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.

The Prodigal SonS

A reflection on Luke 15:11-32

In the story of the prodigal son, do you think much about the older son? We like the nicely completed story of the younger son who decided to leave the family ranch for the big city, demanding his share of the family wealth as he goes. It’s easy to see how he squandered the gifts he had. And it gives us a sense of completion to see him return, destitute, willing to ask for his Father’s forgiveness. This is the vulnerable humility everyone should show when they admit to their harmful behaviors. And the Father offers grace and forgiveness and rejoices.

But what about the older son, the one who stayed and worked? Do you ever think about him wasting or squandering the gifts he had? He stayed. He worked with his Father rebuilding the wealth that the younger brother depleted. He followed the rules. And he is angry and resentful and grumpy and unwilling to join in the celebratory barbecue to welcome his brother home. I get it. It can be challenging to celebrate with someone whose mess we had to help clean up. It’s far easier to just label the one who made the mess as useless or worthless than it is to see them as God does.

The Father’s generosity and love has been available to the older son all along but all the son could see is the Father’s rejoicing over the return of the one the older son blames for the pain that he has nurtured into prideful entitlement. This son also wasted his Father’s gifts.

Blame is easy. Blame feeds our self-righteousness. Self-awareness is the weed-killer that stops blame from growing into resentment and anger. The only person whose emotions and behaviors I can manage is me. I can’t make another be who I think they should be but I can allow God’s love and forgiveness shape how I see and interact with others. Personal growth isn’t easy. It takes strength and courage to be who God created us to be.

The Father knows that relationships, especially ones that have been broken and restored are the most valuable thing we have in life. Reconciled relationships are stronger than they were before the damage because true reconciliation requires growth on both sides. It takes strength to admit fault and to say I’m sorry. It takes courage to accept the apology and to love in spite of the hurt caused. Reconciliation requires movement and healing on both sides of the relationship, a willingness to change and grow and work together to intentionally forge a relationship stronger and more healthy than it was before.

Jesus doesn’t tell us if the older son ever let go of his self-righteous resentment and reconciled with his Father and brother. We don’t get a tidy bow on this story. I think the intent of the ‘cliff-hangers’ in Jesus’ parables is to make us think “how would I end this story?” Do I nurture my resentment with more effort than I put into intentionally growing the relationships in my life? Am I willing to step into God’s strength that enables me to either say or accept “I’m sorry” and “Let’s do the work of reconciliation together”?

I think this parable needs to be titled ‘The Prodigal SonS’. In their own ways they both left their relationship with their Father and squandered what they had been given. Jesus gives us the ideal ending with the younger son and lets us work out the ending with the older son ourselves.

Imagine what our world would be like if we worked as diligently at our relationships as we do attempting to amass whatever form of wealth that has gained our attention. God’s gifts to all of us – love, grace, mercy, forgiveness, reconciliation – are always available. We can walk away from them. We can ignore them. Or, we can live into them with the wisdom that these gifts grow in abundance the more we live into them. And there’s always more than enough for everyone.

Do you have a few minutes?

Hi, Y’all. As I sit here with my coffee and my dogs watching the sunrise on this chilly morning, I’m reading the headlines and attempting to process all that is going on in this country. I know, these are big thoughts for a Friday morning but it’s how my brain works this time of day. I’m a morning person.

So, here’s what’s on my mind: We are losing our capacity for empathy. There’s lots of reasons for this loss and I’ll leave those theories and explanations to the psychologists, sociologists, and other experts who know how to study such things.

I think that a major reason is we are being giving permission not to be empathetic on a daily basis by the leadership of this country. I am regularly shocked by the way our president speaks of others, by the way he shows absolutely no concern, empathetic or otherwise, for any human being. I do not understand how anyone can say he’s looking out for us or the greater good by what he’s doing.

I see him intentionally creating chaos and crashing the lives of those whose jobs he’s deleting and anyone who disagrees with him. I see his lies and his rewriting of the narrative and his unwillingness to see his fellow human beings as anything but instruments of his desires and collateral damage in his game of greed.

I hear folks scared about what will become of their social security income and their Medicare funds to pay for their healthcare, neither of which are entitlements but money from their own income over the years that our president and his co-president are threatening to steal.

But y’all know all of this. The only reason anyone cannot see it at this point is, in my opinion, because they are choosing not to. If I’m wrong about that, please help me understand why you support what our president is doing.

