Monthly Archives: June 2024

Reaching for the hem of his garment: A Sermon for Proper 8B, 2024

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I wonder how many of us feel desperate this morning, weighed down by the challenges we face, the world’s problem, an election season that promises to be full of anger, hatred, and fear. We see a world falling into chaos, with so many millions suffering the violence of war and political division, hunger, and homelessness. Our political system criminalizes homelessness, forces women to give birth at the risk of their own lives and that of their babies. And the only solutions that seem to be offered are bibles or displays of the Ten Commandments in every school classroom.

We are full of fear, despairing, dreading tomorrow or the next day, or the next four years. And we wonder as the voices of White Supremacy and Christian Nationalism grow louder and ever more shrill, whether the Jesus Christ whom we follow and in whom we put our faith … can speak to us and to the world, whether his death and resurrection can continue to give us hope, and strength, and courage.

Whatever those larger problems and challenges, on the national or global stage, there are also challenges that we face as individuals. Most, if not all of us, could tell some story about the horrors of our health care system. Maybe it’s the runaround we’re given when we try to get an appointment or a second opinion. Or it could be  the exorbitant costs of treatment which is the leading cause of bankruptcies in America. Or it could be the frustration that comes from a chronic problem that remains uncured after years or decades. It’s a broken system and the only people who seem to benefit from it are the corporations that increasingly seem to be running things. Even medical professionals, doctors and nurses, are overworked, underpaid, and frustrated.

So there’s a real sense of empathy when we come to today’s gospel story and hear these two stories of healing from Mark’s gospel.

In today’s reading, Jesus and his disciples come back home to Galilee after their foray into Gentile territory. Jesus gathers a crowd by the sea, a great crowd gathers, and presumably, Jesus is about to begin teaching. But he’s interrupted by Jairus, the leader of the synagogue, who asks him to come heal his daughter. So Jesus goes with him. But as he goes, he’s interrupted again. This is a favorite technique of Mark’s, to tell a story within a story. In doing so, he presents us with two very different sets of characters, two very different healings, and in those contrasts, hopes we will learn something new about Jesus.

Jesus and his disciples are walking along. They have returned from their visit to the other side of the lake, a journey we saw them on last week. As they go, they encounter Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, who implores Jesus to come and heal his sick 12-year old daughter. And so they go.

But before they can get very far, Jesus has another encounter. He hardly notices it, only because he senses power going out from him does he realize that someone has come to him. It’s a woman. She’s been suffering from hemorrhages of blood for twelve years. That makes her ritually impure, and contagious to those she encounters. And she’s tried everything, doctors, quack cures. This is her last, desperate, grasping at straws, attempt to be healed. So she sneaks in through the crowd, touches Jesus’ cloak, and is healed. 

When Jesus asks, “who touched me” his disciples respond with ridicule. There’s a crowd pressing around, how can we know, why are you worried about having been touched in the jostling? But Jesus persists, and the woman, in fear and trembling, comes clean. The contrast between the boldness of her actions in seeking healing and her response when challenged by Jesus is striking. In fear and trembling, she falls down at his feet, and “told him the whole truth.” Jesus comforts her: “Daughter, your faith has made you well, go in peace.”

As soon as the woman leaves, messengers from Jairus arrive to tell Jesus that there’s no point in continuing on to Jairus’ home. The girl has died. But Jesus persists, telling him, “Do not fear, only believe.” When they arrive, they are greeted by another crowd. This time, instead of jostling for position, the crowd is weeping and wailing, mourning the girl’s death. Jesus takes his closest disciples with him, Jairus’ family, too, and enters the sickroom. This time, instead of being touched by the one who would be healed, Jesus reaches out his hand to touch her. He tells her, get up. She does, restored to life and to her family. 

As I said, this story is an example of one of Mark’s signature techniques, often called the “sandwich” story, in which he interrupts his narrative with another story that often duplicates some of the same details and themes. So in this case, we have two healings, but two very different people: a ruler of the synagogue and a woman.

