Don’t Miss Out

A sermon preached at Grace Episcopal Church, San Antonio, Texas.

The lectionary readings for the Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

I have a confession to make, well, I guess it’s a necessary confession by the world’s standards because apparently I’m breaking the rule of “must haves” so I admit it, I have an iPhone 6 and I have no desire to get a new one. My phone works just fine and it will have to die completely before I fork out the money required for a new one. But what will most likely happen is that the manufacturers will stop supporting the operating system long before it gives out and force me to get a new one which will only benefit them and not me. Call me a rebel, if you must, but I’ve learned that I don’t have to be afraid of missing out, even if a TV commercial tells me I should be.

Fear of missing out isn’t something new. The original 12 disciples and so many other Followers throughout history have suffered from the same fear. Our desire to follow Jesus is challenged by our desire to be accepted by and participate in the culture into which we are born and raised.

In our gospel reading for today, we continue walking with Jesus and the disciples as the Good News story is told to us by Mark. Last week Jesus asked them “Who do you say that I am” and at first blush, Peter’s response rings true: “You are the Messiah, the Christ.” But as Jesus begins to tell them what must happen, Peter tries to lead Jesus on the path of worldly power and Jesus reminds him in no uncertain terms just how this Following thing is to work.

If we want the true life, the real life God has in store for us, the life we are created for, we have to give up the life we think we want, the life the world says will somehow make us happy, well, that is until the next new thing comes along and we are told again that we won’t be happy without it.

So, about a week after the “get behind me” incident, after Jesus and three of the disciples have had a mountaintop experience and Jesus has cast out a dangerous and stubborn demon from a boy when the others disciples had been unable to do so, Jesus once again takes the disciples aside to remind them just how ‘power’ in God’s Kingdom works: The Messiah will be delivered into the hands of humans and killed and THEN he will rise again.

And they still didn’t understand him, and were afraid to ask Jesus to explain it further.

Why do you suppose they were afraid?
Perhaps because they knew their own desires were not in line with what he was saying and they weren’t ready to give them up?
Perhaps because they didn’t want to admit they stopped listening to him when he said “killed” and completely missed what came next?
Or perhaps because they had heard what he said and were remembering all the times they had been complicit in the cultural system that would promote the killing of the one who threatened the current power source?
Or perhaps because they just didn’t want what he’d been saying to be true so if they just ignore it, maybe it won’t happen?

And true to his nature, Jesus doesn’t force them or try to coerce them or threaten them. He simply speaks the truth and lives the truth and lets them ponder it for themselves. Changing our worldview takes time and intentionality. We are inundated with competing messages all around us and coming from inside us as well. We’ve been culturally conditioned and trained to think differently that what the Gospel – the Good News of Jesus – offers us. We spend an hour or two in worship each week, and perhaps an hour or two in study with others and a few minutes each day in prayer, compared to the hours and hours and hours each week we are conditioned by our culture. Just what is it we are missing out on?

Leaving them to ponder what he has said, Jesus waits until they get home to ask them what they’d been thinking. And again, they are afraid. Because once again, their cultural worldview has taken over: instead of talking with each other about how the Kingdom of God presents a completely different way of living, they try to fit Jesus’ words into their already existing worldview: one individual must be considered the greatest, people hold power over others, to be great I must make you weak.

And, so, again, Jesus reminds them what he’s shown them: power in God’s Kingdom isn’t domination but servitude. The Kingdom at hand doesn’t mean a reversal of power but a completely different way of seeing power.

Jesus uses a child as the point of his “greatness” message because children were the absolute lowest rank on their societal ladder. And yet, children hold great power: when they are hungry we feed them. When they are sick we care for them. We protect them with all that we have. We want the best for them, we want our children to have a better life than we do. We are delighted by their playfulness and kindness and amazed at how they learn by watching what we do.

And when we see everyone, including ourselves, as children of God, we come to understand this Kingdom power, we understand the power of love. We realize what we’ve been missing out on.

The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Michael Curry, says that the opposite of love isn’t hate but self-centeredness. Love is other-focused. Jesus says the greatest commandment is to Love God with all of our being and to love our neighbor as ourself.

To be the greatest in God’s Kingdom requires that we set aside our cultural ideas of power and prestige. Power in God’s kingdom isn’t at all about being better that someone else but about each of us putting others first. It is in vulnerability and compassionate love that we find the power of God with us.

God’s love isn’t about getting. There isn’t anything we can do or give that God needs. God’s love is about giving. God gives his life for us so that we can have the life we were created for: life grounded in this self-giving love without competition or ladder climbing or having to prove ourselves. God loves us as we are with the invitation to follow Jesus as we help to bring about the Kingdom on earth as in heaven. This is the new life, the rising after dying, that Jesus teaches us, and that we so often miss.

In our second lesson, today, James helps us understand what it is to really FOLLOW Jesus.

“Are any of you wise and understanding? Show that your actions are good with a humble lifestyle that comes from wisdom. However, if you have bitter jealousy and selfish ambition in your heart, then stop bragging and living in ways that deny the truth. This is not the wisdom that comes down from above. Instead, it is from the earth, natural and demonic. Wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there is disorder and everything that is evil. What of the wisdom from above? First, it is pure, and then peaceful, gentle, obedient, filled with mercy and good actions, fair, and genuine. Those who make peace sow the seeds of justice by their peaceful acts.” (James 3:13-18, Common English Bible)

Follow Jesus and you won’t miss out on anything that God has in store for you. Amen.

