Tag: christianity

Jesus’ Program

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Did you know that any service of the Episcopal Church that includes communion is required to have a sermon? The church reformers wanted to make sure that scriptures were not only read in church, but understood among the people of a congregation. 

The preacher’s job was, and is, to “make plain” the words of our scripture texts so that, when we are invited to share in Holy Communion with Christ and one another, we feel fully a part of the Body of Christ, and united in his purpose. 

This call to preach the Gospel has persisted in our tradition for nearly 500 years. But it finds its origin in the very earliest practices of the church, informed by Jewish tradition. Today, in fact, we encounter Jesus delivering his first sermon.  

Couched between his 40-day fast in the wilderness and an attempt by the congregation to throw him off a cliff, this scene is the calm in the middle of “many dangers, toils, and snares” throughout Jesus’ ministry. 

In the story, Jesus reads a bit of scripture, then sits back down, before preaching nine, carefully chosen words: “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

In one small scripture text and just nine words, Jesus articulates a comprehensive vision for his ministry. I’ve heard people describe it in various ways: as Jesus’ manifesto, his statement of purpose, his strategic plan, and maybe most apt, his Inaugural Address. 

Biblical scholar Luke Timothy Johnson calls it a “programmatic prophecy.”  Which is to say, here, we get a preview of Jesus’ priorities, the ones that will guide his ministry and inform his tactics going forward. Here, we learn what kind of leader Jesus will be.

It’s important to remember that, in Jesus’ day, many people awaited a Messiah, a person anointed by God to carry out his will for transformation. But most imagined a politician, a king, or a war hero.  And many wanted a rabble rouser who would ignite a political takeover. 

This is why, even at nine words, Jesus’ sermon is provocative. In the same breath, Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah hoped for and outlines a surprising set of tactics for his reign. Instead of building an army to defeat the Roman emperor, Jesus turns his gaze to the downtrodden. 

During his reign, he will bring good news to the marginalized, impoverished, and forgotten ones, proclaim release to those trapped by prisons or circumstances, recognize the dignity of the Disabled, liberate and empower the oppressed, and declare the goodness of God for all time. 

He will reveal his power paradoxically, by ignoring and forsaking the world’s power networks, walking out of the spotlight, and sitting down in the crowd, among the people he has come to save. 

Jesus only needs nine words, because the real sermon isn’t what he says – it’s who he is. The real sermon is his own body. 

Jesus will use his heart and mind, his hands and feet – his very life – as the tools of transformation. He will use his own blood, not poured out on the battlefield, but shared at tables with friends and strangers, offered as sustenance for the world. 

Jesus’ program is not a strategic plan for domination, but a painstakingly personal, relational effort to care for each person according to their need. It is a blatant refusal of common sense, a waste of resources, and a brutally inefficient system. But that is the way of Jesus: Not a pitch, a campaign, or a policy, but a body, putting itself on the line for the salvation, redemption, and liberation of the world. 

Early Christians, understanding themselves as the Body of Christ, took this sermon very literally. 

In the earliest years of the Jesus movement, Christ-followers became known for their intensely, egregiously gracious community values: 

  • Wealthy elites worshipped with enslaved people.  
  • Jews worshipped with Gentiles.  
  • Women and men alike served as community leaders (Ludlow, 17). 
  • Widows were so highly regarded that they became their own order of clergy (Ludlow, 19). 
  • Babies abandoned due to disability or poverty were adopted and raised by church members (Holland, “Charity”). 
  • Landowners sold all their property and gave it to the church (Acts 4:37).  
  • Congregations took up collections for the poor in faraway places, and built housing for them in their hometowns (Pauline epistles, Holland). 

And here’s a really wild one:  Some, according to first-century bishop Clement, even sold themselves into slavery to provide for the destitute (Ludlow, 19). 

In the 4th century, Emperor Julian shared his annoyance with Christians, which he calls Galileans, in a letter to the pagan priest of Galatia: “How apparent to everyone it is and how shameful that our people lack support from us when no Jew ever has to beg and the impious Galileans [Christians] support not only their own poor, but ours as well” (22). 

Early Roman persecutions of Christians are thought to have occurred, in part, because Christians were so bent on ignoring the social order. They were refusing to live according to the “way things had always been done.” They didn’t seem to care about hierarchies, cultural boundaries, and political mandates. They were using their bodies and their lives as tools of transformation, pouring themselves out for the sustenance of the world. 

Many of them died as martyrs, unwilling to forsake the call of Christ. And yet, their communities were characterized by joy. 

How can this be? While early Christians struggled with the same theological disagreements, life circumstances, and wills to power as everyone else, there was a clear goal: Everyone has a place at the table, and everyone is fed. 

Of course they were joyful! The early church was like an open-invite dinner party. 

And how can you be downtrodden at a dinner party? How can you worry when another course is on its way? How can you fear when everyone you love is here with you, with scars and struggles and stories to tell? How can you grieve when each face around you is shining in the glow of candlelight, lit like the glory of Christ? 

How can you be burdened by the risk involved in Christ’s program when you know that this program, his own body, is what got you here? Christ and his followers endured “many dangers, toils, and snares,” putting their bodies on the line for the sustenance of the world. 

And the most incomprehensible part of all of this is that he did it, and they did it, for you. You and I are here today because the early Christians took Jesus literally. And because they took him literally, they weren’t willing to give up on the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the disabled, the lost and forgotten ones. 

Because they took him literally, we, “who were lost, are found.” Together, we are one body with many members, trying to figure out how to be Christ’s body for the world. 

In a nine-word sermon shared while seated, Jesus calls to us, not from the stage but among the crowd, to become one body and one blood, poured out for the sustenance of the world. 

So, here’s my own attempt at a nine-word sermon: This is what it means to participate in Communion. 

References:
Luke Timothy Johnson, Sacra Pagina Commentary Series: Luke
Morwenna Ludlow, The Early Church
Tom Holland, Dominion
“Crowd” language courtesy of Willie James Jennings (particularly After Whiteness)

In Your Light, We See Light

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Readings here

In our Collect and our Readings, the theme of the day is “illumination.” As I prepared for this service, celebrating the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., I kept coming back to a certain phrase in our Psalm: “in your light we see light.”  

It reminded me of Easter Vigil. At the very beginning of an Easter Vigil service, which occurs at sunset on Holy Saturday, a new Paschal candle is lit. 

The Celebrant says this prayer over the candle: O God, through your Son you have bestowed upon your people the brightness of your light: Sanctify this new fire, and grant that in this Paschal feast we may so burn with heavenly desires, that with pure minds we may attain to the festival of everlasting light; through Jesus Christ our Lord. 

The gist of this candle ritual plays out a little bit later in the darkened church when, at the Easter proclamation, all the lights are turned on, shocking sleepy parishioners into wakefulness, and making the church shine like a beacon in the dark midnight of Easter. People ring bells, greet one another other, and joyfully sing “He is risen.” 

If Christmas is about the light of the world becoming incarnate, then Easter is about the light of the world becoming permanent, refracting endlessly in the world’s dark night until everything is illuminated. Christ’s glory has been revealed for all time, and now the People, illumined by Christ’s Word and Sacraments, carry that light with them, beacons in the dark. 

“In your light we see light.” 

For as long as I can remember, I have loved Martin Luther King, Jr. It was a standard part of elementary school curriculum to talk about the Civil Rights Movement the week leading up to MLK Day. We learned how this one man stood up to bigotry, racism, and injustice with nothing but the strength of his ideals and a whole lot of persistence.  

Of course, as adults, we know that King’s story – and indeed, the reality of the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-20th century – was much more complicated. King was not a perfect saint – we know he had affairs. And, like anyone else, he made choices that didn’t always pan out and claims that weren’t always quite true. But those things can’t negate the power of his ministry, or the movement he was a part of. Because it wasn’t one man – it was a movement.  

Thousands of courageous people took a stand for their own dignity and the dignity of others, at great risk to their lives and livelihoods. They were united in their goals, but they weren’t all the same. Not all of them got along. Not all of them agreed on tactics, or were motivated by the same experiences. But all of them knew the stakes were too high to keep silent. 

Some of them, like Mamie Till, were simply proclaiming their child’s human sacredness in the midst of a culture of violence. 

In 1955, Mamie insisted on an open-casket funeral for her son, Emmet Till, who had been tortured and murdered by white men for allegedly flirting with a white woman. The men received no punishment for their crime. But the horrifying spectacle of Emmet’s funeral forced the world to confront the violence of racism. Mamie’s prophetic belief that injustice could not prevail is often credited as the beginning of the Civil Rights Movement.

The light inside of Mamie lit a match that started a fire of justice. In Mamie’s light we see light. 

Among King’s followers was a young, white Episcopal seminarian named Jonathan Myrick Daniels.  

In 1965, he journeyed to Selma, Alabama to register new voters after the passing of the Voting Rights Act. While walking to a convenience store with a group of young, Black activists, a white man pointed a shot gun at 17-year-old Ruby Sales. Daniels pushed the man down and took the bullet.  He died on the scene.  

When King heard about it, he said, “one of the most heroic Christian deeds of which I have heard in my entire ministry was performed by Jonathan Daniels.” 

The light inside of Jonathan burned so bright it saved someone’s life. In Jonathan’s light we see light. 

And, of course, there is King himself.  

A Christian, pastor, and preacher, King’s engagement in civic life was an extension of his faith and vocation. His commitment to non-violence stemmed from his desire to emulate Christ, who rejected a violent overthrow of the Roman government and insisted that revolution started with good principles and sound theology sustained and negotiated in a “beloved community.” 