Think of the contrast between them: a man, a woman. A ruler of the synagogue, pillar of the community, a man of prestige, honor, probably wealth. The woman; she’s probably not been inside a synagogue in twelve years. She certainly hasn’t entered the temple in all that time to perform the required sacrifices. Her malady makes her ritually impure. She’s destitute, we’re told.

Think about how they approach Jesus: The ruler can expect Jesus to pay attention. He could approach as an equal but he doesn’t. Instead, he bows at Jesus’ feet, begging him to help. The woman, on the other hand, sneaks up to Jesus. She doesn’t dare confront him. Instead, it’s enough to touch his garment. But when Jesus notices her, like Jairus, she bows in deference, fear and trembling.

But there are also interesting comparisons between the woman and the synagogue ruler’s daughter. The girl, who is twelve, is born the year the woman’s illness began. They are healed on the same day. Just as the woman’s ailment makes her ritually impure, the girl’s body is ritually impure and makes all those who touch it impure. By restoring her to life, and by restoring the woman to health Jesus does more than heal them, he restores them to their community. And the woman is restored to community just as the girl is. When he heals her, Jesus calls her “Daughter”—creating relationship where there had been none, giving her status and identity.

So these are healings, not just physical, though they are that. They are also healings of community, of relationships, restoring to wholeness things that were broken. We might think about all the ways in which illness and infirmity estrange us from one another—we might be hesitant to share our struggles with others in our community or congregation. We might be forced to remain distant from community, forced by frail bodies to remain in our homes, unable to go to church or other gathering places. We might ponder how illness or physical struggle can estrange us from God. Jesus’ healings are about much more than fixing a physical ailment. They are signs of the coming of God’s reign.

And yet. We feel the despair of the woman who approaches Jesus with no hope. We look for signs of God’s coming reign and see only brokenness, death, destruction, evil. I was watching the livestream of General Convention, Friday, thinking about this sermon, seeing the pundits’ reaction to Thursday’s debate, the avalanche of Supreme Court opinions wreaking havoc to our nation and to our globe, with others looming tomorrow. All the while, the deputies were debating the meaning of “memorialization” an obscure issue related to the role of the Book of Common Prayer in the life of our Church. I immediately thought of Nero fiddling while Rome burned, but in this instance, the fires of institutional collapse were licking at the deputies’ feet.

But then came the vote on the reunification of the dioceses of Wisconsin. Our own John Johnson stood to testify and spoke eloquently about our state’s culture and history, the hard work that was done, the relationships that were built. And after the vote, in her remarks, my friend Jana Troutman-Miller bore witness to the important role of the Oneida in the history of the Episcopal Church in Wisconsin. And our new Presiding Bishop, Sean Rowe, of NW Pennsylvania and Western New York, has witnessed first hand the hollowing out of industry in the towns and cities of W. Pa, and has thought deeply about how to bring about change in the midst of decline and crisis.

Our challenges may persist more than twelve years. We may be at our wit’s end, full of fear and dread, but Jesus walks before us preaching the good news, healing the sick, bringing hope to the broken-hearted. Let us grasp the hem of his robe in fear and trembling, and may the healing power of his love and grace fill our hearts and bodies, and the whole world.

Bunnies, Mustard Seeds, and the Coming of God’s Reign: A sermon for Proper 7B

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I didn’t post this earlier.

Proper 6B

June 16, 2024

I’m going to tell you a story. It may not be a parable but it may get at something central about parables. On Wednesday morning, as I was coming into the courtyard here at church, I encountered a woman who was walking around and enjoying its beauty. But it seemed like she was looking for something. So I asked her, “May I be of help?” 

She said that she was looking for the baby bunny she had seen the day before. She had a lanyard around her neck, so she was here for a conference and had seen the rabbits the day before while walking back to her hotel. She was disappointed that the baby bunnies were nowhere to be found, although there was an adult sitting in the grass a few feet from us as we chatted. 

Our conversation was ironic, though she didn’t know it. Just before I got on my bike to come to church, my wife had come in from the garden complaining. She had put out new plants the day before, and that morning found one of them had been eaten by the rabbits. I guess the coyote I had seen strolling through the yard a month or two ago hadn’t been back recently.

