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Sermon – Lk. 10.1-11, 16-20, P9, YC, July 7, 2013

10 Wednesday Jul 2013

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One of the challenges of our faith is connecting our modern world to the world of Holy Scripture.  Most of us have experienced the Living Word still speaking to us today, but some texts are a little more relatable than others.  Today’s gospel lesson is one of those un-relatable texts.  The more we think about those seventy who were sent out the more we conclude that their experience is totally foreign to us.  Jesus brings us up short right away when he starts talking about going out into the mission field to “harvest” people.  We get nervous just talking about the word evangelism, let alone trying to figure out what harvesting people means.  Our minds wander to thoughts about judgment and saving souls and a shudder moves down our spine.  Then we get into the gritty details of the text.  Jesus tells the disciples that they are to preach about the kingdom coming near.  Most of us hear the word “preach” and we immediately tune out.  “Oh, that’s what the priest does.  I guess this is not a passage about what I am called to do.”  And that thought does not even cover our aversion to the idea of preaching, “The kingdom of God has come near to you.”  All we can envision is that guy in Times Square with the sandwich board yelling about how we are all going to hell for us to decide conclusively that this passage does not relate to us.  Add to these reservations the instruction from Jesus to cure the sick and we are pretty much done.  Most of us are not doctors and many of us are still uncertain about what role our faith plays in our health.

The truth is I am not sure the seventy others who Jesus sent out felt too confident either.  First Jesus tells them that the “harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”  So basically, there is so much work to be done that the seventy are going to be overworked and overstressed.  Next Jesus tells them, “I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves.”  Quite frankly, I would think most of the seventy would have been terrified by this statement.  I am sure they were panicked with questions about who these wolves were and whether their own lives were at stake.  Then Jesus tells them, “Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals; and greet no one on the road.”  He goes on to explain that they are to be dependent upon the hospitality of others.  If they were not worried about working conditions already, this last bit of information might have set them on edge.  Basically Jesus sends them out with nothing – no safety net, no creature comforts, and no guarantees.  So the seventy are terrified and starkly vulnerable; and we, thousands of years later, are either equally wary or totally dismissive.

Back in April, the Vestry had a retreat about evangelism.  One of the stories the consultant told us was about her own harried experience with evangelism.  She was studying with a professor whose specialty was church growth, and her assignment for her thesis was to go to a local coffee shop and start talking to people about their faith.  The first week she went to the coffee shop, but was too terrified to talk to anyone.  When her professor asked her how it went, she totally lied.  She made up some story about talking to some people and how the conversations were good.  This charade continued for weeks.  Each week she would go to the shop, but be unable to take that first step.  And each week, she would lie to her professor about trying.  Finally, guilt won over, and she took a small step forward.  She made a little sign out of a folded piece of paper that read, “Talk to me about church, and I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.”  She sat nervously, petrified of what would happen.  Eventually a woman came up to her and said, “I’d like to talk to you about church, but I’ll buy the cup of coffee for you.”  The following conversation was transformative for both of them, and the professor, who knew all along she was lying, was proud to see the consultant finally make progress.

Like there was good news for this consultant, so there is good news for the seventy.  Although Jesus does send the seventy out in a very vulnerable way, he does not send them alone.  Jesus sends them in pairs.  Having a partner offers all sorts of security in the midst of their vulnerability.  “When one of them falters, the other can help.  When one is lost, the other can seek the way.  When one is discouraged, the other can hold faith for both for a while.  That is what the company of believers does – we hold on to each other, console each other, encourage and embolden each other, and even believe for each other.”[i]

Second, Jesus promises the seventy that the harvest is plentiful.  Jesus does not tell the seventy that they are responsible for preparing the harvest – that is God’s work.  Their work is simply to gather the harvest.[ii]  This distinction is pretty tremendous because Jesus is saying that people are ready for his message.  Jesus does not tell the seventy that they will need to go out and convince people of the message.  Instead, he tells them that there are people who will already be receptive and are simply waiting for the seventy to gather them.

Finally, we hear that after this scary commission – as lambs among wolves, of walking over snakes and scorpions, and of being utterly reliant on the hospitality of strangers – the seventy return with joy.  This thing Jesus asks them to do does not leave them bereft or exhausted or even discouraged.  The seventy return delighted in what has happened to them; not because they did something, but because of the work that God did through them.[iii]

This gospel lesson has good news for us today as well.  Despite all of our hang-ups about the language – about harvesting people, the kingdom of God coming near, and about curing people – at the end of the day, this story is about our own call to share our experience of God’s grace with others.  When we think about this text in those terms, the language starts to shift.  When Jesus says we are to go out for the harvest, and that the harvest is plentiful, mostly Jesus is telling us that in our world today, people are eager for a word of Good News.  Even if they say they are not religious, or they do not normally talk about God, Jesus assures us today that there are many people who want to hear your story of gratitude about all that God has done in your life.  And when Jesus says the kingdom of God is coming near, he is not asking us to put on a sandwich board and grab a megaphone.  Mostly he is telling us to stop delaying and get out there.  The kingdom being near is his way of saying the time for sharing is now.  Finally, when Jesus tells us to cure people, we might consider the ways that our faith has been a salve for us.  Surely in your faith journey, at some point your relationship with God has gotten you through something tough and has returned you to wholeness.  Hearing some Good News might just be the same salve that others need.

And just in case you are not sure about all of this, I want to give you a little encouragement.  In our Vestry evangelism work, our first bit of homework was to go to a local gas station or shop and ask for directions to St. Margaret’s.  One of our Vestry members was shocked to find that the grocery clerk was able to give her perfect directions to our church.  The Vestry member found out that she lives in the neighborhood across the street, though she had never actually been inside our doors.  Just over a week ago, another Vestry member was chatting with a different grocery clerk about the amount of blueberries she was purchasing.  The Vestry member explained that they were for Church.  The clerk proceeded to ask her which Church and even said she might come by one Sunday.  And then yesterday, as I was stretching at the Y, a gentleman approached me who I had seen several times over the last year.  He said that he had seen me in a St. Margaret’s t-shirt the last time I was at the Y and he wondered what my affiliation was with St. Margaret’s.  In the conversation that followed, I learned that he had once attended St. Margaret’s and that he might consider coming back for a visit.