King was an intentional movement builder, and he was good at it because he knew how to be a community and congregation builder. Following the example of Jesus, he understood that any movement must be built, first, on unwavering principles regarding the sacredness of human life. There could be no question that human dignity was an intrinsic and God-given right that applied to all people, equally. 

And second, King understood that successful movements require coalitions, of different kinds of people, from all walks of life, doing what they can where they can. United, but not all the same. In his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, King wrote, “injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” That meant anyone bogged down by unfairness, want, and oppression could find a reason to join hands, link arms, and do the work. 

On the night before he died, King was giving a speech to striking sanitation workers in Memphis. Now known as the “Mountaintop Speech,” it reads like a sermon, conveying scriptural moments of deliverance and counter-cultural connection, and connecting them to the specific trials of the age. 

At the very end of the speech, it becomes clear that King knows there are credible threats on his life. He knows he might not live to see the end of the movement, or even the end of the strike.  

But he concludes with this: 

“Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! I’m not worried about anything. And, so, I’m happy, tonight. I’m not fearing any man! Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!” 

The light inside Martin smoldered like incense. They could kill the body, but they could not kill the soul. In Martin’s light, we see light. 

Martin and Jonathan and Mamie saw the glorious light of God and refracted it out in so many directions, it began to overcome the darkness. Their lives became beacons, interrupting the dark night of the world. 

Two of them were martyred.  

Which forces the question, why does the world hate light so much? 

The glorious light of Christ that illumines his people is persistent, pervasive, and exposing. It eliminates the shadowy places where evil can persist. “It will not keep silent” when injustice rules the day. 

Symptoms of Christ-light include fearlessness, boldness, and an unwavering commitment to principles of human sacredness and dignity. This light insists on honesty above etiquette, inconvenience above order, and love above all else. 

It is agitating and loud and overbearing. It wakes up the sleepers and forces us out of our apathy. It makes us remember that everything God created he declared good, and we must declare it, too. 

Light cannot tolerate injustice – it must act, proclaim, and respond. And this means, the light of Christ is like a pebble in the shoe of injustice: Worldly powers and dominions hate people who challenge them on their ego trips and power grabs. Worldly rulers and their allies will kill to keep the world in darkness. 

But we are not like them. We are light-bearers. In Christ’s light, we see light. And we carry that light as beacons in the dark world.  

It is our task to be honest, and to speak up in the face of injustice. It is our duty to stay the course of our faith: to care for the poor, the orphan, the outcast, and the marginalized, to love our neighbors near and far, no matter who they are, and no matter what other people say about them. No matter the cost to our reputations, livelihoods, and maybe even our lives. And it is our calling to be bold and bright, to refract light until the whole world is covered in it. 

United but not the same, we bring different experiences and different skills for the movement that we might call Christ’s “way of love.” But we all have work to do. We all have light to bear. 

By God’s grace, illumined by Christ’s light, in the way of Martin, we will be able to say that we are not afraid, because we have seen Christ’s glory. And in our light, the world will see light.  

Amen. 

Not ‘Ordinary’ At All

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Father in heaven…Grant that all who are baptized into his Name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen. 

Among the many nerdy theological arguments clergy find themselves engrossed in, is a lively debate about what to call the season we’re currently in. 

Is it the Season of Epiphany or the Season after the Epiphany? The Feast of the Epiphany was Monday. Every year on January 6, we celebrate the arrival of the Wise Men bearing their gold, frankincense, and myrrh, and announcing Jesus as the “King of the Jews.” 

Epiphany marks the end of the Christmas season and the return to “ordinary time.” While “ordinary,” in this case, means “counted,” in many ways, we are also getting back to “normal” until Lent begins. 

But preachers and scholars can’t quite agree on the thematic details. Some feel like the broader theme of epiphany – meaning “sudden revelation or insight” – invades and permeates the scripture readings set for this season. They insist that we keep looking for signs and wonders of Christ’s action in the world. 

And I take their point. 

But personally, I am inclined to say Epiphany is done, and there’s nothing else to say about it. I think it’s just that I’m over the twinkly lights and the Christmas trees and the heightened sense of optimism, that our secular Christmas and New Year’s celebrations bring. I’m ready to put all that away and sink into my Seasonal Affective Disorder until spring. (Yes, I have been diagnosed.)

But in his weekly newsletter, Dr. Andrew McGowan suggested that we can’t say goodbye to “epiphanies” just yet. Because today, we celebrate the Baptism of Jesus, the descent of the Holy Spirit, and the sudden revelation of Jesus as the Son of God, announced by God himself. 

As a colleague put it, this moment in our Gospels is when the clock starts ticking on Jesus’ earthly ministry. He is baptized here, among the people he has come to save. He will spend the next three years with them, walking slowly toward Jerusalem, the cross, and the resurrection. 

In other words, Jesus’ baptism marks a spiritual, relational, and ritual transformation that will bond Jesus and this burgeoning faith community to one another for eternity. Jesus’ baptism, in a mystical and physical sense, is the beginning of the church. Because it gives form to a new religious movement that will eventually be called Christianity. 

That’s not ordinary at all. That’s an epiphany! 

This is why baptism has been so important to the church since the very beginning. And it is why we call it the “initiation rite” of our church… 

Our Book of Common Prayer describes Holy Baptism as “…the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.” It was described by the early church reformers as “the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace.”  

While Christ can and does speak to us whether we’re baptized or not, our baptism welcomes us into new life, a life dictated not by the finality of death and brokenness, but by the last Word of eternal life, held forever in the hand of God. 

While we usually baptize at a font by pouring water on the person’s forehead, the early church preferred baptizing in a pool of water. These were inground pools built within the walls of the church. The person to be baptized would be brought into the room, descend down several steps into the pool, be immersed face first, and then step up and out of the pool, where they would be clothed in white.i 

The layout was significant to the meaning of baptism: Stepping down into the pool signified stepping into the grave, being immersed in the water signified death (and purification), and stepping back out to be clothed in white signified the resurrection. 

This ritual, an “outward and visible sign,” revealed what baptism actually is: becoming one with the Body of Christ in his death, and his resurrection. 

Just like those ancient Christians, our baptisms still make us one with Christ and with his Body, the church. Whether water is poured on our foreheads, or we are immersed in a pool, at baptism we participate in our own funeral, and our own homecoming.  

But we don’t do it alone. The Episcopal Church no longer performs private baptisms, because we understand that our faith is not only for ourselves, but for our community, and strengthened by our community. 

This is why infant baptisms are part of our practice. We believe that life in Christ is nurtured in the church, that we learn from one another and, in turn, teach one another what it means to be “born again.”  

Our initiation into the church through baptism prepares us for a lifetime of growing in the faith. And it helps us pay attention to life’s epiphanies that both reveal Christ’s grace and urge us to respond in kind. 

Baptism, Christ’s and our own, points us to who we are.  

We are “resurrection people.” Life in Christ, and in his church, will not protect us from the trials and horrors of this life – from the fires and floods and griefs. 

But we are a people called to run toward the challenges of this life in service of love, drawing from a deep well of hope in Christ that can’t be moved by the death, destruction, and decay all around us, because we know we are held forever in the hand of God. 

To use a Biblical term, we can “gird our loins” for whatever comes, because we know we belong to Jesus, we are led by the Holy Spirit, and we have one another as mentors on the Way. 

[As we prepare to say together the Baptismal Covenant, I encourage you to take some time to reflect on and pray with the words.  Consider how the Holy Spirit is leading you to more fully embody your baptism. 

Later, as you come up for Communion, I encourage you to place a finger in the font and make the sign of the cross on your forehead, as a physical reminder of your participation in the resurrected life of Christ and his church. 

We will now take a couple minutes of silence for prayer and reflection…]

God Found a Way: A Christmas Sermon

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Sometimes God speaks in unlikely places through unlikely people… 

Yesterday morning, I took the rare opportunity to sleep in. When I finally did get around to stirring, I did what many of us do these days: I rolled over in bed, picked up my phone, and clicked into Facebook.  

After scrolling through friends’ pictures of poinsettias and children’s pageants for a few minutes, I happened upon an ABC Science video, hosted by historian and science communicator, Dr. Ann Jones. She was describing a curious case of parthenogenesis. Parthonogenesis, which literally translates to “virgin birth” in Greek, is the process by which some animals reproduce without mating. 

It seems that a crocodile, named Coquita, who had been held in a Costa Rican Zoo by herself for 16 years, had somehow managed to produce eggs that were developing. (Note the irony here: Coquita means flirtatious in Spanish.) 

Now, parthenogenesis isn’t that unusual in the natural world. Many insects can reproduce without the aid of fertilization. And some fish and sharks can, too. But until 2018, there was no evidence that parthenogenesis could occur in crocodiles. I’m sure some people here know a lot more about crocodiles than I do, but this was all news to me. 

So, let me get back to the basics for a minute…The thing about crocodiles is that they often lay eggs without the usual prompting from the mating process. But, these eggs are never fertilized and so they don’t develop…at least, that was the case until Coquita came along. In Coquita’s case, one of the embryos developed to full-term, though unfortunately, the baby – a female – was stillborn.  

When scientists analyzed the baby’s DNA, they found that she shared 99.9% of it with her mother. The evidence was clear. Coquita had a virgin birth.  

Before anyone jumps to conclusions, rest assured that I am not suggesting that Coquita the Crocodile’s reproductive miracle offers irrefutable evidence of the truth of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ. Humans are not crocodiles, after all.  And believing in the virgin birth is more properly assigned to the realm of faith than reptile science. 

The inbreaking of God in our world through the embodiment, or incarnation, of Jesus Christ does not have to find its proof in the biological sciences. Because God is allowed to break the rules. And, in fact, he often does. 

