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Sermon – Luke 6.20-31, AS, YC, November 2, 2025

05 Wednesday Nov 2025

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On the blog this week, I shared about friends of ours who are fragrance aficionados.  When we spend time together, we’ve taken to doing fragrance samplings with them – sort of like wine tastings, but with the focus on the sense of smell.  Invariably, I find a new fragrance I like that I had never heard of, but that brings me a sense of playful joy.  This past week I was sharing one of those fragrances with one of our daughters and she said, “It’s okay, but I prefer your ‘Mom smell.’”  While I wish there was a more attractive label to that particular fragrance, and while I suspect that “Mom smell” is some combination of the scents of my soap, hair products, and laundry detergent, I get what my daughter meant.  Just like fragrances can evoke memories of special places, fragrances can also recall to us people in our lives.  One whiff, and we are transported to another time and place, remembering what someone meant to us.

On this All Saints Sunday, we engage in a similar kind of sensory recalling.  In our case at Hickory Neck, instead of the sense of smell, we invoke the sense of touch – the feel of smooth or ridged ribbons running through our fingers as we tie them to the altar rail in memory of a saint of God, the feel of droplets of water landing on our heads and bodies as we recall our baptismal identity and the baptisms of saints who have died, and the feel of the wafer in our hands and mouth or the feel of the priest’s thumb as they rub a blessing on our forehead, as we engage in the earthly banquet, reminiscent of the heavenly banquet our loved ones are enjoying.

But just like scents have the power to remind us of beloved memories, so scents can remind us of painful memories.  While some of us may have a “Mom scent” we recall with love and affection or wistful memory, others of us didn’t have such beloved memories or experiences – and unfortunately, smells can recall those memories too.  As I was reading Luke’s gospel for today, that’s where I landed – that all of us – all of us saints of God – have the opportunity to live lives of good or ill – to leave behind fragrances that help or harm.  And since Luke’s language is entirely literal and not at all the flowery, spiritual language of Matthew’s beatitudes[i], we are very clear on Jesus’ words and meaning.  The blessings and woes of Luke’s beatitudes are straightforward and simple.  As one scholar puts it, “If you want anything to do with Jesus or the God who sent him, Luke says, you had better go find the poor, the hungry, the captives, the blind, and the outcast, and join Jesus, as Jesus cares for them.  The way we know who Jesus is, is to go where Jesus is, with the poor, the hungry, and the oppressed.”[ii]

While All Saints Sunday can take us to place of remembering loved ones and the saints of the church, tempting us to get lost in those memories, what All Saints Sunday ultimately hopes to impart is that the lives we live matter.  We remember the saints of the church and the lives of our loved ones we miss because they showed us what living lives that matter looked like.  We do not honor them because they were rich or well fed or joyful or respected.  We honor them because they loved their enemies, they did good to those who hated them, they blessed those who cursed them, and prayed for those who hurt them.  We honor them because they were nonviolent, because they gave sacrificially of their wealth, because they understood that poverty makes people desperate – and because they did to others as they would have them do to them.

We could easily leave here today with the commission to “go and do likewise,” as if Jesus’ words are a simple commission.  But nothing about what Jesus is saying is simple or easy.  Several years ago, I was talking to our children about the Golden Rule – those words we hear today about doing unto others as you would have them do unto you.  To my great shock, my children did not see the wisdom of the words at all.  Instead, their desires were rooted in a sense of justice or fairness.  “No way!” one said.  “I’ll do unto others what they do to me.”  What I had understood as simple, universal wisdom that is shared among faith traditions totally flies in the face of secular, American ideals.  Even Professor Johnson says about Luke’s text today, “It is not only greed that jeopardizes the wealthy Christian’s relationship with God, but the simple – and subtle – temptation to think we can take care of ourselves.”[iii]

Luke leaves us, then, with a challenging invitation.  As you tie on a ribbon to remember a loved one today, you can certainly recall whatever fragrance of theirs you miss.  But Luke asks you to go further – to recall the witness they left to you about living a faithful life, and be emboldened to start leaving your own faithful fragrance behind too.  Lean into those who have gone before to encourage your own witness of love, compassion, and justice.  Lean into the faithful who gather beside you in person every Sunday who struggle to live that Golden Rule with gusto instead of resentment.  Lean into Jesus, who walked before us in incarnate form, leaving behind the fragrance of incense – the fragrance of humility, compassion, and sacrificial love.  With them, you can then begin to create a signature fragrance of your own that will help draw others to God.  Amen. 

[i] Marjorie Procter-Smith, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 239.

