Tag Archives: God

Sermon – 1 Samuel 15.34-16.13, P6, YB, June 14, 2015

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

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Talking about politics in the pulpit is always dangerous business.  I rarely do because I know that one mention of something political can be so distracting that I lose your attention for the rest of the sermon.  So I am going to ask you to hang in there with me because I think our secular world can teach us something about our sacred world today.  Back in 2008, a young man named Barack Obama was running for president.  Though many of us had no interest in his candidacy, some people saw a sense of hope and the possibility of a change that might bring about a new era of progress.  He even won a Nobel Peace Prize before completing one year in office.  But as time rolled on, many of his enthusiastic supporters began to be frustrated.  The hope they had seen seemed to fade away.  I remember I spoke with someone about this sense of lost hope, and the person confessed, “The problem is that people were treating Obama like he was the next Messiah.  He’s not.  No one is.  We have one Messiah, and we killed him on a cross many years ago.”

In our scripture lessons last week, God warned the people of Israel through Samuel that electing a king would involve such a challenge.  A human king could never give them all that they dreamed about having.  A human could never be God.  Having been fairly warned, the people insisted on having king anyway, and were given Saul.  For a while, things were okay.  Saul seemed to thrive and make progress for the people.  But Saul got cocky.  He overstepped his bounds, and he stopped following God’s instructions.  Finally, Saul made one fatal mistake that cost him his anointed kingship.  He had been instructed to completely destroy the Amalekites and all that they had.  But Saul saved some of the best of the spoils of war – animals, valuable trinkets, even the rival king.  This was the last straw for God, and Saul’s rule was over in God’s eyes.  In today’s lesson we find Samuel grieving over Saul and God being sorry that God had made Saul king of Israel.

We are no stranger to this sort of grieving in the church.  We have watched bishops leave the Episcopal Church in protest of decisions made at General Convention – taking many priests and parishioners with them.  We have watched priests who were seemingly amazing leaders ruin careers and parishes with romantic affairs or financial indiscretions.  Even in our own parish, less than ten years ago, we went through a period of grief when our relationship with our priest required us to dissolve the pastoral relationship, ending for some what had been a meaningful relationship, and for others had been a fraught relationship.  Like Samuel, we grieved that relationship – in fact, many of us still do.  I have heard story after story of grief and guilt about that time.  Some members of the Search Committee who helped select that priest feel as though they did a faithful job in selecting the priest for this parish; but in hindsight, they wonder.  Some leaders of our Vestry feel as though they bent over backwards to accommodate and help our priest thrive as much as possible, but they mourn the way history unfolded and they still feel the scars of that turbulent time.  And some leaders in our parish were so upset by the final decision that their grief drove them out of the church, never to return.

Although Samuel grieves Saul’s demise, God does not allow that grief to be the end of the story.[i]  God sees hope and promise in a way that Samuel cannot.  Seeing that Samuel is not going to be able to move on and do the work God needs Samuel to do, God steps in and guides Samuel into a new future.  Samuel struggles to take those first steps.  When God tells Samuel to get up and go to anoint another king, Samuel is terrified.  He knows that Saul is a vicious king, and will kill Samuel if he finds out.  But God makes a way, creating a “cover story” of sorts to encourage Samuel.  Later, when Samuel meets the eldest son of Jesse, Samuel is certain the eldest will be the next king.  But God has to keep guiding Samuel to the true king – the unexpected youngest son, David.  When Samuel is weak, God is strong – nudging and guiding Samuel into new life.

What I love about this part of Samuel’s story is the way that the story reminds us that God does not call people and merely wish them well and send them on their way.  God empowers those who are called to accomplish what they are called to do.  God walks with them, corrects them, forgives them, protects them, and keeps directing them to see what God sees.[ii]  God is not a passive god, but a “passionate, fully engaged deity, willing to take risks and even expose vulnerability in order to continue the relationship with the people.”[iii]  We see that reality with Samuel, and later we will see that reality with David – who, if you remember, is no saint himself.  Though David becomes the ancestor of the Messiah, David has his flaws that God will journey through as well.

God has been journeying with St. Margaret’s in a similar way.  In our grief from a troubled relationship with our priest, God stepped in and pushed us forward.  God sent us other priests, but more importantly, God sent us new life.  New parishioners joined us, new ministries unfolded, and new life emerged.  God did not allow grief to have the final word.  God knew that there was life beyond our grief – and that life has been born in each of us, and has been renewed by each new person who has joined us in our journey since then.

I have heard this story from First Samuel many times.  Every time I read verse 16, when God says, “How long will you grieve over Saul?” I thought God was scolding Samuel.  I could almost imagine God rolling God’s eyes at Samuel, God’s tone being one of annoyance and exhaustion from Samuel’s lingering grief.  But as I read God’s words this week, and I thought about St. Margaret’s, I heard them with a bit more tenderness.[iv]  I think of the young teen looking over love letters and trinkets, mourning the loss of a romantic relationship.  I think of the man who visits the grave of his wife every week, wondering what is left of life.  I think of the mom whose fingers still rub the ultrasound picture of the baby who did not survive.  God knows the depths of that grief and, even in our passage today, we see that God grieves too.  But, when the time is right, God also saddles in beside us, and whispers ever so gently and kindly, “How long will you grieve?”  The question is not one of rebuke, but one of encouragement.  The question is followed up with some sort of promise for tomorrow.  For Samuel, God promised a new leader and a plan for how to find that leader.  For us, God promises something new too.  God asks us too, “How long will you grieve?  Because when you are ready, I have something tremendous in store.”

