Category: sermon

Sermon for the 10th Sunday After Pentecost

Readings

May I speak in the name of 
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. 
Amen.

On the evening of August 11, 2017, I was locked inside my church with 500 other people. 

As the interfaith service began to wind down, the worship leader suddenly walked to the back of the church. He spoke quietly with someone out of my view, then headed back up to the front. *

Then he told us: “The Nazis are outside.”

I have no memory of the next few seconds. But, someone must have told us we were in lockdown. It wasn’t safe to leave.

Then the worship leader spoke again: “So, we’re going to sing loud enough to drown out their hate.”

This week, Facebook reminded me that I had made a recording in the sanctuary as we sang: “This Little Light of Mine, I’m Gonna Let it Shine…” 

…For some timeless period, we tapped on the backs of the hardwood pews in front of us, and stomped our feet to the rhythm. The candle flames danced on the altar. 

In my memory, this moment feels almost like a dream. It felt like the Kingdom of God.

—

Meanwhile, back in the narthex, unarmed priests, pastors, rabbis, and imams were guarding the doors. 

There was no police presence at first. Because the Nazis had called in dozens of false emergencies to deploy the Charlottesville Police away from their tiki torches and hateful chanting, as they marched through the University of Virginia’s campus across the street from the church.

The only things separating us from terror that night was “This Little Light of Mine,” our clergy, and the big red doors of my church.

—

But I didn’t know any of that then. All I knew was that I was singing and stomping my feet in the sanctuary where I had been confirmed only a few months earlier. 

And, I felt peace. I had shown up – against my better judgment – because I believed that Jesus had called me to love my neighbors. And we were all there doing just that, despite the risks.

The next day, local clergy and congregations led hundreds of counter-protesters downtown to confront the hate of the Nazis. They took their little lights and let them shine.

These white nationalists could terrorize a community and murder an innocent person, but they could not overcome the way of love.

– 

But, when national news networks broadcast the violence of that weekend in MY TOWN, they focused on the division. 

They played footage over and over like it was a football game. They implied that there were winners and losers. But the division of that weekend wasn’t the problem. The problem was white supremacy, which is evil.

Those who stood up to it weren’t being divisive. They were answering the call of their faith, to love one another, even when it is risky! 

–

Today, we meet Jesus at another risky time. His coming death is starting to weigh heavily on him. He cries out, “What stress I am under until it is completed!” 

As the days of his ministry wear on and he gets closer to Jerusalem – where he will be killed – you can hear his parables become more urgent. And, today’s reading isn’t even a parable. 

It’s straight-up apocalypse. 

These words are intentionally prophetic. They recall the Messianic prophecies, like those of Isaiah.

But they feel shocking, because, up until this moment, Jesus has been showing everyone a new way to love one another. He has been blessing the poor, performing miraculous healings, teaching people how to pray, and recruiting women, tax collectors, and foreigners to his new way of living.

Along the way, some of his followers have gotten the impression that his ministry will ultimately result in some epic, political situation where Christ is the new king on earth. It’s not their fault, really. Their prophecies have always been interpreted to mean that the Messiah will bring peace on earth.

So putting two and two together, they think that Jesus will simply make the world good without too much struggle for them. And they will ride his coattails to power.

But today, Jesus says that’s not what’s happening. He warns his listeners that his mission isn’t a “get-peace-quick” scheme.

Instead, Jesus tells us that the peaceful kingdom we were hoping for won’t arrive the way we had hoped. To get there, we have to walk toward death and come back to life again.

This strange road is Christ’s way of love. It makes us act in service of others and deny claims to earthly dominance. It forces us to turn away from the easy road, and stop getting distracted by our fear.

Choosing this kind of love is difficult in a world that craves domination and supremacy. Families turn on one another. And people’s personal sense of security is turned upside down. When Jesus is let loose in our lives, things become awfully unpredictable.

The way of love seems divisive because it requires us to take risks that look foolish to a world preoccupied with power and security.

– 

Speaking of which, this week was a doozy in national news…

Much of the country is either underwater or on fire, literally and figuratively. The former president is being investigated for stealing the Nuclear codes. Author, Salman Rushdie, was stabbed at a talk in New York. It seems that everywhere you look, vigilantes are storming federal buildings, conference centers, and places of worship. 

Depending on what circles you move in, people are enraged, giddy, forlorn, optimistic, or apathetic. There are a lot of people on edge.

We are living in what some call divisive times.

And yes, we are divided. Too many of us are treating terror like a football game, with winners and losers.

But, Jesus isn’t a Republican or a Democrat. He’s not a fascist or a socialist. He’s neither rightwing nor leftwing. He doesn’t map onto our narrow and unimaginative political arguments.

Jesus isn’t building a political party. He’s certainly not advocating for vigilante justice. He’s busy, building a freaking kingdom! Christ’s kingdom is about creation, not destruction. And we are being called to follow him in the way of love, which is the farthest thing from earthly power and control.

Choosing love means choosing what and who Jesus chooses, even when it goes against the grain.

