Will and Affections

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for the 5th Sunday in Lent are here.

Y’all may have picked up on the fact that I’m not shy about substituting words in the Book of Common Prayer; I modernize the use of thees and thous because, like many Anglican theologians before me, I believe that worship and scripture should be in the common language. I use words that include both men and women when referring to humanity as a whole and sometimes I add the name of women who have too long been hidden. Today, you may have noticed what I did with the word ‘sinner’ in our opening prayer.

If you were here a few weeks ago on the first Sunday in Lent, y’all know how I feel about the labels ‘sinner’ and ‘wretched’. Time may move like molasses when it comes to revising our prayer book – and I do love our Book of Common Prayer – but our understanding of human psychology and the use of demeaning labels has grown since even the last revision in 1979 and I believe that our theology must evolve with this understanding.

And, so, I’ll say what I did then: We must be careful with the labels we assign to ourselves and others. When we define ourselves or others by our worst characteristics or behaviors, we cover up the beauty of the image of God in all people. We are not sinners, we are not wretched, we are human beings, beloved of God, who sin, who choose our own way of defining good and bad rather than God’s way. We have unruly wills and affections. Yet sin does not delete the image of God within us nor does it erase God calling us good.

Our scriptures are full of stories of folks not so different from us who had unruly wills and affections. Our faith ancestors felt free to tell their identity stories with both positive and negative episodes. They seemed to understand far better than we do the importance of acknowledging what they got wrong as well as what they got right. Acknowledging we have strayed from God’s ways like lost sheep comes from a desire to be in relationship with God; from an instinctual understanding that we are most human in relationship with our Creator. Berating ourselves or others doesn’t draw us into closer relationship with God. When we choose to berate ourselves or others, we are saying that God’s name for us is incorrect and God’s gift of forgiveness isn’t sufficient.

Remember that God created us good and yes, sometimes God calls us ‘stiffnecked’ but really, can we say God is wrong with that? We can be stubborn about wanting to do things our way. Psychologists tell us that a little feeling of guilt is good, it guides us away from harmful behavior and towards what is right. But when we let guilt ferment into shame, we’ve let it stew too long. Guilt is about our behavior: “I feel bad because I did such and such and it caused harm to others and myself and I want to do better.” Shame is about our identity: “I am a bad person because I do bad things.”

Our true identity comes from the image of God within each of us. And, yes, we have unruly wills and affections, but the Good News of Jesus, the good news that God has worked to convey to everyone since, well, the beginning of creation, is that we are created and lovingly designed for LOVE and community. It is when we choose another way that we miss the mark. We have a choice to let God shape us as God’s beloved or not.

Jesus asks the question, should I pray for God to rescue me from the pain and suffering I must endure for the sake of all and answers his own question – no, because this is the purpose for which Jesus came and all that Jesus did was for God’s glory.

Committing ourselves to God’s Way, the Way of Love that Jesus walked in flesh and blood, is the way our our heart, soul, mind, and strength are oriented to the true joy of God’s Way. This is how we bring Glory to God, by living as God created us to live and showing the world God’s Love.

We give up our way – we let go of the life we may want to craft for ourselves that puts us at the center – and we receive the life God has in store for us, following and serving Jesus for God’s Glory. Like a seed, we must die before we can grow and bear fruit.

When we chose to live for the glory to God’s kingdom with all that we think say and do, it changes the world even when we can’t see it on the evening news. There are still wars and famines and natural disasters; still shootings and killings. There are still people so in love with power that they think nothing of oppressing and abusing others to maintain that power. There are still people so in love with themselves that they are blinded to the needs of anyone else.

In all of the hate and fear and anger and war of this world, people are crying out “we wish to see Jesus” even if they don’t use these particular words. When we see and experience suffering in this world and our hearts are troubled we follow Jesus’ example. God doesn’t cause us to suffer for God’s glory but in suffering, we know that God is with us and we help others see God’s love, by our prayers; by our actions; by our listening; by our words; by our giving of work, wisdom, and wealth.

The new Covenant that the prophet Jeremiah speaks of is the divine assistance, the power of the Holy Spirit in us, that writes God’s law of love on our hearts. We no longer live for ourselves but for the greater good of all, together, side-by-side, following Jesus, doing what is ours to do and equipping each other for Kingdom work, all the while being shaped by God’s love. This inner transformation, this taming of our unruly wills and affections, will one day render the idea of sin obsolete because we will no longer desire our own way but only God’s way of love, justice, and humility*.

We follow and serve Jesus as we love God, our neighbor, and ourselves with our whole being – heart, soul, mind, and strength. And God, throughout the whole of our life, trains our unruly wills and affections toward the Kingdom on earth as in heaven.

Next Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week, the most important week of the church year – the week we walk though the very purpose for which Jesus came: to show the world that God’s love is more powerful than any force in this world. These dark forces thought they were burying Jesus but instead, like a seed buried in the ground, he rose to bear the fruit of God’s Kingdom so that we too, could participate in this transformation of power.

Begin planning your time now so that you can participate in all that Holy Week has to offer – the entry into Jerusalem, the fellowship of Jesus with his closest disciples as they celebrate the Passover together, and yes, the pain and suffering as they watch his arrest and crucifixion. And finally, the joyful triumph of Jesus’ resurrection. All for the glory of God, as we give ourselves over to God’s Way, following Jesus in the faith and knowledge that God works through even the worst this world has to give to bring love and forgiveness to all.

We are a resurrection people in covenant relationship with our Creator. We have received the gift of forgiveness through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. With this gift comes great responsibility to show the world, or at least our small corner of it here in the Hill Country of Texas, the power of Love so that those who wish to see Jesus can find him with us. Amen.

*https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/lectionary-commentary-lent-5

The Word is Love

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church in Canyon Lake, Texas.

The lectionary readings for the third Sunday in Lent are here.

During the season of Lent, it’s an option to recite the Ten Commandments at the beginning of our worship service. I’ll confess I am not in favor of doing it mainly because what we know as the Ten Commandments have been so misused by some and so over used by others that we don’t really stop to consider their original intent and purpose. They’ve become something we hang on the wall and used as a political and religious weapon to force Christianity upon non-Christians; a line in the sand to determine who’s in and who’s out.

It’s quite fortuitous that this past week we discussed the Ten Commandments in our Bible in a Year group. If you remember the story, God spoke these words to Moses and the people promised to obey and before the ink was dry on the stone tablets – well, you know what I mean – the people were already breaking the covenant these words represented. And God forgave and kept the covenant knowing full well, we humans would break the covenant over and over again.

A covenant is intended to establish a relationship, with responsibilities on both sides. It isn’t conditional or transactional but an agreement in which both parties say they will behave in certain ways for the good of the relationship between them.

