Our second day of travels landed us in Little Rock, Arkansas. We had mostly planned to get here and head straight to the hotel, but traffic was forgiving, and gave us a little extra time. So, we hopped over to the Little Rock Central High School National Park Site. As a refresher, in 1957, Central High became the epicenter of confrontation and the catalyst for change in enforcing the decision of Brown v. Board to integrate schools. Three years after the Supreme Court decision, the “Little Rock Nine,” were denied entrance to the school, and President Dwight D. Eisenhour had to federalize the Arkansas National Guard to safely enable the Little Rock Nine to successfully attend school.
As I was looking at the photos at the National Park, I noticed a butterfly flitted past me and landed right next to a picture of those National Guardsmen protecting those students. I was reminded of how even in the darkest times, one can find beauty. I do not know the stories of those men who protected those students. Maybe they did it because they were obligated to help by order of the President. Maybe they did it because they felt a desire to right an injustice. Maybe they had feelings that changed before, during, and after the event. What I do know is those from Little Rock during that time were transformed in that event. And like that butterfly, their transformation flitted on throughout the country as we made our way toward justice – as we continue to make our way toward justice.
Commemorative Garden. Note butterfly in photo. (Photo credit: Jennifer Andrews-Weckerly)
In the Commemorative Garden at the site, there is an inscription about the school. It reads that Central High School, “…has survived, indeed not just survived but succeeded beyond anyone’s belief, becoming once again Arkansas’ premier high school.” The inscription goes on to say, “It has achieved this not by returning to its old form merely showing its pretty face, but by modeling the diversity and pluralism that caused the original storm of protest.”
Post-pandemic, and indeed, in the modern era of Church, I think many are hoping to simply return to our old form, merely showing the Church’s pretty face. But the massive disruption of the pandemic has convinced me that this is our opportunity not to become simply familiar again, but to become something excellent because of our evolution into the goodness God created us to be. I wonder what new goodness God has invited you into in this post-pandemic season? Where are butterflies beckoning your attention to see beauty not in what once was, but what is now, and in what can be? I can’t wait to hear how you are seeing butterflies in your journey!
Once upon a time, I was pretty critical of the concept of “Ashes to Go.” I worried that by encouraging people to get quick ashes, they would miss the fullness of the liturgy, cheapening the power and importance of what we do on Ash Wednesday. How could a three minute interaction hold the same power as an hour-long ritual?
This year, I am grateful once again that someone convinced me years ago to try Ashes to Go anyway. As our church is located in a more suburban area, we do a drive-through ashes experience. The reasons people stop vary widely. For some, they do not like to drive at night, so a daytime option fits their schedule. For others, they have young children and a school night is just too hard to rally for the family. For others, the reasons are not totally clear, but stories are shared: about how times are hard for their families, how they haven’t been to church in five years, how they heard about it in the neighborhood and wanted to check it out. And for others, words fail them, but you see in their eyes how powerful the brief, intimate moment with the sacred means a tremendous amount.
If there are times I wonder if we really need to offer Ashes to Go, every year reminds me of the absolute necessity of meeting people where they are. In fact, I have been wondering if there are not other ways we can step out of the church walls and meet people where they are. Surely if something as grim as reminding people they are dust can compel people to drive by for ashes, there must be other ways we can take “liturgy” to the streets. Ever since the pandemic happened and our parish embraced livestreaming, I have become increasingly aware of the church’s ability to reach people differently – to minister to and offer sacred encounters in all sorts of ways.
As we journey deeper into Lent this year, I invite you to consider where else in your life you can take church with you. Maybe you can slow down just a bit and listen to the stories of those around you. Maybe you can reach out to someone who is hurting today. Or maybe you can share a bit of your own story and how your journey with God is making a difference. I look forward to hearing how God is showing up outside the church walls this week!
As a teenager, in my rural southern United Methodist Church, our Sunday School class each week was an in-depth Bible Study of some book of the Bible. I have a distinct memory of one particular class where a condemning text arose about divorce. My Sunday School teacher herself was divorced and was happily and healthily remarried. I remember being aghast and indignant about the text, questioning my teacher about how divorce could be seen in such a condemning way, holding in my mind how beautiful my teacher’s current marriage was. Her response to me was a defeated admission of judgement for herself and her husband that would not be remedied.