Jesus chooses the lost, the losers, the poor, the left out, the sick, the eccentric, and the lonely. He touches dead people and makes them alive again! He chooses everyone, especially the ones the world keeps telling us to hate!

When we begin to practice this kind of love more fully, we come to understand that Jesus’ prophetic proclamation in Luke isn’t a threat of a future apocalypse. He is merely telling the truth about the world as it is.

Because, when we choose to pursue the Kingdom of God over worldly power, we inevitably choose division. We can no longer blend in or be quiet. The way of love is loud, wild, and unpredictable.

And when we stand up and let love throw a spotlight on the evil in this world, we also risk the vigilantes coming for us. I wish that was an exaggeration.

–

But Christ is still calling to us, and we have to answer. 

Will we uphold our baptismal vows to “resist evil, respect the dignity of every human being, and love our neighbors as ourselves?”

Will we do that even if it stirs up controversy in our families? Even when it puts us at odds with our communities? Even when it feels like the promise of the Kingdom is so far away?

Transforming the world in love when it is so bent on everything but love is one of the hardest things we can ever commit to. Jesus’ ministry was always too radical to not ruffle any feathers.

–

But as the writer of Hebrews reminds us today, we are not alone in this great and terrifying labor of love.

So many have gone before us, acting on faith and believing in God’s promise. Through miracles and tragedies, the faithful journeyed on. 

They walked the way of love, risking division and danger, because they knew that these things were inevitable in a divisive and dangerous world. They could not avoid it. They had to answer God’s call.

Like it did for that great cloud of witnesses, violence encroaches on us. Christians in a so-called Christian nation are not safe when we choose the Kingdom of God over militant loyalty to political parties and nationalist ideals.

But, through faith, we believe that Christ’s Kingdom of peace is still before us. To build it here on earth, we must risk taking the way of love.

So, do not weep over our division. Division means someone out there is still letting God’s light shine. Someone out there is still following Jesus in his way of love.

Amen.

*In talking this over with my spouse, I realized that I may misremembering some of the finer details of this moment. I’m not sure if we were explicitly told what was happening as it happened. Some details came out hours and days later. Such is the nature of trauma memory. For more on that, I recommend Tim O’Brien’s “How to Tell a True War Story.”

A Sermon Given on the 6th Sunday After Pentecost

In today’s collect we pray:

…grant that we may know and understand what things we ought to do…

Figuring out “what we ought to do” feels just as pressing as ever. I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that many of us have been asking the question: “how do I show up in the midst of….ALL OF THIS.” (move hands)

In just the last two months, we have borne witness to at least five, highly-publicized mass shootings. And dozens more that didn’t make national news.

In that same time frame, our nation’s highest court made decisions that, whether we agree with them or not, have seemed to bring further ideological division to our communities.

On top of that, we are dealing with our own health crises, family emergencies, and grief.

And, all of this has taken place against a backdrop of continuing racial violence, a global refugee crisis, war in Ukraine, economic uncertainty, and a pandemic that just won’t go away. 

What are we supposed to do?

—

Fortunately for us, our Old and New Testament readings get right to the point…

God’s fiery justice in Amos and the Samaritan’s unlikely compassion work together to show us how God shows up, and how we should show up in the face of the world’s suffering and injustice. 

Both readings remind us that the People of God are called to not pass anyone by.

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus tells the story of a man who is beat up, robbed, and left for dead on the roadside. 

When two men from the same religious and ethnic heritage as him, see him, they pass by the suffering man. They are afraid for their own safety, or perhaps even concerned that being near this dirty and bleeding man will harm their religious commitments, to ritual purity.

And then, something really unexpected happens. Another man is so overwhelmed with compassion for this total stranger that he shows up, and he stays. He carefully cleans the man’s wounds.

Then, sparing no expense, he uses his own funds to purchase a hotel stay until the man can recover. Here, the wounded and traumatized man can begin to heal.

—

This story is one of Jesus’ parables. The characters are not real people, but they are representations of real problems in Jesus’ society.

The first two men who passed by represent respected religious leaders in the community. 

The Samaritan, however, came from a group that Jesus’ listeners likely hated. The Samaritan people had different religious beliefs and different political ideologies. In fact, some of the Samaritans were known to cause trouble for Jesus himself.

So, when Jesus makes the Samaritan the good guy in the story, he is actually doing something pretty radical. He is challenging his listeners to completely reconsider their prejudices. And he is showing what it means to see the good in people, even people he had a reason to avoid.

In the parable of the Good Samaritan, we learn how WE should show up in the face of injustice: When we see a person in need in front of us, we should not pass them by. 

…Even if their circumstances are a burden. Even if we have nothing in common, and see the world in different ways. The Good Samaritan shows us that there IS an antidote to the world’s suffering. It’s a hard thing that looks like a simple thing…

We don’t let worldly divisions and learned prejudices keep us from caring for one another. Instead, we show up for one another. 

We don’t pass anyone by.

—

But, we do NOT do this work by ourselves.

In our Amos passage, there’s a curious turn of phrase that connects our action and God’s action in the world…

But first, a little background on Amos. Amos prophesied during a time of immense economic prosperity and political power in Israel. The nation was as big as it was ever going to be.