Though the language of this gospel might make us evangelism-wary Episcopalians nervous, the truth is that Jesus is simply inviting us to share the Good News of God’s grace in our lives.  He promises that we do not have to do the work alone – we always have good partners here at St. Margaret’s.  He promises that people are ready to hear our words – we all have a story of goodness about our faith journey here.  And he promises that there will be joy – we will all find surprising delights in this journey of sharing.  Our invitation is to be a laborer in the plentiful harvest.  Amen.

[i] David Lose, “The Greater Gift,” as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2617, on July 5, 2013.

[ii] David J. Lose, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 217.

[iii] Richard J. Shaffer, Jr., “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 218.

Sermon – Luke 9.51-62, P8, YC, June 30, 2013

03 Wednesday Jul 2013

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This week, most of us will celebrate the fourth of July in some fashion or another.  Though the holiday is filled with words like independence, patriotism, liberty, and fireworks, mostly we are celebrating a sense of “home.”  Our celebration of the Fourth is really a celebration of the place that millions of us commonly call home.  Our songs celebrate this theme:  “God bless America, our home sweet home”; or “and the home of the brave.”  This is a day that we celebrate our home with a sense of pride, of belonging, and of identity.  Like any home, our country has faults and drawbacks, but our country is our home, and nothing else can replace the sense of comfort that home can bring.

Perhaps what we forget in our celebrations is that our “home” did not always feel that way.  Centuries ago, when the original settlers came to this country, the country felt nothing like home.  In fact, those settlers left what they knew as home, with all the comforts home offered, and came to this foreign place.  This was a place of newness and discomfort.  Nothing was familiar, and in fact much of what the settlers experienced was downright scary or dangerous.  Though settlers came here to establish a new home, that home-like feeling took a very long time to create.

Here at St. Margaret’s we have made a similar transition in the last fifty years.  I was just reading the rough draft of our fifty-year history this week, and I was thinking about the contrast of those early years with our experience of St. Margaret’s now.  Fifty years ago, St. Margaret’s was merely a group of people gathering.  We had no building, no clear identity, and certainly no sense of the familiar.  In fact, the story goes that when we would gather for Sunday worship in the American Legion Hall, the smell of smoke and beer lingered from Saturday night events at the Hall.  When people left their church homes to join St. Margaret’s, I am pretty sure smoke and beer on a Sunday morning was not exactly what they were dreaming of for their new home.

So as we Americans prepare to collectively celebrate our home, and as we at St. Margaret’s, in our fiftieth year of ministry, continue to celebrate our home, we find Jesus saying some pretty funny things about home in our gospel lesson today.  When someone along the road says to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go,” Jesus says to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.”  Then, when Jesus calls others to follow him, and they first ask for some basic things, like burying their father or saying goodbye to their loved ones, Jesus refuses.  In other words, Jesus basically tells anyone considering following him that they will lose all sense of home – not only the literal place to lay one’s head, but also all the comforts and familiarity of home.  Following Jesus is a calling into a homelessness of sorts.  Jesus’ calling into homelessness is pretty scary.  Following Jesus means giving up control and trusting that all will be well, which is a lot to ask, considering Jesus has already told them that all will not be well.  Their new “home” will be a place of suffering, persecution, pain, and homelessness.  Jesus’ new home sounds a lot like the home those founding ancestors of our country and those founding members of St. Margaret’s faced years ago.

To be honest, I am not sure I would have been able to follow Jesus as those men and women did so many years ago.  I am sure you already know this about me, but I am a pretty big fan of control – or at least the illusion of control.  I do not like the feeling of things being out of my control.  So when Jesus asks me to let go of control – of a sense of home and familiarity – I am not sure I would have said yes.

The good news is that I do not think Jesus is actually asking us to cede control to him.  Jesus is not really offering the choice of either us being in control or him being in control.  As we well know, Jesus did not head to Jerusalem with the mission of taking control or charge.  Instead, he set his path to Jerusalem to throw himself fully and completely into our out-of-control lives and to come out on the other side.  That is the promise of this Gospel – “not that we can be in control, or even that God is in control, but rather that God in Jesus joins us in our out-of-controlness, holds onto us, and brings us to the other side.”[i]  This is the homelessness Jesus is really inviting us into – this commitment to giving up the illusion of control, to take some risks, and to throw ourselves into this turbulent life and world, trusting that God joins us in the adventure, holds us through the ups and downs, and brings us in time to the other side.  When Jesus offers his hand out to others to journey with him into homelessness, this is the underlining promise – that he is with us in the journey into homelessness and out-of-controlness.

On my mission trip to Burma, we had a day when we were supposed to go see working Elephants in the forest.  We loaded up our truck, crammed in way too close, as usual, and began the bumpy journey.  But an hour into our ride, our truck had some mechanical issues.  We pulled into to what seemed to be a local mechanic, although our version of a mechanic shop and the Burmese version of a mechanic shop are very different.  Sensing that this stop would take a while, our tour guide suggested our team take a walk.  The seven of us followed, happy for a distraction.  During our walk, we came upon a rice paddy, and could see workers out in the field.  Although the team was content to observe from a distance, our guide recommended crossing the dikes to get a closer view.  We found his offer shocking.  We worried about trespassing, encountering swarms of disease-carrying mosquitoes, or falling off the dikes, which looked quite tenuous.  Most of the team looked at the sturdy ground on which we were standing and decided that we should not test the swampy paddy.  When our tour guide realized most of us were not following him, he came back to the place where he jumped to the first dike.  First, he pleaded with the group as a whole.  Then, he called me by name.  “Jennifer, please come with me.  It’s okay.  You can trust me.”  I looked into his dark brown eyes, and saw a sparkle of adventure and joy.  I looked back at the dirty – but dry – road wistfully.  Then I turned back toward our guide and his outstretched hand.  His smile conveyed a sense of confidence and encouragement that warmed my heart, and I found myself jumping across the water to the dike.

We all know that sense of crossing into Jesus’ homelessness.  Certainly our country this week has at many times felt out of control.  Though we call this place home, we have been bitterly divided about Supreme Court decisions and Congressional bills this week.  Those decisions have left us wondering what sort of home we are creating now.  The same could be said for St. Margaret’s.  Though many of us know this place as home, our home seems to be ever changing.  There are new ways of operating, new projects underway, and new invitations.  There is an ambiguity about who we will be and how we will change.  But the promise in all of this, especially in the emerging sense of homelessness in our country and in our church, is that God is right here with us.  God continually promises to be on this crazy ride with us.  That reassurance by God today fills us with hope, and a renewed sense of courage and joy as we journey forward.  Today, as we look into Jesus’ sparkling eyes, he calls us by name, and says, “Come on.  Let’s go be homeless!”  Amen.