Empathy is defined as “an emotional response of compassion and concern caused by witnessing someone else in need.” Empathy is an other-oriented view of the world around us. Empathetic concern is a fancy psychology phrase for how Jesus teaches us to live when he tells us to love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourselves.

We cannot follow Jesus and be unmoved by the pain and suffering in this world. I don’t know how to say that more plainly. That isn’t just my opinion. It is the teaching of Jesus, part and parcel to the Gospel that is Good News for the poor and oppressed and ALL people. We cannot follow Jesus and turn a blind eye to the pain and suffering that is being caused by the actions of our president.

AND, we must be guided by Jesus as we address the evil, as we speak LOVE more loudly than the hate. We cannot devolve into name calling or brutality. Express curious compassion to those who are still under the spell of our president. Write and call your representatives and firmly speak the truth. Reach out to your neighbors. It’s difficult, I know. But with God’s help we can follow Jesus in the Way of Love.

And, to wrap up, I used the following blessing a couple of Sundays ago and some of you have asked for a copy of it.

Thanks for listening, y’all. Together in love and with God’s help we continue to build up God’s Kingdom on earth as in Heaven. LOVE.

Mothering Love

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

We are in the second week of Lent. Did you give up anything? Did you take on something new? How’s it going? Did you ask, along with the what and how of giving up or taking one, the most important question? Why? Why do we make decisions to give things up or take things on for Lent?

If I give up buying more Lenten devotion books for lent, yes, my budget will be happy and yes, I’ll be less frustrated in trying to decide which one I read first and feel less guilt for reading a 40 day daily devotional in three days, but what’s the real purpose?

If you look to church history, you’ll find connections between our giving something up and sacrifices, you’ll find explanations of remembering we depend on God for all things, and that it’s a small scale metaphor for God giving of God’s life for us. And all of these are legitimate reasons to observe Lent. But, again, I ask for what purpose? Why do we need to remind ourselves of what God has done for us and who and Whose we are?

The purpose of Lent is to be intentional about opening ourselves up to growing deeper in relationship with God because tending to our relationship with God is the very purpose of our creation in the first place. The purpose of Lent is to make more room for God in our daily lives and because we are human with limits and one of those limits is there is only 24 hours in a day if we want to make more room for God we may need to let go of something else.

Sometimes, though, what we need to do is become aware of God’s presence with us in what we are already doing. Do you consider that God is with you when you are doing laundry, washing dishes, doing yard work, working on your hobbies, spending time with your family and friends, relaxing in front of the tv, stressing while watching the news, while paying bills, or sitting in the doctor’s office?

God doesn’t want to be the god of only those parts of our life where we choose to acknowledge God. God wants us to know the joy and love of God being God of our whole life.

The other day I was working on a piece of writing about how the words we choose to use matter and when our grandmothers told us not to call people names it was because they understood that when we call people names, it is an attempt, whether we are conscious of it or not, to dehumanize them even just a little bit. Names articulate who we are and the names we use for others articulates who we think they are. When people call us by name we feel like we matter and when we call someone a name with negative intent it is because we want to show disrespect.

So, as I was writing I typed a sentence that read, “Jesus never called anyone a name.” and then I immediately remembered the passage I just read and I quickly deleted the apparent heresy I had typed. Jesus called Herod a disrespectful name. But in order to get to the root of it we need to back up a bit in the story. Jesus is speaking in a synagogue and has just healed a woman on the sabbath and of course the leader of the synagogue is incensed. Jesus’ response is to caution those listening against taking better care of their animals on the sabbath than they do God’s beloved people and he follows this with three short parables to answer the question “what is the Kingdom of God like” – yeast, a mustard seed, and a narrow door – and wraps up his sermon with ‘some who are last will be first and some who are first will be last.’

And then these Pharisees come to warn him that Herod is out to get Jesus because of his talk of Kingdoms. Jesus does’t flinch. He doesn’t become defensive or threatening. Instead, Jesus offers a message to Herod and calls Herod a fox. Just like in our English language, this would have created an image of a cunning or sly person. Jesus knew how Herod had treated his cousin John. Herod was both intrigued and threatened by John’s words and was willing to trade John’s life for his own reputation. By calling Herod a fox, Jesus is making the point that Herod doesn’t live and behave as a person created in the image of God should in God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Herod is acting more like an animal whose only instinct is to preserve its own life. Herod becomes a character in one of Jesus’ parables on what the Kingdom of God is and isn’t like.

