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Sermon – Philippians 1.3-11, A2, YC, December 6, 2015

11 Friday Dec 2015

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This sermon was given on the occasion of our Annual Meeting.

My dearest St. Margaret’s, “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.  I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.  It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me…For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus.”

If ever I were to write a love letter to St. Margaret’s, I would steal these words from Paul to the Philippians.  You see, Paul saw in the Philippians what I see in you:  a community of faith alive with the Holy Spirit, sharing the Good News of Christ Jesus in our community.  A little over four years ago, I became your rector.  You were bruised and battered, having not only survived a tumultuous relationship with your last rector, but also a strained relationship with an interim, as well as the absence of consistent leadership for over two years through the limits of a supply priest.  Having had years of struggle, I quickly came to realize that St. Margaret’s had some baggage.  But St. Margaret’s also had a sense of tenacity, determination, and a deep-rooted joy that could not be stifled.  You see, as Paul writes, I could see that over fifty years ago, “the one who began a good work among you [would] bring [that good work] to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.”  I knew God was not done with us yet.

And so, over time, I came to love each of you:  not the dreamy romantic love of love birds, but the kind of love that family has for each other.  That is what people usually describe as being so wonderful about St. Margaret’s:  that we are like family.  Now when I first heard that description, I got a little nervous.  I have served at too many funerals and weddings to know that every family has some drama.  Every family has a loud Uncle Carl, crazy Aunt Bessie, or overbearing Grandma Jones.  Every family has experienced sibling drama or tensions between parent and child.  Describing St. Margaret’s as being like a family made me wary.  I began to wonder who the loud uncle, the crazy aunt, or the overbearing grandma were in this community.  But over the years, I began to understand more fully why the description of St. Margaret’s as family works so well.  Don’t get me wrong, we have our loud uncles, crazy aunts, and overbearing grandmas – though I will never tell you who they are!  But like a family, we know each other.  We know each other’s foibles, quirks, and tendencies.  We know each other’s hurts, failures, and embarrassing moments.  We even know how to predict the reactions of each other to any given situation.  But also like family, we love each other anyway.  We love each other in the way that loving mothers, protective fathers, supporting sisters, and encouraging brothers can.  We love each other not despite our weaknesses but because of those weaknesses.  In fact, no matter how much we might annoy each other at times, those foibles, quirks, and tendencies are what we have come to love about one another.  In essence, we have come to see each other with the loving eyes that Christ has for each of us.  We have come to love like Paul.[i]  Somewhere deep in our hearts, we too pray, “I thank my God every time I remember you, constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you.”

Paul gushes about the Philippians today:  about how much he loves them, how proud he is of their work to spread the Good News, and how he sees Christ moving and acting among them for good.  But Paul’s letter is not simply a letter of affirmation – a love letter for the Philippians to put under their pillows and pull out when they are feeling low.  Paul’s letter is more.  Paul’s letter comes with a charge.  “And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.”  Paul does not want the Philippians to keep this love to themselves.  He wants them to let their love overflow into action.[ii]

The more and more I read Paul’s charge this week, the more and more I began to see the mission of St. Margaret’s in his words.[iii]  Several years ago, St. Margaret’s took up a mantra.  We want to be a community of faith seeking Christ, serving Christ, and sharing Christ in our community and beyond.  First, we want to be a community seeking Christ – a community committed to learning more about this God we follow, and deepening our journey with Christ.  As Paul says, we want to build up knowledge and full insight to help us determine what is best.  And so that is a part of our work here.  We are teaching our children how to walk in the way of Christ.  We are studying God’s word and challenging one another to grow through prayer, reading, and reflection.  We are engaging in meaningful worship that inspires and delights us, and helps us to connect with our God.  We are a community of faith seeking Christ.

We are also a community of faith serving Christ.  As Paul says, we are letting our love overflow.  St. Margaret’s is a community that cares about others – not just those inside the doors, but outside the doors too.  I see that love in the ways that wallets open as soon as we learn of a need in our community.  I see that love when you think of others when grocery shopping for yourselves, adding in a few extra cans or boxes for people you have never met.  I see that love when we spread peanut butter and scoop jelly, praying that the recipient of that sandwich might know the love of Christ that you have known and be encouraged in their struggle.  Our love overflows into vegetable gardens, into grief support groups, and into the hearts and minds of those who long for love.  We are a community of faith serving Christ.

We are also a community of faith sharing Christ.  As Paul says, we are to let our love overflow so that it might produce a harvest.  What I have loved about this community is that although we are nervous about sharing the Good News – of evangelizing – we share the Good News anyway.  When you gush with friends about the meaningful thing that happened at church, when you tell a stranger about how your church is doing good work, or when you serve as an example of Christ-like love in the world, you are sharing the Good News.  We do that when we walk in the parade, we do that when we put our name on baseball jerseys, and we do that when we wear our St. Margaret’s shirts to the gym, grocery store, or shopping mall.  We are a community of faith sharing Christ.

We are a community of faith seeking Christ, serving Christ, and sharing Christ because the love, joy, and acceptance we have found inside these walls is not just for us.  Fifty-two years ago, God began a good work in us.  God planted the seeds of righteousness in this community, and today we are invited to harvest that work.  And Paul assures us, as he assured the Philippians years ago, that God will bring to completion the good work began in us.  All we have to do is let our love overflow – overflow from us, overflow from our beautiful, complicated relationships with one another, and overflow from our community out into the world.  So tuck that love letter under your pillow when you need affirmation and a reminder that you are doing the good work that God calls you to do.  But also pull out that love letter when you feel weary – when you need to be inspired to get back out there, to seek Christ, serve Christ, and share Christ.  God loves you with a deep affection; and God wants your love to overflow to others more and more.  Amen.

