sermon – Page 6 – Leah Wise

Call and Duty

July 11, 2021Posted in sermonTagged ordinary timeLeave a comment

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.

A God Who Heals?

June 28, 2021Posted in sermonLeave a comment

Photo by Aleksandr Burzinskij on Pexels.com

A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Pentecost

Reading: Mark 5:21-43

Additional readings here

God did not make death,
And he does not delight in the death of the living.

You may be seated.

—

In this world of death, what are we supposed to do with miracles?

Today’s Gospel reading doesn’t shy away from miracles. In fact, as my preaching professor pointed out, Jesus is actually in the middle of performing one miracle when he is rudely interrupted by another one! In about twenty verses, one woman has been healed of an excruciating chronic illness, a young child has been raised from the literal dead, and hundreds of people are left to wonder at the impossibility of it all.

We worship a God who heals, and yet, for so many of us, healing never comes. It is a burden of our faith that this is true. It is very likely that each one of us here has experienced the grief that comes with chronic illness or the death of loved ones.

And each one of us has had to grapple with questions that never get answered. Questions like: Where was God? Why did this faithful person have to suffer? Why was that person healed while my loved one died?

In so many ways, these questions are the bitter core of life. We cannot avoid them. We carry them with us.

What I’m really getting at is that miracles are tricky to talk about, because there is seemingly no rationale for why some people are healed and some people are not. But I believe we need to talk about them in the most honest terms.

Why? Because we worship a God who heals.

So where do we go from here? It seems to me that today’s Gospel passage tells us three important things about God’s healing in the world…

The first thing we can recognize is that when Jesus performs a miracle, it’s not JUST about people becoming well in a physical sense.

As our deacon pointed out to me earlier this week, the bleeding woman’s suffering was not only about her physical pain.

In her society, the fact that she was bleeding meant that she was unclean. And her specific condition probably meant she couldn’t bear children, which would have made her particularly vulnerable in a patriarchal society. As a result, she probably wasn’t allowed to live with her family. She may have even been forced to live on the outskirts of town.

When she reaches out in a sudden act of defiance and touches Jesus’ garment, she is not only defying her culture’s moral rules, she is asking to be restored to her community.

In the wake of Covid-19, I think we can identify with her loneliness and fear here, and maybe especially with her deep yearning to be restored to community. When Jesus heals the woman, he is healing her relationship with everyone she knows and everyone she loves. He is announcing that his mission is not just for privileged people like Jairus, who was a leader of the synagogue, but also for the marginalized. Jesus longs to bring us into a community of love.

The next thing we can recognize is that Jesus’ grace for the poor and marginalized never excludes the privileged. Jairus was most likely a synagogue leader. But for all of his power in society, he still suffered from the effects of death and grief. The passage says that he begged Jesus to come heal his daughter. In a way, his story isn’t so different from the bleeding woman’s. Like her, asking Jesus to help him defies the expectations placed on him by society. This man had religious authority. But he had to humble himself in front of an itinerant preacher to find the healing he needed.

So in Jairus’ story, we see the way a powerful man is forced to grapple with his limitations. But we also see the way Jesus cares for him. Death and illness do not discriminate, and neither does Jesus.

The final thing we can recognize is that the Bible gives us permission to look for miracles. We are confronted with stories that force us to consider that Jesus is powerful enough to literally change the world’s narrative of death. Jesus defies the limitations we would try to place on him by showing that miracles are possible.

In this passage, we see the way Jairus places limitations on Jesus. He begs Jesus to come heal his daughter before she dies. This is because he thinks that Jesus cannot make a dead person alive again. And yet, Jesus does make a dead little girl alive again.

For us, here in the 21^st century, it is almost impossible not to put limits on Jesus’ power. There are many competing theories and ideas about the world that make miracles seem like an impossibility. And there is no way to systematize or make sense of why some people are made well and others are not.

So we do what Jairus’ friends do and try to leave Jesus alone. But how would our lives change if we recognized miracles?

While working at the hospital last summer, I experienced real healing miracles. In one case, a man who was unconscious from a severe case of septic shock defied the doctors’ expectations. Instead of dying, he woke up! And by the time my internship was ending, he was able to speak again. Occurrences like this were widespread if you worked at the hospital long enough.