[ii] E. Elizabeth Johnson, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 239.

[iii] Johnson, 241.

Sermon – Matthew 11.25-30, St. Francis Feast, YC, October 5, 2025

15 Wednesday Oct 2025

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Image credit: https://www.instagram.com/p/CF_31K6sogj/

I was talking to a friend recently who had been on a road trip.  She had stopped for gas and was standing by her car when another car pulled up next to her.  A family piled out of the car, followed by the family’s dog.  My friend was paralyzed in place.  The dog looked exactly like her beloved dog Buddy who had passed away four years ago.  Her eyes immediately watered, and even though four years had passed, an ache appeared in her chest that she thought had long ago gone away forever.  “I just really miss that dog,” she explained later – surprising even herself at how her grief lingered.

I have sometimes wondered if our celebration of St. Francis and the Blessing of the Animals is not a little gimmicky.  We even took our celebration on the road yesterday for the first time, offering to bless animals and their owners whom we have never met, who maybe never harken the door of any church, let alone Hickory Neck’s doors.  But as I thought about my friend’s lingering grief over her dog who had passed, and as I have heard countless stories over the years of cats, horses, Guinea pigs, goats, and even chickens who have been a source of joy, companionship, sometimes consternation, but always love, I understand more fully why we commit to blessing animals and their owners, even if on the surface the practice may seem like a gimmick.

We engage in the blessing of animals because of the inspiration that comes from St. Francis of Assisi.  St. Francis is one of the most beloved saints of the Church.  Most of us think of Francis as the patron saint of animals and creation.  When we think of him, we may think of a St. Francis statue in a garden.  We may think of various images of him preaching to birds.   Some of us may even recall that tale where Francis negotiated peace between a village and a wolf that had been terrorizing the town.  His understanding of animals as his brothers and sisters is why we bless animals on his feast day – the creatures that were so dear to him.  That is also why when we say the Eucharistic prayer [at 10:00 am] today, we will use Prayer C – the one that praises, “the vast expanse of interstellar space, galaxies, suns, and the planets in their courses, and this fragile earth, our island home.”[i]

At the heart of our blessings yesterday and today is an understanding that St. Francis had mastered and we continue to understand – that we are bound to all of the creation God created – to the earth, to the earth’s animals, and to one another – even the other humans or other creation we may not like.  Jesus reminds us of the nature of that bond today in his words about following him.  In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  Those yokes Jesus talks about were used to harness two animals for work.  The yoke allowed the two not just to double their work, but to rely on one another – if one was tired, the other could push harder; and then the weaker one could later support the stronger one.  Yokes, like Jesus’ work, were easy and made the burden light. 

But beyond the mechanics of a good yoke, the yoke is also a good metaphor for how we see the gospel.  Being yoked to another makes you connected.  And once you are connected, and see how dependent upon one another you are, you begin to see how that connection extends beyond the two of you – that your yoked interconnection is a microcosm of the connectedness of all of God’s creation.  Francis, who was just as known for helping the poor as he was for befriending animals, understood that all humanity is connected.  He learned that the more we spend time seeing the humanity in others – especially the humanity in those we would rather not – then we start to see that our interconnectedness extends even further – to God’s creation, to God’s creatures, to the cosmos.  If we open our hearts to one, we cannot help but to open our hearts to all.  Francis’ love for the poor and Francis’ love for creatures were not two separate things – they were one in the same. 

The invitation for us is to start claiming our yoked nature – yoked to those we love, yoked to our political opponents, yoked to those who have different ethics and values than ourselves, yoked to parents who make different parenting decisions, yoked to those with different skin color or sexual orientation, yoked to those we see as deserving of God’s grace and those who are not.  Our yoked nature allows us to pray [and later sing] the Prayer of St. Francis from our Prayer Book:  “Lord, make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, let us sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is discord, union; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. Grant that we may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand; to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive; it is in pardoning that we are pardoned; and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”[ii]  We can do the work of St. Francis, blessing animals, humans, and all creation, because of the yoke of Jesus.  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

[i] BCP, 370.

[ii] BCP, 833.

Sermon – John 11.32-44, Isaiah 25.6-9, AS, YB, November 7, 2021

17 Wednesday Nov 2021

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Most Sundays we talk about Jesus’ life and witness and how we can emulate the Son of God.  Many years ago, there was even a campaign with the letters WWJD:  What Would Jesus Do.  But what we rarely talk about is how incredibly hard that ideal is – how hard as everyday humans emulating the Savior, who was both fully human and fully divine, really is.  So, in theory, a day like today should be a relief.  All Saints Sunday is a day we shift gears and talk about emulating people who were fully human.  Of course, that notion is tricky too.  By “saints” the church means those “persons of heroic sanctity, whose deeds were recalled with gratitude by

later generations.”[i]  These are people like St. Francis who shed his every earthly possession and obtained the stigmata, Mother Teresa who nursed this sickest of the sick and poorest of the poor, or even St. Margaret, who slayed her way out of a dragon after being tortured for her faith. 

