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UJCCM Ecumenical Service Sermon – Matthew 5.17-19, Deuteronomy 4.1-2, 5-9, March 6, 2024

15 Friday Mar 2024

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This sermon was preached at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in Norge, VA as part of a seven-week pulpit exchange between ecumenical churches during Lent.

I do not know what your experience with Holy Scripture has been.  I grew up in the South where Scripture was meant to be memorized, and at the very least you needed to know the Ten Commandments by heart.  As someone who is pretty terrible at memorizing scripture, you can imagine how tortured my childhood was.  When I was in grade school our Sunday School teacher quizzed us for weeks, making sure we were memorizing the Ten Commandments.  I vividly remember that dreaded day when each of us had to stand up in front of our peers and recite all ten.  My friend Nathan went before me and recited them perfectly.  My hands started to sweat, and I was fidgeting in my chair.  I could only imagine the whispers around church when everyone found out the minister’s kid (yes, I’m a preacher’s kid!) could not remember all of the Commandments.  I felt like a failure before I had even begun.

For those of you in parishes that follow the Sunday lectionary, you likely heard the Ten Commandments this past Sunday.  The scripture lessons appointed by the lectionary today continue the conversation about the commandments.  In Deuteronomy, Moses is preparing the people of Israel for the Commandments he is about to enumerate in the next chapter.  Meanwhile, in Matthew, Jesus proclaims that he comes to fulfill the law and that whoever breaks the least of the commandments will be least in the kingdom of heaven.  In the verses following the ones we heard tonight, Jesus goes on to describe some of those Ten Commandments more fully. 

But Jesus’ harsh standards about those Commandments are unnecessary really.  All we need is a slow reading of the Ten Commandments, or the Decalogue as they are often called, and we realize how woefully unfaithful we are.  Any deeper dive into the commandments probably has our hands sweating like that little kid in Sunday School.  Likely the only commandment most of us have avoided is the murdering, although we have probably wished we could murder someone at least once.  But all the others sneak in and tempt us.  We may not have stolen something large, but we have probably taken home a pen, paper clip, or notepad here and there from work.  If we have not committed adultery, we have certainly coveted someone else, which the Commandments say is equally bad.  We may think we have avoided creating idols, but when we realize the centrality of money in our lives, we discover that money has become a god for us.  And keeping the Sabbath – forget about it!  We are lucky if we make our way to church three out of four Sundays.  And even when we make it to church, we immediately whisk ourselves away to our busy schedules afterwards – even if those schedules are only packed with watching games or hanging out with friends.  We rarely take a true break in our week for a full day with God.  We prefer Jesus’ summary of the commandments much later in Matthew’s gospel to, “love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself,”[i] because his summary allows to avoid thinking about all the specific ways we sin against God and our neighbor.  In our minds and in the minds of many, “the Ten Commandments have somehow become burdens, weights, and heavy obligations.”[ii]  We sense their burdensome weight on our shoulders, and we feel like our bodies and our spirits are being physically pushed down by God.

What may help us tonight, then, is to take a step back and look at those troubling commandments and laws that Jesus came to fulfill.  The Decalogue does not start out with the preface, “Here are ten rules that you will obey.”  Instead, the commandments begin with a “breathtaking announcement of freedom: ‘I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery.’”[iii]  God is not the overbearing parent who is saying, “You will do what I say because I am the boss.”  Instead, God is saying, “Remember that you are free.  Remember that I brought you out of a terrible place and now, you are free, my beloved ones.”  As a freed people, God is simply reminding them of how freed people live – in relationship with God and in relationship with one another. 

Jesus’ summary of these commandments later in Matthew is helpful, especially in that the summary reminds us of how we are to attend to our relationship with God – which is presented in those first four commandments, and how we are to attend to our relationship with people – what those final six commandments teach us.  But Jesus’ summary can allow us to forget how interrelated these two relationships are.  As one scholar argues, the Commandments teach us more specifically that, “having ‘no other gods before me’ means that money, sex, and power will not wiggle their way into the altars of our lives, and thus will not be used to exploit others.  Keeping the Sabbath is a reminder that all of creation is a gift and we have a responsibility to be wise stewards of it…‘you shall not murder’ suggests that others are gifts who bear the image of God for us.”[iv]  Those Ten Commandments show the people of God how life should be structured as a freed people, and how that life is an intertwined life of relationships between God and one another.  Out of those commandments comes a way of being.  Out of those commandments comes a full understanding of liberation.  Out of those commandments comes the path of life – a life that reminds us that not only does Jesus come to fulfill the law, but as Stanley Hauerwas argues, “…our discipleship of Jesus entails our fulfillment of the law.”[v]

Several years ago, a hoopla arose around an Alabaman judge who wanted the Ten Commandments posted in his courthouse.  In response, many Alabamans posted small plastic signs in their yards with the Ten Commandments written on them.  I remember visiting my family in Alabama and seeing the signs everywhere.  At the time, I rolled my eyes.  I could not imagine what good posting those rules up all over neighborhoods could really do.  Were they meant to teach others about being a person of faith, or were they meant to be a way of flaunting their Christian identity (and yes, in Alabama, those posting the Ten Commandments were Christian, not Jewish)?  At the time, they seemed to me to be self-righteous or at least condescending.  But as I have been thinking about those silly signs this past week, I have begun to wonder if there is not something to them.  What if instead of being a finger-wagging at the neighborhood, the posted signs are a way for each resident to claim on which path they hope to live – what law they are trying to fulfill through their own life.  What if instead of saying, “You all need to live like this,” the signs say, “I need to live like this.”  What if the signs are a way of saying, “I am liberated by God and want to try to live on the path of life.  Help keep me on that path – and join me if you like!”

