Tag: jesus

Human, after the Resurrection

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In these last weeks of the Easter season, you can feel our readings strain toward the next part of the story.  We are now past the grief of Jesus’ execution, the surprise of the empty tomb, the hesitant hope of the disciples, and Christ’s multiple visitations after the resurrection. 

Now, with new urgency, we are looping back to what Jesus said before all of that. From here on out, our Gospel readings will carry us into the urgency of the early church. They will compel us to hold onto the teachings of this revolutionary man and his disruptive, remarkable life, so, that we can get a grip on what it looks like, feels like, and takes to follow him. 

We often call Lent the “season of preparation.” But it turns out, Easter is also a season of preparation. In this season, in the brightness of the resurrection and the refreshment of baptismal waters, we are being prepared to reaffirm our own resurrected life in Christ to be made new, and to strain toward becoming everything God made us to be. 

In other words, we are being challenged to “do something” about the resurrection. Today’s Gospel reading makes clear what the resurrection calls us to: following in the footsteps of the “Son of Man,” we are to “love one another.”  

“Love one another.” It’s basically the brand identity of the church. It is the mission statement and driving ethic of who we are as followers of Christ. The whole of Christian scripture hinges on these three words. 

It’s simple, it’s obvious, and it’s part of Jesus’ inherited religious tradition, stretching back to divine laws given to Moses. 

Specifically, Jesus is referencing God’s commands in Leviticus 19: “Love your neighbor as yourself; love the foreigner as a native-born, do not ridicule the Disabled, don’t privilege people based on their status, respect your elders, take responsibility for the safety of those around you, do not pursue vengeance or bear a grudge.” 

With this callback to Leviticus, we are to understand that the love that Jesus calls the disciples to is not selective, or limited to the 11 people in the room that day, Because, as our passage in Acts also shows, the movement Jesus is building is an unconditional and unbounded one. 

Followers of Christ are to be known, primarily, by their self-sacrificial love. This is not so much a brand-new commandment, but it does solidify a new kind of community. 

Unfortunately, as a whole, humans have never managed to live up to the mandate. If we’re lucky, we can say that we have loving friends, neighbors, and families, but rarely can we say we live in a loving society, even in a so-called “Christian nation.” 

It seems that part of the reason this theological mandate is so hard to follow is because we don’t really understand how to practice it.  If it’s just a rule to follow, we will always have to work up the energy to do it. Because practicing love will always feel like an uphill battle in a world run by Judases and Pontius Pilates and Herods. 

We will never be able to love like Jesus until we understand that he calls us – not to define, negotiate, and judge people against love –but to become love. We are to be transformed, so that our first impulse is care, invitation, and relationship, no exceptions. 

We have to figure out how love becomes innate in us, not just a thing that we put on. To do that, we have to understand who Jesus is, not just what he says. 

Fortunately, there’s a clue in the specific way Jesus identifies himself in this passage in John: Jesus is called the “Son of Man.”  

In Aramaic, the language Jesus spoke, the phrase would translate simply to “human one.” In Greek, the language of John, it would mean something like, “one who shares in humanity.” But the concept is originally a Hebrew one: “ben-adam,” Son of Adam: descendant of the one who is blueprint of humanity. 

In the context of the Old Testament, the phrase is used most often to talk about a person who is literally just a human. The Jewish Encyclopedia says that ben-adam “denotes mankind generally in contrast to deity or godhead, with special reference to their weakness and frailty.” 

So, when Jesus calls himself the “Son of Man,” the human one, he is highlighting, not his divinity, but his humanity. Which is to say, the quality of his being human: material, physical, emotional, relational. And, the quality of his being humane: caring about the wellbeing of others. 

Jesus, the son of God, of one being with Father, is identified by the fact of his being a human. He is not denigrated for it, but glorified within it. 

Therefore, Jesus reveals himself as the standard-bearer for what it means to be a human. He is the archetype and the blueprint of the human person. 

And what does it mean to be human? Jesus says: “Just as I have loved you, you should love one another.” In this passage, Jesus redefines the human person as “one who loves.” 

