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.

Sanctified for Joy

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

Happy Mothers’ Day. It is a day of many emotions. Being a mother is challenging and complicated. Having a mother is challenging and complicated. All relationships are complex and the mother/child relationship is perhaps the most. And acknowledging this, we look for the joy today: that ‘so-much-more-than-an-emotion’ feeling that we get as we ponder what it is to bring life into this world whether it be by giving birth or by nurturing another to be who they are created to be. The joy of Mothering is done with hope for the future.

For our weekly readings during this season of Easter, we step away from reading Mark’s telling of the Good News and focus on John’s version. And beginning two week’s ago when Fr. Chuck was here we get bits and pieces of Jesus’ final words with his disciples before his arrest. Jesus tells them earnestly that the point of this last sermon is so that they won’t lose their way, that they will have what they need to follow The Way even when he is no longer physically with them. He is giving them the joy of hope.

In the three chapters from John 15 through 17, Jesus speaks the word we translate as Joy 6 times. In last week’s gospel reading Jesus is speaking directly to the disciples and says “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete”. In today’s reading, Jesus is praying for the disciples and says to God, “I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves.”

Joy is the ‘so that’ of following Jesus. Jesus often likens the joy of living as God’s Beloved to that of a new mother. Giving birth and raising children isn’t easy, to put it mildly, there is anguish and pain and struggle bringing life into this world AND there is so much joy. Joy in watching babies discover their fingers and toes and recognizing the faces that love them; joy in seeing their personalities develop over time; joy in watching them grow and become parents themselves.

Joy is why Jesus invites us into the Kingdom of God here and now with the directive to Love God, our neighbor, and ourselves; Joy is why he tells us to be disciples making disciples, so that we can experience the mothering joy that God knows in watching us discover who and Whose we are. Joy is what happens when we simply delight in others as fellow image bearers of God, when we discover that it isn’t our job to turn others into God’s image but to journey together in the lifelong process of becoming who God created and calls each of us to be.

In all of Jesus’ teachings he never tells us to make the world perfect and he never tells us we have to fix ourselves or other people. Jesus shows us in flesh and blood how to heal ourselves and others with love and he does this SO THAT we may know joy.

God didn’t create all that there is out of duty but because the power of love is a creative power; the more love we offer the more love there is. God delights in creation, in all that God made – flowers and birds and butterflies and puppies and kittens and trees and mountains and rivers and stars and sunsets and rainstorms and oceans and dolphins and coral reefs and snakes and spiders and lions and tigers and bears, oh my. At each stage, God calls it good and then God made us and all of creation was ‘very good’.

It was when we humans decided we could know better and do better than God that things went sideways. And from this moment God has invited us back to his presence, to the joy of remembering who and Whose we are. Joy is what God saves us for. Joy is why God calls us to love and serve the world in God’s name. Joy is the reason Jesus says ‘follow me and share God’s love with others, remind others that they are image bearers, too, SO THAT they can know the Joy of being God’s beloved’.

This is what Jesus is praying for – that in the midst of the struggles of this world we can find hope and strength and courage to keep loving better and better because we know that we are God’s beloved. Joy is knowing we are God’s beloved, regardless of our circumstance. As I was working on my sermon this past week, I did a little digging into how the word we translate into English as ‘world’ is used here and one of the definitions was ‘ungodly multitude’ which made me laugh probably more than I should have. Another commentator described it as those who don’t yet know the truth of God’s love. This is how Jesus sees and wants us to see the people – not as projects or something to fix and not as our enemies, but as fellow image bearers who don’t yet know the joy of God’s love.

Let me tell you a fun secret about Jim – he loves Little Debbie’s Honey Buns and there is always at least one box in our pantry. Currently, on the back of the little Debbie honey bun box is a picture of a honey bun being dunked in a cup of coffee with the words ‘pure joy’. Now, honey buns and coffee may be what makes Jim so sweet but when Jesus prays for us to have joy he wasn’t talking about our morning pastry and beverage choices. We can, and do, spend a lot of energy trying to pass the happiness of things outside of ourselves off as joy but true joy isn’t dependent on our circumstances. Joy comes from the very core of who we are.