Our liturgy tonight in some small way is doing the same thing that those signs had the potential of doing.  Our liturgy tonight, both in our prayers and in our scripture reading, invites us to remember that we are liberated by God, that we have been given the path to life, and that we can rejoice in those gifts tonight.  Our liturgy tonight invites us to shrug off our perceived burdens and to step into the warmth and love of the law and commandments.  Our liturgy tonight invites us to create our own metaphorical plastic yard sign that will remind us to live on the path of life, to do the work of fulfilling the law, and to invite others along the path through our witness of Decalogue-living.  Amen.

[i] Paraphrase of Matthew 22.37-38.

[ii] Thomas G. Long, “Dancing the Decalogue,” Christian Century, vol. 123, no. 5, Mar. 7, 2006, 17.

[iii] Long, 17.

[iv] Craig Kocher, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 78.

[v] Stanley Hauerwas, Matthew: Brazos Theological Commentary on the Bible (Grand Rapids:  Brazos Press, 2006), 66.

Sermon – John 2.13-22, Exodus 20.1-17, L3, YB, March 3, 2024

15 Friday Mar 2024

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Today’s gospel lesson is one of those lessons in Scripture that is so vivid we find looking away difficult.  All four of the gospels have this story, and three of the gospels use this story to convey Jesus’ righteous anger about how the practice around temple worship and obligatory sacrifice has led to monetary abuses.  Matthew and Luke even have Jesus calling the whole enterprise a den of robbers.  The story evokes images of Jesus flipping tables, or in today’s version, swinging around a whip like Indiana Jones.  We often recall this text when looking for evidence of Jesus’ righteous anger at injustice. 

But John’s version of this story takes us down a different path from the other three gospels.  First, John places this story in a very different place in his narrative.[i]  Unlike the other gospels who place this story toward the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry, John places this incident in the second chapter, right after the miracle in Cana.  And in John’s version, Jesus does not lay into the moneychangers in quite the same way.  Instead of financial injustice, Jesus seems more concerned that those gathered have missed something critical – in the obligatory administering of sacrifices at the physical temple, they have missed the fact that God is no longer tied to the location of the temple – and instead is found in the temple of Jesus’ body.  For John, the incarnation, the word becoming flesh and dwelling among us, is central to the entirety of the good news and in this story specifically. 

We are in a season of flesh.  Lent is that season when we experience Jesus in deeply enfleshed ways.  What our Lenten disciplines or practices do for us is help us remember that we are a people of flesh and our God was willing to take on that flesh to transform our lives.  We do not often talk about the profound reality of an enfleshed God, but I recalled a hymn this week that opens up the reality.  Brian Wren’s hymn Good is the Flesh says, “Good is the flesh that the Word has become, good is the birthing, the milk in the breast, good is the feeding, caressing and rest, good is the body for knowing the world, Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”  The hymn goes on to say, “Good is the body, from cradle to grave, growing and aging, arousing, impaired, happy in clothing, or lovingly bared, good is the pleasure of God in our flesh, Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”[ii]  Now I do not know about your own spiritual language, but I cannot think of anything that talks about Jesus’ flesh so vividly.  The closest I have come has been in imagining the vulnerability of that enfleshed body in the cradle.  But capturing what being enfleshed means for all of life – from cradle to grave – somehow opens up John’s words about the temple of Jesus’ body.  God takes something we often associate with sinfulness – and transforms that flesh into something good.  “Good is the pleasure of God in our flesh,” are powerful words that shift how we experience the fullness of Christ’s humanity.

Once we reconnect with the goodness of God’s flesh – the incarnation of Christ – then we begin to see all of Jesus’ ministry immersed in the flesh of life.  Scholar Karoline Lewis reminds us Jesus’ fleshy life was important, “Because a woman at a well, whose body was rejected for the barren body it was, experiences the truth of neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem; because a man ill for 38 years, his entire life to be exact, whose body has only known life on the ground, is now able to imagine his ascended life; because a man born blind, is then able to see, and to see himself as a sheep of Jesus’ own fold; because Lazarus, whose body was dead and starting to decay, found himself reclining on Jesus, eating and drinking, and with his sisters, sharing a meal once again.”[iii]  Not only is Jesus’ incarnation good, making flesh good, Jesus’ ministry is about blessing, healing, and restoring physical bodies. 

Once we connect with the goodness of God’s flesh, and the power of Jesus’ fleshy ministry, we are forced to see something we do not always feel comfortable with – the goodness of our own flesh.  I do not know about your journey, but my experience in church has not been one in which the church tells me how good my body is.  In fact, today’s inclusion of the ten commandments, not once, but twice, usually reminds me of the opposite – of the myriad ways my body is sinful:  from the words that come out of my mouth, to the ways in which I hurt others and take things with my body, to the ways in which I covet things and other bodies.  And those sins do not even touch the ways in which I hear the message that my body is imperfect – how my body is not the right height or shape or gender, how my body is not fit or strong enough, how my skin color, hair, or nails are not quite the ideal.  But if God takes on flesh and says, “Good is the flesh,” and if that enfleshed God engages in a ministry of blessing flesh, then surely part of what we remember today is how good and blessed our own flesh is – how God made our flesh for good. 