But on this occasion, I had felt compelled by the Holy Spirit – against my will, in fact – to pray for a healing miracle. Hearing myself utter those words out loud – “healing miracle” – made me physically cringe. His family was visiting his bedside that day and they were not Christians. I wasn’t even sure I believed in miracles. I waited to reckon with the fallout of such an act of holy defiance.

Instead, for the first time in my life, I was forced to admit that what I had witnessed was God’s intervention in the world’s narrative of death. And I couldn’t systematize it, make sense of it, or claim it as my own power.

What’s more: it wasn’t MY miracle. In fact, if I could place myself in today’s Gospel passage, I would have been in the crowd. The miracle I witnessed was for someone else. And yet, I couldn’t help but be changed by it.

Miracles in our world can feel few and far between. And it seems that for every one that occurs, a whole crowd of bystanders are left with unanswered prayers. Yet believing in them, through faith or experience, sets the tone for how we live our lives. Lives which are their own kind of miracle. Jesus calls us to respond to healing by leading hopeful lives.

—

Our loved ones may never be cured. Some have already passed. This life does not dole out life and death in any way that makes sense. There are so many things that are not good.

But we know this, “God does not delight in the death of the living.” Though death so often feels like the victor, we know that death will not ultimately have its way. We worship a God who aims to restore us to the love of community, who wants to show us that the impossible is possible, and that life is growing like a weed in the midst of death.

To see the hope of life in the midst of our mortal lives is defiant, and it is certainly not always easy. But we worship a God who can feel our tugs on his garment in the midst of the crowd. We worship a savior who weeps with those who weep and rejoices with those who rejoice.

As Christians, let us wonder together at the strangeness of God’s working and stop feeling afraid to look for miracles, even against all odds. We cannot avoid grief. But hope can still grow like stubborn weeds in sidewalk cracks.

Amen.

The Days are Surely Coming

June 28, 2021Posted in sermonTagged LentLeave a comment

Sermon on Jeremiah 31

Fifth Sunday in Lent, Given March 21, 2021

Reading: Jeremiah 31:31-34

Today’s reading from Jeremiah contains some of the most comforting language to be found in the Bible: “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” It’s a passage in which God reaffirms deep and ongoing relationship with God’s people. This relationship is not one of stoic or distant observation, but rather, a promise etched on the hearts of God’s chosen ones, never to be taken away.

The passage is beautiful on its own, but it leaves me wondering about the context. Just looking at it here, it makes me think that this is the conclusion to a story; maybe it’s the summary after a long journey.

I find myself asking: What is happening here? Why does God need to make a new covenant now? And is it relevant to us today?

To begin to answer these questions, it’s helpful to enter the historical moment:[1]

The year was 627 BCE and the people of Judah were finally feeling hopeful again. Years of threats from the militant Assyrians were finally passed, and the Assyrian Empire was beginning to crumble. King Josiah was on the throne, and he promised to build back better. He wanted to restore things to the glory days of King David and Solomon, and first on the list was getting people back together for worship at the Jerusalem Temple.

You see, years of hardship and threats of war meant that the people were no longer participating in worship services at their central sanctuary. Instead, if they were participating in religious life at all, they were doing so in their own homes or in small, local gatherings. It felt like they were only connected by a thread to their religious community. If they were alive today, maybe they would be worshipping on Zoom.

So, when King Josiah announced that they should worship again in the recently-renovated Jerusalem Temple, I imagine many were thrilled. “At last,” they must have thought, “we are worshipping God the right way. At last, things are getting back to normal.”

But Josiah’s plans fell apart almost immediately. In 609, he was killed by Egyptians during battle. By 597 BCE, his people, the Judeans, were being rounded up, torn from their land, and exiled as enslaved peoples and refugees to the great Empire of Babylon.

Their hopes were dashed. Far removed from the sanctuary yet again, they deeply grieved their loss. “Where is God?” they asked. “Who will save us?” They sang songs of mourning, like this one:

By the waters, the waters of Babylon. We lay down and wept, and wept, for thee Zion. We remember, we remember, we remember thee Zion.

—

Here’s the interesting thing: God’s new covenant is declared by the prophet Jeremiah before the exile begins. It is made in practically the same breath as destruction is foretold. We see that this is not a context in which everything is sorted out, but one in which everything is still up in the air…

The new covenant God makes with God’s beloved people isn’t the conclusion to the story at all. Instead, it is made in the very midst of a people’s confusion, anger, and grief.

