August 16, 2020
11th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 15

Genesis 45:1-15
Psalm 133
Romans 11:1-2a, 29-32
Matthew 15:21-28

Let’s do a little word study. When you hear or use the word “faith” what comes to mind?

Faith, I think, is one of those words we use often without really giving thought to what it really means.

How many of you are hearing Inigo Montoya saying: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

So what does “faith” mean?

If you ask Merriam-Webster you get:
“Allegiance to duty or a person” & “Belief and trust in and loyalty to God.”

If you ask Google you get:
“Complete trust or faith in someone or something.”

I didn’t ask Alexa. She doesn’t live at our house.

The Greek word we translate as faith could also mean trust.

These definitions seem incomplete to me because they relay a bit of a passive connotation – we believe or trust that someone else will do something or be as we predict them to be; these definitions don’t take into account what the person who has “faith” does.

If we look at how Jesus uses the words, at the people to whom he says “your faith is great” or “your faith has made you well,” these are the folks who “stepped out of line” and who demanded what their faith promised them.

Jesus and his disciples are in Gentile territory and a Canaanite woman approaches them. In her desperation, she shouts at them and tells them her daughter is tormented by a demon.

And the disciples aren’t comfortable with it even though they’ve seen it before. Like they tried to do with the crowds on the other side of the lake, the disciples ask Jesus to send her away.

These very men who themselves had been on the lower and outer edges of society until Jesus called to them, now considered themselves the privileged ones and didn’t want to share the joys of heaven on earth Jesus has shown them.

This woman was loud and somewhat impolite. She stepped outside the preferred role of women to be quiet and timid and accepting of whatever the world does to her.

She does the very thing that Jesus did with the Samaritan woman at the well – this Canaanite woman approached a Jewish teacher and spoke directly to him.

People tend to interpret this passage in one of two ways – either Jesus was arguing with this woman and she somehow changes his mind as to what his divine and eternal mission really should be, or Jesus is making a dramatic point for the disciples and crowd’s sake, wanting this woman to stand strong and show them all what courage and strength our faith provides. I go with the latter interpretation. I think the first one goes against who scripture tells us plainly God is and the reason Jesus came to us (but it gives our human egos a boost – we can change God – so we like it).

This woman is what we’d call a momma bear today – willing to do whatever it takes to defend and protect her child. Like all the mommas who stood with locked elbows to protest the murder of George Floyd, this woman comes prepared to fight for what she knows is right, for what really matters.

Jesus doesn’t answer her at first because he’s waiting to see if his disciples had learned the “you give them something to eat” lesson from the feeding of the 5000. And when they behave as if they didn’t know Jesus at all, he turns this into another learning point for them.

I imagine Jesus looking this woman square in the face, with a knowing look in his eyes and speaking directly to her. She must have understood the look because she approaches closer and kneels before him.

This woman, this so called outsider, addresses Jesus as “Lord.” She shows him the honor of who she knows him to be. She knows he is capable of curing her daughter. She trusts the stories she’s heard. She believes the words of compassion and love she has heard him speak. It didn’t matter to her that she wasn’t “one of them.” And she knows it doesn’t matter to Jesus, either.

She stays strong and courageous. She sees the knowing look in Jesus’ eyes and she speaks words that are meant to pierce the souls of those who hear them, just as Jesus wanted her to do.

This is the faith that makes us all well; a bold and courageous faith that proclaims loudly that God is for everyone. It is the faith that speaks for those who can’t stand for themselves and stands with those who’ve been told they don’t matter. It is the faith that trusts and believes and knows that we have more to do than just show up on Sunday morning.

When we step out of our own comfort zone, following Jesus’ on the Way of Love, we do so with the same courage and boldness of the Canaanite woman. We know, deep in our souls, deep in that God Image within each and every one of us, that all of the free floating anxiety and anger of this world isn’t The Way God intends for us.

The world feeds us anger and self-centeredness. Jesus feeds us love and compassion and grace and then he says, “you give them something to eat.”

Together, connected in our faith that loudly proclaims God’s Love is the better way, we stand courageously against those in this world who had told this woman – and so many people throughout history – that some people aren’t worthy of God or of our Jesus-led efforts to bring heaven to earth.

Everyone deserves the food from God’s table.

In faith, we look away from ourselves to the people around us and say, “you are worthy, how can I serve you?”

Jesus teaches us and shows us that our faith is both trust and action. We know that God is true to God’s promises of unconditional love and continuous presence. And because we know these things, we do the things that God calls us to do.

Our actions of faith help make us well and whole and who God created us to be. Let’s give the world a feast of God’s love. Amen.

August 09, 2020
10th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 14

Genesis 37:1-4, 12-28
Psalm 105:1-6, 16-22, 45b
Romans 10:5-15
Matthew 14:22-33

Jim and I were watching a British detective show on Netflix one evening this past week and as an episode ended, we debated whether to watch another one, which would have kept us up past our usual bedtime. Jim in his cleverness said, “no because it’s the last of the season and if it’s a cliffhanger we’ll have to stay up even later to find out what happens.”

Long gone are the days of having to wait all summer to find out who shot JR.

How we encounter the gospel story, God’s story, through our Weekly Sunday readings is like a tv drama that keeps building on itself. You can jump in the middle and get some idea who the characters are, but you really get to know them best if you can start at the beginning. Each weekly reading is a cliffhanger for the next and when you miss a week, you miss a piece of the whole story.

This year, during our ordinary time in the church calendar, the season between Pentecost and Advent, we are walking with Jesus as Matthew tells us the story of God’s love. And while each Sunday reading can be taken on it’s own with great benefit, to read them as a continuous story offers an even deeper understanding of who Jesus is and our place in this story of all stories.

Today’s reading follows right after the demonstration of God’s abundance as Jesus feeds a giant crowd with one sack lunch, which followed teachings on what the kingdom is. Immediately after the disciples had participated with Jesus in a glorious view of life on earth as it is in heaven, he tells them to get in the boat and head to their next destination.

