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Sermon – Mark 9.38-50, P21, YB, September 27, 2015

30 Wednesday Sep 2015

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“Are you the priest they sent?”  That was the question he asked me.  I was confused at first, but realized one of the nurses must have called an on-call priest.  I also knew from experience that if he was looking for the “priest they sent” he was not looking for me.  You see, I’m a priest, but I’m also a woman.  When people at hospitals are looking for priests, the majority of the time they mean a Roman Catholic priest.  But he seemed desperate, so I delicately said “No, I’m actually here to see a parishioner.”  But I stayed and talked to him a bit more about what was going on and whether the chaplain’s office had been called.  His wife joined us as we talked.  Then the inevitable question came.  She asked what church affiliation I had.  I told them I was a priest in the Episcopal Church, and that they were welcome to wait for a Catholic priest.  She insisted it didn’t matter – they just wanted a priest to say prayers.

Honestly, I was floored.  That had never happened to me.  Usually when I tell a Roman Catholic person that I am not a Roman Catholic priest, they reveal (subtly or not so subtly) that I am not the kind of priest they want.  And truthfully, I am totally fine with that.  I totally understand and would never assert any differently, especially to someone in crisis at the hospital.  We ended the conversation with the agreement that we would go to our separate rooms.  When I was done, if they still didn’t have their Roman Catholic priest, I would be happy to say prayers.  I went on to my visit, fully anticipating the “real” priest to show up for them while I was elsewhere.

That division among the Church, among the faithful of God, is not unique to Roman Catholics.  We all make boundaries and distinctions about who is in and who is out.  Episcopalians are only in full communion with the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.  So if I ever wanted to have a United Methodist Minister or Presbyterian pastor celebrate Eucharist, I would not be allowed.  We also make rules around the communion rail.  Most Episcopal Churches say that all baptized Christians are welcome to the table – meaning if you have not been baptized, you should not receive.  Even to serve on Vestry we have boundaries.  All Vestry members have to be financial supporters of the parish, are expected to be present regularly in worship and parish events, and are asked to contribute to at least one ministry of the church.  If the Vestry member is unwilling to make those commitments, they cannot serve on Vestry.  We often think of Roman Catholics as having lots of boundaries – from no women at the altar, to no married clergy, to no communion unless you are Roman Catholic.  But the reality is that, as Episcopalians, we have an equal number of boundaries that keep people in and out of our community.

The good news is that we come by our exclusivity honestly.  In our gospel lesson from Mark today, we are told about an encounter between the disciples and Jesus.  John comes up to Jesus and says, “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.”  John is so confident of his authority that he almost sounds like he is boasting to Jesus.  “Hey, Jesus, there’s some dude who is trying to do our work and he keeps using your name.  But don’t worry – we shut him down.”  You can almost imagine John expecting Jesus to give him a chug on the shoulder and say, “Good work, John!”  But that is not how the story unfolds.  Instead, Jesus says the total opposite, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.  Whoever is not against us is for us.”  You can imagine the disciples’ confusion.  Jesus is constantly pulling them aside and only telling them how to interpret his parables.  When Jesus commissions people, he commissions the disciples, and no one else.  And although people are often following Jesus in droves, his crew, or his posse, is made up of the disciples.  In the disciples’ minds, Jesus is implicitly telling them that they are the insiders, with special privileges, and everyone else is an outsider.  The disciples are in; everyone else is out.  And anyone who tries to break those boundaries is going against the will of Jesus – and, ergo, the will of God.

Despite the fact that Jesus shuts down the notion of insiders and outsiders, the Christian community has been struggling with boundaries since Jesus’ death.  Who is a Christian?  Who can have communion?  What are the rules and what are the consequences of breaking the rules?  Now, boundaries are not necessarily bad.  Boundaries help us define who we are and what behavior is acceptable.  Boundaries help us uphold values and create meaning.  Boundaries can even help us make an informed choice about belonging to a community.[i]  Clearly Jesus created some boundaries.  When he says, “Whoever is not against us is for us,” he implies that there are people who are in fact against them.  Jesus himself creates a group of insiders and outsiders.  What Jesus is trying to communicate is not that boundaries are bad.  What Jesus is trying to communicate is that we are capable of getting so wrapped up in our boundaries that we exclude people from the love of Christ.  And nothing could be more harmful, or even sinful, than making someone feel that they are cut off from the love of Christ.

I had a friend who started going to therapy to help him cope with a spouse suffering from depression.  He imagined that the therapist would share her knowledge of persons suffering from depression and teach him some coping skills.  But after a lengthy explanation about what was wrong with his spouse, the first question the therapist asked was about him.  The therapist wanted to know what his issues were.  My friend interrupted, “No, no, no, I’m not here for me, I’m here to learn more about dealing with my spouse.”  The therapist wisely said, “Yes.  But before we get to your spouse, let’s talk about you.”  That therapist did what Jesus does with the disciples.  Jesus redirects the disciples concern about others by telling them to worry about their own problems – those hands, feet, and eyes that cause them to sin.  You see, Jesus is very clever.  What he realizes is that when the disciples start sorting through their own sinfulness, their own “stuff,” they do not have time to worry about boundaries and rules and barriers.[ii]  And when they let go of those boundaries, rules, and barriers, something incredible can happen – the love of God and the fellowship of Christ can grow and thrive.