But, I’m sharing the story of Coquita the Crocodile, because I need you to know the background of her story, so that you can hear Dr. Ann Jones’ final sentence the way it rang in my ears on the eve of Christmas Eve. 

Sometimes God speaks in unlikely places through unlikely people… 

And, Dr. Jones, at the very end of the video, inadvertently makes a theological claim: “Parthenogenesis, [virgin birth], is nature’s last-ditch attempt to save a species.” 

You see, virgin births occur because things have gotten dire. They occur in contexts where the chances of survival have become slim to none. Whether due to habitat loss, isolation, disease, or any number of dystopian scenarios, scientists widely agree that virgin births occur to make the future possible, when the population is in jeopardy, and there is no other way forward. 

The survival of just one baby produced by parthenogenesis could make mating possible for the next generation. It is quite literally a matter of life and death. 

And in a way, isn’t this what our scriptures claim, too? 

“Parthenogenesis is nature’s last-ditch attempt to save a species.” In a world of violence, oppression, apathy, and desperation, the virgin birth, of Jesus Christ, was God’s final attempt to save the world. 

And it worked.  In his first, shrill cry out into the cold night in Bethlehem, Jesus Christ used his brand-new lungs to proclaim LIFE in the midst of death. 

Sometimes God speaks in unlikely places through unlikely people… 

In the Christmas story, God speaks in the voice of an infant; in the bafflement of anxious, young parents; in the lowing of livestock; in the song of angels; and in the excited voices of unkempt shepherds. And God-incarnate makes his first appearance in a room that was the last-ditch effort at last-minute shelter, on a cold night in Bethlehem. 

The curious virgin birth, of Jesus Christ, made the future possible for us. And not just any future: An abundant and joyful future, where wrongs are righted,  and peace mends all the broken things. 

It was just as the prophets foretold… 

The people who walked in darkness 
have seen a great light; 
those who lived in a land of deep darkness– 
on them light has shined… 
For a child has been born for us, 
a son given to us; 
authority rests upon his shoulders; 
and he is named 
Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, 
Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. 

The baby was born, and so, salvation was born into the world. As the angels announced and the shepherds declared, Jesus had come to bring abundant, loving, expansive, incomprehensible, unending life. 

Finally, God had come down into the thick of it to forge a straight path through the rubble of our lives, and to show us, by word and example, what it means to keep a promise, and what it takes to build and birth an abundant future for the whole world. 

Joy to the world! The Lord is come! 

…against all odds, after so much waiting, just when we thought we couldn’t survive. 

This is the story of Christmas:  A curious virgin birth, a cry piercing the night, a baby in a manger. A message in the sky, the surprising witness of shepherds, the ponderings of a new mother. The salvation of the world. 

And it only took one baby, born in a time and place just as difficult and dystopian as our own. Born to make the future possible.  And it worked. 

Just when humanity thought it couldn’t survive, God found a way. 

Eternal Word, New Beginnings

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Readings here

Today is the first Sunday in Advent.  The word Advent means arrival. But we’ll get back to that later. Today also marks the beginning of a new year for the church.  So, Happy New Year! 

When we think about typical new year’s festivities, we probably imagine raucous celebration. The ball drops, couples kiss, and fireworks go off around the world.  People crowd into streets, bars, and houses in sparkly clothing. And strangers drink and even sing together like old friends. 

The next day, people make and eat special New Years’ food, thought to bring good luck: black-eyed peas, tamales, goose, and even pickled herring make the list.  In my family, we eat corned beef and cabbage. 

All of these traditions seem to be a way to conjure optimism out of thin air. They encourage us to perform reckless and unjustified hope. The drinks and debauchery help us literally forget the old year, with its old sorrows and annoyances. And in the hazy glow of midnight, we can look forward to a limitless future. 

We tell ourselves: this year is gonna be different.  We’ll finally become who we always wanted to be. We’ll finally get the job, mend the relationship, make the move, start the workout, and get the good news.  

We have no reason at all to believe any of these things are influenced by the fact that it is a new year. But, we decide to believe things will change…at least until the end of January. 

— 

In Christian tradition, our Advent new year is also a season of hope.  But our hope looks a little different. And, unlike new year’s resolutions, it’s a pretty bad conversation starter at holiday parties. Because, Christian hope is apocalyptic. Which is to say, it has a lot to do with the end of the world. 

By now, we are well-acquainted with the apocalyptic literature of the Bible. Our scripture readings have been tracking with the apocalypse for a couple of weeks now. In Daniel, Jeremiah, Revelation, the Gospels, and even the Psalms, we have heard prophecies proclaimed about the end times. Today, we hear news of a mysterious “Son of Man” who is coming to judge the world. 

These apocalyptic predictions are kind of like New Year’s Resolutions – in that they help us imagine the future. But there’s one big difference: these scriptural resolutions are not about hoping for things you can put on your resume or brag about on Facebook. 

And they are not about forcing unjustified optimism that only lasts a month. At their core, they seek to legitimize and justify hope, and to make it more than a game of personal willpower. 

On its surface, apocalypse can seem grim. But it’s not supposed to be traumatic. It is meant to be just alarming enough to wake us up and turn us around, so we can see the big picture. 

It draws us into the mystery of our faith. And this mystery dwells in paradox. Appearing to be about the future, predictions of the final judgment are actually the story of everything, reaching back to the farthest past.  

They compel us to look forward to the final days, but when we do that, we end up being drawn back to the very beginning, when the breath of God moved over the waters before time began. With a word, God created the world. And at the end, the same Word, the Word made flesh in Jesus, “will come to judge the living and the dead.” 

The creative presence of God imbues all things, at all times and in all places. This is big news! And it is the cause for our hope. 

— 

But still, the fact remains that we are in the middle of things, and the middle is an unsettling place. What do we do with ourselves in the present tense? How do we read the signs? How do we know that Christ is coming near? 

Let’s take a closer look at today’s reading from Luke: Jesus starts with a pretty typical apocalyptic message.  There will be weird shifts in the planets, eclipses, weather events, and terrible tidal waves. A collective sense of foreboding will fall upon the face of the earth. Then, the “Son of Man,” the long-awaited Messiah, will descend from on high.  

We assumed all these signs were pointing to a terrible end. But it turns out, this Son of Man, Jesus, has come to redeem the world. 

And what does redemption mean? It means someone pays all of your debts and sets you free from bondage and obligation.  It means everything that was taken away is now given back to you and you have everything you need. 

Jesus clarifies his words with a parable… 

‘”Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.’ 

Jesus says, this is how you know that Christ is coming near: the things you took as signs of death are being transformed into new life. 

Like fig trees sprouting new leaves, just in time for summer.  You’ll have delicious fruit to eat by August. 

The signs of Christ’s coming, even when they are foreboding, are not intended to be understood through a lens of death and destruction. Like winter turning into spring, signs of death ultimately lead to new life: the branch springing up, the new leaves on the fig tree, freedom and fresh starts. These signs of life are already present with us, and they’re just as real as death. Christ is already near. 

It is good for Christian apocalypse to be central to our faith, because it is an antidote to atrophy. We don’t accept death as the end of the story. And this means we live our lives with persistence., taking care of our neighbors, praying for restoration, and abounding in love for another. 

— 

The trials and tribulations endemic to this world wear on us. We are tired and afraid. We’d like to forget about our troubles for a little while. I think people have probably felt this way since the world began. 

But Jesus shouts, now is not the time!  Now is the time to “be alert” and pay attention!  If you don’t pay attention, you’ll miss the buds on the branches. You’ll miss the joy of the sweet, sticky figs. 

You’ll miss the fact that the Word of God is speaking into darkness, and always doing a new thing. 

— 

And that’s what Advent is really about. Whether we’re looking back to creation, or the incarnation, or looking ahead with fear and trepidation, God is always interrupting time to do a new thing. 

Advent means arrival, after all. And what is arrival but an interruption, an abrupt end of one thing and the start of a new thing? The arrival of a baby that will save the world. The arrival of a King that will make our winter spring.  

In Advent, timelines merge, worlds collide, and life on earth takes on the afterglow of Heaven. Here, darkness is always muddled with light, and endings are always new beginnings. 

Here, hope is always justified by the glorious, persistent goodness of the eternal Word, surprising us with redemption, over and over again. Happy New Year! 

Love is Lord of Heaven and Earth | Christ the King

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Readings here

On November 11, 1918, World War One finally ended, after four long years. World War One is often called the first modern war. The National Park Service says: “Machine guns, poison gas, rapid-fire artillery, aerial bombardment, tanks, and submarines were all new innovations that brought about horrors never before seen on the battlefield.” 

As many as 22 million people were killed, more than any war in recorded history, up to that point. That kind of destruction doesn’t just impact one family or one community – it affects the world. The result was one big existential crisis.  

Many people asked: How could God permit this suffering? There was no easy answer. 

By 1925, countries long-considered “Christian nations” were allowing new worldviews to take root. In the communist Soviet Union and fascist Italy and Germany, God was no longer part of the equation. God was too abstract and too far away. The people wanted a king.  

Or, rather, they wanted a strongman, a no-nonsense politician who could lead people, scarred by modern war, to a modern promised land. This promised land wasn’t concerned with peace, and it wasn’t imagined through a lens of hope.  Hope was frivolous in times like these. 

Instead, it was all brute force, brute speech, fear of foreigners, scorn of minorities, fences, and locked doors. 

In large numbers, the people of Europe decided that liberty and justice for all was an old-fashioned value after all.  They had become accustomed to rationing, casualties, and adrenaline coursing through their veins.  And the strongmen told them these things were good, and right, and true – signs of their virtuous endurance. 

It was within this context that Pope Pious the Eleventh began a new tradition of the church: Christ the King Sunday. Within a few years, many other denominations had taken up the cause, including Episcopalians. 