When Jesus calls us to love one another, he is not telling us to muster up the energy and repress the resentments, to put on a virtue that we can take off again when it suits us. In drawing attention his own, incarnate, humanity, he shows us what it means to be human, in light of the resurrection. He shows us who we are to become in the Kingdom of God he has already ushered in. 

If Jesus is the blueprint of the human person – and the human person is one who loves, then we are out of touch with our own God-given humanity when we are driven by fear and ego to act in ways that are not humane. The selfishness, isolationism, authoritarianism, racism, deceit, and hatred that plague our communities are ugly distortions of the humanity Christ exemplifies. And if we are not careful, we will let our lives be ruled by these distortions. 

If we fail to define the human person in view of Jesus, we will give away a little part of what makes us truly human, in exchange for false security and broken promises. We will let ourselves forget that Jesus calls us, here – enfleshed, mortal and imperfect – to resurrection life.  He calls us to come out of our tombs to become love in a world that has forgotten its humanity.

The disciples who were gathered in the room with Jesus that fateful night in Jerusalem did eventually get the courage to be human, in light of the resurrection. They figured out how to love, how to change their minds, and how to stop worrying about what everyone thought about them. 

And in response, the church grew like a weed. The outcasts were welcomed, the hungry were fed, the sick were healed, and young and old, rich and poor, worshipped together around full dinner tables.  

The empire was threatened by the humanity of it all. Ten of the disciples in the room with Jesus that night died as martyrs. They died, because they had decided to become who they really were in light of the resurrection – human and called to love. 

Our faith does not call us to comfort. It calls us to love. It is worth living this way, because only in risking love can we encounter our humanity as God intended it. And only in loving can we experience the joy and freedom of really being alive. 

Will we accept the risk of humanity, and follow Jesus in his way of love? Or will we stay in our distortions, never getting out of the grave? 

The resurrection dares us to do something. And now is the time to act. Amen. 

References:

Closer to Jesus, Closer to Each Other

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Readings here

You might remember that a couple of weeks ago, we talked about Jesus’ first sermon in the Temple. First, he read from the scroll of the Book of Isaiah: 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 
because he has anointed me 
to bring good news to the poor. 
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives 
and recovery of sight to the blind, 
to let the oppressed go free, 
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”  

Then, he sat down and declared: “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” 

Scholar Luke Timothy Johnson referred to this brief, but powerful teaching as a “programmatic prophecy,” an announcement of Jesus’ gameplan for ministry. 

Three weeks later (for us, not Jesus), now assisted by the twelve apostles, we are seeing Jesus put that “programmatic prophecy” into action. In today’s Gospel reading, which is often referred to as the “Blessings and Woes,” Jesus acts on the call of his life to “bring good news to the poor.” 

(It’s helpful to know that the word used for “poor” in Luke doesn’t just refer to financial lack. As Johnson explains, it refers to anyone without power in society, those without respect, and those who get deprioritized and ignored, because they are seen as embarrassing, burdensome, or even dangerous. 

And maybe most importantly, when Jesus refers to “the poor” in the Gospel of Luke, he means it literally – he is referring to the flesh-and-blood marginalized people of this world.) 

Jesus comes with very good news for these lowly ones: “Blessed are you.” 

Unlike saying “Bless you!” after a sneeze or “Bless your heart” to soften criticism, this blessing is not just a social nicety. The grammatical form of “blessed” suggests that these words, when spoken by God in Christ, actually bring about that reality at the very moment in which they are spoken. 

So, when Jesus declares that the poor, hungry, grieved, and hated ones – the ones without power and respect – are the blessed ones of God, he changes their station in life. Once rejected, they are now the earth’s blessed ones. 

At the same time, those who have always lived secure and respectable lives are now the ones asked to take a hard look at themselves and see whether or not they’re really following God. 

The divine words of Jesus turn the world upside down. Recalling his mom, Mary’s, Magnificat, “He has put down the mighty from their seat: and has exalted the humble and meek.” 

Of course, Jesus isn’t saying something entirely new. But, he is now making real the oldest promise of God to His people: that blessedness is determined solely by our identification with the image of God that is found in all people, not by popularity, status, confidence, or control. 