Now, here comes the tricky part.  Once we realize “Good is the flesh,” that ministered to the flesh, that our flesh is beautiful and revered, then we are forced to make yet another leap – that the flesh of others is also beautiful.  Those bodies we would like to subjugate, regulate, and decimate are no longer able to be separated from the goodness of God’s flesh or our own flesh.  Barbara Brown Taylor argues in An Altar in the World, “‘One of the truer things about bodies is that it is just about impossible to increase the reverence I show mine without also increasing the reverence I show yours.’  In other words, once I value my own body as God’s temple, as a site of God’s pleasure, delight, and grace, how can I stand by while other bodies suffer exploitation, poverty, discrimination, or abuse?”[iv]

This week at Hickory Neck has been all about that kind of work.  As we welcomed guests through the Winter Shelter, we affirmed the goodness of all flesh – of God’s flesh, of our flesh, and especially the flesh of those who have no shelter, who work hard all day but cannot secure housing, who live lives of uncertainty, of insecurity, of scarcity.  Once we recall the incarnation of Christ, the dignity of our own incarnation, our work immediately becomes to honor the incarnation of others.  We certainly accomplished the work of honoring flesh this week through the Winter Shelter.  But as we keep walking our Lenten journey, we will struggle with our bodies.  Even our collect today says, “we have no power in ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul.”  Our invitation this Lent is to struggle with claiming our body as good – and using the goodness of our flesh to bless other flesh.  Our repentance this week is not just of the sinfulness of the flesh, but we repent this week of the ways in which we do not honor how “Good is the flesh that the Word has become.”  Amen.

[i] Joseph D. Small, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 92.

[ii] I found this hymn in the commentary by Debie Thomas, “The Temple of His Body” in Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories:  Reflections on the Life of Christ (Eugene, OR:  Cascade Books, 2022), 63. 

[iii] Karoline Lewis, “Body Zeal,” February 26, 2018, https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/body-zeal as found on March 1, 2024.

[iv] Debie Thomas, “The Temple of His Body” February 28, 2018, https://www.journeywithjesus.net/lectionary-essays/current-essay?id=1675 as found on March 1, 2024.

Sermon – Genesis 17.1-7, 15-16, Mark 8.31-38, L2, YB, February 25, 2024

15 Friday Mar 2024

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I remember in those first months of parenthood, an older mom and educator shared a bit wisdom with me.  “Remember, that your primary job as a parent,” she told me, “is to foster the independence of your child.”  At the time, her advice seemed a little strange – nothing about making the child feel loved, or reading to them every night, or creating safe space:  just fostering independence.  What I did not realize at the time was how incredibly difficult and grueling the work of fostering independence would be.  For starters, fostering independence in your children means giving up control – something I tend to like having.  And as if that is not hard enough, fostering independence means being the victim of your children’s own desire for control.  I cannot tell you the number of times I have been walking in my house muttering the words, “I am raising independent children.  I am raising independent children.  I am raising independent children.”

I think why this aspect of parenting is so tricky for me is parenting gets to the heart of one of the eternal struggles we have in life – and certainly with God:  our desire for control.  So, we should not at all be surprised to discover that during Lent, that is what both our Old Testament and our Gospel lessons are about:  ceding control.  We can start with Abraham’s story.  This is actually the third time Abraham has been promised a son – or at the beginning of our text, he is still Abram, not Abraham.  But we’ll get to that later.  Abram struggles like we do with control.  When he and Sarai are not pregnant at 75, or 86, or now 99 years old, he’s pretty sure God is not going to make good on God’s promise.[i]  So, Abram takes matters into his own hands and has a child with Hagar, Sarai’s servant, hoping he can make Ishmael the inheritor of God’s promise.  Abram and Sarai just could not trust and cede control to God about becoming pregnant themselves, especially since God’s promise is so ludicrously abundant.  In fact, in the verse immediately following what we read today, we are told Abraham falls on his face and laughs at God.  That is how ludicrously abundant God’s promise is for progeny. 

Of course, Peter is not much better when he needs to trust Jesus.  Jesus tells the disciples in Mark’s gospel that he will suffer and die to fulfill his role as the Messiah.  But Peter, and quietly the other disciples[ii], physically grabs Jesus and rebukes him.  The things Jesus is saying are not the way Peter or the others expected a Messiah to function for good.  As one scholar explains, they signed on for a crown, not a cross.[iii]  But Peter’s grasping rebuke of Jesus is about as literal of resistance as one can get:  an utter unwillingness to cede control of how salvation through the Messiah will work.  And so, Jesus says those stingingly harsh words, “Get behind me Satan!  You are thinking not as God thinks, but as human beings do.”[iv]  Peter and the disciples are no better at trusting and ceding control to God than Abraham is.