Whose, Part 2

I’d like to add to what I wrote a couple of weeks ago here.

And, I admit, that penning this piece has been a struggle because I’m so weary of of the polarization of our ideologies in this country. I want to to scream at the top of my lungs “Stop it! Do you not remember that Jesus tells us to love each other?!?!?!?!?” But I know that doing so would not enable anyone to hear me. So, I pray for compassion and patience and I choose my words carefully in a very human attempt with God’s help to bring us together behind Jesus. What I’m attempting here is to remind us Whose and who we are: beloved children of God called to live on earth as in heaven.

When we place our identity in a political party we give up our freedom to discern was is right in God’s eyes so that we can stay loyal to the party line. Political parties are defined and organized for the benefit of the leaders of the party. Political parties are meant to exclude not include, to place a defined group of human beings over and above another, and this is never inline with the good news of Jesus.

I’m not saying ignore politics or don’t be involved in governmental activities and actions. Just the opposite in fact. We need to be very aware of what is going on and what our government is doing. But, as Jesus Followers, we must be willing to make our decisions about who to vote for and what policies and laws we support based on the Good News of God, not a human defined political party affiliation.

The good news Jesus brings us isn’t liberal or conservative. The good news is that God loves all of us and wants to be in relationship with each and every human being. God came to us, to live and die as one of us, to rise to life again so that we can turn from the ways of this world toward the life we are created for: living in God’s Kingdom here and now. This is what the word ‘repent’ means, to turn around, to change course, to do a 180.

Jesus extends the invitation “Follow Me” and then leads us away from division, hate, and anger. Jesus leads us, all of us together, on the Way of Love. Jesus leads us toward unity, compassion, and peace. An ‘us versus them’ ideology is not part of Jesus’ Good News message.

The writer of the Good News Story according to Luke gives us these two statements of Jesus:
“John replied, “Master, we saw someone throwing demons out in your name, and we tried to stop him because he isn’t in our group of followers.” But Jesus replied, “Don’t stop him, because whoever isn’t against you is for you.” (Luke 9:49-50 CEB)
&
“Whoever isn’t with me is against me, and whoever doesn’t gather with me, scatters.” (Luke 11:23 CEB)

While at first glance these may seem contradictory, pay attention to the pronouns Jesus uses. In the first instance, he says “you” and in the second he says “me.” It isn’t up to us to determine who’s in and who’s out. Jesus never tells anyone they aren’t allowed to follow him; he does say that we (all of us) have to change the way we see and respond to the world around us when we do. Our part in God’s Kingdom on earth is to follow Jesus, loving God with all of our being and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Following Jesus is invitational, welcoming, hospitable – we gather with Jesus. We gather together with Jesus. Following Jesus isn’t a competition but a companionable journey we all walk together as we participate with God in bringing about God’s Kingdom here and now.

Would you pray with me, please?
Loving God, align our hearts and minds to Your way. Give us eyes to see each other as Your beloved children. Show us how to live on earth as in heaven. Give us the courage, strength, and wisdom to follow Jesus. Help us to always remember Whose and Who we are. Amen.

Remembering

A sermon preached at Grace Episcopal Church, San Antonio, Texas.

The lectionary readings for the sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost are found here.

I remember as a little girl hearing my parents and grandparents tell the story of where they were and just what they were doing when they heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

For my generation, we can all remember where we were and what we were doing when we heard that President Reagan had been shot and when the crew of the Challenger was lost in the explosion just after liftoff.

And for all of us over the age of 25 or thereabouts, we can say exactly where we were and what we were doing when we realized the planes that hit the twin towers twenty years ago wasn’t an accident.

We remember the dramatic and often sudden events that disrupt our collective feeling of security and our sense of normalcy.

Statistics tell us that church attendance after such events is always high. Somehow we know instinctively that with God we will know safety and security. And as the dust begins to settle, we talk about going “back” to normal often without considering if there is anything we’d like to do differently. We tend to equate normal with feeling safe so we look backwards to a time we felt safe and try to recapture what was.

So do you recall from last week when I compared the Syrophoenician woman’s conversation with Jesus about children and dogs and crumbs to that of the Jewish community who brought the deaf man for healing – she focused on who Jesus is and they focused on what he did.

And do you remember before that our five-week conversation on Jesus being the bread of life?

Keep those threads visible as we set up today’s story.

Here’s a brief run down of what happens in between:
Jesus feeds another huge crowd of thousands from seven loaves of bread with baskets and baskets of broken pieces, crumbs, left over.

Then Jesus has another confrontation with the Pharisees, this time they ask for a sign from heaven, as if the feeding and healing aren’t signs enough.

As Jesus and his disciples are traveling back across the Lake, he tells the disciples to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees. And the disciples think he’s scolding them because they forgot to pack their lunch for the day.

Jesus looks at them and says, “do you still not understand? Why are your hearts so resistant to God? Do you not have eyes, do you not have ears, do you not remember?”

And then, to emphasize this, Mark tells us the story of Jesus healing a blind man who isn’t completely healed at first but with a second touch from Jesus has his eyes opened wide and sees everything clearly.

All that we are told through the gospel stories weave together to give us God’s story so that we, too, have our eyes opened wide and can understand better and better who God is and who we are in relationship with God. Nothing is insignificant or extraneous and absolutely all of it is relevant to who God is calling us to be in this day and time in whatever circumstances we find ourselves.

Just like singular events in our lives, no matter how major, do not completely define who we are, neither can we have a whole and holy understanding of who God is by isolating the stories we have. Jesus calls us to remember all of it because it is in God’s story that we remember who we are.