God’s covenantal words given to Moses were intended to give the people great responsibility not entitled privilege. They aren’t “arbitrary prohibitions but loving limits”* intended to guide God’s people in a way of life grounded in justice and mercy. These words are about living every day life in response to God’s goodness, not earning God’s favor by completing some checklist.

When we love God and seek to know God, we let God’s love be our ultimate authority in all that we think, say, and do. When we love and seek to know God, we see the image of God in others and don’t need any other image of the God who created all. When we love and seek to know God, we don’t do ungodly things to others in God’s name.

As God’s people, knowing who and Whose we are, we live in the rhythm of work and rest as God designed all of creation; we don’t try to elevate ourselves above God claiming we don’t need to rest or avoid resting in our attempt to prove how much we can get done. We do as God did. We rest and worship on a day set apart from our other days so that this holy day shapes all that we think, say, and do the other six days. This is the pivot point, the fulcrum that balances our relationship with God and our relationship with others.

When we seek to love as God loves, we honor each other, we value all life, we stay true to our commitments, we don’t take what isn’t ours, and we are content and satisfied with what we have because we know that our relationships are far more valuable than any thing we may think we want.

But, what, you may be asking, does any of this have to do with Jesus getting angry with the folks selling sacrificial animals in the temple marketplace? Aren’t they just doing what God told them to do?

Well, yes and no. But let’s get a little background first – “the temple’s sacrificial system depended on the marketplace to supply both the animals suitable for sacrifice and the special coins permitted in the temple.” To shut down the marketplace was to strike a blow to the whole sacrificial system itself – the very system God had told the people to participate in as part of their covenantal responsibility.

Jesus doesn’t condemn marketplaces in general, but the way the temple market had become a corruption of what God had intended. The temple’s focus had become the sacrifices themselves rather than the relationship between God and the people that the sacrifices were to serve. The temple economy lived by the surface and literal interpretation of the commandments. As long as they didn’t actually take someone’s physical life, it didn’t matter what harm they might cause to their soul by treating them as less than God’s child. As long as they made the sacrifice it didn’t matter how they treated their parents or anyone else for that matter. As long as they didn’t take any material possessions it didn’t matter if they took away another’s peace of mind or well being.

In driving out the marketplace, Jesus is shutting down the old and bringing in the new way of being in relationship with God, the way promised by the prophets of old. And when questioned about his authority to do such a thing, he speaks of the destruction of the temple, a statement that the temple leaders take literally and as a threat but the writer of this story makes clear is a metaphor for Jesus’ body, a revolutionary vision of the new era when all who choose to follow Jesus will abide in him and “thereby abide in the house of the Lord”.

Jesus was telling them “The old sacrificial system must end; there is no longer a need for a market to sell the animals or exchange money. A new day, a new era, has begun.” The era of God with Us, in which we make up the temple of God’s presence. The era in which the sacrifices we make are about giving up our personal desires and our egos for the greater good of all as we walk in relationship with God every moment of every day wherever we are.

God’s ‘commandments’ are an invitation to learn to live relationally rather than transactionally. When we walk with God in humility and love, living in the rhythm of God’s creation, knowing who and Whose we are, we have no need for violence or thievery.

When asked what he thought was God’s greatest command, God’s greatest Word, Jesus says that all of the laws and prophetic words throughout the history of God’s people hang on one thing – Love. Being God’s people is about loving well – God, others, and ourselves. We come to worship together as one of many ways we maintain our relationship with God and each other. We do life together because we know that God created us for community and relationship.

Jesus’ clearing of the temple marketplace was a spring cleaning of sorts, removing the clutter that got in the way of people’s relationship with God, removing the stumbling blocks and barriers between the people and God’s presence, dusting the cobwebs off of God’s loving words of relationship, making room for the abiding presence of God within each of us.

For us, in our day and time – without sacrificial animals and temple marketplaces – this story leads us to the question of how and where do we put up barriers to keep others from knowing God’s loving presence? In what ways have we let God’s words get lost in the cobwebby corners of our lives? Where do we ‘do’ the outward activity of church without the inner transformation of becoming the body of Christ? How do we behave as if being God’s people was a privilege instead of a responsibility?

The Psalmist tells us that “The law of the Lord is perfect and revives the soul”. God’s law, God’s word, God’s commandment is to love with our whole selves so that we proclaim the good news and reveal God’s image to the world. Amen.

*I am so very grateful for Salt Project! Most weeks, their blog offers me a way to organize my thoughts to begin preparing my sermon. Some weeks, like this one, the blog helps me craft a word for my congregation when I am close to overwhelmed by all that needs to be done. Thank you, Salt Project! https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/2/27/why-is-jesus-angry-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-lent-3

Finding Treasure

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The Lectionary readings for the first Sunday in Lent are here.

When I was a kid, about once a year, my dad would declare, “we’re cleaning out the garage this weekend!” And believe it or not, this was something we looked forward to. It was an adventure, a treasure hunt of sorts, a family journey through the wilderness that our garage had become over the past year. The garage was key part of our daily living – through this space was our most common entry and exit to the house, from it we began all of our outside play, in and from this space the maintenance and repairs of our home were done.

We’d get up early on a Saturday and have a big breakfast and then we’d take everything out of the garage, not yet evaluating anything, just laying it out on the driveway. Next, we’d sweep every nook and cranny, clearing out all of the cobwebs, dust bunnies, dead bugs, and dirt that we couldn’t see because of all of the stuff that had accumulated.

And finally it was time to sort through the piles of stuff we’d laid out on the driveway. Some of it would be put back in, neat and orderly, visible and available when needed. Some of it would go into a donation pile, still useful but no longer needed by us. And some of it would go to the trash, serving no purpose for us. The best part of this day would be when one of us would exclaim “I’ve been looking for this!” A lost treasure re-discovered under something that should have been discarded immediately rather than tossed on the shelf “just in case I might need it”. And often, we’d come across something and say “I don’t remember this but I sure can use it now!”

At the end of the day we’d admire our work and enjoy the tidiness and order of the space that was such a hub of our life. For a while anyway. Soon, as we rushed through one of us would toss something haphazard on a shelf or the floor; too busy to properly dispose of a box or empty container, we’d leave it for a later that wouldn’t come; slowly the cobwebs and dust bunnies would regain their space in the corners. We’d have the best of intentions with keeping it tidy, but our humanness would prevail and year’s worth of new clutter would accumulate until Dad declared “we’re cleaning out the garage this weekend!” and we’d journey again through the wilderness we called a garage.

Throughout our holy scriptures, wilderness time is a time of disruption and reordering. The Greek word we translate as wilderness means “of uncertain affinity” – not quite sure to whom or where we belong. It’s an in-between time, a liminal space that offers us the opportunity to let go of what is harmful and rediscover what lies underneath all the clutter that we’ve let accumulate- the hurt and anger and resentment, the self-serving ways of hate and the need to control others.