[i] David Lose, “Out of Control,” as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=2614 on June 28, 2013.

Sermon – I Kings 19.1-15a, P7, YC, June 23, 2013

26 Wednesday Jun 2013

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This past week, I went down to a monastery in South Carolina for my annual spiritual retreat.  An annual spiritual retreat is one of the stipulations from my letter of agreement here at St. Margaret’s, so one could assume that we all know what going on a spiritual retreat means.  But I cannot tell you the number of people – parishioners, friends, family members, and fellow travelers – who have asked me the same question:  so what do you do on a spiritual retreat?  Some follow up with other questions about whether I have a schedule of meetings or classes or whether I really have to be silent the whole time.  But most people do not know what a spiritual retreat really looks like.

So imagine my surprise this week, when I opened the text for today, only to hear God twice asking Elijah, “What are you doing here?”  Having been asked that question by countless others over the last few weeks, I got a little defensive about God’s question for Elijah.  Thinking that I somehow needed to answer this question too, my first response was a response not unlike Elijah – who twice explains to God, in the exact same words, “I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword.  I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away.”  As if God did not know that already.  God’s double question, and Elijah’s double response give a little clue about what is happening here.  God is not really asking what Elijah is doing there – at least not in the sense of, “What led you to come here?”  God is asking a much deeper question.  God’s question is the deeper question, “What does your being here say about me, about you, and about our relationship?  Given what you know, what are you doing here, Elijah?”

So instead of answering the question in the standard way – telling others about the silence of the day, the times of worship, the periods, places, and practices of prayer, or even about the monks themselves, instead I let God’s deeper question sit with me this week as well.  What are you doing here?  I found that each time I tried to answer the question the response was not as deep as God’s question.  So if I said I came to rest and refresh for my ministry, God’s response was, “What are you doing here?”  If I said I wanted help discerning answers to some heavy questions, God’s response was, “What are you doing here?”  If I said I just wanted clarity, God’s response was, “What are you doing here?”

This is the hard question from the text for all of us today.  God is asking this question of you this week too.  When you came in those doors and sat in that pew, God asked you, “What are you doing here?”  When you listened to scripture and when you pray, God is asking you, “What are you doing here?”  When you come to the Eucharistic table and consume Christ’s body and blood, God is still asking you, “What are you doing here?”  Today is one of those tricky days in Church.  There is no coasting through this service, just hoping to feel some sense of peace.  God is actively in our faces, asking us the tough question.

The truth is most of us feel like Elijah a good portion of the time.  We hear Elijah’s whiny response throughout this story.  When Elijah flees from Jezebel’s death threat, Elijah sits down under a tree and asks God to just let him die.  He even flops down under the tree hoping for death.  Of course, God does not allow that.  Twice angels wake him to give him food for the journey.  Even after this sustenance, Elijah finds another place to hide – a cave hidden away.  But God does not allow hiding there either.  We know Elijah’s pain.  We just want to come to church, hear some good music, hear a decent sermon, get that sustaining meal, and go back to the daily grind.  We do not want to hear what God says in the sheer silence.  In the sheer silence, God says, “Go.”  God tells Elijah to get back out there and do God’s work.  God does not coddle Elijah or comfort him in his fear.  Instead God tells Elijah to go.

At the end of the day, God’s words for Elijah were the same words for me during my retreat.  I may have lamented to God.  I may have worried to God.  I may have given some lengthy explanation to God about why I was there.  But before I could go any further, God stopped me.  “What are you doing here?  Go.”

When I was in college, the first year I danced with a team, we went to a training camp.  The coach realized pretty quickly those of us who were lacking in certain areas.  My challenge was that I could not yet do a toe-touch.  When we started doing them in training, the coach had us stand in line and one-by-one we had to do a toe-touch in front of him.  When he saw mine, he laid into me.  I basically remember him screaming something to the effect of, “I don’t care if you have to do sit-ups non-stop, or if you need to lift weights, or you just need to stand there and do toe-touches all day until you can’t move, I better see you up in the air before the season starts.”  At least, that is the clean version of what he yelled.  Never having played sports, I had never had anyone yell at me like that, and he put the proverbial “fear of God” in me.  And figuring he was serious, I started working out more and practicing more just to get to where he wanted me to be.

I hear God as being like that coach for us today.  God is kind of like a coach, getting up in our faces today, demanding to know, “What are you doing here?”  And before we can stumble through some Elijah-like complain fest, God says, “Go.”  God says that the dismissal we hear every week is not some cute phrase we say to conclude the service.  That dismissal is our “Go.”  “Let us go forth in the name of Christ.”  “Go in peace to love and serve the Lord.”  “Let us go forth into the world, rejoicing in the power of the Spirit.”  The answer to what we are doing here is to be empowered to go.  We can be fed by the word, by song, and by the meal, but the reason we do those things is so that we can go.  God’s question today is deep, hard, but simple:  What are you doing here?  And in case we are wondering what the answer is, God tells us:  Go.  Amen.

Sermon – I Kings 17.8-24, P5, YC, June 9, 2013

12 Wednesday Jun 2013

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Last week I lost my watch.  When I say that I lost my watch, I do not mean I misplaced my watch.  I went for a walk, took the watch off while I was walking, and about an hour after my walk realized the watch was gone.  I searched the path of my walk, I looked all over the church and our house, but the watch is gone.  Now, truthfully, a watch is certainly replaceable, but this watch was sentimental – a gift from a special occasion that meant a lot to me.  So, of course, ever since I lost my watch, I have been praying to St. Anthony.  St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things.  The prayer I learned, and have been praying for over a week is, “St. Anthony, St. Anthony, please come around, something is lost that cannot be found.”  Though I know the watch is most likely gone, I keep occasionally offering up the prayer with some desperate sense of hope.