In some way or another, I think most of our Lenten disciplines, most of the sinfulness that we are praying about or working on in Lent is rooted in this very issue: our issues with control and trusting in God.  We are so deeply rooted in the American ethic of working hard, achieving your goals, of pulling yourself up by your bootstraps and realizing your own destiny that we leave very little space for God in our lives.  We love being endowed with free will, so the notion that we should just trust God or even give up control to God feels like a fool’s errand.  Having this ethic deeply seeded in our core identity, we, as one scholar argues, arrogantly “assume that we know what must be done, so that even a word from Jesus himself cannot dissuade us.  Blinded by our prejudices, presuppositions, and preconceptions of the way things must be, we would not be convinced otherwise, even were someone to rise from the dead!”[v]

Before we get slapped in the face five weeks from now, when Jesus actually rises from the dead, how might we begin to take a harder look at the illogical nature of our resistance to God?  I like to turn toward Abraham.  I’m going have you do what they do in my mom’s evangelical church, and turn back to the Word of scripture found in your bulletin, and grab a pen (or at least a pen in your imagination).  We’re going to look back over that text and literally or mentally circle every word of abundance in this Genesis text.  We find words like, “exceedingly numerous,” “multitude of nations,” “multitude of nations,” (again) “exceedingly fruitful,” “nations,” “kings,” “throughout their generations,” “everlasting covenant,” “offspring after you,” “bless,” “rise to nations,” “and “kings of peoples.”[vi]  Abram turned Abraham may not have much to say in how this covenant with God will unfold.  But everything we read about this covenant is not just blessing, but abundant blessing.  This covenant is oozing with generosity and indulgence.  The abundance of God’s covenant is embarrassingly, overwhelmingly over the top.  Even Abram’s name change is a marker of this abundance.  The Hebrew for Abram is “father;” the Hebrew for Abraham is “father of a multitude.”[vii]

I do not know what you are holding back from God these days.  I do not know where your lack of trust in God is making you grasp onto a sense of control, as though you know better than the Almighty.  But our texts today are inviting us to let go of the death grip on the way we think things should be, and to make space for the ways God is showing us how things can be.  We will not get our say in the matter necessarily – no amount of struggle will make things better.  But the promise is that when we give our lives over to Christ – when we put our trust in the God whose covenants are not just okay – or even pretty good – but are shockingly, unimaginably abundantly awesome, we are promised very good things indeed.  Some of those good things will be so good we find them laughable.  But that is just because our imagination and our abilities to produce abundant goodness are not like God’s.  But God gifts them to us anyway.  Our invitation is to open our hands and receive them.  Amen.

[i] Barbara Brown Taylor, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 51.

[ii] Jouette M. Bassler, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 71.

[iii] W. Hulitt Gloer, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 71.

[iv] NAB, NJB translations as provided by Bassler, 71.

[v] Gloer, 71.

[vi] This notion of abundance in the text presented by Karoline Lewis in “#950: Second Sunday in Lent – Feb. 25, 2024,” Sermon Brainwave Podcast, February 18, 2024, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/podcasts/950-second-sunday-in-lent-feb-25-2024 on February 23, 2024.

[vii] W. Sibley Towner, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 55.

On Letting the Dust Settle…

21 Wednesday Feb 2024

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Photo credit: https://ymi.today/2015/04/when-dust-settles-in-the-sunlight/

Oftentimes, I think are two version of church:  the version that is consumed and the version that is fully knowledgeable of all the details and intricacies that it takes to create the consumable experience.  In the former, one comes to church, prays prayers, sings beautifully written songs, hears scripture, engages with a sermon, consumes communion, and is commissioned to go out and live the Gospel.  Of course, there may also be the juggling of children, the scramble to get there on time, and the focus needed to fully engage all that is “church,” and not be distracted by life whispering in the background. 

For the latter – the version of church that is fully knowledgeable, the experience of church happens through a filter.  In that experience, you are juggling the personnel details (did the lector show up, how the procession should line up based on who is serving, whether a choir member is late and didn’t get to rehearse fully), you are painfully aware of the hours of planning that went into the bulletin (the liturgical and musical decisions that were made to create a seamless experience), and you are mindful of all the administrative details (did the altar book get marked, which cruet has wine and which has water, do we have enough wafers for the number of people in church, did we remember all the announcements, and on and on).  People in both categories consume church in equal amounts, but the buzz behind the experiences may be different.

As someone who falls in that latter category, I have been especially grateful for Lent this year.  Our staff worked really hard to have all the liturgy planning completed early this year.  That is a fantastic feat, but it also means this winter has been extremely busy and detail-filled.  Even the start of Lent was chaotic.  On Shrove Tuesday, you are eating and merrymaking, and less than 24 hours later, you are spreading ash on people’s foreheads and making sure they have a meaningful Ash Wednesday.  By that Sunday, you are chanting or saying the very long Great Litany on the first Sunday of Lent, and by that Monday, you take a gulp of air once you realize you have done it – Lent has begun.

What all that preplanning has meant for me this year is that gulp of air is an invitation to trust the planning and to now live into Lent.  Instead of my head being abuzz with details, now I can sit down and clear out space to be with God – to do a meaningful assessment of my relationships with God, self, and neighbor, and see what invitations arise about what in those relationships needs repentance, repair, or rejoicing.  In essence, I suppose I shift now to being a consumer of church for a time.  I get to do the prayer, fasting, and alms giving that Lent invites without all the intricacies that began the season.