Declaring Christ as King in that particular moment was not random. Pope Pious was making a subversive political statement against the politicians and dictators vying for the world’s thrones.  

He was reminding the church that they already had what, and who, they needed, in the person of Jesus Christ. And he was declaring that God still had something to say in these modern times: The Kingdom of God had not died on the battlefield.  God had not gone AWOL. 

Against the powers and principalities, Christ had not been moved, and would not be moved: 

His dominion is an everlasting dominion 
that shall not pass away, 
and his kingship is one 
that shall never be destroyed. 

Christ was and is and will be on his throne. 

The world’s rulers might win the day, but they had no power to bring about the kind of promised land their citizens were really looking for, beneath all their fear and despair. 

I like doing a deep dive into history, because it reminds me that the trials of our current day are not greater than those of the past. In many generations and many places, the people of God have struggled with existential crises. In hard times, we have wondered where God is. And we have desperately looked for someone to save us. 

It is hard to answer the questions of our suffering. The world’s corruption can’t be justified by trite reminders that “God is in control.” 

And, I’m sorry to say that I have yet to find a justification for suffering that provides a quick fix. 

But what I can say – because it is what our Scriptures say – is that there are spiritual realities bigger and wilder than we can understand, here on the ground. I can say that the Kingdom of God is breaking through the cracks of earthly decay, showing up now in flashes, but ever-growing toward the ambient light of paradise. 

I can say that, if the world is actually doomed, it has no business being as beautiful as it is, and people have no reason to be as kind as they often are. 

I can also say that, in my darkest moments, when I have asked God “why?” the answer has not always come in words.  But in time, hope has, eventually, come.  

And isn’t that also worth asking about? How is hope still a possibility in a suffering world? How is hope still alive? 

Our scriptures tell us hope is alive because Christ is alive. Even now, he is situated as King on his throne.  

But what makes this king so different from the crude and failing rulers of this earth? And where is the evidence of his kingdom in the middle of life’s sorrow? 

The answer arrives in the life and person of Jesus… 

In his weekly newsletter on the Gospel reading, scholar Andrew McGowan talked about the dialogue between Jesus and Pontius Pilate, the Rome-appointed governor of Judea. 

McGowan says: 

‘Pilate already knows the answer to the first fateful question, “Are you the King of the Jews?”, at least on his own terms.  This question is verbally identical in all four Gospels, which is remarkable. There is no serious possibility, however, that the homeless Galilean itinerant Jesus, is a “king” of any kind, at least in the sense that Pilate would understand that term—or how we would, normally.’ 

On Christ the King Sunday, the church proclaims that this Jesus, this homeless man, is the only true and wise king. In his humble ministry on earth and in his arrest, trial, and death, he exhibits few signs of kingship: 

He isn’t charming, he doesn’t grandstand, and he doesn’t make political alliances. He doesn’t rally his followers to take up arms, surround himself with “yes men,” or bribe Roman representatives to cut him a deal. Any gift he has received he has already given away. He has no possessions and no permanent home. 

Neither an effective politician nor social reformer, Jesus provides the one thing no earthly ruler has ever been able to offer without coercion: the Truth, unburdened by moral and mortal decay. 

In his humble life, self-sacrificial death, and shocking resurrection, the Son of God reveals himself as the answer to all our questions. The Truth is that worldly power will not save us – only love beyond our reckoning will save us. 

And God is Love. And Christ’s kingdom is “not from this world.”  And this is why we can have hope. 

As McGowan goes on to say:

‘“…the love of God…is the real order of the universe.  

To celebrate Jesus’ kingship is not to look away from the world we know, but to see it as it might be, ruled by the true power of love.’ 

No matter what they tell you, the kings, presidents, bishops, and rulers of this earth will never bring us to the promised land. We are not one election, one war, or one succession away from a resolution to the trials and griefs of this life. 

But, as we are reminded throughout our Scriptures, and in our history books, we are not the first generation to confuse brutality with hope. We are not the first people to be duped into believing we needed a strongman.  

We want our earthly rulers to take care of us, so we don’t have to work so hard to take care of one another. We want them to fix things for us. And too often, we accept the lie that fixing things means some people will stay broken. 

But, when we expect these things, we give them too much power. We cannot afford to make them kings, because we risk making them gods. And these false gods – these earthly rulers – will never be able to bring about the life-altering, darkness-shattering, hope-bringing, joy-giving transformation of the world we long for.  

Only Christ can do that.  Only the Kingdom of God can do that.  

Even in these modern times, in our deepest despair, the light of Christ is breaking through. In defiance of all who would justify cruelty, violence, and dehumanization as means to an end, we proclaim love as our salvation, because Christ is the only true king. Amen.

Our Times are in God’s Hand: A Sermon on Apocalypse

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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. 

Readings here.

The year was 2002. I was 13 years old.  The country had recently survived Y2K, a contentious presidential election, the September 11 terrorist attacks, 4 major hurricanes, and dozens of tropical storms, one of which was a direct hit on my home. My dad had just lost his job and had to start commuting nearly four hours roundtrip for his new one. My grandpa died. 

And then, one day in the spring, I was home alone, when the sliding glass door on my house began to shake. Suddenly, I heard a deep, resounding BOOOMMM coming from far away. I looked outside and didn’t see a soul on my cul-de-sac, even though the workday had ended. 

I came to the only, logical conclusion.  It was the end of the world. And all the Christians had been raptured – taken up to Heaven before the Great Tribulation on earth. All the Christians. Except, of course, for me. 

The apocalypse was here.  

Things had not gone as planned. Maybe I had prayed a prayer wrong, or maybe my pastor had failed to seal my Baptism in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Whatever the case, here I was, the last member of my family still earthside.  And all I could do was wait for the violence and destruction to begin. 

“There shall be a time of anguish, such as has never occurred since nations first came into existence.” 

“For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birthpangs.” 

A half-hour later, the kitchen door opened, and my mom and sister walked in. My dad got home from his new, faraway job, just a little later than I expected.  A neighbor called to ask if we had heard the “sonic boom,” when the space shuttle reentered earth’s atmosphere, on its route back to Kennedy Space Center. 

Ohhhh…so it wasn’t the apocalypse after all. Just a cascade of disorienting circumstances that had sent my anxiety into a tailspin. 

—

After hearing today’s scripture readings, maybe your heart rate went up a little, like mine did on that day in 2002. 

Our Daniel and Mark readings are undoubtedly “apocalyptic.” They prophecy a chaotic and violent end and warn their readers to stand at the ready for all that is coming. It is tempting to avoid these passages, because they are disorienting. They stress us out and make us feel bad.  And worse than that, they make us feel obligated to prepare for a future of unthinkable difficulty.  

What does apocalypse have to do with Christian hope? 

Well, I think we have often misunderstood the apocalypse. So, let’s talk about what it means for something to be apocalyptic… 

In informal conversation, when we say “the apocalypse,” we’re most likely referring to the final and complete destruction of the world, or at least, the inhabitable world. 

Scientists might speak of climate apocalypse, politicians of institutional apocalypse, and Christians throughout history have read into wars, storms, recessions, and generally bad vibes as signs of the impending final judgment. 

But in the ancient world, apocalypse had a more nuanced meaning.  The word itself comes from the Greek word, apokalypsis, which means “to uncover or reveal.” That definition ties the apocalyptic tradition to the prophets, because prophets are God’s messengers, revealing God’s active participation in human affairs. 

Not all prophecy is doom and gloom, but much if it is a warning that God’s people need to get back on track. And that’s where apocalypse comes in. While apocalyptic stories often carry a sense of foreboding, their purpose is not to make us freeze in fear and await our fate. 

As John Collins puts it: apocalypse “is intended to interpret present, earthly circumstances in light of the supernatural world and of the future, and to influence both the understanding and the behavior of the audience by means of divine authority” (1).

In other words, apocalyptic proclamations reveal the perils of losing sight of God in the short term, while declaring God’s ultimate power over all things in the long term.  In contrast to doom and gloom, they should encourage us to stay the course and carry hope through all of life’s trials.  As we say in our birthday blessing, “our times are in God’s hand.” 

It’s also good to remember that the dark future foretold is not so different from the ongoing fear and violence of our present reality. The drama of these stories casts a spotlight on the worst of the human condition so we can see it for what it really is. And in the process, we can see who we are, and who God is. 

— 

Today’s scriptures bring the trials of living, breathing, suffering people into the context of God’s power. 

They reference many cataclysms and many terrors we ourselves can recognize – when human apathy and wills to power lead to bloodshed, institutional collapse, hunger, and collective trauma that would span generations. 

This is demonstrated well in the book of Daniel, which occurs in the midst of a cycle of terror… 

At one time, the Hebrew tribes were split into two nations: the Kingdom of Israel in the North, and the Kingdom of Judah in the South. In 732 BCE, war broke out in the Northern Kingdom when Assyria invaded, killing thousands, including women and children. 

After the initial bloodshed, those who survived were systematically deported and displaced. The goal was forced assimilation of the Hebrew people, which would make it harder for them to retaliate against the Assyrian kingdom, by reducing their sense of shared identity. 

During this period, Assyria took part of the Southern Kingdom, but they didn’t gain complete control. But in 597 BCE, Babylon took the Southern Kingdom of Judah. Known as the Babylonian Exile, this period saw several phases of forced displacement of the Hebrew people, led by King Nebudchanezzar the Second.  

The war ultimately resulted in the destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple in 587 BCE. Some of the Bible’s most hauntingly beautiful literature is written about the Babylonian Exile, including the books of Daniel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Lamentations. 