It is made in that middle place between fear and hope. That place that keeps you up at night wondering what will happen next. In the context of the prophecy’s storyline,it is made in the nerve-wracking moment before the people allow themselves to anticipate a better future, and before their hardship is over.

—

Like the Judeans, we are a people on the brink of hope. After months of hardship, we have finally started to believe that things will be back to normal soon. The vestry has been discussing how to safely reopen the sanctuary. Many in the congregation, including myself, are antsy for outdoor services. I’ve heard more than one person describe the Eucharist so graphically you’d think they were describing some kind of decadent dessert.

We just want to make all the baggage of the past year go away, and to slip back into the joys of our old life. We want to be able to worship God the way we were always supposed to, with the creature comforts of liturgy and a familiar worship space.

But what we may not fully realize is that we’re still in the middle of things. The effects of Covid-19 are long term. The grief of death persists, and there have been profound economic consequences that put many families at risk. The evil of white supremacy still acts in the world, just this week with the murder of eight people in Georgia, primarily women of Asian descent.

We recognize that we are collectively a people of exile. Physically and psychologically, what we have endured marks us as survivors. Like the Judeans, we will eventually go back to pick up the pieces of our old lives, but we will be forced to confront the rubble, and the scars. We will be forced to internalize that the idealized world we remembered in our songs of mourning is not the same one we will re-enter.

This will not be easy. It may leave us just as shaken as we were last March when the world shut down. It may leave us raw with rage. It may bring us to our knees with grief. And we may feel as though God’s promise to be with us has been broken.

But Jeremiah reminds us that God never broke God’s promises. No, God compassionately responded to upheaval, accompanied these beloved ones on the journey into unknown territory, and even made a new covenant. And this one wasn’t tied to only one way of knowing God or one way of worshipping. It wasn’t dependent on whether or not the sanctuary was open.

Through Christ, God’s covenant to Israel has been written on our hearts, buried down deep. The hardship we face today, the anticipation for the future, and the trials we will inevitably face throughout the course of our lives are never faced alone.

The days are surely coming when we will touch hands as we pass the peace, sing together in harmony, and shout for joy in the sanctuary. The days are surely coming when we will participate in the beautiful, holy mysteries of the Eucharist. This is cause for joyful anticipation!

But, since God’s new covenant is affirmed in the very middle of our fear and hope, let us not forget to cherish what is here in front of us, now. Among the swift and varied changes of the world, we know that we are already the hands and feet of Christ, with a heart full of God’s love. We know that our hearts are fixed in the embrace of God, who turns our mourning into dancing, and responds to our human need with intimate understanding. In the middle of things, let us hope, and let us grieve, knowing that God accompanies us on our way.

[1] Harper Collins Study Bible

Keep Awake: An Advent Sermon

June 28, 2021Posted in sermonTagged adventLeave a comment

This post was originally published on stylewise-blog.com on November 29, 2020

A Sermon Given on the First Day of Advent

Gospel Reading: Mark 13:24-37. Read here.

“And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.”
Amen.

Happy New Year!

Today is the first day of Advent, which marks the beginning of a new year in churches that follow the liturgical calendar. While the rest of the world shops Cyber Monday sales and blasts Christmas music from their car radios, the church enters a time of introspection in anticipation of a miracle. In our tradition, the season is often marked by children’s pageants and quaint Lessons & Carols services. A hushed sense of the sacred permeates all that we do.

For this reason, Advent has historically been my favorite season. I love the extreme contrast between my religious practice and the chaos of the world. In this season, I get a clear reminder of the way my faith shapes me differently. The hustle and bustle of the world can be overwhelming this time of year; meanwhile, I am patiently waiting for the Baby Jesus.

I have to admit that this year feels different. After enduring nearly nine months of pandemic, shouldn’t there be a baby already?

We have been holding our breaths for new life. We have been waiting for a vaccine that will free us to hug our loved ones again. We have been enduring the pain of social and political questioning. It feels like time either runs ahead, or slows to a halt. I find myself asking how we got to the end of 2020 so quickly, and then complaining that it will never end! I remarked to a friend over the phone last week that, in a way, the pandemic has left us all displaced. We are wayfaring strangers navigating a new world. Everything feels…different, and I am impatient! I don’t feel like quietly waiting for Jesus to come.