Saint Mark gives us the most succinct version of Jesus’ baptism and time in the wilderness. And yet this is the 3rd Sunday since the beginning of Advent that we read overlapping bits of Mark’s version of Jesus’ baptism. I think perhaps it is important. As I’ve said before, we should never cease to be amazed that Jesus, God incarnate, steps in along side us in this new life of love. Jesus is our guide for our wilderness journeys.

Mark doesn’t go into any detail about how Jesus was tempted in the wilderness, only that he was. From Matthew and Luke we learn that with each of the tasks which Jesus is asked to do, or tempted by, what he’s really being asked is to stop trusting in God’s timing and way of living this life on earth as in heaven and take matters into his own hands, to choose for himself what is right and wrong, to chose self-gratification instead of participating with God in the building up God’s Kingdom.

Our annual church season of Lent is meant to mimic Jesus’ wilderness time, and is a time of intentionally stepping into the wilderness activities of disruption and reordering. Cleaning out our heart, soul, mind, and strength – our whole being – and letting go of that which has hidden the treasure of Who and Whose we are. It is a season of reflection and, yes, of repentance but remember that repentance isn’t punishing our selves for what we don’t like about ourselves. Repentance is changing our hearts and minds, reorienting our life to God’s Way.

And before we can repent, we must admit we need to. Being penitent is our acknowledgment that we need God and accepting God’s forgiveness for having chosen our own way.

Repentance is returning to our original identity as God’s beloved. Uncovering this amazing treasure that we’ve let get buried under cobwebs and dust bunnies of trying to survive this life on our own terms and joyfully exclaiming “hey, I’ve been looking for this!” From the very creation of all that is, God created us in God’s image and said we are good. God did not create us sinners; that is a label of our own making and our own choices.

Throughout the Old Testament, the Hebrew word that the NRSV translates as sinner is mostly used only in the wisdom books of psalms, Proverbs, and Ecclesiastes. The only time Jesus uses the word we translate into sinner is when he says that all of heaven rejoices when even one sinner returns to God, when the one who has missed the mark and been labeled by the worst part of their character is restored to the community of God’s Kingdom.

We must be careful with the labels we assign to ourselves and others. When we define ourselves or others by our worst characteristics or behaviors, we cover up the beauty of the image of God in all people. We are not sinners, we are human beings, beloved of God, who sin, who choose our own way of defining good and bad rather than God’s way.

To be clear, I’m not saying that we don’t often get things wrong, or miss the mark. We absolutely do, more often than most of us would like to admit of ourselves. We are human as God created us with the free-will to choose God’s way or to define good and bad on our own terms. My point is that we need to start our definition of who a human being is with Creation not with our departure from God’s intended way for us. Our original identity is that God created us good.

We can acknowledge our mortality, our humanness, without labeling ourselves or others as ‘wretched’. We can admit we have chosen not to follow God’s Way without labeling ourselves or others as ‘sinner’. We can repent, change our heart and mind and be open to the shaping of the Holy Spirit, tuning our will to God’s will without beating ourselves or others up. We can step into intentional wilderness time with each other as a way of healing and restoration from the harm that is done when we label others or ourselves by the worst of our behaviors.

Wilderness time isn’t punishment, it’s renewal and growth, reawakening to Whose and Who we are. Lent is a time to intentionally take stock of what in our hearts and minds is causing our own souls and others harm, hiding the treasure of our true identity under the dirt and cobwebs we let accumulate over time. A time to exclaim “I’ve been looking for this!” as we find the lost treasure of our true selves that’s been hidden under something that needs to be discarded. This is a time of growth when we can come across something and say “I don’t remember this but I sure can use it now!”

The treasure we need to uncover from the debris and dust of our lives is our original identity – beloved children created in the image of God. There is nothing wretched in that! Remember that you are God’s Beloved. Amen.

Have you heard?

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church in Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for the fifth Sunday after the Epiphany are here.

Once upon a time, in preparation for a great family feast, a young mother sliced a couple of inches off the end of the ham before putting the ham in the roasting pan. As she slid the pan in the oven, she asked her mother, “why do we slice the end of the ham off like that?” Her mother thought for a bit and said, “I don’t know, it’s just how Gran taught me to do it.” So, they went in the living room where Gran was playing with the kids and asked, “why do we slide a chunk off the ham before roasting it?” Gran looked very puzzled and thought for a long time before saying, “I have no idea why you do it; I had a small roasting pan and small oven and Grandpa always picked the biggest ham at the butcher shop so I just had to make the ham fit.”

Knowing our ‘why’ is important. Why do we do what we do? Why do we think as we think? Why do we believe what we believe?

In his letter to the Jesus Followers in Corinth, Paul says he does what he does for the sake of the Good News so that he may share in the blessings.

But just what is the good news and what kind of blessings? Let’s ask these questions through the lens of our reading from Mark’s version of the Good News. After spending his first few days back from the wilderness calling some disciples and teaching in the synagogue, Jesus and his newly invited disciples have gone to Simon’s house – Jesus hasn’t yet begun calling him Peter – and Simon’s mother in law is quite sick.

Jesus goes to her, takes her by the hand and lifts her up. And her response to being restored to wellness is to serve those around her.

In the church I grew up in, this is one of the passages from the gospels that was used to say women were put on this earth to serve men. I’m so grateful that smarter folks have shown me how to read this story differently. Simon’s mother in law isn’t healed for the purpose of being in a power-driven servant/master relationship; she is responding in gratitude to being raised up by joining the disciples and Jesus in serving the Kingdom together as all who were sick were brought to Jesus to be restored to wellness. She’s right there with them.

On a significant side-note, it bothers me when women in scripture aren’t given names, so let’s give her the dignity of a name, let’s call her Irene. That was my grandmother’s name and she is my role-model for hospitable service for God’s Kingdom on earth. Ok, back to our story.

Jesus heals Irene with the touch of his hand and then he lifts her up. Mark uses the same word later for Jesus’ own resurrection. In her healing, Irene is restored to her community, her family, and she shows her gratitude by stepping along side the disciples to assist Jesus as he heals the multitudes that show up at her door.

The word Mark uses that we translate as ‘served’ has the same root word as our word deacon – diakonos – which is translated literally as “to kick up dust”. ‘Serving’ as Mark tells this story is practical, active, change the world kind of work.*

Irene is lifted up to serve in God’s Kingdom – resurrected, restored, made new for ministry, as we all are. We are raised to new life with Jesus through our own baptisms, not for our own individual gain but so that we can flourish in the abundance of the community around us. And, if we are all living a life of Kingdom service, focused on tending to each other, we can do so with the confidence that our own needs will be met as well. Y’all have heard me say this before but it’s the difference between a soup kitchen and a potluck supper – and at St. Francis we are professional potluck-ers.

