Kingdom Prayer

I’m not preaching this week but wanted to offer this reflection on the Gospel reading for today. I pray you find it beneficial.

When asked by his disciples to teach them to pray, Jesus offers the framework of prayer that is more about God and God’s wants than it is about us. It is a prayer of reliance on God and being satisfied with God and God’s way. It doesn’t invite Jesus into our hearts or ask for a ticket into Heaven but asks God to show us how to live in the kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven right now. And it makes our primary task worship followed by the awareness of God’s Kingdom all around us and our dependence on God and our interdependence on each other.

And then, to drive his point home, Jesus tells a parable of a persistent neighbor. Let’s set a little time and culture context here for better understanding: to feed a guest was imperative to their hospitality centered culture, even a guest who showed up unannounced in the middle of the night. You couldn’t just say “I didn’t make it to the HEB today but we’ll go get breakfast tacos in the morning.” When a guest appeared, there was to be food and a meal, no matter the time or what else was going on. To be inhospitable was not only an individual failure but a communal failure as well. If you didn’t take proper care of your guests, your whole community was shamed. So you go next door and wake up your neighbor. And if they get annoyed, keep knocking until they help because you can’t bring shame down on the community.

So what does this parable have to do with the prayer structure Jesus teaches? I’m so glad you asked! The prayer and the parable are parallels of each other.

Your Kingdom come = the friends, the one who asks, the one who’s at home, and the one’s who’s just arrived. The building blocks of Gods’ Kingdom on earth as in heaven are relationships. The economy of the Kingdom is love. As we love each other well, we build up the kingdom.

Give us each day our daily bread = I don’t have what I need so I’ll ask my neighbor if I can use some of theirs. God’s Kingdom isn’t about having more than our neighbor but working with each other so we all have what we need. We should be content with what we need and not hoard more to keep it from others. We are all in need of something at times. It isn’t a weakness or a flaw. It’s part of being human as God made us. God provides our needs through other people. God made us to be interdependent.

Forgive our sins as we forgive debts = ‘lend me three loaves.’ Our western minds often hear this as a transaction: God forgives us and in return we forgive others. Yet, God isn’t transaction, God is relational. In all of our relationships, forgiveness is to be mutual; forgiveness is about loving well. Forgiveness doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences for harm done but that we don’t harbor resentment or seek retaliation. Healthy relationships don’t have double standards. We accept accountability for harm we’ve done and we let go of the anger when we are the one harmed.

Do not bring us to the time of trial = ‘at least because of his persistence’. We are asking God to help us pay attention to each other’s needs so that no one has to cause harm to get what they need and to help us not see others asking for help as an inconvenience but a chance to participate in the economy of God’s kingdom.

And then, to make sure we get it, Jesus gives this somewhat convoluted list of knocking/opening/parent/child/fish/snake/egg/scorpion/good gifts metaphors. God knows what we need better than we do, but Jesus tells us to ask God for what we need. Not because God is a petty god who withholds what we need but because God wants us to live in relationship. God delights in giving us good gifts. And with God, we don’t have to be pesky. God answers. But that doesn’t mean God will give us whatever we want. We have to be mature enough to know the difference between needs and wants. In our modern middle class western culture, we are so used to getting most anything we want and, really, we don’t think much about our needs because they are met. We turn on the faucet and there’s water. We open the pantry and there’s food and if we are out of bread we go to HEB and get more. What do we really need to ask God for?

It’s not about the stuff. It’s about all that makes us human, God’s beloved people. In the economy of God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven, we are all accountable for tending to each other’s needs whether they are emotional, spiritual, intellectual, or physical (remember the whole heart, soul, mind, and strength command?). These are part of being human. When we pretend we don’t have any needs and think we are here only to fulfill others needs we are not being fully human. When we see others as only a tool to fill our needs and don’t pay attention to theirs, we are not being fully human.

Life in God’s Kingdom is about our interdependence, loving God with our whole being and loving our neighbor as ourselves. This is what Jesus commands us; it is what he teaches us to pray for. Prayer isn’t about changing God’s mind but about shaping our hearts and minds to reflect the image of God within us.

Keep loving louder than the hate.

Choosing what I don’t (and do) know

Today was a hard day. I guess it started last evening when Jim’s daughter texted me to say it was the 9 month anniversary of his death. I realized that I was still saying he’s been gone for 6 months. Her birthday is today and we talked about “getting through the firsts.” I got to thinking about the firsts we’ve been through: Thanksgiving, Christmas, Jim’s Birthday, Easter, my Birthday, and I can’t remember how I got through any of them. I’ve been on autopilot for much of the past nine months.