Matthew doesn’t give us the conversation between Jesus and the disciples but I imagine it went something like this:
Peter: “but Jesus, how will you get there if we take the boat?”
Jesus: “don’t worry Peter, I’ll meet you there.”
Peter: “but Jesus, we’ll have the boat. Do you want me to hire you a charter? I’ll wait with you to make sure you get there.”
Jesus: “Peter, go. Do as I’ve asked. I’m going to dismiss the crowds and then I’ll catch up with you. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”
Peter to the other disciples: “come on, guys. I have no idea how he’s going to catch up with us. I sure hope he knows. I can imagine all that’s going to go wrong with his plan. But he insists, so let’s go.”

And, so they go as Jesus asks them. And crossing the water, they are caught in a storm. But as fishermen on the Sea of Galilee, this would have been nothing new to them or us. We’ve already seen the episode where they are crossing this same sea, in a storm, and Jesus is sleeping in the back of the boat.

The disciples aren’t surprised by or terrified of the storm. They know what to do. What terrifies them is that through this storm they see a human shaped figure walking on the water toward them. And in their minds, it is easier to assume it is a ghost, a shadow of death, rather than the living, breathing, son of God whom they had witnessed over and over again performing miracles of life.

Even after Jesus calls out to them, Peter does’t believe it. “If it is you,” Peter says, “command me to come to you on the water.”

Peter wants proof his own way, regardless of all that he’d witnessed Jesus doing and teaching.

Jesus calls him into the stormy waves and Peter is able to do what Jesus commands him.

Until he gets distracted and takes his eyes off of Jesus.

As Peter cries out, Jesus saves him in the storm asking “why do you doubt?” Notice it isn’t until they are in the boat that the storm calms.

Jesus meets us in the storm and reminds us, “Take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” Sometimes, as Jesus calms us, we have to wait for the storm around us to settle.

When Jesus asks, “why do you doubt?” He isn’t looking to shame the disciples, or us. He’s asking us to look inside ourselves, at our own thoughts and preconceived notions and sort out what it is that makes us doubt God’s promises to be with us always, to love us unconditionally, and to provide our daily needs.

We are all frightened and disturbed by the storms in our life – the pandemic, social and civil unrest, economic downturns, relationship struggles, loneliness, and mental and physical illnesses. We are human.

God created us with a fight or flight reflex to help preserve our life, AND God says to us, “take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.”

In the midst of the storms of our lives, we can know beyond a shadow of doubt that God is with us. Even as we falter and doubt, Jesus reaches out to save us in the storm and says “take heart, use my strength, have faith”.

In a recent interview with the Today Show, Bishop Michael Curry said, “I’ve seen us do what we never thought we would or could do, because we dared to do what Jesus tells us all to do.”

In the storms of our life, when we take our eyes off of Jesus and cry out, Jesus catches us and reminds us of our faith in a faithful and loving God.

We’ve seen episode after episode of God’s story. We know the ending. We can look back through our lives and see God’s provision of our true daily needs, even if at the time we wanted something else.

We aren’t created to watch this story as a distant observer, we are created as a part of it, participating with God on earth as it is in heaven. Yes, we do learn about Jesus from our Sunday readings, but we get to know who Jesus is and grow in relationship with him by walking with him each and every day, seeking to be aware of God’s presence with us at all times.

We cannot live the life Jesus teaches us to live, the life we are created to live, without Jesus. Like Peter, when we take our eyes off Jesus, we begin to falter.

And when we doubt God’s faithfulness, because we all will from time to time, Jesus reaches out to us in love and compassion with grace and forgiveness, saying, “take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.” Amen.

August 02, 2020
9th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 13

Genesis 32:22-31
Psalm 17:1-7, 16
Romans 9:1-5
Matthew 14:13-21

What do you have?

Remember the parables we’ve been talking about for the previous 3 Sundays? Jesus gives lots of descriptions of the kingdom using seeds and soil, yeast and precious pearls.

In the bits we skip over between last week’s reading and today’s, Jesus is rejected in his own home town – the people who claimed to know him didn’t like what he had to say because it meant they’d have to change their own way of thinking and living.

And then, we are told, Jesus finds out that his cousin and friend had been murdered by Herod and so Jesus wants to spend some time alone in his grief.

We are told that when the crowds heard “it” they followed him. It isn’t 100% clear what is meant by “it” but perhaps they, too, heard the news of John and want to be with Jesus for their own comfort or to comfort him, or perhaps they had just heard where he went and didn’t think about why he might need time to himself and just wanted to be where he was.

Whatever their motivation, Jesus is again surrounded by the people who continuously seek him out. He has a message they think they want, he has a way of being that they can’t resist and they believe that he is going to make their life better if they just hang around him enough.

These people sought Jesus in their own way and he met them where they were with compassion and love and healing.

And then he begins to teach and model for them how to BE the kingdom.

We aren’t told what Jesus says as he cures the sick in this large crowd but it’s easy to paint a compassionate picture of Jesus speaking to each one he touches, sharing the message of God’s life-changing love with them.

As the day passes, the disciples, in their own way begin to worry about the people’s well-being, and their own. “It’s getting late,” they remind Jesus, “and folks are getting hungry. Send them away.”

Send them away so we don’t have to do anything about their needs.
Send them away so we don’t have to share what we have.
Send them away so we don’t have to think beyond ourselves.

And, again, Jesus demonstrates Kingdom living for them.

In this epilogue to his teaching about the kingdom in parables, Jesus shows them the actual kingdom, feet on the ground, hands reaching out to offer both physical sustenance and the loving, life-giving, liberating kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven.

This ancient story of love is for us as well. We have heard of this Jesus and have been told he has something to offer us that will make our life better and so we look for him and go to where we’ve heard he’ll be.

And when we encounter Jesus we have the choice to respond as the people of his home town rejecting what he says because we don’t want to change, or the people on the shore who wanted to be healed.