And in this extended parable, Jesus makes one of the most striking woman-centered images of God in all of scripture – Jesus likens himself to a mother hen who is trying to gather her children together for protection from the fox. What breaks Jesus’ heart is when the children of God would rather be in danger with the fox than in safety with God. The people of Jerusalem, a metaphor for the religious elite, don’t want to make room for God because they would have to give up the power and high ranking status they love more. Making room in their lives for God would mean making room in their hearts for all of God’s people, even the poor and those on the margins. They don’t want to live in God’s kingdom; they only want to build up their own status. And Jesus says when they make that choice, God will leave them to it.

In our divided world, we all have a choice. Do we follow Jesus through the narrow door of the Kingdom of God on earth as in heaven? Do we sow love and compassion and empathy to grow more love and compassion and empathy? Do we live with the understanding that how we live and treat others leavens the world either positively or negatively?

God’s greatest desire for every human being is that we all live in the love of God’s Kingdom here and now, where and when we are, loving God with our whole lives, loving our neighbor as ourselves, meaning we want for our neighbor what we want for ourselves, that we want all people to thrive just as we want for ourselves.

In God’s kingdom on earth, when we seek the greater good of all people, we all thrive. There is always enough for everyone. But we have to choose to make room for God in our lives, to make God the God of our whole life. And sometime this means we have to clear out a closet or two, we have to look at what fills our days and our hearts and our minds and see what we need to rearrange or clear out so that God is God of our whole life. Now, granted this should be an ongoing way of looking at and analyzing our lives but in this season of Lent, we are to give extra attention to it. A bit of spring cleaning if you will in the weeks before Easter when we proclaim and celebrate the good news of our faith. God loves us all, every human ever, so much that God is willing to give God’s life to reconcile with us. And it was never God who harmed the relationship between God and any of us. We are the ones who choose to hang out with the fox instead of God and even so, God said I’ll give myself up so we can be in relationship. That is an extraordinary, beyond human comprehension kind of love.

So, with whatever you’ve given up for Lent, how are you intentionally making more and more room for God’s Mothering Love? The more room we make for God, the more room, the more love we have for each other. So, trust your grandmother and don’t call people names, leave that to Jesus. With God’s Mothering Love we can help heal the pain and division of our collective life on earth as in heaven. Amen.

Our Amazing Humanness

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

All right, since it’s Ash Wednesday, I have a confession to make. My biggest issue in the season of Lent isn’t about giving things up, I’ve already proven to myself I have the self-discipline to give up just about anything for six weeks. My biggest issue is that I over-indulge in Lent devotions. Seriously, I’ve either bought or downloaded 4 different ones for this year. And that’s on top of the year long devotional book that I began in January, I mean, am I supposed to suspend that for the next 40 days or add my Lent ones to it?

The last one I bought just last week is titled, “God Didn’t Make Us to Hate Us” by the Reverend Lizzie McManus Dail. The title hit me hard in my lifelong journey to heal from the harm of my childhood church. I know it’s supposed to be a daily devotional for 40 days but I’m already about a third of the way in. Our prayer for Ash Wednesday says the same thing in a peculiar way: God hates nothing God has made. And, despite what the prayer may go on to say, I proclaim with confidence that God does not make us wretched. I really dislike that word, it’s so, so … well, wretched. If I were on the Prayer Book committee I’d ask to change it to ‘humanness’.

So, what is it to be human, to be in our humanness, to acknowledge our humanness? I know this is challenging for many to hear, but being human means we have limits, that we are finite. We can’t do everything or know everything or even be everything anyone ever wanted. But neither does it mean we are worthless or wretched. Being human means that despite our best efforts and how we might pretend to others, we never really have it all together. Being human means we are The Created of our Creator God. Being human means God chose to create us so that God could love us because God is love.

And in the stories our faith ancestors tell of this amazing Creator God, when God made us, God declared that all of creation is now Very Good. Being created from the dust does not mean we are insignificant; being created from dust is about our connectedness to both our Creator and all of Creation. Often the ‘you are dust and to dust you will return’ of Ash Wednesday comes across as harmful And demeaning because with much of our theology, our understanding of God, we make the mistake of not beginning at the beginning.