Joy comes from being who we are created to be, when we let go of who we think others want us to be or who we think we should be to earn God’s favor and let the Way of Jesus and God’s love reveal to us who we are: God’s beloved people.

Joy doesn’t mean that we won’t ever have struggles or hardships. Joy means that even in the difficulties we are aware of God’s presence with us and we hold on to the hope of God’s promises. Joy is a choice and joy takes intentionality.

Jesus says we are sent into the world sanctified by the Truth. Being sanctified means to be set apart, to be made holy. The joy of God’s presence with us, knowing we are God’s beloved is the truth that sets us apart so that we can show the ungodly multitudes, I mean those who don’t yet know God’s love, the truth of who and Whose they are. We are created to live in this world so that all people can come to know the truth, the joy of God’s love.

I’m going to invite you to do something this week: as you leave today, don’t drop your bulletins in the recycling basket. Take it home with you and read Jesus’ prayer each day. Or better yet, dust off your Bible and read the whole of it in John chapter 17. The last thing Jesus did for his disciples before his arrest was to pray for them and he prays for us. Jesus prays for us! Read Jesus’ prayer as often as you can this week; let the words permeate and percolate; be aware of God’s love for you and experience the creative and healing power of that love. We are all created and called to share God’s love in this world so that others can know the joy of God’s mothering love, too. Amen.

Sheep, Shepherd, Love

A reflection on the lectionary readings for the fourth Sunday of Easter.

It’s been a long time since I wrote a reflection for a Sunday I wasn’t preaching. And I’m not going to promise that I’ll do it regularly again because I’ll just set myself up for disappointment. But, I do want to get back into the routine as much as time allows because it isn’t so much as I haven’t had time but that it’s just fallen off my radar.

During this past season of Lent, I led a quiet day at our church and we pondered how we can stop glorifying being busy and stop equating success with an overly full calendar. We have all the time in the world and we choose what we fill it with. More time doesn’t enable us to get it all done, but prayerfully and carefully considering what are our priorities and making time for what makes us thrive and letting go of what prevents us from thriving does. To do this well, we have to get to know ourselves, really know ourselves, looking deep within at our own motivations, looking honestly at the impact our behaviors have on others, and taking stock of what we let disciple us. And then we have to choose who or what we want to be disciples of and be intentional with our time and energy.

Disciples are students of life. In the time of Jesus’ earthly ministry – 1st Century Palestine – rabbis (teachers of life) called who they considered to be the best and brightest to follow them and learn to be just like them. Jesus called people who were just going about their ordinary lives to follow him and learn how to thrive in God’s love and mercy and justice in the midst of their ordinary lives, regardless of the political atmosphere and culture they lived in. This is what Jesus calls us to, how Jesus calls us to live.

In our lectionary readings for today, John writes a letter to people he loves dearly. He calls them beloved, brothers and sisters, and little children. Little Children was a kindly address used by rabbis for their disciples. It was not meant to be demeaning but endearing, as a parent loves their children. John wants the people he loves to know that they are loved by God and to let all that they think, say, and do come from that love.

Jesus talks about shepherds and sheep, something we need to make sure we understand from Jesus’ perspective, not our own 21st century, western culture minds. Sheep in our 21st century minds are considered stupid and to call someone sheep is an insult. But that is not at all how the people hearing Jesus’ words as he spoke them or the recipients of John’s letter would have thought. Sheep were well cared for because they provided clothing and food. Shepherds were responsible for the well being of their sheep and took that seriously. It wasn’t just a task or a job, it was their identity.

It goes back to the story of creation. God created all things and told us to tend and care for what God made. We aren’t given power to dominate (as we understand that word in our day and time) but power to equip for thriving. Jesus gives us in flesh and blood what this type of leadership looks like. The power God gives us to participate with God in the building up of God’s Kingdom on earth as in heaven is love. Love. Not hate, anger, political vitriol, physical might, coercion, or fear. God gives us the power of love to equip all people to thrive.