Our invitation this week is to ponder anew what that promise is for us.  Grief always has a  place – whether grief over the failure of a leader in our lives or the loss of something or someone dearly loved.  But God will not let grief have the last word.  When we are ready, God stands waiting – not only with new direction, but with a plan to help us.  Our task is to listen.  Our task is to discern the movement of the Spirit already alive and active in us, gently pulling us from our grieving rooms.  Our task is to acknowledge our fear and resistance, and to allow God to guide us anyway.  Grief will not have the last word.  A new promise awaits.  Amen.

[i] Cynthia L. Rigby “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays, Yr. B, Proper 6 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 1.

[ii] Rigby, 5.

[iii] Charles L. Aaron, Jr., “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays, Yr. B, Proper 6 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 2.

[iv] The various ways of hearing God’s words were introduced to me by Roger Nam, “Commentary on 1 Samuel 15:34-16:13,” June 14, 2015, found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2473 on June 11, 2015.

Sermon – 1 Samuel 8.4-20, 11.14-15, P5, YB, June 7, 2015

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

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One of the movies I enjoyed growing up was called Freaky Friday.  The movie debuted in the seventies starring a young Jodie Foster, but they remade the movie in 2003 with Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan.  The premise of the movie is a mother and her teenage daughter are at each other’s throats.  They are constantly fighting, arguing that the other person cannot possible understand the difficulties she is facing.  On one fateful Friday morning, the two make a flippant wish.  With great gusto and anger they both say, “I wish you could live in my shoes for just one day!”  Of course the two get their wish, and spend a crazy day trapped in the body of the other.  There are fun mishaps like the under-aged daughter trying to figure out how to drive a car and spending lots of mom’s money which is suddenly at her disposal.  There are also those stressful moments as the mom tries to take a high school test on material she has long since forgotten or trying to navigate being teased at school.  By the end of the movie, both mother and daughter are frazzled by the demands on them, overwhelmingly regretful of their wish, and just want to go back to life the way it was.  They have to work together to figure out how to reverse the wish, which basically includes coming to a point of fully appreciating the difficulties each of them faces in life and loving each other deeply.

Unfortunately, there was no Freaky Friday for the people of Israel in Samuel’s time.  Samuel had been a great prophet for the people, teaching them the ways of God.  But Samuel was aging, and his sons were proving they would not be able to fill Samuel’s shoes, as they were corrupt and abusive.  Normally, the people of Israel would have been on their own until God decided to elect another prophet for them.  But the people of Israel felt threatened.  There were great powers all around them, many of which were battling for power and control.  The Israelites looked to those nations and noticed one major difference between themselves and the other countries – kings!  And so, with great gusto they had Samuel ask God to give them a king.  Now, we have to understand how petulant the Israelites sound.  In their immaturity, they whine, “We want a king!  All the other kids have kings, and we need one too.  Then we will be guaranteed to be protected!”  Samuel is outraged on God’s behalf.  Asking for a king is tantamount to admitting that the people of God do not trust God to protect them.  They are basically asking to totally change their centuries-old relationship with God – no longer being governed by God, but being governed by a human being.  God agrees to grant their wish, but advises Samuel first to warn them about what they are asking.  Samuel does – like a parent, he rips into them about what they can expect – to give up their young men to fight in wars, to give up their young women for service to the empire, for their livestock and best fields to be taken by the king.  And when they begin to sense the injustice of the king, God will not answer their cries.  And of course, like a petulant child, the people demand their king anyway.

Who among us has not similarly negotiated with God?  We take the higher paying job even though something in our gut tells us we should not.  Years later we find ourselves unhappy and unfulfilled.  We stay in romantic relationships that are not life-giving because we are more afraid of being alone than we are of being in an unsatisfying relationship.  We spend more and more money trying to fill a void in ourselves, even though we know the void never goes away.  Like the people of Israel we turn away from God, trying to control and protect our lives, while God longs for us to instead turn toward God.

Here is what I love about this story though:  God actually had a fair amount of choices in this story.  God could have smote the people for their disloyalty.  God could have simply refused and told them to get on with life.  God could have negotiated or come up with a compromise.  Instead, God respects the people’s free-will.  God presents the disadvantages of taking on a human king; but then God lets the people choose – even choose the wrong choice.  I find God’s action encouraging because God’s action tells us a lot about our relationship with God.  God actions show us that our free-will is so important to God, that God will not rule over us like a dictator, but will let us make our own decisions – even when our decisions are not very good ones.  That kind of relationship between us teaches us that God respects us, empowers us to make decisions, and let’s us have a fair amount of control in our lives.

But even more encouraging than God respecting our free will is that fact that God can make everything good anyway.  The people of Israel did in fact make a poor choice that they paid for dearly – all that Samuel predicted came true in the person of King Solomon.  But God also made their poor decision great “in the form of a Davidic dynasty with a historical significance beyond measure.”[i]  The human choice of an Israelite king would later be redeemed through the coming of Jesus of Nazareth – descended from that same line.[ii]  If God can redeem a centuries old poor decision, surely God can redeem the many poor decisions we make in life.  And that is good news!  Amen.

[i] Roger Nam, “Commentary on 1 Samuel 8:4-11 [12-15] 16-20 [11:14-15]” as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2472 on June 3, 2015.

