Author Archives: jandrewsweckerly

On Looking for Helpers…

02 Wednesday Oct 2024

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Photo credit: https://www.power-grid.com/der-grid-edge/electric-vehicles/midamerican-rolls-out-three-all-electric-utility-bucket-trucks/#gref

Last week I was on retreat in western North Carolina.  We were east enough that Hurricane Helene mostly dealt us wind and rain, and we only lost power and water for about seven hours.  But as we prepared to return home, the news was trickling in that the impact further west was bad – inconceivably devastating.  As I headed east making my way home, signs indicated the highway I was traveling was completely closed in the other direction and that all travel to western North Carolina was forbidden.

On the sobering home drive, as I contemplated all who were suffering and how mostly unscathed I was, a familiar sight appeared:  a line of electric company trucks driving westward.  Having grown up mostly in NC and having been on Long Island during Superstorm Sandy, I felt that familiar overwhelming sense of relief when you see those trucks after a storm.  Help was on the way.  Trucks with their workers from all over the place were dropping everything in their lives to offer up the gifts God gave them to help others.  I knew those in western North Carolina would feel a similar palpable relief to see those glorious white trucks, and I offered a prayer of thanksgiving. 

Fred Rogers used to say, “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.’”  No matter how much we bemoan our divisions and the political toxicity in our country, it is the helpers that give me hope.  That line of white trucks was a reminder to me that goodness is all around us, even when hopelessness feels like it may drown us. 

I wonder what signs of hope you might be able to spy this week – what glimmers of light are breaking through the clouds if you open your eyes.  Or perhaps the Holy Spirit is beckoning you to be a helper – to be one of those signs of hopefulness in the ways that only you can.  I cannot wait to hear the stories of how God is showing up and birthing hope.

Sermon – Matthew 11.25-30, St. Francis Feast, YB, September 29, 2024

02 Wednesday Oct 2024

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Today we honor the life and witness of St. Francis of Assisi.  St. Francis is well-known and beloved for myriad reasons.  Primarily, people tend to appreciate two things about him: his commitment to living in solidarity with the poor, which included dramatically stripping his clothing off, begging for food, and supporting the most needy; and, his affinity for the creatures of God, with stories of preaching to birds, negotiating with a violent wolf to make peace with the local town, and generally valuing the beasts of the earth.  But what we rarely talk about is the stigmata of St. Francis – those marks corresponding to the ones left on Jesus’ body by the crucifixion said to have been impressed by divine favor on devoted followers of Christ.

Here’s what we know about St. Francis’ stigmata.  He was praying on the Feast of the Cross, which falls on September 14.  His prayer that day to Jesus was that he might feel in his body and soul the pain that Jesus felt in the Passion.  But he also prayed to feel in equal measure the excessive love that Jesus felt that allowed him to endure pain for us.  We are told that in his intense prayer session, he saw a vision, and when he emerged, he had what looked like piercings in his hands and feet – or, stigmata.[i]  Now I don’t know how you feel about the existence of stigmata on certain saints, but I’ve always thought it was a little, well, weird – and even more heretical, maybe even unbelievable.

So, why, on this Sunday when all we want to do is bless and celebrate animals or remember the poor, do we need to talk about stigmata?  Believe me or not, there is actually a deep correlation with today’s gospel lesson.  Today, Jesus talks about yokes – those tools used to harness two animals for work.  The yoke allows the two not just to double their work, but to rely on one another – if one is tired, the other can push harder; and then the weaker one can later support the stronger one.  Yokes, like Jesus’ work, are easy and make the burden light. 

But beyond the mechanics of a good yoke, the yoke is also a good metaphor for how we see the gospel.  Being yoked to another makes you connected.  And once you are connected, and see how dependent upon one another you are, you begin to see how that connection extends beyond the two of you – that your yoked interconnection is a microcosm of the connectedness of all of God’s creation.  When Francis prayed fervently to both feel Jesus’ deepest physical pain as well as Jesus’ excessive outpouring of love, his resulting stigmata left a physical reminder of the ways in which, even in pain or great love, we are connected to one another.

Perhaps another example may help.  “Ramakrishna was a mystic who lived in India over a hundred years ago.  One day, as he was walking through the marketplace, he saw a servant boy being whipped by his master.  As he watched that boy being whipped, welts appeared on Ramakrishna’s own body.”  We are told that, “This suggests that this man had such a strong feeling for this boy that he could identify with him in the sufferings that he was enduring.”[ii]  Furthermore, “Like Ramakrishna, who was so at one with God that he could walk through the marketplace and become one with God’s creations, especially this poor servant, Francis so identified with the suffering of Jesus that he took on the wounds himself.”[iii]

What we see in Francis’ stigmata and even in the experience of the mystic Ramakrishna is that when we are living faithfully, we begin to see that we are yoked to one another.  We slowly begin to see all of humanity is connected.  And the more we spend time seeing the humanity in others – especially the humanity in those we would rather not – then we start to see that our interconnectedness extends even further – to God’s creation, to God’s creatures, to the cosmos.  If we open our hearts to one, we cannot help to open our hearts to all.  Francis’ love for the poor, Francis’ love for creatures, and even Francis’ stigmata are not disconnected – they are one in the same. 