By the time I finished my visit with my parishioner, the Catholic on-call priest had still not arrived.  I went into the room of the family and realized they needed more than a prayer.  They were going to be removing life support and wanted someone to offer the patient Last Rites.  I again reminded them that I was an Episcopal Priest.  The wife of the couple said, “It’s still Last Rites though, right?”  “Yes,” I replied.  “Okay, then.”  That was all.  Here I was bringing up boundaries again and again, and this person, who normally has even more boundaries than I do, insisted that I let go of my boundaries and help her family have an experience with God.  The first words the husband had asked me were, “Are you the priest they sent?”  My first answer was correct.  I was not.  But my answer was not complete.  I was not the priest that “they” sent.  But I was the priest that God sent.  You see, God has a call on me – and in fact God has a call on each person here.  God sends us everyday – to our workplaces, to our schools, to our friends, and to strangers.  Everyday we have the choice to get tangled up in boundaries and rules and limitations.  But we also have the choice to remember the ways that Jesus wants us to love God and love our neighbors.  Those are the only two boundaries Jesus really cares about anyway.

That is our invitation this week:  to consider how God is calling you and also to consider how you are getting in the way of God’s call.  The boundaries and the rules really are not as complicated as they sound.  If the Pope can say, “Who am I to judge?” surely we can start letting go and embracing love.  Then, the next time someone asks you, “Are you the person that was sent?” you can reply, “Yes.  Yes, I am.”  Amen.

[i] Harry B. Adams, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 116, 118.

[ii] Amy Oden, “Commentary on Mark 9.38-50,” September 30, 2012, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1357 on September 25, 2015.

Sermon – Proverbs 31.10-31, Mark 9.30-37, P20, YB, September 20, 2015

23 Wednesday Sep 2015

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There are some Sundays when the scripture lessons appointed for the day are just right.  They speak truth to power or relate to a spiritual crisis in the community.  They shed light on a current event or they give pastoral words to aching hearts.  On those days, I am so grateful for the ways in which I see the Holy Spirit moving through the Church through the vehicle of scripture.  Today is not one of those days.  I read both our Old Testament and Gospel lessons this week, and my first reaction was, “Really?!?  THIS is what we needed to hear this week, God??”

The Old Testament lesson from Proverbs is actually one of my favorites – even though the lesson takes some deconstructing.  This passage is often referred to as the passage about the capable wife.  Now anytime the church starts talking about how women need to be wives and how those wives need to be “capable” I start getting defensive.  The good news is that the title is more the problem than the lesson itself.  The Hebrew word often translated as “capable” is better translated as powerful, strong, or even warrior-like.  This woman is a superhero.  She rises before dawn; manages a staff, ensuring her family has food and security; she purchases property and plants a vineyard with her own hands; she runs a thriving business, providing fine clothing for her family and the community; she is known for her wisdom and is happy and satisfied; and in her spare time, she is a shining example of philanthropy.  When you think about the traditional role of women in the patriarchal society of the time,[i] this woman is on fire.  She is an empowered woman, an equal partner to her husband, and is the master of both her home and her work outside of the home.[ii]  She is like Martha Stewart on steroids.

In the Gospel lesson, we find the disciples struggling yet again.  Jesus meets with the disciples and explains to them his fate.  And instead of asking Jesus what he means, they remain silent because they are too afraid to ask.  Actually, they do not remain silent.  Instead, they start bickering among themselves about who will be first in the kingdom.  I suppose that if the world is going to end, we might be similarly distracted.  But Jesus catches them arguing and shames them into true silence.  Not only does Jesus tell the disciples that they must strive to be last – servants of all; but also, Jesus tells them that in order to be a part of Jesus’ kingdom, they need to welcome children like they would welcome Jesus (which really could be interpreted as welcoming the poor, widowed, or disenfranchised).  So basically, Jesus tells the disciples they are a mess.  Not only are they not listening, they are distracted by their egos, and they are not attending to the one ministry he has called them to do.

So here is the challenge with these two lessons.  Basically, we take from the lessons that we are all too full of ourselves, we are distracted by the wrong things, we are not doing the work Jesus has called us to do.  And if we want to correct all of that behavior, we need to become warrior women and men – Martha Stewarts on steroids, showing everybody how it’s done.  Now I am not arguing that any of those points are not inherently truthful and are not lovely goals toward which we should strive.  What I am arguing is that I just did not want to hear them this week.  Here we are busting our buns to do the massive amount of work needed to pull off the Fall Fair.  Here we are busy kicking off the program year, with teachers preparing lesson plans, the choir readying music, and all our ministries being back on deck.  Here we are putting together last minute receptions for the bereaved, trying to complete a major construction project, and trying to ensure that we have enough funds to run our operations and enough energy to evangelize in our community.  And that is on top of all the work we are doing to get kids back to school, to reconnect with our community commitments after a summer hiatus, to make sure we are still performing well at work, to get our homes tidy and prepared for fall, and to squeeze in some football games.  In the midst of that chaos, the last thing I need to hear from church today is that my priorities are all wrong and that I need to work harder – a lot harder.  Thanks, but no thanks, Holy Scripture!