So, all this was on my mind as I walked out the front door this morning to head for the church and discovered an issue with my car. My reaction was to turn around and go back in … to tell Jim. But he isn’t here. So I texted my son (who lives 4 hours away and I knew he couldn’t do anything but he’s the longest known constant in my life I know I can depend on so I reflexively reached out) as well as a gentleman from the church who is so very kind and has said ‘call me if you need anything.’ Between the two of them and me texting pictures of the issue, we decided it was ok to drive carefully to the church where he could look at it.

I know nothing of cars except how to drive one and how to put gas in. I don’t even like driving, it’s just a necessity that I must do in life. My son’s response was so encouraging. He assumed that if he told me what needed to be done, I could just crawl under there with the right tools and do it, which I took as a great compliment. He thinks his mum is capable of doing whatever needs doing! I choose, however, not to know about fixing cars or to learn it. And yet, this whole situation made me teary and feel incompetent, even with my son’s compliment. Talking it through with a wise friend, I realized what I was actually feeling was sadness, and yes, a bit of anger, that Jim wasn’t with me to help me solve the problem. He knew lots about cars and liked doing ‘car stuff’. We used to joke that when he retired he’d be my full-time chauffeur. But then he realized he’d have to get up early to drive me to work so he said he’d be my evening and weekend chauffeur only.

This was another first – my first real car issue since Jim died. The thickness of my grief has begun to thin and so I wonder if I can more clearly see and experience the firsts? It won’t be long until I’m journeying through the ‘seconds’. I wonder how it will all feel. I’ll know when I get there. What I do know now is this: having been raised in a family in which emotions were inconvenient, I’m grateful to be learning to face my emotions (yes, even the painful ones), to work with them, learn from them, and experience life fully with them because emotions are part of how God made us to be human. And I want to continuously grow into who God made me to be. I’ve chosen to know more about what it is to be fully human. I can find someone who knows more about cars and can fix them. I can’t find anyone else to be me except me. I am most fully me in relationship with God and with others when I accept and live into the fullness of being human: heart, soul, mind, and strength (aka: emotions, the ‘self’ that makes me me, thoughts, physicality).

I pray that if you hesitate to acknowledge your emotions or any part of your humanness that sharing my experiences will encourage you to explore why. It’s not selfish or self-centered. It’s part of learning to love God, our neighbors, and ourselves with our whole humanness. We are never too old to begin this work of being fully who God made us to be.

And just to tie up the story – the parishioner met me at the church and was able to make it a bit safer to drive so that I could get it to the mechanic. The issue is fixed and I’m safely home again. I am so grateful for all who are willing to do life with me and give me the privilege of doing life with you.

Keep loving louder than the hate in this world!

Being Human

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for the sixth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

Our gospel story this morning is one most of us know well. Jesus is at the home of his friends and devoted disciples although not allowed to claim the title because they were women, Mary and Martha. Martha is doing all that she thinks is necessary in order to provide Jesus with a pleasant and hospitable time in her home. She invited Jesus in and then continued to do all that she normally did.

Martha sees her sister Mary sitting with and listening to Jesus – To be at Jesus’ feet is an idiom that means a posture of learning and humility – and instead of listening herself, Martha’s resentment grows and rather than join her sister at Jesus’ feet, she makes an attempt to coerce Jesus on to her side. “Tell her to help me!” Martha insists. She invited Jesus in and then tells Jesus to follow her lead.

Now, don’t get me wrong, what Martha is doing, the tasks she is performing, aren’t bad. She’s wanting to offer Jesus the cultural norm of hospitality but her motivation is out of whack. Jesus knows this and doesn’t belittle or condemn her; he doesn’t even tell her that the work doesn’t need doing. He tells her that she doesn’t need to be worried about proving herself, that what’s most important is to be with each other. Jesus invited Martha to follow him into the Kingdom where cultivating and nurturing healthy relationship is the purpose of all the activities and tasks we do.

True hospitality is being kind and welcoming AND curious about those we invite; true hospitality isn’t about proving how hospitable we are but about nurturing our relationships. The tasks still need doing but its when we use the tasks to prove ourselves or earn gratitude or control things, like Martha, we’ve let ourselves be distracted by, well, ourselves. We’ve taken our eyes off of Jesus. And when we let ourselves be distracted from being fully human, we miss out on relationships and we miss out on God’s presence with us.

In his book The Expectation Gap, pastor Steve Cuss talks about the Big 5 False Needs that people have: Control, Perfection, Knowing All, Always Available, and Approval. At various levels some struggle with all 5, some with a few of the five but everyone has an internal struggle with at least one. This is similar to the work I do with the Enneagram, discovering what needs we are trying to get met by our regular patterns of behavior and that the good of us is, when misdirected, the worst in us.

