September 6, 2020
14th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 18

Exodus 12:1-14
Psalm 149
Romans 13:8-14
Matthew 18:15-20

I hear a lot these days that the gospel just isn’t relevant to live in the 21st century, that the teachings of a middle eastern man from over 2000 years ago has nothing to do with the way we live today. And, when we don’t accept Jesus among us, that’s true.

Jesus didn’t come to fit into the culture in which he was born. He didn’t teach the disciples to fit in to the culture they lived in. He doesn’t teach us how to fit into our culture. The teachings of the middle eastern, brown skinned man from 2000 years ago have nothing to do with the way we live when we choose to live as the world teaches.

Jesus came to teach us how to be the people God intends for us to be – people living in healthy relationship with God and each other. Relationships in which we are other focused, seeking the greater good of all rather than our own individual interests and agendas.

Jesus didn’t come to be the popular one but the one who speaks the truth of unhealthy relationships people create for themselves and their unhealthy approach to God and religion, whatever century we find ourselves in.

Jesus teaches both on the cultural level and the personal one. We each have to do the difficult and sometimes painful work of letting our own faults be healed so that we can be together as community in healthy relationship.

Think back over the Sunday readings and sermons this summer: we’ve talked about tending to our own soul’s soil and abundantly scattering the seeds of love.
We’ve talked about seeing the infinite value in all human beings as God’s children.
We’ve talked about the true treasure of God’s kingdom and how our behavior reveals what we truly value.
And, we’ve talked about not conforming to the ways of this world and letting ourselves be transformed by God’s love so that we can bring heaven to earth.

Jesus, the great healer, didn’t just heal physical ailments and deformities. Jesus heals our hearts and souls as well.

And in today’s gospel reading, Jesus talks about how to handle conflict with direct and loving communication. I can’t think of anything more relevant for us today than this topic.

We’ve become angry and in our anger we can only see how to destroy something or someone in an effort to alleviate our anger. As a nation, as a society, as a culture, as a community, and as individuals, we are lashing out at anything or anyone.

We are angry and we want to feel better and looking outside ourselves is far easier than looking in. And, it is far more damaging to our society, our relationships, and ourselves.

When we bring one person down in our undefined anger and we still don’t feel better, then we have to bring down another and another and we continue to destroy our own heart and soul in the process.

We like to think that churches are free of this type of conflict, or at least we are very good at pretending it doesn’t exist. We’ve decided to ignore that conflict happens in church because we want people to think we are nice, and that’s the most unhealthy response to conflict there is.

The first step in a healthy response to conflict is to say “we have conflict”. It’s like being an addict, the only way to begin resolving the problem is to admit there is one.

Often however, in our “nice church people” attempt to deny any conflict at all, we then attack the one who is trying to resolve the issue by pointing it out in the first place.

We’d rather stay in our unhealthy ways because we know these ways and they are comfortable and they don’t require us to change anything. It’s like saying “I’m used to my limp so why do I need to have the surgery to fix it?”

We keep putting pretty coats of paint on the facade and ignore the cracks in the foundation.

And so Jesus teaches us how to face the conflict and how to work through it in a loving and healthy way.

Jesus address the ways we are tempted to deal with conflict and offers us a healthy, life-giving alternative to these temptations:

First, Jesus makes it clear that avoidance and evasion are not the answer. He tells us to talk to each other, honestly and openly, with the agenda to build up rather than tear down.

Second, when someone causes us offense, we don’t gossip – we don’t start with talking about the person, but we address the issue directly with the person who offended us, one-on-one. This respectfully gives both of us a chance to discover if perhaps it was just a misunderstanding and to explore the real cause of the bad feelings without embarrassment or shame. Triangulation and gossip are corrosive to our community, the opposite of healthy and life-giving.

