Tag: bible

Lucky to be Blessed

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This sermon was given in a trilingual (English, Spanish, American Sign Language) service of Holy Baptism.

Readings here

O God, whose blessed Son made himself known to his disciples in the breaking of bread: Open the eyes of our faith, that we may behold him in all his redeeming work. Amen.

When I read today’s scripture readings, my first thought was: “Oh my gosh! We are so lucky to have a story about Baptism and a story about Communion on the same day! Especially on a day when people are getting baptized at the Hill!”

But I couldn’t even finish the thought before the internal voice that channels my mother kicked in and corrected “lucky” to “blessed.” Growing up, my mom always reminded me that, as Christians, we don’t believe in luck, because luck is attributed to chance or fate.

“When something good happens,” she said, “we should understand it as a blessing.” In other words, good things are evidence of the grace of God, who is actively participating in our lives and invested in our wellbeing.

I think my mom is probably right. It is a blessing – a divine gift – to revisit these wonderful Bible stories on the very day that two of our own will be baptized. Because the actions that take place in these stories directly connect our current faith practices to Jesus Christ and to the very first people who were called Christians. And beyond showing us where we came from, these stories open our eyes to the fact of Christ’s ongoing presence in our practices.

So, let’s get into it…

In Acts, Peter – who just moments ago was hiding in a locked room – has encountered the living Christ and has taken to the streets to spread the good news. He says: “Let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

The crowd is so moved by his proclamation that they ask him, “What should we do? How do we join up with this Jesus you speak of?” And Peter replies: “Repent and be baptized.” “Vuélvanse a Dios y bautícese.” Acts tells us that “about three thousand people” were baptized that day!…(Can you even imagine how long that took!?)

Jesus wasn’t there in the flesh that day, but the Holy Spirit showed up in full force.

In Luke, we go back in time a little bit, to the first day of the resurrection when two disciples join up with an apparent stranger on the road. Even though these disciples know who Jesus is, they do not recognize that this man is Jesus, until he eats with them.

The Gospel tells us that he blesses and breaks the bread. It’s an action that reflects the Last Supper; the special way he breaks the bread can only mean one thing: they are in the presence of Jesus Christ!

Just as they recognize him, Jesus disappears. And then, one of them says: “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?” “¿No es verdad que el corazón nos ardía en el pecho?”

Jesus wasn’t there in the flesh anymore, but they recognized him in the broken bread.

When I first read today’s scriptures, I was swept up in the wonder in these stories. The confident conviction of Peter, who had, up until this point, been afraid to admit that he knew Jesus at all. The enthusiasm of the crowd, and the enormous number of baptisms. The confusion turned to delight, of those disciples who met Jesus on the road.

And the common theme of both: that Jesus is present and doing good and gracious things even when we can’t see him.

It is interesting that these moments of baptism and breaking bread are not so uncommon: we all wash ourselves, we all eat. But they are somehow made holy and blessed when Jesus enters the picture. In other words, they are made “sacraments.”

And this is why we still practice these sacraments today – because we believe Jesus shows up in them.

The sacraments are, as our prayer book puts it,

“…outward and visible signs of inward and spiritual grace, given by Christ as sure and certain means by which we receive that grace.”

In some churches, there are said to be seven sacraments. In the Episcopal Church, we generally say we have two: Baptism and Holy Eucharist, our prayer and participation in Communion.

While there are many ways that Christ shows us grace throughout our lives – whether through relationships, experiences, or something else – we believe that these two particular actions are places where Christ’s grace is always and immediately apparent.

That means that these actions, these sacraments, are more than a symbol of transformation. And they are more than a memorial to something that happened a long time ago. When we cleanse ourselves in the waters of baptism, and when we eat the bread and wine at communion, we are – through a divine mystery – encountering the living presence of Jesus Christ. Here at the font, and here at the table, we are brought into the eternal blessing of God. And something essential about us is changed by our participation in them. Even though we don’t see Jesus – the eyes of our faith are opened to life and hope beyond the here and now.

And, to get even more mystical, whenever we participate in the sacraments, we are also in the presence of the “great cloud of witnesses.” These are the ancestors of our faith, living and dead, who are part of the eternal family of God. The 3,000 people who were baptized that day in the book of Acts rejoice as two more join their ranks today. The disciples whose hearts were warmed in Christ’s presence will dine with us at the Eucharistic feast.

Even if we can’t see Jesus, the Body of Christ is here. And we pray that he will continually open the eyes of our faith so that our hearts will recognize his presence.

We’re so lucky that luck isn’t the thing that determines goodness in our lives. We are blessed, instead, by these sacraments, And we can be “sure and certain” that Christ’s grace is freely given to all who wish to receive it. We are blessed to witness to the new life in Christ of these dear ones being baptized, who will also join with us and the great cloud of witnesses at the shared table of Christ today. Amen.

A Locked Door & a Word of Peace

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‘When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.”’

In today’s Gospel reading, we get an inside look at the disciples’ doubt, joy, and faith as the resurrected Jesus greets them with a word of peace. One Anglican priest sharing online noted that Jesus’ introduction here – rooted in the Jewish greeting of “shalom” – is essentially the same as our tradition of “passing the peace.” (Which, of course, we got from Jesus.)

Jesus basically says, “The peace of the Lord be always with you.” But instead of mumbling a dutiful, “And also with you,” the disciples are completely transformed by this greeting. They are in the presence of the Prince of Peace, and so peace has become more than a greeting – it is real. Heartened by this new reality, they are about to change the world.

Jesus knew that this would happen. In fact, he promised it only a few days before.

In John 14-17, in what some call his “farewell discourse,” Jesus says:

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.” – John 14:27

And later in that passage, he says it more bluntly:

“I have said this to you, so that in me you may have peace. In the world you face persecution. But take courage; I have conquered the world.” – John 16:33

Still, the disciples had reason to doubt. In the space between his farewell discourse and his greeting in the locked room, a lot has happened. In fact, we re-lived most of it last week during our Holy Week services:

Jesus is arrested while praying, ridiculed by his own people, and charged with heresy against God and treason against the Roman emperor. He is assaulted by soldiers, spat on by passersby and finally, killed in a public execution.

His body is prepared for burial. And he lies dead in a tomb. And then, a couple of disciples come weeping to the tomb and find it empty. Finally, Mary Magdalene rushes to the house where the rest of the disciples are staying and announces, “I have seen the Lord.”

In the time after Jesus’ promise of peace, his followers, friends, and family have experienced everything but peace. Fear, yes. Horror, yes. Grief, of course. Existential despair, everywhere.

In the felt absence of Jesus Christ, life has been, well, Hell. In the chaos of those days, I wouldn’t be surprised if not one disciple remembered Jesus’ promise of peace. Their nervous systems were short-circuiting. They were afraid of being arrested as accomplices by the local authorities.

But maybe even worse, their lives had lost a sense of purpose. After all, they had hitched their wagon to a grand cause: the salvation and transformation of the world. They had abandoned fishing boats, families, social norms, and even common sense – and now their leader had died in shame. And they were hiding behind a locked door.

Though Mary Magdalene insisted she had seen the risen Lord, the disciples weren’t sure what to think or do. And can we blame them?

But that evening, Jesus showed up again. We don’t know if he walked through a wall or poofed into the room. But there he was, standing among them, with visible wounds in his hands and his side where the nails and spear had punctured his skin.

It’s probably for the best that he showed up like this, as weird as it was. The terrified disciples probably wouldn’t have let him in if he had knocked on the door, afraid that it was some kind of terrible trick.

And the first thing he says is “Peace.” And as he utters the word of peace, his disciples let out the breath they have been holding since he died and they breathe in the Holy Spirit. And they rejoice, because they know that Jesus kept his promise.

Peace is Jesus’ calling card. It was made real in the upper room by the presence of the living, breathing Jesus Christ. And it is made real today by the Holy Spirit that lives in us. It is the thing that enlivens us to pursue the path of life, and the way of Christ.

But what does Jesus mean when he says he gives us peace?

The scriptures reveal that Christ’s peace is not merely the absence of conflict. It is a transforming presence that calms fear, steadies the nerves, and makes people courageous beyond their own potential. It is an active force that propels trembling and tired people out of their locked rooms and into the light of day. It is stable ground that – like a loving parent – motivates us to go out into the world seeking better things for ourselves and our neighbors.

In drawing people to look toward the living Christ, this peace puts our disagreements into perspective. It leads us to recognize that resentment, conflict, and violence are distractions that keep us from living lives of purpose and transformation.

Importantly, Christ’s peace is not the same as “keeping the peace.”

This is obvious in Jesus’ own life. In every act of love – in every shared meal, invitation, and miraculous healing – the family of God got bigger and his enemies grew more numerous. Though he rejected violence, he became a target for violence. He proclaimed peace, and got killed for it.