In Psalm 148, a psalm sometimes read or sung on St. Francis’ feast day, we hear an invitation to all of God’s creation:  Mountains and all hills, fruit trees and all cedars;  Wild beasts and all cattle, creeping things and winged birds; Kings of the earth and all peoples, princes and all rulers of the world; Young men and maidens, old and young together.[iv]  We bless animals today because Francis reminded us how all of God’s creation is worthy of love and is interconnected.  But the invitation for us today is not just to love on cute dogs, cats, hamsters, and horses.  The invitation for us is to start claiming our yoked nature – yoked to those we love, yoked to our political opponents, yoked to those who have different ethics and values than ourselves, yoked to parents who make different parenting decisions, yoked to those with different skin color or sexual orientation or gender identity, yoked to those we see as deserving of God’s grace and those who are not.  Our yoked nature allows us to pray the Prayer of St. Francis from our Prayer Book:  “Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”[v]  We can do the work of St. Francis because of the yoke of Jesus.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[i] Hilarion Kistner, O.F.M., The Gospels According to Saint Francis (Cincinnati:  Franciscan Media, 2014), 88-91.

[ii] Kistner, 87-88.

[iii] Kistner, 92.

[iv] Psalm 148.9-12.

[v] BCP, 833.

Sermon – Proverbs 31.10-31, P20, YB, September 22, 2024

02 Wednesday Oct 2024

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As the presidential election approaches in just about six weeks, I have spoken with many of you about a rising sense of anxiety and despair.  One of the things I have noticed about the last three presidential elections is that we have kind of gotten lost – so caught up in big personalities and dramatic events that we have lost sight of one core question in elections:  what do we need in a president to create a just country that reflects the priority of love.

Since I always tell our community that I do not preach politics – just Jesus – I thought I would turn to scripture this week for guidance.  I started with the daily office.  On Wednesday, I came across Psalm 72.  The psalm begins, “Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to a king’s son.  May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice.  May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy, and crush the oppressor.”  “Yes,” I thought, “This is the president we need.  After all this debate and controversy, this is the kind of president I want.”  Then I kept reading.  The more I read about this noble king, the more the king sounded a lot like Jesus.  Finally, a truth seeped through – this year, as I am considering my choice for President, I have not been looking for an actual person.  I have been looking for a savior; and that is not fair to any human being.  Any person running for president is going to be flawed.  And we already have a Savior – we do not need another one. 

Then I turned to our Old Testament lesson for today: the so-called “capable woman” from Proverbs.  I spent some time with this text when I was writing my thesis in seminary, so I am always drawn to this familiar text.  But the more I read about this woman this time, the more inadequate I felt.  She makes clothes, rises before dawn to feed her family, manages a staff, purchases a field, and plants a vineyard by herself.  She in an entrepreneur, selling her wares for good money.  She cares for the poor, and is a wise teacher.  She does all this and is happy.  As a priest, mother of two, and a wife, I feel woefully inadequate next to the capable woman.  In fact, in Hebrew, the word to describe her is not really “capable” per se.  The word, hayil, is a word that means much more than capable.  Hayil is primarily used in the Old Testament to describe men of great power, valor, and strength.  Hayil is a term for powerful warriors.  In fact, this Proverbs woman and Ruth are the only women in the Old Testament to earn the title normally reserved for men.  The Proverbs woman is not just capable; she is a woman of strength and power.  She is a superwoman. 

The challenge with these two images – the righteous king and the powerful woman – is that neither of these labels feels attainable.  For women, the Proverbs woman of power is especially loaded.  Many of us long to be a woman of hayil.  We want to be a woman who can do everything – work outside the home, manage our finances, care for a home and family, maintain a healthy relationship with God, have power and honor in our lives.  This is the challenge of the modern woman – society is opening doors for us to do everything – to work, to raise a family, to be successful.  But the reality is that we either kill ourselves trying to do everything, or we feel horribly guilty for our many failures.  Unlike celebrities, who seem to manage family, fame, and face with ease, we feel overwhelmed and woefully inadequate.  In fact, as I was pondering preaching this text this week, I stumbled across a quote from one seminary professor.  She writes, “Many of you will conclude this text is too much a minefield and steer clear, with good reason.”[i] 

Of course, today is not just a sermon for the women in our community.  Men often feel the same sense of being overwhelmed by trying to do everything.  Forget the kingly imagery from the Psalm.  There is often pressure for men to be financially stable, and if you have a family, to provide for them.  There is now an expectation that men play a role in the rearing of children and doing housework, being involved in the community, and caring for the upkeep of your home.  As I have read parenting magazines over the years, I have seen story after story of men trying to navigate the modern family’s expectations of playing both traditional and nontraditional male roles.  And for the man and woman running for President, expecting a “just king” or a “capable woman” places incredibly unfair expectations on either candidate.