Third, Jesus tells us not to create echo chambers of grievance – seeking out those we know we can convince to agree with our grievance even if they themselves were not a part of the original offense, secret meetings to discuss such topics as “what are we going to do with her” or “how are we going to make him do it our way.” The true goal of these types of secret meetings is never reconciliation but revenge. So bring in a witness who can point out the common ground necessary for building healthy and life-giving communities.

Fourth, if talking directly with the individual or with a witness hasn’t worked, we can’t stay within our like-minded gang of grievance. The next step is to bring the offense before the entire community, including the one who caused the offense in the first place. All points of view are included, keeping everyone accountable. With a diverse group of listeners, we are less likely to exaggerate our “side” or to omit or alter key details to make us look better or the other person look worse. It helps us keep resolution as the goal, not revenge or retaliation.

And finally, Jesus warns against throwing the offending person out. When the goal becomes excommunication even before we begin communication we are focused on retaliation not resolution. If someone in the community continues in dysfunctional behaviors, removing their toxicity may be the only answer but it is always a last resort.

The church is a place of mission and ministry, a community in which we are to look outwardly to see where we need to be sharing God’s love at all times. And so, Jesus tells us to treat self-focused, emotionally unhealthy individuals as he does tax-collectors and sinners – we welcome them to stay in our community to learn to be Christ-centered people, serving God and others with all that we have.

No one is exempt from God’s grace. No one is excluded from Jesus’ mission of love and God’s beloved community.

Conflict happens. It is happening. As the church we are the ones who are called to model relationship building resolution, not corrosive retaliation and coercion. With all that is happening, this is more relevant today than perhaps any other time in our history.

How we live within the relationships of our church community reflects our hearts – light or dark. Our behavior toward others either reveals heaven or the ways the world.

We have the choice to bind ourselves to heaven or earth.

We can choose to say that the gospel is no longer relevant and ignore Jesus’ teachings about living in relationship with each other. Or we can embrace the life-giving, loving, liberating way of God and let ourselves be transformed into the people God created us to be, with full awareness of Jesus in our midst at all times. Amen.

August 30, 2020
13th Sunday after Pentecost; Prop 17

Exodus 3:1-15
Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c
Romans 12:9-21
Matthew 16:21-28

This week’s gospel and sermon are part two of last week’s. Last week we gave Peter full marks for answering Jesus’ question “who do you say I am” with “you are the Messiah.”

But in this week’s reading, we learn that Peter hasn’t fully grasped what God meant when God promised to send The Messiah, despite spending three years as a disciple of Jesus.

Peter and the other disciples had grown up under a government who ruled by violence and force. They’d been taught that the one with the biggest sword wins. So, we can’t be too hard on them for thinking this is the kind of savior God would send – a person who could build an an empire and an army with weapons in order to take power by force, to kill the ones who kill, to oppress the ones who oppress, to control the ones who controlled.

But this type of deliverance is centered on revenge and retaliation, not love and redemption and reconciliation. Forceful deliverance does not coincide with anything Jesus has taught them and shown them.

It is so incongruent with Jesus’ teaching that Jesus labels Peter’s words as from Satan himself. Seeking to achieve forceful power and control isn’t just a misinterpretation of God’s will, it is not even within the realm of God’s kingdom.

What Peter and the disciples had failed to understand is that Jesus’ form of subversion is far more powerful than any sword.

If you attempt to defeat those who have oppressed you with a bigger fist than theirs, then you are destined to live with the fear that someone else will come along and do the same to you one day. This method of power mongering is self-centered, and self-serving, and grounded in fear. Wanting to be “more powerful” than the next guy means that what you really want is power over someone else.

Jesus comes along and takes power and control out of the equation all together and replaces it with service and humility and unconditional love. This is a revolutionary idea that they’d never heard before.