And this is evident in the disciples’ lives. As soon as they encountered Jesus in that room, they threw caution to the wind, ran outside, and told everyone the good news. Christ’s peace had emboldened them, and many around them would dismiss them as crazy.

This is the paradox of the peace Jesus gives: It doesn’t make all our problems go away; in fact, by emboldening us, it might put us in situations of increasing conflict. But, Christ’s peace also puts our problems in their proper place, which is in view of the risen Lord, whose path leads to abundant and beautiful life.

Throughout our lives, we may find ourselves hiding behind locked doors. For many of us, this time contains real threats to our lives, livelihoods, and wellbeing. And there are real costs to insisting on peace in a world corrupted by war and conflict. Who wouldn’t be afraid?

But, even in the isolation of our hiding places, Jesus will find us. He will poof into the room or walk through walls if he has to. And the first thing he will offer is real “Peace.”

So, when we greet one another with “peace” today, I think we should really take it seriously. Because “the peace of the Lord” isn’t just a cute little thing we say to one another on Sunday morning. It is a sign that Jesus is really here with us. Jesus Christ, through the Holy Spirit, is really living in each of us. And even in our fear, we can become each other’s cause for joy.

This peace we offer one another is the stuff that will embolden us to lead lives of purpose. Because we know and feel and rejoice – that Jesus lives.

Amen.

The Strife is O’er | Easter Sermon

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The Lord is my strength and my song,
and he has become my salvation.

One of the best things about being a priest is something you might not expect…If I want to, I get to pick the music. And every Easter, I make one particular request: we have to sing “The Strife is O’er.”

The hymn uses an old 16th century tune called “Victory,” written by Palestrina for use in a sung mass. Victory is a fitting title for a song that uses the imagery of war to describe Christ’s victory over the last enemy, which is death itself. The words were translated from Latin by Francis Potts, a priest and hymnwriter who wrote many hymns before and after becoming deaf in his 50s. The “Alleluia” refrains were added later.

Like many of our Easter hymns, the words of the song are joyful and emphatic:

The strife is o’er, the battle done;
the victory of life is won;
the song of triumph has begun.
Alleluia!

But what makes this hymn so distinctive is the proclamation that it makes in the first line of the first verse: not “Christ is risen” or “Welcome happy morning,” or something to the effect of “Come on, get happy” – But, “The strife is over.” It recognizes from the very start that we poor humans have indeed endured great “strife” and that sometimes we need someone to tell us – in explicit terms – that “the strife is over” before we can even entertain good news.

The hymn unfolds the story so that we can come to joy on our own terms, in our own time. Each verse builds on the last, taking the singer from the battlefield, with its legions of deathly, dark forces, to the grief of Christ’s violent death. Then, down to Hell itself – where Christ frees the lost from their chains. And to Heaven, where all are restored to the paradise of God.

Finally, the hymn invites us to understand that our very participation in the song is evidence of the resurrection, which has freed us to live in the hope of our own new life in Christ…

Lord, by the stripes which wounded thee,
from death’s dread sting thy servants free,
that we may live and sing to thee.
Alleluia!

And then, at the very end of the hymn – having crossed the threshold of the tomb – we find ourselves in the bright presence of the risen Lord. And we can’t help but declare Alleluia to close out the song. (Alleluia means “Sing praise to the Lord.”)

Where the opening Alleluias seem to have been tacked onto the song as an afterthought, the closing ones feel more honest. They give us permission to try out joy for ourselves. We thought death was the end of the story, but it was only the beginning of a new story, one that is freed from the finality of death.

In the unfolding story of resurrection, our whispered alleluias are set loose to become loud shouts. If we let Alleluia into our weary hearts, we will feel it reverberating there, doing its work to untangle the knots of despair. If we let ourselves embody the buoyant freedom that Christ has made real, we won’t be able to stop proclaiming good news with reckless abandon.

If even death has been defeated, nothing can hold us back. Nothing can keep us from writing more verses to our Easter song. The worst has already come to pass. The strife is now over. And no enemy, obstacle, intrusion, or limitation stands between us and abounding, sustaining, ever-expanding possibility.

For 2,000 years, Christians have been proclaiming that a man who was God died and rose again.

This is an absurdity by some people’s reckoning. It seems to them an act of grace to deny the existence of living, breathing hope in the face of life’s suffering.

But Jesus’ resurrection “is a truth universally acknowledged” by those first disciples whose testimony lives on in the writings of the New Testament. The women who visited the tomb in the hour between darkness and dawn found an angel and an empty grave, while the empire’s watchmen quaked in their boots. Then, they ran into Jesus himself and grabbed ahold of his feet, bowing in reverence and holding onto the one they never thought they would hold again. And the men who crouched in hiding in the upper room touched the death-scarred hands of a living Savior.

But that’s not how the story ended. The Gospel of John tells us that: “…there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”

There are many other things that Jesus did, and he hasn’t stopped yet…

Through two thousand years of war and calamity – drought, flood, fire, and plague – as empires rise and fall, the people of God keep encountering the living Christ, just as alive as he was that first Easter morning:

  • Responding to our prayers,
  • Appearing in our dreams,
  • Comforting the dying,
  • Soothing the suffering,
  • Nourishing us at the table,
  • When all hope is lost – a light that shows a way forward.

The world itself cannot contain the books that the people of God could write about the living Christ – showing up in our well-worn stories of death.

Christ is alive – two thousand years of testimony attest to it. And if Christ is alive, though death may be the story of our day, we can turn the page.

And we will find, in the end, that “the strife is over.”

And we are free…Free to live in defiance of the predominant story – which is that death is the end of our story. Free to live like Easter people. Which is to say, to live like Christ, who knows the stench of death and moves toward life anyway.

We are free to add new verses to the song of Christ’s victory over death and the grave. We are free to live, not merely in the memory of those old testimonies, but in our own resurrection stories.

The strife is over. The tomb is empty. And the risen Lord is waiting to meet us on the road.

Alleluia! Amen.

In the Dusk of Another Dark Day

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Yesterday morning, I woke up earlier than usual to a mysterious sound. In my half-asleep stupor, I listened carefully without taking out my earplugs. I deciphered that the static I was hearing was rain. When I took out my earplugs, I could hear the rain falling hard and fast. It was drowning out the noise of rush hour traffic on the highway and quieting the morning tune of songbirds.

I stayed in bed for a while. And at first, I was relieved by the arrival of needed rain after months of drought. But then, I remembered the last time morning had brought this kind of rain. And I began to cry.

On July 4th last year, the rain was just like this – except it lasted longer. And in the Hill Country, it rained much harder.

That morning, I expected to wake up to last-minute planning for the neighborhood Independence Day party, But instead, I woke up and invited people to a prayer vigil.

About six of us sat together, right here, huddled in a circle, constantly checking our phones for news. By the end of the day, it seemed like all of us knew someone who had died. The blessing of rain had become a curse. And the people of this congregation were suddenly on-call to an unfolding nightmare.

Not a week goes by that we don’t talk about the floods: in clergy meetings, conversations with parishioners, or whispered updates between friends. It has changed the way the clergy preach and pastor. It has changed the way we as a congregation grieve. It was, perhaps, our church community’s darkest day.

Today, we are living in Christianity’s darkest day. We are living in the shadow place – the day that God-incarnate died.

And I’m tempted to say, like so many have said before, that the brutality of Christ’s death is hard to stomach. But, in fact, it’s the easiest day for people like us to understand.

No matter our circumstances, we have all been battered by loss and grief. None of us can avoid it. And all of us, if we let ourselves, can draw out the pain we still carry in our hearts as the result of some great loss.

And so, it is easy for us to place ourselves in the story of Jesus and his friends, during those hours before his death: through the waiting and the hoping, the worry and the fear, and the sinking feeling in our gut, when we realize the worst has come true.

Good Friday is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. It is the day where we are given gratuitous permission to wake up to rain, and cry. A day where we are given free rein to sit in sackcloth and ashes and to mourn the death of hope itself.

It is also the day that the disciples become mourners with us – at the foot of the cross. And all the grief in every heart, and throughout all generations, is still held right here at the cross, the sorrow so deep it once caused darkness to cover the earth.

That darkness is God’s own grief. And God is still found in the darkness. At the cross, God swallowed us up into his gravitational pull, stretched out his arms, held us close, and said, “I am right here with you.”

Held in the arms of God, we find one another, a family bonded by great loss, but also great love. Here at the cross, in the dusk of another dark day, we find a safe place to lay our burdens down.

And soon enough, when our eyes close in sleep, we will cast off the memory of rain, and perhaps dream about the rising sun(son).

While we still were sinners

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For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person– though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.

The Young Adults’ Bible Study, which meets here on Thursday nights, recently began studying First Corinthians. In our first week, we learned that First Corinthians, like many letters in the New Testament, was written by Paul in the first century. Paul was a former persecutor of Christians who became one of Christianity’s most significant preachers and evangelists. His letters – passed down to us through the Bible – contain a mix of personal history, community instruction, and theology.