Once upon a time, I might have told you that faulty biblical interpretation like this is what drove me from the Methodist church to the Episcopal Church. But the truth is, there have been many a times when Episcopalians do not fare much better. When confronted with gospel lessons like we have today from Matthew, most Episcopalians are more likely to either brush hard texts under the rug, or minimize and point you to something shiny, like “It’s all about love, so don’t worry about that pesky Biblical passage.”
Instead, today I invite us to acknowledge that Jesus’ words in Matthew’s gospel are hard. When Jesus tells us we cannot approach the altar without being reconciled in our broken relationships, or that our natural urges are so destructive we should gouge out our eyes, or that divorcing or lying are gravely dangerous offenses, we get nervous and even defensive. Where is that Jesus of love we like so much? Is not this a place where we claim all are welcome?
In order to understand scripture today – in a way that is neither defeatistly resigned nor superficially glossed over – the discomfort we may be feeling today is actually a good thing. The first thing you need to know about Jesus is that he was a skilled rhetorician. Much of what you hear today about ripping eyes out and cutting off hands are used not literally, but figuratively to point to something very important: the central importance of relationships in the community of the faithful.[i] Jesus wants to shock and provoke, to unsettle and destabilize, because he wants to invite a reorientation.[ii] I find theologian Stanley Hauerwas’ explanation the most helpful. He argues, “Jesus does not imply that we are to be free of either anger or lust; that is, he assumes that we are bodily beings. Rather he offers us membership in a community in which our bodies are formed in service to God and for one another so that our anger and our lust are transformed…Jesus is not recommending that we will our way free of lust and anger, but rather he is offering us membership in a people that is so compelling we are not invited to dwell on ourselves or our sinfulness…If we are a people committed to peace in a world of war, if we are a people committed to faithfulness in a world of distrust, then we will be consumed by a way to live that offers freedom from being dominated by anger or lust.”[iii]
Now I can tell you about how progressive Jesus words are about divorce since women were socially and economically marginalized by divorce at the time,[iv] or I could address anger, lying, or lust. But all of these four vignettes are meant to point our attention not to the salacious nature of Jesus’ words, but what Jesus is trying to do for us. Being a part of Hickory Neck or the wider body of Christ means our bodies are part of Christ’s body – that, as Dietrich Bonhoeffer suggests, we are so in communion with Jesus’ body that our infidelity is not just a sin against our own body, but against Jesus’ body.[v] We come here not just to reassure our own selves, and to find restoration for our souls, but also to be a part of something bigger. To become disciples, finding a purpose much bigger than our naturally self-centered ways, means becoming part of the larger body of Christ – a body that mends broken relationships, restores others to wholeness, and values the dignity of every human being.
The good news is that you do not join that body of discipleship alone. Everyone of us here is on the journey to being a different kind of human than the outside world would have us be. In fact, the reason we do this work together is we are better together than we ever could be on our own. We hold each other accountable, we keep working on reconciliation when we fail, we offer grace and love in our very humanness. The choice is ours. As Sirach aptly describes today, the choice is always before us – the choice of life or death, of fire or water. Our invitation today is to choose relationship – to choose the life of discipleship that joins us to the body of Christ, that roots us in the love of Christ, and enables our work of light in the world. We cannot do the work alone. Our invitation is to choose the love and light of Christ that we find his body, the Church, and in the relationships we find here. Amen.
[i] Ronald J. Allen, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 359.
[ii] Anna Case-Winters, Matthew. Belief: A Theological Commentary on the Bible (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015), 84.
[iii] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew: Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2006), 69.
Last night, my younger daughter and I started reading the first book in the Harry Potter series. I love the series, although I found it later in life. I never read them as a young adult. I started them the summer I was serving as a chaplain in a hospital in my early thirties because I needed something to read that was not overly taxing on my emotionally drained self. Later, I read them while breastfeeding my first child (I spent a lot of time on a pump!), and then again with my first child when she was old enough. I could not wait to start the series again with my younger child.