The good news is that there is good news.  For all the overwhelming work of the warrior-like woman in Proverbs and for all the scolding the disciples receive, the message from both lessons is clear and surprisingly manageable.  In Proverbs, the lesson concludes, “a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.”  Now this is not the kind of fear we get when we talk about horror films, phobias, or abject worry.  The fear the passage is talking about is “awe, wonder, gratitude, and reverent humility before the Creator.”[iii]  Now fear of the Lord may sound like one more thing to add to the to-do list, but actually, fear is where the lessons are calling us to start.  You see, the disciples lacked a genuine fear of the Lord.  They were afraid in the more traditional sense – of what Jesus was talking about, of what would happen to them, of how they would ensure their own security.  They got wrapped up in themselves.  But if they had been wrapped up in awe, wonder, gratitude, and humility, all of the things Jesus had to instruct them to do would have come more naturally.  If they were in awe of Jesus, they would have easily been able to see how grateful they should be to have a Messiah who would sacrifice himself for them.  If they had been in wonder of Jesus, they would have simply been happy to be called a disciple, without worrying about their place or status.  If they had been full of gratitude, they would have already been welcoming children – and the poor, and the outcast, and the stranger.  The same sort of reversal is true for the warrior-like woman in Proverbs.  All of those amazing things she seems to accomplish in 24 hours happen only because of her reverence for God.  She is not favored because of all that she does.  She is able to do all that she does because she starts in a place of gratitude.  The rest flows easily out of that vantage point.

Today’s lessons are not about scolding us for how we get everything wrong, or about setting some impossible standard of perfection for us.  Instead, today’s lessons are about checking our baseline.  When our baseline is about awe, wonder, gratitude, and humility, we find living into Jesus’ instructions much easier.  When our baseline is about awe, wonder, gratitude, and humility, those astounding to-do lists and projects do not seem like burdens but gifts.  When our baseline is about awe, wonder, gratitude, and humility, church is not only a place we want to be, church is a place to which we are lovingly drawn.  That’s when that piece you were writing about stewardship doesn’t seem scary or even hard.  That’s when those sacred moments happen in Sunday School when a child or teen says something profound that stays with you all week.  That’s when you are up to your ears in stress about the Fair, and something funny – really funny – happens, and you and the other volunteers laugh so hard that you cry.  Holy Scripture today is not directing us down a path of guilt and shame.  Holy Scripture today is inviting us onto that path less travelled – the one that starts with awe, wonder, gratitude, and humility, and ends with grace, joy, companionship, and satisfaction.  I may not have wanted to hear our scripture lessons today.  But I needed to hear them.  My hope is that you can hear them in the spirit in which they were intended too.  Amen.

[i] Brent A. Strawn, “Commentary on Proverbs 31.10-31,” September 20, 2009, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=390 on September 18, 2015.

[ii] Telford Work, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 78.

[iii] Kathleen M. O’Connor, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 4 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 79.

Sermon – 1 Kings 2.10-12; 3.3-14, P15, YB, August 16, 2015

09 Wednesday Sep 2015

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Let me tell you a story that a friend of mine once told me.  Once upon a time, there was a wise prince.  Following his father’s death, the prince became king, married a beautiful princess from a neighboring kingdom, and began to rule his people in a way that honored God.  One night, God came to the king in a dream, and told him he could have anything he wanted.  Being a humble man, the king did not ask for money, power, or a long life.  Instead, the king asked God to make him wise so that he could care for the people.  God was very pleased by this request, and God decided to grant the king wisdom.  And, as a reward for being so humble, God said the king could have wealth, honor, and long life too!  The king became known all over the land as a wise king.  People traveled far and wide to hear the king’s wisdom.  The king’s kingdom flourished, his rule becoming a Golden Age for the kingdom.  After forty years of peaceful success, the king handed over his throne to his son.[i]

The king in that story is a real king:  King Solomon from our Old Testament reading today.  As we baptize Kayla today, we wish the same things for her that King Solomon has.  We pray that she might be wise in her decisions, that she might have a close relationship with God, and that she might honor others.  And to help her become those things, we as a community pledge to support her, and we promise to try to do those things too.  On this special day, we look to the future with hope and optimism, praying that God will make Kayla as wise as Solomon.

But, we have to be careful.  You see, once upon a time there was also a shrewd prince.  When the prince’s father died, the prince ordered that his older brother be killed so that he could become king instead.  As he began his rule as king, he killed many more people out of revenge for the way they treated his father.  Then he set out to build a kingdom of riches, power, and honor.  But this king was greedy.  He wanted so many things that he made the people suffer.  He made the people pay taxes, and forced them to build lavish homes and temples.  He collected 700 wives and 300 concubines.  Many of the women worshiped foreign gods, and so the king started to worship those gods too.  He was not loyal to the God we know.  By the time he died, the people were very angry, and they revolted when the king’s son tried to take over.  A big war broke out, the kingdom divided in two, and the world fell into chaos.[ii]

Here’s the funny thing about the bad king.  That bad king is Solomon too.  Isn’t that weird?  We often remember all the good stuff about Solomon – and there is a lot of good stuff.  But there is a lot of bad stuff about Solomon too.[iii]  In fact, we skipped that part in our reading in church today.[iv]   The same king who humbly asks for wisdom is the same king who gets greedy when good things happen to him.  The same king who wisely rules the land also forgets about loving the people he is ruling.