Paul was not one of Jesus’ original disciples, but he had an experience of Jesus Christ speaking to him in a flash of light while in the middle of one of his Christian persecution campaigns. It left him literally blind, until God led him to a local church member named Ananias, who reluctantly, but faithfully, prayed that he would be healed in body and soul.

That series of encounters – first with Christ in the flash of light, then with faithful Ananias – changed the course of Paul’s life. Once Christianity’s biggest skeptic, he became its biggest advocate.

As I mentioned, many of the letters in the New Testament were written by Paul, including Romans, which we read from today. Often called epistles, these are real letters that Paul wrote to churches throughout the Greco-Roman world. This world, the world the church was born into, was chaotic. It was marked by extreme class hierarchy, religious oppression, and a head-spinning amount of dynastic drama.

Whether Paul is writing about conflict resolution or the nature of God, we know that he was crafting his message to encourage real people to rise to the challenge of their time and place. And over time, we have also understood that these messages still say something to us. After all, humans are gonna human and we are still subject to many of the same problems as those first century Christians.

Today in Romans, we find ourselves in the middle of one of Paul’s theological speeches. Paul has just made an argument that faith – not works, status, or heritage – is what makes someone eligible for inclusion in God’s promises. Scholar Andrew McGowan suggests that Paul’s use of “faith” in this context can be understood as “trust.”

So, Paul is explaining to the church in Rome what happens when we trust in God. He says that, though life is hard, we can trust that God will transform our suffering. Suffering will build endurance, endurance will build character, and character will lead to hope.

And, Paul says, this hope is not flimsy or aspirational – because it is built on what has already come to pass. Christ has already saved us and filled us with the Holy Spirit, And we are empowered to live, act, and love in his name. No matter what hardship we endure, we are reconciled with the God of the universe and we can trust that his power will be made known in our brokenness.

As Paul points out, we are, indeed, broken…

For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.

Christ didn’t float down from heaven on a cloud, invite the most beautiful, moral people to his cause, then die for them because they were so pure and sweet and holy. He started his ministry in a farm town, actively avoided befriending the righteous Pharisees, invited hated tax collectors into his friend group, and boldly welcomed a heretical woman (at the well) into the salvation of God.

Paul rightly points out that “rarely will anyone die for a righteous person.” And yet, even for us, Christ was willing to die. Jesus lived and died, and lived again, for a whole bunch of beat-down, bothered, and broken people. And that is more than reason enough to trust him to be with us even when things feel beyond repair.

What’s more, in Christ’s death, he invites us into the same self-sacrifice. In his dying, he showed us that reconciling with God requires being reconciled with all of humanity: ungodly and godly alike, “bad” guy and “good” guy alike. He showed us that empathy, forgiveness, and love are the tools of reconciliation – and they require us to let go of the idea that some people are more deserving of it than others.

This mindset is particularly apparent when we talk about death. And death has been all over the news this week.

In the past few days:

  • I read about the girls’ elementary school that the U.S. bombed in Iran, killing at least 160 people – with at least 300 other civilians and leaders killed in other parts of the country.
  • I read about six U.S. soldiers who died – we didn’t count the other country’s dead soldiers.
  • And I looked at the faces of the four people who died in last Saturday’s mass shooting in Austin – the fourth death being the shooter.

In all of these stories, the public has made their best effort to sort the casualties into deserving and undeserving, innocent and perpetrator, ungodly and godly. We have tried to find justification, if not for the deaths themselves, then for a reason for our grief in some cases and our anger in others.

I dare not make a judgment call. And I dare not suggest to you that your own feelings are unjustified. We have reasons to weep and reasons to rage – and so often our weeping and our raging are just two sides of the same grief.

But Paul reminds us: while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Christ’s death collapsed the dichotomy – that the only sinless human would die for victim and perpetrator alike is scandalous to our way of thinking; that Christ would dare lump us into the same salvation as the “bad guys” is insulting.

And yet, Christ died. And yet, he invites us all into eternal life. And yet, he calls us to be reconciled, if not in our mortal lives, then in our eternal ones.

While we may not be able to “fix” the sin and death that has already occurred, our reconciling activity now – our empathy, forgiveness, and love – can transform the violence in our hearts into peace that may very well change the course of the future.

To do this, we must build trust with God and one another…

It is no coincidence that Paul, the man who speaks so eloquently about trusting Jesus, first encountered Christ through an act of “blind” trust. While totally vulnerable, he sought out a stranger for healing. And Ananias, equally blindsided, responded to God’s call.

Paul, a faithful Jew, would have been justified in wishing Ananias dead for distorting sacred religious teachings. Ananias, scared for his life, would have been justified in ignoring God’s call to heal Paul. Who was the “good guy” and who was the “bad guy” depended on your point of view.

But they each trusted Christ – and it led them to each other. And it is that trust that led Paul to the church, and his letters, and these words that still instruct us to lay down our pride and reconcile: with God, with one another, with the world.

In the end, our only justification is in Christ. And in Christ, there are no good deaths. There are no true enemies. There is only fumbling humanity – weak and ungodly as we are – taking a step toward one another, and finding God there. Amen.

Be salty. Stay lit.

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Readings here

Last weekend, I was at a community choir event when I saw an older man wearing a sweatshirt that read: “Be salty. Stay lit.” My first thought was, “I wonder if he knows that passage is coming up in our lectionary next week!”

It’s always fun to see the Bible “out in the wild.” When I was in seminary, an author – I can’t remember who – talked about reading scripture in random parts of town just to see if the context changed the meaning. For instance, I imagine that reading about Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate in front of a courthouse would be an interesting experience.

During the pandemic, one of my fondest memories was reading Psalm 84 during an outdoor service, as the birds sang around us in the trees:

Even the sparrow finds a home
and the swallow a nest for herself,
where she may lay her young,
at your altars, O Lord of hosts,
my King and my God.

When I saw that man’s sweatshirt – “Be salty, stay lit” – I was in a warehouse venue space singing with a bunch of musical theatre nerds. But only a day earlier, I was outside a very different warehouse. And I couldn’t help but think about it then.

On that day, I went to pray with a group of other Christians in front of a warehouse-turned-immigrant detention center. Though we were on public property, as we sang and prayed, we were increasingly being surveilled by federal officers. And by the time I opened my eyes and turned toward the building, the anti-terrorism agents had arrived. When our service ended, we quietly scrambled back to our cars; but I spent the next few days worrying that they were coming for me.

When I read, “Be salty, stay lit,” on a man’s sweatshirt the next day, I was in a context of raising my voice in song. But I couldn’t stop thinking about raising my voice in song at that other warehouse – about what it meant to live my faith boldly and in public.

What do these words call us to? Let’s see if we can figure it out…

Our Matthew reading today is just a little piece of a much bigger teaching, which we often refer to as the Sermon on the Mount. It comes immediately after the Beatitudes, which we talked about last week. And what follows it, is a series of teachings that expand the Ten Commandments.

A Torah scholar in my Bible study group points out that the Sermon on the Mount is a direct reference to Exodus, with Jesus paralleling Moses and the “crowds” paralleling the Israelites. In addition to the Exodus reference, the “city on a hill” language in our passage is a direct reference to Isaiah. In Isaiah chapter 2, the prophet reveals God’s vision for all people:

In days to come
the mountain of the Lord’s house
shall be established as the highest of the mountains
and shall be raised above the hills;
all the nations shall stream to it.
Many peoples shall come and say,
“Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord,
to the house of the God of Jacob,
that he may teach us his ways
and that we may walk in his paths.”

In these subtle and not-so-subtle parallels, Jesus is revealing himself as the fulfillment of the story of the God of Israel. He is in the direct line of its patriarchs and prophets, and intends to follow its ethical and religious commands.

Up to this point in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has been focused on his own identity and call. But in these verses about salt and light, we receive his first instruction to “the crowd,” This crowd includes all of us, who gather before the altar of Christ today.

How he phrases his first call to action is surprising. Instead of telling us to “do” something, he tells us that we “are” something.: “You are salt, and you are light.” In other words, you are called to rise to who you were made to be, to use your intrinsic properties – your gut, your conscience, your mind, your body, and your soul – for the good of the Gospel.

You are the salt of the earth. As a matter of who you are, you have the power to preserve and sustain those around you; to make things good or to make things rotten; you have the power to make the roadway safe or slippery; you have the power to bring healing.

You are the light of the world. Like a spotlight in a darkened theater, you have the power to make meaning for others; to direct their gaze to where the real story is taking place; you expose what was in shadow; how you move and what you focus on shows others what really matters.

So…will you be discerning? Pouring out your life-sustaining salt to provide for those around you? Or will you be careless? Using too much or too little in ways that cause rot and bitterness?