So, what do we make of this woman of hayil in Proverbs today?  Like the King in Psalm 72, I wonder if the woman in Proverbs is perhaps not a particular human, but an ideal.  All the practices of the woman of strength are practices that we should strive to embody – we are to be industrious, using the talents that God has given us for the good of ourselves and others.  We are to work hard and to care for the poor and needy.  We are to use our words wisely, and shape the next generation to love kindness and walk humbly with God.  And most of all, we are to fear the Lord.  Fear in this sense is not the kind of fear that cowers from God, but that holds the Lord in awe, marveling at the majesty of God, rooting our lives in that sense of wonder, gratitude, and reverent humility before the Creator.[ii]  But mostly, this text is a reminder that we do not put these expectations just on presidents – these are expectations, or ways of life, for each of us.

The good news is that we do not strive for the ideal of hayil alone.  Perhaps a better image for us today is not a single woman of hayil, but a community of hayil.  This text from Proverbs is not inviting us to be all things to all people, but instead is inviting all men and women to consider together what the tasks of a family, church, or community are, and to consider the ways we can share in those tasks together.[iii]  When we focus on only one woman, we miss that this text encourages us to think about the partnerships between men and women in the work of the community.  This text is not a beautiful hymn to one human woman, but is a lesson about interdependence, partnership, and the contours of community.[iv]

That’s what excites me about Hickory Neck.  We are on a journey to become a woman, a community, of hayil.  I see you using your time, talent, and treasure to help in the ways that you are most gifted.  I see you praying for one another, especially when one of us looks particularly overwhelmed or stressed.  I see you looking beyond our doors about the way we can individually and collectively care for our neighbors in need.  I see you leaning into our creativity to make a path forward in a new reality.  In this moment, Hickory Neck is living as the woman of hayil.

Of course, we still have work to do – we are still accomplishing the ideal as a community.  A priest friend of mine had a set of triplets in her parish.  She knew that the mother could not manage all three alone – one person only has two arms!  So, the priest arranged for a rocking chair in the narthex to help ease the babies’ tempers.  There were older women in the congregation who, within seconds of a cry, would swoop up one of the babies and rock the child in the side aisle, without the mother having to even ask for help.  There were men who caught the crawling babies under pews and returned them to their mother.  And mostly, there were patient parishioners, who would focus through the cries of the children to hear the sermon without complaint.  We too can offer this grace to one another.  Whether there is a parent with a child who could use some help, whether there is a parishioner who needs a hand to get to the communion rail, or whether we offer prayers for someone who we notice is struggling this week, we are a community who can exemplify the holy partnership we see in scripture today.  We can acknowledge that our work is best accomplished together because our shared labor expresses faith, hope, and love in ways that build us up and bring us together.  We can all be that woman of hayil, that superwoman for the wider community, but only if we do the work together.  Amen.

[i] Amy Oden, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-25-2/commentary-on-proverbs-3110-3, September 23, 2012, as found on September 20, 2024. 

[ii] Kathleen M. O’Connor, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 79.

[iii] H. James Hopkins, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 77.

[iv] Hopkins, 79.

On Actively Remembering…

11 Wednesday Sep 2024

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Photo credit: https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-and-operations/sept-11-attack.html

The anniversary of September 11, 2001 is always one that hits me in unexpected ways.  For those of us living at the time twenty-three years ago, our experiences that day are as varied as our humanity is varied.  Depending on how close you lived to the three crash sites, whether you lost a loved one or waited long days for them to be found, what your ethnicity is (as those of Middle Eastern heritage had very different experiences that day and in the weeks and months to follow), or what your philosophy of justice was, our reactions to, experiences of, and the aftermath of that tragic day affects us all differently.

Despite those deeply varying differences, one thing always seems to be consistent on this anniversary – we remember.  Maybe we spend time in prayer, or maybe we dedicate some time to silence, or maybe we take a long run, or maybe we burn off steam another way, but all of us in some way or fashion remember.  As you remember this year, I invite your reflection to be active.  There were countless people on that day who did something good for someone else – whether they helped someone out of a burning building, comforted a friend, searched through rubble, helped a stranger search for someone lost, made a meal for someone, or even made the ultimate sacrifice so that others might live.  Use those stories and those memories of goodness that punctuated a day of awfulness to be a force for goodness today – to be an agent of Christ’s love in a world that desperately needs love.  If you’re looking for motivation, you can find stories here.  If you’re looking for a prayer, you can try this resource. 