Steve presents it this way: Each of these false human needs are traits of God’s character: God is in Control, God alone is perfect, God is all knowing, God is always available to us, and God gives us his approval through his righteousness. These are false human needs because we are not God and shouldn’t try to be. We don’t need to be in control of everything around us because God is; God doesn’t demand our perfection but calls us to completion in relationship with God; we can live life curiously because God knows all; God is always available to everyone so we don’t have to be the superheroes; God frees us from needing human approval with God’s unconditional love.

When we try to make God’s traits our responsibility, we are trying to be God instead of being human. We aren’t trusting God to be God. Like Martha, we are inviting Jesus in and then telling him to follow us.

Martha wasn’t doing anything wrong, the dishes need doing. Martha had her priorities out of order; she had made doing more important than being. Jesus teaches us that our highest priority of life is cultivating and nurturing our relationships. Relationships are the true treasure of God’s kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. When we give our attention and energy to trying to be god-like rather than following Jesus, not only do our human relationships suffer but so does our relationship with God.

When folks ask me to describe St. Francis by the Lake, the first thing I always talk about is Decktime. This time is set aside each week for the sole purpose of being in relationship. We gather with food and beverages and as more folks come in, we drag more chairs over until we need another table and then we rearrange again, always making room for everyone who shows up. And if it’s monthly potluck night, when the time comes to shift from snacks to dinner, no one has an assigned job, we just all chip in to reset and then clean up after, because yes the dishes need doing and it’s our collective responsibility to do them. Part of being in healthy, growing relationship is doing the necessary tasks together, not letting the burden fall on one, nor taking the burden solely on ourself. Life in God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven is about doing life together as we follow Jesus, each of us doing what we are capable of, from praying, to organizing, from encouraging to doing dishes or stacking the chairs. There’s something for each of us as we are able.

When we let go of the distractions of proving ourselves and focus on cultivating our relationships we are choosing the better part. When we work together for the benefit of all we are choosing the better part. When we always make room for others we are choosing the better part.

The better part is living life on God’s terms, accepting God’s love for us and not working to earn it; believing that God sees us as invaluable; trusting God’s forgiveness and God’s desire to redeem all of creation. The better part is letting ourselves be human together and in relationship with God because it is in relationship with God that we are most fully human.

The good news, the Gospel, is that we are all invited into the Kingdom as we are. Following Jesus in the Kingdom Way of living teaches us how to be Kingdom people. We don’t have to prove ourselves to be Kingdom people or earn the right. We don’t have to be perfect or control everything and everyone or know everything or fulfill everyone’s every need or have everyone’s approval. We merely have to be human.

As humans we aren’t perfect but we are enough in God’s eyes.

As humans we can’t control everything or everyone but we are loved so that we can love well.

As humans we can’t know everything but we can be always curious about each other and God’s creation.

As humans we can’t fulfill every need in this world but we can do life together with God so that none of us are in need.

As humans we can never gain everyone’s approval but we have God’s unconditional love in abundance so we can share that love with everyone.

That’s why it’s good news! God’s love for us is enough, God’s grace and mercy are sufficient.

We glorify God in our lives by being the humans God made us to be. We don’t have to be super human, we don’t have to be god-like. We can’t be. We honor God and all of creation by being who and Whose we are created to be: humans who follow Jesus, the One who is God in human form. And if God is willing to be one of us to show us in flesh and blood how to be fully us, being human is pretty special indeed!

God is God and we are human, beloved people made by God because God loves. When we let go of the distractions that tell us we must be something other than God’s beloved, we enter the freedom of God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. We begin the journey of becoming fully human by following Jesus, remaining steadfast in our faith, firm in the hope of the good news, working with God and each other to build up the Kingdom of God. Amen.

Bodywork

I have a confession. I store my stress in my body. I know this is not news for any of us, but sometimes I’m slow to realize things. I mean, I had a series of heart attacks when I was 40 with no prior warning and even after reviewing my medical and my family history my cardiologist finally came to the conclusion that my heart attacks were a fluke. That was 18 years ago and me and my 3 coronary stents (named Fred, George, and Sam because why wouldn’t I name them?) are still alive. And still storing stress in my body.

I’ve never spent much time thinking about my body except when something is wrong with it. I do make some effort to manage my health. I told my cardiologist that I want to live to be 100 and he said if I did all that he told me to do and didn’t step in front of any buses that it was a definite possibility. So, I take my meds, I exercise, I eat semi-healthy most of the time, and I try to be careful around buses. However, two and a half years ago I had emergency surgery to remove a bleeding fibroid from my uterus along with the uterus, ovaries, tubes, cervix, and several dozen fibroids in my abdominal cavity. There were signs that something was wrong but I was busy and had things to do and didn’t go to the doc until it was ER urgent. I grieved at the time over losing what I felt biologically made me a woman. And then I got busy and had things to do and became impatient with my body for taking weeks and weeks to recover from major abdominal surgery. So perhaps I need to pay better attention to me.