If this is really true, then it forces everyone gathered there to reconsider what, and who, they follow. Because it forces them to reconsider who is worthy of respect. 

So, let’s look at the people gathered there… Who is Jesus’ audience? Who makes up the crowd? And what do these blessings, and their opposites, mean for how they order their lives? 

“Jesus came down with the twelve apostles and stood on a level place, with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon…And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them….” 

He’s not in the Temple or the town square, and he’s not talking to a particular group of people who share his views, his status, or his ethnicity. Instead, he is standing on level ground on an open plain, eye-to-eye with the great multitude who have joined him there, jostling, chaotic, and pushing in on one another in hopes of touching him. 

Jesus literally and figuratively levels the playing field as he declares blessedness, as he prophesies and heals in and among a diverse crowd. 

In his book, “After Whiteness,” on the theology of seminary communities, Dr. Willie Jennings talks about “the crowd” that surround Jesus as the centering image that should inform our ethic and our lives as Christians. He says: 

“The crowd is everything. The crowd is us. People shouting, screaming, crying, pushing, shoving, calling out to Jesus: “Jesus, help me;” “Jesus, over here.” People being forced to press up against each other to get to Jesus, to hear him and to get what they need from him. People who hate each other, who would prefer not to be next to each other. Pharisees, Sadducees, zealots, rebels, insurrectionists, terrorists, murderers, tax collectors, sinners, all widows, the orphans, the poor, the rich, sex workers. Wanderers, magicians, musicians, thieves, gangsters, centurions. Addicts and magistrates, city leaders, people from all over the Roman Empire, all pressing to hear Jesus…The crowd is not a temporary condition on the way to something else. The crowd is the beginning of a joining that was intended to do deep pedagogical work” (After Whiteness, 18-19). 

I think Jennings is really getting at this: Though we are all different, the work of Jesus Christ is to gather us into the “great multitude of people” gathered around him. As we fix our eyes on Jesus, himself poor and marginalized, we push closer, seeking healing and wholeness. And, as we do, we find ourselves drawing ever closer to each other. 

Among the crowd, on level ground with Jesus and his apostles, we are on equal footing with rich and poor, friend and enemy, and we become something other than our worldly titles and status would suggest. We become a ragtag, misfit, diverse, and dynamic single entity: the crowd. 

And all of us are here because we are looking toward Jesus, as he centers us on words that turn the world upside down. This poor man Jesus, who will be rejected, ridiculed, and crucified by those he came to save, is the blessed one. And those like him are blessed, too. 

But there’s more. Like Jesus and the apostles, we who are here in the crowd become prophets compelled to proclaim that the poor and hungry have been the closest to God’s righteousness all along. And blessedly for us, we don’t have far to go to get close and learn from these righteous ones. They are here: they’re among us and with us in the crowd that follows Jesus. Perhaps they are us. 

But, if the poor and oppressed are not in the crowd that surrounds us – in our lives, in our churches, or in our communities – it is time to ask ourselves why not. And, if we are not living with and among those forsaken ones Jesus calls blessed, it is time to ask ourselves if we are actually following Jesus, or if we accidentally ended up in a different crowd, following someone else. 

Because Jesus always makes his home among the gathered people who yearn for healing, among the crowds, churches, and communities that are messy, diverse, and rough around the edges, where people disagree and figure out how to be together anyway, with people who have all they need, and people who don’t know what that feels like. 

Jesus longs for us to join him in finding that level ground, in finding that equal footing that leads all of us into the blessedness of God. Eye-to-eye with one another, pushing ever closer to Jesus and, therefore, ever closer to each other. 

Friends, I am thankful to be smushed into the crowd that contains such blessed ones as you. May we seek God’s blessedness together. 

Amen. 

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…]

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.

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. 

Surprise, Inspiration, Bold Proclamation: Advent 4

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Five years ago, I journeyed to the diocesan offices in Richmond, Virginia to undergo several hours of interviews for “postulancy.” Postulancy is the first step, of many, on the path to ordination in the Episcopal Church.  

