Responsible

Not to sound melodramatic but what a week of juggling unexpected events it has been! And it’s only Tuesday. One of my favorite Old Testament stories is when God tells Elijah to have a snack and take a nap and after he’s had two snacks and two naps Elijah has the strength and courage to proceed. Conversations with God, snacks, and naps are key to my functioning for sure. Not that I’m equating my job with Elijah’s, not at all. But there are times when I wonder why on earth do I keep trying to help us all learn to be better people. My minuscule voice is nothing compared to the vitriolic yelling that is over abundant in our society.

The violence in this world takes on many forms: our thoughts, our words, and our actions. Violence is anything we do that harms another and ourselves and violence against another always involves harm to our self.

I saw a post in a social media platform that said “I think since all these children want guns taken away we should take all video games with guns and violence in them away as well.” And while I agree with the shrouded message that what we expose ourselves to or let our children spend time doing shapes how we see the world (which is the same premise that discipleship is grounded in), I am deeply concerned by the attitude of “us vs them” revealed in the words “all these children” and the retaliatory nature of the post. It’s basically saying to our children, “if you complain about getting shot at school, it’s your fault for playing violent games. It’s not our fault as the adults who are supposed to teach you how to properly navigate this complicated world.”

Adults blaming children for the atmosphere of violence and the idolization of guns in our country is the most shameful thing I’ve seen in this grand debate. Children did not create violent video games, adults did. Children did not buy them, adults did. Adults let the children play them. Children are not responsible for the state of our culture, adults are. And as adults it is our job to raise up our children either to respect and value all human life or to see violence as the answer to all issues.

This statement about taking away video games as punishment for school shootings models the immaturity of a nation of adults who refuse to hold themselves accountable for the culture we have made. It is just one more instance of the blame-game. If I can find someone to blame, then I don’t have to be responsible or accountable for anything.

Blame wants revenge and retaliation, a tit-for-tat response. Responsibility and accountability will enable us to actually solve the problem. I had a conversation with a parishioner this past week that didn’t go how I thought it was heading. This person asked me why our confession of sin is in the plural ‘we’. I thought he was asking why we are all accountable for each other’s sin and I began to address the reasons we are. He listened patiently and said, “no, I get that, but what I’m worried about is that without individual accountability of ‘I have sinned’ that our responsibility gets diluted; we need to confess both individually and corporately.” I had never thought of it this way around before, but he’s right: avoiding individual confession dilutes our accountability. I reminded him that we do offer individual confession if he ever wanted to and showed him the liturgy for it in the Book of Common Prayer. I agree with him on the necessity of both forms of confession. I am so very grateful for folks who ask the questions that broaden my view.

As we follow Jesus, we are responsible for our own behavior and the collective behavior of our community. All of scripture teaches us this. As adults, we are responsible for the safety of our children and we are responsible for teaching them how to love others and the value of human life. Blaming others instead of taking responsibility is just another form of violence. It wounds our souls and our ability to see the image of God in each other.

God’s peace be with you, my friends.

As We are Created

A Sunday reflection for Trinity Sunday.
The lectionary readings are here.

In my parish, we are reading through the Bible in a year using the reading plan from BibleProject (please, check out their videos, blog, and podcast!). We’ve talked about how our human desire for power and control is the same now as it was then. We’ve asked ourselves ‘how have we not learned that violence only brings about more violence?’ And we’ve had great conversations about why we’d rather look and be like the world than to walk with God, trusting that God’s Way is the better way. Our conclusions have been that we just have to keep trying to follow Jesus, recognizing that any act of ill-will or violence on any level (thought, word, or deed) is contrary to God’s Way.

The news shows us the great violent acts of our time; shows and networks masquerading as news reveals how violent we are when we attempt to manipulate people’s fear. Violent movies are blockbusters. We call bullying leaders strong and compassionate leaders weak. We use violent language to describe success (I killed it). We value individualism and have made ‘us vs. them’ our lifestyle, as if the only way to be ‘us’ is to define who our ‘them’ is. We struggle to express what we believe but we can sure enough tell you all that we don’t like about what they believe. And all of this is contrary to the teachings of Jesus.

The Trinity, One God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the image in which we are all created, is our ultimate model of community and unity. We are all created in the image of the Trinitarian God and are part of something so much bigger than ourselves. The early followers of Jesus spent much time and effort working out how One God can be three. The acceptance of this holy mystery is foundational to our faith. The acceptance of violence in our culture is the result of years and decades and centuries of humans losing this theology. The “rugged individualism” that we preach in this country is the antithesis of the Trinity. Individualism creates a world of constant competition: “I have to fight for what’s mine. I have to be better than everyone else. I have to push others down to lift myself up. My life/possessions/ideas/beliefs are threatened by your very existence.”

Living into our trinitarian theology says we are all in this together, seeking the greater good for every human being. Trinitarian theology says life is a companionable journey, not a competitive fight to the death. We each make the Body of Christ whole. We are most fully human when we live in community and unity as God created us to live. We are most like Jesus when we see the pain and hurt in other people and are moved to help alleviate it. This is the very meaning of compassion.