And yet, Amos prophecies that the nation is in moral failure. The people of God aren’t acting much like the people of God. They have abandoned their care for the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the immigrant. 

They are ignoring profound acts of violence and injustice in their society. And all the while, they have extravagant religious events that look more like political parades than acts of worship. 

By this time, God has shown mercy over and over again, but nothing has changed. God is fed up.

So, in the passage we read today, an angry God issues a decree: 

“See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by.”

Now, in many translations of that passage I just read, the phrase, “I will never again pass them by” is simplified to say something like, “I will never again forgive them.” But that’s not really what the Hebrew text says. 

The word, AVAR, which means “to pass by” in Hebrew, is almost exclusively used to describe God’s powerful intervention in human activity. 

There’s this idea that God’s simple presence is so bright, rich, and awe-inspiring that people must usually be protected from it. For instance, when God passes by Moses on the mountaintop, Moses’ face is so blindingly bright from that brief encounter, that the Israelites ask him to cover it up until it begins to fade with time. 

When God “passes by,” that means that God is making sure that the Divine presence doesn’t totally overpower the person God is interacting with. Most people can’t handle a God who shows up, and stays.

—

But, in Amos, when God says, “I will never again pass them by,” God is saying, “I won’t turn away from this madness. I won’t pass by those who suffer. I will show up.” And when God shows up, injustice has nowhere to hide. The world MUST reckon with the suffering it has caused.

Like the Good Samaritan, God’s refusal to pass by injustice is fundamentally an act of compassion. God stays here, with us, in this chaos.

God’s presence is uncomfortable, precisely because it uncovers everything: the horrors of human action and human sin. But that is exactly what we need in times like these. Because the suffering is too great to ignore.

So, when we consider our Old and New Testament readings together, we see that the full context of “not passing by” means to show up and stay with our communities. We care for each other by expecting both love and accountability, and by offering the same.

—

But…when we attempt to show up for others, it can feel like such a small thing. 

It can feel like our desire to be in real relationship with one another is never grand enough to remedy the world’s suffering and pain. For every small way we tend to others, there are a thousand new terrors, and a thousand new things to grieve. 

But, God knows this. God knows that we can’t possibly dig ourselves out of this mess alone. And God also knows that the first step toward healing is to reach across profound difference in order to show up and stay with one another, just as the Good Samaritan did. 

This world wears us down. People and circumstances will enrage and horrify us, push us to uncomfortable places, and even cause us to question our good intentions. 

Doing what we know we ought to do can isolate us from our ideological camps. It can make people question our sanity. It can lead us to places we never thought we’d go. 

But, God promises to never pass us by. Because of that, we can know without a doubt that God is present in every circumstance that reveals injustice. God speaks in every word that declares the Truth. God’s power is greater than a gun, a court, an army, or a border. Greater, even, than death.

It is our job to uphold THESE truths, and to love one another in defiance of all the world throws at us.

We, the People of God, carry God’s powerful presence with us when we DARE not to pass anyone by. Amen.

A Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

Readings: Here

If you were to read the Bible as a self-help book, today’s passages would leave you with a laundry list of things to try achieve:

This is perhaps most evident in the passage from Proverbs. While our translation identifies the subject of this ancient poem as “a capable wife,” the Hebrew uses the term eshet chayil, which means a Woman of Valor.

Though Proverbs was first compiled as early as 700 BCE, the woman in this passage is the picture of modernity. She seems to be the perfect encapsulation of the idea that women can “have it all.”

The Proverbs 31 woman has…

• A trusting relationship with her adoring husband
• Artistic skills
• A good eye for quality goods
• An inexhaustible work ethic
• Physical strength
• Business savvy
• Empathy for the poor
• An unfailingly good attitude
• Appropriate self-confidence
• The love of her children
• And a right relationship with God

I don’t know about you, but I am exhausted just reading out this list.

—

And, lest the men here today think they’re off the hook, our Psalm, Epistle, and Gospel hammer home a number of other expectations! They practically berate us: Do this, not that. Here’s what you’re doing wrong. Why are you so covetous? Why are you so selfish? Stop being so juvenile! Get your act together!

To say such a reading is anxiety-inducing is an understatement! If the Bible is really telling us to get our act together, doesn’t God already know that we’re doomed to fail?

—

Measuring up feels impossible, so we fall into patterns of unhealthy behavior:

• As individuals, we may feel like isolating ourselves from those who seem more pious than us, or over-compensating by acting more confident than we are.
• As a church, we may feel like restoring things to “how they used to be,” or over-compensating by rushing to build new programs.

In either case, reading the Bible as a set of expectations pushes us to react rather than to listen. It pushes us to lose sight of new possibilities.

It turns out, if you read the Bible like a self-help book, the Bible becomes a bully. The instructions are impossible to follow. And you’ll never measure up.

—

It leads me to a question…

Is it possible to understand the moral stories of the Bible in ways that are inspiring rather than overwhelming?

I think so. And what it comes down to is revisiting our scriptures with an eye toward their multiple contexts and interpretations. When we pay attention to the history and context of Biblical passages, it helps us let go of our assumptions, and discover new insights. It gives us a more open path, and may even compel us toward holy creativity.