Even twenty-three years out, this day carries with it so much weight.  I can’t wait to hear what you do to lighten some of that burden for someone else or yourself.  Today we can be a part of shining Christ’s light in the darkness in our time.

Sermon – Proverbs 22.1-2, 8-9, 22-23, P18, YB, September 8, 2024

11 Wednesday Sep 2024

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Many of us grew up with parents or grandparents who were always trying to instill wisdom.  “A penny saved is a penny earned.”  Or, “The early bird gets the worm.” Or one that overlaps with faith, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  I think the hope has been to create mantras that will remind us to be good human beings.  In a lot of ways, that is what we do in baptism.  Certainly, the main purpose of baptism is to welcome people into the community of faith.  But every baptism is also an educational moment – an identity-making moment.  The liturgy of baptism (and especially the renewal of our baptismal covenant which we will do later today) is chock full of wisdom about how to live faithfully as a Christian:  continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of the bread, and in the prayers;  resist evil, and, whenever you fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord; proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ; seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself; and strive for justice and peace among all people, respecting the dignity of every human being.  The baptismal covenant may not be as catchy or memorable as those phrases your grandparent used, but they do the same thing:  teach us something about being people of faith.

That is what our lesson from Proverbs is doing today too.  Truthfully, many of those proverbial sayings we learned from our elders come from scripture or even the book of Proverbs directly.[i]  Today’s lesson from Proverbs is all about wealth.  Now I know what you are thinking, we just baptized a little baby – why in the world do we need to talk to them about money?  Besides, isn’t that a little uncouth?  Much as we polite southerners might not like to admit it, Holy Scripture always has a lot to say about money.  For Jesus, money was the topic he talked about the most in Scripture.  But Jesus comes from a long line of people and scriptures that talk about wealth.  He was probably shaped just like we were by elders trying to give us wisdom.  But before you get too squeamish, just remember that talking about wealth is not just a concern about personal behavior or morality.  In the instance of our lesson from Proverbs, talking about wealth helps us understand how to live in community – how to be a people of faith together.[ii]

Let’s take a deeper dive with these verses today (feel free to go back to your bulletin as we read along).  The first verse talks about how a good name is much more valuable than great riches.  Now that does not mean we need to literally pick good names for our children – although Nathan, who was baptized earlier, is a beautiful name (quite biblical, actually!).  But what the original Hebrew means by “good name” is “good reputation.”[iii]  In other words, people need to know that you are a decent human being more than they need to know you have high levels of wealth.  In the second verse, the proverb goes even deeper, suggesting that whether we are rich or poor (or somewhere in between) we are all equally loved by God.  We are all beloved children of God.  Now if our equally beloved status is true, and how we treat others matters most, then our main job in life is to care for one another.  If we happen to be wealthy, we are encouraged to share our wealth.  As a community, we share our resources to support the work of ministry – verses eight and nine as well as 22 and 23 tell us how important our care for one another is.  That right prioritizing with wealth and community puts us in right relationship with God.  And Lord knows, Nathan, or any newly baptized, is going to need to navigate that reality in their lifetimes. 

That is what baptism does.  Baptism helps us remember first and foremost what we want to teach the newly baptized.  Whether the baptized is an adult or an infant we will communally raise, we want people like Nathan to know what being a person of faith is, and how that identity impacts the whole of our lives – from our weekly gathering in worship, to our caring for the poor, to the ways we steward our own resources. 

Secondly, baptism reminds us as a community what we need to remember.  Just because we were baptized once, or have reaffirmed our baptisms multiple times, that does not mean we have mastered faithful discipleship.  Even in our baptismal covenant, we do not say, “if we fall into sin,” we say, “whenever we fall into sin.”  Being a person of faith means working at being faithful over and over again – always with the help of fellow people on the journey, but certainly the work is ongoing.

That is why today, in addition to celebrating our baptism, we are also turning our hearts again to the topic of stewardship.  As we kickoff another program year, we are reminded that generosity is at the heart of faithful living.  Verse nine that we read today says, “Those who are generous are blessed, for they share their bread with the poor.”  Generosity, as one scholar explains, is “here imagined as sharing bread with the poor; that is, sharing those things that are necessary for a safe life.  In the ancient context, ‘sharing bread’ is not just dropping money in a cup, but is an expression of solidarity.  Those who share what they need for life (bread) find that they will have what they need for life.”[iv]   Our invitation today, as water is sprinkled on all our heads, is to consider how we might embrace a generous life – how we might, recognizing our blessedness, share our bread with others.  For when we live generously, we find we have all that we need for life.  Amen.

[i] Susan T. Henry-Crowe, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 26.