Compassion requires us to see and be present to other people. Compassion requires us to seek to understand the other person’s circumstance. Compassion requires us to acknowledge the Image of God in every person. Compassion isn’t about deciding whose “side” we are on. Compassion is seeing all through the eyes of Jesus so that there aren’t any more “sides” but instead we see human beings created in the Image of God.

Deepening our compassion requires us to look at our own responses to the situations we find ourselves in and ask ourselves some tough questions: is my response self-serving or for the greater good, why do I respond that way, why do I think that way? When we catch ourselves defending the way things are, we need to ask ourselves why am I engaging in this debate, what am I afraid I’ll lose if things change? When we want to stay in the comfort of silence or the selfishness of neutrality, we must remind ourselves that Jesus calls us to take a stand and speak the truth of God’s love. When this work of ‘self’ is done within a loving and compassionate community of Jesus Followers so that we shine God’s Love into this hurting world, we are living as we are created to live.

A Spirit of Adoption

A Sunday reflection on the Day of Pentecost. The lectionary readings for today are here.


All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ– if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

Romans 8:14-17

On this day of Pentecost, you may be wondering why I’m choosing to write on the reading form Paul’s letter to the Romans instead of the story of the Holy Spirit descending upon the followers of Jesus. I have a few things to say about my choice, mainly that there will be a plethora of Holy Spirit, Birthday of the Church, Flames and Tongues type sermons today, and since I’m not actually preaching I thought I’d use Paul’s words about fear and adoption and belonging to continue to conversation we started here.

This world we live in, and by ‘world’ I don’t mean God’s amazing creation but the ‘princes and principalities,’ the people, governments, institutions, and societal groups that seek our attention so they can shape us to their will (aka discipleship) that are absolutely contrary if not actually deliberately opposing God’s Way and Will, this world we live in wants to control us through fear. At the most simple level, look at the advertising we encounter every day. Companies use phrases like ‘must have,’ ‘everyone is getting it,’ and ‘the life you want’ to get us to buy or buy into whatever it is. They play on our fear of not belonging, of missing out, of someone having something we don’t.

We are told to be afraid of being manipulated as we are being manipulated by the group we are listening to. We are told to fear others having what we have incase there isn’t ‘enough.’ We are told to fear being afraid and whatever they are selling will make us feel safer. We are told to fear those who are different than us because accepting them means we have to change and we should definitely be afraid of changing.

Almost as often as Jesus tells us about Love, he tells us to not be afraid. And although there is much to fear in this world, I can confidently assure you that if you are following a leader or a group or any institution that teaches you to be afraid, you are absolutely not following Jesus, nor are they (even if they claim they are). Jesus knew all too well the manipulative power of fear. The Roman controlled world he lived in were experts at it. The Pax Romana wasn’t an idealistic society, it was a society brutally ruled by fear. There was an artificial peace because no one was brave enough to stand against the leadership. Except Jesus.

As Children of God, as Followers of Jesus, we are taught (discipled) to let God’s Love be the foundation of our living. Through the power of the Holy Spirit we are adopted into God’s family (we call the outward act of this baptism). This is the belonging we are created for. There is absolutely nothing in this world that can take away our belonging to God. When we find our true identity in God our Creator, we have the courage and strength even in the worst of times to not be afraid, to not let fear govern us.

Jesus has shown us, in flesh and blood, the Love of God. He has invited us to follow him, to let compassion, kindness, forgiveness, and mercy shape us to God’s Way and will as we live in this world so that others know Love as we do. God’s Way and will is Love, that everyone should flourish and thrive as beloved children of our Creator. Following Jesus means participating with God in working out this purpose and plan for all people, making it on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

A Better Question

It’s been awhile since we sat together with a cup of coffee. Can I start us off today with a story?

At one of the parish’s I’ve served that had a school, I would go and read to the preschool classes each week. This particular day I was in the three year-old-room and we were sitting on the floor (soooo much easier to get off the floor in those days) in the reading circle when an announcement came over the intercom. Nothing scary, just a normal sounding announcement about something the teachers needed to bring to the office. Immediately the teacher and every one of these precious little humans stood without saying a word and began moving quickly to the corner and huddling down. The teacher motioned for me to follow, with her finger on her lips in a silent ‘shhh’ as she turned out the lights and locked the door. Confused, I did as requested and as I got to her she whispered in my ear ‘it’s a drill, an intruder drill” and she and I squatted down and circled our arms around the children who remained motionless and silent. And when the all-clear announcement came the children returned to the reading circle AS IF THIS WERE JUST A NORMAL DAY. I finished the story, said goodbye, and left the room as they went to their tables for snack time.

As I walked into the church office, I looked at the Parish Administrator and burst into tears. “That was normal for them, they knew exactly what to do,” I sobbed. She looked very confused (we didn’t hear the school announcements in the church office, only the fire alarm bell) and in between sobs I told her what happened. No child should have to live in a world where intruder drills are necessary.

