to repent and for us to not recoil for a moment. But if you pay attention to our gospel reading, you’ll notice, no one recoiled, no one ignored. Whatever John was doing and saying, the crowd was compelled. They were waiting in line to be baptized by him and experience this repentance. John had something that made people listen to him and with all of his charisma and popularity, he uses that to the point to what or who is to come- someone who baptizes with fire. 

I read this week about a study done and they were trying to look at what motivates people to change. They tracked people who had serious but changeable health conditions. These were people who essentially had their doctor sit them down and told them it was change or die. Eat more vegetables, take more walks, give up cigarettes… or die. They tracked these patients and after two years, do you know how many were keeping up the healthy life? How many out of 10? One. Turns out, not many of us are motivated by the change or die

I think this tells me when I read about this scene with John the Baptist is that they weren’t running away from something scary but they were running towards something that was good. 

Tomorrow is December 5th and in the church calendar, that is the feast day of St. Nicholas of Myra- a very real and historic bishop of the early church. Saint Nicholas (when he wasn’t a part of the Council of Nicea and contributing parts of what we read as the Nicene Creed) was known for his generosity. His wealthy parents died when he was young and he gave much of his fortune away. There was one family he knew that had three daughters and was very poor. In those days, to marry off a daughter, families would need a dowry to offer. Without a dowry, these girls would have been destined for a life of slavery and/or prostitution. Saint Nicholas knew this and wanting to help this family, he walked by their house at night and secretly threw a sack of gold coins for each of their girls. 

Saint Nicholas also has a modern counterpart in Santa Claus.  You don’t have to listen very hard to hear parents in our community reminding their young kids that Santa is watching and keeping a list of who’s been naughty or nice and this list will determine the magic (or lack of magic) on Christmas morning. Rumor has it that Santa’s technology has advanced to the point where some families have actual elves living in their homes to keep an eye on day to day behavior. Panopticon much?

We will let Santa be Santa, but I’m here to tell you that as far as St. Nicholas worked and as far as God is concerned, that’s not how this works. That’s not how any of this works. If you paid close attention, you’ll notice that St. Nicholas never stopped to consider whether the girls deserved his gifts, whether they were nice enough or too naughty, Likewise, God doesn’t operate like that: Repentance isn’t a carrot on a stick, it’s not a transaction where we can barter our good works for grace. True repentance is letting God lead our hearts somewhere new, and it’s changing both our minds and our actions towards a better way. 

John the Baptist cried out as a voice in the wilderness “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near.”

And John sees the religious authorities coming and he calls them a brood of vipers. And I love this because it’s more than just a punchy insult. In the first century, vipers were a real threat. As John Shea wrote, “Vipers lurk along footpaths and spring out at travelers from beneath rocks. If a path is going to be cleared, it must be freed of vipers. Their poison stops progress.” That’s a strong metaphor, because it suggests a certain attitude toward God. Far too many religious authorities, both in the first century and today, are eager to sit in judgment over everyone else: waiting for you to trip up and then springing out from behind a rock to say, “ha! Gotcha!” 

And that bleeds into the way they talk about God, making God into a great cosmic Elf on a Shelf, just watching and waiting for any excuse — whether it’s an unwitting mistake in a religious ritual, or cutting someone off in traffic, or even doing the right thing with the wrong attitude — to give you a lump of coal. If you don’t do everything right, there’s going to be hell to pay — literally. And if you screw up, the only way to get right with God is to get right with the religious authorities who control access to God — which means more sacrifice from you, and more profit for them. 

That’s the attitude of the “brood of vipers” John the Baptist sees… but he offers a better path. A repentance, a washing-away. This isn’t an easy way out, by any means; as Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it, grace is free, but grace is not cheap. Repentance requires a real turning-away, a real intention to allow God to take control and a real commitment not to return our hearts to the well-worn path they were on. This repentance requires change and vulnerability. 