Jesus meets us where we are as we seek him out, he sees us with eyes of compassion, he offers the message of God’s love and then he says:

“Follow me.” I’ve met you where you are and now you must choose a new path, a new way of being.

He instructs us to “feed them,” to care for others and when we say we don’t have enough, he asks “What do you have? Bring it to me.” Everyone has something valuable to bring to the table because the most valuable thing in God’s kingdom is you.

You may think you don’t have enough but with God all things are possible and when you bring all you are and all you have to God, God creates abundance from your ideas of scarcity. God provides everything we need to live as Jesus teaches us. The abundance of God’s kingdom isn’t about stuff but about people and healthy, loving relationship.

God takes our ideas and thoughts of scarcity and turns them into abundant living in the Kingdom by showing us the real treasure of our life – our relationship with God and each other.

Jesus’ stories and actions are just as relevant today as they were 2000 years ago. People are hurting and stuck in the systems – family, corporate, societal, political – of this world that have decided human life is just another commodity in a transactional system, the same as the Israelites in the Rome Empire.

Jesus shows us that God’s way isn’t transactional but relational. A way in which we value the well-being of all people more than anything else.
God’s way is about seeing the world through eyes of compassion and doing all that we can with God’s help to heal the pain.
God’s way shows us that life isn’t a competition in which we come out on top but a relationship in which we all are created in the image of God as God’s children.

We’ve been given the abundance of God’s kingdom and as Jesus said to the disciples, he says to each and everyone of us:
You give them something to eat.
You share the message of God’s love in all that you say and do in every situation.
You live relationally rather than transactionally so that the systems of this world are weakened.
You build the kingdom by meeting people where they are in their pain and hurt and showing them the Way of Love to God.
You make the choice to see others with compassion.
You do the work to confront whatever it is in you that makes you choose the world’s way rather than God’s and makes you say “send them away” or “there’s not enough.”

God will meet us in the place of our scarcity and doubt and show us abundant life as we are intended to live it.

Following Jesus in the Way of Love is a life-long journey of healing and hope. It is bringing to God all that we have, giving thanks, and sharing the abundance with the hurting world around us.

We are God’s chosen method of revealing the Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. We all have something to bring to this holy work. We are all worthy to do this liberating, loving, and life-giving work. We are the Church we have asked God to defend. And together with God’s help, we can show the world a better way. Amen.

July 26, 2020
8th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 12

Genesis 29:15-28
Psalm 105:1-11, 45b
Romans 8:26-39
Matthew 13:31-33, 44-52

Let’s take a trip back in time, to way before Corona, for some of us way, way, way before … back to our Jr. High English Class when we learned about metaphors and similes. Are you there – in the classroom sitting among your classmates and listening attentively to the teacher (we’re pretending, remember, so we might as well make it good).

Both similes and metaphors are forms of comparison to help explain or describe a concept or thing. Metaphors are more of an abstract or implicit comparison like telling a story to make a point or draw out a truth from a current situation. Often the similarity is obscure and not easily identifiable at first and we have to work to draw connections.

Jesus does this often in his parables, not because he wants to make things difficult but because it is by the forming of these connections in our own thoughts that the point of the story is made more real to us. The point of all of Jesus’ stories is to change us and help us grow.

Two weeks ago, we read Matthew’s telling of the Parable of the Sower. Jesus at first doesn’t make a direct comparison between the soil or the sower and us, he just tells a story. Sometimes it is easier to hear a truth about ourselves if we can see it about someone else first.

It is only when the disciples don’t get it that he draws the connections for them. Like our Jr. High English teachers, he’s teaching them and us to make these connections. With this metaphor of the sower, Jesus is setting the stage, helping us till our soul’s soil, so to speak, for what he’s going to say next.

In last week’s gospel reading, Jesus begins using similes, a direct comparison, and says the Kingdom of Heaven is like a person, not a place. The kingdom isn’t bound by time or place because the kingdom is us learning to live now on earth as it is in heaven and Jesus wants to make sure we get the direct connection between what he says and who we are to be.

In our reading this week Jesus continues to describe the Kingdom as acts of abundance.

The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed. The purpose of a mustard seed is to become a mustard plant to make more mustard seeds so that we can all enjoy a really good hotdog. That last bit is my editorializing but you get the point: God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven is like a mustard seed that does what it is created to do and in doing so, provides for the wellbeing of other creatures in the kingdom.

The kingdom of heaven is like yeast in bread. Yeast’s job, it’s purpose, is to spread throughout the dough and cause it to rise so that we have nice, palatable, fluffy bread rather than ration biscuits. God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven is like yeast doing what does to create abundance and nourishment.

The kingdom of heaven is like finding treasure and giving up everything else to get it.

God gave his life for us. We are God’s treasure. And Jesus shows us that when he says hard things like “those who lose their life find it” what he’s really showing us is how to discover, like a long lost treasure, the life God created us for all along.

The kingdom of heaven is like finding the perfect pearl so that we are willing to give up all that we have to gain this one thing. God loves each and everyone one of us as if there were only one of us, as if we were the one perfect pearl. And when we discover we are God’s treasure, God becomes the only treasure we need.

And then just so our heads don’t get too big, Jesus returns to the theme that it isn’t ours to sort who’s “good” or “bad”. The kingdom is fish of all kinds gathered in one net. We don’t get to sort them out, we are simply called to be what we are created to be – God’s children living in and sowing the abundant love of God. The angels will sort us all out later.

I don’t think these descriptions of the Kingdom are in random order, I believe that they build on each other.

Jesus talks about scattering seeds and the point of that parable is to teach us to till our own soul’s soil so that we can grow the seeds of God’s love in abundance and scatter them.

Then we learn about how it isn’t our role in this glorious kingdom to determine who in or out, good or bad, but to let the Holy Spirit cultivate us so we can be who God created us to be.

