Perspective

A sermon preached at St. Francis by the Lake, Canyon Lake, TX.
The lectionary readings for the thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost are here.

Are y’all familiar with the cartoonist Nathan Pyle? He does a cartoon series called Strange Planet in which he views the human world imaginatively through his alien and animal characters. Nathan’s work draws us out of our selves so we can learn to see other perspectives and points of view through humor and art and storytelling.

One of his classics is of two eagles sitting in wingback chairs reading newspapers and drinking coffee. One of them asks the other, “do you think the owl is a predator?” And the other eagle responds, “of course not. He’s never bothered me.” To which the first eagle replies, “exactly!” and after a pause says, “no idea what Mr. Mouse is going on about.”

When we aren’t willing to be curious about each other we get stuck in our own way and believe that everyone experiences life the same way we do. And this being stuck in ourselves lead us to thinking our way is the only way and anyone who doesn’t think and act like us is wrong or even evil. And this way of thinking is what stops us from seeing other people as beloved children of God, made in the image of God.

We like to fool ourselves into thinking that if we lump a big group of people who think differently than we do together and label them as our enemy that excuses us from having to love them and treat them with dignity and respect.

This is not the example of the godly life Jesus shows us. The fruits of Jesus’ redeeming work that we prayed to receive thankfully is a life lived in the Way of Love, proclaiming a gospel message that invites and welcomes others freely, a journey that leads us into the fullness of who and whose we are.

In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul tells us that to be wise is to understand what the will of God is. From the very beginning of time and through all of the stories we have of our faith ancestors the will of God has always been that every human being be in relationship with God, that we choose to love God because God loves us. God’s will, God’s desire for us is that we walk the continuous journey of learning more and more each day how to love God and each other well.

Paul was well versed in the wisdom of our faith ancestors that we get a glimpse of in both the reading from Proverbs and the Psalm for today. The writers tell us to “Lay aside immaturity, and live, and walk in the way of insight” and “turn from evil and do good; seek peace and pursue it.” Our faith is an active, ongoing journey.

In our gospel reading, the perspective Jesus is giving us with his cannibalistic sounding metaphor is what this godly life is. Jesus is intentionally upsetting our perspective, our way of thinking, to awaken our imagination to so much more than the surface level of life. Jesus wants us to see that our faith isn’t simply a checklist of dos and don’ts. Our belief in God is so much more, it is a way of being, a relationship with our Creator. It is who we are created to be.

This wise, mature, human life that Jesus invites us into isn’t clothes or homes or cars or dominating power, coercive power, or power over in any way. Life as God created us to live is about being with God and with each other in relationship. Jesus wants us to grasp, as much as we can in our humanness, this wonderful mystery that God is not some external entity that we worship but that God is part of our very being. The core of who we are is the image of God in us; the core of every human being is the image of God. The growing awareness of this is the eternal life Jesus speaks of – knowing who and Whose we are.

We all are given the choice to either live life on our own terms, expecting everyone to see things from our perspective and behave accordingly, or to live life on God’s terms in relationship with God, walking with each other in this world both seeing and offering the perspective of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Offering, not forcing. Our proclamation of the good news of Jesus is always an invitation and never an arrest warrant.

One of my favorite current day theologians is a woman named Barbara Brown Taylor. She says our faith is asking with each step we take in this world “what is this about?” Not “do I like this” or “do I want more or less of this” but “what is this about?” This is a curiosity that expands our perspective so we have the eyes to see and ears to hear the amazing work of God in all people and all situations.

When we hear the challenging words of Jesus, “I am the living bread and whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood will have eternal life,” he wants us to ask, “what’s this about?” What does Jesus mean by saying that he is as much a part of our humanness as the food we eat, that our nourishment is Jesus himself? A checklist of rules doesn’t fit this metaphor. A way of being does. God’s loving wisdom shapes our hearts and minds into who God created us to be just as the food we eat builds our bodies.

When we wear the blinders that keep us thinking we are the only ones who get this life right we will only see what others get wrong. When we put on the blinders that allow us to only see how good our own life is, we can’t see how to contribute to the goodness in the world. We become like the eagles in Nathan Pyle’s cartoon – unable to see the pain of others because it isn’t our pain. We become stuck and unable to grow in compassion or empathy or love. We loose sight of the will of God.

A cartoon by Nathan Pyle. https://www.nathanwpyle.art/

The will of God is that we learn more and more each day what it is to love well, to work for the greater good of all instead of building our own prestige and power. The life that God created us to live fully is life together knowing that we are dependent on God and each other to be fully human, to be who we are created to be. We need each other’s perspective. Being curious about how someone else sees the world isn’t a threat to our own way of being. To be curious about another means we are both confident in and wise about what we believe and who we are and opens our eyes wider to the amazing work of God in this world.

Following Jesus, knowing that the best life we can live is because of Jesus, receiving thankfully the fruits of his redeeming work makes our world bigger and there is always room for others to join us in this godly life journey. Amen.

Tell

Some thoughts along my journey.

You know that quote that goes something like you never know what another person is going through so be kind (I googled it and couldn’t find a source, just lots of memes). It’s a good thought to begin every interaction you have with another human being and it helps us to remember to be kind even if they are not. And to be kind even if your own struggles make you want to be curmudgeonly. And for simple, public interactions it is the way we should be.

