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Sermon – Matthew 5.1-12, AS, YA, November 5, 2023

29 Wednesday Nov 2023

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I once served at a church that decided to support a ministry for women exiting prison.  We decided to prepare ourselves for our engagement in the ministry by reading the book The Prison Angel, about a wealthy divorcee in California who has an epiphany about her call, and eventually becomes a nun that lives in the notorious prisons of Tiajuana, Mexico, serving the men and their families.  We spent weeks reading the book, reflecting on Mother Antonia’s stories, slowly grasping the realities of prison life and those who serve them.  I was feeling energized by how well prepared our book study group would be when we finally began serving our local ministry.  But on the last day of our study, one of our participants shared, “I don’t know.  I don’t think I could ever be as self-sacrificial as Mother Antonia.  She’s sort of superhuman and I just cannot imagine living that kind of life.”  I remember feeling completely deflated – here I was trying to inspire servanthood and instead, I had made servanthood feel unattainable.

Sometimes I fear All Saints Sunday does the same thing.  Certainly, that can happen as we think of those significant saints of the church, like St. Peter, St. Francis, or Mother Teresa.  But our feelings of inadequacy can happen with the personal saints of our lives – the souls of beloved parents, lovers, children, and friends.  We remember the faithful ways they lived and only see our own failings.  And then we go and read the Beatitudes from Matthew’s gospel, we can become downright despondent.  Maybe I have mourned or felt poor in spirit.   But do I hunger and thirst for righteousness?  Am I pure in heart?  As we grieve the violence in the Middle East, have I done anything tangible to be considered peacemaking?  Has anyone ever reviled or persecuted me for the sake of Jesus?  Instead of inspiring and uplifting us today, this feast day with Matthew’s gospel has the potential to leave us feeling unworthy and unmotivated in our journey to live faithfully.

I can assure you that is not the lectionary’s intent.  In fact, after weeks of stories about discipleship in Matthew, the lectionary takes us back to the fifth chapter of Matthew for a purpose.  Perhaps we should look at what the Beatitudes are not doing today before we look at what they are doing.  The Beatitudes are not “to do” items.  As scholar Debie Thomas explains, these are not suggestions, instructions, or commandments.  There is no sense of “should,” “must,” or “ought” in these words.  We are not to walk away from these words thinking we should “try very hard to be poorer, sadder, meeker, hungrier, thirstier, purer, more peaceable, and more persecuted…”[i]  Likewise, the Beatitudes are not meant to shame us.  Jesus is not attempting to make us feel like overprivileged wretches worthy of self-condemnation.  Likewise, Jesus is not telling us to grit our teeth through whatever suffering we are living through, knowing that relief comes after death.[ii]

Instead, the Beatitudes are redefining what our modern culture might define as “#blessed.”  When we talk about being blessed, we are usually referring to our bounty or at the very least, the goodness we see in an otherwise hard world.  Instead, theologian Stanley Hauerwas explains that by declaring the poor in spirit, the mourning, the meek, the merciful, and the peacemakers as blessed, Jesus is indicating the transformed world of the kingdom of God has begun.  “Each of the Beatitudes names a gift, but it is not presumed that everyone who is a follower of Jesus will possess each beatitude.  Rather, the gifts named in the Beatitudes suggest that the diversity of these gifts will be present in the community of those who have heard Jesus’s call to discipleship.  Indeed, to learn to be a disciple is to learn why we are dependent on those who mourn or who are meek, though we may not possess that gift ourselves.”[iii]

What is particularly helpful as we read these familiar words, then, is to clarify what we me by the literal word “blessed.”  Going back to the Hebrew scriptures here will help.  There are two words for “blessing” in Hebrew:  ’ashar and barak.  Barak means to “bow or stoop.”  For example, in Psalm 103, when we say “Bless the Lord my soul,” we mean “Bow to the Lord.”  But ’ashar literally means, “to find the right road.”  So, if we go back to Beatitudes, we instead hear “You are on the right road when you are poor in spirit; You are on the right road when you hunger and thirst for righteousness; you are on the right road when you are persecuted.”  Jesus is calling his disciples to hear and walk in the way of his will for our lives.[iv]

As we remember those saints who inspire us, as we recall those loved ones who taught us about how to live faithfully, as we hear Jesus’ beautiful blessings of all kinds of experiences in life, we are reminded today not to feel guilted into a more holy life.  We simply remember that the people sitting next to you today are all different points of the faith journey, with different blessings or things that feel like curses.  Because we choose to walk together, we will learn to be faithful people that, someday, someone else will remember – that someone else will tie a ribbon onto this altar rail to remember the ways you taught them what being “#blessed” really means.  Our invitation today is to celebrate the right road, knowing the fullness of that road is only visible through the communion of saints who walk the right road together.  Amen.