And now we have mustard seeds, and yeast, and invaluable treasure. When we live as God created us to live, we do bring heaven to earth. We bear the fruit of the kingdom – love, peace, hope, compassion, in abundance, and through our fruit others are equipped to bear the fruit, too.

Later on in Matthew’s telling of the gospel story, Jesus says if we only had the faith of a mustard seed we could move mountains. We often take this to mean we’ve failed because we don’t have “enough” faith. Faith, even if we start with a tiny bit, becomes like yeast in the right conditions. It grows and permeates the entire batch and brings life and sustenance to the kingdom.

You hear me say it often – our faith, our belief, our choosing to follow Jesus isn’t some eternal life insurance policy for later but for our every day, ordinary, now.

The salvation that God offers is about saving us from the forces in this world that work hard to convince us
that happiness comes from things,
that people are to be used for our individual benefit,
that we have to look out for our own individualized interests because there is never enough of anything to go around.

We are saved by God’s grace when we realize the purpose for which God created us – to live in loving relationship with God and each other.
We are saved as we come to understand that joy and peace and strength and hope are grounded in our relationship with God and not the temporary things of this world.
When we are saved we spend our energy reaching out with our hands and hearts to serve God by serving others in all that we think, say, and do.

The kingdom of God is not a place. It is people and actions of abundance and being as God created and intended. The Kingdom is knowing that we are God’s treasure and God is ours.

The kingdom of God is now. Discovering this treasure is the point of all of Jesus’ stories, however he tells them.

And like St. Paul, I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.

July 19, 2020
7th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 11

Genesis 28:10-19
Psalm 139:1-11, 22-23
Romans 8:12-25
Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43

Do you like to do puzzles? Jim and I have done a lot of puzzles this year; normally it’s just a winter activity but in this long winter of our discontent that doesn’t appear to have a glorious summer coming, it’s one of the ways we’ve kept ourselves entertained at home.

Our typical methodology is to sort through and pull out all the edge pieces and then sort the remaining pieces by color or pattern. But this last puzzle we did didn’t have name large sections of specific color or pattern, so after completing the edge we just divided the pieces among the trays we work from and got busy.

There was this one piece that was quite distinctive and in my mind I saw part of a shirt with buttons on it and I thought it would be easy to place. I looked and looked and looked at the picture and could not figure out where it went. There were little figures all over the puzzle and none of them were wearing a bright blue shirt with brown buttons. So I put it in Jim’s tray.
Some time later, he picked it up this particular piece and put it right where it belonged without even looking at the picture! It wasn’t a part of a shirt after all and what I saw as buttons were nail heads. I couldn’t see it for what it really was.

Sometimes we need to see from another perspective to get the true picture. That’s why Jesus tells parables – to give us another perspective, to help us see and hear our circumstances differently or in a new way.

Last week in our Gospel reading, Jesus tells a parable about scattering seeds on different types of soil. The message of that parable isn’t that we are to be stingy with our seeds or even to be with careful where they land, but to scatter the seeds of God’s love abundantly without concern of where they land and to till our own soul’s soil so that the seeds that land on us can grow to abundance so we have more to scatter.

This week, Jesus again puts before the crowd another parable involving seeds and sowing. But this time, instead of being the sower or the soil, we are the seeds.

Jesus says the kingdom of heaven is like someone – notice he doesn’t compare the kingdom to a place but to people, that’s an important detail – the kingdom of heaven is like someone who sows good seed in a field and when no one was looking, an enemy sneaks in and sows weeds. The two types of plants grow together and when they get mature enough so that it is apparent some are weeds, the servants come in and question the Master – don’t you know what you are doing? they ask.

Without listening to the Master’s plan or thinking through the consequences, they offer up their own plan to fix it: we’ll just rip out the weeds. And the Master tells them “no, trust me, I’ve got this”. The Master knows that the servants’ exclusionary plan would cause so much more harm to the good plants than leaving the weeds in place.

When we lose sight of God’s love and seek to root out those we don’t approve of, we are sowing violence not compassion.
As God’s children, the people who are God’s kingdom, our purpose isn’t to separate the wheat and the weeds, but to sow the seeds of God’s love abundantly. When we attempt to damage the “weeds” we do more harm to our own souls that we do to whomever we label as “them”.
Jesus talks a lot about seeds, some say it’s because he lived in an agrarian society, which I’m sure is part of it, but I can’t think of a better metaphor for the continual newness of life Jesus calls us to. For a seed to bear fruit, it must die, it must cease being a seed and become a plant so that it can bear the fruit it was created to bear.

For us to live as kingdom people, we must continually let go of our inclination to say to God, “I’ve got a better plan than yours”. We must let go of our own ego and live for God’s glory.
We must learn to see the world from a kingdom perspective. We must have ears to hear God say “trust me, I’ve got this” and with God’s help live into our created purpose of spreading the abundance of God’s love in all that we think, say, and do.

God always and only wants the best life for us, the life God created us for. A life grown in the fertile soil of love and hope and peace, a life that bears the fruit of the Spirit, even in the midst of a pandemic and social unrest and financial strife – ESPECIALLY in the midst of a pandemic and social unrest and financial strife.

We cannot let the weeds in this world distract us from sowing God’s love. I couldn’t see the puzzle piece for what it really was but Jim saw it easily. Sometimes we all need help to see as Jesus teaches us to see, to hear as Jesus teaches us to hear. Parables help us get a different perspective, to hear and see things differently.

Jesus “puts before us” many things in parables. He tells the story and then leaves it to us to hear the message. It’s our choice. Parables are glimpses of the fullness of God’s Kingdom, not just intended to prepare us for the “end of the age” but to give us a model for our life here and now as the Kingdom of God already at hand.

And when the suffering of this day seems more than we can bear, we have the words of St. Paul to remind us that the glory of God’s kingdom is revealed in and through us as we strive with God’s help to live on earth as it is in heaven.

Let anyone with ears listen. Amen.