I admit that it has crossed my mind that this is the Apocalypse; I know I’m not alone in this, because a quick internet search reveals dozens of article titles ranging from: “The Four Horsemen of the Viral Apocalypse” to, inexplicably, “The Zombie Apocalypse and Covid-19”.

Epidemiologists predicted that this would be an “Apocalyptic Fall,” and it seems that it has turned out that way. If even the scientists are saying it, maybe something is broken. Maybe it really is the end?

It is within this dizziness and disorientation – and frankly, terror – that we read today’s Gospel reading.

This passage in Mark does not sound like the quaint and quiet Advent I’m used to. I’m not accustomed to singing Advent hymns that go: “in those days, after that suffering, the sun will be darkened.” In fact, this chapter is called “The Little Apocalypse.” Linked to the Book of Revelation, it is full of mysterious declarations and disturbing images. Many centuries of Christians have puzzled over these apocalyptic stories, trying to search it for clues. But we’re often left with more questions than answers.

The more I sit with the text, the less I feel inclined to even look for straightforward answers. I am too disturbed, disoriented, and exhausted to make sense of it.

So what do we do with that?

The word apocalypse means an uncovering or revealing, so the question that really needs answering is: what is it revealing? Thanks in part to the fact that I’ve been taking a class on Revelation this semester, I have a few ideas.

First, apocalypse intentionally disrupts our sense of time. This chapter in Mark includes a half a dozen references to Old Testament prophecies while simultaneously telling us that it’s actually about the future. It removes us from the stable ground of the present. Instead, we are pushed back and forth from the strange and foreboding past to the shocking and uncertain future, like time travelers in a dysfunctional time machine.

Apocalypse also disturbs our self-perception. It makes us take a good hard look at ourselves and those around us, to see everything with new perspective. It also makes us ask if we’re ready for Jesus to come to earth. Like children assessing the play room before their parent comes in, we wonder if we have time to clean up the messes we’ve made.

Finally, apocalypse gives voice to suffering. That’s why some scholars call it the “literature of the dispossessed.” What they mean is that people who write and tell such wild, mysterious, and horrifying stories are trying to find ways to say something true about their grief and struggle. Vietnam veteran, Tim O’Brien, writes about this in his essay entitled, How to Tell a True War Story, saying, “when you go to tell about it, there is always that surreal seemingness, which makes the story seem untrue, but which in fact represents the hard and exact truth as it seemed.”

Like a war story, apocalypse is disorienting and disturbing precisely because it mirrors the turmoil in our world. It compels every reader and listener to enter in to the story of chaos and brokenness.

So, it seems that apocalypse pushes our senses to the edge. In this way, what it reveals or uncovers for us is the truth of the world as it really is. We know this world well, because we live in it. Rather than be terrified by its mysteries, apocalypse is reaching out and telling us, “I see what you’re going through and I understand it.” And we are meant to be left feeling that we aren’t wayfaring strangers. Instead, we are slightly bumbling, regular humans on an admittedly scary journey that Jesus shares with us.

So why read apocalypse during Advent? Perhaps, because the season of Advent disorients us, too. We exist in a spiritual story in which Mary is still pregnant and yet Jesus has died. In which we wait for Jesus to come, and also come again. In which Jesus is alive and speaking, even though he’s not yet born. This time-warp can feel disturbing, but it reveals to us something true.

It reveals to us that even in death, we can hope. Even in wandering, we are held steady on the path. And even in chaos, we can see the light of Jesus entering in. Maybe today’s Gospel reminds us to “Keep awake” because once we knowingly enter this apocalyptic way of thinking, we’re simply too excited to fall asleep. Everything is different, and we are right to be impatient. Jesus is coming, and, if I may be so bold, it’s about darn time.

Don’t You See I Have Work to Do?

June 28, 2021Posted in sermonTagged CPELeave a comment

Originally published on stylewise-blog.com on November 6, 2020.

At that very hour some Pharisees came and said to him, ‘Get away from here, for Herod wants to kill you.’ He said to them, ‘Go and tell that fox for me, “Listen, I am casting out demons and performing cures today and tomorrow, and on the third day I finish my work. Yet today, tomorrow, and the next day I must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away from Jerusalem.” Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing! See, your house is left to you. And I tell you, you will not see me until the time comes when you say, “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord.” – Luke 13:31-35

A Homily Given on November 6, 2020

Over the summer, I served as a chaplain intern at the VA Hospital, where a number of my Catholic patients announced to me that they believed themselves to be in purgatory. Long, painful hospital stays in the midst of a pandemic, being prodded with needles and forced into embarrassing interactions with a parade of hospital staff, made these vets feel like they had suddenly been assessed, and considered not good enough to enter the Kingdom of God. They were just waiting for the suffering to end.