[ii] Stephen C. Johnson, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 27.

[iii] Megan Fullerton Strollo, “Commentary on Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23,” September 8, 2024, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-23-2/commentary-on-proverbs-221-2-8-9-22-23-6 on September 4, 2024.

[iv] Ronald J. Allen, “Considering the Text:  Week 4, Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, 8 September 2024” Center for Faith and Giving, as found at centerforfaithandgiving.org, 27.

On Baptisms, Community, and Belonging…

04 Wednesday Sep 2024

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Photo credit: https://www.sacredheartcalgary.ca/sacraments/baptism-2/baptism/

One of the challenges of a church with multiple service times is the inevitable formation of multiple smaller communities within a larger community.  Between different attendees and different worship styles, each service begins to take on its own personality.  I have had families with young children show up at our early service, and had to be sure to let them know that the later service might be much more familiar and comfortable than the meditative feel of the early service.  Or I have had folks who grew up in an Anglo-Catholic tradition show up at our later service, and had to be sure to let them know they might find the more formal liturgy of the early service more heart-warming.  The trick is figuring out how to create a sense of “home” in each worship service while also providing opportunities for cross-pollination across services.

I think that is why I am so excited for a baptism at my church this weekend at the early service.  We almost never have children at that service (I know very few parents of littles who can get their families at church by 8:00 am), and we do not have music (for those littles to join in the joyful noise making), and the pews in the historic chapel are way less accommodating than the movable chairs in our newer chapel.  But the mother of the baptized grew up in that space and wants her child to experience the centuries of prayer found there.  And although there may not be other children there, she will tell her son of the days when she used to sit in the window wells or babies crawled under the pews.  And when she sees parishioners the age of her son’s grandparents in worship, she will be able to tell her son about the fellowship of saints, and maybe even let parishioners take a turn rocking her son if he becomes fussy.

That is the true beauty of the kind of community church creates.  No matter which service you choose, there is a child whose grandparent may live far away, a grandparent who hasn’t seen his children in months or a year, and a parent who just needs a place who gets how hard parenting is.  And those three groups come together as a fluid organism, with all their everyday human stuff, laying their troubles before God, praising God for their blessings – even when it is sometimes hard to see them, and breaking bread together, recognizing the beauty of a diverse room of people reflecting the image of God. 

That is what this Sunday’s baptism is all about:  bringing another human being into to the strange, mysterious, beauty of Church; helping him know that he is a child of God and is marked as Christ’s own forever; teaching him that he will now belong to a community that will both love him unconditionally and challenge him to live into his vocation and calling – whatever it may be.  We baptize that little one to tell him all that.  But we also baptize that little one to remind ourselves of that reality:  to remember how we too are beloved children of God with a commission to love and serve the Lord in the world.  No matter what service you choose, we all need that message.   

Sermon – Mark 7.1-8, 14-15, 21-23, P17, YB, September 1, 2024

04 Wednesday Sep 2024

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Before I became a priest, I served as a Director of Volunteer services at a Habitat for Humanity affiliate.  In my training as a volunteer manager, I learned that one of the most important things about recruiting someone to a volunteer position was clarity about what one was asking from a volunteer.  If they were going to serve on a committee, how long was the commitment, how frequently would they meet, what work would be expected, and how was leadership structured were all details they should have.  If they were going to work on site, what training was expected or would be provided, what age restrictions existed, what risks would they undertake, and how their day would be structured were important details before a workday.  If they had a group event, they needed to know how many volunteers could be on site, what hours they needed to commit to, and what happened in inclement weather.  By the end of my tenure, every volunteer position had a position description outlining expectations, qualifications, and rewards.

So, imagine my transition to the priesthood and realizing how poorly the Episcopal Church had defined membership.  The very first time someone asked me (and every time since then), I dread the question, “So what do I need to do to become a member of this church?”  The Episcopal Church does a notoriously poor job of defining membership.  Our commitment to professing “All are welcome!” seems to translate into no defining characteristics of membership.  “How do I join your church?” should be one of the easiest questions there is.  And yet, when I talk to new members, the answer has to be two-fold:  the technical answer (as long as you attend three services a year and are a financial contributor, you’re considered a member – the answer from the wider Episcopal Church which I loathe!), and the more practical answer we have crafted here at Hickory Neck:  you fill out a form, you commit to supporting the church financially, you commit to feeding yourself (through study, prayer, regular worship), and you commit to feeding others (through giving your time to the church and to the wider community on behalf of the church). 

Our gospel lesson today seems to be wading through a similar lack of clarity.  The Pharisees and scribes are totally perplexed by how some of Jesus’ disciples are not washing their hands before eating – a totally valid concern in these days of post-pandemic!  But handwashing was not just about hygiene.  The ritual washing of hands was about identity, or “membership” as we understand membership today.  The Jews of this time are in an “oppressed minority, living in an occupied land.”  Their question is asked with the backdrop of colonialism, cultural and religious diversity, and competing claims on identity.[i]    Their question is both simple and complex:  why aren’t the disciples living like members of our community? 