July 5, 2020
5th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 9

Genesis 24:34-38, 42-49, 58-67
Psalm 45:11-18
Romans 7:15-25
Matthew 11:16-19, 25-30

Yesterday we celebrated The United States’ day of Independence. It is the day we recognize the birth of this nation and our independence from the British Crown. Our nation’s founders chose to separate ourselves from one group of people in order to unite as a different group of people.

It took a special type of people, coming together to separate from what they had always known. To have the courage to say “we want a different life than what our parents and grandparents and great great great grandparents had.” These people stood up against the world they knew to learn and live a new life together.

To live this independent new life, they bound themselves together as a united people, concluding the Declaration with these words: ‘And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

This group of courageous and innovative individuals knew they needed each other to live this new and wonderful life they wanted. They chose, in their way and their time, to intentionally work for the greater good. Their idea of independence as a nation was not about individualism but rather interdependence. They fought for freedom from the British Crown, not from their collective responsibility toward the greater good and each other.

And yet, over the past 244 years, it seems that the idea of independence in this country has become individualized. But this is nothing new and unique to this country or this time.

People groups and nations throughout history, regardless of how and when they came together in the first place, have struggled against the human inclination to self-ness rather than other-ness.

Throughout history, God’s people have, over and over again, sought their own individual gain instead of intentionally working and living in unity for the greater good of all. Throughout our faith history, God’s people have decided to choose what is right in their own eyes rather than live as God teaches and calls us to live.

In our collect today, we are reminded that God taught us to keep all God’s commandments by loving God and our neighbor.

Sometimes, a lot of the time, loving our neighbor is hard and we don’t want to, so we intentionally or unintentionally, consciously or unconsciously declare ourselves independent from this mandate. We individualize our faith so that “it’s between God and me” to separate ourselves from being accountable to others and living in community as our faith is taught throughout our holy scriptures.

We try to rewrite the Gospel message of Jesus to make it about individual salvation rather than the collective redemption of all of God’s creation. Again, this is nothing new to our “generation”. People have been declaring their independence from God’s plan since Adam and Eve.

In our Gospel lesson today, Jesus is talking to a crowd about John the Baptizer and the promised signs of God. John had come to prepare the way and proclaim the promised time had come and Jesus has been preaching and teaching and healing and people are still asking “are you the one.”

Jesus tells the crowd, you’ve been told what to expect by the prophets so why, now that you’ve seen what you were told to expect, can you not accept it for what it is?

And Jesus compares their inability to accept what it right in front of them to a group of spoiled children who pout and whine because they aren’t getting their way.

We are still that generation. Choosing to live as if we were really independent individuals rather than accept the reality of our interconnected life grounded in God’s love.

I came across this quote from Julia Butterfly Hill this week and although it isn’t from scripture, it is truly Biblical:
“Love is not about froufrou New Age-ism. It’s about a way of living and honoring the interconnectedness of life and accepting our responsibility and our power to change the world for the better.”

So, just what do we mean when we talk about love as God intends us to understand love?

Love is “other focused” not self serving.
Love is looking beyond ourself and seeing the greater good of all.
Love is living in the knowledge that we are all interconnected and that every single thing we think, say, and do has an impact on others, whether we can see that impact or not.
Love is accepting our collective responsibility for the greater good and each other.

Jesus ends his sermon with, “Come to me all who are weary and carrying heavy burdens and I will give you rest.” Come to me, he says, all who have been fighting against what I’ve shown you, fighting against God’s live-giving, liberating, love. Let go of the fight and accept the grace and forgiveness and compassion that I offer freely to everyone.

Hear Jesus say, “Let go of the burden of trying to do it on your own and live as I designed and created you to live – in loving, covenantal relationship with me and each other.” This is the Gospel message, the good news for all, true freedom.

Together, grounded in God’s interconnecting love, with God’s help we can work together against the injustices and division in our country. We are only truly free when we are devoted to God with our whole heart, and united to one another with pure affection, following Jesus in the freedom to live the life God created us to live in God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

July 12, 2020
6th Sunday After Pentecost; Proper 10

Genesis 25:19-34
Psalm 119:105-112
Romans 8:1-11
Matthew 13:1-9, 18-23

My grandad was a story teller.  Not just the kind of person who tells stories to reminisce but the kind who told stories to teach or make a point.  We all knew that when we asked a questions chances were the answer was going to be far more than we really wanted.  And yet we always went to him with our questions about anything and everything.

I miss his stories. His stories shaped us and made us stretch our minds and helped us grow and be better people.  Grandaddy told us stories because he loved us so much he wanted to help us be our best possible self.  He was an amazing man.  

So, when I read the stories of folks asking Jesus questions, I know how they feel when his answers aren’t straight forward or what they wanted to hear.

Jesus has been teaching and preaching in the towns and villages around the see of Galilee.

The people long to hear his words, they seek him out continuously.  They know he has something life changing and even though they’ve seen the signs and heard his words, many still question who he is, not because they doubt him but because they don’t want to accept God’s way of doing things over their own way.  

And so he tells them many things in parables.  

Jesus tells them stories because he wants them to have so much more than just pat answers to recite.  Jesus tells many things in parables because he wants to change our way of thinking, our way of seeing the world around us. He wants to change our hearts so that we see everything as part of God’s kingdom.  

Jesus tells us stories because he loves us and wants to help us be our best possible self. 

For the crowd Jesus is speaking to, many of them would have gardens or even large fields in which they grew crops.  Planting seeds meant carefully plowed rows and carefully managed seeds because there would have been a limited supply of seeds.  The condition of the soil in which they planted their precious seeds was of utmost importance because only good soil produced bountiful crops.  

And Jesus tells them a story of abundant and reckless seed scattering by a sower who didn’t seem at all concerned with the type of soil on which the seeds landed.  Many of those who heard this story would have been shocked by the perceived wastefulness of the sower.  They wouldn’t have the ability to see it any other way.  They did not have the ears to listen to the true meaning of the story.  They didn’t want to be changed.  