Even if we had clear news about the election this morning, the fact would remain that many of us feel like we’re just waiting for the suffering to end. Does that mean we’re in purgatory, too?

In Catholic thought, purgatory is not always conceived of as a place of passive waiting. Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict the 16^th, suggests that purgatory is not a “supra-worldly concentration camp where man is forced to undergo punishment in a more or less arbitrary fashion. Rather it is the inwardly necessary process of transformation in which a person becomes capable of Christ, capable of God, and thus capable of unity with the whole communion of saints.”

The hard, uneven places between certainty and uncertainty, safety and danger, justice and malice, supremacy and equity, are not places of passive suffering either. Time has not stilled, breath is not bated, even though it often feels that way. Jesus knows something about this. In today’s passage from Luke, he tells off the Pharisees who cry: “Danger is coming! A decision is about to be made, and you’re in trouble.”

But Jesus doesn’t freeze like a deer in the headlights. I can imagine him wildly gesticulating with his hands: “Don’t you see I have work to do?” Jesus lives in the purgatorial space between violent Roman supremacy and the Kingdom of God, and yet his work remains the same: he presses on to advocate for the marginalized and drive demonic evil out.

All week I’ve been asking myself what is required of me, what it means to be a Christian in a partisan empire, not realizing that Jesus has been wildly gesticulating to get my attention all along.

Our lives are lived – not just now, but entirely – in the uneven place where demonic evil like white supremacy bleeds together with the Kingdom of God. And so, we are in purgatory, but we’re doing it wrong.

Many of us in more progressive circles take for granted that social justice is a call of our shared faith. And yet, while we proclaim that we’re doing the work, we’re often sitting in our own self-designed purgatories. It may look like waiting for someone else to pick up the pieces while evading the harder work of ushering in the Kingdom of God. It may look like self-flagellation, a belief that punishing ourselves will somehow right the wrongs of the world. Or, it could look a bit like standing on a soapbox in the city center declaring our piety for the world to hear.

But the process of becoming “capable of Christ” is not fostered through our nihilism, self-loathing, or performative allyship. Our exterior actions must instead accompany us in our inner purification. Following Christ’s lead, our shared work defies the voices that cry out DOOM! Instead, we listen for the hymns of praise sung on the path to the Kingdom. We find the song and join the march.

We are not being called to “win” something for God, as if God primarily desires to live within the unimaginative narratives of our political systems. Neither are we being called to patiently wait for the suffering to end. We are being called to press on, in the novel and defiant path of the Gospel, to enter into the true story – which is more confounding and more just and more bright with unquenchable love than anything we have known before, the one in which all the saints of God dwell.

Homily: Abide Here

April 9, 2015June 28, 2021Posted in sermonLeave a comment

The Reading (John 15:1-11):

‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the vine-grower. 2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been cleansed* by the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become* my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

Homily:

In John 15, Jesus uses an agricultural metaphor to describe the Christian life. He tells us that he is the “true vine” planted and tended to by God. He goes onto say that we are offshoots, or branches, of that “true vine” and that we only live abundantly through our connection with Him, saying “Apart from me you can do nothing.”

Well, that’s all well and good, but, practically speaking, what does it look like to “abide” in and with Jesus when he’s not exactly walking around on earth waiting to come to our dinner parties and church services?

Though it may not be immediately clear, I think this passage is rooted in a simple concept:

Growth happens in relationship.

I’m not presenting a new theological idea here, but I think it’s one we often take for granted. Paul helps us understand what relational faith looks like in 1 Corinthians 12, when he tells the people of Corinth that God’s church acts as the “Body of Christ” on earth.

He says: “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.” He ends this section with this: “Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.” I love the phrasing of that last verse – though I read this passage over and over in my daily devotions as a young Evangelical, I’d taken it for granted. We don’t lose our individuality when we join a community, but we do become something different – and better – as a collective. Like the human body, we work together to survive and thrive. But we’re not just any body – we’re the Body of Christ – and we do His work when we band together.

