Stories

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

The story of the tower of Babel and the story of Pentecost: two stories of communities coming together for a purpose.

One wants to make a name for themselves, to make their way to God by their own power with their newly invented technology of the brick. To know why building a city to avoid being scattered across the whole earth is a problem, we have to look at the story just before, the story of Noah. After the flood, God made a covenant with Noah to provide all that Noah and his descendants would need and Noah’s part of the covenant was to fill the whole earth. But these folks decided they didn’t want to live into the covenant. They weren’t satisfied with receiving what God gives. God was not enough for them. Instead of living as faithful witnesses to the covenant with God, they want their own glory. Now, to be fair, this wasn’t new. It’s is the same dissatisfaction that led Adam and Eve, in spite of the abundance of the garden around them, to want the one thing God said no about. God had given Noah’s decendants the whole earth and they wanted to claim a tiny part of it in their own name.

Through generation after generation this dissatisfaction with God’s Way hasn’t diminished; we humans still have the tendency to try and make a name for ourselves instead of living into the purpose for which we are created. And yet God continues to work in this world to redeem all that we have upended. God continues to come to us with the invitation to follow. God comes and says that we are so valuable to God that God is willing to give God’s life for us, to defeat death so that we can live as we are made to live – unafraid and satisfied with God’s Way. And despite our dissatisfaction with all that God has promised us, God loves us because God is love.

And so we also have the story of the community gathered in Jerusalem for the Festival of Pentecost, a Jewish festival commemorating the giving of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai, fifty days after the Israelites left Egypt. After his Resurrection, Jesus had asked the disciples to wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit to come to them to empower them to work toward God’s purpose of spreading the good news of God’s love for all to the ends of the earth.

At our own celebration of Pentecost, what we know as Jesus’ commissioning of the church, we remember the stories of both communities. The first decided they knew better than God and was scattered and fragmented, never fulfilling their own desire to be where God is. The second listened and waited for God’s power and were united with one purpose even with their differences, to share God’s love with the world.

This is what the church is. A community of people following Jesus, bound together and empowered by the Spirit for one purpose, proclaiming boldly the healing and liberating power of God’s love, participating with God in redemptive work in this world. The only way we can fulfill our desire to be where God is, is to do it God’s way, by living the good news of God’s love. We can’t be where God is when we use fear to control others, when we seek a name for ourselves instead of living as God’s people, when we try to lead Jesus rather than following him on The Way. We are invited to live in God’s story, not write our own.

Now here’s a story you may not have heard before: the story of the tightrope walker Charles Blondin. In 1859 he became the first person to cross Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Over the next few days, he crossed many more times to the thrill of the gathering crowds, carrying and doing things that made the crossing more and more risky. Finally, when the crowds seemed convinced he could not fail, he asked if anyone would let him carry them across. Only one man was willing, the one person who knew Charles well, a man named Harry Colcord. As they began to cross with Harry on Charles’ back, the wind picked up and one of the stabilizing ropes snapped. As the rope they were on began to sway, Charles said to Harry, ‘As I move you must move with me as if we were the same person.’ Harry listened and the two made it across safely.

As the church, we are to move as Jesus moves in this world with love and compassion and empathy for all. Our whole identity, who and Whose we are is found in Christ, the love that came to us, the love that desires nothing but to be with us, the love that enables us to be who God creates us to be, the love that gives us true life. We are one with Jesus as the Body of Christ.

Jesus says that if we love him we will keep his commandments. The commands that Jesus gives us both summarize and remind us of the purpose of the commands of God given to the ancient Israelites in the desert: We are to love God with our whole being and we are to love our neighbors as ourselves. If we love Jesus, we will do this. We will be satisfied with God’s Way.

As the church, our purpose is to follow Jesus in the Way of Love, open to lifelong growth and formation through the Holy Spirit, ever going deeper in our relationship with God. We are to live relationally, giving of ourselves for the greater good of the world, not looking to make a name for ourselves but to bring glory to God’s name. As we follow Jesus, we don’t lose our freewill but we grow to want what God wants: to work toward a redeemed world in which everyone knows the love of God.

This doesn’t mean we have to all stand on street corners yelling out Bible verses or that we have to travel to distant lands to plant churches and start ministries. It means that we find our identity in Jesus and we let the Holy Spirit teach and remind us who and Whose we are, whatever our days may bring letting God’s love guiding us, not our egos. We are all created to be one with God and to live in unity with each other, bound together in one purpose, to share the good news of God’s love for all people. We are created to be the body of Christ, the church, following Jesus in God’s redemptive story. Amen.

The Purpose is Love

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

Today is the last Sunday of the season of Easter and yet our gospel reading backs up in the story to the night of Jesus’ arrest. The season of Easter is the time in our church calendar between our celebration of the resurrection and Pentecost, the time in which Jesus was again with his disciples, before he returns to the Father, guiding them to continue the work he had begun in and with them for the good of the whole world.

Jesus spent his earthly ministry standing up for justice, lifting up those on the margins, healing the sick, welcoming the stranger and those whom the government had chosen to ignore or actively oppress, restoring relationships, and building a loving community who would participate with him and continue the work to bring about God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. And then as he knew his death was near, he prayed, not for himself but for others. He prayed for his disciples and he prayed for us, those who have come to believe that the love of God is the true power in this world through the words of Jesus and his disciples.

