Tag: Episcopalian

Reconciled, Forgiven, Freed | Christ the King Sermon

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

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

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

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

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

None of this is necessarily a bad thing…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet all are one in Thee | All Saints’ Sermon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rules are What Make Things Fun?

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There was a time, back in the day, when living in Florida came with one very special advantage. At any theme park in the state, from Disney World to Adventure Island, you could get deeply discounted annual passes. When I was a pre-teen, my parents invested in four of these passes, getting unlimited entry for the whole family, to Busch Gardens in Tampa.

One Saturday morning, at the break of day, I woke up to my mom by my bedside, practically bursting at the seams with excitement. She and my dad had decided to surprise my sister and me, by planning a fun day at Busch Gardens.

I’m sure she expected me to cheer: to jump out of bed, give her a hug, and hurry off to get ready. But, as soon as the good news came out of her mouth, I was angry. “Absolutely not!” I responded. I simply couldn’t do it. I had already planned my day. I had written things down in a neat row in my planner. I had thought through my leisure activities: when I would read, scrapbook, and play with my cat. Guidelines for the day had been set, and now they had to be accomplished.

In the words of comedian Amy Poehler: “Rules are what make things fun.” And I lived by that statement.

I regret to tell you that we didn’t go to Busch Gardens that day. In fact, my parents never tried to surprise me again. On that Saturday 25 years ago, meeting expectations was more important to me than a happy surprise. Even good news was bad news, if it meant I had to think outside the box.

On a different Saturday, 2,000 years ago, we encounter another occurrence of expectations conflicting with a happy surprise: A woman is healed. And as soon as it happens, someone is angry about it. Of course, the events of today’s Gospel reading are far more serious than a day at the theme park. But what exactly is happening here? And what does it tell us about human nature, and about Jesus?

First, let’s talk about the setting of the story… Luke tells us: “Jesus was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.”

Sabbath is the Jewish day of rest. It starts at sundown on Friday evening and ends at sundown on Saturday. The word sabbath comes from the Hebrew word, shabbat, which literally means “rest” or “ceasing.” Sabbath is mandated in the Ten Commandments. And, according to the Bible, has been a central part of Jewish life, since the beginning of the world.

Work is not done on shabbat, especially work associated with using your hands. Things like shopping, cooking, cleaning, mending, and plowing are forbidden. And attention is turned to God: in a shared meal, worship, study, and thanksgiving.

Sabbath finds its earliest example in the rest of God after the creation of the world. And it is reemphasized in the context of the Israelites’ flight from Egypt. In Deuteronomy 5, God says: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.”

So, sabbath is a day for Jewish people to become free from their hectic lives, and from the obligations that distract them, So that they may be brought nearer to the God who created them and freed them from slavery.

The “sabbath” talked about in the Bible is shabbat – it is not the same thing as Sunday worship in a Christian context. Since the first generation of Christians were converts from Judaism, they participated in both Saturday and Sunday religious gatherings, Sabbath on Saturday and “The Lord’s Day” on Sunday. The Lord’s Day was a complement to sabbath study, specifically centered on the resurrection of Jesus. Over time, as more people from other religions converted to Christianity, the Lord’s Day became an official day of rest for Christians, and gradually Christians stopped observing the Jewish sabbath.

But, in our Gospel story today, the important thing to know is that sabbath was a religiously and legally required practice for Jews; It was mandated by God himself. And, mostly, it was a blessing to the community that there were rules and regulations for the sabbath, because it ensured that people could justify walking away from their tasks and focus their attention on God, finding restoration along the way. This is the context in which Jesus gathers with the community and begins to teach.

Luke tells us that, right as Jesus begins speaking, he notices a woman who is suffering from a serious physical condition. Moved with an innate sense of compassion, he immediately shouts to her: “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Then he touches her, and she stands upright and begins praising God. This miracle, like all of Jesus’ miracles, is astounding. It defies medical expectation and crosses social barriers. Like so many of his healing miracles, it shocks the crowd. And the healed woman immediately recognizes that she is in the presence of God.

But the center of this story is not about a miracle…

We are not encouraged to linger on this happy surprise of hope and healing. Instead, a religious leader immediately interjects, and proclaims that Jesus has made so grave an error that it is an affront to God. The man suggests that when Jesus raised his hands to touch the woman, he was using those hands for labor. Jesus’ action, miracle or not, was just the kind of work that was forbidden on the sabbath day. Jesus has broken the rules. He has rejected the guidelines. He has acted against expectation!