We do funny things in our prayer lives, especially when things are not going our way.  We have been known to bargain with God.  “God, if you please just grant this one thing, I promise I will never blank again.”  We have been known to try to negotiate with God.  “I know that I am not perfect, God, but let me tell you about all the good I have done.  Surely you can grant this one thing to your faithful servant.”  And we have been known to rail at God.  “How can you do this to me God?  Haven’t I been through enough?!?”  Sure, we know the Lord’s Prayer, and we may pray the daily office at home, and we may even pray with scripture, especially our favorite psalms.  But when we are at our lowest, when we feel like we have tried everything we are supposed to say or do with God, sometimes our prayers simply reveal our broken, frustrated, desperate spirits.

This is the prayer that Elijah offers today.  Elijah has already created quite the imposition on a poor widow.  Elijah goes to the widow, a woman who is about to die of starvation, and asks her to feed and house him.  Now, God takes care of the widow’s lack of food, but while Elijah is still there, the woman’s son almost dies of illness.  The woman blames Elijah, and Elijah at first seems fairly composed as he asks for the boy.  But when he retires to another room with boy, Elijah lets God have it.  Elijah cries out to God in anger, rage, and despair.[i]  “O Lord my God, have you brought calamity even upon the widow with whom I am staying, by killing her son?”  Elijah does not come to God with a polite request that God heal the son.  Elijah does not offer some traditional prayer of healing.  Elijah simply cries out to God.  He cries out to God for the injustice done to this poor widow – who is already clearly impoverished by having no husband.  The death of an only son would mean certain death for her as well.  Her son was her only hope for survival in this world.[ii]  Elijah boldly accuses God of an injustice – in fact accuses God of killing this boy and all that he represents to the widow.

Some may hear in Elijah’s prayer a sense of self-interest.  If he is proclaiming to be a man of God, and God then kills this woman’s only sense of hope, then the death makes Elijah look bad.  Who wants to follow a prophet of a God who kills the downtrodden?  Or, we might hear Elijah’s prayer as petulant.  Perhaps he sounds like a man whining about fairness – something childish and narrow-minded.  But I hear Elijah’s prayer as both fully human and as an honest portrayal of someone with an intimate relationship with God.  In any intimate relationship, the overly polite ways of being with one another end eventually.  In time, the only thing that works in that intimate relationship is being brutally and fully honest, holding one another to account and being totally open about the good and the bad of the relationship.  This is what Elijah is doing here.  Elijah, who knows God intimately, holds God to account.  “Really, God?  This is how you are going to treat people?  You claim to care about the poor and oppressed, and you have forced me to impose on this poor widow, and now you are going to let her only son, her only source of potential security die??”  Elijah does not ask this of God for himself or out of a sense of injustice.  Elijah asks this of a God whom he knows to be better than this – a God who loves and cares for the poor and oppressed.  And he also knows that God can do the impossible.  Elijah knows that God can bring this child from death to life.

What I love about this passage is twofold.  First, I love the very human, intimate depiction of prayer.  As Episcopalians, with our reliance on our Prayer Book and our desire for beauty and intelligence when we talk to God, we can become so formal with God that we forget that we have a real relationship with God who can handle our real words.  We can be brutally honest with God or even angry with God, and God will still love us.  We can be vulnerable and frustrated and desperate with God.  We can even come to God when we do not have words – when our emotions are so overwhelming that we no longer have anything left to say.  Elijah gives us permission today to be fully ourselves with the God who loves us no matter what.

I also love that we get this passage today because today is our monthly healing service.  Since I have been at St. Margaret’s, I have been regularly asked questions about our healing services.  Our tradition of monthly healing services that began well before my time here still has many of us questioning.  I have had adults ask me who they are allowed to ask prayers for – whether they can only ask for healing prayers for themselves or whether they can ask for healing for others as well.  I have had some of our teens ask me what we are actually doing when we lay hands on people.  Even my own daughter asked me why I made the sign of the cross on her forehead when she came forward once.  Elijah points the way to answers for those questions today.  By praying our litany of healing and by coming forward for ourselves and others, we proclaim several things.  We proclaim that intimate relationship with God means that we can be fully honest about all that is ailing us, our neighbors, and the oppressed.  We proclaim that God can do the impossible through prayer and we offer up our hopes that the impossible is possible for us too.  And we proclaim that although we may not understand God in the midst of suffering, we still come to God, hoping for healing, hoping for clarity, hoping for peace.  Whether you come forward today for healing is actually not that important.  What is most important is that you know that you can, that you know that your God is a God who can do the impossible but who also cares for you so deeply that God can handle all the parts of you – the good, the bad, and the ugly.  Amen.

[i] Carolyn J. Sharp, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 100.

[ii] Glaucia Vasconcelos Wilkey, “Pastoral Perspective, Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 102.

Sermon – John 16.12-15, TS, YC, May 26, 2013

29 Wednesday May 2013

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When I was in seminary, I audited a class entitled, “Living Biblically:  Money, Sex, Power, Violence, and The Meaning of Life.”  The title alone made me want to take the class.  The class spent the quarter studying Jesus’ words and actions for some clues.  Of course, I did not leave the class with all the answers.  But the one thing that stuck with me from the class was this:  when looking for answers to “What would Jesus do?” you have to look at not only what Jesus says, but also what he does.  That may sound simple and obvious enough, but what we slowly began to realize is that what Jesus says and what Jesus does are often opposites.  So, if you look at what Jesus says, you find some pretty harsh words about how to live life and who is to be judged.  But if you look at what Jesus does, you find him living in a much more permissive and forgiving way.  We came to see Jesus as one with high standards and a low threshold for forgiveness and grace.  Of course, that did not mean we got all of our answers to our 21st Century questions about money, sex, power, violence, and the meaning of life, let alone answers to our questions about science, technology, and our modern world.

That is why I find our gospel lesson today so comforting.  Our lesson from John today is part of Jesus’ farewell speech with his disciples – his last words during that Last Supper.  You can imagine the hushed room, the feeling of something ominous approaching, the questions by the disciples, and the ever-patient Jesus trying to explain all the things they need to know.  Finally, Jesus utters these words today, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.”  You can almost hear the frustration in his voice, as if he is saying, “I wish I could explain everything to you now fully, but I just can’t.”  In the midst of the weight of such a conversation, Jesus promises something better than they could possibly imagine:  the Holy Spirit.  Jesus explains that Holy Spirit will come and will continue to guide the disciples.  All of the things that they cannot understand now, all of the things Jesus cannot say, will be revealed to them through the Holy Spirit in the years to come.  Though Jesus will be physically absent from them, Jesus will be continually present with them through the Holy Spirit, revealing truth and perhaps even revealing what Jesus would do.