Lent is over and we are in the fourth week of the season of Easter. But the political atmosphere is well charged around us and we must be aware of who and what we are letting ourselves be discipled by. The giving up and taking on of Lent is to prepare us for our lifelong learning Journey. Our emotional and spiritual growth doesn’t just happen for six weeks a year. As Resurrection People, what we do in Lent, with God’s help, equips us for the other 46 weeks of the year. Do we give 25+ hours of our week to our favorite news outlet? We are being discipled by that. Do we give the majority of our time to ‘keeping up with ? We are being discipled by that. Do we shape our life around our political party or our sports team or our favorite celebrity? We are being discipled by that.

We are discipled by what we let shape the structure and flow of our time. To be a disciple of Jesus, to follow our shepherd, we need to structure our time on the foundation of God’s love for all people, for all creation, for us. To be Resurrection People is to live differently that those who don’t yet know the power of God’s love.

Jesus calls us to follow him and learn how to thrive in God’s love and mercy and justice in the midst of our ordinary lives, regardless of the political atmosphere and culture we live in. Let’s not add to the hate and vitriol. Let’s add to the love around us. Let’s follow Jesus and be Resurrection People.

In Joy and Wonder and Disbelief

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

Many years ago, when my son was 11, we went to the Grand Canyon. As we walked the rim, around every curve a new view opened up to us and I just kept saying, “WOW” over and over again. At one point, my son looked at me and said, “Mom, you need a new word.” This past fall, a quarter of a century later, Jim and I went to the Grand Canyon. Around every curve and new view, I said, “WOW”. I just can’t come up with any other way to vocalize my amazement at the beauty of the Canyon. And, I can’t imagine ever letting the awesomeness become commonplace, even if I lived there. I want to say “WOW” every time I see the Canyon, or the beauty of a sunrise, or an eclipse, or wildflowers along the roadside. But sometimes we get distracted from the amazing by the ordinary routines of our days.

Imagine how awed the disciples must have been when Jesus appears among them, the man they had watched get arrested and crucified, the man they had seen put in a guarded tomb. I think for most of us this is an impossible imagining, I mean we celebrate it at Easter and we shout Alleluia as loudly as decorum allows, but do we stop to imagine even this one impossible thing before breakfast each day?

This one thing is the heart of all that we say we believe. Christmas and Easter are the bookends of the Good News that God IS with, in, and among us all. All creation is good because it all comes from God. Humanity is what tips Creation from good to very good – ‘a vessel well suited’* for God to become one of us and to do astonishing things not just in the physical body of Jesus but in and through each of us, even in the ordinary routines of our days.

Jesus’ resurrection gives us all the imposs-ability to be resurrected through changed hearts and minds. And we live into this impossibility each day as we follow Jesus on earth as in heaven.

Jesus’ Resurrection doesn’t “cheat” death; Jesus isn’t a ghost. He physically presents himself to the disciples to show that the power of God’s love is greater that any death dealing force in this world. And yet, God created our physical bodies to experience physical death and God gives us the hope and possibility of everlasting life. What life after our physical life is is a mystery; we aren’t given this knowledge. But we are given the wisdom to live as God’s beloved children and to know that everlasting life begins with following Jesus to become more and more like him in this life.

To become more and more like Jesus is to live as Resurrection People every day. It is a steady, continuous, lifelong journey that we walk with each other. There is no goal, no endpoint, only a Way of Life. There is no individualism in The Way. There is no fast lane in The Way.

One of my favorite modern Theologians, Eugene Peterson, wrote a book called Practicing Resurrection: a Conversation on Growing Up in Christ. Each year as I prepare to preach on these post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, I’m tempted to just read y’all the book, but that would keep us here way too long, so I’ll just share a few quotes and perhaps we’ll all read it together as a study soon.

In talking about this continuous, lifelong journey of Following Jesus, Peterson says, “There are no shortcuts in growing up. Maturity cannot be hurried, programmed, or tinkered with. There are no steroids available for growing up in Christ more quickly. Impatient shortcuts land us in the dead ends of immaturity. The path to maturity is long and arduous. Hurry is no virtue. There is no secret formula squirreled away that will make it easier or quicker. But stories help.”

“But Stories help.” Stories aren’t just what we read in a book somewhere, they are what we create as we do life together as God’s beloved children. When we gather together and talk of the events of our lives, we create Story.