But what has surprised me in restarting this adventure is this is not the first attempt. Normally an avid reader, I thought my daughter would be excited about reading them with me. And, given my super enthusiasm for the books (and her knowledge that her older sister and I enjoyed them so much), I thought she would be equally enthusiastic. But every time I mentioned starting them, even making a point at age eight to tell her I though she was finally old enough to enjoy the privilege, she was only lukewarm about the experience. We even tried this fall to start them, and she just was not that excited. With a new set of books all her own being gifted at Christmas, I am hoping this is the attempt that will stick!
I have been thinking how much her journey with Harry Potter might be like others’ experiences with churchgoers who just know that you will love their church. I recognize I cannot speak with authority about never being raised in the Church – although my faith journey has taken me through multiple denominations, I have never not felt a draw to the Church. But having ministered to many people who are new to the Church or who are simply Church curious from a very guarded distance, I sense that even our most enthusiastic descriptions are not always compelling to someone who has never been a part of Church culture.
Many people who have seen the Church decline over the years perhaps feel this is an inevitable reality. I disagree. I believe the power of shared stories, including shared stories of faith, remains important. I am not at all advocating for pressured pitches that many of us have been scarred by (I grew up in a very conservative area and was asked if I was saved more times that I can count). But being willing to share your faith story is as vital as being able to share about the most amazing food you ever tasted: it’s an exchange in joy, an exchange in life, and exchange in meaning. The other person may not be moved to start attending your church, but they might just be intrigued enough to keep listening. Convincing people to come to our church is not our work. Our work is simply to share our faith journey joy and invite others to come and see. The rest is the work of the Holy Spirit and will come (or not!) in its own time.
This past week, I spent hours delighting in my children’s relationships with their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Whether it was their uncontained excitement about a sleepover with their aunt and uncle, the deeply contented smiles of grandparents engaging in conversation with our children, the similarly-aged cousins who have never met but act thick as thieves within minutes of time together, or the admiration of the older new favorite “cousin” (a girlfriend who my children are desperately hoping marries into the family – no pressure though!).
Living relatively far away from our family, I find watching my children with their grandparents and aunts and uncles in person to be a tremendous blessing. I get to see our children through fresh eyes, watch their behavior transform, and see healthy relationships being forged that are totally separate from their relationship with me. As our children age, I see how important these separate and special relationships are for all of us: for me as a parent, for the children as individuals growing into adults, and for the extended family members. I never lived close to my own grandparents and extended family, so perhaps others experience that blessing all the time. But as I come off some holiday time with family, I am acutely aware of the importance of these relationships beyond what I and their father can provide.
I am usually quite loathe to call churches “families” because families also bring lots of baggage. In fact, for some, church provides a safe haven their biological families did not. However, churches can do what families do when at their best. Part of why I am so committed to having my own children in church (even though it may appear obligatory as the community’s priest) is because we live so far from our biological families. I want the elders of our church to dote on my children the same ways in which their grandparents do – in part because I know those relationships are just as life giving for the seniors as they are for the children. I want the mid-age parents to be the cool aunts and uncles that my children can go to when they are tired of their own mom and dad – in part because those same parents may sometimes feel like parenting failures with their own children but can use the reminder that they are beloved and needed beyond their immediate family. And I want my children to feel a sense of kinship with the other children of church – the cousins they rarely see, but for whom they can serve as role models at church. The very intergenerational nature of church is a major reason why church is so important to our lives.
We live in a time when families are often dispersed, where work or service calls us from our extended families, or where, if we are blessed with immediate family nearby, we have neighbors who are not. That reality became painfully poignant during the pandemic, when our sense of isolation grew, families with children felt unbearable weight as they became teachers, parents, and a little of everything else, and elders missed gathering with their own biological families. As we emerge from this pandemic, if you have yet to come out of that internalized, isolated state, I invite you to engage (or reengage) with a church community. It certainly will not be perfect – no community or family is. But it will be a place of life and light, of encouragement and engagement, and of purpose and pleasure. You are welcome here!
Photo credit: Hickory Neck Episcopal Church. Reuse with permission only.
This Christmas will be the first Christmas I am able to spend time with my husband’s family in five years. We used to travel there more regularly, but about the time we would have visited, the pandemic hit, and here we are years later returning to something that feels comfortingly familiar. I find a deep sense of relief knowing the familiar faces that will greet us, the warmer temperatures and beautiful landscape that will refresh us, the smells and tastes that will delight us, and the love and acceptance that will overwhelm us.