In my role as a Disaster Preparedness and Response coordinator, I’ve done active shooter training and drills with parishes and clergy. And as I’ve witnessed the looks of fear and confusion on the faces of grown-ups as we talk about someone combing in with a gun, I think of that day with the three year olds. No child of God, regardless of age, should have to live in a world where intruder drills are necessary.

And yet we do. And I want to know why we have crafted this world for ourselves? Why has our primary focus been on preventing injury and death WHEN an active shooter appears on school campuses and church grounds rather than preventing the violent act to begin with? Why have we allowed such heinous acts against the immeasurable value of human life to become a normal part of our lives in this country? And I know that these are immensely complicated and complex questions and that there are no simple answers.

And I know that these are the questions Jesus would be asking, that he does ask of us, just as he asked the man at the healing pool, “do you want to be made well.” Just as he spoke to the the men who accused a woman of adultery, “let the one who is without sin throw the first stone.” Just as he spoke with the woman at the well and the woman whose daughter was tormented by a demon and John’s disciples and Nicodemus and Peter and Martha. Life isn’t about the easy way or simplistic answers. Life is complex and complicated and when we choose to follow Jesus we face these questions in the confidence and hope of God’s promise to restore and redeem all things.

We are the instruments God has chosen to work out the divine plan of ‘on earth as it is in heaven.’ We are to bear the image of God in the pain and suffering. And we reveal the Divine Image to others in the way we Love as Jesus loves. So, perhaps, the better question is, “How do we love better?”
By growing our skills in civil discourse so that we can model how to respect others’ views?
By increasing our own knowledge of mental wellness?
By offering our facilities as places of learning for both Civil Discourse and Mental Health Awareness?
By working with our government leaders to craft and enact sensible and safe gun legislation?
By hosting holy conversations about our communal responsibility toward others as our fellow human beings?
By partnering with our local schools and youth clubs as mentors?
By deepening our own spiritual growth so we see more clearly the image of God in all people?

Life isn’t simple questions or simple answers. Loving better is a challenging, lifelong journey, following Jesus for the greater good of all people. What does loving better look like in your community?

Prayer Action

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The readings for the seventh Sunday of Easter are here.

We’ve said and witnessed a lot of prayer this week. In the wake of the horrific tragedy in Uvalde – and so many others like it – we pray. We bring our emotions to God in in our need for comfort and guidance. And we should do this, it is the right, first response as we follow Jesus. And we keep in mind that prayer is not passive. Prayer is an action of love. In our prayer we are drawn closer in relationship with God our Creator. And the fruit of this relationship is how we love the world – actively seeking the greater good of all, working together to reveal God’s love in the midst of pain and suffering.

The purpose of prayer is to deepen our communion with God. Prayer isn’t access to some holy vending machine in which we tell God about all of our good works so God will dispense what we want. It isn’t a way to earn God’s favor or even to get God to change or punish others.

Prayer is entering into honest and authentic communion with God. It is both speaking what it on our hearts, the good, the anger, the joy, the sorrow, the pain, whatever it is we are experiencing, AND then listening in the silence, aware of God’s presence with us. Prayer is the first step in our partnering with God to make it on earth as it is in heaven here and now. Prayer is about aligning our will to God’s will, shaping our hearts so that what we ask for is in line with God’s will for all.

In our gospel reading today we hear a portion of the prayer Jesus prays for his disciples and us in the last moments before his arrest and crucifixion. It is a prayer full of anguish, urgency, and active love.

In the words of his prayer, Jesus reminds us that we are in this world but we do not belong to this world. We belong to God. That we have a purpose in this world – to reveal the love of God to the world, to be united as one force of love in the name of Jesus so that all come to know God. And that those who claim allegiance to this world rather than God will hate those of us who claim allegiance to God.

Following Jesus isn’t about leaving this world or transcending it but living in it in the name of Love so that we participate with God in making it on earth as it is in heaven. Love is stronger that hate. Love is stronger than fear. When we pray seeking deeper communion with God, our capacity to love grows so that we can counter the hate and fear in this world with all that we are and all that we do.

As we come together each week to collect all of our prayers together and raise our voice as one to God we are living into the unity that Jesus speaks of. Our Eucharist is framed as a prayer. We ask God to make real in us the purpose for which Jesus lived and died and rose again.

Prayers and Action are not separate options. For Christians, they must be used together. We thoughtfully consider the value of all human life and pray for God’s power and strength to reveal to us where we need to change so that everything we think, say, and do reflects God’s love for all people and a hurting world. We pray that our city, state, and country leaders will thoughtfully consider which policies will best serve the people and the common good and not their own political agendas or power trips. We speak the truth of Love against the fear and hate in this world. We use our votes to elect people of good character not to support a particular party.

We pray and we act. We participate with God to reveal the power of Love in this world.