For today, let’s focus on Proverbs 31…

—

There are three things that I want to bring to light:

First, the passage is culturally and historically situated.

The Woman of Valor may not have really existed. One Proverbs commentary says that the intended readers of this passage were likely “affluent and moderately wealthy members of an urban commercial class,”[1] living under the Persian Empire. These upper middle-class readers may have owned enslaved people who were made to help them with weaving, dying, and other household tasks. So, this woman, even if she existed, was not running a business empire by herself.

The passage probably served as instruction for both men looking for a wife, and young women and girls learning how to behave appropriately in their society. This is probably the reason our 20^th century Bible translators call the Woman of Valor “a capable wife.” But we miss the larger possibilities if we only see her this way.

Author Rachel Held Evans points out that, in Jewish tradition, women are still called eshet chayil, a woman of valor, whenever they achieve success. It’s less about what position they occupy and more about their orientation to it. They are praised for their determination, courage, and gifts.

So, in the contextual sense, the Woman of Valor is an archetype. She is a concept about what it means to be a woman, written for an ancient audience and interpreted through Jewish practice.

Second, Proverbs 31 has been interpreted as allegory within Christian tradition.

Early church fathers like St. Augustine read Proverbs 31 as a symbol of the church, not as a single person. His interpretation was so influential that it continued to be read this way throughout most of the Middle Ages.

This is really helpful! Because, when the passage is read as an aspiration for the church, things become much more manageable. This multi-talented woman becomes a suggestion for our collective work, not our individual skills.

In this view, we are not being asked to be perfect multi-taskers, parents, entrepreneurs, or money managers. Instead, we see an example of the abundant possibilities of the church, when we each bring our limited skills to the table. It shows us what could happen if we really understood that amazing things are possible when we work together.

So, in the allegorical sense, the Woman of Valor can be read as Christ’s church, working together for God’s purposes.

[Note: to read this passage as Christian allegory does not negate or supersede historical or contemporary Jewish readings. It is simply one way for Christians to explore the text within our own inherited tradition.]

And third, Proverbs 31 is actually a story about God.

Though the Woman of Valor seems to have her whole life together, she is said to “fear the Lord.”

Commentaries point out that this proclamation is at the end of the passage for a reason.[2] It’s because her reverence for God is what matters most among her many gifts. It’s because all the life advice contained within Proverbs only matters in a world where God is understood to be present.

So, in the narrative sense, the story of the Woman of Valor reveals that all is made possible in relation to God.

—

Fundamentally, the intent of every Bible story is to point to God’s intervention and our worship. Each human story and parable – each expression of emotion – is a reminder that God is present with us in the midst of our lives.

We see that, even though the Bible does contain advice, it is not a self-help book.

In truth, it is actually a God-help book. Its admonitions are not intended to be taken on as individual challenges, but instead understood in the light of God’s ongoing presence with us.

This means that any valor we demonstrate is not the product of gumption, but of careful listening to the Spirit of God.

We were never meant to do everything by ourselves.

—

This learning has practical ends within the life of the church.

As an example, I want to talk for a little bit about a project I’m helping with, here at this congregation. As many of you know, I was your seminarian intern last year. This year, my role is a little bit different…

In addition to calling this congregation my worshipping community, I am working as a student facilitator for a project called “Reimagining Church.”

[This congregation] is among ten churches selected by [my seminary] to embark on a year of discernment, dreaming, and reimagining for the sake of the future of the church.

A working group from this congregation will meet regularly to discuss the history and culture of this church, work through fears, understand the wider community, and share our hopes for what this place can grow into.

Reimagining Church is not about throwing out tradition or giving up on beloved and life-giving programs. It is about letting the Spirit move in new and curious ways through old and well-trod terrain.

As in all churches, this process is an ongoing one. It began long before we filled these pews and will continue after we are gone. And it has been expressed most recently through the renovation of this sanctuary, and shown in the joy and hard work of last week’s Jamboree.

At the end of the year, we may arrive at a pragmatic goal, or you all may continue in discernment. Either way, this is a practice of learning how to turn our good intentions from a practice of anxious self-help to a trusting God-help. It is about orienting ourselves toward God-given possibilities, so that the church can be called eshet chayil.

—

When the work of the church is thought of only as a self-help project, we lose sight of the creativity that exists beyond the horizon of our own limited thinking. We can’t hear the Spirit’s voice over our own worry, fear, and over-compensation.

But, when we internalize the idea that the Bible is a story about God with us, we are able to understand ourselves in relation to our own context. We can ask: How is God working now? What are our community’s needs?

We are also able to understand ourselves as a community, not just as individuals who get together sometimes. We can ask: What skills do we each bring to the table? What are we afraid of? How will we grow together?

And finally, we are relieved to understand that our hopes and strivings in this church are a part of God’s eternal story with us.

In truth, God’s church was never about getting our act together. It is about transformation and belonging, love and grace. It is about reorienting ourselves to the story of God acting with and in us. Because all that we undertake as a church only matters in a world in which God is present.