I think that is why we often conflate All Saints and All Souls Day – the latter being a day when we remember all of those who have died in the hope of the resurrection.  These are the saints or souls who may not have been marked by heroic sanctity, but certainly had an impact on our lives.  These are the moms and dads, the spouses and friends, the children and lovers who may not have always been holy, but certainly taught us about the Christian faith and who we entrusted to the hope of the resurrection as we sat by their deathbeds or mourned their sudden deaths from afar.

We conflate the notion of All Souls Day into All Saints Day because there is something more human about All Souls Day – not only because we can relate to ordinary human life and death, but because the celebration today makes us feel like our humanity can be enough too.  That’s why I love the gospel lesson we get today.  In all the texts about Jesus’ healings, outwitting the challengers, and his ultimate sacrifice for us on the cross, today we get a text about Jesus being very human.  Before the amazing miracle of raising Lazarus from the dead, we are told, very simply, Jesus wept.  Caught up in the grief of his friends Martha and Mary and lost in his own overwhelming sense of loss, Jesus cries; not just a single, artistic tear, but a full-on bout of weeping.  In that solitary moment of grief, Jesus feels deeply, tangibly human.

I do not know about you, but that is what I need from Jesus today.  Later in our service we will list the names of the beautiful souls from Hickory Neck who died in the last year – those who made us laugh, sometimes made us angry, who put a smile on our face, and sometimes made us weep.  In the Prayers of the People, we will pray for the over 750,000 people who have died of COVID in the United States, mourning not just their loss, but the loss of our old “normal” and all that this pandemic has taken from us.  We mourn the ways in which many of the funerals we celebrated in the last year cheated us from each other’s presence – a reality that has still not be fully remedied.  In the midst of what has been a time of significant trauma, we need a Savior who weeps with us – and not just for the dear friend who has died, but also for the fact that his raising Lazarus will soon mean his own death.[ii]

That very gift of Jesus’ humanity today is what empowers us to boldly proclaim hope[iii] in the midst of sorrow, in the midst of trauma, in midst of this strange in-between time.  The words of Isaiah remind us of the promise, the promise that, “the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.  And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples, the sheet that is spread over all nations; he will swallow up death forever.  Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces, and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth, for the Lord has spoken.  It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.  This is the Lord for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.”  On this All Saints Sunday, that is our hope for the week – the promise that the Lord God will wipe away tears – because God’s Son has known our tears – and that we will enjoy that rich feast with our loved ones again.  This in-between time is just that – a time in-between where the promise of new life is a rich promise indeed; one that gives us strength for the not-yet time.  Thanks be to God!

[i] Holy Women, Holy Men:  Celebrating the Saints, (New York:  The Church Pension Fund, 2010),664.

[ii] Debie Thomas, “When Jesus Weeps,” October 28, 2018, as found at https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1999-when-jesus-weeps on November 5, 2021.

[iii] Kathryn M. Schifferdecker, “Mourn Loss, Proclaim Faith,” November 1, 2021, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/mourn-loss-proclaim-faith on November 5, 2021.

Homily – Matthew 11.25-30, St. Francis, October 4, 2015

07 Wednesday Oct 2015

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I once led a book group that read the book The Prison Angel.  The Prison Angel is the story of Mother Antonio, a woman of privilege from California who had a mid-life crisis, took on the role of a nun, went to the largest prison in Tijuana, Mexico, and began a ministry of transforming guards, inmates, and families connected to the prison.  Her work was amazing – the way that she was able to love everyone equally, the way that she was able to harness resources and get them where they needed to be, and the way that she was able to devote her life to this system – even living in her own prison cell for a while – were all examples of her awesome witness.  As we finished the book, I had hoped that people in our book group would be inspired, and might even consider their own contribution to a prison ministry.  Instead, the response was more like this:  Mother Antonio is truly amazing.  But let’s be honest.  I can’t be like her.  I’m not going to drop everything – my family and life – and become totally devoted to a ministry.  And just like that, I lost them.  No longer was Mother Antonio inspiring.  She was impossible.  And once she was impossible, no one felt compelled to do anything.  I definitely felt like I failed my mission of inspiration leading to action.