We pray for the victims of gun violence and those who inflict it. And we act to prevent it happening again. We can join in with the group Episcopalians Against Gun Violence. We can participate in both Mental Health Awareness and Civil Discourse programs or organize and offer them in our community. We can donate to reputable victims groups. We can help groups like rawtools.org turn weapons in the gardening tools.

We pray for those who are sick and we help them get what they need to recover. We pray for those who are struggling, financially, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and help them locate the resources they need. We pray for those who are hungry in our community and help to relieve their hunger.

Mother Teresa said, “I used to pray that God would feed the hungry, or do this or that, but now I pray that he will guide me to do whatever I’m supposed to do, what I can do. I used to pray for answers, but now I’m praying for strength. I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us and we change things.”

It is ours, as Jesus Followers, to reveal God’s love in this world. We vow to do so in our baptismal covenant, claiming we will, with God’s help, persevere in resisting evil, and, whenever we fall into sin, repent and return to the Lord; proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ; seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourselves; and strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being.

We follow Jesus in prayer and in action, doing what unites and builds up, what puts the greater good of all over and above our personal desires, what reveals the power of God’s love even in the darkest of times.

I’d like to close this sermon on prayer with a prayer and then at the end of our worship I invite you to pick up the printed prayers and resources for action and make use of them. We pray and we act.

Let us pray for the community of Uvalde in the words of Bishop David Reed:
O God our Father, whose beloved Son took children into his arms and blessed them: Give us grace to entrust your beloved children of Uvalde to your everlasting care and love, and bring them fully into your heavenly kingdom. Pour out your grace and loving-kindness on all who grieve; surround them with your love; and restore their trust in your goodness. We lift up to you our weary, wounded souls and ask you to send your Holy Spirit to take away the anger and violence that infects our hearts, and make us instruments of your peace and children of the light. In the Name of Christ who is our hope, we pray. Amen.

Love is.

As I have been carefully crafting the outline for what I plan to do with this blog, the very thing that prompted me to start it continues: violent events cutting short the lives of God’s beloved children. People doing their shopping shot by a man whose only motive is hate. Children shot by a man in the classrooms that are supposed to be places of growth and development. What is it going to take for the human race to learn that violence only breeds more violence. Hate breeds hate. Love is the only thing more powerful than hate and violence.

The answers are not simple. I know that it will take more than just changing our laws. The true nature of the matter is the value we place on human life. Some stand up and scream about saving the lives of unborn babies but do they scream as loudly and passionately about saving the lives of children sitting in a classroom? We put metal detectors in school doors and train our children with intruder drills and develop bulletproof backpacks and arm our teachers. But what can we do so we don’t have to treat our school campuses like war zones?

The one thing Jesus said almost as often as he talked about love, is “do not be afraid.” He didn’t mean that there aren’t many events in this world that are frightening. He didn’t mean we should ignore that which is dangerous. He isn’t telling us to pretend we aren’t afraid. Jesus means that fear is not what we let guide our behavior. Love is.

Fear prevents us from seeing the greater good of all. Love works for the greater good so that all are able to flourish in God’s Kingdom. Fear excludes. Love includes. Fear is about self-preservation. Love is about the abundance of life in God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. Fear paralyzes. Love empowers.

Love is the answer. And I don’t mean the hallmark version. Active love that respects the dignity of all people, wants the best for the greater good, and seeks actively to ensure every single human being flourishes in this world. Living in a posture of defense and fear is the opposite of love.

There are so many ways to love each other in the aftermath of tragedy. Donate blood. Give to reputable agencies that will help the survivors. Volunteer with these agencies. Pray together. Learn about how to offer mental health awareness training in your parishes and public places. Write your congresspersons and other officials. Support organizations like rawtools.org that turns guns into garden tools. Host a civic discourse workshop in your community.

Together, as we follow Jesus, we learn to love better and better each day. We are created by the God of Love in Love and for Love.

Holy and Loving God, you seek us and we speak your name in praise and honor. Love is how we reveal you and your Kingdom to the world you have given us. Give us what we need for this day; we trust your faithfulness to provide for us tomorrow. Help us to follow you in Love so that we are not misdirected by fear; your love is stronger than evil. Amen.

That Day was a Sabbath

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for the sixth Sunday of Easter are here.

You may have noticed as I read the gospel lesson that I used the word ‘sick’ in reference to the people at the pool rather than the word the NRSV uses. The Greek word translated here means ‘in need of strength’ and most every other place this word is used the NRSV translates it ‘sick’. I’m not comfortable using the word invalid because even though we put the emphasis on a different syllable, to me it still reads in-valid. And no one is God’s Kingdom is an invalid human being.

So, now that we’ve got that disclaimer out of the way, let’s take a look at our story: A man had been ill for many years, 38 to be precise. I wonder, why not 40? What is John attempting to convey with 38? Something to ponder, hmmm? Anyway, he’d been sick a long time, unable to position himself in the healing waters of the pool of Bethsaida. Of all the people who would have been at the pool, Jesus singles this man out and asks him a peculiar question: “Do you want to get well?”