In some recent therapy work, we discussed what a gift our bodies are. It is with and through our bodies that we experience the world. We get to see beautiful sunsets and sunrises, hear music, feel the hugs from loved ones, taste ice cream and chocolate and coffee and wine. I hadn’t ever really thought about my body as a gift. I know life is a gift but to realize that it is with my body that I receive God’s gift of life is a new realization for me. And, yes, it feels like a ‘duh’ moment.

I had a massage today and as the therapist began, in rhythm with my breathing I found myself thanking God for the amazing gift of my body. It was a time of incredible awareness of both my body as me and me as God’s beloved. I don’t know how else to say it. It was deeply moving. For the first time that I can recall in my 58 years on this planet, I truly appreciated my physical body even as the therapist did the painful work of removing the knots in my shoulders and back. My body has many flaws and it is how I live life and experience this world, the good, the bad, and the ugly. And I am so very grateful. When Jesus says the greatest commandment is to love God with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength, he’s not speaking of four different parts of us but of the entirety of our being, our ‘us,’ our humanness, that which God created good and the tipping point that moved Creation from good to very good. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve preached and taught this but today, it truly came alive in me. Thanks be to God (and a really good massage therapist).

Thank you, Loving God, for your gift of this physical body, for the gift of me. Give me the wisdom to care for this treasure, to be in this body who you created and continuously call me to be. My I live into the great commandment of loving you with my heart, soul, mind, and strength, all of me as you made me. Amen.

Life’s Lens

Some thoughts on being a neighbor on a non-preaching Sunday.
The lectionary readings for today are here.

This past week, I posted some thoughts on my personal facebook page in which I invoked the story of the Good Samaritan without looking ahead to see that this parable is the Gospel reading for today. I’ll take a bit from that post and put it in a slightly different frame.

The Gospel reading for today begins with a lawyer testing Jesus. “Just then” we are told, a lawyer stands up. It’s unclear just where Jesus is. He’s been speaking both publicly and privately to the disciples and so this ‘just then’ is an abrupt interruption that makes us pay close attention to what comes next. One of the things we tend to overlook in the stories of our scriptures is the motivations of the people. And yet, the authors make the effort to write them. Motivations matter. The lawyer wanted to justify himself, as many do when they are looking to validate their own way of being rather than to learn from a wise teacher how to grow and be a better human.

The lawyer could quote the great commandment to love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourselves, but he wanted a loophole, a way to justify not loving his neighbor. In response to the lawyer’s test, Jesus tells a story of a man who most Jews would not claim as a neighbor, a man from Samaria.

With the parable, Jesus turns the understanding of ‘neighbor’ on its head. Jesus makes it clear that who we define as our neighbor is about how we treat others, not the proximity or origin of the ‘others’. Jesus tells the story and then asks ‘which of these was a neighbor to the man who was robbed and beaten?’ He didn’t ask was the man robbed and beaten a neighbor and should the samaritan have done what he should. Jesus takes away the possibility of a loophole. The point of the parable is determining whether or not I am behaving as a good neighbor not who I do or do not put the label ‘neighbor’ on.

The point and purpose of God’s commandments is to shape our hearts to be like God’s heart. As we live into God’s commandments we are continuously transformed as God’s beloved children; it’s a lifelong growth journey. When we see life with the lens that God’s commandments are a checklist to earn our way into the Kingdom, we are motivated to look for the loopholes that justify how we already are. Love is the lens through which Jesus teaches us to see. When the lawyer answers that the neighbor is the one who shows mercy Jesus tells him to go and do likewise.

It should be the constant question for ourselves: am I revealing God’s love with my whole being, heart, soul, mind, and strength? Am I loving my neighbor as myself? Am I living into God’s commandments or looking to earn my way into the Kingdom? Jesus came to live and die as one of us so that we don’t have to justify ourselves, to show us in flesh and blood that God doesn’t operate transactionally but covenantally and redemptively. God desires to be in relationship with us not to do business transactions with us. God invites us all to participate in the building up of the Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven.

The stories we have in our Holy Scriptures are to help us grow into who God calls us be to, not to justify ourselves. If we approach scripture looking for weapons to dehumanize others we will find them because that is what we are looking for. When we approach them as a means of opening ourselves to God’s transforming love, our hearts will be shaped by God’s heart so we are equipped to share the good news of God’s love with our hurting world. Amen.