But what about our actual relationships? Should we leave others wondering what we really are going through or should we be open and honest and authentic enough that they know? For my generation and older, we’ve been taught to keep our pain and struggles to ourselves and to only express positive emotions publicly. We grew up with “don’t cry” and the idea that negative emotions make us look weak. My family had the policy of keeping the hard things secret and we pretended it was to protect others people’s feelings but I am learning that it is really is about avoiding the hard stuff of life so the image we projected was only positive.

And, yet, Jesus teaches us that we can’t, and shouldn’t, avoid the difficult conversations in life because they are as much a part of being human in this world as breathing. When we learn to express our emotions in healthy and productive ways – the full range of the emotions that God created us to experience – we are being more fully human, not less, not weak, not immature.


When we read the Psalms we learn that our faith ancestors knew the importance of expressing their emotions. In the Psalms we see the full range of human emotion, brought to God authentically. Even the most difficult stuff. When they felt anger and wanted to retaliate against their enemies they brought those requests to God because they knew that only God can be truly righteous in anger. When they were heart broken and desperate, they brought that to God knowing that in God’s goodness they would find comfort and peace and hope. When they were joyful and happy they brought that to God knowing God is the giver of all good things.

As New Testament, Resurrection People, following Jesus in the Kingdom on earth as in Heaven is a group activity, a life of community and communion. What we experience in our humanness isn’t to be hidden but shared in healthy relationships as we journey with God and each other in this life. We do life together, building each other up so that we are on equal footing, tending to each other without rank or status, all of us both giving and receiving. Following Jesus is about companioning not competing, being our authentic selves with each other and expressing our authentic emotions in healthy ways in our God-centered, God’s-presence-filled community.

When I teach and preach and write about following Jesus on earth as in heaven I use the words becoming and journey and growing, I talk about being aware of God’s presence, and knowing who and Whose we are, because following Jesus is a life-long, continuous process of growing into who God created us to be. In the stories our faith ancestors tell about creation, God created all things good. Not perfect but good. Good gives us the freedom to grow and mature. The idea that we must be perfect keeps us stuck, either because we have the false idea we are already perfect and therefore have no need to mature or because we are paralyzed with the fear that others will see the imperfections we are working so hard to hide. We tend to understand perfect to mean without flaw. But neither the Hebrew nor the Greek word we translate into English as perfect means without flaw; these words mean complete as in whole or complete as in finished, full grown, mature.

Our purpose as we follow Jesus in this life is to become more and more like him. That’s what disciples do, live and work and grow to become like their teacher. So, yes, we should do our best at being kind with everyone we encounter. And, yes, we should work at being more authentic and open in our relationships. We need to normalize sitting with each other in the difficult times and just being; we need to normalize asking for what we need. We need to be willing to receive comfort and companionship as much as we are willing to offer it to others. Talk about what you are feeling and experiencing; listen to how others feel and experience life. Be human as God created us to be.

God’s Work

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

This past Monday, July 29, the Episcopal Church celebrated the 50th anniversary of the ordination of women to the priesthood. If you didn’t get to watch the Philadelphia Eleven film with us, I hope there are other opportunities for you to see it. (https://www.philadelphiaelevenfilm.com/) It is an incredible story in our history and I am honored and privileged to stand on the shoulders of these amazing women and the men willing to stand up for equality and do the work of God in this world.

For those of you who have ever asked me about my calling to the priesthood, you know that I quote Paul’s words to the church in Ephesus that we read today “The gifts God gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, (now, here’s the important part, so listen carefully) to equip the saints for the work of ministry.” Being a priest is about enabling and equipping all of us to do God’s work together.

And, Paul tells us, we are to continue equipping each other until all, ALL, all come to the unity, not exclusivity, of the faith and knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. The measuring stick of our maturity is Jesus. Our purpose is to become more and more like Jesus as we do what Jesus teaches us to do. Jesus sums up all that he shows us by telling us to love God and our neighbor as ourselves. We show we love God by loving our neighbor and if we love our neighbor as ourselves then we want for our neighbor what we want for ourselves – the life God created us to live, as Kingdom people living in a world where all are equal and no one is hungry or thirsty or without.

In our gospel reading today, the crowds ask Jesus what must they do to perform the works of God and Jesus tells them plainly, “this is the work of God, that you believe in the one God sent.” When we follow Jesus, believing that he is the one God sent to show us how to walk in the Way of Love, we are doing the work of God in this world.

In our prayer for today, we ask God to both cleanse and defend God’s Church and to govern the Church by God’s goodness. Now y’all know we aren’t talking about the building but about the Body of Christ, the one holy, universal, bound together by God’s grace and love through the power of Holy Spirit, church. But do we trust and believe that God will defend us and do we really want God to cleanse us? Because when we ask God to cleanse the church, it isn’t about removing those we consider undesirable, but a prayer to cleanse our own hearts and minds of those things that keep us stuck in emotional and spiritual immaturity. It’s so much easier to pray “God, those people over there need cleansing, you go smite them and we’ll defend you from our pews”. But that is not doing the work of God.