I think most of us would jump in and say “of course he does! that’s why he’s at the healing pool.” And yet, he has a list of reasons why he’s been there, on the edge of being well, for so very long. No one has helped him and other’s have cut in front of him. Instead of saying “yes, I do” he talks about why he hasn’t been able to accomplish it.

Healing at this pool was in limited supply. Tradition tells us that on occasion, an angel would stir up the waters and in these brief moments, whoever was able to make their way and be first into the pool would be healed. There was no published schedule. You just had to wait until the waters stirred and then try to be the first one in.

Jesus takes the competitive nature of the situation and makes it relational. He doesn’t help the man to the water or scold the others for not helping, he just simply heals him. Without effort or earning or payment, this man is healed on God’s terms, with God’s strength.

And everything is going to change for this man. The life he had known for the past 38 years, is completely transformed. And now, he has the choice to live in the competitive and transactional economy of this world or the relational economy of God’s Kingdom. Does he continue to live in a world where people can be labeled as invalid, made invisible, stuck in a corner by a pool and forgotten because they don’t measure up to our standards? Or in a world where everyone matters, all are healed by Love and relationship with God, where kindness and compassion are in abundant supply, and everyone is known to be a beloved child of God. This man has the choice of living a life worthy of the gift he’s received or to live as those who found it acceptable to treat him as he’d been treated for the past 38 years.

And here’s the rub – we aren’t told which economy he chooses to live in, just that he picked up his mat and walked. We aren’t told, I think, for two reasons: one is so that we don’t see this as a transaction. Jesus heals him without asking for anything from him either before or after. And two so that we can decide for ourselves how we would respond, how we DO respond to Jesus’ healing.

God’s forgiveness, God’s love is a gift freely given. It is already ours. Do we let it change everything? Do we let it change us so that we live a life worthy of the gift? Or do we just take it and go on about our business?

We may not be told what the man does, but we are told that all of this occurred on the Sabbath.

Doing things on the Sabbath got Jesus into trouble more than a few times. To be fair, God HAD commanded the Israelites to keep the Sabbath holy by not working on the Sabbath. And the religious leaders, priests and rabbis had sought over the years, to determine just what was work and what wasn’t, what was allowable on the Sabbath and what wasn’t in a good faith effort to keep folks from sinning.

Healing and carrying mats were apparently two tasks that aren’t appropriate for the Sabbath. In what comes after what we read today, the man is questioned by the Pharisees as to why he is carrying a mat on the Sabbath and he tells them that Jesus told him to. And so they turn their attention to Jesus healing on the Sabbath.

Jesus responds to their criticism by saying, “my father is still working so I am working.”
They seem to have forgotten that the command wasn’t not to work but to keep the Sabbath holy. Healing and relationship building are holy activities. The instruction to not work is not the purpose of the command but a way to keep the command. They’d turned it around backwards and made the method more important than the outcome.

So, what does it mean to keep the Sabbath holy and how does not working help us to do that?

Sabbath means ‘to stop’, not just to rest but to stop, cease all doing and trust that God will keep the world turning so that we can pay attention to what God has done and continues to do in the world around us.

Holy means dedicated to God. The command to keep the sabbath holy means to dedicate the time to God.

We have our own challenges in the 21st Century to keeping the sabbath holy. Sabbath isn’t just time off from work but an intentional ceasing of all forms of ‘doing’. Just taking a day off from work and then filling it with so called leisure activities doesn’t allow us to stop, it just keeps us busy in a different way.

To keep the Sabbath holy means that, in an intentional amount of time, we keep our focus on God, laying aside all of the tasks and activities that have distracted us from what God is doing in us and in this world and pay attention to God, remembering that all of our work, all of our doing, is done in God’s created world, so that when we resume our activities and work we are better able to center all that we are and all that we do in God’s Kingdom.

In his book, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places, Eugene Peterson says, “The attentiveness and adoration that Sabbath-keeping cultivates develops into a capacity for wonder under the conditions of creation that permeate the days of the week … Sabbath is a deliberate act of interference, an interruption of our work each week, a decree of no-work so that we are able to notice, to attend, to listen, to assimilate this comprehensive and majestic work of God, to orient our work in the work of God.”

Sabbath keeping is one way we respond to Jesus’ question “do you want to be made well?” It keeps us properly oriented in our life’s journey of following Jesus. In the hearing of scripture, we are made well. In our prayers, we are made well. In our joyful praise, we are made well. In giving thanks, we are made well. In our coming together around God’s table, we are made well.

Sabbath is a way we learn to rely on God and God’s strength, because like the man at the pool, we are all in need of the strength that only God can provide. Not a strength that makes us mightier than others but the strength that comes from love and compassion. The strength that enables us to live in God’s Kingdom economy in which everyone is infinitely valuable. The strength that changes everything and enables us to live on earth as in heaven. Amen.