[i] Debie Thomas, Into the Mess and Other Jesus Stories:  Reflections on the Life of Christ (Eugene, OR:  Cascade Books, 2022),120.

[ii] Thomas, 120-121.

[iii] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew:  Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids:  Brazos Press, 2006), 63

[iv] Earl F. Palmer, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 238

Sermon – Matthew 5.1-12, AS, YA, November 5, 2017

08 Wednesday Nov 2017

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Today we honor All Saints Sunday, one of the major feasts of the Episcopal Church.  We recall this day all the faithful departed who lives were marked by heroic sanctity and whose deeds have been recalled and emulated from one generation to the next.  The celebration of these saints began as early as the late 200s, as churches began to honor those who gave up their lives for their faith, as well as those who lives were particularly exemplary.  Later, in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, sainthood became reserved for a select few who meet a certain set of requirements, which could include the performance of miracles or a particularly virtuous life.

On such a day of reverence for those whose virtuous lives remind us of God, our gospel lesson from Matthew is an intriguing choice.  Today’s gospel lesson is the beginning of what we call the Sermon on the Mount, that ministry-defining sermon by Jesus that tells us what we can expect from the Messiah.  He begins his long sermon with what we call The Beatitudes:  the famous listing of those whom we define as blessed.  The last two beatitudes make a lot of sense for today’s celebration:  Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake…Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.  Certainly martyrs fall into the category of sainthood.  But what about the other beatitudes?  What about those who mourn, who are poor in spirit, are meek?  Those characteristics seem much more passive than martyrdom, or even the actions I associate with most saints.

I think what has always challenged me about honoring the saints or even reading The Beatitudes is that they feel unattainable.  If Jesus is associating being blessed with grief, meekness, poverty, purity, peacemaking, and mercy, I am not sure I can attain those things.  In my mission travels, I have visited with a couple of L’Arche communities.  Founded by Jean Vanier, L’Arche communities are communities for people with developmental disabilities.  Some of those disabilities are quite severe, and others are so mild that the individuals are highly functional.  Rooted in The Beatitudes, L’Arche communities flip the notion of most group homes.  Those with developmental disabilities are called “core members.”  They are the center of the community, the most elevated and honored members of the community.  The people who are there to help them are called “assistants,” and they live among the core members.  Though society labels abled-bodied people as more valuable, in L’Arche communities, the able-bodied members are seen as mere helpers for the more revered members.

The use of The Beatitudes in shaping L’Arche communities only heightened my sense of inadequacy when reading those beautiful words.  Reading those words have often made me feel like an outsider – that unless I suffer grief, pain, persecution, I will never come close to God.  Unless I give up my life in the ways that many assistants do at L’Arche, or unless I give up my life as the martyrs do, my life will only be one of mediocrity.  I will never be able to achieve the checklist of virtues that The Beatitudes provide.

Luckily, I found some relief from the scholars this week. Stanley Hauerwas says about Jesus’ words today, “The sermon, therefore is not a list of requirements, but rather a description of the life of a people gathered by and around Jesus.  To be saved is to be so gathered.  That is why the Beatitudes are the interpretive key to the whole sermon – precisely because they are not recommendations.  No one is asked to go out and try to be poor in spirit or to mourn or to be meek.  Rather, Jesus is indicating that given the reality of the kingdom we should not be surprised to find among those who follow him those who are poor in spirit, those who mourn, those who are meek.”[i]  N.T. Wright concurs.  He says, “These ‘blessings,’ the ‘wonderful news’ that [Jesus is] announcing, are not saying ‘try hard to live like this.’  They are saying that people who already are like that are in good shape.”[ii]

Taking the pressure off a sense that I need to work harder to be like the saints or that I need to seek out ways to be mournful or meek, I found the text opened up something else this week.  Another scholar suggests we look at the beatitudes in this way, “Perhaps [Jesus is] challenging who we imagine being blessed in the first place.  Who is worthy of God’s attention.  Who deserves our attention, respect, and honor.  And by doing that, he’s also challenging our very understanding of blessedness itself and, by extension, challenging our culture’s view of, well, pretty much everything.  Blessing.  Power.  Success.  The good life.  Righteousness.  What is noble and admirable.  What is worth striving for and sacrificing for.  You name it.  Jesus seems to invite us to call into question our culturally-born and very much this-worldly view of all the categories with which we structure our life, navigate our decisions, and judge those around us.”[iii]

At our worship service on Wednesday night of this week, we shared who the saints are in our lives – the everyday people who taught us something about God.  There were all sorts of people named – mothers, fathers, grandparents.  One that struck me the most was the description of one such mother.  “She simply did her duty every day:  being a wife, being a mom, structuring the home.”  Though I have come to use saints in my prayer life as vehicles for deeper prayer and connection with God, more often, the people whose lives motivate me are just like that mom:  everyday people whose everyday lives point to the sacred – who reveal God to me in the basic ways they live their lives.

