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One Little Choice After Another: Epiphany

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nevertheless, the Magi entered the story… 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen. 

Someday at Christmas

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

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

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

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

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

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

But one in particular stood out… 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Words had become flesh. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amen. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is what Advent is all about.

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

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

Amen.

Yet all are one in Thee | All Saints’ Sermon

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Convicted”: Lazarus and the Rich Man

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a man lies on the street with a clothesline in the background

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I grew up in an Evangelical denomination. My husband, Daniel, grew up Lutheran. When Daniel and I first met, it’s like we spoke a different language of faith.

One day, while eating lunch together in the Student Union, I told Daniel that “I felt convicted” to make a certain change in my life. As I kept describing what I had been thinking about, I could tell he was no longer able to listen. To my surprise, he blurted out, “what do you mean, you were…convicted?”

“You know, convicted…God ‘laid it on my heart’ to understand something differently than before. For example, to forgive my roommate, to give money to an important cause, to trust in God more.”

Daniel was struggling, not with the concept, but with the word itself. Because, if you’re not coming from a faith context that uses that word, the only place you hear the word “convicted” is in a criminal context. And no one on a police procedural is being convicted to give money to the poor. They are being convicted of… murder.

Why was I taught to apply such serious language to relatively minor circumstances of my faith? Couldn’t I have used softer, more positive language? Couldn’t I have said that I felt the Holy Spirit guiding me to do something good, rather than “convicting” me about what I wasn’t doing?

One reason I joined the Episcopal Church was because of that shift in tone. Instead of feeling like a moral failure all the time, I could rest in the assurance that God didn’t see me that way. Instead of wasting away as a “convict,” I could be guided and led, like a little sheep, to better pastures, by the Good Shepherd who had sought me out. It’s amazing what one little shift in language can do…

Still, looking back on that conversation with Daniel, in light of today’s Gospel reading, I wonder if there’s something salvageable in the idea of “being convicted.”

Not always, but sometimes…

Today, Jesus continues his teachings on wealth and the Kingdom of God by sharing another parable, a fictional story meant to convey a moral reality. Like I mentioned last week, parables are often “multivalent.” This means they can have multiple interpretations, values, and meanings. While there might be a central theme, your life experience, and the way you place yourself in the story, impact what you get out of it.

That’s what I love about Jesus’ parables. They never get old. Every time we encounter them, there’s an opportunity to think differently.

In this parable, we learn that a poor man, Lazarus, has spent years outside the well-appointed gates of a rich man’s house. Covered in sores and on the edge of starvation, he sits among the dogs, He survives on the rich man’s trash. Meanwhile, the rich man wines and dines, thinking nothing of Lazarus or his circumstances.

Eventually, both of the men die. While Lazarus goes to paradise, the rich man goes to “Hades.” While Hades doesn’t perfectly map onto our modern sense of Hell, there is no question that Jesus is making a clear judgment call. The poor man Lazarus, who suffered all his life, now receives comfort among the angels and the patriarchs of the faith. The rich man, who had access to every creature comfort, now suffers in the afterlife.

Over the years, he distanced himself from the “riff-raff” on the streets; and in doing so, distanced himself from the central tenets of his faith. Now, there is no one who can come to his aid. There’s no other way to put it: the rich man was “convicted” of his past wrongdoings – in the literal sense.

Of course, we remember that a parable is a fictional story that speaks to a moral reality. And this story is a warning for the crowd – very much still living – that surrounds Jesus as he tells it. Jesus’ audience is “convicted,” in the spiritual sense now, toward right action, faithfulness to God, and love for their neighbors. They are reminded that the God of Abraham and Moses commanded these things, not to punish, but to protect, in order to lead them to a rewarding life in the here and now, that continues for eternity.

The moral of the story isn’t just about personal, financial giving – though that’s certainly a part of it – but about seeing our fellow humans through the eyes of God, and then acting on that vision. The rich man failed to see Lazarus as a person – he was just another dog on the street. And both of them suffered from that affront to human dignity. The life God calls his people to is one where physical, spiritual, and relational suffering is acknowledged so that it can be alleviated.

But I am also struck by another lesson:

And that is: “You already know how to live righteously.”

The rich man begs Abraham to send word to his brothers about their coming fate…

‘He said, Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father’s house– for I have five brothers– that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ Abraham replied, They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ He said, No, father Abraham; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ He said to him, If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.'”