It’s been a while …

It feels like forever since I posted something and in fact it has been a couple of months since I wrote anything beyond my sermon or a Sunday reflection for the weeks I’m not preaching and I haven’t even posted my sermons for the past few weeks. I’m not sure of the reason, except perhaps I just needed a break. I didn’t intentionally stop, I’m not withholding or withdrawing from anything (that I’m aware of but that can be a stress response from me so I do spend time pondering it), I just haven’t had much to say.

I have been doing a lot of reading and observing and learning so perhaps I’m just letting stuff settle in. I’ve been seven months in a new parish, five months in a new house and life is on a fairly even keel right now. I am grateful for a steady pace. It’s how I function best. But I also know that I can go a bit too slow for some, that I procrastinate as a way of avoiding even the potential for conflict. And sometimes in my avoidance I actually can create conflict, the very thing I’m avoiding. We humans are peculiar creatures, aren’t we?

I have a dear friend who says, “life was so much simpler before I was so self-aware.” Such a true statement. Doing the work, making the time to ponder our reactions and ways of moving through this world is challenging. And it is the best way to become more compassionate toward others. Deepening our capacity for compassion is the reason I started this blog. And so, looking back over the time I’ve been posting I realize that my own awareness of Whose and who I am has continued to grow. They (I’m not sure who ‘they’ are but I know they said this) say that the best sermons are given to ourselves. As I write and preach, praying that my words are useful and edifying, I grow too. And to my prayer I add the request that this growth never stops. For each of us and for all our sakes.

In all of the conflict and danger and trauma of our broken world, we cannot see peace and hope if we do not have it within ourselves. If I am not at peace with who I am, I cannot be at peace with who you are. If I do not have hope that I will continue to grow and be continuously transformed into God’s beloved, how can I have that hope for anyone else? Intentional time and the awareness of God’s presence with me are necessary components as I follow Jesus in bringing light and Love to the small corner of the world I inhabit.

I fret that talking of my ongoing journey will come across as self-centered so I pray I can clearly communicate that in my vocation as priest and writer I cannot walk with you in your journey of continuously becoming God’s beloved if I am not also on the same path. God’s gifts and blessings are never for a single individual but given through one for the benefit of all. God’s gift of love for us is to be shared so I preach and write with the hope that you will find God’s love in my words and in me as we walk in relationship with each other.

So, I’ll get to writing again and I’m so grateful you are willing to journey with me. Together, as God’s Love grows in us we can leave less and less room for darkness in this world.

Remember How He Told You …

An Easter sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake, Canyon Lake, TX The lectionary readings for Easter are here.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

<The Lord is Risen, Indeed! Alleluia>

Oh, good, you remembered! And although each Sunday we celebrated the Resurrection of our Lord, today, Easter Sunday, we remember the very first Easter.

Do you remember when we put away our ‘alleluias’ at the beginning of Lent?

We have new alleluia this morning! A little brighter and shinier than the ones we packed away. Take one and pass them along. Alleluias are to be shared!

Do you remember what I said when we gathered them up in the purple box way back at the beginning of Lent? Although we never stop praising God for his gracious goodness toward us, through the season of Lent we suspend saying alleluia so that we can take it up again refreshed and new so we don’t take either our praise or God’s goodness for granted. We suspend saying it for a season so that when we resume, it’s a bit shinier and brighter than before, enabling us to better remember why we say it to begin with.

This Greek word for remember, ‘mnaomai’ is more than just a factual recollection, it is being mindful of past events, bringing “past actions to bear on the present, with new power and insight,” letting what happened before shape who we are and what we do now. It isn’t getting stuck in the past or wishing things would ‘go back to normal’ or even an unrealistic romanticization of ‘the good old days’ but an understanding that we are shaped by our past as we inhabit the present and move forward into what is to come.

Whenever God instructs his people to observe a festival it is to ‘remember’, remember what God has done, remember who they are as God’s people so that they can continue to follow God. At his last meal with his friends before his crucifixion, Jesus tells them that whenever they share this meal they are to remember.

When the women, Mary, Mary, Mary, and either Joanna or Salome, depending on the version, went to the tomb that morning to properly prepare Jesus’ body, they forgot to remember what Jesus had told them … until the messengers, angels, remind them: “Remember how he told you!” Remember how he told you! HOW he told you. Not ‘what’ he told you but how.

Imagine yourself in that moment – not just recalling the words but bringing to mind, being mindful of all that Jesus had said and spoken and done and taught! All of their time spent with Jesus comes to them in a completely new way. These women take their new insight – the dawning reality of the resurrection and HOW Jesus had told them – to the men and the first Easter Sermon is preached by the women who had remained close to him through it all. And most of the listeners of this first Easter Sermon don’t ‘remember’. They cannot bring what Jesus had spoken, the miracles they had witnessed, the resurrection of the widow’s son or Lazarus, into their present and let it shape and transform what is to come.

Somehow they are unable to let the joy of the resurrection blend in with the pain and grief of the previous three days; they are unable to see the redemption of the crucifixion in the resurrection. Perhaps they need to remember even further back – to the stories told in their scriptures, the story of the God who has been leading the people through redemption after redemption since the very beginning.