Jesus prays not that the disciples would be miraculously removed from this world but that they would be protected from the evil one and that God would make them holy, to be equipped for God’s purposes by the truth of God’s word. And then Jesus shifts his prayer to us and he prays that we would all be one with God so that the world may come to believe in the power of God’s redemptive love.

Being one with God doesn’t mean we all become identical robots. If that had been God’s intent he could have just made us that way from the very beginning. Instead, God made each of us unique, to be our own particular part of the Body of Christ in this world. Being one in the name of Jesus doesn’t mean that we conform to one mold or that we think alike or always agree or even that we always get along well with each other. Being one as Jesus and God are one means that we know who and whose we are: beloved children of God. Being one means we have one purpose even as we each have our own unique way of working toward that purpose. It is God’s love that makes us one.

Brian Zahnd, a pastor and author of the book Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God writes, “Most of us are scripted to think that life is a game and the purpose of life is to win. But the divine truth is that life is a gift and the purpose of life is to learn to love well.”

And we learn to love well by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. When Jesus says that “the world does not know” God he’s talking of the same world which John writes “God so loved the world that he gave his only son”. God loves the world. Everyone. All. And our choice to receive God’s love or not doesn’t stop God from loving. It isn’t transactional. God loves.

When Jesus calls us to follow him it isn’t to learn who to condemn and who to accept. It’s to learn to love well. It does’t mean we have to be best friends with everyone or as we talked about last week to accept bad behavior. To love well means to want the best for everyone and for everyone to be their best. To love well means we know we can only fix or control our own behaviors and thoughts and so we open our selves up to the growth and correction that enables us to love as Jesus loves better and better through the whole journey of our lives. To love well means being willing to set aside our own ego for the greater good of all because we know that when we help others thrive we thrive, too.

God loves every human being ever, scripture is plain about this. We don’t get to choose for God who’s ‘lovable’ and who isn’t. We do get to choose if we are all in with this ‘on-earth-as-in-heaven’ thing or not. Knowing God and following Jesus means that we accept the invitation to live here and now as Jesus teaches us how to live, as Jesus teaches us how to love.

And when Jesus says we are to love our neighbor as ourselves, he didn’t mean that we should only love our neighbor if they are like us. Jesus knows that our neighbors don’t look, act, or believe like we do and he said to love them as ourselves, meaning we are to want for our neighbors what we want for ourselves.

We can’t take our own hurt and hate, throw it at others and say it’s God’s will. Using God’s name to promote hate is using God’s name in vain. To be one with God and Jesus and each other, we have to stand with Jesus and refuse to let hate be acceptable, refuse to let lying be the norm, refuse to allow bigotry of any form go unchecked, refuse to be silent in the face of injustice. Following Jesus means to choose one-ness instead of division, to love more loudly than the hate in this world because God so loved the world that God was willing to give his life to show us what love looks like in flesh and blood.

This Jesus shaped love is our salvation from hate and fear and anger. God shaped love is what sets us free to live on earth as in heaven. God’s kingdom can’t be coerced or manipulated or built with monetary wealth. God’s kingdom is constructed by loving God with our whole being and loving our neighbors as ourselves.

Jesus teaches us the power of Love and the power of prayer. This prayer of Jesus, prayed over 2000 years ago has been resounding through time to everyone who has chosen to follow him. How amazing is that? This prayer asks that we become part of God’s redemptive story in our here and now. How amazing is THAT?

Some day the City of God will come to earth in the New Creation and all will be redeemed and restored to God’s intent. This will be the work of God alone. There is no human power or effort that can bring it about. So, for us, for now, in our now and not yet time, we are invited to participate with God through the Power of the Spirit to live as Jesus teaches. This is what our belief in God is for, this is the purpose of our lives – to live redemptively, to participate with God in redeeming the broken parts of God’s good creation. To redeem injustice with justice, to redeem hate with compassion, to redeem rejection with community, to redeem selfishness with love.

This coming week, as we prepare to celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost next Sunday, I encourage you to read the entirety of Jesus’ prayer in the seventeenth chapter of John’s good news story. Listen with your heart and soul to the words of Jesus praying for us. Ask God to show you how you can participate in the redemptive story of God. Open your heart and mind to the transformative power of the Holy Spirit as together we live into the purpose of God’s kingdom on earth as in heaven. Amen.

Whole

Did you know that May is mental health awareness month? I have to admit, I just discovered that this past week which taught me that I need to be more aware. In all seriousness, our mental health should be taken as seriously as our physical health. When one part of our bodies is out of whack, we know that it impacts the rest of our body and we go to docs to figure it out and navigate whatever possible solutions we have to make us better. When our hearts and souls are out of whack, we need to accept that that too throws our whole life out of order and we need to learn to navigate the therapy, meds, and emotional and spiritual exercises that benefit us all. And we need to make talking about this as normal as going to the doc for our blood pressure or achy joints.

Our gospel reading today was selected for the season of Easter, but it is absolutely perfect for mental health awareness month. For those who participate in the enneagram group, y’all know that this is one of my favorite questions from scripture and often how I introduce the enneagram as a wisdom tool for our wellbeing.

Jesus asks the man who has been sitting by the healing pool for almost 40 years, “Do you want to be well?” Jesus wasn’t testing him, but pointing out that when he is healed his life will change with new ways of living and being and Jesus wants to set realistic expectations. Jesus is concerned about the whole man, not just whether or not he could walk.