But Jesus reminds the gathered crowd that sabbath finds its meaning, not in meeting expectations, but in the freedom of God. And no one can doubt that this woman is free, for the first time in 18 years. Jesus declares that his action wasn’t work – it was worship. He didn’t just follow the rules, he followed them perfectly, by fulfilling the ideal of sabbath. Jesus acted against expectation, and the result was more than a happy surprise: it was a miracle.

As Christians living in the twenty-first century, there are parts of today’s Gospel reading that we can’t fully inhabit. Our tradition doesn’t practice shabbat in the Jewish sense. And I’d bet many of us are not taking a sabbath day of any kind.

But, we can still understand how this story mattered for the first Christians. It revealed, not that “rules are meant to be broken,” but that rules aren’t ends in themselves: they are always intended to help us live up to our ideals.

And we can still see how that matters to us. Jesus shows us that worship is intended to re-form the gathered community around a vision of wholeness, freedom, and rest. He shows us that his mission, and thus the church’s mission, is about using our liturgies, creeds, and traditions for the sake of a wider and fuller embrace, not for policing one another’s holiness.

To follow Jesus is to get comfortable with the fact that he loves to defy expectations. He will wake us up and proclaim good news, even if it’s not the good news we wanted. And, at times, this will make things messy, disruptive, and challenging. Our choice is to embrace it as a happy surprise, or refuse it. We can always refuse it. We can always choose the comfort of narrowly defined rules and expectations over the freedom of the ideals they lead us to. But would that really be worth it, in the end?

If I could visit my preteen self, I would tell her this: Don’t let your expectations get in the way of rejoicing when there’s something to rejoice about. Lord knows life is hard enough – embrace the miracles in your midst. Amen.

Jesus Has Stepped Out of Line

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Restore us, O Lord God of hosts; show the light of your countenance, and we shall be saved. Amen.

On Friday, Daniel and I went to see the re-release of the Shin Godzilla movie. The film begins with a mysterious disruption in the water. A boat sinks and a circle of red fluid marks its downward path. Steam rises from the bay and cracks appear in the bridges and tunnels that cross it.

The setting shifts to the inside of a government building, where the audience is introduced to dozens of government officials. They are assistants, chiefs of staff, military personnel – even the prime minister – and one hundred nameless others. The whole group of officials, all wearing matching black suits, moves together into bigger and bigger boardrooms with more and more people. They seem to think that the sheer number of people present at the meeting will solve the emerging national disaster. In the biggest boardroom of them all, each official sits in their assigned seat and takes a turn reading their theories off of little notecards. “It’s an earthquake!” “It’s a submarine.” “It’s a creature!” someone finally suggests. No, that’s preposterous, the room responds! The meeting continues, with great order and great civility, as befits a democratic nation.

Meanwhile, out in the streets of Tokyo, a monster called Godzilla has emerged from the water and is making its way onto land. As it moves through the streets, it leaves a trail of utter devastation in its wake, then finally returns to the sea.

After it retreats, the government officials must decide how they will prepare the country for Godzilla’s inevitable return. But they are faced with a steady stream of bureaucratic concerns: How will they be perceived on the international stage? How will they stay in the good graces of military superpowers like the U.S.? How will they keep the economy afloat? What bills have to pass before they can invest in recovery efforts? Meanwhile, as they sit in conference rooms and wring their hands, worrying about the optics of any given choice, Godzilla is out there, recharging, and preparing himself for another attack.

In the face of a Godzilla-sized problem, the people in charge respond with matching suits, conference rooms, and little notecards. They respond with calls to “keep the peace” and present a united front. But false unity will not save the day. Instead, it is the ones who are willing to agitate that bring about true peace. Evil is only defeated when one person steps out of line and says, “Enough.” And eventually, others follow.

Today, in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus reveals himself as the agitator in the story of good and evil. He says: “I came to bring fire to the earth!… Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division!”

Jesus is like fire that burns away the underbrush and fertilizes the soil, so new things can finally grow. He rejects false unity in favor of true and lasting peace. When Jesus shakes things up, there is discord – not because he’s being mean or trying to start a fight, but because people, by their nature, don’t like to be disturbed. As a group, we don’t like to do things differently. We don’t like to have to change our habits, opinions, or beliefs. But Jesus says that healing requires an intervention. So, he offers something beyond civility, something different than traditional family structures and political regimes. He proclaims freedom, love, and belonging for all people.