In some ways, I think attending church on Christmas Eve is a lot like that comforting familiar experience. We know the lessons we will hear, the songs we will sing, the greenery we will find, and the hospitality we will experience. In what has been a time of disorientation, suffering, grief, and struggle these last years, nothing feels as enticing as the promise of a warm, welcoming womb in which to gather.
What’s fascinating about the Christmas story and experience is that the first Christmas had little other than a womb in common with our modern experience. Mary and Joseph are likely still recovering from the rocky beginning to their relationship – nothing like an unorthodox pregnancy to bring on marital strain! Mary and Joseph also join hordes of their kin in being displaced by the government, only to find accommodations entirely unsuited for childbirth. Strangers of ill repute show up sharing stories quite unfathomable, inserting themselves into the chaos of that night. And Mary is left overwhelmed, trying to figure out what is happening to her life. Why, of all the stories we could hear, is this crazy, disorienting story the one we want to hear year after year?
I suppose, in part, we breathe in a comforting deep breath on Christmas Eve because no matter where our journey has taken us over the last year – or years – knowing the imperfection of that perfect night helps us bless and honor our own imperfection. Perhaps we revel in Christmas at church because we know that every year, no matter how off-track our lives have become, we have a place where we can go, a family with whom we can journey, and a Savior who is just as vulnerable as we are. This Christmas, I hope you know there is no imperfection in you that is not perfectly welcome at the Table. You are welcome here.
I served in a parish once whose strategic initiative was to grow the church. At a leadership retreat, when the facilitator asked us about our intention to grow, a key leader said, “Well we want to grow. But not too much.” His words were a shock to my system. Something I had seen as a common goal that everyone supported and for which I was working suddenly seemed to be in question. I was left doubting how we could possibly move forward if we were not together in our sense of direction.
When I came to Hickory Neck, I was regaled with stories of this parish’s love for children. The stories of children sitting in the window wells in the Historic Chapel (before there was a New Chapel), and toddlers crawling under the pews only to be captured and passed back overhead to mom and dad slowly became my stories. As I learned about our surrounding community, which draws both young families and recent retirees, our collective identity and purpose became clear. We are a multigenerational church whose entire sense of purpose is bringing together the generations to experience, glorify, and serve God in community.
So, you can imagine my shock recently when I was told that one of our families was made to feel as if they were not welcome at Hickory Neck because their children were too loud. My dismay was two-fold. First, I am deeply sympathetic to our families with young children. That they have their children dressed and in church by the time worship starts is a feat so laudable they should receive gold stars at church. Despite a desire to bring one’s family to church, I promise you, getting there and staying there is no small feat. It can be stressful enough to make you wonder why you do it at all.
But second, I could not reconcile something so contradictory to our core values and sense of purpose. As a church that values hospitality and living fully into its multigenerational identity, we know those things are inherently messy. But every squeal, cry, and wiggle are the sounds of life for the church. Every child who is loved in our space comes to know the love of Christ, every parent who is encouraged in our space comes to experience God’s grace, and every surrogate grandma, grandpa, auntie, or uncle who experiences the “noise” of church has the opportunity to know the Holy Spirit.
Claiming an identity is the easy part. Living that identity is the hard part. We will all have days where we fail miserably and succeed fabulously. Just this Sunday, the same day as the other incident, a visitor intimated to me, “You know, I can tell your church really supports young families. When my children were that age, I found most churches were not welcoming. Honestly, it made it hard to go to church.” This week, I encourage us to live into the reality we have claimed and that, most days, others experience. It will not be easy. It will be loud, messy, and some days frustrating. But it will also be heart-warming, sacred, and beautiful. This is the Christian witness into which we are called. But we can only achieve it together: young and old, loud and quiet, energized and exhausted.