The rich man argues that only a supernatural intervention could convince his brothers to live in the promise of God. But Abraham sees this for the misguided notion that it is. He says that the ancestors in the faith have already conveyed the truth. With the authority of God himself, they proclaimed God’s love and justice. They proclaimed, like the Psalmist, that God is the one who saves. They proclaimed, like Jeremiah, that those who suffer are held in high regard by their Creator, and restored to lands of abundance.

And beyond proclamation, the history of God’s people revealed the truth of God, over and over again. In slavery, exile, and persecution, God remained with his people, asking only that they remain with God, and see the face of God in all people.

If the rich man’s brothers can’t understand the proclamation of patriarchs, poets, and prophets – and the history of their own people – then a divine intervention won’t change their minds now.

In our own struggle to live faithful lives, how often do we find ourselves hoping for a divine intervention?

When I’m trying to make a decision or solve a complicated problem, I know I have asked for signs and miracles. I have complained to God that the path forward is unclear. I have insisted, with great drama, that I can’t move forward without the confirmation of a booming voice from Heaven.

But Jesus now proclaims:

“You already know how to live righteously…”

“He has told you, O mortal, what is good,
 and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice and to love kindness
 and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8)

‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:36-40)

If we are convicted, let us be convicted of this:

We don’t have to wait for God to tell us how to be, or how to live. Because God has been here all along, waiting for us. In scripture, history, and experience, we have all the proof we need of God’s faithfulness. We have all the knowledge we need to make faithful choices that lead to abundant life, in the here and now, and for eternity.

We don’t need to fear Hades. We don’t need to wait for God to tell us what to do. In every generation, our call is the same:

Run into the arms of the God of mercy, who is not far away. And remain in his grace, showing that same mercy to others.

Amen.

Heaven Smart: The Dishonest Manager

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Here at this parish, my fellow priests and I have the great fortune of doing a weekly Bible Study together. Every Wednesday after staff meeting, the five or six of us take turns reading the Sunday scriptures and chatting with each other about what they are saying, and what they might mean for this congregation in our time. As we read this week’s Gospel passage about the quote-unquote “dishonest manager” who is, nevertheless, said to “act shrewdly,” we were puzzled.

In this parable of Jesus, only found in Luke, the rich owner of a big farm operation threatens to fire his business manager for incompetence. So, the business manager goes to everyone who owes the company money and cuts them a deal. After all the deals are made, the manager reports back to the owner, and the owner is quite pleased with him.

The manager may not have made back all of the money that was owed, but at least he had done something, and it likely benefited everyone involved: the debtors got a discount, the manager got in their good graces, and the owner got some of what was due.

The story itself makes sense, I think. But what’s confusing is this word “dishonest.” The manager is called a “dishonest manager.” And when Jesus inserts his own commentary, he says:

“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”

Uh…what? Where exactly does dishonesty come into play, and what does this have to do with Jesus?

Are we supposed to be “con artists…for Christ?”

As you can imagine, this set the clergy Bible Study on edge. We were abuzz with anxious energy…

“Maybe we’re not getting something about the ancient world?” one priest suggested.

“Maybe I’ll just stick to the Jeremiah reading this week,” another priest said.

“…Good luck with that, it’s pretty bleak,” I muttered under my breath.

Meanwhile, in my notebook I was making notes about junk fees and commissions and kickbacks, desperately trying to find a hook that could make meaning of this story, and Jesus’ seeming suggestion that we should do sketchy business dealings for the sake of the Gospel.

It turns out that even the most learnéd scholars are unsure of the complete meaning of this parable. One scholar, Rudolf Bultmann, even suggested that true meaning is, quote, “irrecoverable.” Unable to be recovered.

Fortunately, others, like Andrew McGowan, don’t think the situation is that dire. His commentary reminds the reader that, while every parable, or moral story, of Jesus contains metaphors meant to relate to some aspect of the Kingdom of God, not every parable is an allegory.

This means that, while the story references an aspect of Jesus’ ethical framework, it doesn’t mean that every single part of it maps perfectly onto reality. To understand the underlying ethic of this story, we can’t just pull out a couple verses from it, and call those things the plain truth.

We have to look at the story as a whole: who the people are, what they are doing, their underlying motives, and the impact of their actions. We have to enter their world.

So, let’s try…

The first thing to note is that the Greek word for “dishonest” translates to something closer to “unrighteous” or “unjust,” and the phrase, “dishonest manager” is more like “manager of injustice.”

Basically, the manager isn’t uniquely “dishonest” – he is as unjust as anyone else forced to do business in an inherently unjust context: where luck and ambition determine who gets to live well. That means that the gist of this story isn’t that the business manager is “dishonest,” it’s that he is living within a society run by money. And that means he has to make difficult and imperfect choices in order to get by.