And so we find ourselves with Jesus and his disciples as they are preaching and teaching and healing in the villages around Caesarea Philippi, a Roman city and site of a temple that Herod the Great (yes, the one who had all the jewish babies killed in his attempt to stop God’s messiah from coming into this world) had built to honor Caesar.

In the shadow of the temple to the self proclaimed deity Caesar, the one who gave himself the title “Son of God,” Jesus asks his disciples “who do people say that I am?”

And their answers are, well, so very human: John the Baptist, Elijah, some other prophet. People could believe that Jesus was a human come back to life but they could not wrap their heads around Jesus being God incarnate.

When Jesus turns the question directly to the disciples, “who do you say that I am,” Peter says, “you are the Christ,” Christos, meaning ‘anointed one’ a title that is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word ‘Messiah’ meaning a promised deliverer.

And then, curiously, Jesus orders them not to tell anyone. If they know who Jesus is, why can’t they tell anyone? Because they don’t yet fully understand what their answer means.

He begins to tell them what God’s Anointed One, Messiah, Deliverer will have to endure. But this plan of suffering and sacrifice didn’t fit their normal, their idea of safety and security. They wanted a deliverer who would oppress those who had oppressed them, give them power as they understood power. They wanted a messiah that would destroy people and buildings in acts of revenge and retaliation.

Peter attempts to correct Jesus because Jesus was undoing their sense of security and normal. Peter seems to have forgotten all that Jesus had spoken and done.

And Jesus’ response isn’t to make Peter comfortable but to help him remember. “Get behind me, Satan. For you are not setting your mind on things of God but on things of men.”

Peter was trying to lead Jesus and Jesus reminds him of the call “follow me.” Jesus tells Peter to remember just who is to follow who.

C. S. Lewis once said, “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.”

Jesus promises to comfort us in our sorrows but never does he say following him will be comfortable.

Jesus calls each of us to find our safety and security in our relationship with God so that when the tragedies of this world happen, we remain in the normalcy of God’s kingdom, following Jesus.

Normal isn’t something behind us but us behind Jesus, following him, walking the Way of Love always.

All that Jesus says and does – the event of God coming to us as one of us, dying and rising again for us – is intended to disrupt the world’s normal and to give us the normal centered in God’s Kingdom, the kingdom in which no one is oppressed and no one oppresses, no one is left out and no one does the leaving out, no one is hated and no one does the hating, a kingdom based on the power of loving relationships rather than the power of retaliation.

Jesus shows us that real power, the true power of God’s kingdom is love and compassion and grace.

Who do we say that Jesus is?
Do we step in behind Jesus and follow each and every day?
Do we give up our own ideas of security and safety and comfort to live life as God intends for us to live?

We remember this weekend the tragedy of 20 years ago even as we are continuing to experience the trauma of the COVID19 pandemic. And Jesus calls us all to remember that he is the bread of life, the living water, our savior and messiah and lord, who comforts us when we are in need and leads us forward into true life every moment of every day.

Remember. Remember whose and who we are. Amen.

Seeking AND Finding

I like to ask questions, especially “why” questions. I don’t recall my family ever saying that I was one of those kids who drove everyone crazy with questions, but I do know that the older I get, the more curious I am becoming. What I’ve come to realize is that life is about the discovery path between the question and the answer and that new answers always lead to new questions. We can get stuck in two ways: either in needing absolute answers or in wanting only questions so we don’t have to discern the ongoing answers.

In my life I’ve known church communities that discourage questions and I’ve known church communities that invite questions without much effort in helping folks seek answers. Real life, the life God intends for all of us, lies in between these two extremes. Questions are good, necessary even, to enable us to discover who we believe in. Belief in God is a who question – who is God and who are we in relationship with God – and God is bigger than any question we might ask and any doubt we might experience.

Jesus never shied away from questions and, yes, he gave answers but most often he answered questions with questions so that the folks he was speaking with had to work out the answers. Jesus knew this was the best way for folks to own the truth of the Gospel message. Spoon-fed answers don’t enable us to grow and mature.

In the gospel stories we have many, many answers about how to live. But we have to have ears to hear and eyes to see who God is and who we are. As The Church, we need to be open and welcoming to all questions AND we need to equip people with the tools to discern answers. Labeling all questions as doubt isn’t faith, it’s brainwashing. Inviting questions without also offering the opportunity to grow and learn is a hollow invitation to nothing in particular. To truly be “seeker friendly” we have to help folks actually find something because that’s what seeking means. Jesus says, “seek and you will find” (Matthew 7:7).

If we are only asking questions and avoiding answers, we are not actually seeking but looking for a way to remain comfortable where we are so we can feel good about ourselves without actually having to change or grow.

And the flip side is this: if, as The Church, we shame and guilt those who don’t like the answers they are discovering and they choose to walk away, we are not living the answers that the Gospel shares with us. Following Jesus is a choice. When the rich man couldn’t find it in himself to do what Jesus asked and walked away, Jesus let him (Mark 10:17-22). And, when others told Jesus that they wanted to follow him but first they needed to take care of some things, Jesus said to them, ‘make me first in your life and I’ll guide you with all that you need to tend to in this life’ See Luke 9:57-62).

Jesus said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.” He commissioned all of his followers to “Go out and train everyone you meet, far and near, in this way of life, marking them by baptism in the threefold name: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Then instruct them in the practice of all I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19-20, The Message).