With a soup kitchen, there’s the servers and the served. I have something you don’t have and you don’t have anything for me. At a potluck, we all bring what we have and all partake of what each other has, there’s no us and them, no haves or have-nots. There’s only all of us around the same table. This equalizing lack of competition is what we are freed from and for.

We are freed from the bondage of having to prove we are better than anyone else, freed from the bondage of having to earn or deserve God’s love or to show ourselves worthy of inclusion in the Kingdom. We are freed for serving each other in God’s Kingdom.

Have you not heard? Do you not know? God Loves and wants us to love. And it’s not that God wants us to love him back so God can feel good about himself. Being in relationship with God and each other is the very purpose we are all created for! This is our biggest and most foundational ‘why’. Love. This is the blessing we all share in.

Let’s look again at what Paul says to the people in Corinth. When Paul says he’s a Jew to the Jews and to the gentiles (those outside the law) a gentile and all things to all people, he isn’t having an identity crisis, he’s stepping firmly onto the foundation of his identity as a citizen of God’s Kingdom. He is painting for us a beautiful picture of inclusion; taking down any barriers to the potluck supper table. He’s living the resurrection life of putting the greater good of all above his own individual desires, just as Irene did when Jesus lifted her up. Paul is sharing in the blessings of God’s Kingdom.

When loving God, our neighbor, and ourselves is our purpose in life, we are truly alive as God intends for us to be. All that we choose to think, feel, and do will flow from this love. Choice is key in our understanding of our ‘why’. God could have made us all little robots that served God and the Kingdom without question. But that’s not love. Love as God loves requires free-will, our ability to discern and choose what it best for God’s Kingdom, to think outside of ourselves for the greater good of all. And, so God gave us the beautiful and dangerous gift of free-will knowing full well we’d mis-use it for our own individual gain, knowing that we’d miss the mark.

So then, God offers to us forgiveness. God touches us, takes us by the hand and lifts us up, restored in relationship so that we can, together and with God’s help, kick up the dust of this world and serve in the revolution of love. This is the abundant life we are created for; this is our ‘why’ as we follow Jesus on our lifelong journey in God’s Kingdom on earth, as we all share in the blessing of our everlasting potluck supper.

Why do we keep showing up at this place? Why do we keep showing up with and for each other? What good news do you hear and how does this good news shape your resurrection life so that those who are searching for God’s love experience the good news?

We share in the blessings of the Good News of God when we choose to be citizens of God’s Kingdom, God’s beloved children first and foremost and let what we think, say, and do be guided by God’s love. We’ve been lifted up for the purpose of showing others the freedom and abundance of this lifted-up life. Amen.

*https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/progressive-lectionary-commentary-epiphany-5

Kaleidoscope

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake, Canyon Lake, TX.
The Lectionary readings for the third Sunday after the Epiphany are here.

What would it take for you to hear someone say “follow me” and you immediately drop everything – your job, your life as you know it – and go? Can we even really imagine a life so terrible that we’d even consider doing such a thing? Dig deep in your compassionate imagination and consider what kind of life these men must have had that an invitation from a stranger would cause them to drop everything and go. Galilean Fishermen in first century Palestine were near the lowest rung of the caste system ladder. Most of us simply think of fishing as a leisurely sport but these men worked day and night to make barely enough to feed their families. Roman law demanded they sell every single fish they caught into the Roman Economy. The best of the catch were sold to the elite and wealthy and what was left, if any, to the very fishermen who caught it. The money they were paid for the fish they caught was barely enough to buy fish to feed their families.

In our gospel reading today, Mark tells us of Jesus’ arrival in Galilee to take over when John the Baptizer was interrupted — proclaiming the good news of God and saying, “the time IS fulfilled, the Kingdom of God HAS come near, repent, and believe in the Good News.” And he offers these fishermen an invitation to live in the economy of God’s Kingdom, an economy built not on using people up but on building each other up with companionship and collaboration.

And they are willing to drop their nets and follow. They needed genuine good news and they were willing to follow Jesus to see if what he said was true. Perhaps, probably, for the first time in their lives, they are given a choice, given the permission and authority to decide how they will live their life. In our 21st century, middle-class, North American world, we really have no idea what it is to not have choices about how we live. And yet, we still have a tendency to let ourselves get caught in the currents of tribalism, exclusivity, and scarcity, none of which offer much good news or freedom.

In the Kingdom life, we are freed from our self-created struggles of building our own kingdom by proving ourselves, needing to be admired, to be the strongest, the smartest, the happiest, or the one with the most or best stuff. The Good News is that God’s Kingdom is ‘at hand’ as some translations put it, right here among us and it is available to all of us if we change our hearts and minds and believe that God’s Way is what we are created for, who we genuinely are – people loved by God so that we can learn to love each other better and show the world they are loved, too.

When Jesus tells these fishermen that he will show them how to fish for people, Jesus is saying that relationships are the building blocks of God’s Kingdom, not money, not bricks and mortar, not prestige or political power or military might. These men lived in a culture that said other people were simply a means of getting what I want and except for the form of official government I don’t think our consumerist culture is much different.

Is the person on the other side of the cash register there only for your benefit? How can you be a blessing to them and show them Jesus by who you are? Are folks of the “other” political party your enemy? How can you love them as Jesus asks us to do so that they know God loves them, too? Do you see those who are seeking a better life in this country as trying to take away the life you feel entitled to simply because you were born here or with more than they were? How can you learn to see them as Jesus saw these fishermen?

We can change our hearts and minds with God’s help and in companionship with each other. The good news of God is hope not despair or destruction. The good news of God is that we are all loved. The good news is that we don’t have to wonder if we are enough. Jesus tells us we are. We are already on the journey of the Kingdom we were born for, all of us together, making each other whole and holy with the light of God’s love shining through all of us, like a kaleidoscope.

A Kaleidoscope is filled with seemingly random bits and pieces that are each beautiful but when viewed together with a light shining through them they create amazing pictures that change as they move together. Their combined and reflected nature is so much more than what the bits could be alone. The amazing beauty of a kaleidoscope comes from all of the bits and pieces being tumbled around together in the light.

This is how I picture God’s Kingdom. This Kingdom life isn’t always easy and we get tumbled about sometimes but together and in God’s light we make something wonderfully beautiful. This is the life of companionship and collaboration, seeing others as companions in a life of abundance rather than competitors in a world of scarcity. Jesus invites us into a life lived rooted in abundance, believing that the treasures of God’s Kingdom – love, joy, peace, hope – increase the more we offer them to others. We are more, we are whole, we are holy, when we live with each other rather than against. We are most fully human, God’s beloved people, who and Whose we are created to be when we answer Jesus’ invitation to follow God’s way.