Life With

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

It’s been a rough couple of days – our 4th of July festivities were tempered by the devastating floods in Kerrville with 43+ lives lost followed by the anxiety of knowing the raging Guadalupe would continue to cause damage as it made it’s way to the Lake. And as the rain continued to fall yesterday, our own community was under threat of devastation. As desperate as we’ve all been for water in the lake, it just doesn’t feel right to be happy about it when it comes with pain and sorrow in it’s path.

Life is complicated. It’s a mix of joy and pain and it’s uncomfortable to hold this mix of emotion and yet that’s part of being human, isn’t it. Our hearts ache with those who are still waiting and searching for loved ones. We want to jump in and help in some way but right now the best and most necessary thing we can do is pray. To quote our bishops in their joint letter to the diocese yesterday, “Prayer is not sitting by passively and doing nothing.  Prayer is hope in action.  It moves mountains and tunes our hearts to the heart of Jesus.  Pray big prayers for the missing.  Pray big prayers for their families and friends.  Pray big prayers for first responders and rescue workers.  Pray big prayers for St. Peter’s Church, Kerrville and the Hill Country camping community.” And I’ll add pray big prayers for those north of us in Travis county. Pray big prayers for our own community and those impacted by the flash flooding along River Road and Rebecca Creek Road. “Pray big prayers not just one day or one Sunday, but for the next 30 days” and beyond as we know the recovery efforts will go on for months.

There is no better way to explore just how complicated life can be than with the stories and letters we read each week from our faith ancestors as they experienced and were shaped by the God of creation. Who better to show us how to navigate this life than the One who made us, the One who chose to become one of us and knows us better than we want to know ourselves. When Jesus gave us the greatest commandment to love God with our whole being and to love our neighbor as ourselves, he gave us the lens through which we are to see life.

There are so many layers to explore in today’s Gospel reading. It was a challenge to narrow down what we can look at in these few minutes together, and even more difficult as the events of the past two days had me relook at what I needed to say. This passage follows immediately after Jesus saying “anyone who puts his hand to the plow and looks back isn’t fit for God’s Kingdom.” Today’s section of the text actually begins with “after these things” Jesus appointed seventy others. ‘Others’ being in addition to the twelve Jesus had already commissioned to go ahead to prepare the way for him as he makes his way to Jerusalem. Jesus sent them out in pairs, not to be individual heroes, not to be in competition with each other but to do life with each other as Jesus had taught them to do life with God. He sent them out to be like lambs among the wolves. He warns them of the wolves in the world, those who prey on the vulnerable, and he cautions them against behaving like the wolves.

He sent them to proclaim peace, God’s peace, peace that is so much more than just an absence of conflict but the kind of peace that comes from knowing to whom we belong, the kind of peace that comes when we see our fellow humans as companions not competitors. The kind of peace that knows that every human being is intrinsically valuable because they are created by God. The kind of peace that gives us the strength and courage to deal with the tragedies and complexities of this life.

This peace that God gives us isn’t a limited commodity but an abundant resource that grows as we offer it to others. This peace isn’t forced or coerced or found by lording power over others. This peace comes with finding our identity in God, as God’s beloved, living in the economy of God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. An economy in which love and compassion and empathy increase the more we give them away.

And when we encounter those who want to live life as a competition, who don’t want to live peaceably, we aren’t to join them but stand confidently in the knowledge of God’s love for all people, continuing to proclaim the Kingdom of God is right here with us. The dust that we are to wipe off is the inclination to villainize those we disagree with, the inclination to fight against others rather than walk with them. When we join in the competition to be better than others, we become the wolves not the lambs.

When these seventy come back delighted by what God had equipped them to do for others, Jesus cautions them to not let it go to their heads, to not let it enlarge their egos but to remember who and Whose they are and the reason for going to begin with.

If I didn’t know that Paul’s letters were written before the gospels I’d think that Paul was preaching to the Galatians on our passage from Luke. The common thread between the two is how we are to walk through life together as we live in this now and not yet Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven.

Paul tells the Galatians that we are to bear one another’s burdens and that we each carry our own loads. Our load is our regular, ordinary obligations as we continuously grow into who God calls us to be. Carrying our loads isn’t a competition where we have to convince others ours is better or theirs means less than ours. Our loads are our loads and everyone has one. Burdens are when our loads become too much for us, either extra is added on, or we for some reason just can’t carry what we once did. We all have burdens and we all need help with them. No one is better or worse because of the burdens; we are all human with them. As we journey through this life together, we work for the good of all, sharing the peace and love of God in the new creation, aware than not all who claim to be of God truly are, some are wolves wearing an ill fitting sheep skin. We are to discern the good to do through the lens of the great commandment: loving God with our whole being and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

As the full impact of the weather events of these past two days come to light, many will need help with burdens because their ordinary loads have been upended. And as we come together to help each other and our hill country neighbors, I pray we are shaped and transformed to better see others as companions along the way.