We should never stop asking questions AND we need to live into the truth of the Gospel. These two behaviors are not mutually exclusive but go hand in hand as we continuously grow into the maturity of Christ (See Ephesians 4). We may not find a direct answer to every question in Scripture, in fact, there are many we won’t find, so we also have our Tradition, the words and work of faithful Followers who have come before us, as well as each other, and our God-given ability to Reason things out with each other in faithful community. The most hopeful and important message we can offer is that through our questions and the discovery and discernment of the answers in community, we will find the life God has in store for us all.

We are on this amazing journey we call life together, living an ongoing Sunday School lesson in which we continuously ask ourselves “how would Jesus love” so that we are equipped better and better each day to live as Jesus’ Followers on earth as in heaven.

What questions do you have? I’d love to seek answers with you!

Wrestling

A sermon preached at Grace Episcopal Church, San Antonio, Texas.

The lectionary readings for the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

This is a tough one, Y’all! It’s one of those Sundays in the lectionary where as the preacher, you have to make the decision to either deliberately avoid the difficult parts or intentionally step into a wrestling match with the text we are given. Guess which one I decided to do?

Just what are we to do with this story of Jesus and the woman of Syrophoenician heritage? I keep three different study Bibles at my desk to use in my sermon prep and not one of them offers notes on these verses, so apparently even the experts hesitate to tackle it. Which should probably be my clue to leave it alone so as not to venture into heresy but I’m not always that smart and I do believe that every single bit of scripture can teach us something about who God is and who we are in relationship with God, if we ask for the eyes to see and ears to hear. So, here we go …

Before we get into the actual conversation between Jesus and this woman – you know, I’d really like to give her the dignity of a name but I also think it’s a key factor of us stepping into this story that we aren’t told her name, she could be any one of us – let me set the stage and y’all imagine yourself in her place.

So, just where is Jesus and what is he doing there. Jesus wanted to get away for some rest and recovery. Healing and feeding and teaching full time is exhausting, just ask any parent. He’d been trying to get away for some time, but the crowds kept finding him. So he stole away to a region where, perhaps, he thought, he wasn’t as well known and wouldn’t be recognized or discovered.

Before he set out, he would have to know someone who lived in the region to stay with. He didn’t just log into the AirBnB app and make a reservation. But we don’t know if he was staying with friends or relatives or if they were even Jews.

The region of Tyre was not a jewish neighborhood but gentile. It was a wealthy area, a major seaport on the Mediterranean coast, north of Galilee, where Jesus did the majority of his ministry.

In Matthew’s telling of this story he says the woman who comes to him is Canaanite, a term used to emphasize even more how far removed from “God’s people” this region and the people who live there were considered.

And let’s not ignore the fact that she’s a woman. No self-respecting Jewish rabbi at the time would have been caught dead in the presence of a woman ‘like her,’ much less engage in conversation with her.

But most of all, she is a desperate mother wanting her daughter to be freed from her suffering. Desperate enough to throw herself at the mercy of a man she would expect to, at a minimum, ignore her, and worst case, have her thrown out into the street. But she’d heard this man, Jesus, was different.

She didn’t come in a posture demanding what she felt entitled to. In her understanding of the world, this Jewish rabbi would willingly give her nothing so she came prepared to beg. She was so desperate for her daughter that she was willing even to give up her dignity and her definition of self-worth.

So, just what do they say to each other?
She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.
We aren’t given her words but begging is never dignified. In Matthew’s telling we are given a few more details, that she cried out over and over again making everyone uncomfortable to the point that others tell Jesus to send her away.

And then Jesus responds, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.”
Wait. What? Did Jesus just insult her? Is he testing her faith? Is he making a point to those who are listening? I think yes, to all of these.
We can’t know what Jesus’ intention is exactly, but we can look at this situation in light of other stories we know.

Remember way back when in July when we talked about Jesus walking on the water? Mark tell us that even though the disciples were struggling with keeping their boat afloat in the heavy wind Jesus watched them from the shore for several hours and that when he did head out on his miraculous walk, he intended just to pass them on by. But when they cried out for him he stopped and got in their boat and their storm passed.

And then there’s the story of the man Jesus encounters at the healing pool who’d been there for most of his life and Jesus asks him, “do you want to be well?”

And then there’s the story of the woman brought before Jesus so he could condemn her and he turns the situation around and tells her accusers that if they are without sin they can punish her.

And then there’s the story when Jesus asks the disciples how they are to feed so many people instead of telling them what he planned to do. And then there’s Jesus’ response of “feed my sheep” when Peter assures Jesus he loves him after having denied knowing him.

In each of these stories and others, Jesus leads the person he’s talking to toward wisdom – rather than giving them a straight forward answer, he gives them what they need to work out the answer themselves; to wrestle with what they think they know and reframe it in light of God’s love and compassion. Because Jesus knows that is how we are truly transformed into kingdom people.

And so, the woman answers, not from a place of entitlement but from a footing firm in the understanding of God’s Kingdom: “Yes, Lord; yet even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”

Calling her a dog was a huge insult, and she turns it around and relates Jesus words to the grandest and most public miracle he was known for. The miracle of feeding the 5000 had gone viral for sure and a key detail of there being 12 baskets of what? Crumbs! Is not insignificant. The “children” had been fed and now Jesus is taking the feast to the gentiles because in God’s Kingdom there is always enough for everyone.

Very few of the “children of Isreal” had called him Lord, but this woman who would have been considered less than a dog by the Jewish leaders called Jesus Lord. She had wrestled with his words and she knew and accepted who Jesus is.