As I was preparing for today’s celebration of St. Francis, I ran across this quote:  “Of all the saints, Francis is the most popular and admired, but probably the least imitated.”[i]  You see, we have a sanitized version of Francis in our minds.  He was nice to animals and took care of the poor.  He devoted his life to Christ as a monk.  We even put up statues of Francis in our gardens and outside our churches.  When we think of Francis, we think of a gentle man gingerly allowing a bird to perch on his finger, and we smile.  We like our sanitized version of Francis because the real version is a little scary.  When Francis renounced his rather significant wealth, he stripped naked in front of his father and the bishop.  Francis didn’t just help the poor, he became poor, begging on the streets.  He worked with lepers – people no one wanted to touch, touching them with his bare hands and kissing them.  Barefoot, he preached in the streets about repentance.  He preached to the birds, and is rumored to have negotiated with a wolf.  If we met St. Francis today, most of us would not imitate or venerate him.  We would just see him as another homeless beggar with a serious case of mental illness.

That is the challenge for us when trying to live a holy life.  St. Francis is the obvious example today.  Though we love and admire St. Francis, few of are comfortable with his total identification with poverty, suffering, and care for our creation.  The same can be said of Jesus.  Though we profess that Jesus is our Lord and Savior, we regularly fail to live in the ways that Jesus taught – in fact, some of us have given up even trying.  Even looking toward a modern-day example of holy living trips us up.  When we watched Pope Francis come through last week, we marveled at his radical witness.  We loved what he had to say – except when he had something to say that made us uncomfortable or that we disagreed with.  When thinking about the radical life that is following Jesus – whether through the Pope, through St. Francis, or Jesus himself – most of us stumble and feel like giving up.

Luckily Jesus offers us a promise today.  Jesus says, “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.  Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”  My yoke is easy and my burden is light.  When we look at St. Francis’ witness and we think about the poverty, the preaching, and the penitence, we get nervous.  We like our stuff, we like being comfortable, and we like being Christians without having to be too loud about it.  When we think about St. Francis, we think of a yoke – but not a light one – one that is heavy and onerous.  But Jesus harkens us back to his original words.  My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

One of the reasons I am a proponent of international missions is that they help you experience reality in a totally different way.  When we go on local missions, we can keep our smart phones, we have access to clean, accessible health care, and we can always find a McDonalds for a burger fix.  But when we are in a rural town in a third world country, things change.  We may not get to shower everyday, we may have to boil our water before drinking it, we will eat food that you are not so sure about, and we pray that we don’t get too sick while abroad.  And forget about a cell phone and internet access.  Most of us don’t even take a watch or jewelry to ensure they do not get lost.  Now that may sound like torture to most of you.  But here is what we learn when we are stripped of comforts and living and working in a foreign setting:  We learn to appreciate your massive wealth comparable to the poor in the third world; we learn what hospitality – real hospitality in the face of nothing – really feels like; we forget about email, phone calls, and even stop obsessively checking the time, because those things do not really matter that week; we hear birds and other creatures in a way that we never have before – maybe because of their proximity, or maybe because we normally distract ourselves with a hundred other things; and – now this is the crazy one – we talk about Jesus and no one is uncomfortable (well, except maybe us because we haven’t done that very much).  When stripped of everything familiar, we discover that Jesus’ burden really is easy and his yoke truly is light.  And sometimes we need to be stripped of the familiar so that when we are back in our comfort zone, we can more tangibly remember how easy that burden was and how light that yoke felt.

You may not be able to go on an international mission trip.  But each of you has some experience – a heartfelt expression of gratitude when you cared for the poor, a prayer with someone who was really hurting, or surprisingly easy conversation in a coffee shop about church and your faith.  Though Jesus, St. Francis, and even the Pope sometimes go to extreme measures, they all ultimately are trying to do the same thing.  To remind us that Jesus’ burden is easy and his yoke is light.  And then they all invite us to get comfortable with discomfort or even with the label of being crazy – and to go and do likewise.  Amen.

[i] Holy Men, Holy Women:  Celebrating the Saints (New York:  The Church Pension Fund, 2010), 622.