Will you be bold? Shining a light that casts away the dark shadows of sin and death in this world? Or will you be distracted? Putting a spotlight on unimportant things that distance you and others from the love of God?

You are salt, and you are light – you were made to share the good news of God’s freedom, abundance, and love. Your choice is not to become, but to properly use your intrinsic call.

In the earliest versions of our strategic plan, our mission statement said that we wanted to be a “community lighthouse.”

As a congregation literally sitting “on a hill,” we want to be like a light that pulls people away from danger, and toward safe harbor. When we workshopped this, a few people noted that the image of a lighthouse made no sense in our landlocked context. So, you’ll see our current form of the mission statement reads a little bit differently:

Rooted in Christ’s vision of reconciliation, mutual care, and love of neighbor, the Hill is a beacon of God’s love in southeast Austin.

A beacon can be a lighthouse, but it’s broader than that…The basic definition of a beacon is: “a fire or light set up in a high or prominent position as a warning, signal, or celebration.” But I came across an alternate meaning online. A beacon can also describe “a hill suitable for a beacon of fire or light.”

I believe the desire of all of our hearts is to make this church on the hill suitable for a beacon of fire or light. We want this place to be a home to the Holy Spirit, so often depicted as fire. We want it to be as life changing as the burning bush, from which God called Moses to deliver his people from slavery.

We want the light of Christ to remind us that we are salt, and we are light. So that we can act as beacons that shine a light on the lost and endangered, and help them find safety. And, so we can invite others “to taste and see that the Lord is good.”

As we let our strategic plan guide us in the coming years, today’s scripture reminds us that God has already made us exactly who we need to be for this world, in this moment.

Our choice is not about becoming a beacon. It is about turning our spotlight on the story of God, as it is revealed to us through the patriarchs, prophets, and commandments. And in the incarnate Christ – whose first act of ministry was to heal the sick, the suffering, and the lost.

Be salty. Stay lit. Amen.

Thanks to Andrew McGowan’s substack, Warren Carter for The Working Preacher, my colleagues, and my Bible Study group for the insight.

One Little Choice After Another: Epiphany

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Happy are the people whose strength is in you! 
whose hearts are set on the pilgrims’ way. 

When I was a kid, I used to love reading those “Choose your own adventure” books. Maybe you’re familiar with them… 

These were short chapter books geared to preteens. You started off by choosing your character. Would you be a spy? A scientist? A doctor? 

Then, the story began. After a few pages of hijinks and intrigue, you would have the option to choose between two or three tracks, based on some kind of question or pivot in the story. Would you follow the shadowy figure down the dark tunnel or run out of the cave? Would you operate on the patient, or wait and see? 

Based on what you chose, you would be prompted to go to a certain page in the book. There, the story would continue on, until, through a series of choices, you finally reached the end. 

An enthusiastic neuroscientist on the internet mapped these stories and their many twists and turns. And he found that “Choose your own adventure” books could have as many as 44 different endings! It’s amazing that one little choice after another would eventually lead you to a place far beyond where you started. 

When I started thinking about these books last week, it was just a passing thought. It came about because, in this week’s lectionary, the preacher could choose between three different Gospel readings, all having to do with the end of the nativity story.

Let’s say we were characters in the story of Jesus. We would have already been visited by angels and beheld the Christ-child lying in a manger. We would have sung Silent Night and been enveloped in warmth by the body heat of sheep and goats,  as they settled into the hay surrounding the holy family on that first Christmas night. 

But today, we had to make a choice. Did we want to: A, Escape Herod’s wrath by journeying to Egypt?, B, Lose 12-year-old Jesus at the synagogue in Jerusalem? Or…C, Follow the star with the wise men to give him gold, frankincense, and myrrh? 

Unfortunately, I’m not really giving you a choice…Sorry, but I had to write a sermon! So, I went with C. And the reason why is because the Wise Men’s story has all the high stakes and intrigue required for a “Choose your own adventure” book. They journeyed far away from their home,  disobeyed a violent king,  and chose to believe in a prophetic sign from a God they didn’t even worship. 

But who were these so-called Wise Men  and what convinced them that this was an adventure worth choosing? 

While our translation of the book of Matthew refers to them as “Wise Men,” the Greek word for these mysterious people “from the East” is “magoi,” which comes from the more ancient semitic word, “magus.” You might be familiar with the English translation, “Magi.” 

Mentioned in the Bible and in Babylonian texts, “Magi” referred to a group of people who worked as magicians, astrologers, and psychics. The book of Daniel uses the term in a list of ineffective dream interpreters called upon by King Nebuchadnezzar. In the book of Acts, the same term is used to refer to “false prophets.” 

While some cultures may have looked upon “Magi” as wise and holy men,  the Jewish and Early Christian traditions certainly did not. As far as I could tell in my research, this story is the only positive portrayal of Magi in our scriptures. It’s too bad our translation hides that fact. Scholar Daniel J. Harrington draws on the specifics in our Gospel reading to describe these particular magi. They are likely Persian priests using Babylonian star-charting and bringing gifts from Arabia or the Syrian Desert. 

In other words, they are about as “foreign” as anyone could imagine, true outsiders by every cultural, religious, and geographical definition. For its first hearers and witnesses, the Magi’s presence in the story of Jesus must have been shocking. In a very literal sense, they didn’t belong in it. 

Nevertheless, the Magi entered the story… 

Like a “Choose your own adventure” book, they made one little choice after another  that would eventually lead them to a place far beyond their imagination. 

Here was the first choice:  Would they “travel afar” – away from home, culture, and recognition – or would they stay put? They chose to go… 

On their way, they were called into King Herod’s court. Accustomed to working for powerful rulers, they told him what they had seen in the stars. Herod told the Magi to continue on their way, and to report back on what they learned. So, they made another choice. They kept going… 

When they finally arrived underneath that bright star,  they were filled with “overwhelming joy.” Their spirit recognized that they were in the presence of an unlikely Savior. A child who had been born not just to save the Jews, but the whole world, including them and their people. 

Now, they had another choice to make. They had received warning in a divine dream not to return to Herod. But they had made a promise to him, and backing out on it was risky. 

Was it worth the risk to disobey the direct orders of a powerful ruler just because they’d had a crazy dream? They were so convinced of God’s presence in the person of Jesus that their choice was clear: they went home by another route. And that divinely directed choice, along with Joseph’s decision to flee, likely saved Jesus’ life. 

Which is wild when you think about it: These crackpot foreigners, along with Jesus’ stepdad, saved the one who would save the world. 

It didn’t have to end this way. The Magi always had a choice. It would have made far more sense for them to stay home in the comfort and safety of a culture and worldview that accepted them. After all, even if Jesus was some kind of “king of the Jews,” what could that have meant to a foreigner, an outsider, or a false prophet? Still, they went. 

They could have gotten to their destination, seen toddler Jesus throwing a temper tantrum, and rejected the sign in the stars. Instead, they worshipped him as a king. 

They could have colluded with King Herod, and found their reward in the royal court. But they fled back home like thieves in the night, to find their reward in household of God. 

There were 44 other possible endings to their story, all of them more reasonable than this one. But this was the adventure they chose. And because these pagan foreigners followed the star to a podunk town called Bethlehem – where they, inexplicably, found God, we are reminded of two things: 

The first is that God makes himself known in unexpected people and places. The Magi are in good company with other unlikely Bible characters: unbathed, bug-eating prophets; tax collectors and fishermen; eunuchs, mouthy women, and Samaritans. 

These “side characters” become exemplars and heroes when they enter the story of God, defying cultural norms and common sense. And we would do well to look for God in the faces of outcasts, weirdos, and strangers, too. 

And that leads us to the second thing: No matter who we are, where we come from, or what other people say about us, we all get to make choices that bring us into the story, so that we may encounter the “overwhelming joy” of Jesus.

On this adventure with Jesus, we might find ourselves in strange places, among people who don’t seem very much like us. We might find ourselves in contexts way beyond our comfort zone. But we can trust that God will guide us, and we can trust that we will have the courage we need to make the next daring choice on our way. 

The Magi teach us that the life of faith is just one little choice after another. Until we find ourselves knocking on a door and finding Jesus on the other side. 

Amen. 

Someday at Christmas

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And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. 

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As a lifelong choral singer,  I have always been a bit of a Christmas-song snob. And it’s only gotten worse since I became an Episcopalian, and learned about the Season of Advent. Because, as the snobbiest of Christmas-song snobs know,  it’s simply *not done* to sing Christmas music before December 25th. 

So, when Christmas songs start playing on the radio in November, I simply refuse to indulge in the merriment. Instead, I try to stop up my ears and ignore all the clatter about rocking around the Christmas tree, kissing Santa Claus, and filling the world with cheer. But this year, something shifted… 

It has been a hard year. I think I can say that without needing to qualify it. Many of us have borne witness to unimaginable loss and lived with prolonged grief.  We have seen our neighbors struggle. Some of us have lost jobs, or struggled to get one. Many of us have lost much more. 