The reason we remind ourselves in this prayer that only in God can we, the church, continue in safety is because it is only by God’s loving work of unity and community that we can be saved from our ego driven behavior. It is in our spiritual and emotional immaturity that we are so easily offended by others’ ideas and ways of moving through this world and convince ourselves that we need to defend God instead of asking God to defend us.

Following Jesus is an invitation to all to join in the Way of Love. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians could easily be written to most any church in the USA Today. God’s work that we are called to participate in in this world is leading a life worthy of God’s love for all so that we are working toward unity not division.

If the truth we claim to speak in love is motivated by excluding others, elevating ourselves above others, or condemning others who aren’t just like us, it isn’t God’s truth. God’s truth in love is motivated by wanting others to join the journey of growth and maturity, but never, ever forcing them; it is an invitation to a better life, the life we are created for: this life of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven in which we are all walking together, using the gifts God gave us for the greater good. God’s love always wants the best for others, all others.

One of my fondest memories of General Convention was at the Revival Night when Bishop Curry was preaching. At one point in his sermon he said his familiar phrase: “if it’s not about love” and a thousand Episcopalians, without missing a beat, excitedly finished the sentence “it’s not about God.” This is our theme. If it’s not about love, it’s not about God.

As we journey together, side-by-side, following Jesus, we grow from praying “God, give me my bread and, oh, yes, while you are at it can you feed the hungry” to “God, we give thanks for the bread you give so that we can do your work in this world of feeding the hungry.”

The bread of life isn’t just about our bellies. We need nutritional sustenance for our bodies, AND we need nutritional sustenance for our souls. When we feed on the negativity and and anger and hatred of the world, we are not nourishing our souls with the bread of life but of food of death. When we feed on the words of scripture, do life together in community and in worship, we nourish our souls with God’s goodness.

Pay close attention to what you are consuming with your eyes and ears. Is it helping you bring about God’s kingdom on earth or teaching you to put up walls to keep others out?

Following Jesus is about making this world better – doing God’s work to change it from the nightmare it often is, to the dream that God intends. Do not let anyone convince you that we need to go backwards or sideways or any direction other than the Way of Love in God’s Kingdom.

There’s a meme that’s been around for a few years, I’m sure many of you have seen it, of a young man and Jesus sitting on a park bench and the young man asks, “Jesus, why do you allow so much injustice and suffering in this world?” And Jesus responds, “why do you?”

50 years ago, a group of people stood up and asked why do we let the ordination rules in the Episcopal Church exclude half the population from discerning a call to the priesthood. They believed that God’s loving truth said that women are equal to men. It wasn’t an easy path but they knew they were following Jesus. It felt divisive at the time because people had to chose to walk in God’s kingdom or stay stuck in their spiritual immaturity. We all stand on the shoulders of those who helped make the path more and more like God’s Kingdom. Together, in love, we are called to build up others and grow to be more and more like Jesus, inviting everyone to join us so that God’s Kingdom is on earth as in heaven, and still loving those who chose not to join in.

This is the work of God, that we believe in him whom God has sent and offer the bread of life to all. Amen.

A Good Grief

I’m not at church today. My dad died. That’s direct, I know, and may shock some and cause you to gasp. I’ve been playing with the phrase “passed on to the everlasting life” but I truly believe that our everlasting life begins with the physical life we are in so I’m not sure that is a good theological statement about death. I don’t like that in our modern western culture we work so hard at pretending we can avoid death. We make aging a disease rather than a part of the amazing gift of life that God has given us. This pretending does not equip us to live well or to grieve well when someone we love dies.

Dad and me at my ordination to the diaconate.

My dad’s mom, my grandmother, lived and aged more gracefully than anyone I’ve ever known. She wasn’t afraid of getting older. She said she ‘earned’ every wrinkle and gray hair by living the best life she could. To her, the ‘best life’ wasn’t about things but about loving God and others well. I’ve tried to emulate that. People who knew her her whole life would say to me, “you look just like her when she was your age” and I’ve always held that close to my heart. I tried for much of my life to be like her before gaining the wisdom that I have to be who God created me to be and that all that she taught me by the way she lived her life is part of who I am.

It’s the same with my dad. Part of his everlasting life is that he is a part of me and my siblings, and all of his grandchildren and many others whose lives he helped shape. I don’t claim to know for certain what happens when our physical life on this earth is done (since I’m a priest, that statement may shock some of you, too). Jesus tells us we will be with him but he also tells us he will be with us in this life. He just doesn’t tell us exactly how that all works. I’m ok with that mystery. Jesus spends much more time showing us in flesh and blood what it is to live this life well than he does talking about what’s next. Eternity doesn’t begin when we die; eternity already is. Our faith in God isn’t an after-life insurance policy. Our relationship with God is the foundation of who and Whose we are: beloved children of God who are created and called to be image bearers of God’s love in this world so that others know they are beloved image bearers. My dad did this well. My grandmother did this well.

In the beginning, God created us (and all things) and calls us good. God created us in and through love so that we could love. The greatest and most dangerous gift God gave us was free-will. God knew we would misuse it for our own gain, but in order for us to have the capacity to love we have to have free-will. Love isn’t forced or coerced or controlled. Love is given and received freely. (I’m not talking hallmark love but self-giving, other-focused, always-growing-in-emotional-maturity, walking-with love.) My grandmother and my dad loved well.