For those whose lives had been burnt to the ground by invading armies, this was surely the apocalypse. This was surely the end of the world.  

Yet, it was within this hopeless context that Daniel’s prophecy rang out: “But at that time, your people shall be delivered.” 

The world of the ancient near east may have been consumed by “war and rumors of war,” but the people of Judah would survive. Their times were still in God’s hand. 

Fifty years later, the Judeans were permitted to go back to their homeland. They rebuilt the Temple. They rebuilt their lives. And God was with them the whole time. 

In Mark, we hear Daniel’s words echoing in the voice of Jesus. Jesus tells his followers there will be destruction and bloodshed, terror and chaos.  

And within the first months and years of the early church, Christ-followers would indeed face persecutions, executions, false prophets, and false narratives. They would be blamed for things they didn’t do, and pushed ever further to the margins of society.  

Just as in Daniel, Jesus’ words are not foretelling some distant, future darkness beyond imagination. They are a clarion call and a comfort in the present darkness. Christ followers can rest assured, in all these trials, that the good news is still worth living out, and that God will sustain them in the end. 

This is what apocalypse should teach all of us: God remains steady in the midst of our chaos, pain, and existential despair – in the very center of the worst thing that we can imagine. God doesn’t ignore evil, doesn’t celebrate injustice, and doesn’t revel in our suffering.  

Our hope comes from a deeper well than the brutality happening around us and to us.  And hope can be sustained no matter the circumstance, because it comes directly from the Creator of all things. 

If you feel today that you are standing at the edge of apocalypse, consider this: maybe it’s not the end. 

It may very well be the end of certain assumptions, communities, families, relationships, and ways of being. It may be the end of the world that you imagined, but it is not the end. 

When the chaos of this world feels apocalyptic, we can see that disorientation for what it is:  a clarion call to live like Jesus, to endure in the struggle, to love self-sacrificially, to pay attention, to rest in the care of one another, and to look for the life of the world to come.  

We do not need to fear the apocalypse. With hope in our hearts, we keep moving forward, held steady in God’s hand. 

1. Collins, John J. (1984). Daniel: With an Introduction to Apocalyptic Literature. Eerdmans.

The Saints of God are Just Folk Like Me

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Proper 26, All Saints’ Sunday 2024 – Readings here

I was 23 years old before I celebrated my first All Saints’ Day.  

Growing up in an Evangelical denomination, we were allergic to the word, “saint.” We weren’t really into people and their stories. We were into doctrines and rules by which we could measure ourselves and others. We were determined to cast off the baggage of centuries of tradition in pursuit of a clearer, more consistent, more relevant Christianity. 

This mindset was influenced by a few major ideological shifts: the anti-Catholic sentiment of the Protestant Reformation, which saw the saints and all their associated celebrations as superstition at best, and idolatry at worst; the optimism of expanding imperialism and the industrial revolution, which directed people in the Western world to leave behind the past, in order to forge ahead to a limitless age of progress; and the rugged individualism of American culture, which made religion a personal practice rather than a collective one, and measured each person by their ability to prove themselves worthy of God’s love. 

The saints simply didn’t fit into the picture. They were funny, old relics of medieval Catholicism. Their stories and experiences, so often tied up with struggle, were quite frankly embarrassing to our self-sufficient, modern ears. They were messy and weird, hard to manage, and rarely fit within the norms of fundamentalism. 

My faith story was one without a prologue, because it lacked the stories of the saints. As a result, faith was like a path that had never been trod before. It was dark and mysterious, an unknown venture that I had to endure on my own. No one, besides, perhaps, my parents and my pastor, could offer wisdom for the journey. It was often a lonely place. 

But many years later, I found myself in an Episcopal Church on the occasion of All Saints.  

Still wary of more “Catholic” traditions, I had nevertheless found hope and healing among the people in that big, neo-classical building across from University of Virginia’s campus. They had held me, watched me cry, and let me sit with my grief after leaving the Evangelicalism I was raised in.  

I had left because it turned out that, in addition to saints, they were allergic to women in leadership. But this Episcopal Church hadn’t put pressure on me to contort myself into an “acceptable” version of a woman or a Christian. They didn’t seem to believe that Christianity was about proving myself worthy of God’s love.  

And they didn’t act like the Christian journey was a thing I should do on my own. In fact, through the liturgy, they had carried me along in the faith when I was too spiritually weary to utter the words myself. 

These ordinary, holy people had started to help me feel like Christianity was much bigger and more vibrant than what I had grown up with. Because it wasn’t about me, sitting in a dark room alone with an exacting God. It was about us, wherever we found ourselves, walking together toward the light of a loving God. 

Still, on All Saints, I wondered what the long-dead saints, with their fantastical stories, could possibly teach me about the good news. And then, we sang a silly, little British song about the saints of God. 

To my mind, today’s sequence hymn, “I Sing a Song of the Saints of God,” is perfectly composed. In the first two verses, we encounter abbreviated, and basically anonymous, tales of the formalized saints of our tradition: 

  • Doctors, like St. Luke and St. Hildegaard 
  • Queens, like St. Helena and St. Margaret of Scotland 
  • Shepherdesses, like St. Bernadette of Lourdes 
  • Soldiers, like St. Martin of Tours 
  • And too many priests and martyrs to name. 

There is something jarring about the juxtaposition of the sickly-sweet little children’s tune and the harrowing realities of these ordinary, holy people who walked with God, so often to their own death. 

The jaunty little melody and the laundry list of unnamed saints work together to suggest that the saints, even while being worthy of veneration, are nothing to get worked up about. They’re everywhere, in every generation. There are so many, the song doesn’t even have time to name them. 

And then, what is, at first, subtle in the song’s composition is made concrete in its closing words – 

They lived not only in ages past; 
there are hundreds of thousands still; 
the world is bright with the joyous saints 
who love to do Jesus’ will. 
You can meet them in school, or in lanes, or at sea, 
in church, or in trains, or in shops, or at tea; 
for the saints of God are just folk like me, 
and I mean to be one too. 

For the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one too.  

When I was 23, red-eyed from crying, but surrounded by Christian love, I sang a song of the saints of God, and I finally understood the saints. 

It’s right there in our church’s catechism: 

“The communion of saints is the whole family of God, the living and the dead, those whom we love and those whom we hurt, bound together in Christ by sacrament, prayer, and praise.” 

It turns out, the saints aren’t just long-dead people with nothing to offer. Both living and dead, they are exemplars of ordinary, everyday holiness, who shore up our faith in turbulent times and show us the way in the midst of life’s uncertainty. 

The church can’t afford to ignore 2,000 years of saint stories because we think they’re old or weird, or mystical or uncool. Because the church is nothing without the saints: the named ones and the anonymous ones, the ones we find acceptable and the ones we find confounding, the ones who died in glory and the ones sitting here in this room. 

All of them have something to teach us about the path of Christ. All of them, in their own time and place, lit up the world with a little bit of good news. 

Our faith rests on the legacy of the saints.  

Because of this, it finds its shape and meaning in a rich and never-ending web of relationships, spanning from ancient times to the far-future. These relationships reveal God’s unbroken chain of love in a broken world.  

Through the example of the faithful in every generation, we understand who the Triune God is, in eternal relationship with Godself. 

Through relationships with our fellow disciples, we learn what it means to live into the greatest commandment to love one another, without worrying about the outcome or the cost. 

And these relationships inform our relationship with the world – with the downtrodden and alienated, displaced and forgotten, hated and misunderstood, immigrant and citizen, rich and poor. 

In communion with the saints, we find that the Kingdom of God “is closer than we know” (1).

And the path of Christ is not ours to walk alone. We are not left without history, tradition, exemplar or teacher. The air is heavy with the prayers of the saints. The streets are crowded with them. 

Like God, the saints are everywhere, always revealing God’s love in places where love has no right to exist. We are not alone.  

So why not rise to the challenge?  

Why not live like you and I could be saints, to someone? 

Why not act like miracles can take place through the mechanism of our ordinary, holy lives? 

Why not share our testimonies, so we can be reminded that love counts for something? That it changes hearts and moves the needle. That sometimes, it even makes enemies friends. 

I have seen the saints at work, loving me back into faith, changing the course of someone’s life, standing up for the vulnerable, overcoming their fears, taking responsibility for the wellbeing of strangers, turning ravaged places into gardens. 

It’s not so hard to find them when you start looking for them. 

As we approach a stressful Election Day, my prayer for all of us is that we look for the saints at work. And that we rise to the challenge, determining to be saints to someone, not worrying whether the love we live out comes across as weird or old-fashioned or even foolish. 

For the saints of God are just folk like me, and I mean to be one, too. 

(1) On his deathbed, my Great Grandpa Camp told my mother: “Heaven is closer than we know.” In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says “You are not far from the Kingdom of God.”

Everything That Actually Matters

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Readings here

“Jesus, looking at him, loved him and said, “You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” 

In Florida and North Carolina and places in between, our fellow Americans are grappling with the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Though the floodwaters and storm surges have subsided, there are over 1,000 people missing across several states. People are still without access to water and power, and some are still stuck in isolated, waterlogged homes. 

My husband and I, who grew up in Florida, kept vigil Wednesday night as Milton made landfall, anxiously waiting for family to respond to our text messages: Are you safe? Is everyone accounted for? Do you have what you need? How can I help? 

Fortunately, our family is safe.

The physical storms have passed, but the wounds remain. These wounds are social, physical, and financial.  And they cut like jagged lines through neighborhoods and towns: disrupting relationships, destroying the comforts and norms of communal life, and compounding grief. 

It’s enough to break a person. And I think that’s why we tend to assume that things will devolve into dystopia after a storm – we expect looting, marauding, and spats of violence. Under conditions of want, we expect people to give up on the whole social project.  Now, it’s every man for himself. 