This fall, when the Christmas music started playing, I noticed my ears perking up. In the midst of the world’s heaviness, I found myself wanting to entertain the idea of Christmas cheer, even if the songs were silly and it was, strictly speaking, not Christmas yet. I was desperate for something that would pull me out of my wallowing. 

So, with cautious hope – or perhaps desperation – I began really listening to Christmas songs, both secular and sacred. And I noticed that songs that had seemed silly and naive before were starting to sound different in my ear. 

But one in particular stood out… 

At a community choir concert earlier this month, I was fortunate enough to hear an arrangement of the Christmas classic, “Someday at Christmas.” Released by Stevie Wonder in 1967, this song was part of the soundscape of Christmas before I was born. But, I had never really paid attention to the words,  until this year, when 200 men began to sing in the big sanctuary of a church downtown: 

Someday at Christmas men won’t be boys 
Playing with bombs like kids play with toys 
One warm December our hearts will see 
A world where men are free 

Someday at Christmas there’ll be no wars 
When we have learned what Christmas is for 
When we have found what life’s really worth 
There’ll be peace on earth 

In the unified voice of 200 men, among the crowd of 300 concert goers, this shmaltzy pop song that has whined over the din of Christmas shoppers for 50 years, became something more. Each verse expanded a vision of the world just as big and beautiful as the prophecies of Isaiah: 

“Break forth together into singing, 
you ruins of Jerusalem; 

for the Lord has comforted his people, 
he has redeemed Jerusalem. 

The Lord has bared his holy arm 
before the eyes of all the nations; 

and all the ends of the earth shall see 
the salvation of our God.” 

And yet, at first, the choir sang from a tentative place: a place of desperation, or of hope nearly gone. They seemed to speak of a far-off someday. It seems that their hope had dimmed with each new grief and tragedy in our world, just as mine had. 

For awhile, I closed my eyes and listened to those hushed voices sing. But then, something caused me to open my eyes and re-focus my gaze. I looked up and noticed that there was a cross at the front of the sanctuary. It had been there the whole time, taking up the whole back wall behind where the singers stood. 

Suddenly, the cross and the music all came together, hitting me like a flash of light. It was as if the full spectrum of faith was being revealed in that room. The desperate prayers whispered in hard times, the cautious hope of someday, the comfort of kind voices filling the room with song. And the empty cross, rising above it all. 

The tone and tempo of the music shifted then, and those 200 voices crescendoed into a bold and forceful sound that made the wooden pews vibrate: 

Someday at Christmas man will not fail 
Hate will be gone and love will prevail 
Someday a new world that we can start 
With hope in every heart 

Quiet desperation had given way to a tangible proclamation of hope. And someday had transformed from passive prayer to bold certainty. As the sound reverberated through the room, all 500 of us gathered there could literally feel hope resonating in our bodies. In the ringing out of unified voices, over the course of many verses, hope had become incarnate. 

Words had become flesh. 

What was this, if not the miracle of the incarnation, playing out in our time and place? That words of hope could fill up a room and inspire everyone to believe. That things hoped for could be made real through living, breathing, singing humanity. 

This is the miracle of the incarnation, on that Christmas long ago: Jesus Christ, the Word and Lyric that made the world, came to us as a lowly human to be united with us. And to make the world around us vibrate with his tangible presence,  

In the face of life’s suffering and loss,  the incarnation reminds us that a young mother was so close to God, she could hold him in her arms, and a cross could not keep holding him. And, because of this, we will be held forever in the arms of God. 

And this is the miracle of the incarnation still: Christ came down to earth – and hope now has a fighting chance. Because the fulfillment of all our hopes lives among us, and in us. 

Against all odds, and against common sense, the hope of the world was born this day in a little, hill country town called Bethlehem. Sleeping in a food trough for animals,  delivered in the usual way, and arriving without pomp or glory. 

But, the air was thick with the singing of angels. Their glorias made the wood of that little barn vibrate. And tired shepherds carried the tune as they ran like fools to the manger. 

As time went on, the singing got louder. Until, on every tongue, in the presence of Jesus Christ, the hope of “Someday” was changed to “Today.” 

Amen. 

Gaudete! You are blessed

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From this day all generations will call me blessed: the Almighty has done great things for me, and holy is his Name. Amen. 

Today is one of my favorite days of the year: Gaudete Sunday! Here at Good Shepherd, it also happens to be “Rise Against Hunger” Sunday. (After the service, we will pack 10,000 meals for communities with food insecurity.)

Gaudete, which means “Rejoice,” references an ancient chant used on the third Sunday of Advent. But more broadly, it ties together the theme of today’s readings: JOY! Because we worship a God who “looks with favor on his lowly servants.” 

Joy is abundant throughout Mary’s Magnificat, which we read in place of the Psalm this week. After Mary receives the news that she is pregnant with Jesus, she visits her cousin Elizabeth, who affirms that she has been blessed by God. Moved suddenly by the literal presence of God within her, Mary bursts out in poetic verse. She rejoices, because she recognizes that God is now fulfilling his promise to bring about a just and merciful society – the very one her people had longed for since the world began. 

For Mary, you might say that “the personal is political.” Her individual experience of being blessed by God has expanded her perception of God’s blessing in the world. 

As scholar Luke Timothy Johnson puts it: 

“In the Magnificat, Mary’s praise for what God had done to her personally widens out to include what God does for all who fear Him in every age, including what God is doing for Israel by the birth of its Messiah. As God “showed power in his right hand” by His mighty works in the past, so does he “now take Israel by the hand.’” (Commentary on Luke, Sacra Pagina)

God calls Mary – a poor and powerless woman – to birth the Salvation of the world. In doing so, God shakes up the world, tearing down our assumptions about what blessedness looks like. 

While some of Mary’s words don’t sound like good news to everyone—for example, “the rich he has sent away empty”—God’s activity is actually a great equalizer. No more will some people have too much and others have too little. Everyone has been brought to a level place. 

Mary declares that, in God’s kingdom, blessedness is measured not by power or wealth, but by proximity to the Creator. 

But Mary’s is not the only proclamation of God’s blessing in today’s scripture readings. Our other readings use a framework of physical healing to arrive at the same point. 

In Isaiah, the prophet continues his description of the Kingdom of God, describing both the environment and its people. The scorched desert will be transformed into a never-ending oasis. 

There will also be a physical transformation for humanity. He says: 

“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” 

In Matthew, Jesus uses similar language to reveal to John that he is the fulfillment of the prophecies in Isaiah. As evidence, he describes his healing miracles:

“the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear…” 

It’s important for us to understand that ancient people understood this kind of “healing” as a great equalizer, in the same vein as God’s equalizing action in the Magnificat. 

Then, as today, many people with disabilities lived on the margins of society. Often, they couldn’t work. And if they had a particular disease, they couldn’t even live in town. Over time, these disabilities came to be understood as a consequence of someone’s sin. 

But, when Jesus healed them, he declared before the entire community that disability was not a barrier to following him. He made clear, instead, that disabled people were blessed. 

Many Christians today still read these passages and think that a disabled person is somehow less righteous than them. But we know that’s wrong. 

Because we are a community made up of Deaf people, we know that Deafness is not a thing to repent from. It is not a sign of sin or brokenness. It is simply one way of being human; and it shapes people, culture, and language in ways that reveal God’s blessing. 

And this is where the Magnificat comes back in. In Mary’s telling, the Kingdom of God rejects the world’s narrow understanding of blessedness.  It’s not about accumulating wealth or status, acquiring peak physical fitness, avoiding difficulty, or pretending to be anything other than human. 

In fact, acknowledging that we are human is the most important part. The only thing asked of us in the Magnificat is that we “fear God,” and all that means is that we trust and accept the powerful, life-altering love of God in service of our own unfettered joy, and the joy of the whole world. 

By choosing a poor and powerless woman to fulfill his promises, God makes clear that being imperfect by human standards is not a barrier to entering the Kingdom of God. In fact, being an outsider – whether poor, disabled, or otherwise – is a sign of blessedness in the new world that Christ is ushering in. 

Today, we will work together, shoulder to shoulder, as a response to Mary’s joy, and our own. We will measure, sort, and pack meals in an effort “fill the hungry with good things.” 

We do this not out of obligation, but because our scriptures and experiences make clear that proximity to the poor is proximity to God’s blessing. In acts of care for one another, we are reminded that everyone is equal in God’s kingdom, and that the blessings we have received are God’s desire for the whole world. 

Gaudete! Rejoice! 

Nathan Chen is about to show up and do a back flip | Advent 1 Sermon

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Almighty God, give us grace to cast away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life in which your Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious majesty to judge both the living and the dead, we may rise to the life immortal. Amen.