But at the same time, as painful and as tough as repentance can be, it’s still good news — because the message John brought was that no one is so infected with sin that they are irredeemable. You, too, can be free of the sins and the pain and the heartache that come from the sinful nature that infects all of us… and the only one you have to get right with is God. You don’t have to pay off some external religious authority, you just have to re-align your heart from the path it’s on, to the path that leads to the Kingdom. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is near, so prepare yourself by repenting and turning away from the darkness and towards the light. No wonder so many people saw John the Baptist, this weirdo in the desert who ate locusts and wild honey and preached repentance, as a sign of hope and renewal.

As of today, we’re now 20 days away from Christmas Eve. In three weeks, we’re going to welcome the embodiment of the Kingdom of Heaven into the world, taking the form of a vulnerable newborn baby who will grow up to be the very man John the Baptist is pointing to when he says that someone is coming who will baptize with fire. 

The Kingdom of Heaven is coming, any minute now, like a thief in the night… so now is the time to ask ourselves the hard question. Now is the time to listen for the voice in the wilderness. Now is the time to run not just away from the bad, but to run towards the good Kingdom. 

Advent 1A

by Iva Staats

Matthew 24:36-44

Jesus said to the disciples, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left. Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.”

Come Holy Spirit, renew the face of the Earth. Kindle in us the fire of thy love, awaken in us a readiness for the day at hand, the day that fosters the coming of your Kingdom. +Amen. 

*** 

“Iva! Iva! You know what time it is! It is time to wake from sleep!” Actually, it sounded a smidge different than this in my house in 1983, and, for the record, it was the only time that I can recollect that I just flat out lied to my mother, repeatedly and intentionally. It went a little bit more like this: “Iva, are you up?” My response was consistent: “Yes, mom. I’m up.” Maybe if I just doze back off, she will forget.  Invariably, though, a few minutes later came the same question: “Iva...are you up?” “Yes, mom! I’m UP!” Depending on how many rounds were tolerated on any given school morning, the eventual secondary response was predictable. My dad would soon arrive in my room, turn on the lights, strip all the covers back from my warm cozy existence and shake the mattress yelling “earthquake!” By then, the situation was most certainly apocalyptic and there was no mistaking what time it was. It was definitely time to wake from sleep. “Iva! Iva! You know what time it is!” But, did I? Did I really know what time it was? I contend perhaps I did not and unfortunately, it wasn’t until I read a commentary on this week’s lectionary that I realized the excuse I should’ve perhaps employed in my own defense on those cold mid-winter school mornings. Maybe I really didn’t know what time it was, relatively, anyway.  

You see, by the time my mother was asking the question, I’d already permanently snoozed the wakeup call of my groovy off-white digital clock radio, the kind with the numbers that flipped mechanically each minute, anyone remember those?  Essayist Cynthia Campbell muses that digital clocks have accentuated our tendencies to see and perceive time in discrete, disconnected units. So, in retrospect, I think this whole situation was my clock’s fault, not mine.  I mean, it’s not that I couldn’t read the numbers on the clock, but they weren’t anything more than numbers, representing a moment in time.  So, those numbers were not held in any relativity to the past, perhaps the math homework left undone, or to the future, the urgency of the arriving bus.  Time advances in this manner from moment to moment, but is not held relatively to anything else. So, you see, it was absolutely my clock’s fault, not mine!  

We all fall under the tyranny of time. We talk about time as though we both possess it, “having” enough time, and create it, “making” time, when in actuality we can do neither, right? Time continues forward never taking into account our posture or attitudes toward it. We also live in an era where communication occurs in these same discrete and disjointed units. We can text or email our thoughts when it is convenient to us, our recipients do not need to perceive or receive these in real time and then can respond when we, ourselves are then busy with something else. Information about the world also arrives to us in these same compartmentalized packets that limit our ability to see the big picture. Our worlds exist largely through small windows we now hold in our hands. When we couple these factors with the phenomenon of telling time in a digital format, we cannot see what has come before and what comes after. In a moment, the moment just becomes the next moment and so on. 