And like last week, Paul in his letter to the Romans offers up an excellent sermon on how we follow Jesus and subvert the powers of this world, giving us a thorough checklist of Kingdom behavior, and explaining what we talked about last week – not conforming to this world but beings transformed by God:
Let love be genuine;
hate what is evil,
hold fast to what is good;
love one another with mutual affection;
outdo one another in showing honor.
Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit,
serve the Lord.
Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.
Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them.
Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.
Live in harmony with one another;
do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly;
do not claim to be wiser than you are.
Do not repay anyone evil for evil,
live peaceably with all.
never avenge yourselves,
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

That last one is key – overcome evil with good.

Jesus didn’t come to create a worldly empire. He came to bring the Kingdom of Heaven to Earth and offer an alternative to the empires of this world.

Jesus didn’t come to build a building for his followers to gather in every week and then live by their own design the rest of the week. Jesus came to create a Church made of people, living in this world but not conforming to it.

World powers since Constantine have tried to rewrite this and force fit Jesus’ Way into their own narrative of power, serving up the gospel as a side dish to their agenda rather than as it is meant to be – a completely alternative way of living.

And churches as institutions run the same risk when we try to conform to or look like the world to attract others, when we water down the gospel message to “be nice” or to make ourselves comfortable.

For many, church has become a competition to see who can have the most people in the pews on any given Sunday, who can put on the best “show”, or who can bring in the most money. All of which have to do with our own need for power and none of which belongs in Jesus’ narrative of living on earth as it is in heaven.

Worshiping together in community is a critical means to an end, but it isn’t the end. It is a piece of our ongoing continuous spiritual formation that equips us to BE the church, the people of God, revealing Heaven on Earth by the Way of Love with all that we are and all that we have.

Jesus teaches that we, each of us, needs to be transformed by God’s love because that is God’s plan for overcoming the forces of this world – a collective group who know that only love can drive out hate, that only light can penetrate darkness, and who approach the world with an open hand of love rather than a closed fist of power.

And so, Jesus makes it personal, telling us to take up our cross, deny ourselves, ask ourselves the question: who do I try to control or hold power over by my behavior?

When we take up our cross, we can no longer hold onto the sword we think necessary to vanquish our enemies.
When we deny ourselves, we can no longer hold power over another human being.
When we follow Jesus, we can no longer follow anyone who isn’t also following Jesus.

Following Jesus means we set our eyes on God, not on any thing of this world.
Following Jesus means we let go of our desire for power and control.
Following Jesus means we let Jesus shape and transform the way we see the world, rather than letting the world define how we should see Jesus.

When we lose the self-centered, closed-fisted attempts to control the life the world promises us and turn to follow Jesus, we find the other-focused life of loving God and our neighbor gaining the life God had intended for us all along.

Following Jesus is our true religion, being continually nourished with God’s goodness so that we bear the fruit of the kingdom with good works for others.

And so, take heart, do not be afraid – Taking up our cross is always followed by resurrection!

Denying ourselves doesn’t mean hating ourselves because when we following Jesus we learn to love even ourselves!

Following Jesus is the life we are created to live and the life in which we are most truly ourselves – beloved children of the loving God. Amen.

August 23, 2020
12th Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 16

Exodus 1:8 – 2:10
Psalm 124
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20

Who Do You Say That I Am?

10 Years ago, the summer of 2010, I spent 12 weeks in chaplaincy training – all seminary students are required to do this thing called Clinical Pastoral Education. It’s on the job training with a group of others in training with classes and group sessions, and yes, limited amounts of patient visits. At it’s best it is part of the process that enables us to evaluate with great intention what we think we know about following Jesus, who God is, and who we are in relationship with God. At it’s worst, it’s designed to break your spirit. It depends on the supervisor.

As part of the pre-work for our training, our supervisor had us write a spiritual autobiography which she expected to be at least 10 pages long. We wouldn’t be allowed to begin without it in her hands at least two weeks prior to our start date. I did manage to resisted the urge to start with “to begin my life at the beginning of my life …” although I may have tweaked the margins a bit to get to the full 10 pages which showed I do not turn out to be the hero of of my own life.