One of my favorite still living theologians, Os Guinness, says that all human beings have two calls in life. Our primary call is toward God. It is God’s desire to be in relationship with us and God calls to us, inviting us to be aware of God with us in every moment of our lives. Jesus offers us this invitation in flesh and blood. Our second call – and yes, each of us has this secondary call as well – is to live vocationally. Whatever it is we do – teacher, accountant, janitor, maintenance worker, engineer, server, business owner, retired, whatever – we are to do it from the image of God within us, as citizens of God’s Kingdom, for the glory of God and the wellbeing of all. We all have a choice to live in the economy of God’s kingdom, choosing companionship over competition, abundance over scarcity, compassion over exclusion.

So, what are the nets we need to drop so that we can focus our attention on God’s Way? How do we need to change our thinking, our hearts and minds and let God’s Way illuminate the beautiful Kaleidoscope of God’s Kingdom? How do we offer this Good News to others by the way we live?

“Give us grace, O Lord, to answer readily the call of our Savior Jesus Christ and proclaim to all people the Good News of his salvation, that we and the whole world may perceive the glory of his marvelous works.” Amen.

How Many Days

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The Lectionary readings for the Baptism of Jesus are here.

When was the last time you had an epiphany? Well, if you were paying attention, you might have had one yesterday which was the Feast of the Epiphany. On January 6, 12 days after Christmas Day, the Church celebrates the arrival of the three men from the East at the home of Mary and Joseph with their seemingly odd baby gifts. Despite the millions of manger scenes that depict otherwise, tradition and a few clues from our scriptures tell us that it could have been as long as two years after Jesus’ birth that these men showed up. So, technically, yesterday’s Feast of the Epiphany is the end of Christmas 2021. That’s way more than 12 days but 730 days of Christmas would be an impossible song to write much less sing!

Matthew tells us that the star the men followed guided them to Mary and Joseph’s home, not the stable in Bethlehem where he was born and not on the same night as the shepherds and angels. But their arrival is important enough that the Church has given it it’s own Feast Day. And the time between January 6 and Ash Wednesday is marked by the number of Sundays after the Epiphany.

These men, wise in reading the stars and evading Herod’s treachery, were not Jewish, not Roman, not local folks congratulating the family on a new arrival. In their profession of reading the stars, they discerned that there was a grand shift in Creation, something extraordinary and awesome was occurring, and they wanted to acknowledge it. They had an epiphany. An epiphany is much more than just an aha moment. It is the manifestation of divine insight. Epiphanies are God revealing to us the divine intent so that we can participate with God in the goodness of the Kingdom on earth as in heaven.

Remember a few weeks ago when we talked about Mary and I said she may have not have been educated but she was far from illiterate about the God who asked her to bear God’s Son? Mary would have understood the significance of the odd gifts these men brought. Gold belonged to royalty, Frankincense was burned as incense to symbolize prayers being lifted up, and Myrrh was used for embalming. These were not items possessed in any significant amount if at all by common people; they are gifts given by and to the wealthy and powerful. These odd baby gifts only make sense alongside what the angel had said to Mary. Perhaps in the two years between the birth of her baby and the arrival of these men, Mary and Joseph had settled into a typical life with their new baby, Joseph earning a living, Mary running the household, both waiting and wondering when and how all of the amazing things the angel told them would take place.

Imagine Mary’s wonder as she receives these men into her home and they present the gifts that assure her that God is still at work in her little family. Now, that’s an Epiphany!

So, although we may distinguish one day a year, January 6, as the Feast of the Epiphany, we have many stories in our scriptures of Epiphanies and when we seek to live awake and alert to God’s presence in this world, we continue to grow through the epiphanies we have of God with us in both our struggles and joys.

Now, today, the first Sunday after the Feast of the Epiphany, we jump forward approximately 30 years to the story of Jesus’ baptism and another epiphany moment. And who said time-travel was impossible?

And, again, if our reading today sounded very familiar as we just read it a few short weeks ago on the second Sunday of Advent. In the story of Jesus’ baptism, we should never lose the amazement that Jesus is being baptized. The baptism John proclaimed was a sign of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And Jesus gets inline with the rest of us in a sign of solidarity with us, God truly with us as one of us.

This is the model Jesus gives us for our lives as we follow him, a lived example in flesh and blood of sincerely humble collaboration and compassionate fellowship. Jesus teaches us that we are most complete, most whole, most holy, when we are together, not just in the same place but in sync with each other, striving for the greater good of all of us and our wider community, knowing that each of us is necessary in the whole. Sincere humility isn’t saying ‘I’m less than you, or I have nothing, or I’m not good enough, or I’m not needed; humility is about our view of others, knowing that we are all God’s beloved, we are all created for God’s Kingdom; not trying to portray ourselves as less than others but seeing all of us together as whole and holy. We cannot see the true worth of others if we don’t know our own worth as God’s beloved. Each and everyone of us, each and every human ever born or who will be born is loved by God. And there is absolutely nothing any human can do to make God love us more or less than God loves. We are just not that powerful, my friends.

It is not quite clear in our reading just who saw the skies open and heard God say “this is my beloved in who I am pleased” but imagine the ongoing epiphany of those who followed Jesus remembering that he was baptized just a they were – God choosing to be one of us!

Jesus steps in line with us and then says follow me in the Way of Love, together we will show the world the life we are all created for, a life of humble collaboration and compassionate fellowship. If we try to convince ourself or others that we are more or less than God’s beloved it is pride, not humility. Jesus knows who he is and wants to help us discover who and whose we are.

In our baptism covenant, after we proclaim what we believe, we make promises about how we will live. We promise, with God’s help, to continue the whole of our life to learning who and Whose we are, to do life together, to share all we have, both grounding and framing our life in prayer. We promise, with God’s help, to accept responsibility for our own actions and admit it when we harm others so we can learn better how to live in collaborative fellowship with each other and God. We promise, with God’s help, to look for the epiphanies of God’s image in every other human being we encounter. And we promise, with God’s help, to live on earth as in heaven, living for the greater good of everyone, in the sincere humility of knowing that we are all God’s beloved.

I may have paraphrased the actual covenant a bit. If you want to check my interpretation you can find the actual words in the Book of Common Prayer.

All that we do in here on Sunday mornings and all that we do on this campus throughout the week is about living our life every day of the year. The coming of God in our lives isn’t just during the Christmas season; epiphanies of God’s presence isn’t about one feast day; reorienting ourselves on God’s path doesn’t just occur during the six weeks of Lent; bearing witness to God giving of God’s Self to us isn’t confined to Holy Week and Easter. Our baptism isn’t a one day event. These are the foundation and framework of every moment of every day of our life as God’s beloved as we follow Jesus in the Way of Love, doing life on earth as in heaven together and with God’s help. Amen.

All the Days of Christmas

A sermon for Christmas Day preached as St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for Christmas Day are here.