Our first family portrait taken in 1968.

As we have begun the process of going through all of Dad’s stuff, I came across a notebook filled with my grandmother’s handwriting. When she was grieving my granddaddy’s death, she wrote him letters in this notebook, telling him what she was up to, how sad she was, who had been to visit her, and how she was learning to live without his physical presence but with the wisdom that he was always a part of who she is. She grieved well.

My dad and my grandmother have always been my ‘touchpoints’ – those people to whom I turned when I had something to celebrate, when I was struggling, when life was just an ordinary routine. They were my wisdom people who helped me navigate life and when I didn’t navigate it well, they walked with me without guilting or shaming me. Now that Dad has died, I’m feeling a bit unmoored. And yet, I know he is part of who I am and always will be. I pray that with God’s help, I will do this grief thing well. As we love, we grieve.

Our last family portrait taken in 2007 just months before Mom died.

Word

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

There’s a sign at one of the many churches along 306 that says they offer “expository preaching.” Have you seen it? Now, I have a degree in English and I’ve been to seminary and I must admit I still had to look up what that meant because I was curious as to what they had to offer on Sunday mornings that was perhaps different from what we do here.

What I learned is that I do expository preaching without even knowing that’s what it’s called. In it’s most basic form, it’s explaining a specific or prescribed piece of scripture rather than starting with a theme and then picking scripture that proves your point. When we turn to scripture to discover primarily who God is we can be better shaped by scripture rather than trying to fit scripture into our own ideas of who others are. When we let God’s story shape us, we discover that God’s story is always about being in relationship. So let’s look at how each of our readings today helps us to know God better.

Our readings for today remind us that as we seek to live in God’s Kingdom on earth we we must open our hearts to the transformative power of the Holy Spirit that enables us to see the world around us through a lens of compassion, a truly relational lens. God has always called God’s people to live Sacramentally within this world so that our behaviors reveal the grace-filled love of God within us.

Jeremiah’s words are for those who are attempting to lead God’s people and have made God’s Kingdom exclusive; the shepherds who were more interested in their own power than they were with the wellbeing of those they were to lead. Jeremiah reminds the people of the promise of the One who is to come. To the misguided shepherds it felt like a threat; to those being misled, it is a hope filled promise of God’s righteousness.

I think it’s safe to say that we are all familiar with our Psalm for today; we hear it at almost every funeral ever and most of us can recite the King James Version by memory. The valley of the shadow of death isn’t a threat but a statement of our reality – we are human and our lives are limited in scope and length AND we have the privilege of walking this life with God as our strength and comfort. We can choose to live as God created us and thrive or fight against God’s plan for us in an attempt to avoid death, in which case we’ve already let death win.

Even in the midst of our perceived slights and oppressions, God is with us, calling us beloved and bringing us comfort, not to belittle or shame our perceived enemies but as an invitation to show them the power of God’s love for everyone.

Paul reminds Jesus’ followers that by Jesus’ death and resurrection, Jesus has made us one and that it is God’s righteousness that binds us together. Regardless of our political leanings, of the neighborhood in which we grew up, of our level of education or the size of our bank accounts, it is Jesus who binds us together in Love.

In our gospel reading today, we have the apostles returning from the fellowship journeys he had sent them on that we read about two weeks ago. They’ve worked faithfully and Jesus knows they need rest. It isn’t clear just how much rest they are able to get and the ambiguity is exacerbated because those who put the lectionary readings together for our expository preaching skip over two seemingly well-known narratives that bridge these two paragraphs: Jesus feeding upwards of 20,000 people with one sack lunch and Jesus walking on the water in a storm. At the impromptu picnic that follows Jesus teaching them many things, his disciples come to him in concern for the others but with their minds closed to the possibilities. Jesus told them to turn their fear of scarcity to the hope of abundance. Fear and scarcity divide; hope and abundance create relationships. And then he sent them off again in the boat by themselves.

Mark tells us that even with all that Jesus had taught and the miraculous event that they had just been a part of, their hearts were still closed to possibilities of God’s Kingdom on earth. They chose to remain in the shadow of fear and scarcity rather than step into the light of God’s love. When Jesus tells them to not be afraid, he’s saying open your mind to all that God has to give so that even in the scary times, fear is not what guides us.

And, so, when they had crossed over to the land of Gennesaret and moored their boat, Jesus continued to lead them on the sacramental, life-long, journey of love that reveals God’s grace filled love within us. The folks that lived in Gennesaret were open to all of the hopeful imaginings of God’s Kingdom – bringing all who were in need of healing to Jesus even just to touch the edge of his clothes. In Mark’s telling it is those who were closest to Jesus who had closed off their imaginations.

Our scriptures tell us a story – a whole and holy story of the God of all Creation who chooses to work in and through the very people he created to bring about the purpose we and all of creation are made for – to use all that we have and all that we are to reveal God’s love to the world. In our weekly worship pattern, we experience the stories in bite sized pieces but we can never let go of the fact that each bite is part of the whole meal that God offers us for nourishment.