To understand this parable, we have to put ourselves in two places at once – as the seed sower and as the soil receiving the seeds.  

We preachers learn early on in our career that the words we so passionately craft for each week will only occasionally land on ears ready for the growth of those particular words.  And when we reach out to our mentors and spiritual guides in times of discouragement, we remind each other of this parable.  We remind each other that our job is to scatter the seeds of God’s love by preaching God’s Word in abundance without worry of where they land. The results are not up to us.  We can only cultivate our own soil and invite others to and model for them how do the same.  

But it isn’t just the preachers’ job to scatter seeds. This parable is about all of us.

When we choose to follow Jesus we all take on the responsibility of being a sower for God’s kingdom.  We are to scatter with abundance the seeds of God’s love, not worrying about whether anyone is worthy or able to receive it.  We aren’t to fret about whether we will run out of seeds because there is no limit to God’s love, the more we sow the more we have to sow.  And we can’t give up because we don’t see results. 

We can’t get hung up on where the seeds land.  The only soil we can cultivate to be good and healthy soil that will bring forth abundant fruit is our own soil, our own hearts.  And the way to prepare ourselves for the seeds of God’s love is to be intentional in our relationship with God, learning to live in our faith in all the we think, say, and do.  

We will never run out of seeds because the more love we share the more love we have to share, and scattering the seeds of God’s love help improve our own soul’s soil.  

When Jesus explains this parable, he never says be cautious about where you scatter seeds. He talks only about the many types of soil on which the seeds could possibly land.  Those with ears to hear will be the ones whose hearts are open to growth and change, those who are willing to learn to see the world through the lens of God’s kingdom. 

In the bit of this chapter of Matthew that we skipped over in our reading, Jesus quotes the prophet Isaiah who said that people won’t be able to see Jesus for who he is because their hearts have grown dull and they have shut their eyes.  

True understanding of God’s path and plan requires us to understand with our hearts and turn toward God, to seek out and discover the image of God at our very core. This is what gives us the eyes to see and the ears to hear the true message of the Gospel.  It is a life-long journey following Jesus being both the sower and the soil.  

Jesus never told anyone “you’re good as you are, you’ve got it all figured out.” Ours is an active and moving faith of following Jesus. It takes daily work to keep the soil of our souls receptive to the seeds of God’s love so that we have abundant seeds to sow.  

Keep coming to Jesus and let the stories he tells shape and change and transform you through the abundance of God’s love for all of us.  And together with God’s help we will grow into who God created and calls us to be. Amen. 

June 28, 2020
4th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 8

Genesis 22:1-14
Psalm 13
Romans 6:12-23
Matthew 10:40-42

Today’s lesson from Genesis is perhaps the most difficult story for us to accept in all of scripture. We work hard to explain it in a way that excuses God’s behavior or else we just label God as “mean” or “angry”.  

I think because we look at the entire Abraham saga – it spans a fourth of the book of Genesis – in bits and pieces we lose sight of the true meaning of the story.  The Saga of Abraham is a story of God’s faithfulness regardless of our own human failings. It is a story of God’s deepest desire for us to have the best life we are created to live with God.  

The text begins, “After these things …” a clue that we have to look at what comes next in light of what has come before. Our holy scriptures weren’t preserved to give us a checklist of right and wrong answers in short snippets but to teach us how to live our life by the lives of those who have walked with God.  It is a whole story in which we are still living.  

God had entered into a covenantal relationship with Abraham: Earlier in this story, we are told “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.””

Abraham does as God says, he leaves home to settle an unknown land.  Years pass, Abraham and his family survive a famine, cause a ruckus in Egypt as Abraham in order to save his own skin pretends Sarah is his sister and loans her out to Pharaoh, and they return to Canaan and get into a land dispute with his nephew Lot. 

And through all of this God tells Abraham, I will make your offspring outnumber the stars and the grains of sand.  And Abraham names one of his trusted servants as his heir instead of waiting on God.  So God reminds Abraham again of his promise. 

Time marches on and Abraham and Sarah still have no children.  And so Sarah tells Abraham to have a child with her slave. And still God does not dissolve the Covenant with Abraham.

And When God does fulfill his promise and Isaac is born, Sarah decides that God’s blessing, which was from the beginning intended to be shared with all nations, needs to be contained within her own family and Abraham agrees to cast Hagar and Ismael out.  

We talked last week about how God took this terrible situation and redeemed it by giving Hagar and Ishmael their share of the blessing always intended for everyone, despite Abraham and Sarah’s actions.  

And, so, after these things, God tests Abraham.  

We often paint this statement in a way that makes God look mean or vindictive.  We don’t think God ‘should’ test people’s faithfulness. We want to ignore Abraham’s unfaithfulness and put it all on God.  

But the point of God’s testing isn’t so God can learn who we are, God knows who we are, knows the very hairs of our head, knows us better than we know ourselves.  God tests so we can learn who we are and therefore grow in relationship with God.  

God tests so that we will ask ourselves the questions: Where do my loyalties lie?  Am I truly following God’s plan or doing things for my own gain? Am I being faithfully obedient to the God who is always faithful?  

God’s test of Abraham is a terrifying one, no doubt.  But the stakes are high, Abraham has accepted the responsibility of being the patriarch of all of God’s blessings spread throughout the world and history.  And Abraham hasn’t shown much faithfulness to God’s plan.  

The Hebrew word we translate to “test” means “in order to humble you.”  

The most difficult thing for most of us to accept is that God is God, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and of all things seen and unseen.  We say these words week in and week out but when it comes to living out the true belief that God’s way is better than our way, we tend to be more like Abraham and Sarah than we care to admit.  

When it comes to giving God the authority to test anyone in order to teach that individual something about themselves, we’d rather label that as God being mean instead of seeing it as an instruction to help with spiritual growth and development.  