This Creator God who made the beauty of the stars, the wildness of the wind, the well ordered rhythm of days and seasons, the whimsy of flowers and butterflies, the strength of tigers and bears, the oddity of platypuses and penguins and sloths, the solidness of rocks and mountains, the fluidity of rivers and streams, this God made US! And even better, this God made us in God’s own image!

One of my desires for all of us through this Lent season is that we rewind our theology of humanness a bit, to start with how and by whom we are created and for what purposes, rather than starting with the moment we attempted to put ourselves at the center of the universe, what is commonly referred to as the Fall.

This is not where God started. It’s is where we used our freewill not to love God back but to take our own journey thinking we could create our own universe. The Fall is where God started God’s relentless pursuit of us to remind us we are created in love and by love and for love.

I think ‘acknowledging our wretchedness’ is going against God’s view of us. He sees us as beautiful beloved children AND God knows we do and think and say things that are harmful to ourselves and others AND God loves us and chooses to make us worthy to be heirs of God’s Kingdom.

And none of what I’ve just said means that any of us are perfect or can do whatever we want without guilt. Part of being human is that we often make choices that go against God’s purposes for us. Instead of living from the place of God’s Image within us, we try to be the small ‘g’ god of our own universe. Sometimes it’s intentional because we want to have power over others. Sometimes it’s accidental because we are just behaving as we have been taught to survive.

But, regardless of intent or accident, we have to acknowledge our humanness, come to terms with who God is and who we are, and confess this knowledge to God (even though God already knows).

This is what Ash Wednesday is all about, acknowledging our humanness, saying to God and our community of faith that we realize we cause harm to others and ourselves and we want to be better humans. The season of Lent is an intentional time to focus on those aspects of our lives that cause harm, the way we treat others and ourselves, the way we tend to our bodies and souls, and the way we care for all of creation, to acknowledge we do harm and then do the intentional work of BECOMING and BEING better at living from the Image of God within us throughout our lifelong Journey with Jesus.

Lent is not about showing the world how good we are at punishing ourselves or beating ourselves up or about how good we are at self-discipline. This is the point Jesus is trying to make in this sermon as recorded by Matthew. Not that Jesus was talking about Lent because it hadn’t been invented yet but the point fits. Sometimes, in ChurchLand it’s like we are having a competition to see who can prove themselves the most wretched when what we should be concentrating on is how to become more and more the humans God created us to be by living as Jesus shows us to live, in love and for love.

God doesn’t ask us to prove anything – either how holy or how wretched we are. God knows who we are and God has already done the work of forgiveness and restoration and reconciliation by coming to us as Jesus, to live and die as one of us. God invites us to remember we are created good and that we are connected to each other and all of creation. God invites us to live the good life of love and compassion and grace and empathy. Heaven’s treasure is the relationships we live into with the firm knowledge that we are neither less than or more than any other human being. We are all on equal footing. Heaven’s treasure is the freedom we feel when we allow ourselves to be who God created us to be instead of trying to be better or worse than anyone else. Heaven’s treasure is the abundance of God’s love flowing through us into the world.

These rewards are here for us now, as we work with God to build up the Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Have a blessed intentional Lent in all of your Humanness. Amen.

Recognizing Jesus

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

There’s a relatively well-known story in some church circles about a priest in an average middle-class American church who told her congregation that she’d be out of town the next Sunday and they’d have a visiting priest. On that Sunday, as the congregation began to arrive for the worship service, a stranger walked in, not well dressed nor apparently recently bathed, and made her way to the middle of a pew in the middle of one side. She didn’t speak to anyone or make eye contact, just walked in and sat down. As others noticed her, they whispered and stared, one or two approached with a shy “good morning and welcome” but didn’t reach out or get too close as they continued their conversations about whether or not they should invite the visiting priest to lunch.

At the Passing of the Peace, just a couple of people reached over to shake her hand. She kept her head down but offered them Peace back. As the service ended she slipped down the side aisle and left as the congregation lined up to shake hands with the visiting priest.

The next Sunday as their priest got up for the sermon, she laid a ragged, dirty zip up hoodie across the pulpit. And then she watched as a few of the more observant folks recognized it. “Did y’all enjoy your guest last week?” They smiled and nodded. “I’m so sorry I missed getting to meet her but I trust y’all went out of your way to make her feel welcome and at home.” People began to look confused and shift uncomfortably in their seats. You see, the guest priest had been a man. “Did anyone get her name or contact information. I’d love to reach out to her.” By now no one was looking at the priest, only at the hoodie she had laid on the pulpit. She moved on to the sermon, on the same gospel passage we read today, commonly known as the Transfiguration of Jesus.