But surprisingly, this isn’t the case. While the road to recovery is complicated, it happens at a quicker pace than we might expect. And it’s all because people rocked by the impoverishing aftermath of disaster become more generous,  not less generous. 

In her book, A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit set out to understand what happens to communities after disasters, by studying real-life disasters throughout American history.  

Her findings disprove the dominant story that, in the face of scarcity and suffering, people will become selfish, violent, and uncollaborative. Across time, location, and demographic, the opposite proved true. She found utopia. 

Solnit writes: 

“In the wake of an earthquake, a bombing, or a major storm, most people are altruistic, urgently engaged in caring for themselves and those around them, strangers and neighbors as well as friends and loved ones. The image of the selfish, panicky, or regressively savage human being in times of disaster has little truth to it. Decades of meticulous sociological research…have demonstrated this. But belief lags behind, and often the worst behavior in the wake of a calamity is on the part of those who believe that others will behave savagely and that they themselves are taking defensive measures against barbarism.” 

In other words, when a community loses everything, all at once, our human impulse is to care for one another. Social standing, past hurts, personal quirks, and property lines cease to matter when we’re all equally vulnerable, when we’re all aware of our own fragility and need. 

The only questions that matter are these: Are you safe? Is everyone accounted for? Do you have what you need? How can I help? 

All that matters is finding a reason to hope. And it turns out, the reason to hope is, very often, looking back at us – it’s the family bond and reciprocal care of other humans. As one makeshift restaurant put it, after the San Francisco Earthquake: “one touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” 

And haven’t we all experienced this?  

After 9/11 or Harvey or Helene or Milton, hasn’t the shock forced us to reach out to others, to find reassurance in one another’s company, and to reexamine what really matters?  

Haven’t we prayed a little more, and lingered a little longer while hugging a loved one?  Haven’t we looked up at the clear blue sky with a renewed sense of wonder to be here at all? Haven’t we been moved to donate our time and money, and open up our homes, because we suddenly understood that we need each other? 

It’s no wonder that one of God’s first acts of love toward humankind was creating another human. When things get urgent and raw enough, we remember that the whole world is kin. 

And when we remember that, anything feels possible. 

— 

It may seem like a strange juxtaposition, but Jesus’ command for the rich young man to sell all of his possessions, places him in a context similar to post-disaster communities.  It asks him to place people above possessions and says something about Christ’s vision for the Kingdom of God. 

Let me be clear that, when Jesus tells the man to give up everything, he is not calling him to suffering. Jesus does not want us to hope for disaster, as if suffering will make us more holy. Jesus does not delight in suffering and death – his resurrection testifies to that fact. 

But, when he tells the man to choose a life of poverty, he is pointing him to the root of hope that is buried under the rubble of our material dependency.  

His possessions, and the accumulation of those possessions (1), are a distraction from real living (2). They keep him from recognizing the generous love of God, found most richly in relationships with his fellow human. 

He is trying to get the man to consider that abundant life is not a thing that can be accumulated or possessed. Abundant life is found in reciprocal generosity, caring for and receiving care from others. 

If you had the choice, why wouldn’t you try to live in that blessedness – that place in which the whole world is kin? Choosing it instead of waiting for the inevitable disaster. Choosing it now, because disaster has already struck somewhere, and hope only grows in the context of mutual care. 

— 

In the end, the man couldn’t fathom making such a sacrifice. And Jesus wasn’t surprised. But, Jesus’ words still ring in our ears, and we should consider them, too. 

Material possessions will not be the marker of our success, and they will not ultimately determine whether the Kingdom of God will survive and flourish. 

Because, God’s kingdom is not built with stone, silver, and stained glass, but as a family system of reciprocal generosity. It is predicated, not on financial liquidity, but on the liquidity of love. Which is to say, it is a place of radical trust and radical dependency. 

We give and receive in equal measure, to be reminded that true and lasting wealth is the bond we share with one another, and with God. 

As kin to one another, we are to open our hands and hearts now, not waiting for someday when it feels like we have acquired “enough,” because that day will never come. 

We are to quit judging ourselves and others by material and financial possession. And reject social forces that pressure us to look, act, consume, and invest according to the logics of wealth, power, and control.  

If disasters have anything to teach us, it is that control is an illusion. All that we possess could be gone tomorrow. 

Our true wealth lies in giving up control to Jesus Christ, who alone can bring about the transformation of the world, who exemplifies generosity, even to the point of giving himself to death on the cross, who, in his earthly ministry, had no money of his own, but brought prosperity of health, spirit, and love to all he encountered on the road. 

Jesus is not asking us to give up “everything” to follow him. He is directing our attention to “everything” that actually matters.

So that we can strengthen the bonds of love, building utopia right here, birthing new life in the rubble. 

Amen. 

(1) Thanks to Dean McGowan for making this point.
(2) Martin Buber, in his book I and Thou, says “All real living is meeting.”

The Scandal of Suffering

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A Sermon on the Beheading of John the Baptist

Readings available here.

The beheading of John the Baptist.  

The mere thought of beheading is so gruesome that I want to avert my eyes as I read the story. 

Reverend Brin assured me that they did not read this passage during kids’ church this morning. Now, I’m normally not an advocate for censorship, but the moral ickiness and graphic violence of this event made me wonder, at first read, why the writer of Mark wanted it to be shared at this point in the story, and in this way. 

The story is disruptive, in more ways than one. 

For the last five-and-a-half chapters, we have been moving at a steady clip with Jesus and his disciples, as they have sought out the marginalized, healed the sick, and restored people to community. 

The narrative has become almost predictable: Jesus goes somewhere, he tries to take a nap or eat lunch, and then a great need arises to which he must respond.  So, he performs a miracle.  

Person by person, bit by bit, the culture of death in the ancient near-East is being covered by new buds of hope.  The Kingdom of God is spreading. 

Now, word of his deeds has reached the regional Jewish ruler, “King Herod.” This Herod is the son of the other Herod, who tried to kill baby Jesus. A Jew himself, Herod works for the Roman authorities, and lives the lavish lifestyle afforded to him by his compliance. Many in his religious community consider him a sell-out. 

By this point in Jesus’ ministry, John the Baptist has already been dead several months.  Mark tells us that John was arrested way back in chapter one. But something curious happens when news of Jesus’ “mighty deeds” reaches Herod:  His guilty conscience can’t help but think that John the Baptist has been raised from the dead. 

Herod’s shock seems to bend space and time, and the narrative suddenly takes a turn. We find ourselves in a flashback, watching horror unfold in the decadent courts of Herod and his family. 

— 

Herod didn’t want to kill John.  

While John had disapproved of his marriage to his brother’s sister, the story doesn’t suggest there was any danger in John voicing that opinion. After all, Herod knew, as well as John, what religious law mandated.  And the story even tells us that Herod “liked to listen to John.”  

But John’s insistence that Herod’s marriage to “Herodias” was unlawful disrupted Herodias’ game plan. She couldn’t risk having her husband change his mind. In a time when the only way for a woman to gain power was through a favorable marriage, she was determined to hold onto what she had. 

So, when Herod throws himself a big birthday party and promises the world to Herodias’ daughter – in front of powerful guests – Herodias knows exactly what to do. When her preteen daughter comes to her for advice, she instructs her in the ways of power: Exploit the fragile ego of the man who controls your future.  Make him kill the man who would put that future at risk. 

“Deeply grieved,” Herod has John killed. His head is paraded on a meat platter at Herod’s birthday party. In his power-drunk bragging, Herod backed himself into a corner. He murdered a holy man. There is blood on his hands. 

— 

This flashback, though only 14 verses long, is like a punch in the gut.  

Corruption and exploitation are oozing from the seams. Herod and Herodias’ self-involvement refuses righteousness at every turn. And they use their own daughter as fodder, training her up in the ways of power, and making her complicit in the death of an innocent man. 

The brutal violence and stomach-turning exploitation in this story are disruptive. The flashback doesn’t fit in with the hope that’s spreading, as Jesus meets and heals people across Judea and Galilee. It’s a crack in the story of the growing Kingdom of God, a near-halting of the narrative.  

So why would Mark place it here? 

Perhaps Mark includes it at this moment to remind us that, though our lives are relentlessly disrupted by cruelty and violence, these are not meant to be things we accept as part of the story of God. The story of God, in Christ, is the story of life. 

Theologian Henri Nouwen spoke of this when he wrote: 

“A life with God opens us to all that is alive. It makes us celebrate life; it enables us to see the beauty of all that is created; it makes us desire to always be where life is… If anyone should protest against death it is the religious person, the person who has indeed come to know God as the God of the living” (from A Letter of Consolation).

For those of us who have experienced even a taste of Jesus’ life-giving love, cruelty, violence, and suffering should feel disruptive. We should never accept them as inevitable or unavoidable or good. 

When they show up in our own stories – or the stories of others – they should stop us in our tracks, just like John’s beheading does in the Gospel of Mark. 

It is good for us to feel “deeply grieved” in the face of the world’s death-dealing. It shows that we have internalized the hope of the resurrection. 

It shows us that God is still working in us. God is still on the move. 

But beyond disruption, this story serves as a cautionary tale. By observing Herod and his family, we see that making decisions to protect ourselves or retain worldly power won’t save us, in the end. Because these desires are based in the fear of death, they have no power to bring about flourishing. 

Herod and Herodias “looked out for number one,” but it didn’t protect them from suffering. Herod was wracked with guilt after murdering John. And, in the end, he was deposed by family members. He and Herodias died in exile. 

Their self-involvement couldn’t ultimately save them. What it did do was help them justify other people’s suffering. 