In the Episcopal Church, the day after All Saints’ Day is called All Souls’ Day.  This day was established in the tenth century as an extension of All Saints’ Day.  All Souls’ Day is the day the Church remembers the vast body of the faithful who, though no less members of the company of the redeemed, are unknown in the wider fellowship of the Church.  All Souls’ Day is a day for particular remembrance of family members and friends who, though no icon has ever been painted, showed us the beautiful life of holiness and righteousness.

The honoring of these lesser known saints seems to go much more richly with The Beatitudes to me.  If we know those who are meek, grieving, and poor in spirit are just as righteous as those who thirst and hunger for righteousness, we get to the heart of Jesus’ sermon today.  I imagine you all have a story.  Our family has been following a family whose ten-year old daughter had an awful case of cancer.  She has been fighting and fighting, and just last week Hospice was finally called in for support.  At dinner on Tuesday night, our eldest, just two years younger than our friend, said, unprompted, “I feel bad for kids with cancer who cannot trick-or-treat.”  The next morning, we found out that our little friend had passed that very night.  Lord knows, my child is not often a saint.  But that confluence of grief, suffering, and loss, brought us a little closer to blessedness.

Today, we will tie ribbons on our altar for all the saints and souls who have gone before us.  Maybe you will be tying your ribbon for a canonized saint, whose religious fervor has motivated you in your spiritual journey.  Maybe you will be tying your ribbon for a family saint, whose small, everyday witness taught you about the vastness of God’s love and grace.  Maybe you will be tying your ribbon for the random person you encountered who said something so profound you knew God was speaking right through them to you.  The saints we honor today are exemplary and ordinary.  The saints we honor today are people marked by action and advocacy, and people marked by everyday suffering.  The saints we honor today are people completely unlike us and just like us.  God has certainly inspired us by a host of other witnesses.  But God is also using each of you to inspire others in their journey.  Amen.

[i] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew:  Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids:  Brazos Press, 2006), 61.

[ii] N.T. Wright, Matthew for Everyone, Part 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 36.

[iii] David Lose, “All Saints A:  Preaching a Beatitudes Inversion,” November 1, 2017, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2017/11/all-saints-a-preaching-a-beatitudes-inversion/ on November 3, 2017.

Sermon – John 11.32-44, AS, YB, November 1, 2015

04 Wednesday Nov 2015

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There is a lot about the Lazarus story that I do not understand.  I do not understand why Jesus allows Lazarus to die if he is only going to bring him back to life anyway.  I do not understand why Jesus weeps when he knows he can fix things.  I do not understand why Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead when eventually Lazarus will have to die again.  But mostly I do not understand why we never hear from Lazarus about how he feels about all of this.  The text tells us Lazarus has been dead for three days.  We do not know much about the afterlife, but presumably, after three days, one’s body and soul have already moved beyond this earthly life.  For all we know, Lazarus is at peace, already enjoying eternal rest with God.  Whatever pain and suffering he has endured in life is gone.  Maybe he is relieved to be free of the stress and battles of earthly life, and to be released to enjoy the peace of eternal life.  When he has reached that point of peaceful bliss, why would he want start over – knowing he will eventually have to go through death all over again?[i]

I used to watch the television show Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  For those of you who are unfamiliar with the show, the premise is that throughout time there has always been one young woman in the world chosen to be the Vampire Slayer – a young woman trained and “called” to protect the world from vampires.  In season five, after having prevented at least five apocalypses, Buffy faces one more.  In the episode, the only way to stop the end of the world is for her to sacrifice herself.  She dies and the world is saved.  Of course, the next season, her friends use magic to bring her back from the dead.  But the rest of that season, Buffy struggles.  She finally confesses that she did not want to be brought back from the dead.  She had been happy and at peace.  All of the fighting and struggling against evil was over, and she was finally free from all obligation and strife.  Being brought back was even worse than before.  Not only did she have to continue fighting evil, but also she was now aware of the freedom she could have had.  She didn’t want to be resurrected.