When Jesus appears to his disciples after the Resurrection, he is with them and eats with them and gives permission for them to touch him – all things that are impossible without a physical body. And, yet, we are told, that even in their joy, they were disbelieving and still wondering. They were in awe. I imagine them staring and saying “WOW” over and over until one of them said, “we need a new word” and someone said, “alleluia!”

And Jesus speaks into their wonder and disbelief with the ordinary. He asks, “do you have anything to eat?” Don’t you love that question?! It makes me laugh with joy. If we look at the stories told in our scriptures merely through an intellectual lens, this seems such an odd thing to ask. Why does the resurrected God need food? And we get distracted from the purpose of Story. Story is about life, real life, lived life, experienced life. Story is about why God created us and all things. This amazing book we call the Bible is a library of stories that tell of who and Whose these people are, identity stories of God’s people. And the library may not be receiving any new books, but that doesn’t mean God’s story is complete.

We are participants in the ongoing Story, creating Story as we gather together to eat and talk and share our own stories with each other. Our times of fellowship, the conversations that happen before and after our worship time, the events outside of St. Francis we attend together, seeing each other at the grocery store, our FEASTs and potlucks and Bunco and craft times, these are all just as holy as any of our structured worship that takes place in this building.

Being a disciple isn’t about passing some theology exam with a settled set of doctrine. Jesus didn’t sit his disciples down in a classroom each day and lecture them. Yes, he taught them, but he did so by doing life with them, showing them God’s amazing presence with them in all that they did in the ordinary tasks of their lives. Now, don’t get me wrong, the studies we do are important – they help us learn the stories of our faith ancestors and to discern the wisdom of asking ‘how do we do life as God’s beloved in our day and our time?’ We are still walking in God’s Story every day. God chooses to love and care for all of Creation through us and all that we do. And we should never stop being amazed at the enormity of God’s love and mercy and grace. And we should never stop learning and discovering who and Whose we are. And we should never stop saying, WOW or Alleluia with great enthusiasm.

Being a disciple is a human endeavor in which we live in the blend of joy and wonder and, yes, even times of disbelief. If all that God did were ‘believable’ God wouldn’t be an astonishing God. Miracles are supposed to initiate astonishment, to make us ponder what is and isn’t possible, to open our hearts and minds to all that God can do in and through us and God’s Creation. The same “wow” we exclaim at the beauty of God’s creation should escape our lips every time we catch a glimpse of God’s image and God’s amazing love in each other.

Start each day wanting to be “wowed” by God and in your awe and amazement, feed each other and those who are hungry for God’s amazing love, literally and figuratively. We are Resurrection People. Alleluia, Christ is Risen!

*https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/4/10/faith-and-doubt-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-easter-3

The Symbols of Easter

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

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Easter is the most Important Holy day, holiday, of our Christian faith; it is the foundation of all that we believe and proclaim with our worship and the way we live our lives as Jesus followers – as Resurrection People, living on earth as in heaven, participating with God in bringing hope and peace to the hurting world we live in. Easter is also the basis for the most prominent symbol of our faith: the empty cross – the instrument of death redeemed by God to be a symbol of hope and new life.

Do you know how some of what have become symbols of this holiday, such as eggs, come from? The egg is an ancient symbol of new life. Our Christian association of eggs with Jesus’ resurrection on Easter is a backward looking association connecting two historically unrelated things. There are legends that say Mary Magdalene either had a basket of eggs with her at the tomb on the first Easter morning or after the ascension gave one to the Emperor to explain the resurrection. In each story the eggs miraculously turned blood red. The word “egg” only appears once or twice in scripture depending on the translation. Luke gives us the words of Jesus, “if you child asks for an egg, would you give her a scorpion?”

Decorating eggs for Easter is a tradition that only began about the 13th century and they were dyed red to symbolize Jesus’ blood. Eggs were a forbidden food during the Lenten season so people would paint and decorate eggs to mark the end of the period of fasting, then eat them on Easter to celebrate.

And did you know that the Bible makes no mention of a long-eared, fluffy-tailed creature who hops around and delivers decorated eggs to well-behaved children on Easter Sunday? Nope. No bunnies at all. Nevertheless, the Easter bunny has become a prominent symbol of Christianity’s most important holy-day. The exact origins of this magical mammal are unclear, but rabbits, known to be prolific procreators, are like eggs an ancient symbol of fertility and new life.