I think why I find this passage so comforting is not simply because we are promised the presence of God with us.  What I find comforting about this passage is that truth is not locked away in some book or some person from two thousand years ago.  Truth is accessible here and now through the Holy Spirit.  We call our scriptures the Living Word because the Holy Spirit enlivens the Word and speaks truth to us, even today.  This is also why we still have the community of faith– because the Holy Spirit creates for us fresh encounters with the revelation of Jesus.[i]  Jesus knew that our changing circumstances would bring new questions and challenges that would require us to think afresh, and Jesus promises the Holy Spirit will get us through.

On this Trinity Sunday, I am grateful that we get this passage.  Although we just had Pentecost, the Church is not always great about talking about the Holy Spirit.  Sure, we regularly say the Trinitarian combination “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,” liturgically, but rarely do we give the Holy Spirit the credit the Holy Spirit is due.  I think the challenge is that we fear the Holy Spirit a little too much.  When we hear talk of the Holy Spirit, we are afraid someone is going to start acting strangely and then claim they were slain in the Spirit.  We are afraid that “the movement of the Holy Spirit” is just code for the movement that a particular person or group wants.  We are afraid our worship will become some seventies, hippie version of God to whom we cannot relate.  I know we are afraid or at least uncomfortable because I cannot remember the last Episcopalian I know, including myself, who began a prayer addressing the Holy Spirit as opposed to God or Jesus.

But this is how I know that the Holy Spirit is still present among us, guiding us to all truth.  One of the primary areas I see the movement of the Holy Spirit is in the practice of preaching.  I always say that somewhere between the preacher and the congregation is the Holy Spirit.  Preaching does not work without the Holy Spirit.  I cannot tell you the number of times I have sat down after preaching a sermon and thought that the sermon was probably the worst one I have ever preached.  But without fail, the sermons I think are the worst often receive positive feedback.  I also cannot tell you the number of times I have gotten into the pulpit with a specific message in mind, only to have a parishioner speak to me later about how something I said was so meaningful to them – only I swear I never said what they think I said.  Somehow the Holy Spirit helps the preacher to glean truth, and the Holy Spirit helps the congregation to glean truth.  Those truths may not be the same truths, but they are truths that lead us closer to God – which is what Jesus promises in our gospel lesson anyway.

Now, I do not mean to insinuate that this revelation only comes through preaching.  Revelation comes throughout our lives together.  The revelation of the Holy Spirit comes in that friend, coworker, or schoolmate who says something so profound that their words stick with you for weeks, and leads you into deeper prayer.  The revelation of the Holy Spirit comes in Bible Study or in an outreach activity when some experience leaves you with a profound sense of the holy in your life.  The revelation of the Holy Spirit comes in the mouths of our children, who say the most sacred and surprising things that open up new truth in unexpected ways.

This is why we dedicate an entire Sunday to celebrating the Trinity.  Without the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, we would not experience our spiritual journey in the same way.  Perhaps we are not truly comfortable labeling the Holy Spirit in our lives or praying to the Holy Spirit, but that does not mean that the Holy Spirit is not ever present in our journey – in fact, making that journey possible in the first place.  We take today to celebrate the mysterious nature of all three persons who make up the one substance of the Trinity[ii] because only through this relational nature of the Trinity is our faith enlivened and is truth revealed.  So today, your invitation is to figure out your invitation.  Perhaps your invitation is to pray with a person of the Trinity that you have been avoiding for a while.  Perhaps your invitation is to listen for the ways that the Holy Spirit is revealing truth to you.  Or perhaps your invitation is to see the movement of the Holy Spirit through others this week.  On this Trinity Sunday, there is no way of avoiding invitation.  The question is which invitation is for you?  Amen.

[i] Eugene C. Bay, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 46.

[ii] Philip Turner, “Theological Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 3 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 44.

Sermon – Acts 16.16-34, E7, YC, May 12, 2013

22 Wednesday May 2013

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If we were to break out a flip chart today and create two columns – one for those in bondage and one for those who are free – where would our main characters from Acts go?  At first glance, our “those in bondage” column might start with the slave-girl.  We are not even given her name.  She is simply called the slave-girl.  And we know from the story that she is a double slave – a slave to her owners who use her for money and a slave to the spirit of divination inside her.  Another addition to the “bondage” category might be Paul and Silas.  They are thrown into jail midway through our story, which clearly puts them in the bondage category.  Plus, the slave-girl calls them “slaves of the Most High God.”  The other column in our flip chart is those who are free.  We have several for that column.  There are those who own the slave-girl.  They are free to collect money for someone else’s performance, and they are free to get someone thrown in jail.  The judges who throw Paul and Silas into jail are also free – free to choose who is punished and who is not.  Finally, we might put the jailer into the free column as well.  He is a man with a steady, respectable job, who has power over those in prison.  So in the “bondage” column we have the slave girl, Paul, and Silas.  And in the “free” column we have the owners, the judges, and the jailer.

Most of us would certainly prefer to be in the “free” column on this chart.  The owners of the slave girl obviously have social capital and an income source.  They have influence and power, and up until Paul and Silas come along, they have the comforts of wealth.  The judges also have a great deal of respect and power in the community.  They are charged with keeping order in the community and protecting the community’s way of life.  Their roles in the community are admirable and secure.  Even the jailer has a clear sense of identity and purpose.  He may not have wealth and prestige, but he has a secure job and a sense of clear identity in the community.  He has a role that is understood and a vocation that is stable.  Meanwhile, the slave-girl is nothing like what we hope for ourselves.  Being possessed by a spirit and being owned by another individual do not usually make the top of our lists for happiness and fulfillment.  And in no way do we want to be like Paul and Silas, who not only seem to be homeless rebel-rousers, they also are physically brutalized and imprisoned.

The people in the “free” column are the people we most likely follow in our lives.  We want to be people with more money, with secure sources of income, and with power and influence.  We like independence and not being forced to rely on anyone else.  But we get so caught up in longing for these things in life that we sometimes forget the only desire that will make us whole – the desire for a deep relationship with Jesus Christ.  Even churches get trapped in desiring the wrong kind of freedom.  “If we just had as much money as St. Swithin’s, then everything would be fine.”  But the truth is that this kind of desire is never fulfilled.  Trust me, I have served at St. Swithin’s, and St. Swithin’s has just as many problems and stresses as we do every time budget talks come around.