As a middle manager, his job was to collect the rent from land that was cultivated by tenant farmers. This was not a profitable business for the renting farmers, but merely a way to survive. Hopefully, after rent was paid, they would have enough left over to take care of their families.

In order for the manager to make money, he would need to take the rent that was owed to the owner, his boss, and add an additional fee, which he would then keep as his own income.

Apparently, the manager had not been doing this successfully. The story implies that he had failed to collect the rent at all. Under pressure from the owner, he finally does go out and collect the rent, but he offers such a large discount, that it doesn’t seem like he’ll have any take-home pay.

He undercuts himself to the benefit of both the tenant farmers and the owner, in hopes that this will foster positive future relationships when the money runs out.

On paper, the manager is kind of bad at his job. And yet, the owner praises him for finding an imperfect solution in an unjust system.

When we take a look at the story as a whole, we see a bigger truth that resonates with our world today…

We are still caught up in a social and economic system that forces us into lifestyles of injustice. We are all victims of institutions and businesses that exploit our work while diminishing our humanity.

And we are all exploiters ourselves. We do what it takes to feed our families and have a roof over our heads, at a cost to someone else, whether it’s a factory worker in Bangladesh or a minimum wage worker in Austin.

Because we are caught up in the middle of things, we may not be able to fix the whole system, but that’s not the point…of this parable, at least.

The point is that we can make choices about how our money moves, even when we don’t have much power. We can make choices about how we see ourselves in the middle of everything – choosing to use our limited agency to solve a problem, even if imperfectly.

We can repent for the ways we have let money make decisions for us, instead of leading with our values. And we can determine to choose lasting relationships over monetary gains.

We can let money be a tool for a good life instead of a solution in itself.

And this leads us back to our Collect…

Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure.

Heaven – shorthand for the Kingdom of God – is a very different kind of business venture. The point isn’t what you can show for yourself. It is how you show up: on the path of Christ, in the community of the faithful, and in the world Christ longs to draw to himself.

The Kingdom of God is about who you are and who you are with, a ragtag group of rich and poor, owner, manager, and tenant, all members of the household of God. As Christians, we cultivate friendships and communities that are heaven smart, not business smart. We find pathways and build bridges, not by force, but through humble, risky, self-sacrificial connection.

We live in an imperfect, unjust system of “dishonest wealth” that we cannot ultimately count on. The only thing we can count on is God, and one another. So, we open our hands and let go of what binds us. We grab our neighbors’ hands, and we pass the peace and pray. We commune together, and we take care of one another.

And we are drawn more deeply into the broken and healed Body of Christ, who binds up the broken things in us – the injustice, the indignity, past wrongs – so that we can find a home with one another.

Amen.

–

References:

Rules are What Make Things Fun?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jesus Has Stepped Out of Line

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Freedom, Flesh, Fear

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One of the most frustrating things about being a human, at least for me, is that you don’t just get to a point where you have everything figured out. You can check off a lot of your goals, but at the end of the day, you’re still just a little creature flailing around. Deep down, you’re still just that little kid asking big questions about the world and how you fit into it.

My husband, Daniel, and I have been talking about this recently. More specifically, we’ve been reflecting on the core values that guide the decisions we make. I like to think that, deep down, I am driven by virtues of kindness, peace, love, and joy. And those are real values I hold.

But Daniel very astutely pointed out that I am also driven by a less positive value: I am deeply afraid of getting in trouble. I am a card-carrying, life-long rule follower. Not because the rules always make sense. Not because I always agree with them. And certainly not because I think rules are somehow innately virtuous and always there to protect us.

(In fact, I do have a radical streak in me. In my 20s, I tried to bring about significant reforms at the retail stores and factories I worked at. It didn’t work.) But I have to admit that fear is always at play, making me doubt myself and making it harder to live into those virtuous core values. After months of reckoning with this fear, I encountered today’s epistle reading, and something shook loose.

Today, Paul sets two “F-words” in opposition to one another: Freedom and Flesh. Christians have often misunderstood the way Paul uses the word “flesh.” He doesn’t mean it simply as the physical body. Rather, “flesh” is a way of thinking about our natural inclinations in a broken world. The “works of the flesh,” which we might call “sin,” are attitudes and actions driven by ego and self-protection. They are things that keep people divided, that cause schisms and disappointments beyond repair. They are habits that keep people chained in cycles of addiction and isolation. They are distractions that keep us from loving our neighbor as ourselves.

These “works of the flesh” are ultimately “works of fear.” Because they are motivated, deep down, by fear: fear that we are not lovable, that we don’t have enough, that we will be misunderstood, that there’s an unseen enemy lurking around every corner.