For many a reader of this text, all sorts of erroneous conclusions have been drawn – primarily the anti-Semitic understanding that the laws of the Jews are superseded by laws of Jesus.[ii]  But that is not what is happening in this text.  Jesus does not have any issue with ritual cleansing:  he of all people understands the expectations of following God.  But Jesus is saying something more nuanced about identity and membership.  Jesus is saying that no matter how we traditionally mark ourselves as “other,” even if something is “the way we’ve always done it,” what is more important is how we live our faith.  So, if we are doing all the right things:  washing our hands the right way, bowing or genuflecting at all the right times, crossing ourselves when we’re supposed to, saying “Amen” during the sermon – or avoiding saying “Amen” during the sermon – none of that matters if our insides are defiled.  As Jesus quotes from Isaiah, “This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me…”[iii] 

Today’s invitation is to ponder what membership in this body of faith means.  Are we honoring Jesus with our lips, but our hearts are far from Jesus?  Are we following the external “rules” but fostering evil intentions in our heart?  Have we filled out the membership form but neglected our work of feeding ourselves and feeding others?  Our work this week is making sure that when we go out into the world to love and serve the Lord – the dismissal that the we agree to every week – that we love and serve the Lord in ways that show people Christ through our words and actions; that as the political season ramps up, we ensure we are not defiling the dignity of any human being with our lips; and that when we talk about how much we love this church on the hill, we do so in a way that does not mask our individual struggles with avarice, deceit, slander, pride, and folly.  Telling the world you are a proud member of Hickory Neck Episcopal Church is just fine – and something I hope you do on a regular basis.  But our invitation from scripture today is to be clear with others that, as that old tune says, “He’s still working on me,” is also a part of membership in the body of Christ – perhaps the most appealing one that draws others into a desire for membership too.  Amen. 

[i] Debie Thomas, “True Religion,” August 22, 2021, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=2944 on August 30, 2024.

[ii] Idea suggested by Matt Skinner on the Sermon Brainwave podcast, “#799: 14th Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 22B) – Aug. 29, 2021,” August 22, 2021, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/799-14th-sunday-after-pentecost-ord-22b-aug-29-2021 on August 28, 2024.

[iii] Mark 7.6b.

On the Joy of It Not Being about You…

28 Wednesday Aug 2024

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Photo credit: https://wexnermedical.osu.edu/blog/visit-someone-in-hospital

One of the privileges of the work I do are visitations.  On countless occasions I have visited someone approaching death, someone in the throes of dementia, or someone just bone-weary with illness, and the immediate response when I walk in the door is a huge smile and the lightening of their countenance. 

I am very clear what that reaction is not.  It is not about me:  I have come to understand that the reaction is much more about the collar I wear and associations that collar has with a beloved church community.  It is also not about me bringing God to the room:  God is already there – my presence just sometimes helps people remember that fact.  And the reaction is definitely not about what I bring:  my visit will not physically change the pending death, the continued dementia, or the ongoing suffering – my work is much more about helping the individual find peace and a sense of connection to God in what can feel like a desert.

Despite all the things those smiles and lighter countenances are not, there is still a shared joy in them.  As the parishioner is reminded of God’s grace and love, so am I.  I too take joy in how being a part of a community can make me feel whole.  I too marvel at God’s presence that has gone before me.  I too can receive the peace of Christ in those desert places.  The gift of the visitation is not just for the visited.  The gift is also to the visitor.

I wonder what ways God is inviting you to be that smile and lightened countenance for others.  As schools restart, I see overwhelmed, weary parents, children, and teachers trying to adjust.  As individuals struggle financially, I see the defeated feelings that manifest themselves in hunched body postures and the diminished capacity for hope.  As a caretaker sits through another appointment or misses another engagement, I see a fatigue unlike any other.  To whom is God inviting you, in your daily journey, to be the light of Christ – to be the reminder that God is already there, that a community awaits, and that glimpses of peace can be found?  It is not about you, to be sure.  But you will be blessed as you do the work of blessing too. 