Campbell posits that our perspective changes when we tell time with an analog clock. You know, the kind that has three hands sweeping around a fixed central anchor in the center of the clock face? The kind of clock that we can see all the numbers of the clock simultaneously?  When we gaze upon an analog clock’s data, we can see not only the moment as it passes, but see the moment relative to other moments. Whether we are conscious of it or not, when we “see” two o’clock, it is held relatively to both lunch two hours ago and quitting time three hours from now. Two o’clock reminds us how long it's been since we kissed a loved one goodbye to when we will sit for a meal with a friend. We know where we stand relative to the beginning of the day and the end of the day. We know where we stand to our deadlines, the moments we look forward to...and the ones that we dread...we know where we stand relative to our lives, situated between the past and the future. The “was” and the “will be” intersect in the moment we are experiencing. From this perspective we can see ourselves in the present as a culmination of our past moments as they hold hands with the ones that remain unrealized, but only when we can see ourselves in the moment relative to each. 

Arguably, neither Jesus or Paul had even an analog timepiece as they admonish us to our wakefulness this morning. They could only tell time relative to the created order and knew where they were in it by watching the created order itself: the sun, the stars, the moon and the tides. Even when one argues that Jesus, being fully divine, would have greater insight, he speaks clearly: “but about that day and hour, no one knows...not the Son...only the Father.” This left them with a profound sense, a situational awareness, of the “was” and the “will be” in the arcing narrative of creation and God’s plan. Their urgency to wakefulness and time telling takes on additional gravity when we consider their time keeping methods and limitations.  

Advent, by its very nature invites us into this same manner of time-telling, or it should anyway. Seasonally, Advent is the analog clock of the church. Amidst the frenetic pace of the secular calendar, always present but certainly intensified in the coming weeks, Advent beckons us to see not only the moment as it passes, but see the moment relative to other moments and ourselves within it, both individually and collectively. The hearkening call of Advent is to hold simultaneously an anticipation of the imminent dawning of the Incarnation, of Immanuel, God with us and the breadth of the salvation narrative, alongside a pregnant expectation of God’s promised inbreaking to Christ’s second coming and a new heaven and a new earth made manifest. 

This is at the heart of living in the “now and the not yet” or “eschatological reservation” of German theologian Ernst Käsemann. The notion of eschatology is the body of theology that considers the culmination of the destiny of humankind, from the individual to the breadth of creation, the “end times” in all its manifestations. Advent is filled to the brim with the divine possibility of living in the now of a world already redeemed by Christ’s life, death and resurrection while simultaneously anticipating a world yet to be brought fully into God’s actualized wholeness and completeness. We are to be watchful and vigilant for both. Both are imminent, but our perspective is heightened when we allow the “was” and the “will be” to co-mingle in the present. This liminal space and time between is the heart of Advent. 

What could’ve been different on those cold mid-winter mornings as a teenager when sleep was so enticing? Likely nothing. Likely I would’ve ignored the analog clock in the same manner as I did my groovy digital clock radio. My moment still became apocalyptic and fully known when my dad arrived to unmistakingly remind me what time it was...it was time to wake from sleep. He did know what time it was; nothing in the created order shall circumvent or derail the arrival of the Incarnation, the new Kingdom...or the school bus. So, my friends, as you consider the donning of your decorations and your “merrily-on-highs", I ask you to perhaps quite literally decorate with as many analog clocks as you can for the duration of Advent and let the “was” intersect with the “will be” in the present moment, filled to the brim with divine possibility. 

Amen.  

Easter Sunday, April 17, 2022

Luke 24:1-12

On the first day of the week, at early dawn, the women who had come with Jesus from Galilee came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body. While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men in dazzling clothes stood beside them. The women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be handed over to sinners, and be crucified, and on the third day rise again." Then they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb, they told all this to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told this to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter got up and ran to the tomb; stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves; then he went home, amazed at what had happened.

Alleluia, the Lord is Risen! (The Lord is Risen indeed- alleluia!) Those Alleluias are so good to bring back. One of my favorite things about Easter Sunday morning is that buzz that puts an exclamation point on all of the Alleluias. 

After six weeks without them, we get the confident Alleluia, the loud and uncompromising proclamation of a risen Christ.