[ii] Patrick J. Willson, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays, Yr. B, Proper 5 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 6

Sermon – Isaiah 6.1-8, TS, YB, May 31, 2015

03 Wednesday Jun 2015

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“God sat Sunday in her Adirondack deck chair, reading the New York Times and sipping strawberry lemonade, her pink robe flowing down to the ground.  The garment hem was fluff and frill, and it spilled holiness down into the sanctuary, into the cup and the nostrils of the singing people.  One thread trickled loveliness into a funeral rite, as the mourners looked in the face of death, and heard the story of a life truer than goodness.  A torn piece of the robe’s edge flopped onto a war in southern Sudan and caused heartbeats to skip and soldiers looked into themselves deeply.  One threadbare strand of the divine belt almost knocked over a polar bear floating on a loose berg in the warming sea.  One silky string wove its way through Jesus’ cross, and tied itself to desert-parched immigrants with swollen tongues, and a woman with ovarian cancer and two young sons.  You won’t believe this, but a single hair-thin fiber floated onto the yacht of a rich man and he gasped when he saw everything as it really was.  The hem fell to and fro across the universe, filling space and time and gaps between the sub-atomic world, with the effervescent presence of the one who is the is.  And even in the slight space between lovers in bed, the holiness flows and wakes up the body to feel beyond the feeling and know beyond the knowing…”[i]

I stumbled on Michael Coffey’s poem as I struggled with the idea of how to preach about the Holy Trinity on this Trinity Sunday.  And then I realized something:  we understand theology much more through experience than through reading some heady fourth-century theologian.  The concept of the Trinity is not an easy one to understand.  In fact, the concept is so complicated that most of us try not to think about the Trinity at all.  We simply know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as truth, and do not worry too much about the details.  That approach is probably fine most of the time – until you have to explain the concept of the Trinity to a child or non-believer.  Trying to explain how God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit are all the same and yet all distinctly separate is not as simple as it sounds.  Then try to explain how all three are co-eternal and I promise you, you will get looks of confusion.  The questions about how Jesus can be born in a particular time and place and yet be co-eternal with the Holy Spirit and God will make anyone stutter.

I have begun to wonder then if part of why we do not often spend time working through the theology of the Trinity is because we do not necessarily need to think about the Trinity – we simply need to have an experience of the Trinity.  That realization became clearest to me this week as I thought about our lesson from Isaiah.  Now you may be wondering how I found an experience of the Trinity in the Old Testament.  Certainly, we need the fullness of the New Testament to really understand the Trinity.  But we have to remember that the Trinity has always been – remember that word “co-eternal”?  Now I must admit, this notion makes me uncomfortable too – reading a New Testament theology into the Hebrew Scriptures is what a lot of purists call anachronistic – a chronological inconsistency where we juxtapose two different time periods incorrectly.  But given our theological understanding of the Trinity as being co-eternal, many theologians argue that seeing the Trinity in our Isaiah text today is not, in fact, anachronistic.[ii]  If you buy that logic, the song the seraphs sing, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts…” reminds us of the old hymn, “Holy, Holy, Holy” which contains the line, “God in three persons, blessed Trinity.”  The seraphs’ song hints at the three persons of the Godhead.  And when God wonders what prophet God will send to the sinful people, God says, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  That “us,” by many scholars, is considered yet another precursor to the concept of the Trinity.[iii]

But all of that is academic to me.  We can certainly debate whether or not the Trinity is hinted at in the Isaiah reading today.  But what is more important to me is that we get a better understanding of the experience of the Trinity through the Isaiah story.  The story starts with Isaiah seeing the Lord sitting on a throne, with that hem that Michael Coffey describes so vividly in his poem.  The text says the hem of God’s robe fills the temple.  Imagine, as Coffey does, the hem of that robe filling this entire church.  Imagine fabric billowing over the pews, draping over the altar rail, spilling out the front door.  Imagine us stumbling over the enormity of that fabric, getting tangled up in the hem’s folds.  And all of that fabric swirling around us is only the hem of the robe – not the whole robe, but the hem of the robe.  Isaiah’s description is of a God that is larger than life, that is incomprehensible in size and vastness.  Just the tip of God’s garment is larger than the greatest Cathedral and certainly overwhelming in a space like our intimate church.

In fact, the experience of God is so overwhelming, that Isaiah is brought down to his knees in fear – not a simple fear of God, but fear because Isaiah realizes he is woefully sinful and unworthy of being in God’s presence.  He even shouts among the folds of fabric that entangle him, “Woe is me!  I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips…”  That is the second experiential understanding of the Triune God.  First we are overwhelmed by the Trinity’s vast, mysterious incomprehensibility, and second, we are crippled by the shame of our sinfulness in response.  But then, another profound realization happens.  When Isaiah confesses his sinfulness, the seraph simply touches his mouth with a hot altar coal and Isaiah’s sin is blotted out.  That is the third thing we discover about the Trinity.  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are quick to forgive a repentant heart.  No Hail Mary’s are necessary.  No Our Fathers.  Forgiveness is swift and full – much unlike human capacity for forgiveness.  Finally, we learn yet another interesting thing about the Trinity.  God-in-three-persons needs us.  The Lord says, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?”  There is not strategic plan; there is no preordained conception of who should go.  God does not say, “Isaiah, you shall go and be my prophet,” which is unusual because in most of the call stories we hear, God does call people by name.  But not with Isaiah.[iv]  Here, the Trinitarian Godhead is wondering who in the world will go and be the prophet.  That is what we finally see about the Trinity.  The Trinity openly invites – and according to Isaiah’s response, “Here am I: send me!” we learn that the Trinity inspires people to recklessly volunteer for things they probably shouldn’t.