A bunny bringing eggs to good girls and boys seems to have begun with German Lutherans. The idea that the bunny actually laid the eggs first arrived in America in the 1700s with German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania and brought their tradition of an egg-laying hare called “Osterhase” or “Oschter Haws.” Their children made nests in which this creature could lay its colored eggs.

Eventually, the custom spread across the U.S. and the rabbit’s Easter morning deliveries expanded to include chocolate and other types of candy and gifts, while decorated baskets replaced nests. Like leaving cookies and milk for Santa, Children often leave out carrots for the bunny in case he got hungry from all his hopping and that’s why we have carrots at Easter.

As for the chocolate, we can joyfully credit Cadbury’s, the first chocolate company to produce a chocolate Easter egg in 1873 and the first to figure out how to mass produce hollow chocolate bunnies so that they would be affordable to the masses.

The only other modern Easter symbol that is mentioned in scripture is the Lily. In the Sermon on the Mount, in telling us not to worry, Jesus says “consider the lilies of the field how they neither toil nor spin yet are more beautiful than any of Solomon’s robes.” The lily is a symbol for purity as well as new life and hope. Legends tell us that on the day of the resurrection, lilies sprang up wherever Jesus blood stained the ground, both in the garden of Gethsemane and on Golgotha.

I delight in the bunnies and eggs and flowers at Easter and I definitely have no problem with chocolate, except when there isn’t enough of it. Eggs, bunnies, and flowers are all things appropriately associated with life and new birth – the very gifts God gave us through the death and resurrection of Jesus. And through the past 2000+ years, people have, with the best of intentions, used these items to help others understand the power of the Jesus’ resurrection to change everything with the Good News: God took the very worst the world could do and offers us the very best: abundant life in the Kingdom.

Many of us will have feasts today around bountiful tables with people we love. So much of Jesus’ ministry was feeding and tending to others with the invitation to come and see what life is like in God’s kingdom on earth, the abundance of love and peace and hope, with no one lost among the margins.

What if we made the tables and feasts our most prominent symbol of our faith? The Table that is at the climax of our weekly worship sometimes seems less visible that the symbols we use for the grand holy days, perhaps because it is what we do regularly. The Feast of God’s Table is what Jesus told his disciples to do to remember. What God did through Jesus’ death on a cross is so that we can feast at God’s Table and invite the whole world to join us.

Jesus came to proclaim the Kingdom of God, a kingdom built of relationships, bound together by the love of God flowing through us into the broken and hurting world that desperately needs to hear the message of life and love.

For Jesus and his followers in first century Palestine, the world was just as politicized and polarized as ours is today. The Jewish religious and Roman empire leaders who were against Jesus didn’t just disagree with what he taught. Their control of the population was based on fear and intimidation and Jesus’ message that we should all treat each other from a foundation of love threatened their power. The leaders wanted to completely and totally silence him and his followers and the best way to do that was in death.

This wasn’t just some horrific and unexpected turn of events. Jesus was never plan B. It was God’s plan all along to come and live among us, as one of us, to experience the pain and suffering of being human, and to reveal himself to the people of the world who had forgotten him as their creator. To show that not even mortal death was more powerful than God’s love.

What we celebrate on Easter is the gift of grace and hope and forgiveness that can only come from God. By what God has done, we are given the inheritance of God’s kingdom so that we can live aware of his presence now. By what God has done, we can trust that the God who created us in love, to be loved, and to love will someday reconcile all things and put things as he intends them to be.

When Jesus asked Mary ‘why are you weeping, whom are you looking for’ he was doing more than just speaking words of comfort. He is giving her the true meaning of life for every human being. All that we think we are looking for can be satisfied by the new life we are given in our relationship with God.

Easter isn’t just a one day a year celebration nor just a 50 day season in the church. Easter is the way of life for all who follow Jesus. Like Mary we are to follow Jesus into the hurting world to share the message of love, participating with God in building God’s kingdom on earth, making more and more room at the feasting table. And that’s better than anything you can fit in an easter basket. Alleluia! Christ is risen!