I wonder where you are finding yourself at the beginning of this second week in Lent.  How are you creating spaces where the buzz of life, the swirl of life’s details, and the burdens of the everyday can be set aside to connect with God, self, and neighbor?  How are you finding meaningful ways to repent, repair, and rejoice?  I cannot wait to hear how this Lent is reigniting your faith journey!

Sermon – Mt. 6.1-6, 16-21, AW, YB, February 14, 2024

21 Wednesday Feb 2024

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This morning, I got a fun text from a friend.  “Happy Ash Valentine’s Day!” she exclaimed.  I have seen all sorts of humor about the confluence of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday this year.  From questions about whether the clergy might be making the sign of a heart instead of the sign of a cross with our ashes tonight (sorry to disappoint those of you who were hoping that wasn’t just a rumor); to a meme from the National Church that says  “You can’t have VaLENTines with the LENT”; to actual candy conversation hearts that say “U R Dust,” “Ashes 2 Ashes,” or “Repent” instead of the traditional “Be Mine,” “True Love,” or “Kiss Me.”  Even my own daughter petulantly asked me, “Do we always have to celebrate Ash Wednesday on Valentine’s Day??”

Though the humor has been fun, what lurks under the surface is a discomfort with talking about death – especially on a day meant to be for celebrating the happiness of love.  But part of my job as a priest is to bring a certain sobriety about death to the world – no matter the day.  That is not to say that I am a party pooper or that I don’t like a good box of chocolates myself, but my role as a priest is to name the truth about what happens in death – earthly death and reunion with our Lord in eternal life.  In fact, the Church is one of the few places left in the world that openly and regularly talks about death.  In a world that encourages anti-aging treatments, who has desensitized us to death as we have moved away from an agrarian lifestyle, and whose medical advances have extended life much longer than before, we learn that death can be conquered and should be fought at all costs.

Pushing against this secular understanding of death, the Church gives us Ash Wednesday – even on Valentine’s Day.  The Church looks at our flailing efforts to preserve life and as we humbly come to the altar rail, rubs gritty ash on our heads and says, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return.”  There is no, “Don’t worry about death; you’ll be fine!”  Instead, those grave words, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return,” echo in our heads, haunting our thoughts.  Every year the Church reminds us of the finite amount of time we have on this earth – even on a day seems like we should be talking about love and life.

This is why I love Lent so much.  The Church dedicates forty days to a time where we cut to the chase and honestly assess our relationship with God.  We take a sobering look at our lives, a sobering look that could be reserved only for the time of death, and we discern what manifestation of sinfulness has pulled us away from God.  Our Prayer Book defines sin as “the seeking of our own will instead of the will of God, thus distorting our relationship with God, with other people, and with all creation.”[i]  Lent is the season when we focus on repentance from our sin – not just a feeling guilty about our sinfulness, but eagerly seeking ways to amend those relationships and turn back toward resurrection living.  What most people get only at the time of death, we are given every year at the time of Lent:  a time of sobering realignment. 

This is why we get Matthew’s gospel lesson on Ash Wednesday.  As we begin our sobering Lenten journey, the gospel lesson names disciplines and practices that can help us along the way.  Jesus names those ancient practices that have brought people back to God for ages – giving alms, praying, and fasting.  Each one of these practices has ways of bringing us closer to God by shaking up our normal routines.  Of course, any Lenten practice can have the same effect.  Giving up caffeine, reading a daily devotional, or reconnecting with nature are equally valid ways to shake up our routines enough to notice the ways in which we have become more self-centered than God-centered.  Although Jesus names the disciplines of alms giving, prayer, and fasting, the actual discipline itself is not the issue for Jesus.  The issue is our intentions in our practice. 

This is why we hear Jesus labeling so many people as hypocrites in our gospel lesson today.  Jesus is less concerned about what disciplines we assume and is more concerned about the authenticity behind those disciplines.  Jesus is not arguing that private acts are authentic and public ones are inauthentic by nature.  What matters is the desire and motivation behind these practices.  We have all seen this in action.  One of my favorite comediennes jokes about this very behavior in one of her shows.  She talks about how people sometimes use prayer requests as a means of gossip.  In one of her jokes, she has the gossiper of the church inviting people into a prayer circle so that they can pray for someone in the church who just got pregnant, even though the news was supposed to be private.  We all know the kind of hypocritical behavior Jesus is addressing.  This kind of behavior will never get us to the sobriety we need to right our relationship with God and others.