When we think about Kayla’s journey with God in the years to come, we want her to be like wise Solomon.  But the truth is Kayla, and the all the rest of us, are probably a mix of wise Solomon and naughty Solomon.  We are a mix of both because we all learn that we can never be perfect.  But the good news is that God loves us anyway.  When we baptize Kayla today, and we renew our baptismal covenant, we recognize that truth.  We pray that we all will be wise, and kind, and blessed.  And we recognize that we will have to work really hard to not be greedy, unkind, and separated from God.  But we also promise that we will take care of each other on the journey, helping each one of us find our way back to being good servants of God.

So how about we find another way to tell Solomon’s story?  “Once upon a time there was a king.  He had big dreams, as most of us do.  He had great faults, as most of us do.  He lived a life marked by success and failure, nobility and disgrace.  He loved God and he didn’t.  He pleased God and he didn’t.  He left a legacy that was neither perfect nor wretched, as most of us will.  But he was loved by God throughout, even when his foolish wisdom shattered God’s heart.  As we are.”[v]  Amen.

[i] Debie Thomas, “A King’s Tale,” Journey with Jesus, August 9, 2015, as found at http://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/324-a-king-s-tale on August 12, 2015.

[ii] Thomas.

[iii] Cameron B.R. Howard, “Commentary on 1 Kings 2:10-12; 3:3-14,” August 19, 2012, as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=1358 on August 12, 2015.

[iv] Andrew Nagy-Benson, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Supplemental Essays Yr. B, Batch 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 2.

[v] Thomas

Sermon – John 6.1-12, P12, YB, July 26, 2015

29 Wednesday Jul 2015

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On one of the first days on a mission trip to Burma, our team went to Church.  Like any good Anglican Church, the Burmese have their own version of Coffee Hour.  Lots of people wanted to be around us, but mostly all we could do was smile and nod because of the language barrier.  One of the mothers of the parish came up to us and asked our translator if we were hungry.  She said she would bring us some Mohingar.  When she returned, we discovered Mohingar was a soup.  My teammate and I graciously thanked our host, but suspiciously eyed the soup.  I mean, it’s soup, so how bad can it be, right?  But it’s soup – there’s not telling what is in that thick broth.  But when you are a guest, you eat.  And, so, with many eyes on us, we tentatively ate our Mohingar.  As we ate, flavors filled our mouths.  The soup was good – really good.  In fact, this “Mohingar” was probably the best soup I have ever eaten.  This was no ordinary soup – Mohingar is like a meal in soup form.  Mohingar has eggs, noodles, fish, banana stems.  It sounds strange, but I promise you it was delicious.  I had no problem needing to pretend to graciously like the soup.  It was amazing!  At the end of my very satisfying, filling bowl of Mohingar, I raved to our host.  Unfortunately, that meant she insisted I have more.  I later realized on that trip in Burma, that this was always the practice with food.  If you even came close to finishing your food, you were always offered more – more rice, more fish, more fruit, more Mohingar.  We finally broke down and learned how to say, “I’m full” in Burmese.  What I learned about food in Burma was that showing love and hospitality meant showing abundance through food.  That is not to say that our hosts were well-off.  In fact, many of them were struggling.  But even in the midst of poverty, abundance found a way.

The disciples in our gospel lesson today were not accustomed to this practice of abundance.  Instead, they were quite adept at the practice of scarcity.  When Philip is asked where they can buy bread for everyone, he calculates the number of wages that would be needed to feed such a crowd, basically concluding that there is no way they can afford to feed so many.  When Andrew is presented with just a little food from boy – five loaves and two fish, he scoffs.  His scarcity mentality is too limited to imagine how greatness can come from so little.  I am sure that when Jesus told the disciples to sit the people down, the disciples were vacillating between skepticism, disbelief, and maybe even fear of what would happen when all five thousand people realized how hungry they were and how little this Jesus and his disciples had.

We are all familiar with this theology of scarcity.  Karen Yust imagines the same scene in a contemporary congregation.  She says, “One might expect the [Vestry] to echo Philip’s money-management concern, pointing out that the congregation does not take in enough revenue to support such a project.  The outreach committee might reinforce Andrew’s position, stating that the congregation has earmarked only a small percentage of its income for mission giving and the proposed project’s needs far exceed the allocated amount.  The groups responsible for discipleship and worship may not even offer an opinion, as they are busy preparing for a fast-approaching religious festival.  The buildings and grounds committee may assist with seating everyone on the lawn, although some [committee] members might worry about the effects of this event on the property’s landscaping.  It is likely that none of the congregations’ boards or committees would expect to participate in a miracle, as that is not what they signed on for.”[i]  On the surface, those behaviors are all smart behaviors.  Vestries have fiduciary responsibility for parishes.  Outreach committees must be wise in managing their aid.  The Altar Guild, Buildings and Grounds Committee, and Sunday School teachers all have areas of responsibility that need tending.  Even I have parameters around my discretionary fund and how often one person or family can receive aid.  The challenge is when a group of people have gathered to serve and glorify God, but only have a limited financial ability to do so (and trust me, big parishes sweat paying the bills as much as small parishes do), a seemingly necessary but nasty habit evolves – a theology of scarcity.  We all have faced that temptation.  Think about the last time you were planning your pledge to the church.  I am sure each of us looked at our income and other financial obligations before deciding what we had left to spare for the church.  We want to be sure that if we give generously to the church, we still have enough to pay the bills!