Today is the first day of Advent – the start of the Christian new year. Advent is often translated as “arrival,” but it can also carry a more active connotation: “coming.” The Season of Advent holds the fullness of these meanings. We acknowledge with renewed hope that Christ has already come to earth, and has already defeated death – he has arrived. And we anticipate Christ’s second coming – he is still on his way.

We are celebrating, but we are also waiting for the final celebration, when Christ will come in “glorious majesty” to restore all things.

The longer I have been in a congregation that follows the church seasons, the more I have come to appreciate them. While there is no way that Christians in the fourth century could have anticipated the cesspool of consumerism that this season has become, their work on the church calendar continues to be a blessing…

Because, following it – especially in this season – reorients our focus from the frenzy of secular Christmas, and calls us to a deeper, more focused anticipation. There’s no harm in enjoying the superficial fun of the season: Santa Claus and Jingle Bells and gift exchanges are perfectly acceptable ways to celebrate with family and friends (even if it is still Advent).

But, the church calendar reminds us that there is something eternal at work underneath all these distracting celebrations. There is something that calls for our singular attention, not as a test of our faithfulness, but because it is so wonderful. Someone has arrived to change everything, and he will carry us into a future of unfettered joy and ultimate freedom.

As a thought experiment, I tried to think of a time when I was called to pay singular attention, simply because it was so wonderful. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be…

When I was at Yale Divinity School, I got word that the Yale Figure Skating Club was putting on their winter show. Made up of amateurs, the show was typically just a way for hobby skaters to have some fun while their friends cheered them on. But that year, there were whispers that a special guest was coming…

Three-time world champion and two-time Olympic figure skater Nathan Chen was enrolled at Yale that fall. And word on the street was that he was going to come to the show.

With uncharacteristic clarity of purpose, I convinced a small group of seminarians to take the hike over to the main campus to see what we could see. I was the only figure skating mega-fan among them. So, while everyone else bought concessions and chatted about term papers, I was staring straight ahead, hand on my chin, laser-focused on the rink. I didn’t dare leave my seat. If Nathan Chen was going to be there, there was no way in heck I was going to miss it.

After more than a half-hour of very sweet performances by people who could barely skate, a young man swiftly and silently skated onto the ice. My friends – lulled into the stupor of greasy food and easy conversation – didn’t seem to notice…But I noticed.

I let out the loudest, highest, most piercing, blood-curdling scream. It was so unlike me, that I didn’t recognize it as my own voice until the person in front of me turned around in shock.

Nathan Chen was here, in the same room as me, and he just did a back flip!!! (They didn’t even let him do that at the Olympics because they thought it was too dangerous!!!!) And then, he did his signature quadruple jump, the move that would win him the gold medal in 2022.

The adrenaline was coursing through my body, probably as much as it was coursing through his. And I was just sitting there.

Amid the chatter and distraction around me, something demanded my singular attention. And I was determined not to miss out on the realization of the hope that I had carried with me to the rink that day. I didn’t know when he would arrive, but I trusted that he would.

And what I found was that the wait was worth it, not just for the satisfaction of seeing a dream realized. It was worth it to gather up my new friends, take a risk in inviting them, and spend an afternoon passing the time together in that chilly rink. The joy was abundant even before Nathan Chen got on the ice. The light was already breaking through…but nothing could beat that back flip!

In today’s reading from Matthew, Jesus tells his followers to pay attention: to “keep awake,” not as a test of their faithfulness, but because something wonderful is on the way. Jesus “will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end.”

And, while no one knows the day or hour that Christ will return, they should “stay on the alert” with such single-mindedness that it is almost as if they’re waiting for a thief to break into their home. In modern terms, we might say it is almost as if record-breaking figure skater Nathan Chen is about to show up and do a back flip.

We don’t know when he’s coming, but the only way to live, in the meantime, is to stay alert to the promise that Christ will come.

Dr. Andrew McGowan notes the paradox in this idea of staying alert to a thing you can’t predict. He says:

“Jesus’ apocalyptic proclamation is framed by Matthew not as futurology, but as a call to live in a particular way now…So, while Jesus warns from trying to correlate world events and the end of time, the paradoxical message remains that the reader needs nevertheless to “watch,” even without knowing just what we are watching for.”

What Jesus is doing here is making it impossible for us to inoculate ourselves against the unimaginable glory of his coming kingdom. If we don’t know when he’ll arrive, we can’t settle the issue; we can’t put the Kingdom of God in a box.

What’s more, we can’t take a break or rest on our laurels. We’ll just have to be laser-focused on the loving, self-sacrificial, lively work of his kingdom. We’ll just have to let joy run in our veins like adrenaline, until it becomes infectious. We’ll have to take action based on the assumption that all our hopes will be realized.

Christ is coming – we don’t know when or how. But we know that when he comes, death itself will die, and we will live in the eternal light of God. In the meantime, we live with the knowledge that he has already arrived by looking for the cracks in the world where his light is already breaking through. And we make plans that align with God’s promises of joy and freedom, of wholeness and reconciliation, of unconditional love.

This is what Advent is all about.

At the beginning of a new year, we learn again how to “stay awake” to the presence of Christ who was and is and is to come. We learn again how to live in the paradox that some theologians describe as the “already and not yet” – anticipating the glory of Christ’s second coming without losing sight of the light that is already breaking through.

“Come, let us walk in the light of the Lord!”

Amen.

Reconciled, Forgiven, Freed | Christ the King Sermon

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Today is “Christ the King” Sunday. And that means it is the last Sunday of the church year. Next week, we will start our three-year scripture cycle over again, with Year A, and we will enter into the season of Advent.

The tone will shift, and we will look forward, with renewed urgency, to the coming of Christ: both the Christ-child that we celebrate at Christmas, and the risen Christ, who promises to bring about the “restoration” of the world.

On this last Sunday of the Christian year, as we prepare for the chaos, longing, and joy that Christmas brings, it is good to remember that Christ is king, which means that “perfection” is his job – not ours. Jesus holds everything together, when our best laid plans seem to be falling apart. He calls us to let go of what burdens us, so we can join with him at the banquet he prepares for us.

Over the past 40 or so years, it has become increasingly unpopular to use kingly metaphors when referring to God or Jesus. Though our scriptures are full of references to the triune God as Counselor, King, and Almighty One – and though God’s relationship with his people hinges so often on his authority – some of our newest liturgies remove these references.

In some of the liturgies of our church, words like “Lord” have been changed to “Savior” or, simply, “God.” Kingdom has been changed to “reign.” Some of the most faithful people I know refer to the Kingdom of God as the “kin-dom of God,” deemphasizing the hierarchy between God and humankind and emphasizing humanity as equal members of the family of God.

None of this is necessarily a bad thing…

For one, these edits are pretty subtle – they don’t necessarily change very much in the context of a single prayer or turn of phrase. In some cases, they bring renewed meaning to well-worn statements of faith by signaling that God’s domain is more generous and expansive than those of worldly rulers. And, in a world run by tyrants and would-be tyrants, it is reasonable to be wary of using hierarchical language associated more with violence than benevolence.

In a recent article written for The Living Church, the Reverend Barbara White speaks to this point:

In a world of developed democracies, which is nevertheless beset by dictators, oligarchs, and those who want to be, it makes sense to wonder if kingship is the most relevant metaphor for Christ’s relationship to the world and to humanity. There is also the uncomfortable fact that the term “Christ Is King” has been recently highjacked by alt-right antisemites on social media—which should be…condemned by all who bear the name of Christ…

In this day and age, it is good to be careful with our language. And it is reasonable for us to worry about what it signals to declare Christ as King when there are people out there suggesting that Christ’s kingship is some kind of political maneuver that means that people that look and think “like them” should be in charge.

But, anyone who calls Christ King while encouraging more division, more judgment, and more self-righteousness is missing the point entirely. Because, by naming Christ as our King, we should be seeking, not to uphold, but to destroy the hierarchies and boundaries that divide people. We are all made equal under the banner of Christ our King.

In today’s Gospel reading, we encounter the final moments before Jesus’ death on the cross. Smug bystanders mock and ridicule Jesus for claiming that he is the Son of God and the Messiah, the “anointed” one. They have placed a sign over his head that reads: “King of the Jews.” It is intended as a clear denial of his kingship – after all, this so-called Savior is dying.

Meanwhile, from his lofty height on the cross, Jesus looks down and asks for their forgiveness: “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

In that moment, one of the criminals on the cross next to Jesus receives a spark of understanding: Jesus is not only innocent, he really is the Savior spoken of in the prophecies.

So, he asks for all he thinks he can ask for, as a guilty man: “remember me.” And Jesus gives him all that he can give: eternity: “Today you will be with me in paradise.”

Jesus is a king who turns everything on its head: his throne is a cross and his law is forgiveness.

Here on the cross, there is a profound reversal of expectations. The bottom falls out of earthly power structures held up by self-interest, self-righteousness, and control. And now, the full sweep of humanity falls into the arms of Christ: reconciled, forgiven, and freed.