And this disturbs the way things are. But it is only by disturbing the shadows that light comes into the world.

In this time of urgent, monstrous problems, we often end up looking like all those officials in suits in the Godzilla movie. We strive to keep the peace, follow the chain of command, and maintain a sense of civility. But if we’re not willing to confront the urgent, monstrous things, we will be stuck inside debating our little problems while evil gains power in the world around us.

Jesus’ call to “love God and love our neighbor” is not a call to civility. It is not a call to sit calmly and behave, to “wait and see.” It is a call to step out of line and be bold; and to say: I know who I am and whose I am, and I know what Jesus requires of me: to go where his fire burns.

We are living in a world of urgent, monstrous problems. One of them, in particular, has had an impact on our church, in Austin and across the country. Our immigrant neighbors, families, and friends are being terrorized. Regardless of their legal status, they are being imprisoned without translators and housed without beds and adequate food. Just a few weeks ago, the daughter of an Episcopal priest in New York was arrested by ICE agents after going to a routine hearing, as part of her student visa process.

Over a dozen Episcopal parishioners in various parts of the country have been imprisoned, and some are still in ICE custody. In early July, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe called the church to account: “When religious institutions like ours enjoy easy coexistence with earthly power, our traditions and inherited systems can become useless for interpreting what is happening around us… Churches like ours… may be some of the last institutions capable of resisting this administration’s overreach and recklessness. To do so faithfully, we must see beyond the limitations of our tradition and respond not in partisan terms, but as Christians who seek to practice our faith fully in a free and fair democracy.”

For too long, I have been afraid to talk about the monster of the immigration crisis from the pulpit. I have been trying to be civil, so I chose false unity over true and lasting peace.

But Jesus came to bring fire, and through the Holy Spirit, that fire is all of ours to own. So, I will own it. We must be willing to tell the truth “in the present time” or else, all is lost. We must be willing to step out of line, to be agitators for good, right, and holy causes: causes of love and compassion for our neighbors.

Immigrants are neighbors we know personally, and neighbors that are themselves part of the Body of Christ. Immigrants are us. If we can’t strive for their safety, we will have to admit that we’re the false prophets, hypocrites, and fools that Jesus reprimands.

The Gospel, which means “Good News,” must be good news for everyone. And the good news is that freedom, justice, mercy, and love are the guiding ethics of the Kingdom of God. It is not enough to say that, and then do nothing about it. We must be willing to be agitators for the most vulnerable among us, even if it causes division, and puts us at odds with people we love. Because, when something monstrous is outside, you can’t solve it with civility. Evil is only defeated when one person steps out of line and says, “Enough.”

Jesus has stepped out of line. The choice is ours: will we follow him or not? Amen.

Kid Jesus in the Temple, A Sermon for Christmas 2

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Today, after anticipating the coming of Jesus for four long weeks and celebrating his birth for two, we are suddenly encountering pre-teen Jesus seemingly ignoring his parents. 

After all that talk about “Silent Night,” it’s a real shock to the system! 

How did we manage to miss the last eleven years of Jesus’ life? You might be tempted to blame the sudden jump in the story on the Lectionary – which is the schedule of scripture readings we use in the Episcopal Church. But it’s not the Lectionary’s fault. We’re still only in Chapter 2 of Luke, after all.  

This is simply a consequence of Luke’s story-crafting.  He has a point to make and only so much time to make it. Cuts had to be made! 

If Luke were a movie, all we would have missed was a brief growing-up montage set to gentle string music, with a kindly voice reading verse 40: “The child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon him.” 

At the end of today’s reading, we actually get the bookend to that verse: “And Jesus increased in wisdom and in years, and in divine and human favor.” Those two, brief summaries signal the swift passing of time.  

In the next verse, we will be propelled nearly 20 years into the future, to the time of Pontius Pilate and the start of John the Baptist’s ministry, which ushers in the final Passover pilgrimage of Jesus, from the Galilean countryside to Jerusalem, where he will die and rise again. This little passage in Luke is the only time kid-Jesus gets any airtime in the whole Bible.  

So, why tell this story at all? What does it tell us: about who Jesus is, about his parents, and about the promise of God? 