Of course, like any good Bible story, appearances are not always as they seem.  The truth is that although we might put the slave-girl, Paul, and Silas in the “bondage” column, their true home is in the “free” column.  The slave-girl already knows the truth that no one else can see – that Jesus is the way to salvation.  And when she shouts that long and loudly enough, she is not only freed of her possession, she is free of the bondage of slavery – because her owners can no longer use her as they did before.  Even Paul and Silas, who are locked in jail, are in that “free” column.  What person, after being brutally whipped and thrown into a cold cell, can be found praying and singing praises to God in the middle of the night?  Only someone who is so free of the bondage of this world can be able to praise God in the midst of earthly suffering.

And of course, if those in our “bondage” column are actually in the “free” column, the same is true of those we originally put in the “free” column.  Those owners, who seem to have the earthly freedom of wealth, have actually become slaves to their wealth.  They are so enslaved to that wealth that when their source of income is freed, they lash out, bringing pain and suffering down upon others.  They cannot see the gift of freedom for the slave-girl; they only see the consequences for themselves.  The judges are no freer than the owners.  They are so enslaved to their rigid rules that they cannot see the inherent injustice that the slave-girl has faced for so many years.  Even the jailer is not truly free.  He is so caught up in his identity as a jailer that he is willing to take his life for his job.  He is ready to kill himself for what he thinks is a failure on his part than to see how this job has taken over his sense of identity.[i]

We do this too.  We are enslaved by our economies, our ways of doing things, and our senses of roles.  Think about the last party or gathering you attended.  What is one of the first questions someone asks to get to know a stranger?  “So, what do you do?”  We ask this question because our job or our role in society defines us in some way.  Several years ago, a friend of mine was going through a real low point in life.  She quit her job because she knew the job was not what she was called to do.  But she also had no idea what was next.  She was bold enough to say “no” to the old job, but was left clueless about what would be her next step.  This all happened when she was relatively new to a community, and still had not found a church home.  She confided in me that she had stopped looking for a church home because she got so tired of stumbling through an answer at coffee hour when she was repeatedly asked, “So, what do you do?”

So if we are enslaved by our ways of being, how can we get out of our bondage?  Our first cue comes from Paul and Silas.  Paul and Silas could have easily fled that jail when the earthquake happened.  They could have sped past the jailer, and been focused solely on their own self-preservation.  But we see that there is a peace in Paul and Silas that comes from true freedom.  Instead of weeping and plotting in that cell, they sing and pray to God.  Instead of running when the doors fling open, they ensure that the jailer is okay.  Instead of demonizing the jailer, they offer him baptism.  This is what true freedom looks like.[ii]

How do we get to this true freedom?  The jailer gives us the second cue.  The jailer asks Paul a simple question, “What must I do to be saved?”  In order to be saved, to gain that true sense of freedom, we must ask for help like the jailer asks for help that day.  Whether we ask a friend, a stranger, or God, we must ask for help.  This is not always easy for us.  We will have to risk our pride and we will have to trust others.[iii]  But asking for help is that first step in the journey out of the “bondage” column and into the “freedom” column.

Our invitation today is two-fold.  First, our invitation is to consider the ways in which we have become enslaved – the ways of being that we have assumed that have created a life of bondage.  That recognition leads to our second invitation – the invitation to ask for help, to trust in another to guide us into the freedom that can only come from Christ.  When we do those two things, we can know the peace of freedom that we see in scripture today.  Amen.

[i] David G. Forney, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 526.

[ii] L. Gregory Jones, “Come, Lord Jesus,” Christian Century, vol. 109, no. 16, May 6, 1992, 485.

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

10 Friday May 2013

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sermon – Psalm 23, E4, YC, April 21, 2013

24 Wednesday Apr 2013

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One of the most familiar pieces of scripture is the 23rd Psalm.  Today we hear the BCP version of the psalm, but most of us know the psalm in the King James Version.  In fact, the Prayer Book even has the King James Version printed within the Burial office because that translation is so familiar and comforting to us.  This is the psalm we turn to when we are steeped in anxiety.  This is the psalm we turn to when a loved one is facing serious illness.  This is the psalm we turn to when death finally comes.

I have been particularly grateful for this psalm this week.  This week has felt like a tremendous “valley of the shadow of death.”  We started the week with the horrible bombing in Boston.  Not only did we lose lives, and were many people horribly injured and maimed, but also something of the innocent joy of that sporting event was taken away.  But the week just kept getting worse.  After powerful testimonies from the Newtown families, the Senate still could not pass legislation around background checks for guns.  I know that gun control is a sensitive political topic, but for many people, the Senate’s not passing this bill felt like an acquiescence to the violence in our country.  Then just a day later, a horrible explosion happened in Texas, killing many.  After the past six months, which have included Hurricane Sandy and Newtown, this week makes our valley of the shadow of death seem more and more barren, and perhaps unending.

Of course that is only our own American valley of the shadow of death.  That valley does not include the hundreds of places around the world where bombings happen every day.  The American valley does not include the places where villages are ravaged by HIV/AIDS, where children are starving, and where violence threatens whole ethnic groups.  Just this week, the night one of the Boston bombers was killed, a bomb went off in Baghdad in a coffee shop, killing 27 people and injuring over 50.  If we really tracked the worldwide and domestic news everyday, we may not feel as though we are just walking in the valley of the shadow of death, but instead our entire world has been exiled to a permanent valley of darkness and death.

But the reason I have been so drawn to the 23rd Psalm this week has not only been because of the poignancy of the valley.  I have also been drawn to this psalm because of the richness of comfort, blessing, and peace in this psalm.  In fact, in some ways, the valley is mentioned in passing to highlight the ways that God cares for us so abundantly.  Frederick Buechner wrote about a worship service that happened immediately after September 11th, in which a speaker said, “At times like these, God is useless.”  Buechner writes, “When I first heard of it, it struck me as appalling, and then it struck me as very brave, and finally it struck me as true.  When horrors happen we can’t use God to make them unhappen any more than we can use a flood of light to put out a fire or Psalm 23 to find our way home in the dark.  All we can do is to draw closer to God and to each other as best we can, the way those stunned New Yorkers did, and to hope that, although God may well be useless when all hell breaks loose, there is nothing that happens, not even hell, where God is not present with us and for us.”[i]

This is why we are all drawn to this piece of scripture.  All that we want to believe about God, all that we hope is true about God, is found here in this brief psalm.  Our longing for words like these is why this psalm is so popular and prominent.  The 23rd Psalm is so well-know that the psalm has been called “an American secular icon,” because even people who do not attend church have come to know this psalm.[ii]  We all want a God who leads us beside still waters, who restores our souls, who takes away all fear, and who comforts us.