But Jesus does not seem to know anything about this theology of scarcity.  In fact, Jesus seems to have developed the opposite theology – a theology of abundance.  Of course, this feeding of five thousand should be no surprise.  This is the same Jesus who turned water into wine in Cana – and not just a little wine, but gallons upon gallons of wine; and not just any wine, but the best wine they had had all night long.  This is the same Jesus who will later explain to his disciples that in God’s house, there are many dwelling places – not just room for each of them, but many dwelling places.  In John’s gospel, “we are confronted with this profuse and full-measured flood of God’s grace mediated through the Christ.”[ii]  Nowhere does Jesus invite us to be careful or reserved.  Instead, Jesus keeps reminding us of the abundance of God.  Not only can he feed five thousand people, there will be leftovers.  And my guess is that those leftovers were there even after Jesus kept asking if they wanted more – until the people found the right words for “I’m full.”

Today, Jesus leaves us with baskets – twelve to be exact.  Twelve full baskets that are left over after feeding five thousand.  Those baskets sit there, challenging our every tendency to live on our own scarcity or fears of insufficiency.  Those baskets sit there, challenging our tendency to hoard, save, worry, and live a very small, safe life.  Those baskets sit there, challenging all the times we would rather pull back than push forward.  Instead, the baskets sit here today, right here at St. Margaret’s, inviting us to exercise faith in God’s abundance.  The baskets sit here today, calling us as a community to go places we have never been, to do things we have never tried, and to be things we have never envisioned.[iii]  The baskets sit here today, reminding us of all the times St. Margaret’s has had enough and emboldening us to live our lives as though we will always have not just enough, but an abundance.  The baskets sit here today, inviting us not be a people of anxiety and competition, but a people of generosity and hope.[iv]  Those baskets – that message of abundance is our good news today.  Amen.

[i] Karen Marie Yust, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 3 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 284.

[ii] Charles Hoffman, “More than Enough,” Christian Century, vol. 123, no. 15, July 25, 2006, 18.

[iii] Hoffman, 18

[iv] H. Stephen Shoemaker, “Bread and Miracles,” Christian Century, vol. 117, no. 20, July 5-12, 2000, 715.

Sermon – 2 Samuel 6.1-5, 12b-19, P10, YB, July 12, 2015

17 Friday Jul 2015

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One of the side bonuses of being a parent of small children is that you have to step up your silliness game.  In general, I am not what most people would call being adept at being silly – I tend to err on the side of being serious and thoughtful.  I am not sure when the loss of silliness happened, but I imagine the loss began as I matured into adulthood.  Even scripture seems to condone this putting away of silliness.  First Corinthians says, “When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.”[i]  Most of us embrace the mantra of putting aside childish ways when we mature – except perhaps when we are in the presence of a child.  I learned pretty quickly that harnessing silliness could garner me much parenting success.  Nothing deflates a temper tantrum like a silly face contest.  Nothing distracts a fussy baby like silly noises.  And nothing makes a car of children happier than a parent grooving out to a favorite song on the radio while driving.  Sure, the drivers on either side of the car will look at you like you are crazy – and if you think about them too much, you’ll become too self-conscious to keep up your silly dancing.  But if you can block them out, and dance with abandon, the joy in the car multiplies – and the whole car shakes as you and the children dance in your seats.

Restraint is a value for most of us.  Most of the time, dancing while driving is not really appropriate.  Instead we should be calmly and intently focused on driving.  Most of the time, we expect a certain amount of decorum while working.  The expectations around attire, behavior, and language are quite different at work than they are at home.  And most of the time, we expect a significant amount of restraint from those attending church, especially as Episcopalians.  Though we encourage people to come as they are, there are still certain garments that would raise eyebrows if you wore them to church.  Though we say “Amen,” throughout our services, we have designated times for those amens, and many of us tense up when someone says a spontaneous “Amen.”  Though we often sing songs of praise in church, many of us get uncomfortable if someone embodies that praise, either through clapping, raising their hands, or, heaven-forbid, dancing.

And yet, that is exactly where we find David today in our Old Testament lesson – exuberantly, and without many clothes, dancing before the ark of the Lord.  Before we can understand why David’s actions are so outlandish, we need to understand the fullness of this story.  If you recall, we have been tracking David’s story this summer.  We have seen him from his earliest days, when Samuel anoints him after calling him in from the shepherd’s fields; to his daring battle as a boy with the giant Goliath; to his tenuous relationship with Saul and Saul’s children – who seemed to both love David and fear the threat of David at the same time; to the ultimate demise and death of Saul and Jonathan; and to today’s reading, where David is establishing his rule of the people by bringing the ark of the Lord into the city of Jerusalem – the city of David.  If you remember, the ark of the Lord is known as the container of God’s presence among the people.  They built the ark back in Moses’ day, and most recently, the ark had been stolen by the Philistines.  David retrieves the ark so that the ark can be brought back in the center of the people, marking how David’s rule and God’s presence and favor are tied.[ii]  David’s favor with God leads David to begin his dancing journey of celebration to Jerusalem.

Now lest we think that dancing before the ark is totally normal in those days, we encounter a strange comment by David’s wife, Michal.  The text says, “As the ark of the LORD came into the city of David, Michal daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the LORD; and she despised him in her heart.”[iii]  You almost miss the line in the long text, but that is partially because we do not get the rest of the story today.  In the verses following what we hear today, David and Michal have a heated conversation about the inappropriateness of a king dancing nearly naked before the common people.  In the end, the text says that Michal never bears a child to David, as if suggesting that she is in the wrong for judging David.