To the stranger passing by, the bunnies in our courtyard were cute, enjoyable to watch. To gardeners, they are pests. To my cats, who watch them from our screened-in porch, they’re potential playmates or prey, though they remain tantalizingly out of reach. 

What might bunnies have to do with the Reign of God? What do mustard seeds and rabbits have in common?

Jesus taught in parables. That is something on which the synoptic gospels agree (it’s less obvious in the Gospel of John where Jesus uses other methods of teaching). But just what a parable is might not be clear. They are stories, or observations, taken from daily life that Jesus uses to describe the Kingdom, or reign, of God. We have two examples in today’s gospel:

The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how.

With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade. 

         The reign of God is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds, but when it grows up becomes the largest of the shrubs. That’s right, the reign of God is like a bush. Now, I’m sure if you’ve ever heard a sermon on this parable, you’ve heard some sort of comparison made between the mustard seed and faith; if you only have a little faith, it can grow and mature into something great.

But here Jesus does not compare mustard seed to faith. He compares mustard seed to the reign of God. Indeed, we need to keep one central thing in mind when we read the parables. They are intended to disorient us, to challenge our ordinary perception, to make us think and see the world in a new way. That’s often quite hard to do because of their familiarity. We’ve heard them so often we think we know what they mean, we think they can only mean one thing. And often, the gospels themselves insert an interpretation that forces a meaning upon us. 

Let’s listen to this parable again, in all of its brevity. The reign of God is like a mustard seed, which is the smallest of all seeds. But when it grows up, it becomes the biggest of the shrubs, and puts forth large branches, and birds make their nests in its shade.

Now, just a couple of things before we go on. First, mustard. It’s not something that people would ordinarily have planted in the ancient world. Sure they used it as a spice and as a medicinal, but mustard was then, as it is now, something of a weed. It’s rarely planted because when it is, it can take over a garden or a field in a relatively short time. It’s what we would call an invasive species, and what gardener would plant it, knowing that in a few years she would be fighting it.

The second observation I have is that it doesn’t become a big tree. It grows into a shrub, really, literally, a large plant. So, it’s not giant by any means. It’s not stately or beautiful. It’s a shrub.

So I ask again, how is the reign of God like a mustard seed? To provide another perspective from which to interpret the parable, let’s think about what ancient people might have imagined the relationship between a seed and the plant that developed from it might be. Clearly they knew that seeds produced plants and trees. They require water, soil, and nutrients to thrive. But they didn’t understand or even know the science of botany. To give just one example of ancient reflection, many people imagined that somehow the seed contained within it somehow, the full-grown plant. We needn’t concern ourselves with the details, suffice it to say that for some ancients, looked at one way, the seed was the seed, another way, it was the full-grown plant.

So the reign of God is like this mustard seed. It’s really somewhat dangerous. Yes, it’s small and it grows into a bush and provides shelter to birds. But it might get out of control, take over a field or a garden and suddenly, whatever its beneficial properties, you’re fighting it.

This for us may be the crux of it. Jesus said many things about the reign of God, but above all, he taught in parables. The reign of God is like a mustard seed, or a widow who has lost a coin, or a man who discovered a treasure in a field. He also said things like, the reign of God is near, it is even within you. But most importantly, the reign of God is just a little bit dangerous. It comes to turn our world upside-down. It comes to upend and overturn our expectations and to challenge the kingdoms of this world.

Jesus came preaching the reign of God, not a place, a kingdom, or even something like heaven. The reign of God is a new reality perceived in the midst of the old. It is a new way of being, ushered in by Jesus’ proclamation, expressed in his actions. As he taught, he also healed the sick, restored sinners to God, and brought together groups who had been alienated from one another. He ate with tax collectors and sinners and in his table fellowship offered a vision of a new community in which all might come together.

None of that is particularly obvious. He might have been a miracle worker. Others might have seen him as a fraud. He might have been a rabble-rouser. You probably didn’t want to invite him to dinner; who knows what random guests he might have brought along. But each of those things, his actions as well as his words, pointed to the new reality of God’s reign.