This moment on the cross reveals the true character of Christ’s kingdom: No one is too far gone. No one is beyond forgiveness. And the scorned and abandoned are the first to enter paradise.

When the criminal recognizes Christ as king, he can finally let go of his own will to power. He releases his protective pride and accepts the compassion Jesus shows him. He dares to reveal his deepest hope – that he will not be forgotten. And when he asks, he receives more than he could imagine.

His story can be a lesson for all of us. When we accept Christ as king, we no longer have to hold onto our own wills to power – motivated by shame, longing, regret, and fear – because we know we are held by a savior who loves us more than his own life.

In a time when association with kings and kingdoms is perhaps more fraught than it has been since the American Revolution, we must reclaim the concept of Christ as King. We do this by placing it within the broad message of the Gospel, which reveals that Christ is fundamentally different from the rulers of this world.

He does not rule through control or fear, but by endlessly expanding freedom and joy, in a single-minded path to reconciliation. He is Love, embodied, calling us by name, finding us when we’re lost, and forgiving us even when we don’t ask for it. He makes it possible for us to be a “kin-dom,” a family made up of people who aren’t related and might have hardly anything in common, besides being so deeply loved by Jesus. By reconciling us to himself, we can find peace with one another.

Christ is King, which means we can lay down their weapons, our burdens, and our pride and let Christ do what he does best: make a way to paradise, for everyone. Amen.

That We May Embrace Hope

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Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning: Grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.

Every year on this Sunday, we encounter again my very favorite collect, written by my very favorite Archbishop of Canterbury: Thomas Cranmer. In truth, I don’t pay very much attention to the Archbishops of the Church of England, even though I am excited that the new one is the first woman to hold the position.

But, Cranmer will always have a special place in my heart. Not only was he the first Archbishop of the Church of England, he also compiled, composed, and edited the very first Book of Common Prayer, the book that contains the foundational liturgies, prayers, and theology of the Anglican and Episcopal Church.

The heart of Episcopal Christian identity is informed by this book, and it connects us back, not only to the moment of rupture and renewal that took place during the Reformation in the 1500s, when much of Europe declared itself Protestant. It also connects us back to the church that existed before that moment, in the processions of the medieval cathedrals, the Eucharistic Prayers of the early church, and even the sacrifices of the Roman temples and Jewish synagogues.

In this way, the Book of Common Prayer, while specific to the Anglican and Episcopal Church, actually reminds of us that we are members of the universal church, founded by Christ, and revealed to us in the Scriptures.

In a way, Cranmer’s collect on the scriptures is a kind of thesis statement for the whole tradition. Because, it points us all the way back, past tradition, to the record of our faith, belief, and practice: the Bible. It reminds us that everything we do and believe as disciples of Christ, in this Episcopal Church, is rooted in the stories of God and God’s people as they are revealed in scripture.

And, it gives us some guidance for how to engage with Scripture: “hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life…”

A lot of people have used this prayer for Bible Study. I have seen it used almost as a step-by-step guide to reading scripture. But, what sometimes gets lost is the reason why we would want to engage with scripture at all. After all, we’ve already got this big, expansive tradition with all of its liturgies and practices. What are we supposed to get out of reading the Bible, that we can’t get through praying and going to church?

The collect actually answers that question for us: “that we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have given us in our Savior Jesus Christ.” The point of Scripture is to give us a reason to embrace hope.

And we couldn’t have a better example of that, than in our passage from Isaiah 65…

For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy, and its people as a delight.

Someone asked me this week how we can read hopeful passages like this one when the state of the world feels so hopeless? Doesn’t it give us indigestion to read something so sweet when the world around us is so bitter? When we are surrounded by fear and suffering, and our existential questions aren’t getting answered.

Borne of years of my own encounters with suffering, and my own encounters with Scripture, my response was immediate and unwavering.

I said, “Because, when you read a passage like this one, where God himself is painting a picture of paradise – in which there is no suffering, but only joy – when you read something as grand as that, you are reminded that your vision of beauty is the exact same as God’s. That God wants the same things you do. That there is, in fact, no division between the desires of your heart and God’s own heart. And suffering isn’t part of God’s design.

In this passage, God reverses the curses of Genesis: unburdening labor, disappearing pain, and rewinding all the years of layered sorrows, in a vision so bright it almost feels reckless.

A scripture passage like this one shows us that it is ok to imagine the best possible future, even in the midst of the worst possible reality. It is ok, because the people of God have traveled difficult terrain before, and they were still able to hold onto hope. It is ok, because God’s desire is to make it reality. This is a passage that hypes us up – if we let it, it can give us a reason to embrace hope.

But, what do we do with more troubling passages, like the ones from Second Thessalonians and Luke?

“Anyone unwilling to work should not eat.”

“…they will arrest you and persecute you…”

Well, if Cranmer is right that engaging with Scripture helps us “embrace hope,” then we are obligated to look for the light, even in difficult texts. This isn’t the same as manipulating scripture to suit our needs. We’re not ignoring the confusing or concerning parts of the Bible by reading hope into them. We are simply aware that a “God-breathed” scripture must include some evidence of God, who is “love.”

And when we really spend time with scripture, we discover that God’s promises are seeping into our imperfect and troubling reality…

In Second Thessalonians, a complaint about idleness is directed at a specific community that has abandoned a shared vision of the Christian community. Convinced that their own salvation means that they’re free to just “chill out” ‘til Jesus comes, the writer reminds them that there is still much work to be done to build the Kingdom of God – and that it will take everyone’s efforts. This is ultimately a democratizing vision, against the priestly hierarchies they are accustomed to. Because here, everyone matters.

In Luke, Jesus names the scary reality on the ground, where followers of Christ are targets of both state and religious violence, and where increasing tensions threaten widespread warfare. Then, he tells his people that he will be with them, guide them, and protect them unconditionally – and for all eternity.

So, we see that even troubling scriptures will crack open with hope, if we dare to tap into them.

The Bible will never gloss over the human condition. It is gritty and troubling, and sometimes prompts more questions than answers. And isn’t that just like life? Gritty, troubling, and often more confusing than clarifying.

But, the scriptures are also a record of hope already realized. And because of that, we can have hope and faith that God is present with us now.

In the midst of this mucky and murky human condition is a God lighting up the shadows, calling us out of exile, drawing us out of our self-involvement, healing broken things, troubling the powerful, and creating new heavens and a new earth to spite disaster, sin, and grief.

God grant us so to hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Scriptures. God grant us so to hope, trusting that God is never idle, but always at work, reversing the curses of our fallen humanity.

Amen.

Yet all are one in Thee | All Saints’ Sermon

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O blest communion, fellowship divine!
We feebly struggle, they in glory shine;
yet all are one in Thee, for all are Thine.
Alleluia, Alleluia!

Today we celebrate the Feast of All Saints, also called “All Hallow’s Day.” This is the holiday from which Halloween gets its name since Hallow’e’en, or Hallow’s-evening, is the night before All Hallow’s Day. Hallow just means “holy person,” or saint.

Historical records show that some form of All Saints’ Day has been celebrated among Christians since the fourth century. Originally, it was meant to commemorate the lives of the martyrs, those people who died in service of their faith.

As Christianity spread throughout Europe, All Saints’ celebrations eventually made their way to the British Isles. It was there that the feast was moved to November First. By the ninth century, the Pope declared it a universal holiday, intended to commemorate the growing list of official saints in the church calendar.

Even after the Protestant Reformation and America’s independence from England, the Episcopal Church managed to keep All Saints’ Day in our calendar. But its theology has changed a little bit since the early days. Though we acknowledge many of the saints of the Catholic Church, our tradition doesn’t have a canonization process. Instead, we can make recommendations to a committee that votes on who should be remembered in our calendar…it’s rather bureaucratic.

But part of the reason we do it this way is because we have a broader definition of the saints than the sanctoral calendar might suggest. To be understood as a saint in our tradition, you don’t have to have performed a miracle or died as a martyr, you just have to be a person who tried to follow Jesus the best you knew how. That persistent faithfulness serves as encouragement for others walking the same road, and it is why the church finds it meaningful to remember people in our calendar.

But, the beauty of the whole thing is that anyone can be a saint…to someone. Saints are all around us. Whether named or unnamed, known or unknown, they stretch out in all directions, holding us in our suffering, affirming us in our struggle, blessing us with words of hope, and helping us experience the love of God that knows no bounds.

Our faith teaches us that this “communion of saints” is not merely a nice thought, but a mystical reality. The Body of Christ acts like a tether – holding all the saints together across time and distance, and even death. We are never alone.

As a kid, I was friends with a Catholic girl from Louisiana who always did her Hail Mary prayers before bed, even when she was sleeping over at my house:

Hail, Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

One time, when we were about 12 years old, I heard her whispering these prayers in the dark, and told her to stop. I earnestly believed, as my Protestant church had taught me, that you could only pray to Jesus. At best, praying to Mary was fruitless. At worst, it was idolatry.