But here this is where I am intrigued.  You see, Michal was the daughter of Saul and the sister of Jonathan, both of whom are now dead.  There is some debate about why Michal despises David,[iv] but I think we must remember that Michal is mourning.  In theory, this is a day for joy, since Michal’s husband is now king.  But Michal has every right to be mourning.  That line, “and she despised him in her heart,” though sharp and jarring, is not unfamiliar to me when I really think about her reaction.

One of the realities of the advent of social media is how quickly news travels.  If you follow social media, you are bombarded with news.  Normally, this is a good thing, because social media allows us to stay in touch with the highlights of friends’ lives from around the world.  Where social media becomes a challenge is when someone is struggling.  I have many friends who have struggled with infertility.  Nothing is worse for someone struggling with infertility than to watch a news feed of friend after friend getting pregnant.  They post the coveted ultrasound picture of a baby.  There are endless congratulations, and follow-up baby-bump pictures.  Everyone is full of joy, except for the person who wants that reality and cannot have it.  Every pregnancy announcement feels like another painful reminder of how you cannot seem to become pregnant.  The same is true about jobs or college acceptances.  The social media community seems adept at celebrating the good, but really struggles with recognizing those who mourn while we simultaneously rejoice.  We prefer to dance instead and forget the bad stuff.

We struggle with that reality in the context of church too.  On our healing prayer Sundays I am acutely aware of that reality.  Though each Sunday is meant to be an Easter celebration, once a month we try to remember how Sunday does not always feel like a celebration.  There are parts of our lives that are not whole or healed.  There are times when we still mourn or long for something else.  There are times when we are just not in the mood to dance, and would much rather have people sit with us in our discomfort than for them to be dancing around praising a God who quite frankly may seem absent, neglectful, or downright mean.[v]

I think that is why I love this story from Second Samuel so much.  When we read about David, we long to be like David – unfettered, totally unself-conscious, and full of joy.  We want to be a people of gratitude, celebration, and praise.  But sometimes, we are more like Michal.  We are not ready for joy, we are not ready for celebration, and we not ready to praise God yet.  And quite frankly, having someone in our face doing just that – or worse, telling us to get over ourselves and start dancing makes us despise them in our hearts too.  But that is what I love about this story.  Michal was not edited out of the story.  This is not a simple story about how we should always praise God.  This is a complex story about how freeing and life-giving praising God can be.  In fact, the joy we get from God can make us dance with abandon, totally liberated from what is socially acceptable.  But, there are also times when we are just not there – and the command to make a joyful noise makes us more angry than willing to yield.  And that’s okay.  Things may not turn out how we want them.  We may need to mourn that reality for a long time.  In this complex reality, the Church stands in solidarity with us all, celebrating what can be celebrated, giving space for hurt and mourning where needed.  We are a community of both Davids and Michals.  And sometimes we identify with one more than the other.  To us all, the Church offers a humble meal, reminding us that there is room for all at God’s table.  Amen.

[i] 1 Corinthians 13.11

[ii] Walter Brueggemann, First and Second Samuel: Interpretation, A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville:  John Knox Press, 1990), 250-251.

[iii] 2 Samuel 6.16

[iv] Brueggemann, 251.  Also, see other theories by J. Mary Luti, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, supplemental essays (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Pres, 2012), 6.

[v] David G. Forney, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, supplemental essays (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Pres, 2012), 3.

Sermon – Mark 6.1-13, P9, YB, July 5, 2015

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

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A few weeks ago, as we were planning liturgies, we were discussing the fact that we had two baptisms in a row – last Sunday and today.  A few people in the group kind of groaned, “Two in a row?!?”  I laughed at the time.  But the more I thought about their exasperation, the more I wondered why they were exasperated.  Certainly baptisms can take longer.  Between the blessing of the water, the renewal of vows, and the baptism itself, the service is a bit longer.  And perhaps to groan came out of a place of wanting to spread out the requency of special services – much like one rations out Halloween candy instead of eating it all at once.  But the more I thought about having two baptisms in a row, the more I liked the idea; in fact, the more I thought about the baptismal liturgy, I began to wish we had one every Sunday.

Now before you all issue a collective groan of exasperation, let me explain.  You see, the baptismal liturgy is one of those foundational liturgies.  In baptism, we ritually welcome someone into the family of faith.  But the baptismal liturgy is about more than the cute baby (though Rose is very cute, I admit!).  The baptismal liturgy is the time when we declare who we are, how we are to live, and how we will accomplish that ideal.  In this liturgy, we retell the story of our history – how God moved over the waters in creation, how God split the waters to free the enslaved people of Israel, and how God used the waters of baptism to mark a new way through Jesus’ own baptism.  In this liturgy, we also talk about our nature – how we are prone to sin, how we (despite the fact that we are saved by the waters of baptism) are on a continual journey of repenting and returning to the Lord, and how we need each other if we are ever to keep turning toward God.  In this liturgy, we also declare the radical way that we will live our lives in Christ – what being a Christian actually means.  Being a Christian means regularly gathering to learn together, to pray together, to eat at the Holy Table together, and to join in fellowship together.  Being a Christian means sharing the good news with others – not just by example, but by our words too.  Being  a Christian means seeking and serving Christ in others, loving our neighbor, striving for justice and peace, and respecting the dignity of others.  I don’t know about you, but regular worship, regular evangelism, and regular mission sounds like a lot of work!  And yet, here we are (for the second week in a row!) proclaiming that we will do these things.