But the F-word that Jesus invites us to is neither Flesh nor Fear. It is Freedom.

“For freedom Christ has set us free.” I tried to figure out why the sentence was phrased that way, but that’s really what it means: Christ has set us free so that we can be free. In the original context, this meant that the early Christians were free from a rigidly interpreted Jewish legal code. But that idea can be expanded. For us today, the scripture suggests that we are free from the ideologies, expectations, and fears that don’t allow us to imagine a world beyond “flesh.”

Christ’s freedom is not the limited freedom of our patriotic songs, which ask us to prove our allegiance to one place and one people. It is not the violent freedom that we take by trampling on others, dividing people into categories of powerful and weak, ally and enemy. It is not the regulated freedom brought about by man-made laws, which by their very nature can only restrict the worst in us, not encourage the best in us. Christ’s freedom is certainly not the small, false freedom I achieve when I avoid getting into trouble.

It’s bigger than all of that. “For freedom Christ has set us free.” The freedom of Christ is different from anything we have ever encountered in this world of flesh, because it exists beyond fear. It rejects “brokenness” as the natural order of things and reveals “love of neighbor” as the natural order of the Kingdom of God.

As Paul told us in last week’s reading, there is no dichotomy that Jesus hasn’t already destroyed: “…there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

The freedom of resurrection life is so big that it cannot be defined against what it is not. True freedom doesn’t require haves and have-nots to define its own quality of freedom. True freedom is found in the flattening of hierarchies and abandonment of control. It is evident in our mutual relationship to Christ and one another, as we become a part of his Body in the world.

Theologian Kathryn Tanner puts it this way: “All our action is to be like that of the ministers at the Lord’s banquet table, distributing outward to others the gifts of the Father that have become ours in and through the Son” (Jesus, Humanity, and the Trinity). We are free to give, free to receive, and free to luxuriate in God’s goodness in us, through us, and all around us.

“For freedom Christ has set us free.” What a profound and odd statement: to be free for the sake of freedom.

But if we could just lean into it, feel it, and let go of just a little bit of our fear, do you realize that the world would be an entirely different place? We would be governed not by things that divide, isolate, and shame us, but by the neighborly love of the Kingdom of God. Shaken loose, we would bubble over with love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. These attributes would become infectious, leading us deeper into resurrection life and bringing the world with us.

When we follow Jesus, we are called to be radical in the original sense of the word—to “affect the fundamental nature of something.”

We are called, first, to believe that Christ made us for freedom, not for fear. Then we are called to turn this world of the flesh into a world overgrown with fruits of the Spirit. We do that by rejecting fear as a core value, by committing to love beyond man-made boundaries, and by letting go of control. And by practicing actions and attitudes that lead us back to communion with Christ and one another.

The day we finally understand that we are free, there will be so much fruit, the whole world will feast.

Amen.

All That We Can Understand or Desire

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“O God, you have prepared for those who love you such good things as surpass our understanding. Pour into our hearts such love towards you, that we, loving you in all things and above all things, may obtain your promises, which exceed all that we can desire…” 

A few weeks ago, I was asked to join two other Austin-area priests in a panel discussion for the Episcopal Parish Network. The topic was “atypical church models.”  One priest leads a church that doesn’t have its own building. The other leads a colorful, LGBTQ-inclusive church that meets in a storefront. And, as you know, I’m the priest at a two-campus parish, one of only a handful in the Episcopal Church. 

The EPN group recognized that these models of ministry might represent the “growing edges” of the Episcopal Church, as it becomes less of an establishment institution and more of a missional one. 

They were especially curious about the way small congregations build an identity and ethos as the community adapts and grows. We talked about how a congregation grounded in prayer and discernment takes on a kind of personality that isn’t just one person’s preference, but a combination of tastes, ideas, and passions adding up to more than the sum of its parts.  

I like to think of the resulting context as the Holy Spirit’s personality, tailored to this time and place for the people who are here today and the people who will be here tomorrow. 

This congregation knows what this process feels like. Since its founding, you have done deep and ongoing discernment to build this community and you are used to pivoting. It isn’t always easy, and sometimes, it has been discouraging,  

But, I believe that we are always getting more comfortable with letting the Holy Spirit guide us beyond our own imagination. As we continue in our strategic planning on this campus, this will be the key. Because, it’s just a fact that, when we ask God to help us be attentive to where he is leading us, we will always be surprised by the path we end up on, but we will be delighted, too. 

Because God’s promises surpass our understanding, and exceed all that we can desire. 