And in Luke’s Gospel, the one we’re reading this morning, the first people to hear and proclaim the resurrection are women. Specifically, women from Jesus’s home area, who had brought spices to keep the dead body of Jesus fresh. And as we just heard in our Gospel reading, they get to the tomb to find it empty, and then two men in dazzling clothes appear beside them and tell them that Jesus is alive and risen.

These women go and who do they decide to tell what they’ve seen? Jesus’s friends, of course! They’ll be so excited!

Except that the disciples aren’t excited. They’re incredulous. This is one of those places where our Bible translations, made for prim and proper church people, don’t really do the language justice. 

The NRSV, the translation we use for our lectionary, tells us that Peter and the disciples thought that the women were telling them “an idle tale.”

But the Greek word there, “leros,” is a little less… polite. It essentially means something I’m not really allowed to say in a church service with little old ladies and small children present. Bull… um… manure.

We laugh, of course, but let’s take off our nice Easter shoes for a moment (Metaphorically! Not literally! Please!) and try to step into the disciples’ sandals.

The followers of Jesus have just watched the Roman imperial state and the religious authorities — two groups that had historically been at odds with one another — put aside their pretty massive differences and work together bound by their mutual hatred of Jesus.

They’d also seen the people of Jerusalem — the same people who, just a week earlier, had been hailing Jesus by waving palms and throwing their cloaks on the ground ahead of him as he rode into Jerusalem triumphantly on a donkey — turn suddenly from a cheering crowd into a lynch mob.

And finally, they’d watched Jesus — their rabbi and leader, who had taught them so much and performed wondrous miracles in their sight, someone they thought had the power and authority over all earthly empires and was about to use them in glory — meekly submit to arrest, stand trial in a kangaroo court, be tortured and mocked by ordinary Roman solders, and be executed in a painful and humiliating way.

They’d seen him feed thousands from a few loaves and fishes, heal lepers, give sight to the blind, even raise the dead! And then, when the Roman soldiers tortured and humiliated him, when they whipped him bloody and pressed the crown of thorns on his head, even when they nailed him to the cross and hung him up there to die, he just… took it? Didn’t fight, didn’t call down an army of angels, didn’t try to stage an escape, didn’t even resist?

What the heck?

So now, only two days after all that trauma, the followers of Jesus are reeling. They’re scared. The religious authorities and imperial soldiers had taken down their leader, so the natural next step is to go after his followers too. Sure, Jesus had talked about something like this happening and hinted that everything would work out in the end, but they didn’t really think he was serious about it. So in addition to the despair and the grief, there’s another thought running through their heads: are we next?

So when these women — women they know, women they trust, women who have been with the Jesus movement since the beginning, women who would have absolutely no reason to lie to them — burst into the room telling them that the tomb is empty and two angels told them that Jesus is risen, I like to think it was their fear and trauma talking when they respond with… um… “bull manure.”

I mean, really… wouldn’t we all? Think about someone you love who has died, and only a few days later someone tells you “no, I checked their tomb and it’s empty, and two men in dazzling clothes told me he was alive.” You’d be asking them “are those men in dazzling clothes in the room with us right now?” and surreptitiously looking around to make sure they couldn’t get their hands on any sharp objects.

So let’s review where we are. The disciples are beaten. They’re broken. They’re scared for their lives. They’re jumping at every knock on the door and every creak in the floor. 

And even worse, they’re wondering if this rabbi they have spent the last few years following around Judea, the movement that they left everything behind for, this savior they risked their lives to follow, was himself full of… um… “bull manure.” 

And in come these women they otherwise knew as level-headed and every bit as devoted to Jesus as they had been, telling them that he’s alive.

Given all that, it’s almost a miracle of sorts that Peter responds differently than the other disciples. When it would be so much easier to just give up, to collapse into despair and hopelessness, to think that with everything else that has gone so terribly wrong over the past few days, now even some of his closest friends are starting to crack under the pressure, Peter makes a different choice.

He lets himself hope.