Y’all know I’m a big proponent of the thought that Scripture and worship are to be in the common language. Thomas Cranmer said in his preface to the original Book of Common Prayer that if we expect our daily life to be shaped by scripture everyone must have daily access to it in the language they are most familiar with. It’s why in our prescribed liturgy I change thees and thous to you and your and drop the outdated ‘st’ and ‘th’ endings to English words. God’s story as told to us through the ancient writings of our holy scriptures is meant to be ingested by all of us, not controlled by a select few who parcel it out as they see fit. We must, however, be careful not to use it as a weapon to divide or exclude, or cherry pick only the parts that we like or that suit our purpose. When it comes to God’s banquet, we can’t be picky eaters – we must consume all of it so that our lives are shaped by the whole of it.

When we see others in need, we must hear Jesus saying to us, “take what you have and help them.” When we experience fear, we must hear Jesus say, “do not be afraid” and let God’s love and abundance guide what we do next. We must open our hearts and minds to the transformation of the Holy Spirit so we see the world with compassion, so that we see the image of God in every human being, especially those we disagree with.

The words of Jesus, the Word of God, always heals and unites, provides comfort and strength, and never instills fear. These are the words of love and compassion that we are to let shape our behavior. The Lord is our Righteousness; God guides us along the right pathways; He is our peace that breaks down the hostility between us. Jesus is our true shepherd. Amen.

Two by Two

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

The lectionary readings for the seventh Sunday after Pentecost are here.

As most of you know, I recently returned from the Episcopal Church’s General Convention, the official gathering every three years of Episcopal dioceses from around the world. General Convention is the governing body of The Episcopal Church and comprises the House of Deputies, which is made up of equal numbers of Lay and Clergy from each diocese, and the House of Bishops.

This was my first time at GC, something on my priest bucket list to experience the legislative work of this amazing church that has been so life-giving and transformative for me. I can tell you I was not disappointed. Following set Parliamentarian procedures to keep things in an orderly fashion, all voices are given a chance to speak, everyone has the opportunity to be heard. It is a beautiful representation of the diversity and communion of God’s Kingdom on earth. The work that is done is done together in community. There isn’t one or two people in power telling the rest of us what we are going to do and how we are going to do it.

At GC the varied voices in the Episcopal Church discern together where and how the Spirit is guiding us in repentance and reconciliation when necessary and in peace and hope for our future following Jesus together in Love. And I believe this is The Way of doing our life together that Jesus teaches us: in which we all enable and equip each other to do the work of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven, together, following Jesus, and with God’s help.

In our gospel story today, Jesus has returned to his home town, and although some are amazed at the wisdom and work he’s done, they are skeptical because he’s just the simple carpenter’s son they watched grow up. His ability to do Kingdom work is limited, but not because Jesus isn’t fully capable, he absolutely is. In the midst of the skeptics, Jesus is faithful to his ministry of proclaiming God’s Love. He shows us that the work of God’s Kingdom isn’t thwarted by those who are faithful to the Way of Jesus but by those who don’t believe that Love is the most powerful force in the Universe. Jesus couldn’t do much for them because of their unwillingness to change. And just as the people of his hometown were amazed at the work of his ministry, Jesus was amazed, not in a good way, that in seeing the good he did, they still chose not to believe in the power of God’s Love.

Following this episode with his hometown folks, Jesus sends his disciples out two by two to spread the Good News of God’s Love so that others have the opportunity to change their minds – which is what repent means, remember, to change our hearts and minds about what is is to have power in this world. Jesus knew that to send the disciples out in groups to do the work of the Kingdom together would help keep their individual egos in check; it would temper the human desire to have power over others for our own gain and teach them to live in the power of God’s Love that enables everyone to thrive.

This wasn’t some radical new movement but Jesus reminding us that this is the way God intended from the start. In the creation stories told by our faith ancestors, God created two people to tend to God’s creation in equal standing with each other. And the first time something isn’t good is when one of those people is alone. God didn’t create us to be lone-wolves but people in community.

Jesus sends them out together and tells them to be interdependent with others; they aren’t to be self-sufficient with what they packed in their suitcase, they weren’t to require special status because they were doing the work of the Kingdom, but to work with others to mutually meet the needs of everyone. And if the community they were in didn’t want to change their mind about love and power, they were just to move on, not harboring resentment or seeking revenge or retaliation, not trying to control the behavior of others or force their belief upon them. They were simply to keep proclaiming the Good News of God’s Love. It isn’t our responsibility to force people follow Jesus, it is our responsibility to follow Jesus well with God’s help and to the best of our abilities.

In our prayer this week, we remember that God has taught us to keep all God’s commandments by loving God and our neighbor and we ask for the grace of the Holy Spirit, that we may be devoted to God with our whole heart and united to one another with pure affection.

You may have heard about the The Ten Commandments in the news lately. Those who are wanting to force them on others seem to be under the illusion that these commands are some sort of magical incantation that by hanging them on a wall will somehow make us perfect by the mere presence of the translated words. But that is not what they are. The Ten Commandments are a relational covenant that God offered to the ancient Israelites to live into with intentionality and purpose – to show God’s Love to the world. And then Jesus came along and said he fulfilled this covenant and translated the Ten commandments into the Beatitudes in which the peacemakers, the meek, the humble, and the people who seek God’s righteousness are the ones living in the economy of God’s Kingdom.