Of course, when we really think about what we learn about the Trinity in Isaiah: that God is vastly other, inspires repentance, readily gives forgiveness, and causes wanton willingness to serve the Lord, then we begin to see that all of those insights are part and parcel of our own experience of the Trinity every week in worship.[v]  Every week, we start our worship in praise.  We praise God in word, song, and prayer.  We marvel at the vastness of God’s hem as we read and reflect on God’s Word.  We profess our Trinitarian faith in the Creed and then we confess.  Like Isaiah, all that praise, wonder, and realization of God’s enormity pulls us down to our knees as each one of us confesses our unworthiness aloud.  A chorus of voices comes together as we each confess our faults and failings over the past week.  And then, just like a snap, the priest delivers God’s forgiveness.  We are offered the Eucharistic meal, which, like the coal on Isaiah’s lips, wets our lips with forgiveness.[vi]  And when the priest tells us to go out into the world rejoicing in the power of the Spirit, we find ourselves overwhelmed with the words, “Here am I; send me!”  We find ourselves jettisoning ourselves into the world, longing to serve the God whose robe knocks us over and whose meal sets us free.

Michael Coffey’s poem brings us full circle to our Trinity Sunday ponderings.  About God’s robe, Coffey concludes, “…And even as we monotheize and trinitize, and speculate and doubt even our doubting, the threads of holiness trickle into our lives.  And the seraphim keep singing “holy, holy, holy”, and flapping their wings like baby birds, and God says: give it a rest a while.  And God takes another sip of her summertime drink, and smiles at the way you are reading this filament now, and hums: It’s a good day to be God.”[vii]  Amen.

[i] Michael Coffey, “God’s Bathrobe,” as posted on May 31, 2012 at http://mccoffey.blogspot.com/2012/05/gods-bathrobe.html as found on May 27, 2015.  Punctuation and formation changed for ease of preaching.  Original structure found on website.

[ii] Donald K. McKim, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 30.

[iii] McKim, 28.

[iv] Patricia Tull, “Commentary on Isaiah 6.1-8,” found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2458, May 31, 2015, as found on May 27, 2015.

[v] Kristin Emery Saldine, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 28, 30.

[vi] Melinda Quivik, “Commentary on Isaiah 6.1-8,” found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1284, June 3, 2012, as found on May 27, 2015.

[vii] Coffey.

Sermon – Acts 2.1-21, PT, YB, May 24, 2015

28 Thursday May 2015

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There is something quite comforting about coming into the doors of a church.  There is a peace that comes over us when we enter the doors.  Despite the fact that a wooden bench would not be all that comfortable any other time, the sleek, hard pews give us a sense of stability and security.  The familiar motions of the liturgy give us just enough variety to keep us engaged, but enough similarity to give us a sense of comfort.  The distinct texture and taste of the bread and wine in our mouths somehow fill our entire bodies with tranquility.  When those doors close behind us, we feel protected from the outside world – a world that is noisy, harsh, and sometimes cruel.  Inside the doors we find warmth, calm, and serenity.  Slipping into the church is like slipping under a soft blanket that envelops us in security.

We are not unlike those disciples on Pentecost day.  The disciples had made a habit of retreating indoors ever since Jesus died.  Even though the miracle of Easter had happened, almost every time Jesus makes a resurrection appearance, the disciples are behind closed doors.  In fact, on the feast of Pentecost, the disciples were supposed be having a party with the rest of the community to celebrate the giving of God’s law.  But instead, we find them cowering once again in one room behind a bolted door.[i]  I suppose we cannot be too judgmental.  They saw firsthand what happened to Jesus.  Though his ministry had been revolutionary, he was tortured and killed like a common criminal.  Surely anyone associated with him or promoting his ministry and witness would receive similar treatment.  And we cannot forget their shame.  Though they had vied to be at his right and left hand during his ministry, and though they fawned over him when he was making an impact, when push came to shove, they all abandoned him.  And Peter was the worst.  Though he did not betray Jesus like Judas, he basically did the same thing.  In fact, his betrayal may have been worse because he vowed – swore to Jesus and everyone – that he would never, ever betray Jesus.  But he did betray him.  Over and over he denied he even knew the man who was an intimate friend and mentor.  We would probably be hiding behind closed doors too, trying to cover our shame.  Even with all the promises Jesus makes, and the ways he keeps appearing to the disciples, they just cannot seem to get over that hurdle of their shame and fear to step out into the light.

Maybe that is what the community of Christ would have been – a community that gathers in the shadows – had Pentecost not happened.  In the comfort of closed rooms that envelop like a warm blanket, they would whisper stories from the good ol’ days.  They could even develop some rituals just for their members – Jesus had taught them about washing feet and eating the Eucharistic meal.  In fact, maybe they could use that as a recruiting technique.  If word gets whispered around that they are gathering in the quiet, then maybe others will seek them out and ask to join them.  Maybe they do not need to go out like Jesus said and share the good news.  Maybe people will come to them.  They could even figure out a symbol – like a red door – to let everyone know how to find them.