Life is a complicated mix of joy and pain and we need each other to navigate our way in the Kingdom working for peace and the good of all. Jesus shows us that this is how we live most fully as the humans God created and calls us to be. Amen.

Breathing in the ordinary

A reflection on today’s lectionary readings, particularly Paul’s letter to the Galatians and the Gospel reading from Luke.

These past eight months have been for me a time of resetting – figuring out new routines, new ways of handling the ordinary, daily stuff like laundry and yard work and grocery shopping; of managing my schedule so the dogs are cared for; and keeping myself fed slightly better than a bowl of Cheerios for dinner because cooking for one is, well, a bit depressing. I am feeling like I’m coming out of the depths, like I can breathe a bit better and moving through the days is less and less like walking in a pool filled with pudding (not that I’ve ever done such a thing, this is just my attempt at a metaphor of walking, neck deep, through something thick and sticky).

I find it fitting that as we enter into the church season of ‘ordinary time’ that some of my new routines are beginning to feel ordinary. The Sunday lectionary readings for the next six months will focus on living life as Jesus teaching us in flesh and blood in the ordinary moments of our lives. Life as we follow Jesus is done together grounded in loving God, our neighbors, and ourselves. God made humans to be communal, interdependent on each other as we journey together toward wholeness in God. This is our unifying purpose, defined by who and Whose we are, not who we may or may not be against.

In the letter to the church in Galatia, Paul tells us that the fruit of the (Holy) Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Please note, ‘fruit’ is singular. These aren’t a cafeteria list of things we can pick and choose. They are a singular package of ‘gifts’, a community manifestation of God’s love for the whole world. When we choose to live by the Spirit, we will produce this fruit, love-joy-peace-patience-kindness-generosity-faithfulness-gentleness-self-control fruit.

When we choose to follow Jesus and are guided by the Spirit, our whole lives change. Jesus invites us to bring our whole life under his reign, be it the grief and pain that comes from burying our loved ones or the relationships of those we do life with on a daily basis. Responding to Jesus’ invitation ‘follow me’ isn’t to church on Sunday or a commitment we can step in and out of as it’s convenient for us. It is a daily, lifelong journey through which our lives produce the fruit of the Spirit just as Jesus did. If we find ourselves on a journey defined by fear and anger and who we are against, we can be certain we are not following Jesus.

In the gospel story, Jesus isn’t telling these two would-be followers to turn their backs on their loved ones, but to live into all of their relationships from the foundation of God’s kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. We can’t keep one foot in our life before Jesus and one in the Kingdom. Our commitment to God is with our whole being, our whole life, the moments of deepest grief and greatest joy and all the ordinary moments in between. The kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven isn’t an exclusive club we earn or buy our way into so that we can say we are ‘better’ than others. The good of the fruit of the Spirit is for the benefit of all, not just those who have committed to following Jesus. We bear the fruit for the benefit of the whole world, extending Jesus’ invitation to ‘follow me’ in a way that really is good news so that all of us can breathe a bit easier in this challenging world.

What about the pigs?

I don’t think I’ve done this here on my blog before but I want to offer a short follow up on the sermon I preached on June 22. (Here’s the lectionary readings for this past Sunday, specifically Luke 8:26–39; and here’s a link to the sermon.)

After my sermon, one of those listening asked me, “what about the pigs? Why didn’t you talk about how Jesus killed all the pigs as punishment for the swine-herders telling him to leave?”

“That’s an interesting way of looking at it,” I replied, “why do you think Jesus would kill the pigs as punishment.”

“Because Jews don’t eat pork.”

“Well, two points: the people where Jesus was weren’t Jews, they were gentiles, Gerasenes, and Jesus didn’t decide to send the demons into the pigs, the demons asked to be sent into the pigs. Jesus gave them what they asked for and the demons caused the pigs to run off the cliff.”

After a few thoughtful moments, my conversation partner exclaimed, “Oh, Jesus left the demons to their own devices!” I could see the light bulb of understanding flash above their head.

“Yes, Jesus left the demons to their own devices and their choice got them and the pigs killed.”

“Well, why didn’t you point that out in the sermon?”

“Because it’s more fun to watch you put the pieces together for yourself,” I said.

“It was fun,” they said and walked over to others gathered with coffee to share what they had just put together.

These are the moments that make me so proud as a preacher – when someone listening takes what I’ve said and continues to ponder it for themselves. This is how we make our knowledge of scripture our own and grow in our relationship with God. If we just receive information and do nothing with it, we’ve gained nothing. But when we really take it in and think about it with our hearts and minds, it becomes a tool for growth and transformation as we become who God created and calls us to be.