Of course, any kind of practice we take up this Lent can be corrupted.  The giving up of a particular kind of food can be more for weight loss than a connection to God.  The taking up of a volunteer activity can be to fulfill a requirement for something else.  Whatever we do this Lent, that deprivation or incorporation is meant to help us restore our relationship with God, other people, and all creation.  So, when we give up a food, instead of glorying in the fact that we lost a few pounds, we can see how that food has become an emotional crutch that keeps us from leaning on God and others.  When we take on a new prayer routine, we slowly begin to see how little time we give to God in our daily lives.  Whatever our practice, Jesus is concerned that authenticity be at the heart, so that we can more readily prepare for Good Friday and Easter.[ii] 

And so, in order to shake us out of our self-centered, sinful, distant ways, especially on a day for love, Ash Wednesday gives us death.  Ash Wednesday grittily, messily, publicly reminds us of our death, and then leaves us marked so that we can humbly enter a Lenten reconnection with God.  Ash Wednesday throws death in our faces so that we can wake up in a world that would have us keep striving for longevity of earthly life or superficial happiness instead of striving for intimacy with God here and now.  This Ash Wednesday, our ashes are the outward reminder of the sobering journey we now begin, because only when we consider our own death can we begin to see the resurrection glory that awaits us at Easter.  My prayer is that our journey this Lent is not one of painful guilt or loveless deprivation, but instead one of glorious reconnection with our creator, redeemer, and sustainer.  Amen.      

[i] BCP, 848.

[ii] Lori Brandt Hale, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 24.

On Ashes, Valentines, and Ultimate Things…

14 Wednesday Feb 2024

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Photo credit: https://abidingpresence.net/newsfeed/2018/2/8/holiday-mashup

“Happy Ash Valentine’s Day!” my friend wrote this morning.  At first the greeting made me chuckle, especially given the number of grimaces and eye rolls I have received this year about how the Church has to celebrate Ash Wednesday on a day that is supposed to be about love.  Truth be told, I am not even sure how many faithful will even come to church tonight instead of going out to dinner or staying in for a cozy night with loved ones. 

But what I loved about that greeting today was how it married the two notions:  that you can celebrate love and death all at the same time.  In the same way that the Church soberly says, “Remember you are dust and to dust you shall return,” the secular world, despite the obvious consumerism of the day, uses this day to soberly say, “No really.  I love you:  I love you my friend, I love you my co-worker, I love you my classmate, and I love you, my beloved.”  These two days, at their root, are meant to talk about ultimate things:  love and death.  And as a priest, when I walk individuals and families toward death, there is nothing but love hovering around.

I wonder if the confluence of Ash Valentine’s Day might be an invitation for us this Lent.  How might you use these next forty day to meditate and act on those things of ultimate significance?  How are tending your relationship with God in a way that acknowledges that relationship’s ultimate significance?  How are you loving your neighbor in a way that honors the ultimate significance of their dignity?  How are you caring for yourself in a way that shows the ultimate significance of your identity as a child of God?  I don’t know if you need some silly candy conversation hearts that remind you that you are dust – or if you need ones that remind you that you are truly loved.  Either way, I hope this Ash Valentine’s Day is a day you can enter into Lent with significance, remembering you are loved. 

Sermon – Matthew 2.1-12, EPD, YB, January 7, 2024

14 Wednesday Feb 2024

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When you are preparing for ordination, you get asked lots of “big picture” questions:  Who is Jesus to you?  Why do you think you need to be a priest to live out your call?  Where do you see God in your daily life?  Fortunately, or not, those are not really questions we ask each other in our everyday lives.  We sort of settle into a comfort zone with our faith, hoping that just being in church, or maybe being in a study group, or doing some sort of devotional practice will help us grow in faith.  We likely feel connected to God, but we may not regularly engage in the rigorous questioning of our faith.

Our gospel lesson today opens up for us how easily we can miss the activity of God if we aren’t paying attention.  Today we celebrate the feast of the Epiphany – the revelation of Jesus’ identity as the Messiah through the journey of the Magi.  But before we get to those cool, and slightly odd gifts, we learn a lot about the context of Jesus’ arrival.  First, we are told about King Herod – a man desperate to hold on to power by whatever means possible.  Who, when hearing a child has been born, a tiny little baby – who might, one day – threaten his power, is terrified.  And so, Herod goes to the scholars to confirm where this threat is.  Then, he proceeds to meet with the Magi in secret, pretending that he too wants to honor this new leader (as if that would ever be something a paranoid, power-hungry leader would do), and schemes to make sure he can find this threat through the Magi.  And we learn, well after this passage, that his terror is so strong that he kills a whole generation of male children to ensure this supposed future king cannot threaten his power.  Herod is so obsessed with power, he is blind to the extraordinary thing happening in front of him.[i]

Then we are told about the people of faith.  We are told that the Magi’s news terrifies all of Jerusalem too.  For a people of faith who were eagerly awaiting a Messiah, we now see how the system of oppression and fear that Herod has created has paralyzed them.  Though a Messiah would free them, they only know that in their day-to-day life, any threat to Herod means havoc and suffering in their lives.  Even the Biblical Scholars of Herod’s day miss the movement of God.  They very clearly state that the Messiah is to be born in Bethlehem.  One would think that even if strangers tell you the Messiah has come, your scholarly training might make you curious enough to follow the Magi and see if a revolution is coming.  But even their academic training does not embolden them for action.[ii]

Instead, strangers to faith – the “unchurched” as we might call them today – are the ones able to point to God.  These are people who study.  These are people who do not just bury themselves in books, but also keenly pay attention to the world around them.  These are people courageous enough to confirm their conclusions – even if confirmation means traveling quite far.  These are people willing to ask for directions, open to help to understand their suspicions.  These are people capable of great joy, gratitude, and reverence for something that is not even a part of their sense of identity.  And they are vigilant and attentive, willing to keep responding upon further dreams and insight, going another way to their home.[iii]