Like the Proverbs 31 woman, it is only with God’s help that we become a community of valor.

Amen.

[1] Fox, Michael V.. Proverbs 10-31, Yale University Press, 2009. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/yale-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3420503.
Created from yale-ebooks on 2021-09-15 13:00:27.

[2] Ibid.

A Sermon for the Eleventh Sunday after Pentecost

Readings

Through the written word,
and the spoken word,
may we know your Living Word,
Jesus Christ our Saviour.

Amen.

I have a confession to make: I have been avoiding King David the entire summer.

Let me recap: My first week preaching, it was David and the death of Saul. I preached on the Gospel.

Then, it was David and the migration of the Ark of God. I ignored David altogether and talked about a scripture passage that wasn’t even in the lectionary that day!

Two weeks ago, it was that awful incident with Bathsheba, where David sleeps with a married woman and then has her husband killed at war…

Quite frankly, I have a problem with David. And if that last incident tells you anything, it’s that David is not really that likeable. Yes, David is called “a man after God’s own heart,” and held up as an example of lifelong faithfulness to God. And he is credited with writing many of the Psalms, which are so central to our understanding of God.

But the fact of the matter is that he can be kind of awful. He treats people badly. He becomes increasingly obsessed with retaining his power. And he is willing to do unspeakably terrible things to satisfy his own lusts.

So, I have been avoiding the man like I might avoid any other creepy guy. But today, I could no longer avoid this man…

“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

I could no longer ignore David because, today, his grief is palpable. It is gut-wrenching. And it stops me in my tracks. I cannot read those pleading words without wanting to cry myself.

What does it take for a king to weep?

David’s deep love for his son looks past their years-long feuding, and even the fact that Absalom was trying to take over his throne. It looks past the sad reality that this is a war they are waging against one another. Instead, it sees only the most important reality: that this loss of life is too great a cost.

David weeps because he is finally looking at the real problem, instead of all of the drama that surrounds him. Absalom’s death crystallizes the beauty, tragedy, and fragility of their shared life.

In this moment, all the hurt and pain they have caused one another pales in comparison to the truth:

David’s son is dead. All there is left to do is weep.

—

Today, I feel obligated to sit with David’s grief. To make space for it. To really see it.

Even though I tried with all my might, I couldn’t move forward without acknowledging it. Because, to fail to acknowledge it would be to fail to acknowledge how much we have in common:

“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

As l listen to his pleading, David’s pain has already entered the hardened parts of my heart, and begun to wash out my own grief and pain…

It is not lost on me that we are all bound up in our own grieving today, even if it’s not right on the surface. I know a few of you have lost loved ones to Covid. More have lost the opportunity to sit by loved ones’ hospital beds and death beds due to health regulations. Funerals have had to be canceled or missed. 

Some haven’t seen new grandkids. Others have lost opportunities to celebrate anniversaries and birthdays under the shadow of a global shutdown.

I live with the daily grief that my experience of seminary has been irrevocably interrupted by Covid. That budding friendships may be lost for good, and that the mental health toll is irreversible. I am changed and I can never go back. The losses pile up.

And maybe it doesn’t need to be said, but we all sit here today painfully aware that we are masking again (in the indoor service) and looking around us at the horror this disease and all of its related tragedies have wrought. Like, David, it seems we’ve lost control of the battle.

—

So, this week, as I sat quietly with King David, I reflected on the fact that I have not yet arrived at closure for these many griefs. Feelings of anxiety and hopelessness have been tamped down by social forces that tell me it’s not practical or acceptable to display my feelings in public. I have tried to stop the tears because it felt too embarrassing to let them flow…

After all, we live in a culture that equates strength with being stoic and unfeeling. We are taught to be embarrassed if we cry in public. Even worse, we are taught to leave people alone when they are crying because we don’t want to embarrass them.

Women are told that crying will only reinforce gender stereotypes: that we are weak and emotional. Men are told that it’s not manly to cry. Children are reprimanded and told that “life’s not fair.”

And as a soon-to-be-ordained person, I have been told to avoid feeling my feelings in front of the congregation. I am not supposed to cry. I am supposed to be above all that.

Too many times, the result of all of these social reprimands is that we are forced to grin and bear our pain.

But the truth is, there is no way to stop feeling our feelings. They must go somewhere. And if not allowed an appropriate outlet, they can turn into rage or resentment. We lash out like wounded animals, because we are wounded animals.

—

But today, we witness a king who is weeping. Today we are reminded that some things call for public displays of emotion…

“O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would I had died instead of you, O Absalom, my son, my son!”

And when I hear those words, and when I think of David, I can’t help but think about another king who weeps.

Jesus cried when his dear friend Lazarus died. “Jesus wept” as he anticipated his own gruesome death. And Jesus even directly quoted David, as he dared to cry out in public: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

In these ways, Jesus demonstrates that to be human is to feel. Incredibly, even the son of God, who resurrects the dead and would be resurrected himself, had to confront despair in his earthly life. His ancestor, David, modeled this for him well.

—

Today I felt obligated to risk a public display of emotion, because even a powerful man like King David could cry in public. I risked crying because Jesus wept. I risked it because the church must model what it means to share our burdens.