I’m also wrapping up a small group study this week where we’ve talked about how everything in our worship service (and our Book of Common prayer as a whole) is meant to shape and transform us, to help us grow as God’s beloved people. We have had some awesome conversations and I’m so grateful for the willingness of others to ask questions and be open to learning. What we do on Sundays isn’t passive but a time when we participate with God and each other in this thin space where we step into God’s throne room to be equipped and empowered to spread the good news of God’s love in the every day moments of our lives.

Thanks for letting me share this story with you. I hope and pray it helps you be more and more present to God’s glorious work in each of us that binds us together as the body of Christ. Peace and love, my friends.

Our Own Devices

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The lectionary readings for today are here.

Today is one of those Sundays when the readings from the lectionary are so beautifully and obviously connected with a golden thread that as I read them I want to raise my coffee mug in salute to the committee that selected these passage to go together. Did you hear it, the guiding phrase connecting all four of our readings? It’s from Isaiah. Are we following Jesus or our own devices? And by ‘devices’ I don’t mean our gps systems or smart phones. It’s an idiom that Webster defines as “a rejection of guidance or wisdom, leading to poor decisions or negative consequences.” Isaiah says its people who provoke God by elevating themselves saying, “do not come near me for I am too holy for you.” So hang on to that thought.

Today also marks the beginning of what we call ‘ordinary time’ in the church calendar. From now until Advent we will journey with Jesus and the first disciples as they invite everyone to join them in the kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven and to live as God created us to be. To begin this journey we appropriately read of Jesus traveling into gentile territory and encountering a man with a legion of demons: he’s naked, unhoused, isolated, shackled, and considered “unclean” by jewish standards and even the gentiles have banished him to the graveyard.

Then Jesus shows up and everything changes. Jesus doesn’t tell those with him to fear this man. Instead Jesus see a beloved child of God and compassionately helps him. The legion of demons that possessed this man – personified anger and hate that leads to evil – wanted to be left to their own devices and beg Jesus to leave them alone. The author leaves it unclear whether it is the man or the demons speaking and by doing so gives us the freedom to ponder our own willfulness to stay with the demons in our own selves or to do the painful work of letting Jesus help us release our anger and hate that leads us to evil. Evil in this world isn’t only the globally horrific things – genocide and war and human trafficking – evil is personified in us every time we behave in ways we know are harmful to others and ourselves and we choose to do them anyway.

The story doesn’t stop with the man; the author takes this lesson outward to the impact within the broader community. The people of this town didn’t want to face the hard challenges of personal growth and self-awareness that comes with accepting and following Jesus so like the demons they ask Jesus to leave. They saw the man healed and ‘in his right mind’ and they didn’t want to have to reassess how they had thought about and treated him. That is too much work, too hard. What if this man they had demonized was actually a really good person, what if he was intelligent and hard working and could do some things better than they could? What if his changes required them to change? They preferred the comfort zone of stagnation; they were afraid of the challenge of growth. And they asked Jesus to leave.

The man who was freed from his demons wanted to go with Jesus and Jesus asked him to stay and model for these stuck people what it is to walk the challenging and rewarding journey of becoming who God created and calls us to be. To show them what it is to be freed from the demons that cause harm to ourselves, others, and our wider communities. That’s what evil is in this world, the ways we cause harm to others because we stay intentionally stuck in our wounds. Evil distorts reality and tells us life is a competition where only one can win. Evil tells us that others exist for our own benefit and that we’ll be happy at the top of the pile of those we’ve beat down.

Paul, in the letter to the Galatians, tells us that in the body of Christ there is no longer separation by our cultural or societal ranks. In the body of Christ there is no one higher or lower ranking than anyone else even with our distinctions. This is the countercultural life we are to live as the Church. We aren’t supposed to define success by how many people we manage or are in charge of. We aren’t supposed to define success by how much money we have. We aren’t supposed to define success by how smart or powerful others think we are.

In the Psalm appointed for today, the writer prays to God to protect him from the false uses of power in this world. He’s not talking literal dogs and lions but the people who seek the kind of power that both dehumanizes others and themselves in their attempt to live according to their own devices with power that dominates others instead of the power of God that builds up others.

Success in the kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven is the humility and willingness to sit at Jesus’ feet to learn to love as he loves and then to follow him out into the world to heal wounds instead of cause them. Success in God’s kingdom is knowing that only when we are guided by God’s love are we in our right mind.