The good news for us today is that even when we are overwhelmed by fear, even when we are stuck in our faith life, even when we have the truth in our hands but are missing the living Lord, God will find ways to break through the mess of life and break into our lives.  As one scholars says, “Just as the powers that be try and fail to prevent the resurrection, so they try and fail to prevent the birth of God’s child.  God’s purposes cannot be thwarted; God’s purposes will prevail.”[iv]  If, then, God appears anyway, our invitation is to open our hearts, minds, and lives to receptivity to that presence.  Maybe that happens in your daily spiritual practices of prayer, journaling, or study.  Maybe that happens by surrounding yourself with people – churchy types or those foreign to the faith – who are already attuned to God and can help you see the movement of the Spirit in your own life.  Or maybe that happens simply by committing not just to being in church regularly, but being fully present when you are here, cultivating the practice of openness to Jesus.  The promise of accepting that invitation is a journey of adventure, not unlike the Magi – full of learning, joy, and wonder.  Come join the great pilgrimage!

[i] William R. Herzog, II, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 215.

[ii] James C. Howell, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 214.

[iii] William V. Arnold, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 1 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 212, 214.

[iv] Herzog, 217.

On Finding Our Way to Reconciliation…

03 Wednesday Jan 2024

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Photo credit: https://orionmagazine.org/article/this-land-was-made/

This past week, my family was able to visit The Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama.  The museum artfully and comprehensively presents the “history of the destructive violence that shaped our nation, from the slave trade, to the era of Jim Crow and racial terror lynchings, to our current mass incarceration crisis.”  We have made a point as a family to visit various museums focusing on civil rights, but this museum was the first to tie those four actions in history (slavery, segregation, lynchings, and modern incarceration) so intentionally, powerfully, and succinctly. 

One of the more moving sections for our family was a wall of jars of dirt, of varying colored soil.  As we moved closer, we learned the story of the project through the Equal Justice Initiative.  Family members, researchers, and volunteers worked have worked together to trace every known lynching, visit the site, collect dirt in a large jar, and then label the jar with the name of the victim, the date, and the location of the lynching.  Something about the varying colors of soil from around our country, and the sheer volume of jars was mesmerizing – as though you could see the variation in the victims’ stories, while being reminded of the ways the earth bears witness to the sins of her inhabitants.

As we left the museum, we soberly began talking about impact the museum had on us and what we might like to do differently to be a part of breaking the cycle of violence in our own day.  Inspired by leaders in the closing “Reflection Room,” we realized we all could do something – in our way, in our own place, in our own time.  As a parent, part of my work is exposing my children to the awfulness of our humanity that we do not always discuss – especially recognizing the inherent privilege we have to determine when and how our children know this part of our nation’s story.   But I especially appreciated the invitation to begin wondering where God was uniquely inviting each of us to play a part in the shaping of the future.

I often say the work of racial reconciliation can never be “done” or completed.  Racial reconciliation is lifelong work for us as a country.  But sometimes I worry that the reality that we could never “accomplish” racial reconciliation creates a disincentive to even try – to do anything because it feels so very big.  As we begin a new year, and as we add many resolutions to our plans for 2024, I invite you to pick just one thing you can do to be a part of work of reconciliation – in your own way, your own place, your own time.  God and God’s created order have shown us vividly how far we have to go.  Together, we can find our own place in the history of reconciliation. 

Sermon – Luke 2.1-20, CE, YB, December 24, 2023

03 Wednesday Jan 2024

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Sometimes on Christmas Eve, we hear a bunch of strange words.  And instead of paying too much attention to them, our minds simply get cued that Christmas has begun.  But those funny words [that Chloe read so beautifully] – of Emperors, registrations, censuses, some guy named Quirinius, a bunch of town names, something about the line of David, and of a pregnant woman who isn’t quite yet married – all those words matter.  They matter because they set the stage for the birth of the Christ Child.  We often think of that birth as this simplified, sacred moment, where everything gets really still.  We’ll even sing Silent Night tonight.  But nothing about that night was remotely silent.  Joseph and a very pregnant Mary have journeyed over 90 miles[i] by donkey and foot.  The Emperor has created political chaos by forcing people from their residences to their ancestral homes – all likely in an effort to extort more money from strained peoples.  Into that upheaval and manipulation, we find the Bread of Life being born in the town, Bethlehem, whose name means House of Bread, in a bed that was literally used to feed. 

This year, I am especially grateful for the reminder that Jesus was born into the chaos of political manipulation, suffering, and tension.  Over the last many weeks, we have all been watching as the Holy Land has yet again fallen into chaos – as leaders fight over land, disregard human dignity, and desecrate all that is holy.  The images have been horrific:  from children standing in long lines with makeshift bowls hoping for enough soup to stave off starvation for themselves and maybe a little for their parents; to hospitals and other places that should be safe zones being decimated; to the Lutheran Church in Bethlehem whose creche this year placed the baby Jesus in a pile of rubble.[ii]  And although we associate Christmas with shiny lights, joyous songs, and abundant food and blessings, the reality of that first Christmas was much more similar to Christmas in the Holy Land this year.