– 

But don’t take my word for it! There are stories of surprise and delight all around us… 

Here’s one: On Wednesday morning, acclaimed public interest lawyer Bryan Stevenson preached at Seminary of the Southwest’s graduation.  

As the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Stevenson has dedicated his life to improving the justice system. He and his team have “won reversals, relief, or release from prison for over 140 wrongly condemned prisoners on death row…” As one presenter noted, Bryan Stevenson has, quite literally, changed the world. But he didn’t plan it that way. 

Stevenson got his undergraduate degree in Philosophy, and then realized that no one would hire someone with an undergraduate degree in Philosophy. With no real plan in mind, he went to law school. 

Early on in his program, he took a class that required him to go to Georgia and meet with a person on death row.  In his early 20s, with no expertise and no credentials, the proposition filled him with fear. But he showed up and entered the room. 

He spent the first several minutes telling the man he was sorry, because he didn’t know anything and couldn’t help. But finally, he said what he had been coached to say: “You will not be executed in the next year.” The man thanked him profusely, because that meant he could invite his family to visit him without fearing the worst news. 

Stevenson and the imprisoned man spent the next two hours talking to one another. They found out they shared a birthday and were the exact same age. By the time he left, they had become friends. 

Stevenson told us that the encounter left him changed in a way that would shape the rest of his life. He had entered the prison in fear and trembling – everything in him had resisted it – and he had left with a new calling. God had led him to places that surpassed his understanding, and there was joy by the time he got there. 

Because, God’s promises exceeded all that he could desire. 

– 

Today’s scripture readings are marked by similar encounters… 

In Acts, Paul has a vision that leads him to Philippi, in Macedonia. He doesn’t know why he’s supposed to go there, but he senses that God wants him to go. Once there, he meets a woman named Lydia. She is a successful businesswoman who makes her money selling expensive purple cloth. She is also a woman of sincere faith.  

At Lydia’s prompting, Paul and Silas baptize her and her household, and she becomes one of the major benefactors of the church, even hosting church services in her home. It becomes one of the most significant congregations of the early church. 

The fact that Lydia is a woman is significant. According to the norms of the day, there is no reason for Paul and Silas to take a woman seriously, even if she is wealthy. There is no precedent for letting a woman set the terms for her family’s conversion. And it was scandalous that Lydia offered herself as the host for these men who did not belong to her household. 

Paul, who had devoted his life to upholding rigid cultural norms, had followed the Spirit on a mission beyond his understanding, and now he had a woman for a ministry partner! What Paul had once scorned, he now delighted in.  

God’s promises exceeded all that he could desire. 

– 

In Revelation, John of Patmos is carried away to behold the heavenly city of God. Held in neglect in a prison cell, he is somehow encountering the bounty of Christ. Held in darkness, he is nevertheless surrounded by the ambient light of Christ. Left to die, he is brought into an understanding of eternal life. 

Though a prisoner in the eyes of the world, John is a prophet in the eyes of God. Though scorned, God delighted in him. God gave him visions that surpassed his understanding. 

God’s promises exceeded all that he could to desire. 

– 

In the Gospel of John, a man stands up for the first time in 38 years. All he wanted was for someone to let him get into the therapeutic pool called Bethzetha: “House of Grace,” He was only looking for temporary relief. 

But Christ calls him to stand. Risking embarrassment and disappointment, the man does. He immediately goes to the temple to worship God. Christ could see beyond the man’s self-understanding. 

God’s promises exceeded all that he could to desire for himself. 

– 

The life of faith doesn’t come with a map. We know this.

But, sometimes, fearing embarrassment and disappointment, we think that we’re not doing it right unless we know exactly where we’re going from the start. 

Other times, we believe the lie that following Jesus is primarily a practice of “fear and trembling.” That’s it’s supposed to be hard all the time. 

Sometimes, we fear the work itself. We don’t want to have to change our minds: about who we are, about who God is, and about who is worth listening to. 

But our Collect gets it right: If we commit to staying close to God, in prayer and discernment, fostering a habit of love, God will lead us to places we never thought we’d go.  

These places will “surpass all that we can understand…or desire.” They will be places where cultural norms need not apply, because the church is for everyone. They will be places where darkness is turned to light, and the prisoners become the prophets. They will be places where the impossible is made possible, just as we had settled for “good enough.” 

We need not fear or fret about where the road is leading…It is always leading home, to the surprising and beautiful paradise of Christ. And his home is a “house of grace.” 

Amen. 

Closer to Jesus, Closer to Each Other

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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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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. 

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.