When we focus too much on ourselves, it is easy to become complicit in other people’s suffering. It’s easy to justify violence if that’s what it takes to retain control. We make it our business to police, imprison, and do away with those who threaten our access to resources or our social position. 

We quickly forget that Jesus proclaims abundant life for all of us, not only a select few who know how to play the game. 

Herod teaches us that self-involvement, taken to its natural conclusion, causes more suffering than it quells. It is an impulse in direct contrast with Jesus’ other-centered, open-hearted, life-giving love. 

— 

The disruptive story-within-a-story of the John’s beheading reminds us that death-dealing does not belong in the redemptive, joyful story of the growing Kingdom of God. 

Our first task is to believe that. Our next task is to act like it. 

In our own lives, my prayer is that we are so steeped in the hope of the resurrection that we experience suffering, violence, and exploitation as disruptive to the story of God, of which we are a part. 

My prayer is that we have the persistence to resist the cycle of violence, the courage to risk embarrassment, punishment, and social standing by speaking out, and the open-heartedness to stop politicking long enough to love our neighbor. 

In a world marked by so much exploitation and brutality, my prayer is that we lead lives of loving disruption, always pointing to the righteous and peaceful Kingdom of God. 

Amen. 

Not to Hurt Us, But to Heal Us

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Lectionary readings linked here

O God, your never-failing providence sets in order all things both in heaven and earth: Put away from us, we entreat you, all hurtful things, and give us those things which are profitable for us; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. 

On Pentecost Sunday, in St. Cloud, Florida, a priest bit a woman during communion.  

Now, this wasn’t just another case of so-called “Florida Man” doing something erratic under the influence of a novel new street drug. In fact, if the priest could be said to be high on anything, he was high on his religious principles… 

Here’s a portion of the press release from the Catholic Diocese of Orlando, shared by ABC News: 

The incident between the priest and a female parishioner began at approximately 10 a.m. on Sunday during Mass at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in St. Cloud, Florida, when a woman “came through Father Fidel Rodriguez’s Holy Communion line and appeared unaware of the proper procedure,”… 

The same woman is said to have arrived at 12 p.m. for Mass on Sunday and stood in Father Rodriguez’s Communion line when he asked her if she had been to the Sacrament of the Penance (Confession) to which she replied that “it was not his business,”… “Father Rodriguez offered the woman Holy Communion on the tongue,” church officials said. “At that point, the woman forcefully placed her hand in the vessel and grabbed some sacred Communion hosts, crushing them.  

Having only one hand free, Father Rodriguez struggled to restrain the woman as she refused to let go of the hosts. When the woman pushed him, and reacting to a perceived act of aggression, Father Rodriguez bit her hand so she would let go of the hosts she grabbed.” 

Honestly, when I read that story, I am a little sympathetic to Father Rodriguez. Not because I think that what he did was right. But because, in some ways, I can imagine myself in his shoes.  

I can almost feel the horror he must have felt in that split second before he took action.  

I can imagine a scenario where the remaining consecrated wafers fly out of their container as the woman lunges for it. They fall onto the dirty floor,  where they’re scattered and crushed by the feet of people coming forward for communion.  The Body of Christ bruised and broken, now lies desecrated on the ground. 

And then, the priest looks up, only to meet the judging faces of those around him. His parishioners condemn him for failing in his most important task.  His clergy colleagues’ eyes drill into him. 

The stakes are high. If he doesn’t act quickly, people will act as if Father Rodriguez himself crucified Christ. 

Under immense pressure, he did what he thought he needed to do.  To protect the Body of Christ, he bit a woman.  

Ironically, in doing so, he hurt the Body of Christ, embodied in that woman. And, he scandalized the Body of Christ, gathered there in the church. 

It was Father Rodriguez’ very commitment to God, and his very love for God, that led him to do the unthinkable.  

It led him to forget that Christ gave his body for us as a living sacrifice, in order to heal us, not hurt us. It led him to prioritize the image of God in sterile and uniform communion wafers, instead of the image of God in an erratic and noncompliant human. 

The incident is a powerful object lesson for Christians.  

It forces us to grapple with how we respond when our ordered ceremonies and straightforward principles are disrupted by humans…being human. 

In a choice between principles and people, haven’t we sometimes landed on the side of Father Rodriguez? 

Haven’t we been tempted to refuse the messy, fragile, annoying, and weird people who stretch out their hands to us for care, choosing instead those who are safe, reasonable, and poised? Haven’t we scowled at the disruptive, avoided the eccentric, or turned away the person asking for help?  Haven’t we decided it might not be worth the trouble to do the humane thing, if that means being judged by people whose opinions carry consequences for us? 

And to the extent that we have done these things, I doubt we have done them out of malice. In many cases, we have done them out of a desire to love God in exactly the right way. But we lost our way somehow… 

And in that regard, we’re an awful lot like the Pharisees… 

In today’s Gospel reading, Jesus gets into it with some fellow Jewish theologians known as Pharisees. They are condemning him for not taking his religious principles seriously.  

It was the Sabbath day – a day set aside for rest from all labor – but the disciples were hungry. The story indicates that they were gleaning grain from a field. According to Jewish law, farmers were obligated to leave a certain amount of grain behind, so that those who needed it could sustain themselves. The disciples were basically using an ancient version of Social Services. 

Shortly after, Jesus performs a healing miracle in the synagogue. The man stretches out his hand, and Jesus gives of himself, healing the man in front of the gathered community. 

The Pharisees don’t even bat an eye at this miracle! In fact, they seem to expect it! In the presence of Jesus, miracles have apparently become commonplace. 

They don’t doubt Jesus – they doubt his interpretation of sabbath law. Somewhere along the way, they forgot that their religious principles were intended for the benefit of people. So, Jesus reminds them: “The sabbath was made for humankind, and not humankind for the sabbath.” 

In interpreting this passage, it can be tempting for Christians to suggest that Jesus is “doing away with all that legalism” and “bending the rules” in response to human need. 

But, I want to be clear that Jesus is not rejecting Jewish religious principles. Jesus is reminding those first witnesses, and now us, that our religious principles are intended to make us more generous, not more hard-hearted. 

Put another way, our liturgies, theologies, and rituals are not the ends of our worship.  They are the means to true worship.  And true worship is our enthusiastic participation in God’s loving transformation of the world. 

The problem has never been our principles – it’s that our attempts at reverence can so quickly turn into idolatry.  It’s that our desire for God to be glorified becomes a source of personal pride rather than public solidarity. 

As a church, we’re not always good at remembering that, in the Eucharist, we don’t only receive the Body of Christ – we become a part of it.  

Communion points us to sacredness by revealing the living Christ here at the table, and then boldly insisting that we, made in the image of God, are part of that sacredness. 

And this gift, of the Body of Christ, is not only for those of us gathered here – it is for all people. Because, in Christ’s giving of himself, we have become consecrated to be the hands and feet of Jesus in the world. 

Our religious principles should always lead us closer to each other, and closer to all of humanity. They should persuade us to proclaim the good news of God’s unconditional love to weird, imperfect, beautiful people, even at the risk of judgment from those who prefer a sterile and uniform Christianity. 

Christ has come, not to hurt us, but to heal us. 

Amen. 

An Act of God: Pentecost Sermon

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Readings available here

Today is the day of Pentecost.  

The story we just read in Acts reveals a chaotic scene:  

Jesus has ascended into Heaven, and the disciples are hunkered in a house, not sure what to do next. Suddenly, violent wind and flames of fire invade every room. 

Down below, in the streets, Jews from all over the Greco-Roman world are gathered in the capital city for the Feast of Weeks,  This is a time to bless the wheat harvest, and remember God’s gift of the Ten Commandments given to Moses on Mount Sanai. 

The ruckus in the house seems to have compelled the disciples over the threshold and out into the street. There, the crowd meets them with alarm.  

Something strange is happening.  The disciples, who should be speaking their native Aramaic, are somehow understood by festival goers from all over the Greco-Roman world.  The chosen people of God – torn apart by centuries of displacement and war – are brought back together in this moment, united in common understanding. 

United, also, in confusion. Desperate to make meaning of the event, many in the crowd dismiss the disciples, as we might have done:  

“They are filled with new wine,” they said.  

In other words, they’re drunk. 

And then, perhaps the biggest surprise of all:  The timid, bumbling Peter, who denied Christ three times at the crucifixion, steps forward, without fear, and begins proclaiming the Gospel. 

Wind and fire, and wild chaos in the street. Pentecost had the trappings of a natural disaster.  But instead, it was an act of God.

orange flames of fire go out into dark night
Photo by Francesco Paggiaro on Pexels.com

The after-effects of this spiritual storm were like nothing the world had seen before. Within months, Christian communities started cropping up everywhere.  And they certainly weren’t drunk, but they were acting pretty strange.  

They were caring for rich and poor, tending to the sick, sharing in communion, giving their money away, and even dying for the Truth. And they were spreading infectious joy along the way. 

These first Christians were changing people’s lives, because their own lives had changed. They had become fearless. 

That day, the church was born. And the Holy Spirit has been keeping us on our toes ever since. 

— 

A funny thing about preaching is that you start to mentally file away stories in case you need to use them in a sermon someday. 

As I was going through my mental files this week for a story about Pentecost, various natural disasters kept coming to mind. 

Here’s one: In 1997, my little Indiana town was readying itself for a tornado. My parents tucked my sister and me into sleeping bags, and lowered us into the crawl space through an opening in the coat closet.  The tornado hit a street over, and we were spared. 

Here’s another one: In 2005, my coastal Florida town was supposed to get hit with five hurricanes, but all of them diverted at the last minute.  The high school senior t-shirt that year read: “I survived 2005.” 