I think this is why so many artists and biblical scholars are drawn to this psalm.  Because this psalm captures for so many people not only who we believe God to be, but also who we desire God to be, many have been inspired to rephrase the language of this psalm to capture our imagination in new and fresh ways.  Probably the most familiar is the hymn “The King of Love my Shepherd Is.”  This hymn breathes air into the psalm, describing our God as a God, “whose goodness faileth never; I nothing lack if I am his.”  Just this week I stumbled on an a cappella version of the 23rd Psalm that uses feminine language to refer to God – “She makes me lie down in green meadows; beside the still waters she will lead.”[iii]  For those of us who struggle with the overly masculine language we have about God, this version of the psalm broke open the psalm yet again for me.  All of the things we hear about God in this psalm – one who comforts, cares, and cradles – are all stereotypically feminine qualities.  When God can be both feminine and masculine, then God truly is bigger and more whole.

But the one translation that really grabbed me this week is from the New Jerusalem Bible.  The verse that we typically recall as, “Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,” in the New Jerusalem Bible is translated as, “kindness and faithful love pursue me every day of my life.”  The “mercy” or “faithful love” we hear translated is the hesed of God in Hebrew – God’s loving-kindness.  This is the kind of overflowing love, loyalty, and lavishness that God shares with God’s people.  In fact, when people show hesed, that loving-kindness is sometimes translated as “godly love.”  But what really grabbed me about this translation is that God’s hesed does not simply follow us in life.  God’s hesed pursues us in life.  God chases after us, actively, even frantically, attempting “to reach us with the gift of life and the resources which sustain life.”[iv]  We hear the strength of this verb because this is the same verb in scripture that is often used to describe what enemies do – they pursue.  So to use the strength of this word to describe what God does to us is to say that God ferociously desires and drives to give us God’s hesed.

Our invitation today is to allow these new images to work on us as we continue to journey with God, even in what feel like valleys of the shadow of death.  Even when we feel like God is useless or that darkness may overwhelm us, God’s love never fails, God’s motherly care is for us, and when we feel most abandoned by God, God is chasing us down to rain God’s hesed upon us.  This is the beauty of our spiritual journey – our words are ever trying to help us understand this God with whom we journey.  Our language will never fully capture God, but each new attempt awakens our journey and invites us into deeper connection.  Our blessing this Eastertide is the myriad voices that help us get just a little closer to God when we need God the most.  Amen.

[ii] J. Clinton McCann, Jr., “Preaching the Psalms: Psalm 23,” Journal for Preachers, vol. 31, no. 2, Lent 2008, 43.

[iv] McCann, 46.

Sermon – John 21.1-19, E3, YC, April 14, 2013

17 Wednesday Apr 2013

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There are two layers to our gospel lesson today.  In one layer, there is a lot of movement and action.  We have disciples fishing, a man shouting about where to put nets, Peter leaping out of a boat to swim ashore, breakfast sizzling in a pan over a crackling fire, and Peter and Jesus having this strangely repetitive conversation.  This layer of the text is really distracting.  There is so much happening that by the time we get to Jesus telling Peter to feed his lambs, we forget the part of the story about Peter getting dressed to jump into water.  The frenetic nature of the text leaves us with more questions than answers.  Why is Peter fishing at a time like this?  Why is he naked?  Why do the disciples not recognize Jesus at first?  Why is Jesus cooking breakfast?  Why does Jesus repeat his question to Peter three times?

In truth, I think there is so much activity in our gospel lesson because the disciples are a little frenetic themselves.  They had all settled into certain identities in their lives – many of them were fishermen, many of them had families that they worked with, and all of them had homes where they resided.  Their lives were simple and predictable.  Then this guy came into their lives and their identity and purpose got totally out of balance.  They had no consistent daily routine, they left behind everything they knew, this man they were following was compelling but also completely confusing, and they were being asked to totally change their lives.  And just when they had found the rhythm of managing their unpredictable lives with Jesus, then everything turns over on its head again, and they lose everything – their leader, their purpose, and their identity.  So in an effort to find something to hang on to, the disciples become punchy with action.

We all do this.  I know that I am particularly stressed out when I find myself intently scrubbing something in the house.  I may not be able to solve some problem at work, or I might not be able to fix some relationship that needs mending, but I can have a clean floor.  I might not have responded to the forty-eight emails and the twenty-nine items on my to-do list, but my desk will be cleared of all clutter and looking freshly dusted.  My neurotic behavior is cleaning, but we all have some neurotic behavior.  Some of us need to find a mall to clear our minds of all the stuff going on inside of us.  Somehow finding the perfect dress or pair of shoes takes away our other anxieties.  Others of us get out in the garden and dig our way to peace of mind.  Something about a freshly weeded garden makes us feel like something was accomplished, even if the rest of us is in shambles.  Still others hit the gym.  There is nothing like sweating away anxieties or feeling the burn to take away the other feelings going on inside of us.[i]

What is interesting about all the activity and noise found in our gospel lesson is that there is another layer of this text that is completely quiet.  We start with the disciples silently staring at that Sea of Tiberias.  There is nothing left to say among them, because they have talked this whole resurrection thing to exhaustion.  Then we find the disciples on the boat fishing in the middle of the night.  I do not know the last time you went fishing, but fishing is one of the more quiet, uneventful activities you can do.  Despite the splashing of Peter to swim to Jesus, once they all gather on the beach, no one says a word.  The air is only filled with the quiet lapping of water and the sizzling of a pan over a fire.  The disciples have questions, but no one says anything.  Even the conversation between Jesus and Peter has a quiet tone to the conversation.

In some ways, I think this is where the text is really pointing.  The disciples, who have irritated Jesus to no end, finally fall silent.  No more asking about who shall be first, and nor more asking what Jesus means or who he is.  No more crazy proposals like building booths for Moses, Elijah, and Jesus, and no more insisting that Jesus wash all of their bodies, not just their feet.  No more insisting that they would never betray Jesus.  There is nothing left to say.  And so they stare quietly, they fish in silence, and they answer in hushed voices.