This man had spent most if not all of his life dependent on others. We know that this didn’t make him any less worthy than anyone else because really we are all dependent on each other to be well. This is the way God made us, to thrive when we come to the wisdom that needing each other is what truly makes us fully human and to languish when we go through life thinking we don’t need anyone else.

And when I say we need each other, I’m not talking co-dependency in which I am dependent on your perceived value of me to value myself. I am talking about knowing we are all equally loved and valued by God, and that each and every one of us is needed and necessary in building up the Kingdom of God on earth as in heaven.

The Hebrew word translated here as ‘well’ means to be whole. To be whole in God’s Kingdom is to be in relationship with God and others. It isn’t about what we can DO but whose and who we are created to BE: God’s beloved children made in God’s image, made wholly human in love. God made us in love, by love, for love, to love simply because love delights in loving well.

The man by the pool’s culture had told him he was worth less than others, broken, unable to contribute to the world, not needed, not necessary. And, no surprise, this impacted his view of himself. When Jesus asks ‘do you want to be well’ he’s saying everything is about to change for this man because even though Jesus sees him as a whole person and beloved child of God, other’s hadn’t before. The man hadn’t seen himself this way before.

The man believed he was only what others would do for him because that it what his life had taught him. In asking the question, ‘do you want to be whole’ as he healed the man’s physical infirmity, Jesus is giving him agency to live into his full humanness. When Jesus healed physically, he restored people into a community that believed that physical infirmity was the result of sin. We have the scientific and medical knowledge now to know that isn’t always the case. Yes, sometime we abuse our bodies and face the consequences but sometimes our bodies are just ill or broken by no one’s fault.

We also have the wisdom of Jesus to show us that either way, healthy relationships are what enable us to thrive whatever our physical limits may be. When we love as Jesus shows us to love we come to know that we are beloved children of God and so is everyone else.

Our former presiding bishop Michael Curry says “The opposite of love isn’t hate but self-centeredness.” This understanding of love requires that we are self-aware of our own motivations. If I do loving things for another, feeding, clothing, tending, etc., only in order to make myself look ‘holy’ or make myself feel good, I am not, in fact, loving, I’m doing good deeds. But when I do loving acts toward others and accept loving acts in return because I want all of us to thrive together, this is love as Jesus teaches us to love. We love with the wisdom that everyone is infinitely valuable in God’s Kingdom. Together we follow Jesus, growing and learning and always becoming who God makes us to be. As we are made whole by God’s love we accept the responsibility and accountability that comes with being in relationship with God and each other.

Love doesn’t mean we have to accept harmful behaviors from others, in fact, Jesus shows us in flesh and blood that love requires we call people out for harming others including ourselves. Jesus loved both Peter and Judas and called them out for their betrayals. When we let others get away with harm, we teach them that harm is ok, that betrayal is ok and we enable them to cause additional harm to us and to others. That isn’t love.

Holding each other accountable isn’t about punishment or retaliation, it’s about helping each other be the best persons we can be. Love will never require you to ignore or deny your hurt. Love offers space to express hurt so the source of the pain can be discovered. Hurt and pain aren’t the problem, they are symptoms that tell us something needs healing. Love sees your hurt and says how can I help heal it?

Love doesn’t seek to control. Love doesn’t manipulate or coerce. Love doesn’t seek attention. Love doesn’t operate in secret or with secrets. Love doesn’t lie or tear down. Love doesn’t compete or seek to win. Love doesn’t exclude. Love as Jesus loves is big and bold and allows space for everyone who wants to help build up the Kingdom of God-on-earth-as-in-heaven.

When we enter into relationship with others in the name of Jesus, we are accountable to each other, accountable to own up to it when we do cause harm either accidentally or intentionally, and then adjust our behavior so that with God’s help we journey toward “being well,” being whole the whole length of our lives.

By learning to love well, we receive the promises of God, life as we are created to experience it in loving relationship with God and others and ourselves.

In God’s kingdom, our worth isn’t determined by what we do but by who we are, beloved children of God, learning to love as Jesus loves with our whole being – heart, soul, mind, and strength because we are whole and holy human beings with God and each other. Amen.

Against the evil

I am saddened by the news of former president Joe Biden’s cancer diagnosis. I’m even more saddened by the reaction of some who profess to be supporters of our current president. The emotional and psychological abuse is real and it is the pure definition of evil – intentional saying or doing something with the purpose to harm and/or cause fear. The tool of evil is to dehumanized humans so that we stop seeing the image of God in each other.

In particular, all of the comments along the lines of ‘if they are so smart why didn’t they catch this earlier’ simply prove the ignorance of the ones who say it (and need I mention the fear mongering of making up ‘cancer diagnosis’ words and stages). There is absolutely no way to say and do such things that can be even in the same dictionary with words like “compassion” and “be like Jesus”. To twist a cancer diagnosis (or any medical condition) into a political meme or conspiracy is beyond mean, it’s evil.

Let me share with you a personal story. Four weeks after Jim and I were married he was diagnosed, by annual checkup and with no symptoms, with prostate cancer. It was still stage 1 and he had 40 radiation treatments over the next 8 weeks and then tested regularly after and his PSA remained low for a decade. And then it didn’t. They ran tests to see if the prostate cancer had returned or metastasized to his bones. It hadn’t. Jim had many symptoms and spent a lot of time and energy going to doctors to discover what was wrong. The docs would say “oh, it’s X so do Y” and one symptom would clear up. And then return. We spent almost two years driving to doctors, doing blood tests, body scans of various flavors, hospital stays, you name it. We weren’t sitting around just wondering and neither were the doctors and medical teams. For the most part, docs can’t just order up any ol’ test. There are protocols that insurance companies make them go through because insurance company profits run our medical system. Finally we got to the test that said his pancreatic cancer markers were high and so they looked at his pancreas. It was stage 4 and metastasized to his liver and possibly his kidneys. That was in July. He died in October.