Then, last week, my friend’s daughter was driving home when a tornado ripped through her apartment complex in Houston. She said that the wind came like a solid wall, going 80 miles per hour. My friend’s daughter and granddaughter escaped, unscathed. 

I’m thankful for my brain for trying to help. But none of these stories even come close to paralleling the after-effects of Pentecost. 

These aren’t the kinds of cataclysms that set new things into motion. They are simply natural disasters. A bad thing you try to avoid. 

It seems that, when I try to think of moments of profound disruption in my life, my head doesn’t jump to positive transformation.  Instead, it jumps to stories of survival.  These stories are about safety, near-misses,  and that final, heaving sigh of relief.  

The best thing I can say for them is that they hint at “the calm after the storm,” which is maybe something like “peace.”  But, given the liveliness of Pentecost, it doesn’t seem like the Holy Spirit came to bring us peace… 

In the musical, Rent, which takes place in the context of the AIDS epidemic, one line that has always stuck with me is:  “The opposite of war isn’t peace; it’s creation.” 

I think Pentecost reveals the Truth of that statement. While there is an alternative to the brokenness and discord we see all around us, it isn’t the temporary relief of “the calm after the storm” – it’s the new creation.  It’s new life, bubbling over, spreading out, and unstoppable. 

In the Pentecost story, we finally see how the saving love of Christ is not only available to all, but actively growing and putting its tendrils out into the world. 

  • The Spirit of God calls to each of us in our own language, and from our own experience. We are known. 
  • The Advocate calls us home to Jesus, and to one another. We are loved. 
  • The Divine Wind burns away the chaff in our hearts. We are becoming fearless. 

Like Peter, once afraid to speak, we are emboldened to rush out into the world and proclaim the Good News: Love is here, for everyone! Love, trivialized in pop songs and scorned by politicians, is not a trivial thing after all.  Like wildfire, if given a chance to spark, it will cover the world.  

It’s not a natural disaster, but a creative act of God. 

As theologian Will Willimon puts it, Pentecost reminds us that the Spirit is not “an exotic phenomenon of mainly interior and purely personal significance…the Spirit is the power which enables the church to ‘go public’ with its good news, to attract a crowd and…to have something to say worth hearing” (Interpretation Commentary on Acts, 33). 

In all this, Pentecost offers us revolutionary hope.  

But hope is hard to hold onto.  

  • It is more sensible to decide that survival is all we can hope for. 
  • It is more expedient to resign ourselves to “good enough.” 
  • In the face of the world’s grief, and our own, it is more comforting to stay hunkered down inside that house in Jerusalem. 

But, our Scriptures testify that we are Pentecost People. We are possessed with the Holy Spirit, who calls us to be sober, but strange: caring for rich and poor, tending to the sick, sharing in communion, giving our money away, dying, and living, in the Truth.  

The Spirit calls us to defy the status quo, by living as though hope is our birthright. 

And, we can live in hope, because we know that Pentecost is True. Because, 2,000 years later, 7,000 miles from Jerusalem, living on a continent the disciples didn’t even know existed,  we are worshipping God and sharing in Christ’s communion. 

The Holy Spirit set the world on fire. 

And we, Christ’s disciples, are the still here, carrying – within us and among us – the flame of love that lights up the world. 

(The Paschal Candle is blown out.) 

Amen. 

At the Fault Line of the Resurrection

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A Sermon for Easter

I shall not die, but live,
and declare the works of the Lord…

shot of hill country in texas with bird flying over
Photo by J. Amill Santiago on Unsplash

This morning, we join Mary and the disciples at the threshold of the tomb.

As we poke our heads into that dark cave in the hill country outside Jerusalem, we brace ourselves for the stench of death, and find it empty.

In the long hours after Jesus died, we were trying to be strong. But the absence of a body finally breaks us. Our worst fear already came true, when the man who promised he would save us, died on the cross. But now, Jesus is really gone, and it feels like a second death.

Now, hope is dead. And there is no possibility of closure, only the bodily ache of despair.

But, just as we are hit with a fresh wave of grief, we turn our faces toward the blinding light of the morning as a mysterious messenger beckons us:

“Do not be alarmed! Do not weep! The longing you have held in your body, the fear and the hope, the promises you were foolish enough to believe – all of it has been redeemed! All of it has been transformed!”

Against all odds, Jesus Christ was dead, and now he is alive.

Here we are again, this Easter morning, standing at the threshold of the tomb, gazing into an empty burial chamber in amazement. Daring to believe in resurrection.

We stand at the doorway between darkness and light, fear and hope, death and life. Here, at the threshold, our perspective is broadened. We finally have the vantage point to understand the truth of all things: Here, in this space between all we thought we knew, and all that Christ is making new, the way we order the world breaks down. The dichotomies no longer make sense. In view of the risen Christ, “even the darkness is as light.”

At the empty tomb, we see everything with new eyes. NOW, we live in the ambient light of the Savior, the living Word, who created all things and redeems all things.

There is no need to fear the future. Because Jesus Christ is risen, and all things grow toward his light. In fact, there is no need, even, to hope. Because what our ancestors have hoped for since Eden has already come true.

We’re not yearning for the old days, or waiting for better ones. Heaven has come to earth, and paradise is here!

New life bursts forth at the threshold of a tomb in Judean hill country.

Here in Austin, we are intimately familiar with thresholds, in the geological sense. That’s because we quite literally live on a fault line. The city is built on a geological landmark called the Balcones Escarpment.

map of fault lines and zones in Texas
Balcones, and the Mexia-Talco-Luling Fault Trends, where black lines are faults, the blue shaded area is the Claiborne Group, yellow is the Jackson Group, and tan is the Wilcox Group (Image: Public Domain)

As Austin resident Stephen Harrigan put it in a 1987 article for Texas Monthly,

“The Balcones Escarpment…is geology’s most fateful mark upon the surface of Texas, a bulwark of cracked and weathered rock that extends in a pronounced arc from Waco to Del Rio. It is the Balcones that creates the Hill Country, that sets the stage for the Edwards Plateau and the High Plains beyond. The cotton economy, for our schematic purposes, ends at the base of the escarpment, where the rich blackland prairie…runs literally into a wall. Above that mass of limestone there is only a veneer of soil, and the country is hard, craggy, and scenic—cowboy country. The distinction is that sharp: farmers to the east, ranchers to the west.”

On the east side of town where we are right now, you can still see traces of fertile farmland. Each day when I come home, I have to be extra careful not to track fine, black dirt into my living room.

But just a few miles west, the landscape suddenly transforms into hill country. The ground rises up in stops and starts to reveal red clay and rocky passes.

The first time you drive west toward Lake Travis, you might find, like I did, that “amazement seizes you” at the sudden shift in perspective.

Like the Psalmist, maybe you’ll exclaim:

“This is the Lord’s doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

The landscape here, not unlike the culture, is a juxtaposition of abundance and want, softness and hard living, simultaneously quaint and exhilarating.

But you should know that the Balcones Escarpment isn’t the only interesting thing about the fault line. The result of a violent collision of earth that occurred 20 million years ago, the Balcones Fault Zone also produced the Edwards Aquifer.

Basically, when the ground was pushed up into hill country, it was also pushed down into deep ravines and caves. Rainwater flooded these hidden caverns, forming underground springs that provide water to local waterholes, the Colorado River, and the households of most of Central Texas.

These aquifers are literally what make life possible here.

So, if you’re having trouble finding the fault line, just look to where green things grow and people gather. Amid the tumult, and against the odds, life is nurtured and sustained, right here, at the threshold.

Like so many who settled here before us, the perspective of this place might grip you.

Living here, at the site of a geological wonder, you are living proof of a bigger truth: that the ways we sort the world, into good and bad, salvageable and broken, safe and dangerous, habitat and wasteland, no longer make sense in view of the fault line.

From this vantage point, we see things differently: All of it is redeemable. All of it holds hidden possibility. All of it can be made new.

At the fault line, you realize you no longer need to let yourself down easy. You no longer need the old stories or the doubted promises. Things can be bigger, and better, and more beautiful than you imagined.

Here at the threshold, life is bursting forth.

Today we worship in a church, formed at a geological threshold. And we stand with the disciples, at the fault line of the resurrection.

We have held the black earth of the east while gazing up at the red hills to the west. We have drunk the pure water from aquifers borne of violent shifts below the surface.

We dare to proclaim that the old things can be made new. We insist that life is persistent, growing in crevices and dusty hills, against all odds.

We have seen with our own eyes how the death of an old world can create the conditions for abundant life.

And if all this is true, just about the ground we stand on, how much more is in store for us, who proclaim the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the redeemer of the whole world!?

On Easter, we declare that, even in darkness, life is bursting forth!

And so, we proclaim: Alleluia!

“O death, where is thy sting?
O grave, where is thy victory?”

Christ swallowed up death and shifted the tectonic plates. Resurrection is here.

Two thousand years after the disciples peered into the empty tomb, we still bear witness to the Risen Savior.

We still dare to be faithful, in a fickle and distracted world. We still dare to believe in the reconciliation of all things, and all people. We still dare to see the bigger picture.

A dead man crossed the threshold of a tomb. Now, we know that life is always possible. Even death carries the seed of resurrection.

I shall not die, but live,
and declare the works of the Lord.

Amen.

Everyone Who Searches

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22670026And everyone who searches
finds – maybe not
the missing button, maybe
an old note, yellowed photo
with a missing corner.

And you realize
what you find is
good enough,
or better

And the cardigan can
do without mending –
its gapping filled
for now with a memory
of summertime,
or last year’s loss
– you never lost at all.

It was hiding under the bed,
stirred awake,
an answer. The question
never mattered.

———

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.” – Rilke