Making the choice to follow Jesus comes with the responsibility to live in God’s plan not just with it in the margins somewhere, but in the center, at the foundation, of our life; to work with God in covenantal relationship, trusting in God’s faithfulness and living in faithful obedience to God’s way of doing things.  

God’s way of doing things isn’t complicated – it isn’t always easy, rarely is it easy, but it isn’t complicated.  God’s way is the way of Love.  Not the sentimental idea of always feeling warm and fuzzy but an active way of living focused on the well-beings of others.

It is a life lived in questions such as “is what I’m doing for my own gain and benefit or for the greater good of others?  Am I seeking God’s blessing for my own gain or to share it with others?”  

If Abraham had been obediently and humbly walking with God, he wouldn’t have put Sarah in danger with the Pharaoh to save his own skin, he wouldn’t have accepted Sarah’s plan to have a child with Hagar, and he definitely wouldn’t have banished Hagar and Ishmael in order to save his entire inheritance for Isaac.  

So after these things God tested Abraham. God needed Abraham to learn that it really was in him to live in faithful obedience to God, with God’s help.  

God’s plan would not have allowed Isaac to die, just as God intervened when Abraham and Sarah’s plan very likely could have been the death of Hagar and Ishmael.  

God’s plan always leads to life, the eternal life in loving and obedient relationship with our Creator that begins when we make the choice to follow Jesus and welcome the awareness of God’s presence in all that we think, do, and say.  

Jesus says that when we welcome him, we welcome God.  And with our acceptance of God comes responsibility, and blessing beyond measure so that we can can live our best life possible sharing God’s blessing of Love, more abundant than the stars in the sky, with others.  Amen.  

June 21, 2020
3rd Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 7

Genesis 21:8-21
Psalm 86:1-10, 16-17
Romans 6:1-11
Matthew 10:24-39

Have you ever stepped into a situation where you thought you knew what was going on only to find out the hard way it was nothing like what you had expected?  I mean, besides the year 2020?

Perhaps you started a new job and it was nothing like the job description that prompted you to apply in the first place.  Perhaps you met someone new and found out they weren’t at all like the first impression they presented.  Perhaps you had planned the perfect family vacation and nothing went according to that plan.  Or perhaps as a teen or young adult, you had your whole life planned out and things just haven’t happened as you thought they would.  

That all really does describe 2020 doesn’t it?  

Even when we make the choice to follow Jesus and do all of our due diligence to discern God’s will for us, sometime – a lot of the time – things just don’t go as we expect.  I often wonder if movies and TV are responsible for this?  We sit down to watch an encapsulated story with a prewritten script and standard plot line of harmony, discord, journey, resolution, and happily ever after.    But that’s not real life, is it?

Life, despite what Shakespeare tells us, isn’t a play, at least not a fully scripted one.  We have stage directions but we are living in perpetual improv (don’t tell the Calvinists).  We can’t predict exactly what will happen in any situation.  We can’t predetermine other peoples behavior or responses.  Often times, we can’t even predict our own.   

My brilliant husband often tells me, when I’m stressed or shocked or surprised by what has happened, “if you don’t have expectations, you won’t be disappointed.”  At first I took that to mean that we couldn’t “hope” or “believe” that we were doing the right thing, that I was just supposed to lay idly by while life happened around me.  

But I’ve come to learn it means that we can’t predict what others do, even if we think we know ourselves and them very, very well.  

Instead of fighting against the situation in which we find ourselves, life is much less stressful if we accept our situation and do our best with God’s help to be the best we can be in it.  We will still have preconceived expectations, that’s just human, but we learn to recognize them for what they are and let them go when they aren’t fulfilled. 

Our Old Testament story shows the conflict that can – and does – arise when we fight against a situation that isn’t going according to our own expectations. God had promised Abraham and Sarah a child and this didn’t happen according to Sarah’s timeframe so she took matters into her own hands. Her lack of trust in God’s plan created a situation in which Hagar and Ishmael are rejected and abandoned. 

And still God steps in and redeems this terrible situation and rescues Hagar and Ishmael. 

Even when we create a situation that diminishes the value of other human beings, God’s grace is bigger than our mistakes.  This is where our hope lies, why when things don’t turn out as we wanted them to, we shouldn’t be disappointed or angry or sad.  We look for the good that God can make out of every situation and ask God to show us how we can participate in the goodness.

Our gospel lesson today could very well be Jesus preaching a sermon on this story about Abraham and Sarah, Hagar and Ishmael.  

Jesus gives us a lesson on what it is is to live IN our faith and not just with it.  

Every human being is the most precious thing to God.  Regardless of how we try to live our life apart from God or even limit God to just pieces of our life, God knows even the very hairs of our head.  In the confidence of God’s unconditional love, we have nothing to fear, even in moments of crisis or conflict, even when things don’t go as we expect.  

Jesus is a realist. He’s not going to paint some false picture to draw us in unprepared. Jesus wants us to know full well what following him will be like.  He invites us into God’s family – and all are invited, really – and knows that when we accept the invitation to grow into disciples, that there will be conflict.  As disciples following Jesus, our way of living and seeing the world is to be different from the world.  

And when we live Jesus’ way of truth and unconditional love, some people won’t like it because it challenges their status quo and ego.  

Sometimes these people who don’t like it are our closest relatives, our family, and our friends. 

But Jesus assures us that it is the best life we can live, the life we were all created to live. If we can let go of the life we think we should be living, the life the world tells us to expect or that we are entitled to or deserve, and live the life God has in store for us, we will be fully alive as God intends us to be. 

Following Jesus and trusting God’s way isn’t naive or simplistic. It isn’t sitting idly by and letting the world happen around you.  

Following Jesus is the most difficult thing we will ever do as human beings on this planet:  

-The absolute most difficult because it means that we will be working against the powers of this world that promote self-centeredness rather than love and justice.  

-The absolute most difficult because it means that we have to stand up and face conflict from a place of peace and grace instead of anger or retaliation.  