That understanding helps clarify John’s passage – it helps us find a way to put into practice what Jesus suggests. Jesus is not present on earth as an individual entity – we can’t hold onto him like branches on God’s vine – but we do have the church. Through the church – Christ’s Body – we may find a life source, and a connection to God our planter and sustainer, while simultaneously offering the love of Christ to others.

A rewording of John 15:1-11, replacing the pronouns for Jesus with “the church,” becomes a powerful statement of the church’s relationship to us:

“Abide in the church as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in the church. The church is the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in the church and the church in them bear much fruit, because apart from the church you can do nothing.

…if you abide in the church, and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you

…abide in the church’s love

…I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.”

God can work through you or me on any given day, but the work God does is always relational. God’s children must join together for the work of the Kingdom to be done. We prune off the bad fruit in each other’s lives when we ask hard questions and hold each other accountable. We bear new fruit by creating welcoming spaces for everyone – not just the people who are easy to get along with – and by joining together to solve issues within our congregations and the larger community. Conversely, when we resist relationship, we stunt our growth.

I thought for a long time that I could go off by myself with my beliefs and convictions and be just fine, but that mindset fails to grasp the awkward, fulfilling, annoying, life-giving power of church. And I don’t just mean the formal church – I mean the miraculous spaces that allow us to be seen for who we are, to hurt and to hurt others in our confusion, to just be – that don’t give up on us. We cannot fully participate in the Christian life – we cannot build a Kingdom! – apart from Christian community.

My own life is a testament to the church’s work. I attended a highly patriarchal evangelical church through much of college. Though I majored in Religious Studies, I was barred from teaching Sunday School classes if men were in attendance. It was a congregation that privileged the opinions and perspectives of men over even the informed perspectives of women. It tore me apart. I had decided to major in Religious Studies precisely because I wanted to understand my tradition and share it with the church, but everywhere I turned, I saw people who once seemed to love and welcome me slam the door in my face.

I wanted the church, but it didn’t want me. It was a horrible loss; the worst kind of break up. I wasn’t wanted, so I left.

When my husband and I moved to Charlottesville in 2012, we hadn’t been attending church for over a year. We haphazardly church hopped once we arrived in town, but I knew there was still a lot of pain and bitterness in me and I wasn’t sure I was ready to come back.

Ultimately, it was the newly formed Women’s Prayer Group that restored my soul. For the first time in a long time, I was experiencing Church. Not the smug, scared, resistant face of some organization calling itself church, but the welcoming, intentional, safe haven I needed to come back to life. I was free to ask hard questions or say nothing at all. I was allowed to be vulnerable, to be human. But I was also a part of this tiny Body of Christ in the basement of the Canterbury House, and that meant I was called to give the same love and offer the same restoration to other members. We couldn’t do it alone. We had each come as individuals to be healed by one another, but we had also become something different, and better. We had become church.

The church is why I left and the church is why I came back.

There will be pain in this place. There will be hurt feelings and rash decisions and ignorance. But we are called to ABIDE here, in each other, in Christ. We wither and die when we go it alone. In her book, Searching for Sunday, Rachel Held Evans says it this way: “Like it or not, following Jesus is a group activity, something we’re supposed to do together.”

I need you to be Christ for me and, though you may not always feel it, you need to have access to the tangible, living Christ on earth, here in this community and in the universal church.

March 3 Homily

March 4, 2013June 28, 2021Posted in sermonTagged Lent61 Comments

I was asked to do the homily for March 3rd’s evening service at the church I attend here in Charlottesville. Now that it’s done (and I managed not to faint or run away from the podium), I thought I’d share it here.

Readings: Exodus 3:1-15, Luke 13:1-9

In today’s biblical texts, we can trace a clear progression. It has to do with human responsibility. But it’s not an obligation we place on ourselves. It’s one God has compelled us toward since his first meeting with Moses in the burning bush and maybe even before.

It’s a responsibility to personal growth that turns to action.

The Exodus passage begins with Moses going about his daily tasks. In the Old Testament’s typically understated fashion, the text tells us that Moses is suddenly quite curious about a burning bush that is not consumed: “I must turn aside and look at this great sight.”

The commentary in the New Oxford Annotated Bible notes that the motif of Divine Fire is common in this period and that it: “arouses dread, for divine holiness is experienced as a mysterious power that threatens human existence.”