The very same Peter who denied Jesus three times only a few days before, out of fear for his life, gets up and bolts out of the room. He decides that hope is worth the risk of being caught by Roman patrols, or synagogue leaders, or the lynch mob that had only a few days earlier been calling for Jesus to be crucified, and he runs to the empty tomb.

I’m probably not the only one right now who thinks that things over the past 6-7 years, and particularly more recently, have been looking pretty bleak. Oppression at home and abroad. People finding it harder and harder to get by. Staggering tales of human monstrosity. A war in Europe killing hundreds of thousands. Nationalism and white supremacy. Growing political movements being built not around love or the common good, but around hatred and fear of those whose opinions or lifestyles don’t perfectly fit a narrow vision. And, of course, every year the global temperature inches up another tenth of a degree.

Hatred seems to be on the offensive, and love is fighting to hold on to the scraps of territory that even a few years ago seemed like they were unassailable.

With all that, my prayer for us this morning is that we will follow Peter’s example. In a world that is trying to beat us down, to tell us that there is no reason for hope, that things will only get worse, that our best years are behind us, I pray that we, like Peter, will dare to let ourselves hope. 

Maybe it will get worse before it gets better. Maybe evil will look like it has triumphed for a day, or a week, or a year, or even a decade. But we believe in a God of freedom, a God of love, a God of hope. We follow a Jesus who, when it looked like he was beaten and done for, burst out of the tomb to proclaim a new Kingdom.

It’s tempting to think of Easter as the end of the story. After all, that’s where all of our Gospels end. Jesus is crucified and dies, and then is resurrected and spends some time with his friends. But Easter isn’t the end. It’s not a day frozen in time, it’s not happily-ever-after. 

No, Easter is a beginning. It’s the start of the next chapter of the story, a moment when something new and wonderful and incredible comes into the world. And it’s a story we’re all invited to relive, to be part of, every single year.

There’s a wonderful Jewish prayer that is sometimes used on the Sabbath. It begins, “Days pass and the years vanish, and we walk sightless among miracles.”

We walk sightless among miracles. And we pray that God will open our eyes to the miracles around us, to the miracle that is every single person, every single living thing, every single new moment in the story God is writing in the world.

What a gift!

We get to walk around our communities seeing the potential of resurrection everywhere around us.

We get to see the poor and oppressed, the ones who are mourning and hopeless, and bring them God’s love and comfort.

We get to tell the cynical and jaded, the discouraged and despondent, that God isn’t finished with the world yet… in fact, God is only getting started.

I pray that we will dare to hope and follow where God leads.

Amen.

Lent 3C

To jump into my sermon today, let’s start with the end- the last part of that gospel reading. It’s a weird ending. This parable seems to end abruptly. And it’s not just that when we set out the lectionary we happened to end at this verse. “If it bears fruit next year, it’s well and good. But if not, you can cut it down.” 

That’s it. We don’t get a tidy conclusion. But that’s the thing about parables- they’re not just tidy narratives with a beginning, middle and end. Parables give us glimpses into God’s kingdom. 

Here’s a tip for parable reading: Whenever you see a landowner in a parable, that character is almost always a metaphor for God. So in this parable, the landowner is impatient about his fig tree not bearing fruit. It’s been three years and still nothing has come out of this tree, and the landowner is thinking that’s a waste of valuable space in his vineyard that could be taken up by a tree that’s doing something.

So if God is the landowner, who do you think the tree is — the one that isn’t bearing fruit, the one that’s in danger of being cut down next year?

Jesus doesn’t tell us what happens to the fruit the next year because we get to live into the end of this parable. It’s a cliffhanger that over 2,000 years later, March 19, 2022, we get to hear it and decide how it will play out. 

The other thing about parables is they don’t often stand alone. Jesus tells this parable in response- see Jesus had been asked to comment on the hot political issue of the day- the slaughter of the Galileans. And it seems like the question they have for Jesus is did those Galileans have it coming? Surely their death was the result of their sin so… what did they do? But Jesus evens the playing field. The Galileans that were slaughtered by Pilate were no worse than those killed by natural disasters.