No one accused us of not doing enough. No one asked “how could ‘they’ have missed it”. The people who love us gathered around and grieved with me and Jim’s family. BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT KIND, COMPASSIONATE PEOPLE DO. If you are applauding the hateful statements made by those in the political party that is not the Biden’s political party, think about how you would respond if you lived through the story I just told you.

If you are applauding the hateful statement and you also claim to follow Jesus, let me assure you, you are not in this case. You need to step behind Jesus and freshen up your compassion and reorient what you label love. Let the love of God shape your eyes to see the image of God in everyone.

If you are being silent in hopes no one will notice, you need to speak out against the hate, because that’s what Jesus would do. When we don’t stand up to the bullying, the dehumanizing continues. Let God shape your heart with the courage to speak up for goodness and compassion.

And, yeah, I am not naive enough to think that those who are applauding and saying amen to the bullies’ statements even read my unknown blog, but maybe it can help those of us who want to be kind, compassionate people who follow Jesus speak more love into this world. Maybe it will give us the strength and courage to love more loudly than their hate.

And if somehow this little note from an Episcopal priest in a small town in the middle of Texas makes its way to the Biden family, please know you are in my prayers. God’s peace be with y’all.

Leading

Hey Y’all,
I did a thing! Well, two things actually. I went to New Zealand and while there I was a guest on a leadership podcast!

Jim’s oldest son and daughter-in-love live in New Zealand and invited me for a visit. It was actually a trip Jim and I had planned to take together but couldn’t. There are so many wonderful things about New Zealand I don’t even know where to begin. If you are a traveler, move it to the top of your travel list! I’ll be presenting a slide show to the church in June and will post that when I have it done. You may have seen where I took my granddaughter’s stuffed piggy with me and made an adventure story with it. I will finish the story and do a picture book for her.

Spending time with Brian and Sharon was so special, a continuation of the intentional work of shaping my life without Jim (that hurts so much to say … I know he’s with me still but not, you know?). We ate our way through much of the South Island. We sampled a lot of wineries. There were penguins and sheep and alpine parrots, mountains and lakes and rivers, signs to report wallaby sightings, chocolate and honey and more chocolate. I had more hot chocolate in two weeks than most of the rest of my life combined (they do hot chocolate big in NZ, no powder in hot water but real chocolate and steamed milk with real cherry flavored marshmallows not just puffy corn syrup). And the sky!!! Oh my word, the SKY! From their yard we could look up and see the Milky Way and the Southern Cross and one night we saw the Southern Lights!! We talked, we laughed, we cried, and I think I am beginning to recognize the signs of healing and growing since losing my dad and my husband within three months of each other last year.

Sharon and I share a passion for helping others lead well and being authentically who God made us to be. She does leadership consulting and began a podcast called “Who’s that Leader in the Mirror”. She’s not yet had a guest to talk about Christian spirituality and leadership and she asked me to record some episodes with her. I was/am thrilled (we recorded some while I was there and will do some more long distance)! On one of their trips here to visit Jim and me, Sharon told me how sometimes when she’s coaching others about leadership she feels a bit of ‘impostor syndrome’ creeping in and ask me if I’ve ever felt the same. Without hesitation I said, “every Sunday in the pulpit”! It was a bonding moment.

We both know we are called to do this kind of work and I give thanks to God for bringing us together to share our hearts’ desire to glorify God in all that we do.

In whatever field you are in, I encourage you to listen to all of the episodes of “Sharon Blanchard’s Leadership Podcast – who’s that leader in the Mirror” (you don’t need to create a Buzzsprout account to listen) and stay tuned for more of mine and Sharon’s conversation. And go to New Zealand.

The night sky from Twizel, New Zealand (taken with my iPhone)

If you have an Audible account, you can listen here:

Sharon Blancard’s Leadership Podcast – Who’s that leader in the Mirror

Seeing what’s real

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for the fourth Sunday of Easter are here.

Hi! It’s good to be home and I’ve missed you all! New Zealand is incredible and if it isn’t already high on your travel list, I highly recommend you go! One of my favorite parts of being in New Zealand was not having continuous access to the internet. (They have it there, but I wasn’t on a data plan.) For much of the time my phone was simply a phone with a camera as I tried to capture some of the most amazing natural beauty I’ve ever seen. But you know how it is, sometimes what we see through the camera lens is not quite as amazing as what we see with our eyes. The occasional shot captures the majesty of God’s world but it’s not the same as the reality of actually being there and fully experiencing the beauty of the sights and sounds and smells.

There are times, however, when the camera lens enables us to see more than what our eyes are capable of. One evening Brian had gone out with the dogs and excitedly called back to say “the auroras are out tonight!” And Sharon and I joined him on the lawn. With our naked eyes we could see faint light streaks. Brian asked for my phone and began taking pictures. With the camera lens we could see vibrant colors and motion. The right lens enabled us to see fully what our own eyes couldn’t.