This layer is the most important because this layer marks a shift.  The disciples stop trying to muscle their way to discipleship, and they finally learn to let Jesus take the lead.  They have become so physically, mentally, and spiritually exhausted that they stop trying to control everything, and they simply wait for Jesus to tell them what to do.  This is a critical moment in the disciples’ journey with Christ.

I think many of you know this about me, but I love to dance.  I grew up doing all sorts of dancing, but the most difficult form of dancing I stumbled into was formal partnered dancing – the fox trot, waltz, etc.  In the other forms of dancing I learned, I was responsible for myself, learning the steps, and making sure I knew the rhythm so that the dance looked beautiful.  But in partnered dance, especially as the woman, you have to learn how to follow.  As someone with pretty good rhythm and memory for steps, you have no idea how incredibly frustrating it is to follow a man who does not know what he is doing.  The tendency is to want to use your arms or legs to start guiding the man, or even to whisper the directions.  But the role of the woman is to follow where the man leads – perhaps the only time in a woman’s life that she is forced to do this!  But what I also found in this kind of dancing is that when you have a really good partner, he can make you feel like the most graceful, beautiful woman on the dance floor.  In fact, you stop worrying about the steps and the count, and you start moving with fluidity and ease.  The price for such a feeling is total surrender and trust.  But the payoff is that you find a joy so strong that you will hunt down that partner and beg them to save you a dance.

This is the kind of submission the disciples finally master on that beach.  No more trying to muscle Jesus into the way they want him to behave.  No more trying to talk their way through their relationship with him.  They surrender all they have to him, longing for the clarity that only he can give them.  And when they finally do that, in the quiet of that morning, they finally hear the words of purpose for their lives.  “Follow me,” Jesus says.  They are the same words Jesus said to them at the beginning of their relationship with him.  But now they finally hear.  And now they can finally respond with their whole being.  Jesus’ words are as clear as they can be.  Jesus’ words give their life meaning.  And their spirit is finally in the place where they can hear and respond.  They are truly and thoroughly ready to follow him.

This is what Jesus invites us to do as well.  This morning, as we sit in the sacred place, Jesus invites us to shove those piles off the desks of our minds, to rip out the weeds blocking our hearts, and to drop our armfuls of distractions and to listen to his simple words for us.  The words are there waiting.  The direction is clear.  The peace and comfort of clarity and purpose are ours for the taking.  So when you come to this table for the Eucharistic feast, quietly listening for Jesus’ words for you, you will be able to hear those words, “Follow me,” and do just that when you walk out those church doors.  Amen.

[i] Gary D. Jones, “Pastoral Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 420.

Sermon – John 20.19-31, E2, YC, April 7, 2013

10 Wednesday Apr 2013

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As Christians who just celebrated Easter last week, rejoicing in Jesus’ resurrection and all that his resurrection means in our lives, you would think our gospel lesson would be a little more victorious.  You would think the next step after the angels appear saying Christ is not in the tomb but is risen would be the disciples hitting the ground running, doing the work of spreading the good news or at least throwing a raucous party.  Instead, we find the disciples huddled in a locked room, cowering in fear.  They have not taken the good news from Mary Magdalene as reason to celebrate.  Instead, they are paralyzed by fear.

I have often wondered what the disciples were afraid of.  The text says they are afraid of the Jews, perhaps afraid that the same people who killed Jesus would try to kill them too.  But I think there is more to their fear.  I think they are afraid to face others, because they feel as if they have failed.  Perhaps they believe that their pick for Messiah did not seem to be the Messiah after all.  I think they are also behind those locked doors because they are ashamed that they failed to protect Jesus, to keep him alive.[i]  Those locked doors are not just for safety – those locked doors are for hiding the shame, the disappointment, and the fear of facing others that the disciples have.

We know a little about what the disciples feel like.  We all have things about ourselves for which we are ashamed.  There are things about ourselves that we lock away, praying that no one every finds out because we are not who we fully want to be or even who we pretend to be.  Garrison Keillor once said, “We always have a backstage view of ourselves.”[ii]  Most people only see the carefully arranged stage we have assembled for others to see.  But behind the curtain, in that backstage view that only we have, there are all sorts of things hiding: old failures, hurts, guilt, and shame.  And Eastertide is one of the most difficult times for this dichotomy because we feel like we should be at our best – wearing our best clothes, coming to church as perfectly functioning families, showing forth nothing but happy alleluias.  We are working overtime to ensure that our stage is especially carefully arranged at church.

But to this frenzied, harried behavior, what does Jesus say?  Peace be with you.  Jesus comes to those fearful, ashamed, embarrassed disciples, finding them behind their locked doors of protection and offers them peace.  Jesus barges backstage and says, “I see you in your fullness, and I offer you peace.  So forgive yourselves and now go and forgive others.”  This is why Jesus died on the cross – that their sins might be forgiven.  And so, before the disciples get too mired in wallowing in fear, shame, and self-pity, Jesus demands they recognize that they are forgiven – and that they share that good news with others.  For no one should be locked inside a room of shame and fear.  The peace Jesus offers is not some “greeting-card platitude about the sun behind the clouds.  [Jesus’ peace] is the beginning of a new world, the long-awaited world of God’s shalom.  [His peace] comes with freedom from fear, sin, and death.  Jesus opens the door that the disciples had locked…and he shows the way to resurrection reality.”[iii]

This is our invitation today as well.  Our invitation is to offer the same forgiveness to one another that Christ unabashedly offers to us.  In so doing, we invite not only ourselves, but others, to take down the pretty stage trappings, and to recognize that we all have backstage versions of ourselves, which are all in need of Jesus’ love and forgiveness.  This is good news for which we can really shout alleluia.  This is the kind of good news that makes us want to be in church.  Because this sacred space is not sacred because we made our stages look sacred; this sacred space is sacred because we are fully ourselves, and fully forgiven.  Peace be with you.  Amen.

[i] M. Craig Barnes, “Crying Shame,” Christian Century, vol. 121, no. 7, April 6, 2004, 19.

[ii] Barnes, 19.

[iii] Kristen Bargeron Grant, “No Joke,” Christian Century, vol. 120, no. 9, April 19, 2003, 18.