God is the God of Redemption. God takes what we – the whole of the human race – have messed up or done incompletely and redeems it. Redemption isn’t the same as undoing or even re-doing.

God chooses to work with and through humans to further God’s purpose for all of creation. God leads and sometimes pushes us in a redemptive direction, allowing us to learn from our own misdirections so that we can learn to live into the ideal for which God created us. God doesn’t erase what we do but gives us the freedom to learn as we compare the consequences of choosing our own way with the consequences of choosing God’s Way.

God calls us to remember – to remember HOW God was with us from the very beginning, to allow God’s Word and our experiences, and the experiences of our ancestors, both blood and faith ancestors shape and transform who we are as we follow Jesus toward who God calls us to be.

Jesus said he came to fulfill the law not do away with it. The Way of Love that Jesus teaches doesn’t negate the 10 Commandments. The Way of Love shows us how to live the purpose of God’s law – to live on earth as in heaven loving God and our neighbor … and ourselves, just incase some of you need to remember to love yourself.

Jesus tells us how to do this through the parables he teaches, the miracles he performed, the care and compassion he showed for all. He preached how to live as God’s people on earth as in heaven, here and now, in the now and not yet of God’s’ Kingdom. This is the Good News, the Gospel message. Jesus shows us a new way of being human, The Way opened for us by his death and resurrection.

Easter morning doesn’t undo Good Friday. Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t undo his death. His wounds were still visible. The resurrection leads us toward the Kingdom of God on earth, living in this world as God created us to live. Jesus’ human death doesn’t undo his divinity and his resurrection doesn’t undo his humanity. Jesus is fully human and fully divine, in the time he lived on this earth, in the events of his arrest and crucifixion, and in the resurrection we celebrate today and every Sunday as we gather to remember how he told us Whose and who we are.

Life is a blend of sorrow and joy. One does not undo the other. The pain we experience in life isn’t undone by happy events. And our happy moments aren’t erased by the hard times. All that we experience blends together to shape us into the beautiful beloved people of God. Joy redeems sorrow into growth and wisdom and sorrow redeems joy so that it doesn’t become just whitewash.

The Resurrection of Easter redeems the death of Good Friday by revealing the nature of Jesus, fully human and fully divine. Just as Jesus’ divinity and humanness cannot be separated, so his life, death, and resurrection cannot be taken as individual events but a singular movement in the Story of God and God’s people. Neither can we separate our humanness from the image of God in which we are all created. It is only when we live from the image within that we are fully human as God created us to be. And this is the continuous movement of Easter – Easter is the redemption of all of life, to the New Life Jesus calls us to.

This new Way, the Way of Jesus doesn’t undo or erase the pain and sorrow of this world – the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, the destruction of storms, the division in our own country – the strife of this world is all so very real. Jesus gives us a Way to Live in the midst of it all as God’s people, participating with God in the redemption of the world, living each day from the image of God in us, living into the fullness of our humanness as Jesus shows us how to be, a living and active remembrance of Whose and who we are, reminding others Whose and who they are. When we say we believe in the resurrection we are saying yes to God’s new creation, to this new way of being human that Jesus shows us in flesh and blood.

This new way of being human is to recognize the image of God in all people, in ourselves and in every person we encounter through our days, and interacting with them accordingly.

Remember HOW he told you the Good News. Remember the all powerful self-giving love of Jesus. Remember HOW he told us that the love God has for us is the love we are to have for each other. Remember that both the anguish of Good Friday AND the joy of Sunday morning shape and transform us into God’s beloved people, living on earth as in heaven.

Put your sparkly alleluia sticker where it will help you remember every day how Jesus told you of the Good News, how he told you Whose and who you are.

Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

True Night

A sermon preached on Good Friday at St. Francis by the Lake, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings are here.

Are you familiar with Vincent Van Gogh’s Starry Night? Starry Night is an imaginative composition of the narrow scene of a cypress tree against a backdrop of hills out his window and all of the other aspects he knew of the town and countryside around him. He painted it in a single sitting and he considered it “a more spontaneous drawing” than his other works; Van Gogh declared Starry Night to be more realistic than the new fangled technology of his day referred to as photography. He sought to capture more than just the details of a scene, going deeper into the essence, the emotions, the feeling and tenor of the night sky. Vincent dismissed more realistic representational paintings as “delusive precision”.

Vincent thought that too much emphasis on precision can distract us from the truth, the pure nature of a scene or story. With Starry Night he sought to evoke the essence of what it actually feels like to look into a night sky. He wasn’t distracted by the delusive precision of the details; he painted to evoke a fully dimensional human experience.

Vincent wrote to his sister “It often seems to me that the night is even more richly colored than the day, colored in the most intense violets, blues, and greens. If you look carefully, you’ll see that some stars are lemony, others have a pink, green, forget-me-not blue glow. It’s clear that to paint a starry sky it’s not nearly enough to put white spots on blue-black.”