And what does any of this have to do with the scriptures readings for today? We’re supposed to talk about Jesus being the good shepherd today. Well, I did see lots of sheep but I didn’t meet any actual shepherds, just some sheep farmers, and I learned that the cattle industry is bigger than the sheep industry in New Zealand and it kinda burst one of my expectation bubbles about that fabulous land, so I’m going to talk about seeing, having the eyes and ears to see and hear our shepherd.

The gospel is a portion of the larger section of John’s account of the Good News in which Jesus has healed a man blind from birth and gets into a debate with his disciples and then some Pharisees about whose sin caused this man’s blindness. In response, Jesus offers up a sermon on the Good Shepherd and the love that the shepherd has for the sheep. And then we are given a time detail, always important, that this is taking place during the eight day festival of the Feast of Dedication which celebrates the rededication of the Temple in 165BC. This celebration is more commonly known as Hanukkah, which is the Hebrew word for ‘dedication’.

After the Maccabees had won a victory over the Greek decimation of the temple and they re-lit the eternal flame of God, there was only enough oil for one day. The ritual preparations for additional oil would take seven days and they lit the eternal flame anyway in hope and faith and thanksgiving and God’s Holy Presence enabled the oil to last until the newly consecrated oil was ready. The saw the situation through the lens of God’s kingdom on earth, believing in God’s abundance.

Not quite 200 years later, Jesus stood in the Temple and proclaimed the love of God for all as the way to justice for all. But many, including the Pharisees and even Jesus’ closest disciples couldn’t bring God’s Kingdom-on-earth into focus. Their vision was blurred by their own egos. They were only willing to see what confirmed their own perspective instead of being open to a new perspective. They wanted an action-figure style messiah who would turn things upside down so the oppressed become the oppressors, not a leveling of all power with love. They only wanted to see how God’s love and action benefited them instead of widening their view to see God’s love for all people.

Jesus talks a lot about having eyes to see and ears to hear. We all have eyes and ears, and don’t let the significance of the restoring of sight to a blind man kicking off this whole episode pass you by. Eyes to see and ears to hear is about so much more than our physical eyes and ears working properly. It’s about our perspective and our willingness to see this world as Jesus sees it, through the lens of God’s Kingdom.

When we look with the eyes of Jesus we experience the world through God’s goodness and love. We learn to see true justice, not retaliation or revenge labeled as justice. Our perspective is widened so we can see beyond ourselves and our own little group and see the greater good of all and we can truly experience with our whole being that when everyone thrives, well, everyone thrives. In God’s kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven, goodness, love, compassion, justice, and equity are in abundant supply and the more we offer these commodities of God’s kingdom to others, the more there is, an ever abundant supply.

When we look with the eyes of Jesus we learn to see the image of God in every human being, in the “great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages.”

The Pharisees and even the disciples wanted to see a violent revolt. Jesus said, “not so with you” and shows us that love as it heals and restores is the greater force on earth. God gave us a spirit of creation, not destruction, to participate with him in building up the Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven.

The Pharisees asked Jesus to show them plainly and he said, “I already have and you still don’t believe.” Jesus shows them and us what love looks like: healing and restoring, washing feet, feeding others, and yet they could not see the love of God for all. He preached and taught of God’s-kingdom-on-earth, the kingdom at hand, realized, experienced, and lived in relationship with God and others, and yet they still chose not to believe he was the promised one of God come among them to bring about the Kingdom. Their eyes only wanted to see political might and a world not restored but turned upside down so that the oppressed become the oppressors.

Jesus has shown them and they choose not to see. He has told them plainly and they choose not to hear.

To see Jesus for who he is and to see ourselves as who we are created to be, we have to know Jesus to be our shepherd, the one who loves us and shows us the way we are to live. Jesus calls us to follow him and open our eyes and ears to be shaped by the Holy Spirit so we become aware when we are attempting to invite Jesus to follow us. If what we do, what we think, what we believe doesn’t consider the greater good of all, doesn’t seek to build others up, wanting everyone to thrive, it isn’t of God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. To quote our previous presiding bishop, “if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.”

Whatever our actions, our thoughts, our beliefs, if they are not centered in the love of God, if we seek to tear down rather than build up, we are not following Jesus. It is that plain. It is not simple. It takes awareness of our own motivations, honest conversations about what is really our intent and an awareness of the lens through which we are seeing others and an awareness of the lens through which we see and experience God. If we see and experience God as wrathful and vengeful, we can justify our own wrath and vengeance. If we see and experience God as a loving, compassionate God, we see ourselves and others as being created in the image of Love.

Let God shape your eyes and ears so that we can all experience fully the amazing wonders of God’s kingdom-on-earth with all that we are and all that we have as beloved children of the Good Shepherd. Amen.

The Milky Way taken in Twizel, NZ.

Receiving

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.

Tonight’s gospel reading has one of my favorite lines from all of scripture: “having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” If you were here last Sunday, you may recall that we talked about how God loves us regardless of our behavior because God loves. God comes to us as Jesus and loves, showing us in flesh and blood how to love as God loves.

And don’t let the rendering of the Greek verb into our overly simplified tenses of English verbs make you think that Jesus’ love was past tense. In the Greek, which has highly nuanced verbs with many different categories, ‘having loved’ is best understood as loving, an ongoing action. Jesus is loving his own to the end. Now in our English language minds, when we hear ‘the end’ we most likely think of the words on a giant movie screen indicating it’s time to go home, the show is over. The Greek word, ‘telos’ does mean end, yes, but it can also mean the end to which all things aim, or the end purpose. The Common English Bible translate this last phrase as ‘he loved them fully’ and I think that better fits the message of this scene. And the fact that this version of the disciple’s last meal with Jesus was written down after the Resurrection, we all now know (spoiler alert) that what they thought at that meal the end might be wasn’t the end after all.