Jesus shows us how we bring about God’s Kingdom on earth by loving others well – all others, even those who reject us. And this doesn’t just happen by accident and it isn’t pretending that all is well when it’s not. Loving well, remaining united with pure affection, is hard work. And the work isn’t about force fitting others to our standards but opening ourselves up to the transformational work of the Holy Spirit within us.

In one of my favorite podcasts* this week, the hosts talked about growing our understanding of sin from simply breaking God’s law to disrupting the shalom of God’s Kingdom. When we see God’s law as simply a list of 10 rules that when we break one or two we can say the right words and God forgives us so we can go on with our lives until the next time we break one, we turn our relationship with God into a series of transactions that we initiate. But if we think about sin as disrupting God’s peace among our fellow image bearers, then we are better equipped to live into the transformational, ongoing, lifelong and life-giving relationship with our Creator and all of creation.

We are all interconnected and all that we think, say, and do has an impact on others. God created us to be most fully human in our relationships with God and each other. In community we keep our egos in check. In community we learn to follow and lead as Jesus did. In community we can grow from coercively attempting to control other’s behavior into the collaborative communion of God’s Table. We come together around the Table to receive the self-giving Love of Jesus so that we can, with intentionality and purpose, carry that love into the hurting world.

When we are transformed by and united in this love, we are the most powerful force in God’s creation, living into the answer to the prayer ‘Your will be done on earth as in heaven.’ Together in Love we are God’s people called to spread the Good News that welcomes everyone into God’s Kingdom. Amen.

What’s Your Story?

A Sermon preached and parable shared at St. Francis by the Lake Episcopal church, Canyon Lake, TX.
The Lectionary readings for the fourth Sunday after Pentecost are here.
You can listen to the unedited parable read by the original authors and explore resources for The Seventh Story here.

The Kingdom of God is as if someone planted a seed and it grew because that’s what seeds are created to do, not because some person did anything magical; The Kingdom of God is compared to the interconnectedness all of creation, including us, in harmony with God’s Creation Rhythm of planting and growth and feeding and rest.

Jesus told parables to help us think outside the box, to change our paradigm, to stretch our comfort zone; because when we are a bit discombobulated, we have the opportunity to grow. When Jesus extends the invitation ‘follow me’ it isn’t to a specific destination where we can live in static comfort but on a journey of life and growth into the Kingdom on earth as in heaven.

Parables are poetic stories that may not be factually true but are deeply truthful. They reveal the truth of our life that we may not yet be ready to see. Jesus explained them in private to the disciples not to keep secrets from or exclude others but because the growth that comes from parables can be challenging and even painful and we need the safety of a loving community to journey through the growth. Parables are designed to help us see the sharp and jagged edges of our hearts so that the Holy Spirit can smooth them out.

We are created to be in relationships and our lives are interconnected and interdependent regardless of what we may tell ourselves. We all have a core needs that can only be fulfilled in our relationship with God and others. Some of us need to know we matter and are seen, some to be perfect, some to be safe or free or successful or knowledgeable or powerful or helpful. And we are humans who don’t always get it right so sometimes our stories become distorted responses to our very real needs. Jesus invites us back to our original story, the story of God’s Kingdom on earth as in Heaven.

I’m going to share with you a modern parable about the stories we tell ourselves – a story about stories, written by Gareth Higgins and Brian McLaren.

“There once was a people, let’s call them the people. The people used stories to interpret their lives, stories of where they came from, stories of where they were going, stories that told them how to be happy, stories that told them where they were.”

Please listen to the rest of the parable here. https://cac.org/podcasts/an-introduction-to-seven-stories/

(Note: In my spoken sermon, I tell the story but I didn’t want to reprint the whole thing here without permission. I also invite you to listen to the entire Season 5 of the Learning how to See podcast as Brian and Gareth discuss each of the stories in depth.)

This is the story Jesus invites us into. The kingdom of God IS the story of Love. Amen.

An Ordinary Celebration

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

It’s just an ordinary Sunday in June. And, yet, we are here, gathered together to celebrate our extraordinary God who gave us this ordinary day to live our life to the fullest and be who God created us to be.

As we continue our journey with Mark’s version of the Good News this year, today we find Jesus in the midst of a large crowd. Jesus has been walking around Galilee preaching and teaching of God’s Kingdom, healing and proclaiming forgiveness, and hanging out with those whom the religious leaders have labeled as sinners. And the crowds coming from all over to hear and see him are getting larger and larger.

They came from all over Galilee, from Jerusalem, from Idumea, from beyond the Jordan, and from Tyre and Sidon. This wasn’t just popping over from Wimberly or Bulverde, more like if folks walked here from Dallas or Houston to see a preacher their neighbor’s cousin’s brother-in-law told them about. It was a bit wacky, it definitely wasn’t ordinary. Jesus was disrupting how things are supposed to be. He’s not fitting himself nicely into the roles his family thinks he should and he’s definitely not conforming to the tight behavior boundaries of the local Roman or Religious authorities.

And so his family comes to him and says, “be a good son and come with us; quit stirring up these crowds that draw attention. Quit being who you are and be who we need you to be to keep ourselves comfortable.”