Sermon – John 6.35, 41-51, P14, YB, August 11, 2024

28 Wednesday Aug 2024

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One of the components of our leadership training in Vestry is to talk about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  If you’re not familiar with his model, Maslow presents a pyramid of needs.  At the bottom are the physiological needs:  food, water, shelter, etc.  The next level of need is safety or security:  this would include health, employment, and social support.  The third level up the pyramid is love and belonging:  this entails friendship, family, intimacy, connection.  The fourth level is self-esteem:  including confidence, achievement, and respect.  And the final level, the tip of that pyramid is self-actualization:  creativity, a sense of purpose and meaning, and acceptance happen here.  The idea is, you cannot work on someone’s sense of purpose or meaning – the top of the pyramid, or even their sense of achievement and confidence without first meeting their basic needs at the base of the pyramid.  The same is true in the church.[i]  If we want to have excellent programming and ministry, where people are successfully naming and living into their vocations, we first have to make sure that we are a church who is in accordance with the canons of the Episcopal Church, that our property is safely maintained, that people feel welcome and cared for, before we think about people feeling proud about their church and helping their church thrive.  For Vestry members, when we are initiating change, we must be sure the hierarchy of needs has been met before we act.

Neal Mitchell tells a story of church who struggled with that sense of pacing with change.  There was a pastor who decided that the piano was not in the ultimate location in the sanctuary, so one week, he just moved it to the other side.  You would have thought he sacrificed a baby on the altar for the blowback he got.  He stirred such a commotion with his unilateral change that he eventually left the church and took another job.  Years and years later, that same pastor came back to the church for an anniversary celebration.  When he walked in the sanctuary, he immediately saw that the piano was in the location he always wanted but the church had refused to allow in his tenure.  After the worship service, he quietly asked the current pastor, “How in the world did you get them to move the piano over to that side of the worship space?!?”  The newer pastor said, “Oh, that.  Yeah, I just moved the piano an inch at a time.  No one even balked with the piano landed in the current position.”[ii] 

In John’s gospel today, Jesus in right in the middle of a lesson about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  We are in the third week of what is called the Bread of Life Discourse.  To the casual reader, you may be thinking, “Didn’t we just talk about the bread of life last week?”  And you wouldn’t be wrong.  We are in the middle of talking about the bread of life for five weeks.  But the text may not be as repetitive as the text feels.  You see, Jesus has been walking us through a hierarchy of needs.  First, we had that feeding of the five thousand.  Jesus starts by attending to the people’s immediate need – food.  You can’t share the love of Christ if your belly is growling with hunger.  Next, the conversation goes back to their history – when God provided manna in the wilderness – in other words, when God didn’t just tend today’s hunger, but worked on the need of security – of daily bread.  There God tended to the second level of need.  Today, Jesus is talking not about today’s bread, or even daily bread.  Jesus is talking about the bread of life – the bread that will sustain us for eternity – the feeding of our souls, not just our bodies.  This kind of bread means relationship, intimacy, care, and empowerment.[iii]  

This week, I experienced another week of Vacation Bible School – this time through one of our ecumenical partners in town.  Over the course of two weeks of VBS, one of the common conversations I have had with church members here, there, and with the other Williamsburg Episcopal Churches was a reflection about how although families find their way to church through a program like VBS, the next step of coming to church regularly is more difficult to inspire.  Now there is a lot wrapped up in that pondering, but at the heart of that reflection, particularly by longtime churchgoers is an understanding that they have found something deeply meaningful and lifegiving at church and they want to share that soul sustenance – that bread of life – with folks who do not have that same sustenance. 

I think that is what Jesus is trying to help us see today.  We are certainly called to be a community of food.  Lord knows Jesus did that all the time – feeding masses of people, tending to their health needs, helping lift up the poor.  And, Jesus was also about feeding souls – helping people find relationship, belonging, soul-nourishing, and that sense of purpose in the kingdom.  We consume the bread of life here every week not because the bread tastes all that particularly good or because that bread fills our stomachs (certainly not like Coffee Hour does).  We consume that bread of life because that taste, that lingering feeling of a melting wafer moving down our throats, is a balm of belonging, of purpose, of entrance into the eternal.  We are very good at describing our welcoming community here at Hickory Neck or our awesome children’s formation program or our incredible service to the community.  But what Jesus is inviting us into this week is vulnerable conversations with others about our deep-soul needs that God fills every week in this place.  Those kinds of conversations are tricky while standing at the bus stop with our kids, or while waiting in line at the grocery story, or while running into someone at the gas station.  But those are the conversations that move pianos and move hearts – conversations that name the deep, hidden longing for the eternal that we all have.  Jesus invites us to feed others today, to tend to others’ daily bread, and to share the bread of life:  to share the deepest gift of the Church with a hungry world.  Amen. 

[i] Idea explored by Matt Skinner in Sermon Brainwave Podcast, “#977: Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (Ord. 19B) – Aug. 11, 2024,” August 4, 2024, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/977-twelfth-sunday-after-pentecost-ord-19b-aug-11-2024 on August 7, 2024.

[ii] Neal O. Michell, How to Hit the Ground Running (New York:  Church Publishing, 2005), 51-58.

[iii] Idea explored by Karoline Lewis in aforementioned podcast.