We’ll talk more about what it is to live as Resurrection people on Saturday but for now, let’s just say that Jesus’ love hasn’t and never will cease. Jesus’ love shows us all the end purpose, the telos, of our life here on earth as in heaven. Jesus doesn’t just tell us how to live as he lived. Jesus shows us. He truly leads by example in that he walked through life with the disciples, eating with them, working with them, laughing and crying and praying with them. Jesus lived the words he preached and taught. And he wants us to live it, too.

Jesus was baptized and told us to baptize each other. Jesus reframed their festival meal and told us to remember that he gave his life for us when we reenact it. And then Jesus washed their feet and said he is setting the example. He is giving us our telos: the end toward which our life in this world is to journey, loving God with our whole being and loving our neighbor as ourselves. A life of community and communion in which we all tend to each other, the example of which if washing each other’s feet as a metaphor of how we live with each other.

Now, let’s all pay attention to what Jesus is saying here: we are to wash one another’s feet. It is a reciprocal washing, a mutual caring for, a life lived in equality with all. No one is above or beneath either washing or having their feet washed. Not even Peter, the one whom Jesus says is the foundation of the universal church. Peter couches his refusal to participate in humility, saying that he won’t let Jesus wash his feet, but the thing within us that says ‘I can’t let others do for me’ is just as prideful as ‘I won’t do for others’.

When we live in community and communion with each other, we both serve and let others serve us. This is what mutuality means. When we refuse to let others do anything for us, we aren’t living as Jesus shows us how to live. We are in this life together, caring with and for each other with the willingness to accept that our behaviors impact others.

Jesus has set the example of what it is to live life in right relationship with God in the Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. As God’s beloved, we are to love. In this one action of washing the disciples’ feet, Jesus summarizes all that he has taught in his earthly ministry:

Blessed are the peacemakers.

Blessed are the poor in spirit.

Do to others as you’d have them do to you.

Love God with all of your being.

Love your neighbor as yourself.

Love your enemy.

The first shall be last and the last shall be first.

The Kingdom of God is at hand, right here.

Flavor the world with God’s love.

Shine the light of love into the darkest corners.

In this past Sunday’s gospel reading we had Luke’s version of Jesus saying servants are not greater than the master. Luke tells us that a dispute rose up among the disciples as to who was the greatest among them and that Jesus’ response is “the kings of the gentiles lord it over them … NOT SO WITH YOU; rather the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like one who serves.” I’m not sure if it could be any more plain. When we make the choice to follow Jesus, we have to set aside our egos that tell us we need to be of higher status than others. And we need to set aside our ego that says we can pretend we are more humble or less than others. If the first are to be last and the last are to be first, there is no rank. We are to be with each other as equals. And just as we are willing to serve others, we have to let others serve us.

None of this means that we don’t have and lie within various authority structures. We need authority structures to keep us from chaos. God did afterall order the chaos into God’s creation and tell us to tend to it and keep it in order. But we are not to lord whatever authority we may have over anyone, to consider ourselves more than any one else. Well, except when maybe a young toddler asked ‘why’ for the thousandth time and you finally say, ‘because I said so’; that’s allowable, I guess. But in all of our human relationships and interactions we are to remember that the other person has the same image of the loving God within them that we have in us, that God loves them as God loves us, and that Jesus lived and died and rose again for them just as he did for us.

When we participate in the foot washing of Maundy Thursday, it isn’t to make ourselves look more holy. It is to remind us of who and Whose we are and that we are to serve and that we are to let others serve us so they too can serve in God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven.

Love is an ongoing action. Love gives AND love receives. Love is walking the journey of life following Jesus, with and along side each other toward the purpose of participating with God in bringing about the Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Amen.

Love Shaped

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The Lectionary readings for Palm Sunday are here.

Palm Sunday is like a movie trailer for Holy Week: In just a few short minutes we go from shouting ‘Hosannah, Jesus is King’ to ‘Crucify Him!’ And we come to the abrupt end of Jesus’ death, a cliff-hanger to bring you back next week for Easter. If you only come today and next Sunday, you will see the story, but knowing a story and living the story are different.

I know it’s a challenge to be here through Holy Week, and it’s not just about making the time to come to church every day in our very busy lives. It’s also mentally and emotionally challenging. We remember the suffering of Jesus through these days and it hurts on so many levels. I get it. With hearts shaped by God’s love, we hurt to watch others hurt, we hurt watching someone cause harm to another. And knowing that God, blameless and absolute goodness, is suffering for all of our sin, our own choosing to go against what God has offered us, it makes the emotional toll even greater.

But no matter how much we want to distance ourselves from the violence perpetuated against Jesus and hop like a bunny from the Hosannahs of Palm Sunday to the Alleluias of Easter, we must remember that we can’t have the joy of the resurrection without first encountering the death that made the resurrection possible. Walking through the horrific events of the coming days hurts. And it heals.

It heals because it is how God loves. Knowing what he would endure, knowing his friends would betray him, deny him, knowing he would be beaten and abused and killed, Jesus showed up because that’s how God loves. Not to indebt us, not to require us to earn it or pay it back but because love shows up.

What we remember through Holy Week is about those who had been following Jesus AND also the people perpetuating the violence against him. In some cases, both of these were true with the same individual, cue Judas and Peter.