Ah, but you see, God had other things in mind for those disciples.  I wonder sometimes how God ever puts up with us.  God tried for the longest to be in covenant with God’s people.  Over and over again God delivered them from peril.  Over and over again, God renewed God’s covenant with the people, even though they kept breaking that covenant.  Over and over again God chased after the people, longing to gather them like a mother hen.  God even went so far as to send Jesus, to be present among the people in flesh form, and died on a cross to redeem God’s people.  Even after the miracle of the resurrection, after destroying death forever, God’s people still sit hovered in fear, having forgotten all the ways that Jesus wanted them to live boldly.[ii]

And so, on this day, because they clearly could not muster that boldness themselves, something – or someone – breaks down the door – breaks down the walls – and explodes inside the disciples.  A violent, rushing wind fills the room and bursts the doors open.  Different languages – languages they had never spoken before – erupt out of their mouths.  The text says that the people are bewildered, amazed, astonished, and perplexed.  But the Greek text is much more vivid.  The original text says they are “confused, in an uproar, beside themselves, undone, blown away, thoroughly disoriented, completely uncomprehending.”  [You can imagine the chaos from just hearing the chaos of our reading today.]  No longer do the disciples hover in a darkened room.  They are loudly, boldly in the public square talking nonsense – and yet sounding perfectly clear to those gathered.  Even Peter, the one with the most to be ashamed of, the one who probably feels like the deepest failure, on this day manages to become all that Jesus intended for him to be.  When the disciples meet resistance and sneering, Peter stands up and does what he was meant to do all along.  He testifies.  He testifies in public, in the midst of scary chaos, and says the words that have been on his heart since Jesus died.  He proclaims hope, and promise, and fulfillment.  He steps out of the shadows and steps into the light.

How do they do it?  How do the disciples manage to get over their fear and shame and go out into the public square?  Well, they certainly do not do it alone.  The only way they are able to conquer their fear and shame and step boldly into the public square with their testimony is through the Holy Spirit.  Most of us do not really feel comfortable with the Holy Spirit.  We use words like the “Advocate” or the “Comforter” to describe the Holy Spirit.  We think of the Holy Spirit as the one who remains with us after Jesus is gone.  But in our text today, the Holy Spirit is not comforting.  In fact, the Holy Spirit is disturbing, disruptive, and life-changing.  As one scholar says, “The Holy Spirit is as much agitator as advocate, as much provocateur as comforter.”[iii]  In fact, the word in Greek for the Holy Spirit is Paraclete.  That word may be our best way to understand how this all words.  Paraclete is a compound Greek word that literally means, “to come alongside another.”  “In this sense, the Paraclete can be an advocate – to come along side to defend and counsel – or comforter – to come along side to provide comfort and encouragement.  But the one who comes along side might also do so to strengthen you for work, or to muster your courage, or to prompt or even provoke you to action.”[iv]

Last weekend at the Vestry Retreat, our facilitator gave us a challenge at lunch.  She gave us all an assignment.  We had to go up to a stranger in Panera and ask them whether they knew of an Episcopal Church in Plainview.  You should have seen the furrowed brows and the shifting in our chairs most of us did.  You should have heard the bargaining many of us did, promising to do it another day.  We’re not alone in our discomfort.  Tomorrow, you all have been invited to walk with us in the POB Memorial Day Parade to promote St. Margaret’s in the community.  Many of us have valid excuses for not going – the walk is rather long and some of us are out of town for the holiday.  But many of us just do not feel comfortable being the face of the church – giving witness to total strangers.  And that is not the only challenge before us.  Just this week, we posted the baseball schedule for the Little League team we are sponsoring.  The idea is for us not just to have our name in print on a big sign in the outfield.  The idea is also that we meet people where they are – at a baseball field at the POB Community Park on a Saturday afternoon – and just say hi.  We listen to their stories and we share ours.  I know that most of us will not get up the nerve to go sit with a bunch of strangers.  In fact, when we decided to sponsor the team and invite parishioners to go to games, one parishioner told me explicitly, “Oh, St. Margaret’s parishioners won’t go to a game.  They just won’t.”

Today we sit inside, huddled together in a place of comfort and familiarity.  We even painted our doors red and we hope people will find their way to us so that they might enjoy the beauty of St. Margaret’s as we do.  But our church is inviting us again and again to get out of that nostalgic pew, to go out in public, and proclaim the good news.  How in the world will we do it?  Amen.

[i] William H. Willimon, “Taking It to the Streets,” Christian Century, vol. 108, no. 15, May 1, 1991, 483.

[ii] Rob Merola, “Radical Reliance,” Christian Century, vol. 123, no. 11, May 30, 2006, 22.

[iii] David Lose, “Pentecost B: Come Alongside, Holy Spirit!” May 18, 2015, as found on May 20, 2015 at http://www.davidlose.net/2015/05/pentecost-b-come-alongside-holy-spirit/.

[iv] Lose.

On beauty…

20 Wednesday May 2015

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I was visiting a neighboring parish recently and was admiring their beautiful landscaping.  A dogwood was blooming in delicate pink.  There were pockets of flowers in red and purple.  As I was surveying the beauty, I noticed one, brilliantly yellow tulip standing on its own near the dogwood.  It was surrounded by mulch and little else.  And yet my eyes were drawn to the single flower more strongly than the rest of the carefully planned landscaping.  When I mentioned the little flower to someone on campus, they said that sometimes flowers “volunteer” like that.  They self-pollinate and just show up where they like.

The image was a striking one:  something so out of place, and yet so beautiful.  By “volunteering” and just standing boldly where it was, this tulip was a reminder of how beauty cannot always be managed.  Sometimes beauty is beautiful because it was not managed.

Thinking back on that tulip, I found myself wondering whether I was willing to be so bold – whether I was comfortable volunteering to be wherever God planted me.  Jesus talks to the disciples in Matthew about being a light for the world.  He says in Matthew 5.16, “…let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.”  Jesus’ words sound simple, but I think we do not really feel comfortable living out his instructions.  We might consider letting our light shine…as long as we are surrounded by others doing the same.  We don’t mind being a brilliantly yellow tulip…as long as we can be beautiful with others.  But ask us to go at it alone – to let our light shine by ourselves so that others might see our individual good works and give glory to God – well, that is another story.  What if I am not bright or beautiful enough?  What if my works aren’t good enough and people judge me instead of giving glory to God?