So if today is all about defining who we are and who we are going to shape little Rose into being, what might be the best way for us to prepare her for her new life in Christ?  Some of us might imagine the story we heard a few weeks ago about David and Goliath.  If you remember, David was just a boy who agreed to take on the enormous Goliath, that everyone feared.  When King Saul agrees to let David fight Goliath, he first wants to suit up David.  Saul clothes David with Saul’s armor; he puts a bronze helmet on David’s head and clothes him with a coat of mail.  By the time Saul puts his sword over the armor, David cannot even walk!  David realizes the protection weighs him down.  So he removes the armor and weapon and instead takes only a staff, five smooth stones in his shepherd’s bag, and his sling.  Goliath (and if we are honest, probably everyone else gathered, including the people of God) laughs at David’s puny preparation.  The funny thing is that in our gospel lesson today, Jesus does the same thing for the disciples when he commissions them to go out in the world.  Jesus tells them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; they get a staff, one pair of sandals, and one tunic.

When we think about preparing ourselves for the life of faith – of going out into the world to seek Christ, serve Christ, and share Christ – most of us think about preparing the way that Saul prepares David.  We want some armor for all those times that we are rejected when we share our faith; we want a sword in case we run into trouble while seeking Christ; we want some heavy mail so that when we serve others, nothing or no one gets too close[i]  But instead, Jesus sends out the disciples with a staff to steady their walking as they share the good news, a pair of sandals and one tunic so that they can humbly encounter others as they serve Christ, and empty hands and bellies so that they can seek Christ in others.  On this day when we proclaim who we are and how we will live, one might imagine that we are readying ourselves and gathering our supplies, and especially that we are arming this small, vulnerable child for walking the way of Christ.  But instead, Jesus basically tells us that there is no way to protect ourselves; there is no way to prepare.[ii]  We go with our trust in the Lord, with vulnerability, and with a sense of identity and purpose.

That is why I think we could stand to have baptism Sunday every Sunday.  Our tendency would be to find the biggest backpack we can and load that bag with all the things we think we need for our journey.  But Jesus tells us to put that bag down and start walking:  walking the way, the truth, and the light; walking by seeking, serving, and sharing Christ.  In many ways Rose has more to teach us today than we have to teach her.  She came into this world with very little.  In fact, she even came here with very little – sure her parents might have a monster diaper bag with all the “just in case” stuff babies often need.  But Rose herself cannot carry a bag; she is not self-sufficient; she is vulnerable with us all.  Instead of giving Rose an armor for Christ today, she encourages us to take off our armor and swords, and get back to the basics: our staff, sandals, and tunic.  That is the beauty of baptism.  Baptism helps us remember that we need each other.  Rose needs us to teach her the way.  We need her to teach us how to gat back to basics.  Together we find our way to living the faithful life in Christ.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.

[i] Michael L. Lindvall talks about the anxiety that evangelism produces in all of us in his article, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 216.

[ii] C. Clifton Black, “Commentary on Mark 6:1-13,” July 5, 2015, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2502 on July 2, 2015.

Sermon – Mark 4.35-41, P7, YB, June 21, 2015

22 Monday Jun 2015

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A long time ago, we got on a boat.  We were not really sure what was going to happen while we were out to sea, but we got on the boat because we were curious.  We had an experience, or maybe multiple experiences with a man named Jesus, and something about those experiences compelled us to get on the boat.  Maybe the experience happened as early as Sunday School, maybe the experience happened when we were confirmed, or maybe the experience happened as an adult.  We may not even be able to articulate the reason why we got on the boat.  But all of us, at some point, step onto the boat, however tentatively or boldly, and we sail with Jesus to the other side.

The disciples have that same experience in today’s gospel lesson from Mark.  After a long day of preaching and teaching, during which Jesus pulls them aside and explains parables to them, Jesus says, “Let us go across to the other side.”  Now if the disciples had been smart, they would have asked some questions: “What is on the other side?  What if a storm comes?  Can’t we just stay here and get a good night’s rest?  This place is familiar and comfortable.”  And they should have asked questions.  The “other side” of that body of water is exactly that – other.  The other side is Gentile territory, the land of the Gerasenes.  Jesus is taking his first journey into what might be considered dangerous, and even inappropriate.  Jesus is beginning a ministry beyond just the Jews.[i]  “Let us go across to the other side,” is no “Hey, let’s mix things up this year and go to Cabo.”  Yes, the disciples should have asked a lot more questions.[ii]

But they do not.  Something about this Jesus compels them forward, stepping on and manning that boat without question.  That’s the funny thing about Jesus.  We too got on a boat because of him, probably having no idea what we were getting into.  Suddenly we find ourselves cooking casseroles, watering gardens, and bringing in men’s undergarments for our needy neighbors.  Suddenly we find ourselves getting asked by the Rector to serve on some committee.  Suddenly we find the news of the day is not so simple when we remember all those words we said in our baptismal covenant about seeking and serving Christ, loving our neighbor as ourselves, and sharing the Good News.  We really should have asked more questions before we got on that boat to follow Jesus.