Jesus’ nature is compassion. Regardless of this woman’s background, he is moved by her suffering on behalf of her daughter and he heals.

And he said to her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon has left your daughter.”

The irony of a gentile proclaiming Jesus as Lord is made all the more clear by the healing story in the second part of our reading.

Jesus returns to Galilee and some folks bring a man who is deaf for healing. We can assume they are all Jews because generally when folks are other than Jews we are given their origin, the we are with the Syrophoenician woman. They, too, beg. And Jesus takes the man aside and heals him. The people were astonished and said that Jesus ‘does all things well, even making the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’ Instead of acknowledging who he is, they grade his performance.

A Gentile woman and a Jewish man, both healed by Jesus. In one case, Jesus isn’t even in the same house as the girl he heals and he credits the woman asking with participating in the healing. She calls him Lord and does as he asks, she goes home and finds her daughter well.

In the second case, Jesus physically touches the man, and then tells folks not to tell anyone what he’s done. And they don’t listen. And they don’t call him Lord.

Jesus didn’t deny his healing mercy to either person; he gives it freely to both. But who do you think really gets what it is to live into Jesus’ healing power? Which one understands what it is to truly FOLLOW Jesus? Who has wrestled with God?

This is the truly humble submission God asks of all of us. And that really bumps up against our 21st century egos. But that’s the thing about gifts, though, to be truly a gift, it has to be freely given and freely received. If we approach God because we feel entitled, we have not yet realized that we need God’s mercy, and we don’t see the life God gives us as a gift.

We aren’t entitled to God’s mercy and grace based on the world’s ideas of self-worth: money, status, clothes, the right school or neighborhood. We are GIVEN God’s mercy and grace because of who God is: the God who created us in love for love.

It is in acknowledging our deep need for God’s mercy, in wrestling with who God is, that we become fully human as God created us to be because we come to know whose and who we are. Amen.

You Keep Using that Word

You might want to get an extra large coffee this morning because I’m going to step into something controversial, y’all. I want to talk about our (ab)use of the term ‘pro-life’ because I’m not seeing much evidence that many folks who use the term pro-life to describe their political or even religious stance actually are.

To be truly pro-life, we are just as concerned with the quality of life both before and after birth. Pro-life means we believe that every single human being deserves the same quality of life that we think we deserve and are willing to do all we can to make that a reality.

Jesus says that if we love him we will take care of others (see the Gospel according to John chapter 21).

To be truly pro-life, we know that men are equally as culpable as women in the pregnancies that occur from consensual sex and totally and completely and the only one responsible for the pregnancies that occur from the horror of rape.

When a group of men brought a woman to Jesus so that he might condemn her for her actions, Jesus responded by holding the men just as accountable (see the Gospel according to John chapter 8).

To be truly pro-life, we remember that history has taught us that outlawing abortion does not stop abortion but drives it into the dark ‘alleyways’ and into the hands of poorly trained and ill-equipped practitioners where women are mutilated and die. (Here is an expert and reliable resource for more information: https://yourlocalepidemiologist.substack.com/p/this-is-not-about-covid19-but-another?fbclid=IwAR1Hw0JT3FJ1KtNqfyUc5Id1AjnWpTSI8fCia3gZ9oI9hNpGxUfAxNYCtdo)

Without question or hesitation, Jesus healed a woman who had suffered for many, many years and had lost everything because she was unable to find a single person who would provide her with care and compassion (see the Gospel according to Luke, chapter 8).

To be truly pro-life, we realize that our culture perpetuates the false idea that our value and worth, our identity is in the sex we are or are not having, and we learn to see the true value of all people as God’s beloved children. I once had a dear, sweet woman cry that she felt less than human because she was too old to enjoy sex anymore; in her 80s she had fallen victim to this de-humanizing idea. When we accept and believe that our identity is in our creation as God’s beloved children, we will truly know the value all human life.

We are told that all people, all of humanity, are created in the divine image and that with our creation, God pronounced all of creation very good (See the book of Genesis chapter 1).

To be truly pro-life, we do not use God’s Word as a weapon against anyone but as a formation tool for our own character so that we continuously grow to live and love more like Jesus.

To be truly pro-life, we live the words of Jesus that teach us to love God with all of our being and to love our neighbor as ourselves (see the Gospel according to Matthew chapter 21).

And, if we were truly pro-life we would all be willing to submit to the minor inconvenience of wearing a face covering in public and that all who are medically able would get the safe and effective COVID19 vaccine in order to protect the lives of everyone in our communities.

And, if we were truly pro-life, we’d be willing to give up something, anything, everything we think is our ‘right’ in order to preserve the life of another because life is more precious than anything, even our guns.

When we are truly pro-life, we see every human being as God sees us: with the eyes of compassion and love, working toward the benefit of every single human being. Pro-life leaves no room for selfish insistence on controlling others nor the demand of our own personal liberties. Pro-life means we are other-focused rather than self-centered and that we choose compassion and grace over condemnation and control.

Pro-life means we choose to love as God loves, every single person, every single time.

Thank you for your time and attention. May your Saturday be blessed with an increasing awareness of God at all times, in all places, and in all people.

God’s peace,
Mtr. Nancy+

Whose

I came across this a few days ago. I originally wrote it sometime in the first months after I was ordained; I’ve polished it a little to reflect my own growth and development over the past nine years. I pray it resonates with you as it did with me when I found it again.