I have heard some people call postulancy the “narrow gate.” Because, for many people, this is the most critical step in an ordination process. In these interviews, the aspiring priest is compelled to describe their call with clarity and conviction to a roomful of strangers. 

That day in Richmond, I was finally at the end of my interview, and they asked the closing question: “Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?” 

To everyone’s surprise – including my own – I blurted out some garbled sentence about Mary. Whether compelled by the Holy Spirit or by the delirium of anxiety, in that moment, I needed to talk about Mary. It suddenly felt urgent to tell them that Mary’s call by God to mother the Savior of the World meant a whole lot to me. 

As a kid growing up in churches that didn’t let women teach or preach, Mary had become my friend. She was a reminder that women could also be a part of God’s story. And not only that: in the story of Jesus, especially Luke’s telling, women are the first to be called. 

Mary, and her cousin Elizabeth, are prophets and apostles in the first chapter in the story of Jesus. In the most literal terms, they grew, nurtured, and birthed good news into the world, Elizabeth, as the mother of John the Baptist, and Mary, as the mother of Jesus. 

Jesus’ ministry with and for us on earth occurred, because Mary took the risk of saying, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord.” 

I told the committee all of these things as I pondered them in my heart. I pondered a little too hard, because I started crying from the beauty and weight of it all. 

My rector, who had accompanied me to the meetings, had an amused expression on his face. Later, we laughed together as he recounted how I had made myself cry during an optional question at the very end of a long interview. But, I’m glad Mary showed up during that intense moment in my life. 

Because, in many ways, she is the template of the life of faith, not one defined just by having the will to believe, but by moments of surprise, inspiration, and bold proclamation that lead to sustained trust in God. 

In today’s Gospel reading, Mary is inspired by Elizabeth’s Spirit-filled blessing to view her strange and miraculous pregnancy within the whole history of God’s persistent goodness. As soon as Elizabeth calls her “blessed,” she starts up with an original song we now call the Magnificat… 

He has mercy on those who fear him
in every generation. 
He has shown the strength of his arm,
he has scattered the proud in their conceit. 
He has cast down the mighty from their thrones,
and has lifted up the lowly. 
He has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty. 
He has come to the help of his servant Israel,
for he has remembered his promise of mercy. 

Though her words are spoken with the boldness of a prophet, Mary is not foretelling the future. With sudden urgency, she is actually sharing what has already, and always, been true about this loving, generous, just, and merciful God.  

She says: God has already fed the hungry; freed his people from slavery; dethroned tyrants; sustained orphans, widows, and refugees; and brought the lost back to their homes, back to the flock, and back into the arms of God. 

Maybe Mary surprised herself when she blurted all that out. Maybe God’s promises had felt far away for awhile. Maybe on that long journey to visit Elizabeth, the initial joy of her miraculous pregnancy had given way to fear, confusion, and even doubt. 

But then, the Holy Spirit prompted Elizabeth to say exactly what Mary needed to hear: “Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” 

Elizabeth’s words rang true. They hit her like a bolt of lightning that illuminated the dark night of Mary’s strange circumstances. It helped for someone else to say, out loud, that she had already been called, and that meant she could rise to the challenge of God’s continued call on her life, no matter where it took her.  

This realization compelled her to sing! She had professed God’s goodness, she had seen the proof of that goodness throughout time, and now it was time to trust it.  

This is how she embodied the life of faith: as a cycle of memory, inspiration, and bold proclamation, with each one necessary to reviving and sustaining the other. 

This week, New York Times columnist David Brooks, wrote a piece on his own life of faith, entitled The Shock of Faith: It’s nothing like I thought it would be (gift link). In it, he shares the non-linear path that led him from atheism to whole-hearted participation in Jewish and Christian communities.  

He talks about coming to faith, not as single moment of conversion, but as “an inspiration” that occurs at various times throughout life. He says that the first time he felt this inspiration, it was “as though someone had breathed life into those old biblical stories so that they now appeared true.” 