-The absolute most difficult because it means that often others won’t understand and will turn against us rather that choose to walk this path of faith with us.  

Following Jesus is the best life we can live, confident in God’s unconditional love, regardless of the situation we may find ourselves.  It is life grounded in the sure and certain hope that God is always faithful to us even when we lose faith and try to write our own script.  

We may not have a script for 2020 or any other time in our life, but we do have excellent stage directions and the teacher whose greatest desire is that together we grow and mature to be like him, children of God, grounded in God’s kingdom as we navigate the conflicts of this world without fear of being alone or abandoned.   

This year hasn’t been what anyone expected or planned. In all of the uncertainty, conflict, and pain, the only thing we can know for certain is that God is with us, asking “what troubles you” and saying “do not be afraid, I have heard you and I am with you always.” Amen.   

June 14, 2020
2nd Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 6

Genesis 18:1-15
Psalm 116:1, 10-1
Romans 5:1-8
Matthew 9:35 – 10:8

Today begins in the church calendar what we call ordinary time, not “mundane” or “blah” ordinary but the “order of things” ordinary, the regular rhythm in which we live our lives every day.  The order which God created as he spoke the universe into being, with planets in their courses, the sun and the moon marking our days and seasons and years.  What we like to call “normal”.  

In this long season between Pentecost and Advent, we walk with Jesus and the disciples through our weekly readings, learning from their ordinary, normal days so that our days can be shaped by theirs.  

Our ordinary days have changed dramatically. Almost 3 months ago to the day, on March 15, I stood before you and said in order to do our part in slowing the spread of COVID19, we were going to suspend in-person worship for a time.  

Our work places, to do their part, sent us home to work or changed the way we worked.  

Stores and restaurants and gathering places closed their doors for a time.  

The only way to slow this terrible virus was to work together to stay apart.  The best way to protect the most vulnerable in our city was to stay away from them. 

That time grew longer and longer as the number of people infected increased every day.  And we wondered if what we were doing was actually working. 

And then the number started to dip down showing our efforts were not in vain.  As businesses and our workplaces have begun to reopen we have all been asked to continue to work together, with physical distancing and face masks to continue to protect each other and our community from the virus.  

We have been reminded – if we’ve been willing to have eyes to see and ears to hear – a life lesson we’ve lost through the generations of this country: Every action of “I” has an impact the “us” whether we can see that impact or not.

For so many in our country the “normal” has become to look out only for ourselves, to do our own thing, to worry about only ‘me’ and what I need, and to be blind to how our behavior impacts others.

This false ideal of the individual has been revealed to us in the dramatic increase in the number of people being infected in Midland and around this state and country these past two weeks with the reopening of our communities, and also in the veil being pulled away from the systemic racism in this land through the marches and protests as people raise their voices against “the normal” and demand true equity for every human being.  

The old normal is broken in so many ways. We cannot go back either at an individual level or as a city or nation.  We can be better.  God calls us to be better.  Jesus teaches us to be better. 

As we begin our annual journey through ordinary time in church, we have this miraculous opportunity to reshape, with God’s help, what our “normal” looks like.  We can be who God is calling us to be, who Jesus teaches us to be.    

In our gospel reading this morning, Jesus is teaching and healing and proclaiming the good news of the Kingdom and when he sees the crowds, he has compassion for them.

Compassion is that emotion which allows us to see the suffering and hurt of others and moves us to do something to alleviate that pain and suffering.  Compassion isn’t a passive emotion.  It requires action.  

Jesus knows that to alleviate the suffering and hurt in this world requires all of us to work together and so instead of just doing it all himself, he commissions the disciples to do this work.  

Jesus tells his disciples to ask the Lord to send out harvesters … and then he answers their prayer by sending them out to do the work he has been doing. When we pray for God to move mountains, sometimes God hands us the shovel.  

And then Jesus tells them a curious thing, something often twisted in meaning to reinforce our tendency as the church to exclude others.  

Jesus tells them to start with the lost sheep of Israel.  

Jesus isn’t being exclusionary here, he’s being realistic. Jesus knows the human condition well enough to understand that often, when we choose to change for the better, the most difficult place to proclaim that good news is within our own families and communities, the people who know our “normal” as their normal.  

Jesus is telling the disciples to start proclaiming God’s love right where they are, to their families and in their own communities. Later he’ll tell them to branch out, we’ll get to that story later this summer.

From the beginning, God promised Abraham that his descendants would outnumber the stars, SO THAT they would be a blessing to all the nations of the world.  God’s blessing has never been for a single group of people but for everyone.  Somewhere along the way the House of Israel had lost that point and so Jesus sends the disciples to teach their own who God had called them to be all along.  

Somewhere along the way, we as Americans decided that individualism was a better deal than living for the greater good of all.  Collectively as a nation, we’ve lost the ability to see each other with compassion as Jesus sees us.  

And in the midst of all the pain and suffering in our country, God is calling us to be who Jesus has been teaching us to be all along – the body of Christ commissioned 

to spread God’s love, 

to see the image of God in everyone, 

to help alleviate the pain and suffering in the world, 

starting right here where we live.  

When we follow Jesus, the work of sharing God’s love in this world is the “normal” of our ordinary days. 

Striving for justice and peace and respecting the dignity of every human being is our normal.  

Seeking the well-being of others is our normal.  

Being other focused rather than self-centered is our normal.  

Proclaiming the good news of God’s kingdom in all that we think, say, and do is our normal.

I don’t think I’ve given y’all any homework since we’ve been gathering via the internet so we’re long over due, wouldn’t you say?  For this coming week, take the collect for today – it’s on page 230 of the BCP – and pray it at least once a day, more if you can, and then be willing to be the answer to that prayer with God’s help within your own family and our community. 

Together we will be better, we can with God’s help make the world better, as we walk the normal, ordinary path of following Jesus on the Way of Love.  Amen.