I think the writers of the Good News wrote with the same frame of thought as Vincent painted. Each gospel writer chose the details they included intentionally, to offer an experience, THE fully dimensional human experience of Jesus’ death. Remember that they weren’t taking notes as events happened as a newspaper reporter of our day would do. Most of them had run away to hide or at best watched from a great distance denying any connection with Jesus. But we still take their stories as truth, even though they weren’t written down until decades later. What matters is what the story points to, the story’s deeper meaning, the essence of the truth that evokes in us something more real than any historically accurate fact could possibly provide.

If we let ourselves get bogged down into trying to prove the factual details we will miss what the gospel writers are doing – evoking in us the experience of these events, the emotions, the impact, the deeper meaning of how these events shape and form our identity with the understanding that it’s not just “white spots on blue-black” but a richly colored story of Whose and who we are.

We have 4 eyewitness accounts of the same event recalling and focusing on different details, much like we tell family stories of Aunt Gertrude or Grandpa Fred. Each person telling different details from a different point of view, and each point of view coming together in composite to add to the complete experience.

We don’t necessarily consider any version of our family stories as incorrect or incomplete; we understand that together they give a more complete picture of a story, going deeper than just a focus on the factual details but how we perceive what happened and the impact on us. Our family stories shape and form our identity. They paint a picture of our lives in motion, the fully dimensional experience.

Luke tells us that as they lifted and set the cross Jesus was nailed to, he prays: “Father forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing,” a statement of preemptive forgiveness, God’s grace bestowed on us in our ignorance.

Then Luke tells us abut the conversation between Jesus and the two criminals who here hanging with him. Three men found guilty of not conforming to the oppressive standards of their day, threats to the Roman way. And as we see the three of them hanging together we cannot forget about the fourth who was set free in exchange for Jesus because of the narrow view of the temple leadership. Imagine what Barabas might be saying to his companions as they watched these three die. One of the men with Jesus mocks him as the crowd does, his view of life distorted by his own anger. And one has the eyes to see and ears to hear the truth and as he humbly acknowledges Jesus is given the reassurance that: “You will be with me today in paradise,” an offer of hope that is given no matter what stage of life we are in.

Then, turning over to John, we hear of Jesus’ concern for his mother and beloved disciple: “Woman, behold your son; Son, this is your mother.” A God-created relationship bound together through the death of another, the re-creation of God’s people knit together into a holy family.

Matthew and Mark tell of the desperate plea made by Jesus as God turns his eyes away from the world, causing the sky to darken and the curtain of the temple be ripped in two: “My God, why have you forsaken me.” A desperate cry of the deep anguish experienced by Jesus so that none of us – no one ever – would have to know life without God’s loving presence.

And then again, John brings us to the human side of things when Jesus says, “I am thirsty.” And although some mock his request with sour wine, some remember Jesus promising to give us all living water so we would never thirst for compassion and mercy and love again.

With John’s telling we witness Jesus saying “It is finished” and then giving up his spirit with Luke telling us the words “Father into your hands I commend my spirit” as Jesus breaths his last.

And, for now, this is where our story pauses: in the despair of death. A death that in the reality of the moment seems intolerable, unforgivable, unredeemable. The sky is dark and we cannot see beyond the blackness of it.

We have the blessing of knowing Sunday is coming; those who witnessed this day first hand, had already forgotten what Jesus had told them, that he would die but they could not find the light of hope he promised in the darkness. They were stuck in the delusive precision that death is death.

They had forgotten the promises of God from the beginning of time. They had forgotten Jesus’ words, “soon you will not see me but soon after that, you will see me and you will find joy.” They had forgotten that he told them that he would be handed over and condemned to death and killed AND would rise up again. They had forgotten that he had told them about their own betrayal and abandonment of him and he did not condemn them but served them.

They could not, as Vincent did in his painting, bring in what they knew of the whole Story of God to complete their picture. Despite all they had learned from Jesus, despite all they had done and witnessed with him, they could only see death.

From our perspective, our vantage point some 2000 years later, what do we bring into our composition painting? As we stand in the pain and anguish of Friday, and live with the tension of the now and not yet of Saturday, what is the true essence, the fully dimensional experience of God’s story? Can we look for the beauty of the night sky or do we close our eyes and wish for Sunday morning? Can we participate in the story or do we rush past what makes us uncomfortable?

Our participation in the crucifixion is to remember that the cross is not simply a ghastly sight of a naked man dying in agony, but the full disclosure of what God is up to in this world, the revelation of who God is and who we truly and fully are in relationship with God.

The cross defeats all of our attempts to climb our way to God through good works and righteousness and reveals the God who comes to us redeeming our attempts to be our own Creator by enabling us to participate in God’s new creation here and now. The cross teaches us that the only way to God is the way from God.

What happens on Sunday makes no sense without Friday and Friday is just a real downer without Sunday. The two together reveal the truth of who God is. If you look closely, you’ll see the true essence of God. Amen.