[i] Leander E. Keck, ed., New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 11 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000), 484.

[ii] Philip E. Campbell, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, vol. 1 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 39.

[iii] Edward Pillar, “Commentary on Philippians 1.3-11,” December 6, 2015 as found at  http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2695 on December 3, 2015.

Sermon – Ephesians 4.1-16, 2 Samuel 11.26-12.13a, P13, YB, August 2, 2015

05 Wednesday Aug 2015

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A short film circulated about a year ago[i] about the role of all religions to protect women.  The film starts out with a young woman, walking along a dirt road with books in her arms.  We presume she is walking to school to further her education.  She walks past two young men who covetously watch her pass by.  The viewer can surmise what is going to happen next.  The two men get up from the wall and start to follow her.  The young woman glances over her shoulder and sees the men following.  She speeds up, but they start running, managing to pass her, and block her way.  She comes up short and starts to back up, calculating how she is going to get away from these two men to safety.

The anxiety and dread of the young woman in that film has reminded me of Bathsheba these past two weeks.  Most of us are familiar with the David and Bathsheba story.  When we started hearing David’s story this summer, we knew this part was coming.  The story starts out in a totally different place.  When we first meet David, he is an unsuspecting, seemingly innocent, wholesome boy.  We watch David bravely take on the giant Goliath with just a bag of stones.  He is the loving friend of Jonathan and Michal, despite the fact that their father Saul tries repeatedly to kill him out of jealousy.  And when David finally becomes king, he joyously dances before God.  David has been towing the “blessed” line for most of the summer.

But these last two weeks, the story changes.  You see, David has gotten complacent and a bit self-important.  When all the other kings are going out to battle, David stays behind, letting others do his fighting.  When the rest of the kingdom is busy working or tending to life, David is lounging around the palace.  That’s where he first spies Bathsheba.  David should not have been there, and he certainly should not have let his eyes linger on a bathing married woman.  And then something awful takes over David.  He sends his men to take Bathsheba, and he sleeps with her.  Though the text never says so, we know the act must be against Bathsheba’s will, given the “enormous power differential between the violator and the violated, the intuitional background in which the crime [is] committed, and the cunning with which it [is] executed.”[ii]  Later, when Bathsheba becomes pregnant, David deepens his shame by trying to trick Bathsheba’s husband to sleep with her so that he will think the baby is his.  When that doesn’t work, David sends him to battle, having him killed in the line of fire.

I know most of us know this story.  Many of us think of this story as David’s little indiscretion.  But for some reason, reading this story this year has enraged me.  I don’t know if I am angered because I have been hearing too many stories lately about the way we treat women.  Or maybe I am angered because I expect more from David – this king who is the ancestor of our Messiah.  Or maybe I am just outraged by one more example of the powerful overpowering the powerless – taking whatever they want, ruining lives along the way.  This story is about more than an indiscretion.  This story is about a violation of the created order – a violation of the body of God.

Today, as Paul is teaching the Ephesians, he holds them to a higher standard.  Paul says, “I…beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”  Paul says we are one body.  This calling that we are to live worthily is not the vocation we have.[iii]  The calling Paul is talking about is the calling we have as Christians to be one body in Christ – of being a loving, caring, humble body in the Lord.  Nothing David does today reflects the dignity of every human being or the one body in the Lord.  In fact, David does not even seem to see the humanity in Bathsheba or her husband, Uriah.

I think why I am so angry at David is because I am angry with myself.  As much as I want to chastise and critique David, I know that my judgment of him comes out of deep sense of my own brokenness.  David makes me acutely aware of my own failings to see the dignity of every person, to honor the ways in which we are all a part of the body of Christ.  I have become aware of my own complicity with sin as the campaign “Black Lives Matter,” has arisen over the past few years.  As more and more cases of the oppression black men and women have arisen in our country, and as more and more stories have been told about the separate reality these men and women experience from white men and women, I have been feeling more and more convicted.  If we are all one body, when black lives are denigrated, all of our lives are denigrated.  When parts of our body are shamed, abused, or live in the shadow of fear, the rest of our body is not whole.  When I participate in that abuse, whether consciously or unconsciously, I am a part of that sinful denigration of our collective body.

The same was true for Bathsheba.  When Bathsheba is taken by David, the whole body of God is denigrated.  When David sins, everyone loses favor.  And the only way to correct for sin is repentance.  The initiator of repentance today is not David, but Nathan.  Now Nathan is a smart prophet.[iv]  He does not storm into the palace, wagging his finger at David.  No, he tells a story.  Nathan tells a story of a poor man and his beloved sheep.  Of course, David is drawn in by the story.  As a former shepherd himself, he knows the beloved relationships that can happen with animals for which you care.  And so when David hears of a rich man taking that sole, beloved animal, David is outraged, and proclaims that justice must prevail.  Without hesitation, Nathan now is able to quietly, but pointedly say to David, “You are the man!”  You see, Nathan remembers his calling.  He remembers the way that God taught us to live as a community of faith – that when one of our members sins, we are all denigrated by that sin.  What David would hide, and cover, Nathan exposes and corrects.

In that short film of the two men pursuing the young woman, a turn happens.  As the woman starts to slowly back up, another man is passing by.  He sees what is happening and he quickly runs over to stand between the young woman and the two men.  The two men threaten him, but he stands firm.  A Sikh man in a turban also sees what is happening and joins the protesting man, grabbing his hand and joining him in front of the woman.  A Muslim man comes along and joins hands with the men too.  Then a Christian man joins the other men.  Slowly, eight men join hands together, forming a circle of protection around the woman.  The two pursuing men back away and retreat.  A smile crosses the young woman’s face, and she lifts her head a little higher.