When we find our identity in our romantic relationships, when we lose those relationships we lose who we are.
When we find our identity in our spouse, we are not honoring them by offering our authentic selves to them but rather giving them who we think they want us to be.
When we find our identity in our children, and they grow up and leave home, we are as empty inside as our nest.
When we find our identity in our job, we become human “doers” rather than human beings.
When we find our identity in God, The One who created us in the divine image of love and community, who we are is eternal. We are who we are created to be, able to offer our real selves to those we love and to see them for who they truly are. In God, our identity is lived out through all our relationships as we seek to see God in all people, striving to love them as God loves us.

Who we are at the core of our being is Whose we are: God’s beloved children. Created in God’s image. Designed in love to love. Born to continuously grow and mature, becoming more and more like Jesus on our lifelong journey toward God.

Our creator God is the God of abundant Life, the God with us and for us, the God of beauty and practicality, creativity and precision, learning and love, compassion and forgiveness, freedom and responsibility. God calls us to The Divine Presence with the self awareness of the question “do you want to be well” and then commands us to love our neighbor.

In the Centering Prayer App I use (yes, there’s an app for that), I read this quote from Thomas Keating every morning:

“This Presence is so immense, yet so humble; awe-inspiring yet so gentle; limitless, yet so intimate, tender and personal. I know that I am known. Everything in my life is transparent in this Presence. It knows everything about me – all my weaknesses, brokenness, sinfulness – and still loves me infinitely. This presence is healing, strengthening, refreshing – just by its Presence. It is nonjudgmental, self-giving, seeking no reward, boundless in compassion. It is like coming home to a place I should never have left, to an awareness that was somehow always there, but which I did not recognize.”

Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart

And every morning it still takes my breath away.

In the midst of so much angst and despair in the world today, make time to sit quietly and let God remind you whose you are. Let God take your breath away and breathe Life into you. And then do it again tomorrow and the next day and the next. You are God’s Beloved.

True Religion

A sermon preached at Grace Episcopal Church, San Antonio, Texas.

The lectionary readings for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

Today, we return to Mark’s telling of the Good News Story after hearing 5 sermons on Jesus’ one “I am the bread of life” sermon. That’s a lot of time spent on the foundation of the Good News of God’s Kingdom: God coming to us and offering his very life for us so we can be in reconciled relationship with our Loving Creator.

How have these past weeks deepened your understanding of God’s presence with us?

When we left off in Mark’s story, Jesus and his disciples had been traveling around the Sea of Galilee and are on the northwest shore in a town known as Gennesaret. The stories of Jesus’ ability to heal had gone viral and everyone began following him, bringing their sick and injured just to be able to touch even the edge of his clothes.

He had so many followers that the other wanna-be influencers of the day, the Pharisees, came looking for him, not to learn from him but to find a way to discredit him because if you can’t gain lot of followers yourself, you can at least try to undo the good the one with all the followers is doing. If you can’t go viral for for what you do perhaps you can be famous for undoing someone else.

And you thought this kind of behavior was invented with the internet! Our human nature hasn’t changed all that much in these past 2000 years, has it.

And so we join up with Jesus and his followers as the Pharisees gathered around him to question him, not about the healing and feeding he’s been doing but about hand washing. In a sense they were questioning the effectiveness and legitimacy of his feeding and caring for others because Jesus wasn’t worried about whether or not anyone’s hands were clean enough.

The Pharisees had taken God’s laws and twisted them to find the loop holes with thoughts like: I can get out of my obligation to love my neighbor if my neighbor isn’t clean enough.

What better way to distract from the real issue of Loving our Neighbor than to divert everyone’s attention to a minor issue.

But Jesus isn’t deterred. He zeros right in on the main issue. For Jesus, the heart of the matter is the heart. Our hearts, open and transformed by God. Being God’s people isn’t about the physical food we eat or the way we eat it. Being God’s people isn’t only about our outward behavior but our inward transformation that brings about the loving behavior of Kingdom People.

Being God’s people is about loving as God loves. And this kind of love doesn’t look for loop holes. This kind of love comes from the inward transformation of being in relationship with our loving God.

Now, partnered with this specific conversation of Jesus and the Pharisees, it almost sounds contradictory to say “what we consume determines our health” as we’ve been talking about. But Jesus’ point is to take our attention away from food and outward rituals and get us to look inwardly, at what we truly believe in our hearts, because our true belief is exposed by our outward behavior and words, even if we try to fake it some of the time.

The Pharisees used God’s laws to find people to exclude when the intent of God’s laws is to teach to us love and make everyone welcome into the Kingdom.

And as we said last week: Jesus words are intended to get us to do serious internal examinations so we understand our true motivations for what we do. We have to work on the inside of the dish, not just polish the outside.

It is important to ask ourselves how we spend our time and what we are consuming:
Who or what do we let shape our motivations?
Is our diet of life God based or world based?
What do we give our time to?
Do we intentionally make time for what we say we consider important or do we just hope to find the time if something else falls through?

How we spend our time does reveal the desire of our heart.

In his conversation with the Pharisees over what his followers do and don’t do, Jesus tells them that they’ve lost the plot. They are so concerned by the outward appearance that they’ve forgot the meaning of it all. Their outward behavior became all about excluding those who they didn’t deem worthy rather than inviting everyone into God’s love.

It was the Pharisees job in the synagogues and temple to ensure that those who came to worship God observed the rituals and rules intended to shape and form God’s people. But they had become more concerned about the rules than the people these rules are supposed to teach.