The religious leaders do their best to discredit him by using a common weapon of mass distraction* – they try to convince everyone that the good Jesus does isn’t from God but from the Adversary. The good that Jesus is doing, the sharing of God’s love with everyone is making those who try control everyone and everything for their own personal gain look bad in comparison. They don’t want to face their own unhealthy behaviors so they try to distract themselves and the crowd by saying look how “bad” Jesus is.

Some modern day versions of this is when we post a prayer or verse of scripture one minute and a meme that mocks who we are against the next. Or when groups we think we should be against are actually doing the things Jesus does such as tending to the poor and the immigrants with love and we say they are really trying to take away all that we have. What we are revealing when we do this is that we believe that Jesus’ command to love our enemy is only for our enemies to obey and that his command to care for others doesn’t apply if it means giving up our own comfort.

We attempt to distract ourselves and others from our own bad behavior by pointing out the bad behavior of others as we define it. But I cannot make myself any better by pointing out how bad others are. Jesus tells us to love and pray for our enemies, not spend our energy explaining to others how bad they think are. Jesus tells us to care for the poor and the immigrant without exception.

We see the same unhealthy behaviors in the bit we read from Genesis today – Adam and Eve have done the one thing God said not to. Instead of being satisfied with the whole orchard they had to have the one forbidden to them. And when God asks “Where are you?” it isn’t because God can’t find them. God is asking about the orientation of their hearts. And instead of accepting responsibility for their behavior, they play the blame game and step further and further away from God.

The German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, said that the “decisive, heart-breaking “fall” away from God isn’t the point in the story when humanity eats the forbidden fruit, but rather the moment when they hide from God afterwards, in effect turning away from their Creator and at the same time from their true identity*.”

And when God calls to them, instead of opening up to the transformation and healing, they grasp for more and more control, believing they can do for themselves what only God can do. They refuse to let the Spirit of God reorient their heart toward God.

This is the warning Jesus gives the scribes from Jerusalem about the dangers of attributing the work of the Spirit to the Adversary. Our hearts – the core of our being, that place in us from which our behaviors come – can be shaped by the Holy Spirit or by the Adversary. We are always being made into disciples of something or someone. We have the responsibility to be intentional about who we are discipled by, toward whom we orient our hearts. When we label loving compassionate acts as bad, we are orienting ourselves not toward God but toward the Adversary.

Do you remember our conversation about the Trinity a few weeks ago? The role of the Spirit is to transform us, to open our eyes and ears to see and hear Jesus’ teaching of God’s way of love. If we refuse to see and hear and do not admit we’ve lost our way, what we call repentance, we cannot receive God’s gift of forgiveness.

The crowds who sought out Jesus knew that what Jesus offered them was more not less of a life; they were willing to risk everything to receive God’s healing love. Those who already believed they had the best life were threatened by Jesus and so they tried to label the Good News of God’s Love as evil so they didn’t have to step out of their self-created comfortable life. They chose to be people of their own making rather than people of God.

When we orient ourselves toward God, we are continuously transformed by the Spirit to be Whose and who we are created to be. And often times people will think we are losing our minds, even those in our own families, and they will attempt to constrain us as we grow because it’s more comfortable for them.

When we make the choice to follow Jesus, our family includes everyone else who are doing their best with God’s help to follow Jesus, too. God’s Kingdom is always expanding and growing because that is the nature of God’s Love. When we are shaped by Jesus’ command to love God with our whole being and love our neighbor as ourself we accept the responsibility of using our energy to change our own behavior so that our life reveals God’s love.

And yes, there are days it does seem futile. There is so much violence in this world it seems absurd to think that love has the power to overcome it all. But this is precisely what Jesus proved – the world did it’s worst form of evil against him with the false notion they were in control by killing him. But Jesus gave himself willingly. And by the power of God’s Love rose from the death they thought was the final answer. It may be challenging to accept some days, but Love is the most powerful force in all of God’s creation. This is the Good News that Jesus shows us in flesh and blood how to live, what we are here to celebrate on this ordinary Sunday. We are all God’s beloved children and the more love we share the more love there is.

Do not lose heart. Our inner nature is being renewed day by ordinary day as we follow Jesus into God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven. Amen.

Heavenly Minded

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

Today is known as Trinity Sunday, it is every year the Sunday after Pentecost and our entry into ordinary time, the remaining 26 weeks in the annual church calendar until the season of Advent. By ordinary we mean ordered and deliberate: a life – our together life – of intentionality and awareness of God’s presence, our neighbors’ needs, and our impact on others and all of creation with our everyday moments and tasks. Pentecost is our inauguration as The Church, the people of God on earth as in heaven, and the Trinity is the foundation of our communion and community as Jesus Followers.

Attempting to explain the Trinity, how One God comprises Father, Son, and Spirit, has caused a lot of grief and conflict throughout the history of Jesus’ Church. Much ink and much blood has been spilled, missing entirely in our human attempts to “explain” God and our need to be right rather than live in God’s righteousness the true meaning of it all.

One of the more common metaphors for the Trinity is the egg: shell, yolk, and white. And while the egg is a good symbol for life, as a metaphor for the Trinity it isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. An egg is destructible and you can separate the parts and as we learned from Humpty Dumpty, you can’t put it back together again. So, the egg is out. And so is the apple, water, clovers, and any other comparison you can find with Google.