What this short film captures is the power of the body acting as the body.  When Nathan pronounces judgment on David, Nathan is participating in holding up the health of the whole body.  The story at this point could have gone a different way.  Nathan could have been tossed aside, and David could have kept up his deception.  But David’s last words are simple and profound.  “I have sinned against the Lord.”  Truthfully, David sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah.  But what David understands even more profoundly is that when David sins against members of the body, David sins indirectly against the Lord.[v]  We hear his fuller confession in the words of the Psalm we read today.[vi]  But what David’s words teach us is that healing and wholeness are possible.  David does not just say “I am sorry,” but David repents – or as the Hebrew word connotes, David changes his way, and returns to the Lord.  David moves back toward health and wholeness.

The redemption in David’s story for me comes not through David, but through Nathan.  Like those men in that video, Nathan stands up for those without power.  When that action happens, the body is able to move toward wholeness.  When Paul tells us to remember our calling today, Paul is talking about all the parts of us.  For those times when we are Davids, those times when we are pushed to be Nathans, and for those times when we are the Bathshebas and Uriahs, Paul’s words are simple.  “I…beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called….  There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.”  There is one body.  I beg you:  lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called.  Amen.

[i] “Every Religion Protects Women, Protecting Women Is Religion,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D51_GQqVfSk, July 21, 2014, as found on July 30, 2015.

[ii] Eleazar S. Fernandez, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays, Yr. B (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 9.

[iii] N. T. Wright, Paul for Everyone:  The Prison Letters (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2004), 43.

[iv] Lloyd H. Steffan, “On Honesty and Self-Deception:  ‘You Are the Man’,” Christian Century, vol. 104, no. 14, April 29, 1987, 405.

[v] Carol J. Dempsey, OP, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays, Yr. B (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 10.

[vi] Kathleen A. Robertson Farmer, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays, Yr. B (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 6.

Sermon – Philippians 2.1-13, P21, YA, September 28, 2014

01 Wednesday Oct 2014

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Humility has always been one of the trickiest virtues for me.  I actually see myself as a pretty humble person, mainly because life has deflated my ego enough times that I learned pretty quickly to be humble.  In high school I was at the top of my class, and I remember how my classmates all thought I was pretty smart.  But when I got to college, everyone else had been at the top of their class too – and quite frankly, the workload was crazy hard.  Any ego I had started to build up in high school was immediately brought down to size.  Or, as I like to tell the acolytes, in one of my first Sundays as an ordained priest, I was serving the chalice.  We missed a latecomer, so I grabbed the chalice and rushed around the altar to serve them.  In my rushing, my elbow hit the side of the altar, and the wine splashed all over the stone floor.  The gasp from the choir in the chancel was audible.  For someone who holds the sacredness of liturgy dear, I was mortified; but there was nothing I could do.  So humility has never really been an issue for me.  But the weird thing about humility is owning the virtue.  As soon as you declare, “I am a pretty humble person,” haven’t you just negated your humility by bragging about your humility?

Of course, the quest for humility can go to the other extreme as well.  I have a friend who went through a phase of being a pretty fanatical Christian.  At some points I found talking with him to be so frustrating that I avoided him altogether.  He was so obsessed with being a humble Christian that you could never pay him a compliment.  I might say something simple like, “I’m so proud of how well you are doing in school.”  And his immediate retort would be, “Oh, well I had nothing to do with that.  All the credit belongs to God.”  There really is no good response to a retort like that without sounding sarcastic or rude.

But humility is what our epistle lesson today demands.  Paul addresses the community at Philippi with a letter from prison.  Worried that the community of Philippi stay on the right track, Paul tells them, “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves.  Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interest of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus.”  In three simple sentences, Paul’s instructions get harder and harder.  First, Paul tells the community not to let their egos get too big.  Paul wants the community to right-size itself by looking at their intentions and attitudes.  Second, Paul tells the community not just to be humble, but to put the needs of others above their own needs.  Here Paul is commanding the community not just to correct their attitudes, but to reorient their actions as well, focusing on others before themselves.  Finally, as if the other two were not hard enough, Paul takes his instructions one step further and tells the community to have the same mind as Christ Jesus.  Paul wants the community to be a humble as the man who sacrificed his own existence for the sake of humanity.  The more I read Paul’s letter this week, the more I wondered whether my fanatical friend had not been rooting his whole life in the mandate presented here by Paul.  Maybe my friend’s annoying, over-the-top humility was actually what Paul was suggesting.