In our story today, Jesus invites Peter, James, and John to go with him for some quiet prayer time but what our reading leaves off is the intro to the first sentence. It actually begins, “Now about eight days after these sayings …”. Whenever the Gospel writers give us a time indicator we need to pay attention because it links what comes before with the new story signaling that what is about to be read needs to be understood in it’s proximity to what comes before.

So, what did Jesus say eight days before? Some pretty challenging things like if we want to follow Jesus we have to take up our cross, we have to be willing to set aside our personal desires for the greater good of all people, that we need to make our life’s purpose the building up of God’s Kingdom, not our own. And that if we are ashamed of Jesus’ teachings about love and mercy and grace, he will be ashamed of us.

So with these thoughts meandering around in their heads and hearts, Peter, James, and John go with Jesus on the prayer retreat. And they witness something extraordinary on the mountain top. Peter wants to preserve the feeling of truly seeing Jesus with their hearts for the first time. He wants to stay in this moment forever. Don’t we all? But he’s interrupted by the very voice of God. “This is my beloved. Listen to him.”

You see, the transfiguration of Jesus wasn’t for Jesus’ benefit, he knows who he is; the transfiguration happened so Peter, James, and John could truly see and know who Jesus is, not just for a temporary feel-good moment, but so that this wisdom would transform every aspect of their ordinary lives.

And then Jesus leads Peter, James, and John back into the community to continue to reveal himself through healing and restoration, through feeding the hungry and sharing the abundance of God’s kingdom with everyone.

We are also told a curious thing about this incident, that these three students of Jesus kept silent as they came down the mountain and returned to the regular rhythm of their day. And, on the next day, they and a crowd of others witness Jesus healing a boy and restoring the father/son relationship. And all were astounded at the Glory of God. Isn’t it interesting that the crowds who witness Jesus showing up with love and compassion don’t keep silent and his best known students did.

God’s glory isn’t something we are to attempt to contain, either in this building or on a mountain top retreat, or in our hearts. When we see Jesus for who he truly is the glorious, life transforming Love of God is something we must share with the world.

God didn’t choose to show up in this world in fancy palaces or wealthy mansions. God showed up through a woman with no social standing. And God shows up in and through the people who make the teachings of Jesus the compass for their daily lives for the sake of those who need to be seen and heard and fed and cared for.

It’s an important part of our life’s rhythm to show up here and worship together. Just like this mountain top scene with Jesus and his disciples, it properly orients us to who and Whose we are – God’s beloved children. it gives us the opportunity to see Jesus for who he is. It keeps us properly ordered as to who God is and who we are as we worship the One who created all in and for love. But we can’t stay here; we can’t contain God’s glory here. What happens here, what we do together here – pray, hear God’s Word, praise, and receive the body and blood of Jesus in fellowship – is intended to transform us so we can see Jesus for who he is, our Lord and Savior, so that we can show up as the image of God for the hurting world.

In the gospel stories, Jesus shows up as a shepherd, a friend, a teacher, a prophetic voice, and a sacrificial love giver. In our recent class on the Revelation to John, we talked a lot about who Jesus is and how he shows up in John’s visions; Jesus shows up as a slaughtered Lamb, as a victorious king whose ‘sword’ is God’s word of Truth. Never does he show up as a violent, vengeful warrior or as an autocratic leader demanding respect or as a condemning or oppressive religious leader. Jesus shows up in this world in and through us, the people who have made the choice to follow Jesus for the Glory of God.

How does Jesus show up for you? Do you look for Jesus in the not so put together stranger or only in the one in the pulpit? Do you look for Jesus in the kindness of others or only in the ones who lord power over others. In the marginalized or only in the celebrities?

How does Jesus show up for others through your life? As an empathetic and compassionate friend and neighbor who wants for others the same flourishing we want for ourselves?

At our diocesan council week before last, one of our guest speakers was Lutheran Bishop Sue Briner said, “we have been too quiet for too long about who Jesus is.” We can’t hide our relationship with Jesus in this place. We are all called to show Jesus to the world so that the world is shaped by Love and compassion and empathy. This is how we participate in the building up of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. This is how we are transformed into the image of the One we follow for God’s glory.