I spent the last week at Princeton Theological Seminary, concluding an Executive Leadership certificate program called Iron Sharpening Iron. For the past two years, the clergy participants and I have journeyed together, all facing the unique challenges of this liminal time for the Church, but also all hopeful that God is doing a new thing in the Church. In the spirit of camaraderie that has developed over that time, we found ourselves asking each other this week, “So, how are you really doing? How is your church?” This is the kind of setting where clergy feel comfortable enough to let down their guard and share life with an honesty that we might not in other settings. And I confess to you, every time that question was asked of me, and I took a moment to really think about the question, the answer was the same, “Things are actually really good.” In truth, I think I was just as surprised by my answer as every other clergy person was. I had no reason in that space to posture or try to make myself or our ministry look good, especially since most of the participants were not even Episcopalians. I just knew when pondering how we are really doing, at the core of all that has happened in the last two to three years, we at Hickory Neck are doing really well.
I suppose I could have talked about how many of our longtime parishioners and many of our new members are online participants exclusively. I suppose I could have talked about how many ministries are having shortages of volunteers, causing us to rethink what is possible because we cannot sustain the volunteer leadership. Or I suppose I could have talked about how we stepped out on faith by hiring two part-time clergy associates this year, knowing that our financial giving would need to grow to support the programmatic needs of our growing church. But those are realities I do not see as challenges; instead, I see them as opportunities to be the Church in new and creative ways as invited by the Holy Spirit. Certainly, I want our in-person attendance in worship to grow – but I want our online ministry to grow and thrive concurrently. Certainly, I would love some of our ministries to return to how we experienced them pre-pandemic – but I also see sacred invitations into new forms of ministry that may mean letting go of other forms. Certainly, I want to be fiscally judicious within our budget – but I also want to create enough space in our budget to grow ministries that matter and make an impact both inside these walls and outside these walls.
Perhaps what I mean is I look at Hickory Neck the same way that Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy look at their church in Thessalonians. The writer of second Thessalonians, which some debate could be Paul or someone within the Pauline community, is writing to a community of believers facing persecution and afflictions. The text is not clear what those persecutions and afflictions are, but we know the church of the Thessalonians is suffering. In those days, persecutions and afflictions were often seen as signs of the end times, likely leading to a great deal of fear and anxiety.[i] And so, we hear this letter meant to commend, encourage, and thank the community, and help them interpret meaning in the midst of suffering. But the writer does not have to struggle too much to find that encouragement because what the writer has seen about this church is that they have developed an uncommon unity and love for one another.[ii] And that gift of unity and love is a gift to be celebrated and honored. That gift is something for which to give thanks.
And that is what we are doing today on this In-Gathering Sunday. We are giving thanks for the ways in which Hickory Neck has experienced uncommon unity and love for one another, especially as we emerge from what has been a tumultuous couple of years in our community and the world. We are giving thanks for the ways in which God has sustained us through afflictions and persecutions. We are giving thanks for the bountiful abundance in our lives, when the world around us would want us to see scarcity, and we are returning that abundance in the form of our time, talent, and treasure. And, so, friends, as we give thanks, I read to you our letter from second Thessalonians, paraphrased for today:
To the church of Hickory Neck: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters, as is right, because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of everyone of you for one another is increasing. Therefore, I myself boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring…To this end, I always pray for you, asking that our God will make you worthy of God’s call and will fulfil by God’s power every good resolve and work of faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
[i] Guy D. Nave, Jr. “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 257.
[ii] Robert E. Dunham, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 257.
This sermon was delivered to Virginia Theological Seminary on the occasion of our annual Convocation for alumni, faculty and staff, and seminarians.
Photo credit: The Rev. Matthew Tucker
I live in a pretty “purple” district in Southern Virginia. My Congressman represents a different party than my own, but I make a point to stay on his mailing list as a way to remind him that he represents a politically diverse district. Every month he sends out polls, and I dutifully respond to them. But with every survey I find myself frustrated. My Congressman either has never taken a class in crafting an unbiased survey or he is simply not interested in different opinions. The questions are always phrased something like, “In your opinion, how bad of a job is our president doing: terrible, really bad, pretty bad, or I’m not sure.” Or without any nuance or explanation about the background of the issue, the poll will ask something like, “The Congress wants to pay illegal immigrants who knowingly broke the law hundreds of thousands of dollars. Should we pay these illegal immigrant criminals, yes or no?” Or, one of my favorites, “Which of these issues should be the priority of Congress?” (PS, none of the options listed talk about caring for the poor or our neighbor, and there definitely isn’t an “other” category). But I dutifully take the surveys, hoping my voice is part of my representative’s decision making.