Just as God loves us as we show up to sing hosannah, God loves us when we shout crucify him.

God loves us when we are singing hymns and praying prayers and helping our neighbor AND God loves us when we label our neighbor in dehumanizing ways so we can justify wanting less for them than we want for ourselves. So if God loves us either way, why bother trying so hard to be like Jesus? I mean, he is God, so of course he could be that good. If he’s our standard, there’s not a lot of hope for the rest of us, right? It’s hard work to love those we don’t like, to give of ourselves so others can have what we have. It doesn’t always feel fair. What about when they don’t deserve it or haven’t worked as hard as me? Why should I care if they don’t have what they need?

The answer to why bother if it’s next to impossible lies within the question. We are created by God, in the image of God, with the ability to continuously become more like God living as Jesus shows in in flesh and blood. To be like Jesus we must follow Jesus. As we follow him we grow into the true self we are to be: each with our own unique skills and talents partnering with God and woven together as one community of people to show the world the gift of God’s love so others can begin becoming their true selves as well.

When Jesus says he has come to set us free, this is what he means – to free us from the myth that we can be our true selves apart from God. The resentment and anger we harbor when we make life about deserving and earning, does damage to our souls. Jesus invites us to let that go, just as the man on the cross who, even in the midst of his own terrifying death, had the courage to recognize his own failings and was free to be with God.

God does the work of reconciliation so that God can offer us the gift of relationship. We receive the gift and then live life worthy of all that Jesus endured for us. We accept how God chooses to save even when it doesn’t fit our idea of how we want to be saved.

When the crowds shout Hosanna (which means ‘save us we pray’) as Jesus is arriving in Jerusalem, they are crying out for God’s Messiah to come and fulfill God’s promises to save them from the destructive powers of this world. Many of them imagined a giant military force to squash the Roman Empire. God said that self-giving love is the Way to freedom.

Come Easter morning as we shout Alleluia (which means ‘praise the Lord’), we sing praises to the God who has saved us through Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, the way of reconciliation with God our creator.

What God gives is pure gift – we don’t earn or deserve it; there is nothing we can do to save ourselves; it isn’t a competition of who God loves more. You hear me say it all the time – there is absolutely nothing any one of us can do to make God love us any more or any less than God loves us.

It’s quite challenging to think of the horrific events of Jesus betrayal and arrest, mock trial and murder as gifts from God. It’s far easier to think of God’s gifts at Christmas – a cute little baby wrapped in a blanket with people coming from all over to see him and coo. But the baby came so that we could have the gift of Easter – God giving God’s life for ours to set us free from the idea that we can save ourselves, that we can decide better than God what is good or what is bad, that we can self-design a relationship with God to suit our own comfort zone.

God gives gifts freely and we must receive them. Gifts are only complete when they are also accepted. God’s forgiveness is guaranteed but not automatic – we have to admit we’ve done something that needs forgiving. If we don’t think we’ve done anything wrong, what do we need to be forgiven for? Why would we even reach out to receive the gift? We all at one point or another behave in ways that go against God’s Love. It is part of being human. And so is the goodness and love with which we are created. We receive the gift of forgiveness not so we can prove how wretched we are but so that we can live the life we are made to live: a life grounded by loving God and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

I invite you to come for the whole experience this week. Go deeper than just knowing the story. Let the story we tell this week shape who you are continuously becoming and how you live every day that follows. Let the story of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection free you to be who you are meant to be, God’s beloved. And together we can show the world the abundance of God’s love. Amen.

Relational Living

Some pondering thoughts on this Friday morning …

When Jesus says to love our neighbor he’s not just talking about the folks next door or across the street. In the story he tells of the man from Samaria tending to the needs of the wounded man, the answer to ‘who is my neighbor’ is ‘the one who showed mercy.’ Can you see how Jesus flips the order of thinking here? The answer doesn’t focus on who we decide are our neighbors but how we show we are a neighbor: by being merciful to others wherever we may encounter them.

The common definition in ChurchLand for mercy is ‘not getting what you deserve’. This definition comes from a transactional way of thinking, not a relational way of living. Jesus spends his entire ministry on earth showing us in flesh and blood that life in God’s kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven isn’t transactional. It isn’t a zero sum game of good and bad behavior. Our life following Jesus is a journey of relationship in which we continuously become more and more like Jesus every day.

God’s love for us isn’t about earning or deserving. God loves us. God loves all people. God loves all that God has made. God loves. Our love for others shouldn’t be about earning or deserving but about living righteously in God’s kingdom-on-earth. In his book 15 New Testament Words of Life, Nijay Gupta includes Mercy in his discussion of Righteousness instead of giving it its own chapter. Gupta describes Righteousness as God’s “dynamic activity of ‘right-making’”. For us as we follow Jesus, righteousness is about living as “a society and a people that are about righteousness—living rightly toward God and each other in honesty, fairness, compassion, and justice.” This is being a neighbor. This is love as God loves (or at least as close as we can come in our humanness). This is relational living.

God created the world and saves the world and will restore the world with, in, and through love. We participate with God in bringing about the kingdom on earth by loving God and our neighbors and ourselves. Love is the most powerful thing we have. Let’s love loudly, more loudly than those who are shouting revenge and hate and bigotry. Let’s follow Jesus.

The Spirit of the Law

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal Church, Canyon Lake, Texas.
The Lectionary readings for the Fifth Sunday in Lent are here.