My sister is an expert gift-wrapper. Under her tree each year are matching presents with pretty paper, bows, and other crafty embellishments, Pinterest perfect. I, however, am not much of a gift-wrapper, my wrapping tends to look more like it came from the butcher shop than Hallmark. I much prefer putting things in bags with a bit of tissue paper and calling it good. Jim doesn’t even worry about the bag, he just puts a bow on the box the item arrived in and puts it under the tree.

Whichever type of ‘wrapper’ you are, I think it’s safe to say we all like to both give and receive things in neat little boxes or bags with pretty bows. During the month of December we like to count down the days until Christmas with the little doors and drawers and boxes of our Advent calendars. We like to consolidate the 12 days of Christmas into a song that we sing faster and faster with each verse until we are laughing so hard we can’t sing any more. We buy special storage containers to hold it all safe until next year. Even our church calendar organized things for us – we do Advent things during Advent, Christmas things during the Christmas season, Easter things at Easter; each year we do the whole of Jesus’ birth, teachings and ministry, death, resurrection and ascension in twelve months, crafting and coordinating all we do with the season.

And yet, I think we are all able to say that God is beyond our human understanding, and organizing what we do in ChurchLand around the life and ministry of Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us is one of the intentional and real ways we are shaped and transformed by God’s love for us. We have no choice in our human capacity to use words too small for God to talk about our relationship with our Creator, our life as we are created to live it. And, hopefully, we do so with the understanding that God is not contained by our countdown calendars, our songs, our boxes and bows, our tidy storage containers, or even our defined seasons and celebrations.

So, over the next couple of weeks as we begin to pack up all of our tinsel, putting our items of anticipation and celebration into their storage containers, I’m going to suggest that you find something to leave up all year long. But not your outside lights or decorations – that will just make your neighbors talk about you unfavorably.

I know of a family among us who leaves their decorated tree up all year and it brings great delight as you enter their home in April or July or September. Pick something that genuinely enlivens your sense of anticipation when you see it and put it somewhere where it will catch your eye from time to time and surprise and delight you. Even as we count down the next 12 days and our calendars continue to move from day to day through the year, keep your sense of anticipation awake. Be alert to God’s presence with you every day, in all of the ups and downs of our life. Let God delight you all year. Let God amaze you all year. Let Love shape and transform you all year.

In his book, the Mood of Christmas, written in 1973, Howard Thurman wrote “I know that the experiences of unity in human relations are more compelling than the concepts, the fears, the prejudices, which divide. Despite the tendency to feel my race superior, my nation the greatest nation, my faith the true faith, I must beat down the boundaries of my exclusiveness until my sense of separateness is completely enveloped in a sense of fellowship. I will light the candle of fellowship this Christmas, a candle that must burn all the year long.”

This is the same book in which he published the poem most of us are familiar with, titled The Work of Christmas:

When the song of the angels is stilled,
when the star in the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks,
the work of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people,
to make music in the heart.

God’s gift to us didn’t come neatly wrapped in Pinterest perfect bows and embellishments. Even the best wrappers among us can’t make God’s gift any more beautiful or glorious. Even the most organized among us can’t contain the awe and wonder of God. God’s gift to us is God’s self given “In the beginning,” at creation when God spoke us into being with the Divine Image in each of us. In the gift of Jesus, God chose to come among us and show us in flesh and blood what it is to live into the Image within each of us, showing us how this way of being that is beyond our understanding is the truth of who and Whose we are.

In God’s gift of God’s self, we discover hopeful transformation, the peace that comes with justice, the joy of self-fulfillment in fellowship and community, and the love that empowers us to make our own unique contributions to the Kingdom on Earth.  In Jesus we find light and life, and the courage to be like him, answering his call and following in his footsteps every day of the year.

Through the whole of this year to come, rejoice in God’s presence in our lives, anticipate the coming of Jesus in and through us, in all that we think, say, and do. Don’t try to contain what God chooses to do through us.

Come to us, Lord Jesus. Be born in us this day, in our hearts, our minds, our lives. Lead us in the shining truth of God with us, God for us, God in us. Amen

What Day is it?

An Advent sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
You can find the reading for the Fourth Sunday of Advent here.

Are you just a little perplexed about what day it is? Our calendars tell us it is December 24, what we know as Christmas Eve, yet here we are, with our purple banners, lighting the fourth candle on our Advent Wreath, singing Advent hymns, and talking of the angel Gabriel’s visit to Mary. Sometimes the annual rhythm of our worship is a bit discordant with our calendar. It is still, in ChurchLand, the Fourth Sunday of Advent, at least until we change the altar hangings from purple to white after our morning worship, and then it’s Christmas. Sometimes a little perplexity is good – it makes us stop and pay attention; with unexpected alertness we ask “what’s happening and why?”

We can’t step into Christmas Eve without first wrapping up Advent. The words we have assigned to the first three candles of our wreath – hope, peace, and joy – each describe a way of being, an inner experience of who and Whose we are. And those are not complete, even possible, without Love. It is God’s love – the word assigned to the fourth candle – that enables us to experience the other descriptors.

Hope is our willingness to wait patiently on God to fulfill all of God’s promises, trusting in God because God is faithful.
Pease is our confidence that even in the turmoil of this world, God is with us.
Joy is our awareness of the goodness of God at all times, in all places, and in all people.
Love is the outward and visible behaviors that reveal the hope, peace, and joy of our hearts and souls.

And Jesus is at the center of it all, at the center of our lives, strengthening us with hope, guiding us with peace, energizing us with joy, all flowing from God’s love. So, I’d like to offer, that Advent, as we follow Jesus, is never actually done; we are to live in the anticipation of the Kingdom on earth as in heaven as if it were already so.

As Luke tells us the Christmas Story, he tells of wonder and amazement – from Mary’s “how can this be” to Gabriel’s “nothing is impossible with God.” God chose to come among us through the simple life of a young girl in a world dominated by older men. God chose to come to this world in a way quite discordant with what most expected, not with military or political or economical power, but with a simple family in a nowhere town. In two thousand years, our idea of how God should do things hasn’t changed much. Our world still tries to claim political, economical, and military power as God’s plan even as we look upon our manger scenes and read the stories that tell us differently*.

It is very unlikely that Mary could read or write but she was far from illiterate. She was a young woman well versed in and deeply shaped by her faith in God and she her perplexity at Gabriel’s visit enable her to marvel at God’s love and ask what was happening and why, not out of fear but in awe and wonder – that God would chose to come into this world, nurtured by a mother’s love. Raised by parents who chose to walk in the love they knew would be necessary for the calling they said ‘yes’ to. How often do we stop and let ourselves be amazed at the Love come to us.