Jesus tells us that he came not to do away with God’s law but to fulfill it. All of the rules that God gave his people are intended to teach us how to live in love with God and each other. When we love God, we don’t have other gods, we don’t worship other things. When we love our neighbor and ourselves, we don’t desire to lie or steal or cheat or try to manipulate situations for our own benefit. We look out for the greater good of everyone involved. This is the way of living that the Ten Commandments teach us. And yet, throughout history, some folks have attempted to use these Love commands as a weapon against others rather than a transformative teaching as we grow in our relationship with God and each other.

True religion isn’t an outward display but a transformation of our hearts and minds in line with God’s will for God’s creation. Coming together in corporate worship is important and necessary to our Life with Jesus, but it definitely isn’t the goal or end game of Following Jesus. It is just one regular serving of a well-balanced and nutritious diet.

In his letter, James says that faith without works is dead. Did you know that the great Reformer and theologian Martin Luther wanted to remove James’ letter from the biblical canon because he thought it suggested we could earn God’s favor by doing good? An interesting tidbit of knowledge but not the point and not at all what James says. James says what Jesus said – that what we let shape our inside – our heart and mind, our soul – has an impact on what we do and more importantly, WHY we do what we do. True faith, a faith lived, will be seen by the good that we do.

Following Jesus in the Way of Love will bear loving fruit: kindness, empathy, respect, dignity, compassion, and justice in all areas of our life: home, work, play, and church.

As we follow Jesus every moment of every day, we are continuously transformed to be more like him. We examine ourselves up against the life of Jesus, our ultimate example of being fully human. We craft our life diet within the framework of God’s word and prayer. Sunday worship is just one spiritual practice and we need a steady diet of spiritual practices throughout the week.

What do you think and feel when you hear the term “Spiritual Practices?” Angst, fear, frustration?

Do you know why we call spiritual practices, practices? Because we are not supposed to be concerned about being perfect at them. That’s not the point of prayer and worship and scripture study. The point is to let God transform us through these activities. My spiritual director in seminary told me that the only way to fail at a spiritual practice is to not try it to begin with.

Jesus invites us on a life-long journey of continuous discovery of God’s Kingdom: discovering who God is and who we are in relationship with God, discovering the abundant life of love that God desires for us. This life takes intentionality and discipline.

Jesus doesn’t want to be our co-pilot. He invites us to follow him in a shared journey. Jesus doesn’t sit in the passenger seat waiting for us to sing “Jesus take the wheel”. He invites us to walk with him, to show us the Way of Love, a life that reflects the image of God to the world.

God is a God of life and he came to us, calls us toward himself so that we can live the life we are created to live.

The presiding Bishop of ECUSA, Michael Curry says, “God came into the world in the person of Jesus to show us The Way, the way of love, the way to change the world from the nightmare it often is to the dream that God intends.”

And when we follow Jesus, honoring God with both our lips and our lives, being doers of God’s Love, we do God’s will on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Armor

Good morning, Y’all. I don’t know about you but I’m really struggling with maintaining my focus on God’s peace these days: feeling it, offering it, abiding in it. There just seems to be a pervading atmosphere of agitation and aggression. Are you feeling it, too?

Our world is saturated with ‘fight’ talk. When we do something well we say we “killed it.” When we face a challenge we call it a “battle.” We have relabeled ‘success’ as ‘win’ which implies there was also someone who ‘lost’ which means I can only succeed at something if I defeat someone else in the process. I hear Christians say they have to “fight for God, defend the church, defeat the evil forces (which apparently is any group who doesn’t think or act like the self-defined ‘us’).”

The only time Jesus was aggressive toward others was in the temple, calling out the religious leaders for perverting God’s commands for their own benefit and the detriment of God’s children. In the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus’ disciples attempted to physically defend him with violence, Jesus stopped them and healed the one they harmed.

In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul intentionally reframes the Roman war-suit with God’s love and grace so that the people listening to his words would lay aside their tendency for violence. Paul is undoing their idea of what armor is so they can redress themselves as people of God’s Kingdom. Paul tells us to stand in God’s strength with the full confidence that Jesus has already defeated the forces of evil. The Armor of God is not about having a bigger weapon than the next person. The armor of God isn’t aggression or anger or ego and it definitely isn’t about our defending God. The armor of God is about letting God’s love be our strength, walking humbly with God, and seeing others with compassion.

Finally, be strengthened by the Lord and his powerful strength. Put on God’s armor so that you can make a stand against the tricks of the devil. We aren’t fighting against human enemies but against rulers, authorities, forces of cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens. Therefore, pick up the full armor of God so that you can stand your ground on the evil day and after you have done everything possible to still stand. 
So stand with the belt of truth around your waist, justice as your breastplate, 
and put shoes on your feet so that you are ready to spread the good news of peace. 
Above all, carry the shield of faith so that you can extinguish the flaming arrows of the evil one. 
Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s word.
Offer prayers and petitions in the Spirit all the time. Stay alert by hanging in there and praying for all believers. 
Ephesians 6:10-18, Common English Bible

The biggest trick of the devil is to convince us that we have to be aggressive toward our fellow human beings in the name of God, that somehow it is our job to defend God. In claiming an ability and power to defend God, we are making God dependent on us, smaller and less powerful than us. The devil tricks us into thinking we have to fight each other rather than let God’s love defend us from the devil’s tricks.

C. S. Lewis said, “A man can no more diminish God’s glory by refusing to worship Him than a lunatic can put out the sun by scribbling the word ‘darkness’ on the walls of his cell.” We are called by God to Love and to spread the Good News of Peace, to be a part of the revolution of compassion. Instead of using our faith to vanquish other people we disagree with or don’t like, let’s walk with Jesus in the power of love and participate in bringing God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven.