The challenge with trying to take on any spiritual discipline, like taking on the mind of Christ, or becoming more humble, is that we tend to fret so much over the discipline that we get lost in ourselves – which is, in fact, the very opposite of what Paul invites us to do today.  In focusing on our weaknesses or lack of humility, and trying to work our way into a more humble way of being, instead, we find ourselves alone, struggling with God, but separate from others who may actually be able to help us in our quest for humility.  The secret to mastering humility is not by focusing on the self, but instead by focusing on others.  One scholar describes this method by explaining, “One does not ‘self-empty’ by focusing upon oneself.  One is emptied of self to the degree one is overcome by the needs, pains, hopes, and desires of others.  When concern for others takes one utterly beyond self-interest, beyond obsessions with achievements and self-obsessing guilt over failures, beyond self, then one receives the comfort of an Easter ‘yes’ so overwhelming, unconditional, undeniable, and absolute that [the ‘yes’] is experienced as unfailing and forever – a yes more potent and enduring than any imaginable no.”[i]

When I did my year of AmeriCorps service, I arranged to clean and lock up the Episcopal Campus House in exchange for a free room in the back of the house.  Since AmeriCorps volunteers get a very modest living stipend, the free housing was a huge help.  But one day, at the end of a particularly physically grueling day of work, I was talking to one of the clients that the Food Bank served.  He lived in a group home and was trying to transition to independent housing.  We were talking about my housing situation and he marveled, “Man, I wish I could find a situation like that!”  Truthfully, I had taken my housing situation for granted – occasionally I even resented having to clean toilets and mop floors.  But after that conversation, every time I mopped those floors I remembered how incredibly lucky I was.  I needed that client to help me get to a place of humility and gratitude.

That realization is what Paul is hoping the community at Philippi will have as well.  Paul knows that setting aside the self is difficult.  That is why he pushes us to look at the needs of others.  Paul knew that when the community of faith began focusing on others, they would forget about themselves.  They would gain the perspective needed to help them on the journey toward humility.  And as the community turned more and more outward, they would be turning more and more toward the life of Christ – a life always oriented toward the other.  The work of building individual humility and having a mind like Christ only happens in the context of community.  The work cannot be done alone.

In 1974, poet Adrienne Rich was awarded the National Book Award in poetry, having beaten out fellow nominees Audre Lorde and Alice Walker.  When she gave her acceptance speech, she shocked the literary community.  She began, “We, Audre Lorde, Adrienne Rich, and Alice Walker, together accept this award in the name of all women whose voices have gone and still go unheard in a patriarchal world.”  The three women had sat down together before the event and written the statement.  No matter who won that night, this would be the statement of the winner.  When asked about the statement, they “said they believed that by supporting and giving to each other they could enrich each other’s lives and work more than by competing against each other.”[ii]  What these three poets did was refuse to play by the rules of the game.  Instead of accepting that there must be one winner, they declared that they had all won – despite what the award givers were proclaiming.

What these women did is what Paul was hoping the Church community would do.  By working together, these women resisted the temptation to lose their humility.  If any of them alone had won, they could have become puffed up with pride.  Conversely, if any of them alone had lost, they could have spiraled into the depths of self-doubt.  But together, they were able to claim a humble acknowledgement that God was working through each of them to do great things.  That is the true nature of humility – one found and expressed through community.  We are blessed to already have in place the kind of community that can support and encourage one another in the development of humility.  Our invitation is to trust this community enough to uplift us, to challenge us, and to help us grow.  We cannot face the journey alone; but luckily, we are not alone in the midst of this community.  Amen.

[i] William Greenway, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 114.

[ii] Entire story told by Mike Grave, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Year A, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 113.

Sermon – Romans 8.26-39, P12, YA, July 27, 2014

30 Wednesday Jul 2014

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These last few weeks of following the news have been rough.  As the situation in Palestine and Israel has deteriorated once again, I have listened as story after story of deaths by bombs has been reported.  Even hospitals, which would normally be left as safe havens, have been decimated – with doctors, nurses, and injured peoples killed.  Words keep getting thrown around like “justified,” and “terrorism,” and “power.”  But at the end of the day, people are being killed for the sake of safety and security.  As we imagine each Palestinian mother, father, and child dying, we hear the Spirit interceding with sighs too deep for words.

Then there is the Church in Mosul in Iraq.  As ISIS has moved in, they have demanded that all Christians either convert to Islam, pay a religious tax, or be executed.  As hundreds of Christians have chosen to flee, many have been robbed and abused.  Homes and places of worship are marked with the letter “N” for “Nazarene.”  Those labeled buildings are being destroyed or taken over by ISIS.  The Christian community that had been present for over 1600 years is almost completely gone now.  As we imagine Christians fleeing with only the clothes on their backs, we hear the Spirit interceding with sighs too deep for words.

Finally, much closer to home, children are crossing our own borders in waves.  Thousands and thousands of unaccompanied minors are fleeing violence, abuse, and poverty in the hopes of asylum in our country.  Just to have crossed the border means these children have already been through significant ordeals.  Without parents and sometimes without a word of English, they come in the hopes of safety and security.  While our governmental leaders and even some of us worry about long-term solutions and costs to our country, many religious communities are offering emergency food, shelter, clothing, and medicines.  As we imagine rooms filled with confused, scared, vulnerable children, we hear the Spirit interceding with sighs too deep for words.

There are many things about today’s portion of Paul’s letter to the Romans that I find confusing.  Paul says wonderful things like “…all things work together for good for those who love God,” and “If God is for us, who is against us?” and “Who will separate us from the love of Christ?”  And yet, could any of us utter any of these phrases to a Palestinian, a Christian in Mosul, or a Latino refugee child in Texas?  How can Paul admit that we have deep weaknesses, so strong that the Spirit intercedes for us with sighs too deep for words, and yet still believe that nothing can separate us from God?  Instead Paul’s words come off as pithy to those of us who also groan with the agony of this world, overwhelmed and feeling helpless in a world that bombards us with awful, terrible news of suffering and pain.  If God is for us, we are unsure that God’s team really can win.  We have seen too many things working together for evil to believe that all things work together for good.  And we in fact feel very separated from the love of Christ, especially at times like these.