So we can assume that Moses approaches with some understanding of what he’s seeing. When God tells him, “You will set your people free,” he doesn’t need to waste time figuring out if it’s God; he doesn’t doubt. He knows.

And he is so in awe of the Divine that he is afraid to look at God.

Though many of us have heard this passage before, it struck me this time in that it shows an incredible measure of trust on God’s part. Though he has seen the pain and struggle of his people himself, though he has the power to show himself in a bush that isn’t consumed, he tells Moses that HE will do it. God, knowing that perhaps he is unsuitable to act as liaison to Pharaoh considering a general “DREAD” of the Divine, in a sense needs a human to implement his plan. And Moses doesn’t seem to be a random choice. He is the right person for the job.

The first step we take in living within God’s will is one we don’t take at all. It’s an acceptance to let the blazing fire – the passion – of God be kindled in us and the moral diligence to not let it be consumed by doubt, apathy, worry, or self absorption. It’s also the confidence that this passion will lead us forward in ways that suit us, even if not in ways that make us feel comfortable.

And that brings us to Luke.

In the first part of chapter 13, Jesus addresses our human tendency to turn a blind eye to those we perceive as the Other. He confronts a bias born of privilege, one that states that My life is good because I’m a good person and gets reiterated every time someone other than us or our loved ones suffer.

Jesus extends the work of his father in Exodus, who insisted that mere humans feel the passion of his people’s pain and DO SOMETHING about it. He says, “unless you repent you will all perish as they did.”

You’re not better. You’re not more righteous. You got out for now, but you have to do something with that.

His parable ties it all together. God expects great things from us, but we’re just as led astray as a sterile fig tree. Jesus comes to us with grace. He gives us a second chance. He opens our eyes by coming not in the form of a burning bush that makes us turn away, but in the recognizable, comforting form of our own species. It had become clear that we were too consumed in fear to be consumed in God’s loving justice, so God became one of us to show us we could succeed. We see Christ and his mission and we don’t have to turn away – we can embrace it.

God came first with passion, with fury and movement and an impatient drive to protect his people. And he let one of us in. He gave us the power to do something and the motivation to do it. But, just like the disciples and Jesus’ listening crowds, we got lost again in our own concerns. And we saw suffering and only felt lucky not to be suffering, too. And we repeat the cycle daily.

But we aren’t better. We aren’t better because we’re Americans or Episcopalians or Liberals or Conservatives or Charlottesvillians or UVA students. We see suffering and do nothing. We aggressively consume products presented to us through slave labor – we ignore the bullying, prejudice, and apathy in our own communities and in our own hearts – and we consume ourselves in the process of curating and collecting things and experiences, gluttons to our wants. And we think it’s ok because we’ve told ourselves other people are worse than us. All the while, the burning fire God presented us with is burning out.

We know through today’s texts that we are no better than anyone else. We all come to this life as equals in both merit and guilt. We need this humility to see suffering and empathize with it. We also learn through Moses that God shows us suffering in the places where we have influence, where we can take action.

For instance, our lives as consumers have the power to change or destroy lives. Human beings – people like us – suffer long hours, poor wages, and poor working conditions in the futile attempt to make ends meet at the hands of American corporations fueled by American consumers. Instead of feeling lucky to be here, we should recognize that we aren’t better, that we are the same. And once that hits us, we should realize that WE have the collective power – and the moral obligation through the Bible’s teachings – to make changes to set the suffering free. We can only liberate ourselves when we liberate others.

If we shut down from the important moral responsibilities laid out before us, we deserve to perish. But we’re given a second chance because Jesus believes in us, believes that with a little prodding, we can bear fruit again, and stands by us as we turn away, as we deflate our egos, as we press on to equality and progress.

As Christians, we are tasked to do something with the fire of God in front of us, and through Christ, we can face it head-on and not turn away. We are commanded to “turn aside [from the things that distract us] and look at this great sight” of suffering on earth and change our habits, our minds, our hearts. To set the slaves of unethical values, consumption, trafficking, patriarchy, hatred, and false conceptions of God free. We can only do that if we see that we are all the same, and that God is with us as we move toward equality under the banner of Christ’s grace and love.

I encourage you to assess your values and priorities during the remainder of the Lenten season and to make positive, visible, DIFFICULT changes in your own life.

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