Of course, I didn’t realize then that prayers like the Hail Mary are not prayed “to” the saints, but “with” them. They are prayers of intercession, not so different from the having an intercessor pray the Prayers of the People on our behalf. They are intended to invite the eternal and ever-present ancestors of our faith to advocate for us before Christ.

More than 20 years after that fateful sleepover, I found myself sitting alone in a hospital chapel in Slidell, Louisiana. I was out of tears, and out of words to pray.

I whispered, “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us. Please…please.”

Only a few weeks earlier, I had accepted a two-year position at an Episcopal Church in Houston, Texas. I graduated from Yale Divinity School and went on a brief pilgrimage to Canterbury Cathedral. Then Daniel (my husband, not the Old Testament prophet!) and I – along with my mother-in-law – packed up our apartment and our two cats to make the 26-hour drive to Texas.

Daniel hadn’t been feeling well for several weeks, and on moving day, he could barely stand up. Two days into our three-day trip, we were staying the night in Slidell, Louisiana, when he woke up in the middle of the night doubled over in pain. My mother-in-law and I rushed him to the little regional hospital.

After hours of waiting, the weary nurse looked at Daniel and said, “You are very sick.”

The surgeon said he would have to have risky surgery with a long recovery time. We were terrified (much like the Old Testament prophet).

And there were other complications…Our Medicaid didn’t work in Louisiana. The hotel we were staying in was mildewed from Hurricane Ida. The cats were stir-crazy. And our past-due U-Haul was sitting in the parking lot.

Weary with many things, I started talking to Mary about three days into Daniel’s hospital stay: “Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us. Please, please.”

Meanwhile, friends from all over the country were praying, too. A former associate priest from my sending parish had already sent the local priest to Daniel’s bedside. People were sending cash to help us with expenses. A parishioner and his father-in-law drove ten hours roundtrip to pick up our U-Haul and take it Houston. The rector of my new church met the movers to unpack my stuff. The Diocese figured out insurance.

The saints of God, both living and dead, were praying with us and acting on those prayers. They were holding us steady in the love of God.

Daniel asked the surgeon if we could “wait and see” on surgery. And in that little regional hospital, with no one else to attend to, the surgeon shrugged, and said “sure.”

A few days later, Daniel was healing. And after a week in Slidell, Louisiana, we were back on the road on our way to Texas.

I wasn’t expecting a miracle. I couldn’t find the words to pray for one. I had nothing left to say to God.

But, thank God, the saints were praying: My friend Joe in Maryland; Reverend Elaine in New Jersey; my dad Gary in Florida; and my new parishioner Vyonne in Houston; Mary, the mother of God, of course. And even Misty, the Catholic girl from Louisiana, who taught me about the saints when I was busy telling her she was wrong.

All the saints were holding us in that patchwork without end or beginning, bound in the love of God.

I can’t imagine what life would be like without all those saints. In fact, I can only imagine hope at all, because I have seen it with my own eyes, living and breathing in all the saints, made real by each person who simply tries to follow Jesus the best they know how.

On All Saints, we remember that, in Christ, the veil is always thin between the living and the dead. Across time and distance – and even death – the saints are always praying, moving, acting, and loving hope into the world.

The air is thick with the saints. I pray that you will have the courage to count yourself among them.

Word of Truth | Sermon

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Through the written word,
and the spoken word,
May we know your living Word,
Jesus Christ our Savior.
Amen.

The prayer I just prayed was written specifically to introduce the sermon. It comes to us from the Church of England. I found it once through a Google search, but when I tried to find it again, it seemed to have disappeared. When I arrived at Good Shepherd, I was surprised to discover that Rev. Paige uses the same prayer. She can’t remember where she found it either.

In any case, I was attracted to this prayer because of the way it makes a theological connection through the concept of “word.” “Through the written word” refers to the Scriptures; “and the spoken word” refers to the sermon; “may we know your living Word” refers to the “word made flesh,” which is to say, Jesus.

That phrase, “word made flesh,” comes to us from the Gospel of John. You might be familiar with the ancient Christian hymn that introduces the Gospel of John. Here’s a translation of it by scholar Francis Moloney:

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was turned toward God; and what God was, the Word also was. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him nothing was made. What took place in him was life, and the life was the light of humankind…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, the fullness of a gift that is Truth.”

John provides some of the densest theology about the nature of Christ in the entire Bible, and this passage is no exception. John uses the word, “Word,” to characterize Christ through the ages. You might call it word-play.

I want to explore this a bit because it’s related to today’s readings…

So, what’s the deal with all this Word talk? The idea is that, in the beginning of time, God created the whole world with words: God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

It wasn’t physical force or the wave of a magic wand, it was Word that created and originated all that is, and it was Word that named creation as good to God.

John argues that this Divine Word was not like human speech. Moloney says that the tense used in Greek suggests that this Word exists “outside the limits of time and place.” It is not bound in any way by the limits of human communication, and it doesn’t manipulate or lie.

This Divine Word is completely liberated. It can never be miscommunicated or misunderstood. This Word is eternal, and will always be the absolute Truth.

And this is where the wordplay comes in. The Greek word for “Word” is “logos.” The ancient philosophers used logos to refer to the kind of words that conveyed a fundamental truth.

When John says that “the Word is the fullness of the gift that is Truth,” he is overtly drawing the connection to the deeper meaning of logos. And then, he is telling us that this Word – this fundamental Truth – is not only found in Jesus, but is Jesus.

“In the beginning was the truth, and the truth was turned toward God, and what God was, the Truth also was.”

Jesus is the Word God breathed over the water at the beginning of time. He became the “word made flesh.” Truth was crucified on the cross, Truth was resurrected, and now Truth lives in and among us, through the Spirit.

In Christ, we are children of the Word that is True. This means that the world’s transformation is dependent on our tireless proclamation of the truth…

Today, in our reading from Second Timothy, we encounter a teaching that is best understood within the theological concept of Jesus as the Word that is Truth.

The scripture cautions:

“Remind them of this, and warn them before God that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.”

In this passage, there are two instances of the Greek word, “logos”: there’s “wrangling over words” and “word of truth.” These are being set up as opposing kinds of communication: one of them is good and the other one is, as scholar Benjamin Fiore puts it, “good for nothing.”

In Timothy’s day, the church was trying to establish itself. And part of that was understanding what they believed: about God and about how they were supposed to act.

Arguments were widespread. And theological disagreements could become very ugly, even to the point of physical violence.

It is clear in this passage, and in other New Testament letters, that arguments over theology and practice were threatening to rip the early church apart.

They were arguing over: the exact amount of divinity and humanity that Jesus had, whether or not they could eat meat, whether you had to convert to Judaism first before becoming a Christian, about ritual cleanliness and sacrifice, if women could be church leaders, if they should keep their belongings or sell them all, if they should welcome people from other religions, whether they should get married, when Jesus was coming back…and the arguments went on and on.

People used a lot of words, but these words were not the liberated Word of Truth made manifest in Jesus. They were, too often, manipulative, confusing, and distanced from their original purpose. But the worst part about them was that they made it hard for anyone to find common ground, or act on the good news.

Whether they were “accurate” or not was almost beside the point. Because their communication had ceased to be a tool that pointed them to the Truth.

Just like those first Christians, we live in a time of “good for nothing” words. We turn on the news and the pundits are lying. We read social media comments and people are fighting. We are compelled to say the exact right thing or risk being “cancelled.” And all around us, relationships are ending over political disagreements. Because we are sharing and digesting words that don’t point back to the only thing that matters, which is the Truth.

Our scriptures compel us, in the name of Christ, to tell the endless chatter around us to “shut up already.” We’re wasting our time! We can’t keep turning the world’s empty and distracting words into false idols.

The Word that created the world and then saved the world is calling us to be co-creators of his good creation: to renounce evil, to trust God, to love, to serve, and to respect the dignity of every human being.

That’s the Truth, and that’s the only Word that matters.

You and I, and your family member and your neighbor, might have a difference of opinion. We might be very different people, shaped by different experiences. We might see the world through a drastically different lens, or argue for different kinds of solutions.

And that’s ok. As long as we understand that those little words of disagreement don’t have to be worked out before we live into the unifying Word that is Jesus himself.

When it comes to the world’s arguments, we don’t have to choose the lesser evil. We only have choose Jesus. Because we can be united under the banner of Jesus, no matter what other people say. We can live out his call to never give up on love, and to never give up on one another. Because we know the Truth, and we have already been saved by it.

“The word of God is not chained.” It is always creating, always transforming, always telling the truth. As proclaimers of the living Word, that is what we are called to do. Amen.

—

References:

  • Moloney, Francis J., Sacra Pagina: The Gospel of John.
  • Fiore, Benjamin, Sacra Pagina: The Pastoral Epistles.