In this world so permeated with hate and anger, let’s love loudly so others know who Jesus is, too. Amen.

Love Carefully

I originally wrote this in 2019 and before I started this blog. I’ve added an update to the end so I invite you to grab your favorite beverage and read the whole thing (and pay attention to the paragraph that begins “I also think it is a small step toward stopping all immigration to the US and the possible elimination of all public assistance for permanent residents and even citizens…).”

Can I share with you a story?

By my income, I’m classified as middle-class. I have a graduate degree and have been working and paying taxes (mostly) since I was 13 years old. I have a full time job with health benefits, a pension, 403b, no debt except for a mortgage, and a decent sized savings account. My parents were well educated, hard working people who raised us kids to be educated, hard working adults. And, for a couple of years when I was a young single mom, working and going to school so I could make a good life for me and my son, I was on food stamps.

Here’s another piece of my story: I am a naturalized citizen of the United States. I was born in Germany, in a German hospital while my dad was in the Civil Service and stationed there. I have a German birth certificate. My parents filed my birth with the consulate in Munich. We moved back to the states when I was 2 and I traveled with an infant stamp in my mother’s passport. When I was 12 or 13 I applied for and received a social security number. In my mid-30s, post 9/11, I was going to travel outside the US for the first time since I was 2 (except for Mexico and Canada which only required I had ID to cross back and forth prior to 9/11) and I applied for my own passport. The state department sent me a letter saying they had no record of my citizenship. Although I had worked and paid taxes since I was 13, I didn’t exist as a citizen of the United States. So, to cut to the chase here, my mom still had her expired passport that had my infant stamp and I sent that to the state department. They did their research and found the original documentation my parents had filed in a basement in the consular office in Munich. It had never been sent to the State Department in Washington. With the paperwork located, I was issued my naturalization papers, dated 1967 and signed by Secretary of State Colin Powell. Yes, I am concerned that some day someone will “do the math” and question the validity of my papers.

So, in my head and heart, I bump my story up against the new rule that says migrants legally applying to live in the United States can be denied if there is any possibility they could go on public assistance. Any possibility. (you can read it for yourself here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/08/14/2019-17142/inadmissibility-on-public-charge-grounds).

My childhood would not have pointed to any possibility of going on public assistance, but I did. My current situation does not point to me ever needing public assistance but who knows.

The proper use of public assistance is the right thing for us as a society to do for one another. I believe that we all must carry our own load AND bear one another’s burdens (Cf. Galatians 6:2-5). I used other people’s tax money to feed me and my son and I am happy to think that my taxes help others who need to get back on their feet.

I have no statistics to back this up but I’m fairly certain there are plenty of legal citizens who were born in this country to families who have been citizens since the revolutionary war who have abused the public assistance offered by our government and paid for by our tax dollars. Do we need to clean this abuse up? Absolutely! But I do not agree with the idea that we can deny anyone legal access to the US because they might at some point in the future receive public assistance. Who has such a crystal ball?

I also think it is a small step toward stopping all immigration to the US and the possible elimination of all public assistance for permanent residents and even citizens (but I realize I don’t have a crystal ball either). And it frightens me, for all of our sakes.

So, please, just be careful who you lump into “us” and “them” because more than likely someone you consider an “us” is really more like the “them” than you realize. We are all more similar than we are different.

*******

So, approximately six years later, here we find ourselves with a president and an overwhelmingly large group of people who want to and are doing everything they can, legal or illegal, to eliminate immigration and public assistance. And I find myself even more frightened.

If our government undoes birthright citizenship, what’s next? Eliminating everyone who wasn’t born in this country, even American Citizens like me? If laws are passed that require women’s names on their IDs to match their birth certificate at least I’ll be ok (I’ve never bought into the idea that women have to change their name at marriage) but with the death of both my father and my husband last year, will I be allowed to have a mortgage in my name or a car loan? Not if some have their way.

So, again, I say, please be careful who you lump into “us” and “them”. Be careful what you label “woke” or “liberal”. Much of what is being labeled as these are exact teachings of Jesus: caring for the poor and the sick and the widows and the orphans and the immigrants.

Mercy, compassion, empathy, and love are not Christian heresies; they are the core foundation of all that Jesus teaches.

Wake up, be alert, pay attention and discern what is of God and what is of the great deceiver. Let’s LOVE more loudly than the hate that is permeating our country. Thanks for your time.