In particular, Brooks shares a story about being startled by God on a hiking trip, as he read a Puritan prayer: 

Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up,  
That to be low is to be high,  
That the broken heart is the healed heart,  
That the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit,  
That the repenting soul is the victorious soul. 

Suddenly, it hit him that these paradoxical sayings were true. He says he was “seized by joy” and suddenly aware of the beauty all around him. 

In a paragraph that recalls Mary’s Magnificat, Brooks goes on to say: 

“That contact with radical goodness, that glimpse into the hidden reality of things, didn’t give me new ideas; it made real an ancient truth that had lain unbidden at the depth of my consciousness. We are embraced by a moral order. What we call good and evil are not just preferences that this or that set of individuals invent according to their tastes. Rather, slavery, cruelty and rape are wrong at all times and in all places, because they are an assault on something that is sacred in all times and places, human dignity. Contrariwise, self-sacrificial love, generosity, mercy and justice are not just pleasant to see. They are fixed spots on an eternal compass, things you can orient your life toward.” 

Brooks suggests that faith may be born in the will to believe, but it is sustained in transcendent moments of awe, in nudges from the Holy Spirit that lead us to recall God’s faithfulness in history, and trust in his goodness, in all times and places. 

Through the witness of their lives, Mary and other people of faith remind us that goodness is intrinsic to God’s nature, and that love, generosity, mercy, and justice are God’s intended order of the universe. 

Yet, even as we will ourselves to believe, we cannot guarantee that the life of faith will prevent fear, confusion, or even doubt. We may not always feel like a part of God’s story. We may need someone to bless us and remind us of how God sustained his people in the wilderness. We will need to be inspired, in quiet moments and lightning bolt shocks, over and over again. 

My hope in these last days of Advent is that we take heart and find moments of joy in our life of faith, unburdened by worries that we’re not holy or good enough to be called by God.  

Like Mary, we can embrace this journey with God as a cycle of memory, inspiration, and bold proclamation, with each one necessary to reviving and sustaining the other. 

God calls us, and God will come near to us again. Amen. 

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.”

Jesus, Our Neighbor (in the Buy Nothing Group)

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You open wide your hand 
and satisfy the needs of every living creature. 

Readings here.

Ever since the start of the start of the pandemic, I have been a member of my neighborhood’s “Buy Nothing Group.”  The Buy Nothing Project is a national organization with one goal in mind: forge community connections by giving and receiving, without exchanging any money. 

To join one, you simply find your neighborhood group on Facebook and verify with the admin that you actually live there. From there, you start interacting with your neighbors in a “gift economy.” 

During the pandemic, I was part of a large Buy Nothing group that included nearly all of New Haven, Connecticut, from scrappy grad students in falling-apart duplexes to rich people in Victorian mansions to residents in subsidized housing. 

In a Buy Nothing Group, none of these economic categories mattered. The only thing that mattered is that you were willing to give and receive without judgment. 

When we adopted a kitten who was destroying all our house plants, I gave them away to my neighbors for a better chance at survival. When my French Press coffee maker broke, a neighbor gave me hers.  And when we were getting ready to move to Texas, I was able to give away three bags full of groceries to a woman whose refrigerator had just broken down, spoiling all her food. 

But these were just the small things.  

Being in a Buy Nothing Group wasn’t just about what I could offer or receive.  It was about witnessing other people’s generosity. 

Someone offered up their car on loan so a neighbor could get to doctors’ appointments.  People painted each other’s houses, moved heavy furniture up and down third-floor walkups, and shared backyard garden harvests. They offered their skills, like carpentry, and their time as babysitters.  

In some ways, I think I mentally survived those dark days of lockdown because I was in a Buy Nothing group. That group gave me more than hope. It gave me proof that goodness was already in the world. 

In the middle of an apocalypse, we were still living in beatitude.

— 

At a basic level, the Buy Nothing Project is just a common-sense way to get rid of things you don’t want. But it’s transformative because it is principled – community connection matters more than transactional exchange. 

One of the primary principles is that: “We come from a place of abundance ~ not scarcity.” 

It asks its participants to behave as though there is more than enough to go around. 