I remember in college I took a class on social psychology and we learned about something called fundamental attribution error. It means when we see someone else’s behavior, we tend to attribute it to who they are internally. But when we see similar behavior in ourselves, we attribute it externally. The classic example given is that typically, if we see someone trip, we think, wow, they are clumsy and careless. They should work on walking. But if I trip over something, I tend to think it’s situational: ‘who put that rock in my way?’ or ‘these shoes aren’t made well’ or ‘why did gravity just shift right there?’ 

I think this is what we see happening in Jesus’ conversation with this crowd. They see the Galileans getting slaughtered by Pilate and they want to know what inside of those Galileans made this happen. But Jesus knew those slaughtered Galileans didn’t get what they deserve- nobody gets what they deserve because what do we really deserve? Did the fig tree get what it deserved?

Then Jesus tells them to repent. There’s that ‘repent’ word again. Like I told you last week, repent doesn’t mean we need to feel shame or self-hatred and it definitely doesn’t mean we’re only as good as we can live up to certain preacher’s expectations. The Greek word that Jesus used here was metanoia which could best be translated as ‘change of heart.’ It means to be transformed at our deepest levels. 

What’s interesting is that in this conversation, when they are talking about what the Galileans might’ve done to deserve this, they’re looking for a list of sins to avoid. What do they need to SUBTRACT from their lives in order to win favor from God. They don’t really want to repent, but if it will save them from God punishing them, they’ll figure out what sins to avoid. But in the parable, Jesus is more concerned about ADDITION- what are the fruits we produce? What are the changes and transformations that will produce fruit? How will our community and world be better because of our transformations?

Maybe when we want to see waste and uselessness, we should look for possibilities.  Maybe when we want to see comfort and complacency, we should see urgency to bear fruit.  Remember if God is a landowner, we can assume that Jesus is the gardener, the one who intercedes because he knows this fig tree is capable of so much more. The gardner who’s willing to risk his reputation because he sees the promise in this fig tree. I’ve read a few things that say fig trees can be very temperamental plants: apparently very young fig trees do not produce fruit. Also, the figs will drop prematurely if it hasn’t been tended by a process called caprification. Or a fig tree can lose its fruit to overwatering. Overall, it seems sterility of fig trees was a common problem throughout antiquity.* Of all the fruit producing plants to use in this parable, it seems Jesus sees that his people need some careful and skilled tending. 

In the parable the gardener requests one more year to bear fruit. What would you do with one year? We don’t know how much more time we all have but whatever amount of time it is, that’s what we have to write the end of the parable. Will we bear fruit? Will we live lives reflective of God’s glory so the people around us can see love in action? Will we let ourselves be tended by the gardener who sees so much potential in us? Will we let ourselves be transformed?

*"An Unfinished Story About a Fig Tree in a Vineyard" by Charles Hedrick in Perspectives in Religious Studies, January 1999

Lent 2C- March 13, 2022

Lent 2C- 2022

A friend of mine got her PhD in Environmental Biology and because of this, she got to do some pretty amazing field research around the world so she’s always good for a story. One day the topic came up of the most dangerous animal she’d encountered and you know what her answer was: a mother. Yes, plenty of animals might fight each other for dominance or mating rights and there are times when predators will eat humans but often that’s a mistake because we’re not very tasty. But across so many species, coming between a mother and her young offspring incurs a wrath unlike anything else. (For the sake of gender equality, it’s worth noting that in the few species where the father sticks around to know the young, his instincts are often just as strong.)

So it’s particularly interesting that in this morning’s Gospel, as Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem and he is warned by the pharisees about what awaits him there-- very real threats and he knows he must continue on to there and he marches onward, the image he uses to describe his mission, to describe the mission of God-- “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, city that kills prophets and stones those who are sent to them. How often have I desired to gather together your children as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you are not willing.”

His image is that of a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings. In the interest of full disclosure, you should know that this is one of my favorite images of God in the entire Bible. It’s distinctly feminine, but there’s nothing dainty or domestic about it. A mother hen is not something you want to mess with. A mother hen might only have a beak and claws, but if you’re coming between her and her chicks, that beak and claw can become a lot.  