First, let’s think about the setting… 

It was the festival of the Passover, a time for commemorating God’s rescue of the Israelites from the tyrannical Pharaoh of the Exodus story. As practicing Jews, Jesus’ family traveled to Jerusalem to make sacrifices in the Temple, and join the community in remembrance and praise to God for their rescue. 

Though Passover was a religious obligation, it was also a family reunion: along with his parents, Jesus was accompanied on the journey by aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, and people from his village he wasn’t even related to. They traveled together in a large caravan to share protection and resources on what would have been more than a 30-hour journey on foot. 

Once in Jerusalem, the family was hosted by extended family and friends, with everyone sharing responsibility for making sure the kids and animals didn’t go missing. 

Now, let’s think about what happens in the story… 

The sacrifices have been made, the feasting is over, and Mary and Joseph are packed up and ready to head back home. They can’t find Jesus, but they figure he’s with someone they know, so they walk a whole day before they begin to worry. But, the next day, after no word on Jesus’ whereabouts, they have no choice but to turn around. 

For three whole days, they search family homes, rented rooms, marketplaces, and streets for their son.  After nearly giving up, they go back to the most unlikely place to find a child by himself: the Temple. And there he is, talking like a grown-up and holding his own with the religious scholars.  

Mary is not having it. Now nearly a week behind on their journey home, Mary is not in the mood to ponder the blessing of this holy child, because, the fact is, this little blessing is acting like a brat. 

The parental desperation has been building up over the past 4 days, and has now given way to annoyance: “Child, why have you treated us like this? Look, your father and I have been searching for you in great anxiety.” Jesus, unbothered, replies: “Why were you searching for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 

What the…excuse me, Jesus? What a weird thing to say. You’re 12 years old.  And your parents were on their way home to Nazareth, to your father Joseph’s house.  

Oh, right. Jesus isn’t a normal kid. It’s all coming back now. 

You see, in spite of God’s repeated proclamations to Mary and Joseph – through angels, shepherds, and relatives – that Jesus isn’t a normal kid, the trials and stresses of daily living have lulled his earthly parents into a false sense of normalcy. 

In those first years of new parenthood – the fear, the anxiety, the annoyance, and the overwhelm – this “miracle baby” simply became a part of the mix of life, with all of its everyday distractions and demands. 

Gabriel’s angelic message and Elizabeth’s blessing were just surreal memories now, hazy and almost unbelievable after years of continued toil under the hardship of first-century life, the always-simmering oppression of Roman rule, and the realities of raising a kid, who was fully divine, but still fully human. 

Mary and Joseph didn’t get any special privileges for raising the Son of God, after all. Just like everyone else, they had family obligations, ailing loved ones, household chores, work obligations, and sacrifices to make at the far-away temple. Their lives were exceedingly, boringly normal. 

It is a harrowing fact of human nature that even a miracle as big as the incarnation could, in some sense, stop resonating, could stop sustaining hope. 

I think this is why Luke tells the story. 

Not only does the story of 12-year-old Jesus do theological work, by confirming Jesus’ divinity throughout every moment of his incarnate life. For his exhausted, distracted parents, it was a disruptive, inconvenient, and necessary reminder that God’s promise was still true after all those years. 

It was a reminder that Jesus isn’t normal, and life with him isn’t normal either. 

This child truly is the Anointed One. This child truly is the Son of the very God who dwells in the Temple, who rescued their ancestors from tyrants, from enslavement and exile and ruin,  who turned their mourning into dancing and their sorrow into joy. 

And this child, in a few more years, will manage to bring about the revolutionary salvation of the world regardless of his parents’ successes or missteps. 

And because of that reminder to his parents, it is also a reminder to us, that Jesus is who he says he is – always, at every point in his eternal life and at every point of our journey with him. He is our rescue and our hope – he is God’s promise come true. 

Even when we are distracted by our exhausting, confusing, dangerous, normal lives, the miracle is still a miracle, and God is still with us. And just as importantly, God’s promises aren’t diminished just because we forgot, or got distracted, or were too tired to say thank you. 

What a gift to have this story. What a gift it is to know that God can use anything, even disruption and inconvenience, to remind us that we are held in a state of grace. 

Our scriptures remind us that even our normal lives aren’t normal, because Jesus is still in the act of inconveniencing us in order to reveal himself to us, transforming hatred into love, sorrow into joy, and death into life. Like Mary, we can treasure all of this in our hearts, even when we don’t fully understand what Jesus is up to.

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.”