I used to talk of unconditional love but I read somewhere recently that unconditional love is redundant because once you add a condition to it, it’s no longer love. Our presiding bishop Michael Curry defines love as ‘other focused’ and says the opposite isn’t hate but self-centeredness. St. Paul says “Love is patient, love is kind, it isn’t jealous, it doesn’t brag, it isn’t arrogant, it isn’t rude, it doesn’t seek its own advantage, it isn’t irritable, it doesn’t keep a record of complaints, it isn’t happy with injustice, but it is happy with the truth.”
(1 Corinthians 13:4-6 CEB). We can do all the good works in the world but if we are doing it for the purpose of making ourselves feel good rather than for the greater good of all, we are not acting out of love.

Yet, we can’t not mention that love as God loves, doesn’t mean we get away with harmful or dangerous behavior. Love isn’t a free-for-all, do-as-we-like-regardless-of-the-impact-on-others way of living. Love always considers the impact of our thoughts, words, and deeds on others, and to ask if what we may tell ourselves is love is actually self-serving rather than other-focused. Love enables us to speak up for those whose voice is not being heard, for those who are not being seen or considered, for those who are being harmed by another’s behavior. To love as God loves does mean we forgive and forgive and forgive, but it doesn’t mean anyone is free from the consequences of chosen behaviors. God’s Love may be boundless but it isn’t without boundaries.

Love enables us to govern our own behaviors by the light of God’s Love for us. We cannot control or change others motivations for their behavior but we can do the internal work of assessing our own motivations so that we can make loving choices about our outward behaviors.

None of us love perfectly as God loves – we are human and not God and God is more aware of our humanness that we are. And, yet, God chooses us, God’s created, God’s children, God’s beloved. In the now-and-not-yet of this world, we do our best with God’s help to love as God loves, in the hope of the Day of the Lord when God’s peace will be ours as we discover the real joy of God’s presence among us.

Mary asks “how can this be” and Gabriel responds “Nothing is impossible with God”. God is love and love is the most powerful force in the universe because God created all in and through and for love. Mary knows the depths of God’s love and accepts the sure and certain hope that Gabriel offers her. Her answer isn’t one of fear or resignation, her ‘let it be’ is a joyful proclamation that she wants to be a part of God’s work of love. She doesn’t fret about how she could get it wrong in so many ways, she trusts that with God nothing is impossible, even with our own human foibles. It brings much peace into my life knowing that when God ponders my work in this world, God knows all of the ways I can mess things up and still wants me to be a part of bringing about the kingdom on earth as in heaven. And he sees and wants each of you to be a part of it as well.

How can this be? Do you hear the wonder and amazement of Mary’s question? How can this be – that God wants to work in me? Do we ask the same wondrous question of our lives? Do we ask how God wants to work in our lives? Are we open to wonder and amazement at what God chooses to do in us and others?

We end our annual Advent season with the ongoing anticipation of the coming of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. God comes to each of us, asking if we will be a part of God’s plan, today, tomorrow, and each day in the year to come. Let yourself be amazed. Let yourself wonder at who God is and Whose we are. Let the hope, peace, and joy of God’s love shine with all that you think, say, and do. Nothing is impossible with God. Let it be. Amen.

*https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/advent-week-four-lectionary-commentary

Peace

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.

The part of Peter’s second letter we read today holds a special place for me – this was the passage I was given for my first sermon in preaching class in seminary. As I spent an inordinate amount of time pondering Peter’s words I remember thinking, “why don’t I remember this passage from my childhood?” Peter’s words are in direct opposition to what I was told about Jesus’ ‘second coming’ and it made me wonder why, when given the choice, anyone would prefer to emphasize being set ablaze and dissolved by fire rather than God’s patience and holiness and righteousness and peace? Why would anyone choose to proclaim fear instead of love? How is that Good News for anyone?

Sometimes it seems that our world prefers war to peace, coercion rather than patience, hatred rather than holiness. Proclaiming fear gives the proclaimer power over those who buy into the fear-driven way. God chose to come to us as a human, born and raised in this world to show us what it looks like to choose peace and holiness. Jesus shows in us flesh and blood that we have a choice of how we live in the here and now. If you were here a few weeks ago, you might remember that we talked about eternity not being sometime in the future – Jesus didn’t come to offer us salvation for “some day” – but that eternity has no beginning and no end. Our eternal life is now and we have the choice of living God’s way or not.

We have the choice, as Peter puts it, to strive to be found by him at peace. But just what does that mean?

The Hebrew word shalom and Greek word eirene are often translated as peace but in our English language we tend to define peace simply as an absence of conflict. A better understanding of how both the old and New Testament writers were using the word is ‘complete’ or ‘whole’ – something complex that is in a state of completeness. It has to do with our collective wellbeing. To bring shalom means to make complete or restore to wholeness. To reconcile a relationship is to bring shalom. It is more than just not fighting or arguing but actively and intentionally working toward the wellbeing of each other.

The phrase translated in our New Revised Standard translation as “without spot or blemish” doesn’t mean ‘physically perfect’ but morally without reproach. And just how do we come to be without spot or blemish? By accepting our need to be forgiven for the ways we’ve worked at building our own kingdom on earth rather than God’s; the big and small ways we’ve chosen conflict instead of peace, coercion instead of patience, hatred instead of holiness. Admitting we have relied on our way of doing things rather than God’s Way prepares our hearts and minds to receive the Good News that we are loved and that God’s Kingdom is right here among us.

We prepare the way of the Lord by living the way of the Lord, living the Way of Love. This is what John the Baptizer calls us to when he proclaims repentance. John was a bit of an unconventional priest for his time. But Baptizing people wasn’t the most radical thing he did. Converts to Judaism were baptized as a ritual cleansing of their former ways. What made John’s proclamation radical was that he wanted Jews to be baptized. What did they need to repent from – weren’t they already keeping God’s laws? And there in lies the difference: keeping rather than living. John is calling God’s people out of a transactional way of living into God’s relational way of life.

As we’ve talked about before, the word we translate as repentance means to changes one’s heart and mind. It has no intonation of self-loathing or punishment but it does require self-awareness and understanding. When John proclaims repentance he was talking about seeing a better way and changing our hearts and minds to live God’s way here and now.

The temple priests taught about keeping the law – exchanging sacrifices for forgiveness; John spoke of changed hearts and minds. The temple priests had the reputation of seeking power and prestige; John chose to live in the wilderness without luxuries or comforts. When people sought John, he pointed them toward Jesus, not seeking his own glory but God’s.

Jesus tells us that he came not to condemn us but to show us what it is in flesh and blood to fulfill God’s law, not just keep it but to actually be who and Whose we are created to be, to live in the Way of Love, centering our hearts on God, following Jesus, and staying focused on tending to each other, neither denying or elevating our own needs but trusting that as we tend to each other, all of our needs are satisfied. Love as Jesus shows us how to love is always other-focused with the awareness that everything we think, say, and do has an impact, either good or bad, on others. This God shaped love is knowing we are most complete when we are all living into our gifts for the good of God’s Kingdom, collectively not individualistically. And the more love we share, the more we hasten the day of God.