When Jesus shows up, everything changes. When we choose to follow Jesus, we are changed. Life is no longer about competing to be the best but about lifting each other up as the unified body of Christ as we all with God’s help do the work that builds each other up. Life is no longer about demanding others conform to our ideal of a person but seeing the image of God in others. Life isn’t about controlling others but learning self-control so we keep our egos in check. Life following Jesus isn’t about gaining power over others but living in the power of love with each other.

When we follow Jesus our lives are guided by love. And love is hard work. Love is keeping our commitments to each other even when they are difficult, even when it’s harder than we imagined when we first made the commitment. Love is being honest about who we are and what we are willing to do in the first place and when our relationships get challenging to never lose sight of the equalizing image of God in each other so that we don’t assume a posture of power over but live in the authority of God’s love with each other.

Y’all know that I’m happy to embrace the mysterious aspects of our faith: God is beyond our understanding; the Trinity is a relational mystery we are to live into through our relationships; and pondering how Jesus has been with God forever and ever makes my brain hurt. But one thing I know for certain, as the body of Christ we are all equal in God’s eyes; we are all God’s beloved children, and when we attempt to hold power over others or need to prove we are better or more holy or righteous than others, we are living by our own devices and not as Jesus teaches us. As we talked about two weeks ago, being the body of Christ doesn’t mean we are all identical but that we are unified in one purpose: building each other up for the benefit of God’s Kingdom and the glory of God.

The power of God’s love enables all of us to be in our right mind, transformed at the feet of Jesus so we are equipped to follow Jesus on this life-long journey of growth, equal heirs of God’s promise. Amen.

A Simple Reflection

Today is Trinity Sunday. The lectionary readings for are here.
I’m not preaching today but would like to offer this reflection.

Preaching on the Holy Trinity is one of the most difficult tasks any preacher has. If you hear a preacher tell you otherwise, I would suggest you run the other way. The Holy Trinity is a mystery beyond the limits of our human brains. How is it possible that one being comprises three persons who are the ultimate unity yet apparently perform different functions doing one will and having one purpose? Much ink has been spilled through history in attempts to answer this question and much blood has been shed by those who are more focused on getting the answer right than they are about living the Holy Mystery. The Holy Trinity isn’t an academic exercise but a relationship to guide and shape all of our relationships.

When we are focused on proving we have the right answer and weeding out those who we say don’t have the right answer, we are missing the whole point. Jesus didn’t ever say ‘blessed are those who have all the answers.’ All that Jesus taught centered on building and growing healthy relations as we look for the image of God in all people, working together to bring glory to God. I recently had an encounter in which the person I asked for help entered the conversation with the assumption I knew nothing so much so they couldn’t even receive the information I gave them and kept asking questions about what I had already explained wasn’t the problem. It was apparent that their only goal was to prove they held all the knowledge and to prove how others had messed up what needed fixing rather than working together to find the solution to the problem. Being right became the goal, not solving the problem before us. This way of being with each other is completely counter to what we are to learn from the relationship of the Holy Trinity.

So just what can we learn by seeing the Holy Trinity as a relationship rather than a riddle to solve? We can see what true unity, true communion is: being together for the singular purpose of loving well. For God, love isn’t described with qualifiers like better or best or well; I make the qualified statement of ‘loving well’ to acknowledge our human limits. For God love is. In our humanness, we are all made with the capacity for love and we are shaped and formed by our environment to love in various ways. Some of us are taught that love means controlling those around us because we know better than them. Some of us are taught that love means making ourselves smaller for the comfort of those around us so to not bruise anyone’s ego. Some of us are taught that love is tough and demanding. Some of us are taught that love means always being the perfect one, the helpful one, the compromising one. Some of us are taught that love means denying our own needs or talents or abilities. Some of us are taught that love means that others make us the center of their universe.

Jesus teaches us that love is mutual respect, working toward the greater good of all with our human egos in check, wanting for everyone what we want for ourselves. Jesus teaches us that love is seeing others as beloved children of God. Jesus teaches us that everyone person is infinitely valuable and is made to be a particular part of God’s kingdom with skills and abilities meant to be woven together with everyone’s skills and abilities. Jesus teaches us that we are whole together. Jesus teaches us that learning to love well begins and ends with our relationship with God our creator.

We cannot love well when we seek to prove ourselves better than others, when we seek to exclude others, or when we refuse to see the image of God in others. We cannot love well when we want power rather than unity or conformity rather than mutual respect and dignity. We cannot love well when we diminish ourselves or deny our own needs for the sake of someone else’s ego.

The Holy Trinity shows us the ultimate in communion and unity and yes, it’s good to be concerned with being able to describe the Trinity in a way that honors who God is. But let’s not lose sight of our true purpose of living shaped by the unity of God so that we continually grow in our capacity to love well.

Blessed be God: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And blessed be God’s Kingdom now and forever. Amen.