Another comparison I’ve heard that I think has some merit is the various roles each of us has in our family units: I am a daughter, mother, and sister all at the same time yet I’m one person. This is close, but my roles aren’t distinct enough to truly reflect the Trinity. And it doesn’t at all take into account Trinity as our ultimate model for community. If I start talking about the daughter me, the mother me, and the sister me working together to accomplish things, I have a bigger issue than trying to understand the biggest mystery of all time and I would need a psychiatrist not a theologian to straighten things out.

When I was in seminary, during a late-night mid-semester study session, we came up with a Boston Cream Donut analogy: cream filling, tender pastry, and chocolate glaze. Yeah. By morning we had realized the error of our ways and said we’d never speak of it again; I’m trusting y’all to keep the secret.

The greatest lesson I’ve received about the Trinity came from a conversation I had with a Greek Orthodox priest. While in Toronto, I discovered this beautiful orthodox-church-which-had-once-been-a-synagogue and when I could find the time, I’d go and just sit in their worship space and pray. I could feel the blessing of years of prayer and worship in this space like a warm safety blanket wrapped around me.

One day the priest came over and asked if he could sit with me and we began to talk. I asked him about the many beautiful icons in the space and in reading one to me that represented the Trinity he said that he didn’t understand why the western church insisted on explaining the Trinity in finite detail. The Trinity is a mystery, he said, a gift that helps to keep us oriented in our relationship with God. Accepting the mystery of the Trinity reminds us that although we are created in the image of God, God is God and we are not.

We are all in this together; we all bring our gifts and skills and talents to the table to nourish the world with God’s love. This is living the mystery of the Trinity in the ordinary moments of our lives. When we convince ourselves that we can explain the Trinity what we are really doing, whether we realize it or not, is shrinking God down so that we can fit God into our human understanding and contain the very power that created us.

Like our friend Nicodemus in today’s gospel reading, when we try to fit God into our human brain, we miss out on so many gifts. Nicodemus thought he had it all figured out. He tells Jesus that only God could do the mysterious things Jesus did so he knew that Jesus was from God.

“Well said, Nick!” says Jesus and then he tries to take Nick to the next level, which ironically isn’t more or better knowledge but letting go of the need to explain the holy happenings of God in human terms.

Accepting that Jesus is from God isn’t a piece of knowledge we put in a book and set on a shelf, it is the wisdom that reveals who we are and how we are to live. Jesus says, “Unless we are born from above, we can’t see God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.”

Nick is so sure of his own understanding that he misses what Jesus says. Instead of ‘born from above’ he only hears ‘born’. Instead of letting what Jesus says give him a bigger worldview, he tries to shrink Jesus down to his narrow view. Or as my grandmother used to say, “he’s so heavenly minded, he’s no earthly good.”

And so Jesus tries again, “Not physical birth but spiritual birth, by baptism, a new life in God’s Kingdom on earth as it is in heaven, the life I teach and show and live. Keep your eyes on me and you’ll discover this new life, the life you are created to live.”

This is the life given by God the Father, revealed by God the Son, and empowered by God the Spirit. The Trinity.

This mystery provides wisdom for who and whose we are and reveals our ultimate purpose: to be in communion with God and to live in community with each other. The Trinity shows us how we are to pattern our life together: united in love, distinct yet inseparable, all necessary, none greater or lesser, journeying together in The Way.

Our life together is to be grounded in God’s love for each of us and our differences are necessary. It takes each of our gifts and talents and treasures woven together to make the Kingdom complete like a beautiful tapestry.

Our current culture and society tell us that our differences are to be used to divide and separate us. Instead of letting your way of seeing the world expand my view, I must preserve my view and tell you yours is impossibly wrong. But if we aren’t even willing to try and understand each other, why on earth would we think we are able to understand God? As Jesus tells Nicodemus, if we can’t figure out earthly things, why even try with the heavenly stuff?

But when we let the Unity of the Trinity hold us together, our way of seeing widens to see everyone as beloved children of God. Like Nicodemus, we become able to hear the whole message, to really listen, and not just to what fits into our way.

The mystery of the Trinity teaches us that we are a part of something so much bigger than ourselves. Letting go of our need to fit God into our understanding doesn’t make us less significant but enables us to see our infinite value in God’s Kingdom. And the more we open ourselves up to each other, the more our understanding of this world grows and together with the Triune God we discover what it is to be a part of the prayer “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Amen.

Living our Story

We are human. Sometimes in our life’s story we are the hero, sometimes the victim, sometimes the villain.

We are human, rounded out with good qualities, vulnerabilities, and dangerous behaviors.

The best we can do is when we are the hero to not let it go to our heads or corrupt our tendencies toward compassion; when we are the victim to remember God is with us in our pain, express our lament, and stand up for ourselves and others justly and rightly so as not to simply turn the tables and make ourselves the one who harms others; and when we find ourselves the villain to own it, apologize and ask for forgiveness, set right what we have done to the best of our abilities and with God’s help, and honestly address with our true self the reason for being harmful to others so we can grow beyond the dangerous behavior.

We are human, created good in the image of our Creator who is Love. Let’s be human together, to the best of our abilities and with God’s help.

I pray your coffee is good and your day is fulfilling.