If we don’t do it, who will do it for us?

Today’s Ephesians passage tells us to be “tenderhearted.” It says we should put away all of our rage and resentment, and imitate Christ. Being tenderhearted means breaking down the hard parts of ourselves. It means loosening the grip we have on our pain, and making ourselves vulnerable.

For some of us, this is the hardest thing we could do. But I believe it is worth the experiment, because it draws us closer to one another as the Body of Christ.

When we honestly share our burdens, boundaries fall away. All of our pretensions and lofty goals break down. We have a rare opportunity to see one another in the most honest terms. We have a rare chance to tell the truth about ourselves: which is that we are not above it all.

If Christ himself can weep, then surely, we can, too. Feeling our feelings can be our strength.

That being said, sharing our burdens does not mean that we should force particular behaviors on others. Or measure each other by how much we reveal our feelings on the surface.

Each one of us is on our own journey toward greater vulnerability and trust. In the meantime, we can work to allow one another the space to feel, on our own time and in our own ways. To do this, we ask ourselves what it looks like to build a community of trust, and of grace. We create places of rest so that others are free to reveal the truth about themselves.

—

Today, if we can do nothing else, let us sit with King David as he weeps. And let us look in wonder at the Psalms he wrote in times of distress and in times of joy. David was not perfect and neither are we. We can let this complicated man show us what it means to trust God with our feelings, knowing that God, in Christ, feels them, too.

Amen.

A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Pentecost

Readings:

2 Kings 4:42-44
Psalm 145:10-19
Ephesians 3:14-21
John 6:1-21

The eyes of all wait upon you, O Lord,
and you give them their food in due season.

Amen.

A priest friend recently said something about today’s Gospel reading that stuck with me: “Maybe for Christians today, sharing with one another means everyone is a little bit hungry.”

When he said this, at first I just nodded my head and let out a “hmmm.” Because based on a lot of my life experiences, it sounds like the truth.

We can believe that Jesus fed 5,000 people with 5 barley loaves and two fish. But that doesn’t change the fact that we very rarely see such clear-cut examples of abundance today. Our economy is uncertain, wages are stagnant, and at least 600,000 people are homeless in the U.S. alone.

Oftentimes, it seems impossible that everyone could have their needs met.

And whether we think of ourselves as having plenty or having little, meeting our own needs is often a source of anxiety. In our individualistic society, we’re forced to save our money for rainy day funds and retirement, or risk future poverty.

So giving something up in the face of risk is a very difficult thing to do. We recognize the need, but we don’t always feel like it’s possible to answer it. Besides, how can we guarantee that our giving will be multiplied? Is it worth it to risk going hungry? And what if the recipients are ungrateful?

These are relevant questions, to be sure. And yet, the Bible is full of radical acts of generosity. The kinds of acts that seemingly lead to abundance for all. We see it in our Gospel and our Old Testament reading today. And you may recall that in the Book of Acts, we see the early church’s willingness to share everything with one another.

The fact is that we claim a religious tradition that tells us that everything we need is available to us through our Savior, Jesus Christ. But in this world of financial and material uncertainty, it’s often hard to act on such a claim. Still, our faith calls us to action.

Which brings me to a story…

Earlier this week, I traveled down to Columbia, South Carolina to pick up my husband, Daniel. He had been down in Florida visiting with his family, and Columbia was roughly the halfway point between his mom’s house and our place here in Virginia.

Daniel must have been a vacation planner in another life, because he’s amazingly good at planning things to do whenever we’re traveling. Before I arrived, he had discovered that Fort Jackson, the local army base, housed the Army Chaplain Museum.

This may not sound like everyone’s cup of tea, but for me, it was reason enough to travel to Columbia. As I’ve mentioned, I worked at the VA Hospital as a chaplain intern last summer. The experience changed my life. And I have been fascinated by the tensions between serving God and serving the nation ever since. I was THRILLED to have the chance to go on base and tour the museum.

The exhibit began with a retelling of the story of St. Martin of Tours. This is the story I want to retell today…

Martin lived in the 4^th century, in a region that is now France. The story goes that Martin was serving as a soldier in the Roman army when he saw a beggar at the city gate. Almost without thinking, he took off his military cloak and tore it in two. He gave half to the beggar and kept the other half for himself.

That night, he had a vision. In it, he saw Jesus wearing the half of his cloak he had given away. He heard Jesus say: “Martin, who is still but a catechumen, clothed me with this robe.”

But there’s much more to the story than that…

Martin went on to become a monk, and then the Bishop of Tours starting in 371. In the middle ages, his cloak became a relic. Those who took care of it were called cappellanu and eventually all religious people who served the military were called capellini. The shrines that held the cloak were called capella, which means “little cloaks.”

From these words, we derive the words chaplain and chapel.

—

I love this story for many reasons: The fact that Martin was a soldier who understood his duty to serve all people, even beggars at the city gate. The idea that he gave only half of his robe to the man, symbolically showing their mutual need for warmth. The legacy of his lifelong service to the church. His amazing vision of Christ. But more than anything, I love this story because it reveals an important truth about our faith:

God’s abundance grows when it feels like there’s not enough to go around. And yet, we give of ourselves anyway.