I have been pondering the ministry of Jeremiah and thinking his prophetic ministry is a bit like trying to engage my Congressman. For those of us not taking Old Testament this semester, Jeremiah is prophesying in a time of political decline. The northern kingdom, Israel fell to Assyria nearly a hundred years before, and Judah remains in a tenuous situation. The Assyrians are still in control, but in the course of the book of Jeremiah, Babylon defeats Assyria and takes control of Judah. There are rebellions against Babylon, in particular by King Jehoiakim who we hear about today, but they are eventually unsuccessful.[i] Like any good prophet, Jeremiah is attempting to get the people and king to repent and return to the Lord. And like all people of all time, the people refuse to listen to God. King Jehoiakim is particularly egregious in this refusal. In fact, just verses before our reading, the King has his attendant read Jeremiah’s prophetic scroll three or four columns at a time, then cuts those columns off the scroll and throws them in a fire. King Jehoiakim is not alarmed by the prophecy, and certainly not repentant.
But here’s the funny part. In the verses we read today, the Lord tells Jeremiah to rewrite the entire scroll and add in a little final judgment. Like me, sitting down with yet another poll from my Congressman, he sits down and does the same thing over again. I have been of two minds about this passage. On the one hand, and no offense toward the Lord’s prophetic practices and policies, but how many times are we to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. As if King Jehoiakim is going to receive the second scroll and say, “Oh, a second scroll? Okay, I guess I won’t burn this one and will change my ways!” If this pandemic has taught us anything this pandemic has taught us we cannot keep doing Church the way we always have and expect the Church to thrive (or in biblical terms, to repent and return to the Lord). This pandemic has made us nimble, agile, creative, and versatile. This pandemic made us stop thinking about hybrid ministries and digital relevance and demanded we start doing and being those things. And God help us if our churches just want to “return to normal” after the pandemic – if we just want to write another scroll.
But as I mentioned, I am of two minds on this passage. On the other hand, despite what seems like poor strategy on the Lord’s part, God’s covenantal relationship with us has never really made sense. The entire salvation narrative is about failure after failure on our part as the people of God to listen and respond to the Lord. Promise after promise, covenant after covenant, even the sending of God’s Son has meant the Lord’s corporate strategy is a case study in what not to do to thrive in business. But that’s what we love about the Lord, right? God keeps writing another scroll, God keeps giving another chance, God keeps holding out hope and promise because God’s love is not meted out in a logical, economical way. Despite all of the innovation which has been entirely life giving during this pandemic, in some ways, what we have offered to a hurting world is the same as what we have always offered: a community of faith, redeemed by God’s grace, commissioned to love God, self, and neighbor. Perhaps that is why I am of two minds about this text. Although this pandemic has not changed who we are and what we offer a broken world, this pandemic has changed how we are. Our core values as the Episcopal Church have not changed. But throughout this pandemic we have learned that how we go about living into those core values certainly can, should, and hopefully has changed. And, as the Genesis writer would say, “…it was very good.”
In this particular season of the Church, many of us are feeling a longing for rest, for relief from constant pivoting, for a sense of normalcy. Many of us would like to sit down and just write the same scroll over again. In Jeremiah’s day that second scroll meant suffering and exile, and there would be more than twenty years before the people of God would see God’s promise of restoration realized.[ii] But I do not think that is the invitation from scripture today. I do not think the Lord is inviting the Church to write another scroll or fill out another poll. We have a whole Bible full of examples of how doing the same thing over and over does not lead to the fulfillment of the kingdom of God. Instead, the invitation from scripture today is to see the patterns of the resistance to love, and find a new way to love. God is not inviting us to change our “who” or our “what,” but to change our “how.” Your “how” might be different from mine. But Jeremiah shows us time and again that the same repeated “how” does not turn hearts. Our work in this season is to listen to what new “hows” the Holy Spirit is showing us, and then be willing to be vulnerable enough to try them. Because, Lord knows, we do not need another scroll. Amen.
[i] Josey Bridges Synder, “Jeremiah,” The CEB Women’s Bible, (Nashville: Common English Bible, 2016), 953.