Sermon – Ecclesiasticus 51.9-12, Feast of St. Margaret of Antioch (Transferred), July 21, 2013

24 Wednesday Jul 2013

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Today we celebrate the feast of St. Margaret of Antioch, our patron saint.  The legends vary widely about Margaret, but in general, her story goes a bit like this.  Margaret was born to a pagan father, but Margaret was raised by a nurse.  The nurse introduced Margaret to Christianity, and the father disowned her.  As a young teen, she devoted herself to Jesus Christ, vowing to remain his bride for the rest of her life.  A few years later, a wealthy man passed her way and requested to take her as his mistress.  She refused, and he had her imprisoned and beaten.  Her captors felt sorry for her and begged her to submit to the man, but she assured them that though they saw suffering, she saw her pain as “sweeter than cream.”[i]  In her weakened state, she is believed to have faced a dragon, though some refer to the dragon as a demon or Satan himself.  The dragon tried to swallow her, and with a cross she held in her hand, she defeated the dragon.  Of course, this victory did not seal her fate.  Still refusing to submit to the rich man, she was eventually beheaded.

When I explain to outsiders about which Margaret is our patron saint, I often explain how we picked the weird one.  First of all, relating to martyrs is always difficult for modern Christians.  Few of us will ever face torture or persecution for our faith.  Though we may admire their commitment, imagining how we would show similar dedication is challenging.  Furthermore, relating to someone who commits their virginity to Jesus Christ might be difficult for many of us.  Though we may admire nuns and monks today, whose lives also involve a commitment to chastity, very few of us can imagine such a rule for ourselves.  Besides, we get entirely uncomfortable just talking about sex in church.  Add in the bizarre story about the dragon, and most of us start to mentally check out or at least assign Margaret to the category of fiction.  This distance creates a barrier for finding meaningful connection to Margaret.

Of course, some of our resistance is aided by our conflicted feelings about the value of saints.  What I appreciate about saints in the Episcopal Church is that we have a broader definition of saints than the Roman Catholic Church.  We have a wider variety of saints that are commemorated throughout the year, and in fact, our weekly Thursday Eucharist here at St. Margaret’s always focuses on a saint of the church.  What I find most appealing about saints is that they can often be aids for us in prayer.  Either we can pray to be more like a certain saint, or we can use saints as a vehicle through whom we pray to God.  St. Margaret of Antioch was known as the patron saint of women in childbirth.  “Because of the promises made just before Margaret’s death to assist anyone – especially women in childbirth – who has [St. Margaret’s] life written down, reads it, or has it read to them…[some of the copies of her story were] written on long strips of parchment which were fastened around the abdomens of women in labor.”[ii]  Though that practice may sound silly to us now, who has not prayed to St. Anthony when they lost something, or purchased a St. Joseph when trying to sell a home?

Perhaps where we find the most help today in understanding St. Margaret is from our reading from Ecclesiasticus.  The author begins the final chapter with these words, “And I sent up my prayer from the earth, and begged for rescue from death.  I cried out, ‘Lord, you are my Father; do not forsake me in the days of trouble, when there is no help against the proud.’”  I imagine Margaret cried out to God in a similar way in that prison cell.  I imagine there was nothing but prayer on her lips.  But even more than crying out to God in her pain and suffering, I imagine that Margaret more so prayed the words that the author of Ecclesiasticus also prayed, “I will praise your name continually, and will sing hymns of thanksgiving.”  Despite her many trials – being disowned, being captured and tortured, and being threatened with death – she somehow saw the sweetness of Christ in all of her trials.  She could still come to God in praise and thanksgiving, despite facing circumstance that called for nothing of the sort.

St. Margaret has a lot to teach us about today about prayer.  I was just in conversation with someone this week about their prayer life, and they confessed how good they are with their “thank yous and pleases” to God, but how rarely their prayer life is filled with adoration of God.  We all struggle with this kind of prayer relationship with God.  We are quite good at coming to God when we need something, and we occasionally remember to thank God for our blessings.  But rarely do we stand before God, arms and hands open and just stand in awe of our God.  We get caught up in a relationship with God as an exchange, and we forget how huge our God is and how tremendous God’s presence in our lives is.

Today, Margaret invites us to remember the awesomeness of our God.  She reminds us of the incredible work began here in Plainview fifty years ago in her name.  And she invites us into a prayer of adoration for the bountiful grace that awaits us in our next fifty years.  For the First Communion we celebrate today, for the bountiful produce that our Garden of Eatin’ is producing, for the blessing of Holy Matrimony that a couple plans for this afternoon, for the blessed fellowship we enjoyed yesterday at the Gibsons’, for the gift of life and ministry in this place, and for the saint who reminds us of the awesomeness of our God, we will praise the Lord’s name continually, and we will sing hymns of thanksgiving this day.  Amen.

[i] Sherry L. Reams, ed., Middle English Legends of Women Saints (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2003), 119.

[ii] Reams, 111.