Think about it: Martin’s spontaneous choice to give something up for someone in need changed the course of his whole life. It led him to a lifetime of service to God.

But it also started a movement. Martin’s simple act of tearing his cloak multiplied in a million ways:

 The chaplain corps was founded, which aids service members through the extreme highs and lows of military service. And today there are chaplains serving in all sorts of contexts, offering spiritual care to those in nursing homes, hospitals, schools and even corporations.

And every little church plant that started with a chapel can credit Martin’s single act for the name of their building. These chapels have housed and nourished people of faith through more than a thousand years of doubt, hope, fear, and community formation.

They have acted as community centers, and held the sacred services of baptisms, weddings, and funerals. They have both witnessed and sanctified the beauty of our fragile lives.

Chaplains and chapels – these “little cloaks” – have stood as a testament to the way simple acts of faith lead to abundance beyond our wildest imagination.

—

And it’s all because Martin operated from a different sense of abundance.

He wasn’t thinking about the frigid days ahead. He wasn’t worried about disciplinary action from military higher-ups. In fact, he wasn’t really thinking at all, at least not rationally. Instead, he operated on the impulse of the Holy Spirit, out of some gut sense that what mattered most was being connected to the man in front of him. A man who represented Jesus himself.

Like Jesus at the feeding of the 5,000, Martin saw a need and found a way. He may not have had Jesus’ capacity to physically multiply his material possessions.

But what happened when Martin gave up part of his cloak?

While he may have felt a little bit colder, the man he aided was warm, maybe for the first time in months or even years. In his act of giving, Martin was able to see this beggar on the street as Christ himself. As a whole and sacred person, inherently worthy of care. Through this act, God, working in Martin, met God, living in the beggar, and both were brought more fully into the Body of Christ.

The cloak may have been torn in two, but it was still all there. Only now, it was being shared between these two men.

—

I know I will always struggle with the fear that I don’t have enough, but Martin’s story tempts me to throw caution to the wind.

It tempts me to believe that Jesus will always multiply our generosity and restore us to wholeness, even though it always involves risk.

We live in a society that places boundaries and barriers on giving. It tells us that we will never have enough, and that we can’t rely on one another. Even worse, it suggests that the scarcity we see in front of us – the lack of material goods, comfort, or stability – is all that there is. So, we close our fists and wrap figurative cloaks ever tighter around ourselves and our possessions.

But imagine what would have happened if the boy with the barley bread and fish had responded in this way. Imagine if he had refused to give what he had, either out of his own insecurity or his insistence that the people in the crowd didn’t work hard enough for the food?

The reality here is that Jesus didn’t multiply out of nothing.

Jesus asks us to take a chance and give from our fragileness and insecurity, not from our abundance. Because we are not the ones responsible for multiplying. That’s Jesus’ job.

In the long run, God multiplies our meager actions into living miracles. And soon enough, we find ourselves in community with one another, doing the hard work of giving and receiving in the midst of risk.

The important thing is that we understand ourselves to truly be together. We belong to one another, whether we are the beggar or the soldier, the boy with his lunch or the hungry crowd. We owe it to each other to envision Christ in one another, and to act on the faith that God will generously provide.

It is worth the risk to reach out our hands, to take up the work started by Martin’s raggedy cloak, and to live into God’s strange abundance, a holy place where having enough is somehow always more than we could have asked for.

Amen.

A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

Readings: 2 Samuel 6:1-5, 12b-19, Mark 6:14-29

Have you ever done something out of a sense of duty that you later regretted?

Today, I want to talk about two choices that seemed right at the time, but actually defied God. One was made by an unrighteous person and the other by a righteous one. I want to talk about how both of them ended in tragedy.

The stories that we’re reflecting on today are hard to digest, but both teach us that choices made from a sense of duty can keep us from discerning the voice of God.

—

The first choice is made by the powerful leader of Galilee: Herod Antipas.

In the context of the Gospels, Herod is a no-good, rotten, power monger bent on murdering all of our heroes. After all, in today’s Gospel reading he beheaded John the Baptist. And in Luke, he is complicit in Jesus’ crucifixion.

In today’s text, Herod, who is basically the governor of Galilee, invites the who’s-who of his region over for a decadent dinner. He then invites his daughter to dance for his guests. And in a sudden show of pride, he says to her: “Ask me for whatever you wish, and I will give it.” But then his daughter comes back with a request he didn’t seem to anticipate: “give me the head of John the Baptist on a platter.”

And Herod does what she asks. But given that Herod sort of likes John the Baptist – the passage says that – ultimately, he succumbs to what we might call peer pressure. In other words, he feels that he has a duty to impress his high-powered guests.

But ultimately Herod always had the power to say no. Yes, he had made an oath. Yes, he would embarrass himself in front of all the people who could help him get ahead in life. But in reality, he was beholden only to himself.

John the Baptist was locked up in Herod’s own prison. Herod had full control of the situation.

And yet. And yet… *shake head* How would he ever live this down?