Many years ago, while I was serving as a chaplain, I met a woman who had been ill for quite some time, and who was wondering whether death might be approaching.  We talked for a long time, and she finally admitted to me that she had stopped praying.  She had stopped praying because she no long knew what to say to God.  She had run out of words, and she was afraid to show any of the anger that was bubbling up inside of her to God for fear that God would abandon her.  She felt alone – isolated both from the world and from God – and that feeling left her bereft.  She could not even pick up the Bible anymore because of Psalms like the one we heard today that begins, “Give thanks to the LORD and call upon his Name…Sing to him, sing praises to him, and speak of all his marvelous works.”  Those words made her angry.  She did not want to give thanks to the LORD, and she resented the Psalms for telling her to do so.

Being a person of faith is not easy.  We often find ourselves in these conundrums.  How are we to trust in the LORD, stake our claim on God’s love, when much of our experiences run counter to the idea of God’s love conquering all or nothing being able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord?  When our lives have not turned out how we expected, when our loved ones suffer, or when the world seems to be doling out more hatred than our souls can bear, we find leaning on God’s love to be almost impossible.

And yet, that is Paul’s invitation today.  Paul takes our broken selves and heaps piles of love on top of us.  When we are weak, and we do not even know how to pray, Paul says that the Spirit helps us.  The Spirit knows our pain and suffering, and in fact, the Spirit too groans in pain and suffering – with sighs too deep for words.  The “Spirit’s groans are unspeakable words of intercession for those of us who groan in weakness.”[i]  Why does the Spirit think that God might hear?  Because God has made those same groans.  Every time God’s people broke their covenant with God, God groaned with sighs too deep for words.  As God’s son hung on a cross, God groaned in agony over his death.  God knows our groans because God groans too.  God groans when Christians are forced from their homes in Iraq.  God groans when God’s people kill one another in the most holy of lands.  God groans when we turn innocent children into political issues.

And yet, even in those darkest moments of groaning, God loves us.  Hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword cannot separate us from God’s love, Paul tells us.  “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” says Paul.  Paul, who had persecuted and murdered Christians earlier in his life, turns his life around and embraces love.  Paul who has seen and participated in the worst of life manages to see that the loving embrace of our God never left him; and then he shares that love with others.  He is thoroughly convinced.  Nothing.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Not even death, not even evil rulers, or awful abuses of power, or sinful ways, or wayward people of faith can separate us from the love of God.  Nothing.[ii]

As I have been following the news this week, I have begun to see God’s love percolating.  I listened to an interview with a Jewish teen who is studying in Israel right now.  The interviewer asked the teen how he felt about Israel’s invasion of Gaza, and though the teen initially stated that he supported Israel’s actions, as he talked his way through the complicated issue, he finally confessed that he simply did not want anyone else to have to die – on either side.  As violence continued in Mosul, I watched on Facebook as people changed their profile pictures to the symbol for “N.”  The explanations for the changes are simple.  “I too am a Nazarene.”  As politicians struggle to find the most economical, politically savvy way to handle the children seeking refuge in the United States, I have watched Christians of all stripes advocate for these children – from Catholics and Episcopalians to Evangelical Protestants and Southern Baptists, from Quakers and United Methodists to Unitarian Universalists and Jews.  Russell Moore, of the conservative Southern Baptist Convention was quoted as saying, “These children are made in the image of God, and we ought to respond to them with compassion, not with fear.”[iii]

As I visited with that woman in her hospital bed, we talked about the other Psalms: the ones that invoke God’s wrath and vengeance.  All of the anger and abandonment that she felt was also present in those songs to God.  She was not the first to rail against God.  And she would not be the last to rediscover God’s love for her.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Not hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword.  Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation.  Not bombs or evictions or refugees.  Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.  Amen.

[i] J.R. Daniel Kirk, “Commentary on Romans 8.26-39” as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx? commentary_id= 2152 on July 25, 2014.

[ii] David M. Greenhaw, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A., Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011), 282.

[iii] Michael Paulson, “U.S. Religious Leaders Embrace Cause of Immigrant Children,” as found at http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/24/us/us-religious-leaders-embrace-cause-of-immigrant-children.html on July 23, 2014.

Sermon – Romans 7.15-25a, P9, YA, July 6, 2014

09 Wednesday Jul 2014

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Today we are going to do something a little different.  I want you to grab a partner – maybe someone sitting beside you or someone sitting in the row in front of or behind you, and I want you to look at the tags in your shirts or dresses to see where they are made.  And when you are done, I want you to shout out the locations.

One of my favorite musical groups, Sweet Honey in the Rock, is an a cappella women’s group that sings spiritual and political songs.  One of their songs is called “Are My Hands Clean?”[i]  Here are the words:

 

I wear garments touched by hands from all over the world; 35% cotton, 65% polyester, the journey begins in Central America; In the cotton fields of El Salvador; In a province soaked in blood, Pesticide-sprayed workers toil in a broiling sun; Pulling cotton for two dollars a day.

Then we move on up to another rung—Cargill; A top-forty trading conglomerate, takes the cotton through the Panama Canal; Up the Eastern seaboard, coming to the US of A for the first time; In South Carolina; At the Burlington mills; Joins a shipment of polyester filament courtesy of the New Jersey petro-chemical mills of; Dupont.

Dupont strands of filament begin in the South American country of Venezuela; Where oil riggers bring up oil from the earth for six dollars a day; Then Exxon, largest oil company in the world; Upgrades the product in the country of Trinidad and Tobago; Then back into the Caribbean and Atlantic Seas; To the factories of Dupont; On the way to the Burlington mills; In South Carolina; To meet the cotton from the blood-soaked fields of El Salvador.