I have been thinking about that boat a lot this week.  You see, some of our fellow disciples were murdered this week – nine to be exact, in Charleston, South Carolina.  They were praying and reading Holy Scripture – just like we do every Thursday.  They even welcomed in a stranger that night – like Jesus always tells us to do.  That very stranger turned out to be crazy, filled with racist rage, and willing to kill nine people before fleeing.  At least that was how I saw the episode at first.  At first, this was another instance of a crazy person, senselessly killing other people.  But then the prophets of our time began to speak.  The prophets reminded me that violence proliferates in our society.  The prophets reminded me that because we cannot agree on a reasonable gun policy, more and more people die in our backyards.  The prophets reminded me that our African-American brothers and sisters in this country experience very fragile and virtually non-existent safety – they cannot even be safe in church.  There was a part of me that wanted to stay on the shore this week and say, “Oh, Jesus, that was just an isolated event by a crazy kid with extremist views.”  But I had already gotten on the boat.  It was too late.  And a storm began to rage.

That storm for me was the storm of our time:  a storm of violence, racism, and suffering.  No longer could I contain each story:  Trayvon Martin, Ferguson, Sandy Hook, Baltimore, Columbine, Selma, Charleston.  One story bled into another, and as I was reminded of each one, I felt the buckets of water dousing my face.  As I thought about every conversation I have had about how racism is not dead, I felt the water creeping up to my waist.  As I thought about the historical shadow of the oppression of others in our country, I wanted to cry out to God.  And all I could think about was Jesus on that stupid boat, asleep on a cushion in the stern.  Who can sleep at a time like this?  Doesn’t Jesus care about us at all?  Why couldn’t we have just stayed on the shore in that comfortable, familiar place instead of getting on the God-forsaken boat with a man who does not seem in the least bit bothered by our suffering?

The disciples know that feeling.  They are experienced at life on a boat.  At least when they get on the boat, they knew how to manage a boat.  They know the dangers and the perils, and have learned to navigate them for the necessity of survival.  But even these experienced fishermen are scared.  They have tried to control the boat, they have scooped out as much water as they can, and they know they have met their match.  And so they go to their last resort.  They wake up Jesus and shout, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?!?”  When they got on that boat, this is not what they were expecting.  They were expecting the fulfillment of a promise – the fulfillment of a different life and a different world:  the kingdom of God here on earth.  Instead they were going down fast with a man who could not even stay awake and fight the good fight with them.

I shouted those words this week too.  Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?  Maybe we brought all this violence on ourselves, but surely you care?  Surely you did not lure me onto this boat – into this relationship with you – only to watch us perish?  Though I wanted more than anything to think this was an isolated event of a crazy person doing something ungodly, I could not ignore the storm swirling around.

I struggled to find hope today in our gospel lesson.  All I saw was Jesus scolding the disciples for their fear and their lack of faith.  And then I saw disciples even more afraid than before – which is saying something given the awfulness of that storm.  Straining for some strand of hope – some glimmer of redemption – I came back to that invitation from Jesus, “Let us go across to the other side.”  Jesus does not tell the disciples to go to the other side alone.  Jesus does not say, “Go to the other side without me.”  Jesus says, “Let us go to the other side.”[iii]  Whether the disciples felt like Jesus was with them during that storm or not, Jesus was with them.  That may not seem like much, but that may be the biggest miracle of all in this story.  As one scholar writes, “God’s power isn’t in the control of creation or of people, but in being in covenant and relationship with them.  [God’s power] isn’t in imposing the divine will or insisting on its own way but in sojourning with us as we fumble around and make our way in the world.  God’s power is not in miraculous interventions, pre-emptive strikes in the cosmic war against suffering and evil, but in inviting us to build a kingdom out of love, peace, and justice with God.  God’s power is not in the obliterating of what is bad in the world, but in empowering us to build something good in this world.”[iv]

A long time ago, we got on a boat.  We did not know where we were going, what we would see, or who we would encounter.  All we knew was that Jesus was inviting us into a different life, and we felt compelled by this passionate, nonsensical man.  Oh, we had clues.  We knew that the “other side,” was not a place we wanted to go.  We knew that going there might change us, and change our entire worldview.  We knew that getting on that boat would mean stepping away from the familiar, comfortable coastline, and sailing into something different and scary.[v]  But Jesus said he would go with us.  Jesus invited us on a journey with him and something deep inside us, despite the little devil on our shoulder telling us to stay put, told us to step onto that boat.

I am still scared of the storm.  In fact, I am a little afraid of Jesus too.  But what brings me comfort this week is that Jesus is with us.  Jesus does not invite us onto a boat and let us sail alone.  And though Jesus may have an ability to sleep through a storm, with complete confidence in the direction of God, I also know that Jesus will wake up and respond to me when I call out his name.  He may not say what I want to hear.  He may leave me feeling more uncomfortable than getting soaked in a storm.  But he is here.  Jesus is here on our boat, and can make things right.  We just have to be prepared to go to the other side.  Amen.

[i] Beverly Zink-Sawyer, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, Vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 165.

[ii] This train of thought comes from Karoline Lewis’ writing “The Other Side,” June 14, 2015 as found at https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3645 on June 18, 2015.

[iii] Lewis.

[iv] David R. Henson, “When God Sleeps through Storms (Lectionary Reflection for Mark 4:35-41),” June 15, 2015 as found at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/davidhenson/2015/06/1804/ on June 18, 2015.

[v] Lewis.

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

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[ii] Rigby, 5.

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

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

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

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

03 Wednesday Jun 2015

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[iii] McKim, 28.

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

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

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

[vii] Coffey.