We don’t need to look far to see the reality that we face as a world. I hardly need to recite the litany of troubles facing us locally and globally. Perhaps at the heart of it, however, is this. We know we are beset by many problems, economic, environmental, social. But it seems that as a culture we are unable to come together to address them. Our bitter divisions have only deepened over the last years, and the solutions that have been offered seem only to widen the gaps that exist in our society and world.

Into this world, Jesus comes preaching the good news of the reign of God. And what is the good news? Perhaps only this. To have hope that in spite of the reality we see, that in the midst of it God is working a new thing. The reality is obvious; we are bombarded with it daily. But at the same time, there are signs of God’s inbreaking into that reality, to make it new.

Our mission as the people of God, is not only to proclaim the good news, but to see the good news in the world around us. Where do we see signs of God’s inbreaking into this world? Where do we see signs of God’s reign? We might see it in the work of our food pantry; the guests who visit Off the Square Club or Julia Weaver’s Uptown Sanctuary. It might be something as overlooked as our courtyard garden, where a passerby can pause to enjoy the beauty and shade on a summer’s day, and enjoy the site of baby bunnies. All of this we might take for granted. We might see them as our duty, or as perfectly ordinary. But to those who experience them from the other side, they are rays of hope and joy.

The reign of God is like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds that becomes a bush where the birds find homes. Where are the mustard seeds in our world, and in our daily lives, where God’s reign shows signs of breaking in?

Sabbath’s Blessed Rest: A sermon for Proper 4B, June 2, 2024

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`It may not be officially summer by the calendar but it sure feels that way—Memorial Day was last Monday. School will be out this week. Many of us are looking forward to the slower pace of summer with vacations, weekends away, time to relax with friends and family. In the liturgical calendar, we have also opened a new season. Officially the Episcopal Church calls this the Season after Pentecost. The liturgical color changes to green, and from now through the end of November, our gospel readings will focus on Jesus’ ministry and teachings as we read through the gospel of Mark, with another detour into the Gospel of John in August.

Somewhat deceptively, in the Roman Catholic calendar, this season is called “Ordinary Time”—which does not mean “ordinary” in our usual understanding, but refers to the ordinal numbers by the Sundays are named. We call them “propers”—from a Latin word; each Sunday has a set of readings that are specified for the day. But in another sense, ordinary time is an appropriate name for this season because it takes on a different vibe from the great seasons of Advent, Christmas, Epiphany, Lent and Easter, which focus on the birth, crucifixion, and resurrection of Christ. Our attention in this season after Pentecost is drawn to our response to those mighty acts of salvation, to our growth in faith and discipleship as followers of Jesus.

These comments about the liturgical calendar and seasons offer an interesting backdrop to today’s gospel reading and the lesson from Deuteronomy with which it’s paired. This year, we’ll be reading from Track 2 of the lectionary, which provides readings from the Hebrew Bible that relate in some way to the day’s gospel reading. Track 1, which we followed the last time we were in this year B of the cycle, offers a semi-continuous reading of the Hebrew Bible, in year B, the focus is on the rise of the monarchy.

We are presented with two gospel stories, coupled together that focus on Sabbath observance. And in the Deuteronomy reading, we have a version of the commandment to keep the sabbath day holy.

As Americans, we have been acculturated to value individualism, and personal freedom above almost everything else, so the idea that we might not be able to do whatever we want, whether it be a load of laundry or going grocery shopping, on a particular day of the week, elicits visceral, negative responses. Although the weekend still has meaning for us as two days when most of us are off of work, the reality is that there are many—in the service industry for example, or those who work two jobs to make ends meet—who do not have the luxury of 2 days off in a row or a Sunday for relaxation, and perhaps, going to church.

And with the ubiquity of devices in our lives, most of us have to be very proactive not to be reading or responding to emails from the office, or texts from bosses or coworkers about projects or tasks that need to be completed.

Thus, when we hear the Pharisees complain about Jesus’ disciples picking and eating grain on the Sabbath, or their criticism of Jesus’ for healing a man with a withered hand, our reactions are in part shaped by all of those deeply ingrained cultural attitudes, as well as by two millennia of Christian anti-Judaism which contrasts pharisaic morality and legalism with the freedom offered by Jesus. 