So John the Baptist is gruesomely killed as a party trick.

—

It is certainly true that Herod is an antagonist. He is intentionally narrated as someone with cruel intentions. But I think we should be careful not to diminish the humanity of Herod, especially in this passage. Because too often, we behave like him. From this perspective, Herod is a cautionary tale for our own lives.

Now, I hope that most of us aren’t murderers. But what I mean to say is that we may be quick to paint this story as a clear-cut case of good and evil so that we don’t have to see the ways innocent things like pleasing our guests can lead to terrible outcomes.

Because, fundamentally, Herod is a man who allows his sense of duty to cloud his judgment about what’s right. And that is a very human thing to do.

Because of Herod’s duty to his friends and family, a man is dead.

—

Have you ever done something out of a sense of duty that you later regretted?     

The second choice is hiding in our readings today. If Herod’s story illustrates the dangerous consequences that result from duty to our colleagues and loved ones, then this next one illustrates the dangers of assuming we owe more to God than God has requested.

You may have noticed that the 2^nd Samuel passage is chopped up a bit. It leaves out a very troubling story about a man named Uzzah. And since Uzzah’s story never shows up in our Sunday morning cycle as far as I can tell, I decided to share it this morning…

The fuller 2^nd Samuel passage tells us that two men were tasked with driving the Ark of God to a new location under David’s command. Their names were Ahio and Uzzah. In the text printed in our bulletins, we are swiftly brought to the joyous end of the journey. But in the fuller story, something terrible happens.

Ahio and Uzzah are holding the Ark in balance when an ox pulling the cart stumbles over a threshold. Uzzah reaches out to steady the Ark and is immediately struck down and killed. The passage attributes Uzzah’s death to “God’s anger.”

This sounds like horrible theology to our ears, but Uzzah’s death isn’t surprising. The people of Israel knew that they were forbidden to touch the Ark, because it was understood to contain the real presence of God.

So Uzzah likely knew this rule. Nevertheless, he does something very human: he tries to protect God.

—

It seems like Uzzah is only trying to fulfill his duty to protect and serve his maker. He is only trying to be a righteous follower of God.

And yet…by doing so, he is actually questioning the power and providence of God to sustain and guide the people of Israel. He is knowingly pursuing something that God has told him not to.

To our ears, Uzzah and Herod’s choices are in no way equal in severity. And yet, both forgot to listen to the voice of God.

Now, another man is dead out of a sense of duty.

—

So, I ask again: Have you ever done something out of a sense of duty that you later regretted?

Duty can help us keep the peace with our loved ones, or signal loyalty to our colleagues. We hide the full truth about something to avoid an argument. We follow through on a plan because we’re exhausted from negotiating. We fail to speak up when someone is being bullied or harmed, because it might cause a scene. We partner with people who are dishonest or cruel. We do cringe-worthy things to impress others.

Of course, these are the obvious bad choices: the ones that come out of a self-protecting nature. Like Herod, we make choices that make us look better, or that keep us from receiving criticism. We do things so that people will like us.

But there’s another kind of choice that is particularly risky for Christians. These are choices like the one Uzzah makes. Ones that come out of a God-protecting nature. When we forget that God has never asked for us for protection.

These choices are often hard to spot because they look like righteousness, but actually arise from our own judgment and not God’s.

God-protecting choices may look like: belittling someone because of an ideology we disagree with, or rushing to correct someone without first understanding our own motives. They could look like making a big life decision without seeking God for discernment, working ourselves to the bone because we don’t trust others to help, or doing good deeds for public recognition. They can even look like acting like our Episcopal tradition makes us more enlightened than others.

I know I have been guilty of many of these things, in big and small ways.

—

The fact of the matter is that we make choices, daily, out of a sense of duty that God never called us to.

That’s why today’s passages are a wake-up call. Herod and Uzzah’s stories remind us that adhering to social and religious duties without listening for the voice of God can kill, if not literally then certainly spiritually.

In reading these passages, we are being asked to sit with what it is in our lives that comes from our own sheer will and not from God. As we sit, we can ask God for clarity on many things…

• Maybe we’re involved in jobs or ministries that we are no longer called to.
• Maybe we’re afraid to admit that we’re not in control of certain habits or addictions.
• Maybe we’re pushing really hard for certain things in our lives, knowing that they’re not really what we’re meant to be doing.
• Maybe we’re so busy defending what we think is right that we’re alienating ourselves from community.
• Or maybe, we’re so worried about what others think about us that we’re avoiding what God is calling us to.

—

Thank the Lord that most of our choices do not end in death. But it is still essential that we pay attention to these stories.

We are called today to listen attentively to the voice of the Holy Spirit, the very Word of God: in our Scriptures, in our communities of faith, and through the workings of God in our lives. Discernment can come in quiet prayer, but it can also come in conversations with trusted friends, life experiences, and even negative situations.

God wants more for us than to respond to duty, especially when our actions have no bearing on God’s abundantly loving and reconciling Kingdom. God wants us to live according to a deeper sense of God’s will and a greater sense of joy. This takes courage, but we know that, with God, we never do it alone.

Amen.