This is opposed to that image of Herod. Jesus refers to him to say he’s not afraid of “that fox”- an animal that might be sly and deceitful, but ultimately, as long as his own belly is full and his own den is safe, he couldn’t care less about any injustice out in the world. A fox meeting any regular old chicken might not be a fair match, but a fox meeting a mother hen with chicks to protect, that fox has a different fight on his hand. 

Of all the animals out there that are fierce and dominant kings-of-the-jungle, Jesus opts to liken himself to a mother hen protecting her helpless chicks. What are chicks but nature’s fluffy little snacks? To be honest, a mother hen doesn’t always win her fight. But that never dampens her tenacity. 

But here’s the thing about chicks: they can only be protected as much as they come to their mother hen and stay close.  Jesus talks about how often he’s desired to gather children and they were not willing- there’s a longing and a grief to his tone, like maybe the Pharisees telling him to avoid Jerusalem are trying to get between Jesus and his mission of love .  A hen can stand with her arms wide open, offering welcome, belonging and shelter but if none of her chicks seek her, she is a mother bereft. 

This image of longing is captured so well in a writing by Barbara Brown Taylor. She writes: ​​“If the city were filled with hardy souls, this would not be a dangerous situation. Unfortunately, it is filled with pale yellow chicks and at least one fox. In the absence of a mother hen, some of the chicks have taken to following the fox around. Others are huddled out in the open where anything with claws can get to them. Across the valley, a white hen with a gold halo around her head is clucking for all she is worth. Most of the chicks cannot hear her, and the ones that do make no response. They no longer recognize her voice. They have forgotten who they are.

If you have ever loved someone you could not protect, then you understand the depth of Jesus’ lament. All you can do is open your arms. You cannot make anyone walk into them. Meanwhile, this is the most vulnerable posture in the world –wings spread, breast exposed — but if you mean what you say, then this is how you stand.”(citation)

And remember this is a moment on Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem and to the cross. As he’s walking towards his own suffering and humiliation and crucifixion, his heart isn’t breaking for himself but for his brood. Maybe other prophets would see Jerusalem as a place to conquer, to take and consolidate their power. Jerusalem might be a prize. But for Jesus, it’s a place to love, it’s a people to love, even in their rejection of him. 

As Debie Thomas writes about this: “What would it take for us to embrace Jesus’s vulnerability as our strength?  To trade in our images of a conquering, triumphant God for the mother hen God of this lectionary passage? Maybe what we need most this Lent is not a fox-like divinity who wields power with sly intelligence and sharp teeth, but a mother hen who calls to us with longing and desperation, her wings held patiently and bravely open.  A mother hen who plants herself in the hot center of danger, and offers refuge there.  There at ground zero, where the feathers fly and the blood is shed.” (citation)

Lent is a season of repentance and repentance is one of those words that has been horribly misconstrued over the years. Repentance doesn’t require shame or self-hatred or living up to certain mouthy preacher’s ideas of righteousness. to repent is to return. It’s a chance to return to the embrace and shelter offered by the wide stretched arms of Jesus on a cross. It’s a chance to return to gathering and return to each other. Return to a God who loves us enough to become vulnerable with us. 

Lent 1C- March 6, 2022

Jesus in the Wilderness. 

When I was in elementary school, we occasionally had school assemblies and special classes where we were taught about the dangers and horrors of drug use. We would watch videos and they always included some figure in the shadows, usually wearing a trench coat, with an offering of drugs, a pu pu platter of narcotics, with a clear message: if we sampled them even once, we would become hopeless addicts with no future. All of these classes and assemblies drilled into our eager heads the catchphrase “Just say no!” Hearing this in my very embarrassingly sheltered upbringing, this seemed like an easy choice. I was ready to battle my teenage years with sheer willpower.  

But, as you might have guessed, I never really got to practice this willpower because as the do-gooder in a small town, you don’t really get invited to the parties they show in these videos, where drugs are supposedly offered like candy. While I never said yes to drugs, I never really got to practice my ‘just say no.’