What Buffy eventually discovered, and I am sure Lazarus did too, was that there was still some purpose left in her life.  In fact, she was able to transform the entire vampire slaying industry.  Unfortunately, we never really get to hear what happens to Lazarus – how his resurrection transforms his life.  We eventually read that the chief priests plot against Lazarus because people are beginning to follow Jesus after he raises Lazarus from the dead.  Perhaps there were times when Lazarus would have preferred to have stayed dead than to be raised again and face all the controversy.  But perhaps, Lazarus found new purpose and was able to use whatever additional earthly time he had to do something good.[ii]

When Scott and I first moved to Delaware after graduating from college, we found a church home at the Cathedral.  The Cathedral was a special place for us.  The Cathedral was where we were both confirmed as adults.  The Cathedral was where we had our first experiences serving on Vestry, leading Bible Study, officiating Morning Prayer, and teaching a Rite 13 class.  The Cathedral was the place where I fell in love with Anglican Choral Music and chant.  The Cathedral was where I was ordained as a Deacon in the Church.  So, a few years ago, when the Cathedral closed because the congregation could no longer support the cost of ministry in that space, you can imagine that I and hundreds of others were devastated.  Those pews, those stone walls, that altar rail was the site of transformation and holiness in our lives.  Now, the fate of that sacred space would depend on who bought the Cathedral and what they decided to do with it.

This past week, a story broke about the Cathedral.[iii]  Another non-profit in the same town purchased the property and would be converting the church and all the office and classroom spaces into housing for moderate- to low-income elderly persons.  When the project is done, there will be 53 housing units, housing over 116 residents.  Though I never wanted the Cathedral to die – in fact, I was devastated by its death – I also must admit that the news of the resurrection of this church into a powerful new ministry brought me infinite happiness this week.  What I could see was that something good would be coming out of the Cathedral’s death.  The Cathedral had always been a place of service and mission, bringing Christ’s light into the community.  Once this new residence is completed, the Cathedral will continue its work of bringing Christ’s light into the community.

As I was thinking about the Cathedral and Lazarus this week, what I began to wonder is whether earthly death was necessary for each of them to be reborn into new life.  In many ways, when we do a baptism, that is what we say happens.  As we enter into the waters of baptism, the old self dies and a new self emerges from the waters on the other side.  We die to earthly life and are reborn into the life of faith.  In fact, in ancient days, baptism happened in a pool of water so that the whole body could be immersed in water, signifying the old self being washed away and the new self emerging out of the watery womb of Christ.  But in order to be baptized, in order to have new life, death must first happen.

When we think about All Saints Day, which we celebrate today, that pattern is quite familiar.  Most of the saints that we honor today experienced a death of sorts before their earthly deaths.  I can think of countless saints who renounced their wealth or their privilege in order to begin a new life:  St. Francis, Mother Teresa, and Oscar Romero.  And we know everyday modern saints who experience the same thing:  that young adult who spent thousands of dollars on a University education to go spend two years in the Peace Corps; that person who worked on Wall Street, making millions, who left to start a non-profit; or that well-paid doctor who spends weekends at the community clinic and summers traveling with Doctors Without Borders.  What those ancient saints, famous saints, and everyday saints teach us is that sometimes a part of us has to die in order for us to truly experience resurrection life.

I imagine each of us here has something we have been holding on to – or even clinging on to – that needs to die before something can be reborn in us.  Maybe we need to let go of a memory – the memory of that perfect long-tenured rector or the memory of that painful experience with a rector – so that we can reassess what new life is blooming right in front of us.  Maybe we need to let go of a resistance to change – letting the familiar die so that something new and fresh (and perhaps, just maybe, shockingly better) can be born anew in our community.  Or maybe we need to let go of a theology of scarcity – that fear that I or my church will not have enough – so that we can allow a theology of abundance to grow in us.  In many ways, I see that new life already budding here at St. Margaret’s.  I see those glimpses of resurrection life pushing their way out of our protective arms.  The invitation from the saints today is to let go.  Let death happen so that new life can emerge.  Let that new hope spring out of the tightly sealed containers in which we have hidden budding hope.  And maybe, like Lazarus, when Jesus calls for us to come out of the tomb, we won’t be afraid to take off those binding cloths and to embrace whatever new, scary, uncomfortable, and awesome new life awaits.  Amen.

[i] Suzanne Guthrie, “Back to Life,” Christian Century, vol. 122, no. 5, March 8, 2005, 22.

[ii] Henry Langknecht, “Commentary on John 11.32-44,” November 1, 2009, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=429 on October 29, 2015.

[iii] Robin Brown, “Historic church complex set to continue ‘Lord’s work’,” October 29, 2015 as found at http://www.delawareonline.com/story/news/2015/10/22/historic-church-complex-set-continue-lords-work/74269674/?hootPostID=ab06f2224fc6ba16ac4e81312a021ffa.