Which is actually a big deal, considering our entire economic system runs on “scarcity.” The idea that “supply is limited” is good for business, because it convinces us that we should spend now and spend more to get what we want or need. 

But economic scarcity impacts more than the bottom line. It forms our social world, too. Scarcity thrives on a dichotomy between the haves and have-nots, and on the power differential between the “self-made” success stories and the naive poor.  It implies there’s not enough to go around. It makes every person on this planet our competition. 

Scarcity discourages us from being generous. Because we feel like we will never have enough. And in all this, it keeps us from building meaningful, dependent relationships with our neighbors and communities.  

We keep everyone at arm’s length, either to protect our assets or protect our pride. We can’t risk giving or receiving in a world of scarcity. 

— 

Over the years, I have often returned to an article written by Hebrew Bible scholar and theologian Walter Brueggemann, entitled “The Liturgy of Abundance, the Myth of Scarcity.”  

In the article, he rejects the idea of scarcity by tracing a theme of “abundance” in the Bible. He starts from the beginning, when God creates the lush and bountiful earth and all its creatures, calling it “very good.” 

He talks about God’s promise to the chosen people of Israel – how, even in hardship, war, and slavery, God ultimately provides for their need. 

  • God gives them manna in the wilderness, and quail when they complain it’s not enough.  
  • God promises them a land flowing with “milk and honey,” a phrase that points toward, not just sustenance, but an overabundance of good things. 
  • God raises up radicals and prophets who constantly remind them to turn away from idols and kings that promise them the world’s riches in exchange for their freedom.  
  • God folds foreigners, women, the poor, and the ostracized into the ongoing story of God and his people, widening the boundaries of the Kingdom of God. 

In all this, God reveals that scarcity, with all its hoarding, boundary-making, withholding, and harsh judgment is not the ethic of the Kingdom of God. 

Today’s story continues that theme of abundance… 

The message of Jesus has been spreading, and now over 5,000 people are gathered to catch a glimpse of him. They have come for healing and hope. But right now, they are hungry. 

And apparently only one boy remembered to pack a lunch. And it’s the lunch of a peasant: bread made from cheap barley and two fish. 

Jesus begins distributing the food and miraculously, everyone is fed, with twelve baskets of food left over. Here, in the most obvious way, our Scriptures reveal that God is a God of abundance. He not only provides for the basic needs of those surrounding him, his generosity overflows. 

This miraculous act of feeding shows the 5,000 that God’s act of abundant creation in Genesis never stopped. Now, it is being lived out in the person of Jesus Christ. More than providing hope, it was proof that goodness was still active in the world. 

— 

But notice that this miracle of abundance was not solely an act of God.  

The Feeding of the 5,000 was kind of like a Buy Nothing Group, if Jesus was your neighbor. The people were hungry. The disciples facilitated. A boy offered what he had. Jesus opened his hands and spread it around. And the people willingly received. 

Giving and receiving required participation from the people in the crowd.  It required a willingness to try from the skeptical disciples, deep trust from the boy, and an honoring of that trust from Jesus.  

And it required a different economic principle – where the entire point was community flourishing. Each person’s open heart and open hand was acknowledged there on that hillside, and then multiplied exponentially in the hands of Jesus. 

Those who bore witness to the Feeding of the 5,000 – as we do now – were reminded that God’s economy is one of abundance, where even the passive desire to care for one another can lead to a miracle. 

— 

We live so much of our lives with our fists closed tight around what we have, afraid that if we lose it, we won’t have what we need. But our scriptures reveal a God who is continually working to gain our trust, and to pry our fingers open.  

God “opens wide his hand” and shows us how to live into abundance. True freedom comes when we trust him enough let go of our pride and accept the gift he is handing to us, take what we need, and then keep passing it on. 

Even the smallest act of letting go and receiving can destabilize the myth of scarcity that poisons our society. Even the most meager resource, offered with open hands, can meet the need and change the hearts of those who witness the exchange. 

And so, we pray that God will pry open our fingers and open our hands, to receive his abundant gift and to pass it on to others until the whole world is not only fed, but full.  Amen.