I am feeling strengthened with the armor of Love, and I pray you are as well. Together with God we can stand as God’s beloved children, offering true peace to the world.

A Well Balanced Meal

A sermon preached at Grace Episcopal Church, San Antonio, Texas.

The lectionary readings for the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

Are you still in shock over Jesus’ words from last week? We’ve spent the previous three weeks through today, talking about John’s telling of Jesus’ interaction with the crowd following the feeding of thousands and a miraculous trip across the Sea of Galilee to Capernaum, a conversation initiated by the crowd’s question, “Rabbi, when did you get here.”

Rarely does Jesus directly answer the question he’s asked. Jesus responds in ways that require us to reshape our thinking and our way of seeing of the world, and if we have the ears to hear, to dive deep into the type of self-examination that enables us to see the true life for which we are created. Jesus doesn’t provide spoon-fed answers but The Way of living the truth that enables us to be whose and who we really are.

By the time Jesus gets to the summary of all that he has just said, “Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him” the people are so disturbed by what he has said that many find it easier to just walk away.

Many of these folks came looking for Jesus simply because they wanted another meal, thinking that hanging out with Jesus would mean they would have an endless supply of fish sandwiches. But Jesus told them that he had so much more to offer – a living banquet beyond anything they’d experienced, that we need more than just physical nourishment, we need the right food to nourish both our bodies and our souls.

How often do you hear people say things like, “eating healthy is so difficult and time consuming?” We like the convenience of the drive-thru meal, the pre-prepared, just put it in the oven meal. After a long day, H‑E‑B’s ‘Meal Simple’ feel like a life saver, for sure. Ease and convenience allows us to fit more into our lives so we can show the world just how busy we are because busy means we are succeeding at life, right?

But somehow we know, deep in the core of our being, that the life we are created for is so much more than than that, more than just keeping our physical bodies sustained so we can keep up an ever increasing pace that still leaves us hungry for more. We cannot be fully alive without the kingdom nourishment Jesus offers.

Our souls are nourished through the sacrament, through the praise and thanksgiving of our worship, through time spent with God’s story so that we know better and better whose and who we are, through prayer, speaking our gratitude to God for everything, bringing our deepest concerns and fears and desires to God, and in the time of stillness and silence when we do nothing else but listen in the awareness of God’s presence.

And just to be clear, when Jesus tells us “It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all” he isn’t saying that our physical bodies aren’t good but that we are so much more.

Last week to understand the shocking nature of what Jesus was saying about consuming his flesh and blood we went all the way back to the creation story and we go there again today, to remind ourselves, as Jesus’ words would have reminded those with him that day, in whose image we are created.

We are created in God’s image, in God’s likeness, formed of the dust with the very breath of God breathing life into us. The clay shell was not enough – very necessary and needed and worthy of God’s work but not complete without the spirit of God giving us breath.

We are not a body with a soul or a soul encumbered by a body. We are created fully human, in the image of our creator, inseparably body and soul.

There is a mystery to our amazing life given to us by God that we can’t duplicate. No human has been able to create life from nothing as God does. We cannot take the elemental ingredients of the human body, put them in a mixing bowl and create life.

Do you know the story of the scientist who thought he had discovered how to make life? He was so impressed by his own abilities that he called to God saying “come to my laboratory see what I’ve done. I’m just like you.” So God humors this scientist and comes to the lab. The scientist places a mixing bowl in the center of the table and then reaches into a bag of dirt, At which point God interrupts the scientist and says, “No, no, no. You have to make your own dirt.”

Jesus says ‘let me nourish you, your whole and holy self, let me show you the life you are created to live, on earth as it is in heaven. A life grounded in the love of God for you.”

The good news that Jesus came to proclaim is that God comes to us in love, wherever we are, whatever we’ve done, God comes to us and says “you are good, you are loved, you are worthy to be with me, fully alive as I created you to be. Abide in me as I am in you.”

And still there were those listening who didn’t think the news was all that good.

News is an event that changes the world whether we accept the change or not. But a lot of people just want good advice – pithy words that help us make decisions without necessarily changing our reality because changing is hard. The Good News that Jesus brings is that the reality of the world has changed: God has come to us, to live and die as one of us so that we are reconciled to God. We can chose to acknowledge and accept what God has done and is doing and live the full life we are created for and be filled. Or we can take the easy way of living on the surface, remaining in our comfort zone and continue to long for more.

We may credit Socrates for saying “the unexamined life is not worth living” but this is the underlying truth to all of Jesus’ conversations and sermons. Jesus asks questions like “do you want to be well,” and “why are you looking for me?” He makes statements like “you keep the outside of the cup looking good but never clean the inside.”

Jesus’ words are intended to challenge us and provoke us to rethink all that we think we know. Many people, through the centuries to today, decide it’s easier to walk away because the teaching is too difficult, letting a desire for comfort and ease overrule the innate need to be with God.

When Jesus does take us by surprise, in the face and words of another person, when we see Jesus where we didn’t expect him to be and we ask, “Teacher, when did you get here?” he reminds us that he’s been with us all along, ready and waiting for us to hear the good news that changes everything. And, again, we have the choice to walk away because the Good News is too much for us or we can respond as Peter does: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.”

The banquet table is set to nourish our bodies and our souls, our whole and holy selves, beloved children of God. Taste and see that the Lord is good. Amen.