The trick is remembering that little tulip.  I saw lots of flowers that day that looked beautiful.  But it was the one solo flower that made me stop, that made me linger nearby.  That tulip had power simply by being willing to be where it was, and to be there in its fullness.  Our invitation is to do likewise.  My guess is that even if we cannot see our own beauty or our own light, others will – and they will give glory to God.

On prayer and listening…

01 Friday May 2015

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As Christians, there are many things we say out of habit.  We say, “God bless you,” when someone sneezes, even if we do not actually mean to invoke a blessing on the person.  We say, “Peace be with you,” in church without necessarily thinking about what offering the peace really means for our relationship with the other person.  And we regularly say, “I’ll keep you in my prayers,” even if we do not really keep a practice of diligent prayers.

And yet, as I have thought about the chaos that has erupted in Baltimore this past week, the only thing I can say with confidence is that I am holding Baltimore in my prayers.  Everything else I have tried to say has been muddled mess.  If I talk too long about my sorrow around the violence, I find that I too easily slip into blaming – a slippery slope at best.  If I try to talk about race, I find myself getting tangled up in the ways that race is invariably tied to socio-economic status and the inability I have as a white person to speak authority on the experience of my minority brothers and sisters.  No matter what philosophical argument I try to make, I find myself entangled in a very complicated system of oppression and favor.

And so although “I am holding Baltimore in prayer,” sounds like what a person of faith says as a throw-away statement, I really mean it.  I mean it because that is all I feel like I can do with authenticity and humility.  I mean it because it feels like something I can actively do when I feel powerless in so many ways.  And I mean it because what I know in the depths of my heart is that the situation in Baltimore is making me more upset about my own privilege and power than anything.  And I can only work that out through prayer.  God and I need to talk – and I need to listen.

My hope is that prayer will open up a listening heart not just for God’s word, but also a listening heart to my brothers and sisters.  When prayer is at its best, it is an exercise in listening – and if anything, I am acutely aware of how much listening we need to do right now.  The listening this week started for me with this article.  After it brought me to my knees in prayer, I stumbled on this article about what Martin Luther King, Jr. once said about riots.  These pieces and many more have reminded me once again of my obligation as a person of privilege to shut my mouth, and open my eyes and ears.  Though a posture of prayer does not excuse us from action, as Desmond Tutu once said, we cannot accomplish much without it.

For the beauty of the earth…

23 Thursday Apr 2015

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This winter on Long Island was particularly rough.  We went months without seeing the grass – months!  I have friends on Facebook who live all over the country and I remember seeing their pictures of kids playing in the grass in March, and I was so jealous.  That experience of hunkering down through all the snow and ice accumulation left most of us here on Long Island feeling weary and listless.

But this past week, I feel like I have been brought back to life.  Daffodils are in full bloom, the forsythia finally emerged, tulip trees are opening, and not only is there grass, there is also that bright green grass that only comes out in spring.  I feel like I can finally breathe.  There is a lightness that comes with spring, and that lightness is even more potent after a long, arduous winter.

This morning at Eucharist we prayed, “For seasonable weather, and for an abundance of the fruits of the earth…For the good earth which God has given us, and for the wisdom and will to conserve it, let us pray to the Lord.”  Having just had Earth Day yesterday, watching our church’s community garden slowly sprout its early crop, and seeing spring unfold has given me a new appreciation of the gift of God’s creation.  Snow can be beautiful in its own right, but after a long winter, I am especially amazed at the bountiful and beautiful gift of God’s earth that one sees in spring.  And I am honored that God has invited us to be stewards of that earth.  As God’s earth is bursting forth with life, I find myself bubbling with new life and joy.  But mostly I feel grateful: grateful for this beautiful earth, our island home; grateful for a God who entrusts that earth to us; and grateful for how each new color and bloom reminds me of the beauty and grace surrounding me every day.  Thank you Mother Earth.  Thank you spring blooms.  Thank you God, for forming this beautiful earth out of a formless void.  We are blessed beyond measure and we promise to be the good stewards You would have us be!

On love…

15 Wednesday Apr 2015

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This week I have been thinking a lot about love.  It started when I discovered a short film called, “Blind Devotion” by the Jubilee Project.  The film opens with a playful, young couple who seem lovingly devoted to one another.  Unexpectedly, the wife starts to lose her vision and her frustration over the situation begins to pull apart the couple.  She refuses help from her husband and insists on finding a way to maintain her independence.  The husband concedes, but finds that he can’t help himself from helping her in ways that she never notices.  He quickly pushes a tomato toward her while she gropes along the countertop for it.  He follows her to work to ensure that no cars sneak up on her in crosswalks.  He sits a few seats away on her bus just to make sure she gets to work safely.  And then he tiptoes away once he realizes she is comfortably situated at work.  He says that he doesn’t ever want his wife to know how much he does for her because that is how he shows her he loves her – because to him, love is more than just a feeling, it is an action.  And for him, love is not about having the recognition for what he does, but just having the privilege of doing the work.  That kind of selflessness in a relationship reminded me of the love that God showed us through the life and death of Jesus.

Later I stumbled across this blog post.  In it, the author writes what she imagines God would say to working moms.  Basically the letter notes all the ways, big and small, that the mom is constantly trying to care for her family while tending to her work.  The letter is full of affirmation, especially for the small successes, and in the face of what often feel like failures.  As a mom who works outside of the home, I especially appreciated the sentiment.  But I imagine God feels that way about all of us, no matter what familial setting we find ourselves in.  I know that my single brothers and sisters as well as my friends who have partners but no children find similar ways of loving others – and God notices.  God notices because that is the kind of love God hopes that we will show – the same love that God extends to us.