In our small group study this past week we had some great conversations about how the beatitudes (you know those sayings of Jesus that all begin with Blessed are) are Jesus explaining how he came to fulfill God’s law not do away with it. Jesus showed us, in flesh and blood, that the spirit of the law, the true meaning and intent of God’s law, is what should guide our daily lives, not just letting the Ten Commandments be a checklist of dos and donts. Our outward behavior matters, yes, absolutely, but our motivation and the intent of our hearts matters more. And no matter how we try to mask it, our inner motivation always shows through in some way.

When John wrote his version of Jesus’ last days, he wanted to make sure those who read it understood Judas’ motivation wasn’t about living God’s law but using it to redirect people’s attention away from his thieving. And not to make this sermon a summary of our small group conversations, in our groups we also talked about the commandment that says not to use God’s name in vain, this is what that looks like: calling our behaviors ‘God’s work’ while hating our neighbor. I love it when our Sunday readings and what we are learning during the week reinforce each other. Ok, back to the sermon.

John makes it clear that Judas was trying to mask his greed by redirecting the dinner party’s attention to the poor. Judas saw how much money he could make from the perfume Mary used to anoint Jesus. Judas used the letter of God’s law but hadn’t let the Spirit of the Law shape his heart.

And Jesus, as he so brilliantly does, took the conversation to a deeper learning level. He’s been trying to prepare his closest disciples for what is to come: his arrest, death, and resurrection. The women in Jesus’ inner circle seem to be the only ones who get it. Peter and the other men argue with Jesus when he talks about his death. The women listen and believe and trust. Mary trusts enough to spend her money on the ointment used to cover a body at the time of burial. Mary is helping Jesus prepare with what she has because this helps her prepare, too.

But what about this perplexing statement of Jesus, ‘you will always have the poor with you’? All that Jesus teaches with his words and actions is that we are to help the poor no longer be poor. Is he saying our actions are futile, that God really doesn’t mind if some of God’s beloved don’t have enough? Not at all.

In light of all that Jesus teaches, in light of all of the stories we have of God and God’s beloved recorded in our holy scriptures, I hear Jesus saying that there will always be others with whom we can share our blessings because sharing is the purpose of blessings. People who want to justify their own greediness hear this as permission to hoard what they have for themselves; they hear it with a heart of scarcity. Those who are living to be more like Jesus hear it with a heart of abundance, as a reminder that we are all on this journey together, sharing what God provides so that we all thrive.

Mary is sharing her blessing with Jesus, fully believing he is the Messiah, the son of God come to set us all free. In this moment, Jesus is the ‘poor’ one, the one with whom Mary shares her blessing because that’s what blessings are for, to share. And there will always be someone with whom we can share what we have; and there will always be times when we need to receive what another has to share.

It is God’s intent that no one be in need of anything and we participate with God by being open-handed and generous, not closed fisted and cynical. When we try to justify selfishness or greediness by pretending we are trying to be responsible with what God has given us, we aren’t following Jesus. Now, don’t get me wrong, of course we should be good stewards of all God has given us; what we shouldn’t do is pretend we are being responsible in order to pad our own pockets. Part of being a good steward in God’s Kingdom on earth is working toward the directive that no one is in need.

God gave the Law to teach the ancient Israelites how to be God’s beloved people. When we love God we don’t worship other gods, when we love our neighbor as ourselves, we don’t steal from them, or lie to or about them, or try to discredit them. God’s law is our tool to learn to be God’s beloved people. And it’s so much more than a checklist. The intent of the law matters. The purpose of God’s law is to shape our hearts and minds to be more like God’s so that in our every day interactions with others we reveal the image of God within us so that others can know it’s in them, too.

God knows, better than many of us are willing to admit ourselves, that we have unruly wills and affections. And God love us. God loved us before we used our freewill to make choices against God’s purposes. God loves us while we are letting our unruly wills rule. God loves us when we return and say, “I’m sorry, I was wrong, please forgive me.” God loves us. God loves so that we can love.

Next week, we will enter in Holy Week with Palm Sunday, the remembering of Jesus’ final entry into Jerusalem before his arrest and crucifixion, the events that Mary was preparing Jesus and his followers for.

Lent has been our preparation for this time of remembering the very foundation of all that we believe – that God came to with us as one of us, to die so that we could know the unbounded love of God. Our belief is manifested in all that we think, say, and do. Our Journey with Jesus isn’t about showing up to make ourselves feel better but about showing up so that we are made better by God’s grace, opening ourselves up to the heart shaping work of Holy Spirit so that we live the spirit of God’s Law every day.

Paul, in his letter to the church in Philippi reminds us that it is a lifelong journey of becoming more and more like Jesus regardless of what we might think our pedigree is. This is the purpose of following Jesus, to continually grow into the image of God in each of us.

N.T. Wright says it this way, “If you want to know who God is look at Jesus. If you want to know what it means to be human, look at Jesus. If you want to know what love is, look at Jesus. … And keep looking until you are no longer a spectator but part of the grand story.”

I invite all of you to make the challenging choice to show up here every day beginning next week with Palm Sunday and through all of Holy Week to Easter. It will be a commitment to rearrange what your typical evenings look like, I know. You won’t regret it, I promise. We will walk through the final days of Jesus together so we can live the glory of Easter each day, for the rest of the year. As we journey together we will learn to love more loudly than the greed which leads to hate in this world as we open our hearts to the abundant Spirit of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Amen.