In South Carolina; Burlington factories hum with the business of weaving oil and cotton into miles of fabric; for Sears; Who takes this bounty back into the Caribbean Sea; Headed for Haiti this time—May she be one day soon free—; Far from the Port-au-Prince palace; Third world women toil doing piece work to Sears specifications; For three dollars a day my sisters make my blouse.

It leaves the third world for the last time; Coming back into the sea to be sealed in plastic for me; This third world sister; And I go to the Sears department store where I buy my blouse; On sale for 20% discount.

Are my hands clean?[ii]

 

The point of the song and the point of us thinking about where our clothes come from is that there is a lot more to our everyday living than we can ever imagine.  My shirt being made in Guatemala or the Dominican Republic is just a small piece of the story.  Many hands touch that shirt before I ever purchase the shirt – in fact, even the hands that sell me the shirt have a story.  Somewhere, and some times multiple somewheres, along the way our garments are a part of a bigger story – one that regularly involves injustice, oppression, and poverty.  And through our participation in the process, we become a part of that system of sin.

I remember when I worked for a non-profit that advocated for the people of Guatemala, a story had come out about the Gap and how they were using manufacturers that were what we would call “sweat shops.”  I remember telling my boss that I was thinking of no longer shopping at the Gap, and he asked me why?  I thought my reason would be obvious, but before I could elaborate, he explained that almost every clothing manufacturer was touched by the sinful industry of oppression and injustice.  And if not our clothes, then our food or personal care products could also be perpetrators.  The idea of boycotting one company was pointless to him because a boycott could only make the smallest of dents in an unjust world.

The despair that he created for me that day was like the despair that Paul has in our lesson from Romans today.  “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”  I know his words are a bit convoluted, but basically, Paul is articulating how hard doing the right thing is – even when we know the right thing to do, we cannot seem to do the right thing.  And that is assuming we know the right thing to do in the first place!

So what are we supposed to do in this messy world of sin, with our sinful participation in that world?  Well, the church invites us to confess.  Every week after we pray, before we partake of the holy, cleansing meal, we confess our sins – known and even those unknown to us (like those injustices caused by simply putting on a shirt today).  And we confess aloud together – so that we know that Mrs. Edith sins, just like Hunter sins, and just like I sin.  And we even admit together that not just our words and deeds are sinful – sometimes our thoughts are sinful too.  We admit that even though we bit our tongues this week, the sinful thought was still there, letting evil creep into our lives.

But after the confession, an incredible thing happens.  We are forgiven.  We are forgiven again, for the millionth time, and invited to the table as a reconciled community.  We are fed together, having fully acknowledged our sinfulness, and recognizing how we all have work to do.  Finally, we are sent out into the world:  to try a little better this week, to care a little more, to long for justice a little more, and to keep trying to seek and serve Christ in all persons.  Our worship and scripture tell us, “no,” our hands are not clean.  But we are blessed by the God who saves us, and we go forth into the world to keep trying.  Amen.

[i] Found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9sBRnVeUuI on July 3, 2014.

[ii] As found at http://collegeofsanmateo.edu/integrativelearning/learningcommunities/commons/James/AreMyHands Clean.pdf on July 3, 2014.

Sermon – Acts 16.9-15, E6, YC, May 5, 2013

10 Friday May 2013

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This Eastertide, I have been thinking a lot about evangelism.  The bishop asked us to have a conversation about our mission and evangelism efforts here in Plainview during Eastertide.  The Vestry just started reading a book about evangelism as a spiritual discipline.  And our Vestry retreat in April was about the tangible practices of evangelism we could employ.  For a topic that makes most Episcopalians very uncomfortable, evangelism seems to be everywhere I turn.  But as I was thinking about the theme of evangelism this Eastertide, I realized that the theme’s prominence makes quite a bit of sense.  Eastertide is sort of the “so what?” of the resurrection.  Throughout Eastertide, we are hearing the stories of the disciples’ reaction to the resurrection, and what life was like after this pivotal moment.  What better time to think about evangelism than while the disciples are doing just that – taking the Good News of Jesus’ resurrection and sharing that Good News with others.

What I appreciate then about our lesson from Acts today is that the practice of evangelism in biblical times was not exactly precise.  You would think that the book of Acts would tell the story of how after Jesus’ death the disciples knew exactly how to spread the Good News.  You would think after all those years with Jesus, the disciples had clear instructions for moving forward, and were able to draw up a structured evangelism plan.  But our stories from Acts this year have included nothing of the sort.  So far we have heard stories of a brutal persecutor of Christians being dramatically converted, of Peter realizing that Gentiles should also be included in the Christian community, and today we hear of this foreign woman of power coming to Christ.  I am pretty sure if the disciples sat down and planned their target audience for the Good News, Paul, Cornelius, and Lydia would not have been on their list.  And yet, this is the story of evangelism we hear during Eastertide: a story of unlikely and unexpected people hearing and responding to the word of God.

On the surface, this sounds like good news to us.  These stories of conversion give a sense of confidence that no matter with whom we share the story of Jesus, they will be converted.  But looking at the end of the story glosses over the actual experiences of those on the evangelism journey.  If you remember, when Paul is converted, and his eyes are scaled over, the Christian who goes to talk with him is scared to death.  God tells him to go to Paul, but that is little assurance when that instruction means walking into the lair of a nasty murderer of Christians.  And for Peter, his interaction with Cornelius means that he must surrender all that has been familiar to him – the necessity of circumcision and all that he has known as being central markers of faithfulness – and let go of that familiarity.  Even with this interaction between Paul and Lydia today, Paul must take on a long journey based on a few words in a dream, only to find not a Macedonian man who is asking for help, but a foreign woman.[i]

These stories during Eastertide only highlight our own anxieties about evangelism.  As modern Christians, we have a hard enough time sharing the Good News with our friends and family.  Religion is one of those primary topics to avoid at dinner parties.  At the slightest hint of discomfort from someone else, we immediately drop the topic, not wanting to drive away a friend or colleague.  We do not want to become known as some Jesus freak who everyone avoids at parties.  Quite frankly, there are even times when we feel uncomfortable even talking about our faith within Church.  How in the world could we ever then expect ourselves to be able to talk to those who are hostile, unchurched, or strangers to us?