The thing about these particular drug abuse prevention programs is that studies have shown that they statistically really don’t have much impact in whether kids will ever experiment with drugs or not. Temptation is a lot more complex than giving kids a one syllable response. People often turn to drugs in a response to real but unacknowledged pain and the prospect of relieving that pain, even just temporarily, drowns out any logic. To offer a kid in this predicament little more than a catchphrase vastly oversimplifies a deeper problem.

This morning’s gospel reading tells the story of Jesus spending 40 days in the wilderness with nothing to eat, no place to sleep, and no company but the devil. (Sounds like a really good Johnny Cash song.) And boy does that devil know how to strike when the iron is hot. “You’ve got to be hungry, Jesus… so just turn these rocks into bread. You’ve got to want people to listen to you… so just say the word and all the kingdoms of the world are yours. You’ve got to want to prove to me who you are, it could be as simple as throwing yourself off this tower…”

We use devil and satan interchangeably and while they refer to the same creature, the roots of the words reflect different aspects of him. 

• Satan comes from ‘satanus’ which means the accuser. Satan wants to find out what we’re really made of. 

• Devil comes from ‘diabolus’ (think diabolical) meaning ‘the one who tears things apart, the divider’ The devil aims to sow suspicion in our communities and convince us we are alone in our struggles. 

There are a lot of places in the church’s teaching, including our Eucharistic Prayer, that we describe Jesus as perfect. I sometimes make the mistake in thinking about Jesus as perfect and I imagine him as someone who only brought home straight-A report cards, who only hits green lights on his commute home from work and was offered every job he applied for. You know, they types that seem to check every box that’s expected of them and probably could easily ‘just say no.’ But that’s not at all the type of perfect Jesus was. 

In her book Braving the Wilderness, Brene Brown writes about the roots of bluegrass music: “Story has it that as a child, Bill Monroe would hide in the woods next to a railroad track in the “long, ole, straight bottom part of Kentucky.” Bill would watch World War I veterans returning home from the war as they walked along the track. The weary soldiers would sometimes let out long hollers—loud, high-pitched, bone-chilling hollers of pain and freedom that cut through the air like the blare of a siren.

….The minute you hear it, you know it. Oh, that holler. It’s not a spirited yippee or a painful wail, but—something in between. It’s a holler that’s thick with both misery and redemption. A holler that belongs to another place and time. Bill Monroe would eventually become known as the father of bluegrass music. During his legendary career, he often told people that he practiced that holler and “always reckoned that’s where his singing style came from.” Today we call that sound high lonesome.”

Jesus knew the high lonesome. Misery and redemption were key elements to his life to the very end, especially his time in the wilderness. 

Whether we attribute it to Satan or not, we can relate to Jesus’ temptation. We all get hungry, we all want people to listen to us, and we all want to prove who we are. And those aren’t necessarily bad things, in the right context. We obviously need food to survive. We all deserve to have a voice, to be heard. And the desire to be known and loved for just who we are is natural and right. But what Jesus is tempted with when he goes into the wilderness isn’t really those things: he’s tempted with the easy answer. The quick fix. 

And the easy answers and the quick fixes are everywhere. Just buy this product, do this “life hack,” be smarter and better and more hard-working, get a new car or a new house or a new phone, and you too will have a full belly, power, and love. 

But Jesus offers something else, a way of love. Jesus knew temptation and Jesus knew the high lonesome.   

When you listen to bluegrass music and hear that high lonesome, it’s arresting. The power of the high lonesome is that in singing it and hearing it, our loneliness loses its grip. It builds connection and knits together that which had previously been divided. 

We all have times in the wilderness, periods of our lives when we might’ve wandered far beyond what is familiar and known. That’s the beauty of Lent- our chance to remember that these times in the wilderness are a natural part of faith journeys and ultimately bring us closer to God. I don’t have a catchphrase to give you to make the wilderness seem easier or to downplay how difficult it can be to sit in pain. But I can point you to a savior who knew the high lonesome. When we cry out, God hears our pain and God knows our pain. And that high lonesome has that same power in our prayer as it does in song- loneliness loses its grip and it connects and knits together that which had previously been divided.