Both the film and the fictional letter got me thinking about two things.  First, I found myself thinking about the myriad ways that people love me and I probably never notice.  Some are more obvious, but I don’t actively acknowledge them:  a short note of encouragement, a phone call, an art project by my child, or help around the house by my husband.  But some of the ways I will probably never know:  the people who pray for me on a regular basis, the people who fill in gaps that I had not even considered, the people who love my child when I am not around.  As I considered the vast possibilities, I was aware of how that vastness pales in comparison to the vastness of God’s love for me.  I am humbled beyond words for the ways in which love envelopes me on every side.

The second thing I realized this week is that I could stand to honor the ways in which I show love.  Too often I beat myself up for the ways I have not said, “I love you,” enough or I have not written that note I wanted to write or made that call I planned to make.  But I began to wonder if instead, I might close each day thinking about the ways I showed love today:  tending to the life of the church and the beautiful parishioners I am privileged to pastor; tending to the daily life of my family, even if my temper gets the best of me sometimes (five year olds can be tough!); and tending to the body that God blessed me with, making sure I treat it like the temple that God made it to be.  Perhaps if I could capture an appreciation for the ways that I love and the ways that I am loved, I could let go a sense of unworthiness and grab hold of the deep love that God has for me – and then share it.

Sermon – Mark 16.1-8, EV, YB, April 4, 2015

15 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Tonight we celebrate one of the most ancient, and in many traditions, the most important liturgies of the Church.  This is the festival of the resurrection of our Lord – despite what you may have learned about Easter Sunday.  Tonight is the night that we liturgically mark that shift from Lent and the Passion to our Lord and Savior’s Resurrection.  The church gives us this incredible gift tonight, and our job is to hearken back to an innocent sense of awe as we realize what God does through Jesus Christ.

Luckily the Church helps us hearken back to that innocent sense of awe through the structure of the liturgy.  I like to think the Church’s work in the Easter Vigil as being like that Grandfather in the movie The Princess Bride, who visits his sick grandson to read him a fantastic story.  In that movie, the grandson is skeptical – that in fact his grandfather might be planning to read him a boring or sappy story.  But the grandfather insists that this story is one of the greatest stories ever told – a story that his father read him, that he read to his son, and now, he would read to him.

The Church is like that grandfather to us tonight, who gathers up the grandchildren around him, and says, “Let me tell you a story.  This story is greater than any other story you have ever heard.  This story is full of intrigue and surprise, full of the primal elements, full of drama and passion, and full of twists and turns you do not expect.  Do you want to hear the story?”  And before the grandfather can even begin, the grandchildren are waiting with baited breath.

“Once upon a time, before there was time, or people, or even land or sky, the earth as we know the earth was a formless void – filled with watery chaos.  God created the world as we know the world, and proclaimed that creation, ‘good.’  Sometime later, that world fell into sin and God used water to cleanse the whole earth through flood.  To the one person God saved, God promised to never do such destruction again and made a covenant of protection.  Much later, the people of God were fleeing a horrible fate – an awful leader who had enslaved the people.  This time, God once again manipulated the water – both to save God’s people and to destroy those who wished to destroy God’s people.  On the other side of the sea, on dry land, the people rejoiced.  Later, the people fell away from God and although God was grieved, God spoke to the prophet Ezekiel.  God told Ezekiel to reassemble the dry bones of God’s people, and to breathe new life into them.  And the people lived again.  Much later, when the people had become dispersed and disheartened, God proclaimed new hope.  God proclaimed that God would gather God’s people again and would eliminate their despair.

“But after all of that – after creation and floods, after the division of the sea and the giving of new life to old bones, even after promising to save the people – after all of that, yet still the people of God lived in sin and in separation from God.  And, knowing no other way, God did something so unexpected, so wonderful that we could never repay God.  God sent God’s Son to live and breathe among us, to show us the way of faithful living and the way to eternal life.  And as if that were not enough, that same Son was betrayed by his friends, mocked and reviled, and killed on a cross.  That was a dark, painful time – darker and more painful than anything the people had known before.  And so the people of God did the only thing they knew to do:  they mourned, they hid in fear, and a few brave women went to tend to this precious gift they had been given, making his death as sacred as they knew how.  But something amazing happened – something no one ever anticipated.  The Son of Man, the Prince of Peace, the Messiah, Jesus was not there.  And the disciples went from east to west, sharing the sacred and imperishable proclamation of eternal salvation.”

At the end of the film The Princess Bride, the grandfather finishes the book, and tells his grandson to go off to sleep.  The once skeptical grandson hesitantly addresses his grandfather, “Grandpa?  Maybe you could come over and read it again to me tomorrow.”  His grandfather smiles and responds, “As you wish.”  Those words are significant because in the story the grandfather tells, the main characters say, “As you wish,” as their code word for, “I love you.”  Tonight, we too hear the story of our salvation, the great sweeping of our history with our Lord, and the salvific work of our Savior Jesus Christ, and we too find ourselves strangely warmed, longing to perhaps hear the story again.  And to us, the Church says, “As you wish.”  Amen.