Sermon – 2 Samuel 11.26-12.13a, P13, YB, August 4, 2024

28 Wednesday Aug 2024

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One of the most powerful offerings at Hickory Neck is our Godly Play program.  Our youngest children engage in Godly Play in Sunday School, we broadcast Godly Play stories on Facebook every Sunday, our children use Godly Play in Children’s Chapel at the 10:00 am service, and we use Godly Play at The Kensington School for over 20 children each week.  Several of us got to witness Godly Play this week at Vacation Bible School, and I have to tell you, Mr. Z. told one of the more powerful stories this week.  He started out with wooden figurines – a man with a staff, a fence, and lots of little sheep.  As he told the story, the kids came up with names for the sheep:  Rufus, Bob, and Cookie, to name a few.  And then very quietly and dramatically, Mr. Z said, “Look what happens now.”  The fence for the sheep that the Good Shepherd was protecting was taken away and replaced with a little wooden table.  Then the sheep were replaced one by one with little wooden figures of people.  And then the Good Shepherd shed his staff, and assumed the role of serving bread and wine at the table.  The transformation had all the adults in the room stunned – not to mention all our kids.  Suddenly the Good Shepherd (i.e. Jesus and his sheep – or followers), was found in modern day, consecrating a meal among similarly named people, or followers of Jesus.  I made sure Mr. Z clarified that the priest at the table was not actually Jesus but a representative of Jesus, but as one who breaks bread with you weekly, my senses were totally disoriented by those powerful little pieces of wood.

The same thing happens to David today.  We did not talk about it last week, but our Hebrew Scripture reading last week told one of the more awful stories in our Scriptures – the sainted King David acting very un-saintly:  coveting what was not his, acting violently against a woman and impregnating her, attempting to cover his sin through trickery, and when that did not work, having the woman’s husband killed so he could have her as his own.  In today’s lesson, Nathan takes on the role of Mr. Z, entering the narrative with a story.  Nathan spends a great deal of time describing this poor man who has only one ewe lamb, whom he feeds with his own meager food, and loves like a daughter – and a rich man who, although he has more than enough of his own lambs, takes the poor man’s beloved little lamb and kills it for food.  The story is so pitiful that even David gets in a rage and says this man deserves to die and should restore the lamb fourfold.  And here is where Nathan pulls a Mr. Z switch.  “You are the man!” Nathan says.

Now in the whole of this sordid story of David there are three instances of characters speaking two simple words in the original Hebrew.  The first happens in the last chapter of second Samuel when Bathsheba sends word, translated as “I am pregnant” or harah ‘anoki.  The second instance of two simple Hebrew words comes from Nathan “’atah ha’ish,” translated as “You are the man.”  The final two words will come at the end of the story, when David realizing his grave sins, confesses “hata’ti lyhwh,” translated as “I have sinned against Yahweh.”  In these three short phrases, David is indicted, David is identified, and David submits and turns to God.  None of these phrases is easy to say by any of the characters, and yet all are needed for powerful transformation to happen before God.[i] 

But most of those words could never have emerged without the gift of story.  Just like Mr. Z transformed sheep named Rufus, Bob, and Cookie into parishioners named Sue, David, and Linda, so God uses Nathan to transform human sinfulness into faithful living.  As one scholar describes, Nathan’s parable, “…engaged a side of David that is totally different from the man who forces sex upon Bathsheba and orders the death of her husband Uriah.  David is no longer the absolutist king acting from the prerogatives of power and authority.  Nathan’s parable has touched the moral sensibilities of David’s humanity.”[ii] 

One of the more troubling realities of our day is that we have lost the ability to really talk to one another.  The seductive power of “us versus them” in the world has put us in seemingly impenetrable bubbles that keep us divided, full of hate (or at least extreme dislike), and surrounded by people who always agree with us instead of challenging us to be better followers of Christ.  Into this troubling reality, Nathan and Mr. Z remind us of the power of story to transform us into the faithful community that God calls us to be – not divided, hateful, monolithic groups – but united, loving, diverse groups of truth and love.  Nathan teaches us that our work is to reframe narrative and the message of Jesus so that we all stand on common ground.  Though we and others may need judgment, our invitation is not to condemn, but to invite others into fresh eyes through the power of reframing story – to find ways to tell the story of Jesus in alternative ways that lead to new insight and behavior.[iii]  The promise in our commitment to that work is that we can fulfill God’s deepest desire – that we turn from our sinful ways and return to God.  We can do that work as long as we work to do that work together – sinners united in loving storytelling and turning to God.  Amen.

[i] Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel:  Interpretation:  A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville:  John Knox Press, 1990), 282-283.

[ii] Thomas H. Troeger, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Proper 13, Year B, Supplemental Batch 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 4.

[iii] Shawnthea Monroe, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Proper 13, Year B, Supplemental Batch 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 5.