Last night, we baptized Becky Breshears in the waters of the Chickahominy River. When most of us think of baptism, we imagine the baptism of an infant or child, someone for whom godparents make promises to raise in the life of the faith, much like we did with baby Olivia a few weeks ago. The sacrament of baptism for a child is certainly considered being fully initiated into the family of Christ, but we make pronouncements and promises on behalf of the baptized. And as the baptized grows up, we continue to shepherd and guide her, answer her questions, and help her claim her faith as her own. There is an endearing, almost romantic, notion to baptism, full of idealism and hope.
At least, that seems to be true in Episcopal Churches, where we quite primly and gently pour water from beautiful fonts over the heads of babies – the messiest part being if the water accidently runs into the baby’s eyes. Of course, adult baptism is totally normal in our tradition too, we just do not do adult baptism as frequently. When we do adult baptism, we become much more like other denominations, who have always understood baptism to be a mature proclamation of one’s own faith. In some ways an adult baptism is more exciting because an adult baptism is not about something we hope and pray will develop into a faithful life, but adult baptism is the fully developed proclamation now – a set of pronouncements and promises on one’s own behalf. An adult baptism is bold, dramatic, and, especially in instances like last night, much messier!
But adult baptism, especially in the Episcopal Church, are not about proclaiming one has her faith life all figured out – that she has some sense of earned clarity and certainty that has led her to baptism, as if baptism is the end of a journey of discernment. Quite the opposite; baptism is a beginning for Episcopalians. The baptized does not proclaim she knows all there is to know about faith and salvation. Instead, the baptized claims that she is starting a new journey with Jesus, with a community of faith who walks with her. And part of the act of baptism is giving the newly baptized tools to walk that journey.
That’s why I love the lesson from Isaiah today. Instead of scripture capturing a moment (like a baptism), scripture today tells us what the baptized journey will be like. Isaiah describes five things that are critical to the life of baptism. First, the faithful will “remove the yoke from among you” – or in modern language, be an agent of economic liberation for the oppressed, not taking advantage of others. Second, the faithful will refrain from “pointing the finger,” or take responsibility for one’s own actions, not accusing others but acting to change the self. Third, the faithful will “refrain from speaking evil,” because “speech, when it is careless or deceitful, can be destructive and injurious.”[i] Our words have power and are to be used for good. Fourth, the faithful are to “offer food to the hungry.” The life of the faithful is a life of self-sacrifice and sharing what we have learned to call our own. And finally, we are to “satisfy the needs of the afflicted” – not just helping others or solving their problems but letting the disadvantaged “define their own needs and letting them set the criteria for deciding whether our help is effective.”[ii]
What the prophet Isaiah tells us is that as the faithful, we structure our lives differently than the secular, self-interested world might have us live. That includes honoring even the sabbath – this holy day, not as just a day to go to church (though I hope you all will regularly – either in person or online), but also to be a day of honoring God through letting go of the self and focusing on the Lord and on the cares of those in need. That’s why in our gospel lesson Jesus’ actions of healing others on the sabbath is so controversial – because Jesus reminds us the sabbath is a day of selflessness, healing, and giving glory to God.
Last night, Becky committed herself to that life, and we, as fellow baptized recommit ourselves this very day, to a life lived differently – a life lived in the light of Christ. The prophet Isaiah tells us that when we live faithful lives, our light shall rise in the darkness, the Lord will guide us continually, will satisfy our needs in parched places, make our bones strong, and we shall be like a watered garden – a spring – whose waters never fail. We shall be repairers of the breach, restorers of the streets to live in.
Earlier I used the language of self-sacrifice. What the Holy Spirit does in baptism and what the Church tries to continue to do on every sabbath is relocate the self from the center of our universe and place us firmly within a community of faith who cares for one another while placing God in the center of our universe. When we take that step in baptism or renew the step our parents took for us, and in gathering in weekly worship (whether gathering in person or gathering virtually), we commit not to having this faith thing figured out – but just that we want to live a life where our parched places are always quenched through the living waters of baptism, and where our lives become bigger than they have ever been – where our lives shine the light of Christ in the darkness. Amen.
[i] Jon L. Berquist, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3, Supplement for P16 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 4.
Seeking and Serving 