Before I went to seminary, I participated in a group at my parish called EFM – Education for Ministry.  The program was a four-year program where a small group of people gathered and each year covered a different topic – Old Testament, New Testament, Church History, and Theology.  During one of the scripture years, I was traveling by plane alone and I was sorely behind in my scripture reading.  I carried a large study bible with me, and that trip I found that I had more interesting conversation than you could ever imagine.  I had a slightly uncomfortable conversation with a young evangelical male who started telling me about his conservative views on scripture.  I had a businessman ask me if I was a minister or theology student.  When I told him no, he seemed bewildered as to why I would be reading the Bible, and kept eyeing me suspiciously the rest of that flight.  I had a middle-aged woman start telling me about her church and Bible Studies she had enjoyed.  And of course, there were tons of people who just stared at me warily trying to figure out what my angle was.  You would think the lesson from my trip would be, “Take a Bible with you, and see what evangelism opportunities it creates.”  But to be honest, I found myself wanting to never carry a Bible with me again in an airport.

I think why we get so uncomfortable about evangelism is we imagine evangelism as knocking on the doors of strangers, presenting some uncomfortable script, and then having doors slammed in our faces.  But our lesson from Acts today shows us a different model.  Our lesson from Acts tells us is that yes, evangelism will entail going places that may be uncomfortable or interacting with people you would not expect.  Paul goes on a long journey expecting to meet a man and gets something quite different.  Lydia goes seeking a place to pray with her familiar girlfriends and hears something entirely new.  But evangelism is not just about the evangelizer and the evangelizee.  The other major actor is the Holy Spirit.  The text tells us that the Lord opened Lydia’s heart to listen eagerly to Paul.  Evangelism is the intersection between human faithfulness and divine guidance.  “Paul would not have been guided to this place at this moment, were he not first of all at God’s disposal, open to being guided, sensitively attuned to being steered in one direction and away from all others.  Lydia would not have arrived at this place or time, had she not first of all been a worshiper of God, a seeker already on her way.  Peter does his part and Lydia hers, but it is God who guides all things and works in and through all things, not just for good but for what would otherwise be impossible.”[ii]

What is so liberating about this understanding of evangelism is that even if we thought we had to or could do evangelism on our own, we realize today that our work of evangelism only happens with God.  The book our Vestry is reading says that “Evangelism is a spiritual practice of expressing gratitude for God’s goodness and grace.”[iii]  That does not sound so bad, does it?  A spiritual practice of expressing gratitude for God’s goodness and grace.  He does not define evangelism as saving souls or self-righteously driving away your friends.  He says that evangelism is about expressing gratitude for God’s goodness and grace.  Knowing that definition of evangelism and knowing from scripture that evangelism happens as a partnership between our faithfulness and God’s guidance makes the whole enterprise seem a lot less scary.

I want you to take a moment to think about the best vacation you ever had.  Think about all the reasons why the vacation was wonderful and why you enjoyed yourself.  Think about the happiness and peace that the vacation brought you and the warm smile that just recalling the trip brings to your face.  Imagine the enthusiasm in your voice as you share that story with someone else and the great conversation your sharing might evoke.  Now, take a moment to imagine the same experience with a conversation about your faith journey.  Think about the great joy you have had in your relationship with God.  Think about the happiness and peace you have at times found in God.  And now think about the enthusiasm in your voice as you share that story with someone else and the incredible conversation your sharing might evoke.  That is all that happens between Paul and Lydia.  That is all that God invites you to do today.  Because the Holy Spirit will take care of rest.  Amen.

[ii] Ronald Cole-Turner, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 476

[iii] David Gortner, Transforming Evangelism (New York: Church Publishing, 2008), 29.

Sermon – Philippians 3.17-4.1, L2, YC, February 24, 2013

25 Monday Feb 2013

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When a person is ordained as a priest, they make a series of vows.  One of the scariest ones for me was this question:  Will you do your best to pattern your life and the life of your family in accordance with the teachings of Christ, so that you may be a wholesome example to your people?  The question sounds simple enough:  Will you be an example to others?  But the question is anything but simple.  The question asks whether the priest will shape their lives so that parishioners, neighbors, and the world will understand the teachings of Christ through the priest’s life.  And not only is the priest responsible, the whole family of the priest has to be an example.  So when your three-year old is having a meltdown in Target, and your nerves are shot from a morning of similar tempter tantrums, and your spouse and you have argued about discipline, you and your family are supposed to be emanating Christ in Target.

Of course, the priest is not the only one who is supposed to be living a Christ-like life.  When we are baptized, and every time we affirm our baptismal covenant, those promises we renew are all about living a Christ-like life.  And yet, we rarely walk the walk that we talk.  I think one of the most common retorts to a petulant teen by a parent has been, “Do what I say, not what I do.”  We know the life we are supposed to live – even the life we want to live – and yet we fail miserably at that life everyday.  One of my favorite online videos is a video for Welcome Back Sunday in the fall.  The video talks about the top reasons why people do not come to church.  One of those reasons is that the Church is full of hypocrites.  We know the ways that we feel like hypocrites and the world knows the ways we act like hypocrites.