Just this week, I read that Christmas in Bethlehem is cancelled – the very place that welcomed Jesus into the manger has once again had to close its doors to the Holy Family.  As Sophia Lee reports, “Typically, Bethlehem—a Palestinian city of about 30,000 people in the Israeli-occupied West Bank—is jammed with more than 3 million visitors coming from all over the world to celebrate the birth of the Messiah.  Marching bands and carol singers and dancers and fireworks would fill the city with loud cheer and festive energy.  Thousands would pack the Church of the Nativity, golden lights would twinkle across Star Street, and a giant tree with a ruby star would illuminate Manger Square.  Instead, the streets are dark and hushed.”  Christian leaders in Bethlehem report, “It will be a silent night this Christmas—but it’ll still be a holy night… Stripping Christmas of all its extraneous decorations and Western traditions,” they say, “will help them focus on the true meaning of Christmas.”  One pastor explained, “…if you look at the real story of Christmas, it was a story of pure hardship.  But God didn’t leave Mary and Joseph.  And they didn’t leave God.”[iii]

For weeks, I have been feeling like we would have to forego everything good and holy about Christmas – that celebrating this Christmas just did not feel appropriate or respectful of the devastation in the very land we are celebrating.  But the clergy of the Holy Land are paving the way to our Christmas celebrations this year.  Truth be told, Christmas was never about shiny lights, boisterous parties, and lots of presents.  Christmas was and always has been about the miracle of the incarnation – God taking on human form in order to bring us redemption and salvation.  And when God does something, God never does that something half-way.  If God was going to become human, God was going to become incarnate in super fleshy ways – not in shiny, idealized human ways, but in raw, earthy, messy ways.  Jesus came among us – not to the polished versions of ourselves we present to the outside world, but to the real, gritty versions of ourselves who actually need an incarnate God.  And I cannot think of better news than that.  This Christmas, in the midst of censuses, registrations, and funnily named places; in the midst of bombings, bloodshed, and loss; in the midst of anxiety, loneliness, and dissatisfaction, Jesus comes among us.  Jesus does not leave Mary and Joseph.  Jesus does not leave Palestinian or Jew.  Jesus does not leave you or me.  And that is good news for a merry Christmas.  Amen.     

[i] Timothy L. Adkins-Jones, “Commentary on Luke 2:1-14 [15-20],” December 24, 2023, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/christmas-eve-nativity-of-our-lord/commentary-on-luke-21-14-15-20-24 on December 20, 2023.

[ii] As found at https://www.facebook.com/christmaslutheranchurch on December 21, 2023.

[iii] Sophia Lee, “Bethlehem Cancels Christmas, But Local Pastors Still Expect a Holy Night,” Christianity Today, December 20, 2023, as found at https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2023/december/bethlehem-cancel-christmas-christian-pastors-church-nativit.html on December 21, 2023.

On Children, Questions, and Dignity…

06 Wednesday Dec 2023

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Photo credit: https://www.adl.org/resources/tools-and-strategies/respecting-dignity-words

We have been having lots of “big” conversations around our house the last couple of weeks.  The first happened when my younger child and I went to shop for our Angel Tree gifts – an annual tradition from our church and the Salvation Army.  Our girls tend to prefer to choose someone their age – perhaps because they feel more equipped to imagine what someone their age wants, or because it helps them feel a sense of camaraderie.  This year, the nine-year old we selected ended up being quite different from the nine-year old in our family.  Though the toys she wanted were familiar, the size of clothing needed made it obvious that the two girls could not be more different.  So, in the middle of a store, I found myself having a deep conversation about genetics, systems of poverty, and the blessed nature of all creation.

Later, the conversation turned heavy again.  Something came across the same nine-year old’s radar about Israel and Palestine, and the barrage of questions were endless and increasingly difficult.  We started with why they were fighting, talked about what each side had done, and what the impact of this war has been.  Eventually we got into the murky waters of the religious backgrounds of the warring sides – careful to talk about the interconnectedness of the Abrahamic faiths.  But then came the gut-punch question, “So, who do we want to win?”  Talking about war and peace, death and destruction, and the biblical complicatedness of the Holy Land was not exactly the conversation I was expecting between school, dinner, and various sports practices.

One of the disadvantages of being a “grown up” is we often think we have things figured out:  capable of complicated thought, educated and experienced, we have seen enough of life to understand its complexities and make judgments based on our learnings.  It is one of the many reasons why I am so grateful for the children in our lives – both my own, but also our community’s children.  As part of their village, our work is to responsibly help them see the complicated, often sinful, nature of humanity, and help them love humanity in all its complexity.  In essence, children help us see why one of the main promises in our baptismal covenant is we will respect the dignity of every human being.

As we bustle around the Advent season, tempted to be too busy to handle anything other than our massive to-do lists, I invite you to slow down.  When we run so fast and when our minds are so occupied, we miss the invitations to respect the dignity of every human being:  from our neighbors impacted by poverty, to the frazzled parent just trying to get their children to school, to the person suffering within their body, to the innocent bystanders of war.  Scripture tells us that each person, when they are at their best or their worst, their strongest or their weakest, their most successful or their most failing, are made in the image of God.  Whether we like them or not, Jesus asks us to respect the dignity of that creation every day.  How might you better respect the dignity of the humans around you today?