From these pages, and the pages of the 4 other student chaplains in our summer group, our supervisor formulated who we were and fixed these personas in her mind, with gorilla glue apparently, because never once in actually meeting and working with us over the 12 weeks that followed, did she deviate from her initial notion of who we each were.

People often come to a new relationship with prewritten narratives of who we “should’ be for them.

People often come to Jesus with prewritten narratives of who they want him to be.

So, continuing on our walk with Jesus as Matthew tells the gospel story, we are now with Jesus and the disciples in Caesarea Philippi, a Roman settlement near a temple built by Herod the Great and dedicated to the Emperor Augustus, who gave himself the title “Divi Filus” Son of the Divine.

Standing in the proverbial shadow of this temple dedicated to a self-proclaimed god of human origin, Jesus asks his disciples, “who do people say that I am?” The People have a variety of answers, all of which try to fit Jesus into something, or someone, that they are already familiar with. Just as the disciples could easier believe it was a ghost rather than Jesus walking on the water, the people can easier believe that this teacher is a reincarnated prophet of old, even though God had promised them a deliverer.

If they can fit Jesus into their own already written narrative, then they don’t have to change the way they see their world or the way they think about their world.

And then Jesus makes it personal – he turns the question to the disciples: “but what do you say?”

And Peter, blessed Peter who shows us first hand that Jesus calls us with all of our faults and foibles, in our God created humanness, to serve God’s Kingdom, Peter gets it right: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (But, as we’ll see next week, he still struggles to rewrite his own narrative of who Jesus “should” be. For now we’ll give him full credit for his answer.)

In our Old Testament lesson we read today, we see God’s people resisting the narrative of others – as the Egyptians tried to oppress the Israelites into who they wanted them to be, a group of people they owned and controlled completely, the Israelites resisted. Exodus 1:12 tells us, “the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread.” The midwives did all they could to resist the evil of the Egyptian government that said some people are less than human and can be own and controlled. Moses’ parents did all they could do to resist. Even Pharoah’s daughter chose not to conform to her father’s way of thinking and took the baby Moses as her own son.

Like the Israelites, Jesus didn’t conform to who others wanted him to be but lived the life he came to live, the life he shows us we can live if we let go of what the world says life is all about.

In Paul’s letter to the Romans, he gives it to us plainly: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God– what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Not “perfect” in the sense that we must be perfect but perfect in that God is perfect and in seeking to do God’s will we reveal the Good and Perfect God to the world.

God created each and every one of us in the divine image and Jesus came to show us a different way to live. We spend an awful lot of energy trying to create God in our own image and fitting Jesus into our own way of living. In a sense, we have become our own oppressors.

The tighter we cling to the ways of the world the more we oppress in ourselves the love and compassion that comes from the image of God at our very core. We have the choice to bind ourselves to God or to this world.

We are created to live in relationship with God and each other, grounded in love and compassion and grace. This is where we find the freedom God promises us. This is how we are delivered from the anger and hate and violence of this world.

But don’t tell anyone. What a crazy thing for Jesus to say! Why would he say such a thing?

For several reasons, one of which is that Jesus prefers to reveal who he is by actively loving people as God loves us – unconditionally and uncompromisingly. Jesus also knows that Peter and the others haven’t fully let go of their ideas that God’s promised Messiah is to be a military style victor who fights violence with violence instead of justice, reconciliation, and grace. More on that next week when we get to part two of this sermon.

Between now and then, spend time with Jesus’ questions: Who do you say that Jesus is? Do you try to fit Jesus into your own narrative or do you pray for the eyes to see and ears to hear who God really is and who we are called to be in our relationship with God?

Make time this week to ponder Paul’s words from the letter to the Romans. And if it begins to make you uncomfortable, call me or someone else you trust and talk about it. We are on this journey of transformation together, bound together by Jesus’ love. Amen.

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.