Sermon – John 13.1-17, 31b-35, MT, YB, April 2, 2015

15 Wednesday Apr 2015

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The dinner table is where sacred things happen.  The dinner table is where food is served that can satisfy a hunger, can heal an ailing body, can delight the senses, and can invoke a nostalgia like no other.  The dinner table is where stories are told, days are recounted, prayers are said, and laughter is had.  The dinner table is where places are set, dishes are passed, plates are cleared, and remnants are cleaned.  The dinner table is the host of all things mundane – like that frozen meal you threw together before you ran off to the next thing; and the dinner table is the host of all things momentous – like that gloriously planned and executed Thanksgiving meal that you hosted for your friends and family.  Because the dinner table can do all these things, the dinner table becomes the place in our home where sacred things happen – a holy site for one’s everyday and one’s extraordinary moments.

The dinner table where Jesus and his disciples gathered for that Last Supper was no different.  They had gathered at table hundreds of times in the three years they had spent together.  There had been learning and laughter, stories and questions, arguments and celebrations.  In many ways, all of these things seem to happen in the course of this one night during the Last Supper.  Jesus and the disciples are likely chatting up a storm, talking about the days events, when Jesus does something extraordinary.  He gets up, takes off his outer robes, and washes the feet of his disciples.  This kind of event is unheard of.  Hosts and well-respected teachers do not wash others feet; that task was assigned to a household slave.[i]  And some of the midrashic commentary suggests that not even a Hebrew slave was expected to perform such a menial task.  Instead, the slave might bring out a bowl of water, but the guest would wash his own feet.[ii]  So of course, a lively debate ensues with Peter, who does not understand what is happening.  Jesus washes Peter’s feet anyway – and washes Judas’ feet – before returning to that dinner table to explain what he has done.  He goes on to explain that not only will he die soon, but also that he expects a certain behavior after he is gone – that they love one another.

That is the funny thing about dinner tables.  They can bring out the most sacred and holy of conversations.  The dinner table is where one tells his family that he has terminal cancer.  The dinner table is where one tells her best friend that she lost her job and has no idea what she is going to do.  The dinner table is where the young couple announces that that they lost their pregnancy.  The dinner table is where the college student tells his parents that he is dropping out of school.  We tell these awful, scary stories at the dinner table because we know that the table can handle them.  The table is where we gather with those who we care about and is therefore the place where we can share both the joys of life and also the really hard stuff of life.  Though our table may have never hosted a dinner as beautiful as one of the tables Norman Rockwell could paint, our table is still a sacred place that can hold all the parts of us – the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly.  We can share the awfulness of life there because we know that those gathered can handle it, and can carry us until we can be back at the table laughing some day.

What I love about our celebration of this day is that all of those things – the good, the bad, the beautiful, and the ugly – were present that night with Jesus and his disciples.  So yes, earlier in the evening, there probably is a raucous conversation.  The disciples are gathered at the table, in all their imperfection: those who love Jesus with a beautiful innocence and those who greedily hope to be at Jesus’ left and right hand; those who humbly understand Jesus and those who want Jesus to victoriously claim his Messianic power; those who profess undying faithfulness (even though they will fail to be faithful) and those who actively betray Jesus.  At that table Jesus not only talks about how to be agents of love, Jesus also shows them how to love.  On this last night – this last night before the storm of Jesus’ trial, crucifixion, and death – a sacred moment happens at the dinner table.  And though we do not hear the story tonight, we also know that Jesus then breaks the bread and offers the wine, instituting the sacrament of Holy Communion.

We know the rest of the story.  The disciples, who still do not really understand Jesus fully, muddle their way through footwashing and Holy Communion.  Then those same dense disciples sleep their way through Jesus’ last prayers.  One of those disciples becomes violent when a soldier tries to seize Jesus.  And eventually, most of the disciples betray and abandon Jesus altogether.  To this unfaithful, dimwitted, scared group, Jesus offers a sacred moment at the dinner table, inviting them into the depths of his soul and a pathway to our God:  and encourages them to love anyway.

Our own Eucharistic table is not unlike that dinner table with Jesus.  Tonight, we too will tell stories, sing, and laugh.  We too will wash feet in humility, embarrassment, and servitude.  We too will hear the sobering invitation to the Eucharistic meal, and will walk our unworthy selves to the rail to receive that sacrificial body and blood.  We too will argue with God in our prayers, pondering what God is calling us to do in our lives and resisting that call with our whole being.  We too will lean on Jesus, longing for the comfort that only Jesus can give.  And we too will hear Jesus’ desperate plea for us to also be agents of love – not just to talk about love, or profess love, but to show love as Jesus has shown love to us.

In this way, our Eucharistic table is not unlike the dinner table in your own home.  Our Eucharistic table has hosted countless stories, arguments, and bouts of laugher.  Our Eucharistic table has witnessed great sadness and great joy.  Our Eucharistic table feeds us, even when we feel or act unworthily.  And our Eucharistic table charges us to go out into the world, being the agents of love who are willing to wash the feet of others – even those who betray us and fail us.  This Lent, we have been praying Eucharistic Prayer C.  In that prayer, the priest prays, “Deliver us from the presumption of coming to this Table for solace only, and not for strength; for pardon only, and not for renewal.”[iii]   This Eucharistic table, like our own dinner table, can handle all of us – all our failings, sinfulness, and brokenness.  This table can fill us up with joy, forgiveness, and peace.  This table can be a place where we find belonging, identity, and security.  But this table is also meant to build us up – to give us strength and renewal for doing the work God has given us to do – to love others as Christ loves us.  Sacred things happen at this table.  Those sacred things happen so that we can do sacred things in the world for our God.  Amen.

[i] Guy D. Nave, Jr., “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 279.

[ii] Mary Louise Bringle, “Homiletical Perspective, Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 279.

[iii] BCP, 372.