What we see here is not a conflict between rival religions but a conflict within Judaism; even a conflict within a particular movement in Judaism. Jesus and the Pharisees are not disagreeing about the Torah, they are disagreeing about its interpretation. Both would acknowledge the importance of the commandment “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.” The question they are debating is what does it mean to keep the Sabbath day holy. Jesus says, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath.” It’s quite similar to statements from rabbinic literature a century later (perhaps preserving earlier traditions): “The Sabbath is handed over to you, not you to it” and “Profane one Sabbath for a person’s sake, so that he may keep many Sabbaths.”

While the Sabbath is a day of rest in Judaism, it is also much more than that. As the great 20th century Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in his little book The Sabbath:

On the Sabbath it is given us to share in the holiness that is in the heart of time. Even when the soul is seared, even when no prayer can come out of our tightened throats, the clean, silent rest of the Sabbath leads us to a realm of endless peace, or to the beginning of an awareness of what eternity means. … Eternity utters a day.

But what did Jesus mean when he said, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath?” We might be inclined to think that the Sabbath then is dependent on human interpretation, or human desire for keeping it, but it’s likely Jesus meant something rather different.

To get at this question, it’s worth going back to the commandment. There are two versions of it in Hebrew scripture, and we heard the less familiar one, from the book of Deuteronomy, not from Exodus 20:8-11 where the commandment to keep the Sabbath holy and to rest on that day is connected with God’s actions in creation—creating the universe and humankind on the first six days and on the seventh day creating the sabbath: creating, resting, blessing the seventh day and hallowing it.

It’s not only that God created, blessed, and sanctified the Sabbath; God also blessed and sanctified rest itself. Indeed, we can see that in addition to being a God who creates, God is also a God who rests and in so doing, offers us the gift of blessed and sanctified rest.

 Imagine that. 

In our frantic world, when we have made ourselves slaves to our devices, to our email and texts, when so many of us are never disconnected from our jobs, God offers us the gift of blessed and sanctified rest. We can disconnect, slow down, and stop—and, most importantly, we don’t need to feel guilty about it, because God has given us the opportunity, the gift, of sanctified and blessed rest.

The reason for keeping the Sabbath day holy and for resting is rather different in our text: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore the Lord your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day.”

To put it bluntly, here observance of the Sabbath is also connected with God’s nature and God’s actions. But in this case what is emphasized is God’s act of liberation of God’s people—the deliverance of the Hebrews out of slavery in Egypt. So Sabbath is partially an act of remembrance of what God has done, and who God’s people are, but it is also liberation or freedom, in the sense that on this day, God’s people do not have labor and toil as they did while they were slaves in Egypt; or to use a contemporary metaphor, slaves to the almighty dollar. 

But Sabbath is not a day of rest, remembrance, and liberation for myself alone; it is also a day of rest for everyone—male and female, slave and free, and even one’s animals. The day of rest extends to all of creation! In that sense, the commandment to rest on the Sabbath connects up with the commandment to love one’s neighbors. It is an act of love of others to allow them to rest, as well. 

In his wonderful little book, Sabbath as Resistance, Hebrew Bible scholar Walter Brueggeman takes it a step further. Noting that we are caught up in a consuming and commodity culture, where our value is based on what we have and buy and where we are bombarded by advertising, made anxious when we don’t accumulate enough stuff, or enough for retirement, Sabbath is also an act of resistance against that anxious and acquisitive culture. He writes: 

I have come to think that the fourth commandment on Sabbath is the most difficult and most urgent of the commandments in our society, because it summons us to intent and conduct that defies the most elemental requirements of a commodity-propelled society that specializes in control and entertainment, bread and circuses … along with anxiety and violence 

I encourage all of you to look for ways of bringing Sabbath into your lives and the life of your families, whether it be for a day, a half-day, or even an hour; to enjoy the blessed and sanctified rest of a restful God, and to experience the freedom in a God who liberates us.