God isn’t sitting on a cloud somewhere watching and waiting for us to mess up so he can press the divine smite button and do us all in. God is patently waiting for us to all to come to the awareness that our job isn’t to save the world or anyone in it, including ourselves! This is what repentance is – realizing it isn’t our job to fix the world or anyone in it so we are free to discover our purpose as the image bearers we are created to be, honoring each other as fellow image bearers and together “leading lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for AND hastening the day of God!”

This is our salvation – that God has already forgiven us and adopted us. We don’t have to earn it. We don’t have to be good enough. We don’t have to do everything or save the world or anyone in it. We are created and called to participate with God in bringing about the kingdom on earth as in heaven, living in such a way that honors and points to God’s gracious gift of loving forgiveness.

This is our peace, our completeness, our wholeness – trusting that we will all thrive as we live God’s way, even in the midst of our struggles and grief, just as Jesus shows us, tending to each other, actively and equally seeking each other’s wellbeing.

We simply have to be who God created us to be.

Does it bring you comfort and peace to know that you are not responsible for saving the world? Does it bring you comfort and peace to know that it is God’s greatest desire that all human beings – even you and, yes, even that person you don’t think deserves it – enter into the now-and-not-yet kingdom on earth as in heaven? Does is bring you comfort and peace to know that God sees all people the same, as beloved children?

Someday, God will bring about the new heaven and new earth and righteousness will be at home. In the mean time, we wait patiently and actively, awake and alert to God’s presence among us, honoring the image of God in all people, letting our hearts and minds be shaped by God’s love so that we can proclaim love to the world. Amen.

Eternal Living

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.

Today is the last day of the church year, and it is the last of our 26-or-thereabouts week walk through the telling of the good news by Matthew.

Today is also the day in the church calendar that we dub “Christ the King Sunday”. As Americans I think we struggle with the true meaning of this phrase. What does it mean to say Jesus is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords? After all, we threw the monarchy out over 200 years ago and it wasn’t because we were trying to install Jesus on our throne, it was because we didn’t want anyone else having ultimate rule over us, we wanted to rule ourselves.

But even before European colonization came to this land, way, WAY before, from the very beginning of what we know as the history of our faith, God was, and is to be the leader of God’s people. God’s people, however, wanted to be like the other nations, with a human king. When they demanded a king, they were warned that the power of an earthly king almost always corrupts the one who wields it. But the people didn’t care. They were more concerned that they were like the other nations than they were with being God’s people. I don’t think much has changed through the years, we still prefer to rule ourselves, and power, whatever title we give it, tends to corrupt the one who we let wield it.

Matthew is concerned about how the Jewish leaders had been corrupted by power and tells the story of the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry with what we call the sermon on the Mount, the teaching in chapters 5-6 that begins with blessed are the humble, the merciful, the peacemakers and ends with the admonition to both walk the walk and talk the talk as God’s people. Just saying “lord, lord” isn’t enough if we then ignore the needs of others around us. Just giving lip service to God being our King isn’t what our faith is about, it isn’t what following Jesus is about. Following Jesus is about living in the now and not yet of God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

Yes, it is about our eternal life, but eternity has no beginning nor end so our eternal life isn’t something we will enter into someday but already is. Living in God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven is about taking care of each other, it is about taking what we have and working to ensure that everyone has what they need. It is about welcoming others into the Kingdom, not determining the ways we can exclude.

Determining who’s in and who’s out, sorting the sheep and goats, who’s on the right hand or left hand, is God’s job, not ours. And God’s deepest desire is that all are to be part of the Kingdom, here and now and when the time comes for God’s Kingdom to be fully realized in the new heaven and new earth. In our reading from the prophet Ezekiel God’s says, “I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.” This has always been God’s word to God’s people.

If we choose to live outside of God’s love and mercy and grace, we are already in the ‘eternal fire’, living in the struggle of thinking we have to prove ourselves or be the best and strongest or believing that we don’t matter at all. And God seeks us there, to bring us back and heal us so that we can live in the love and justice and mercy of God’s Kingdom, so that we can find our infinite value as God’s beloved people.

Entering into the joy of God’s presence isn’t a reward for what we do well. The blessing and joy of God’s Kingdom is always available to us; we ‘claim’ it by living as Jesus, as Moses, and all the prophets who have come to God’s people teach us – living in God’s definition of justice, being kind and compassionate to all, and walking humbly with God. Living God’s way is the blessing not the reward. The sheep in this story don’t even realize the good they are doing. They are just living as God created them to live.

God created us to be people who are enabled by God’s love to love. And when we lose our way and choose to wander outside of God’s love, we are always welcomed back by God’s forgiveness and mercy.

Jesus isn’t seeking to threaten us when he talks about God’s sorting. We don’t learn to love God by being terrified of doing the wrong thing. We learn to love by receiving love from others as God love us. Jesus is showing us, in flesh and blood, what it looks like to be who and Whose we are – tending to the needs of others as a proclamation of God’s reigning love and mercy; walking through our life’s journey following Jesus; choosing God’s Way over any way that may gain us power or control; letting love be the powerful guiding force of our eternal lives here and now.

Our acts of kindness and compassion, mercy and love are the fruits of God’s kingdom, not the currency with which we purchase our entry.

And, just to be clear, serving in God’s Kingdom isn’t about the false humility of saying we don’t need anyone else’s help so that we can prove how helpful or strong we are. Tending to each other’s needs means you tend to me as I tend to you. If I don’t ever ask for help or pretend I don’t ever need help I stand in the way of you doing what you are called to do; it’s a false pride way of excluding you.

Living in God’s Eternal Kingdom means we accept God as our source of life and way of living here and now: loving God, our neighbor, and ourselves not just with our words but with all that we do, and think, and say for and about others because we have received the gift of God’s love. Knowing Jesus as the King of kings and Lord of lords means we let Jesus be the ultimate authority for how we live – welcoming the stranger, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, caring for each other not because we want a reward but because we want to be who and Whose we are created to be: beloved children of the loving God.

Next Sunday, the church calendar rolls over to a new year with the season of Advent and over the next few weeks, we will prepare ourselves for the coming of God as a vulnerable, human baby in order to turn our ideas of leadership by domination and superiority upside down. Our lives, including the remaining 48 weeks of the year are about two other advents – the coming of Jesus again, when God determines it is time to set all things in God’s proper order with the coming of the new heaven and new earth, and the coming of Jesus each and every day through our words and actions that reveal God to those we encounter.

Look for God, anticipate the arrival of Jesus every moment of every day and together we will discover what it is for Jesus to be the King of kings and Lord of lords so that we can be free to be God’s people here and now. Amen.