So, when we read our epistle lesson to the Philippians today, we may be shocked by Paul’s words.  Paul, who has regularly said that followers of Christ should imitate Christ, now says, “Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us.”  Paul’s instruction to imitate him is bold.  Paul does not say, “Do as I say, not as I do.”  Paul says, “Do what I do.”  Modern skeptics that we are, we immediately assume Paul has developed an inflated ego.  We know that telling people to imitate you is the first step toward a nasty fall.  Such a bold claim is setting Paul up for failure – because none of us are perfect.  Paul’s words immediately remind us of the hundreds of clergy who have fallen – who have embezzled, had affairs, abused children, abused alcohol, and have failed to be faithful pastors.  Surely Paul is setting up himself and the many people who are following him for failure.  Why would he do such a thing?

What we lose in our jaded, skeptical, snarky twenty-first century selves is the reminder of how learning and formation have happened for centuries.  Both Jesus, and Paul his disciple, “know that true moral and spiritual formation depends on tutelage under a master – learning to follow the habits and practices of one who has become proficient in a particular trade or skill.  Indeed, this is the precise meaning of the word ‘disciple’:  a learner or pupil.”[i]  In this way, disciples are learning from someone wiser than themselves, and in fact are imitating the teacher’s teacher.[ii]  So when Paul says imitate me, he does not really mean imitate Paul, but imitate Paul, who is imitating Jesus Christ.  Imitate the teacher’s teacher.

What I find comforting then, is that Paul is not saying he is perfect.  He is not boasting about his perfect imitation of Christ, but only encouraging others to imitate Christ as he imitates Christ.  What Paul knows is that our lives are never perfect.  But if we are not imitating something worth imitation, then we are already losing the battle.  And so, Paul’s imitation and our imitation many years later may be rough versions of Jesus Christ, but our imitation is still rooted in that great teacher who taught so many before us.

How we imitate Paul today is a bit more complicated.  We too must find our teachers who point to The Teacher.  The trick is not to think too remotely.  When asked who our role models are, many of us will name famous people of faith – Martin Luther King, Jr. or Mother Teresa.  And those folks will give us much to ponder about our faith life.  But the problem is, sometimes those people are so removed from our lives that they cannot really teach us how to live our lives as Christians.  I did a book study with a group once to prepare us for a prison ministry.  The book was about a woman from California in her fifties who gave up everything and moved into a prison in Tijuana as a nun to become an advocate for the men and families affected by the prison.  She lived in a cell in the prison and she ministered to the guards and the prisoners alike.  She transformed the place into a place of humanity.  She helped everyone equally, and managed to mobilize thousands of Americans to support the desperate needs of the Mexican prison.  Mother Antonia was an amazing role model that we all found incredibly inspiring.  But at the end of the series, one of the group members confessed that despite the fact that she appreciated Mother Antonia, she really would have preferred to have read a book about someone a little more like herself.  Mother Antonia was so dramatically different from her life that she found that instead of being inspired, she was left without a true mentor to imitate.

This is why Paul offers himself up as an example.  Not because he is some stellar example of Christ, but because he is in relationship with those with whom he is talking.  Paul realizes that the most powerful person to learn from is someone right in your community.  “Paul is directing the gaze of the community not toward some type of individual perfection, not even toward the supreme perfection of Christ…but to the realization of Christ’s love within the community itself.”[iii]

So Paul is inviting us to do a couple of things.  First, Paul is inviting to name our own teachers.  One of my favorite set of teachers is a couple I know from college.  When Rebecca and David were married, they bought a home in North Carolina much larger than what they would need.  The house was a fixer-upper, but they had dreams.  Their dream was to make the house into an intentional Christian community that also serves as a transitional house for families.  So, people who are in-between jobs, a woman who is recently divorced, or really anyone the local pastor recommends is welcome to come live in their home.  They have some house rules about sharing work, community meals, and weekly worship.  But Rebecca, David, and their two sons are imitating Christ in this radical lifestyle.  When I am really wondering how to live a Christ-like life, I look at this family and see how far I have to go.

But even Rebecca and David can be a little too removed.  So sometimes I just look at those around me.  I look at the spiritual disciplines of parishioners here.  I look at the ways that you care for those with physical limitations.  I look at the ways you tend to this property or the ways that you serve our neighbors in need.  Much like Paul and his community, we are not perfect.  We too struggle to understand how faith is lived right here in Plainview.  Our engagement in that struggle is what points us toward Christ.

This leads us to our second invitation from Paul – to recognize the ways in which we are all teachers to others.  When you leave this place every Sunday, you are not just Barbara or Bob or Paul.  You are Barbara the Christian from St. Margaret’s.  You are Bob who shows what being a person of faith is all about:  not because you are perfect, but because you are struggling to be like Christ.  That video about why people do not come to church has responses to each person’s fear or hesitancy about Church.  When one person complains that the Church is full of hypocrites, the Christian honestly and humbly says, “And there’s always room for one more.”  That kind of raw honesty is the kind of honesty that leads to trust, that leads to sharing, that leads to opening our doors to others.  That is the kind of honesty that makes others not only want to imitate us, but also to join us.  Paul invites us then to boldly proclaim, “Imitate me,” so that we can figure this journey out together.  Amen.

[i] Ralph C. Wood, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 62.

[ii] Casey Thompson, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 64.

[iii] Dirk G. Lange, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 65.