Monthly Archives: January 2025

Proclaiming the Good News of God’s Radical Love: A Sermon for Epiphany3C, 2025

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3 Epiphany

January 26, 2025

Today, following the 10:00 service, you’re invited to participate in a series titled “Radical Love.” Sponsored and organized by our Pride Committee, the series is intended to introduce us to new ways of thinking about LGBTQ+ inclusion, and new ways of thinking about the Christian faith in light of the experiences of our LGBTQ+ siblings in Christ.

This series has been long in the planning stage and it’s only coincidence that it is beginning now, when the LGBTQ+ community is feeling especially vulnerable and trans and non-binary people are facing new exclusions and restrictions. But for us at Grace to step boldly into these new challenges is a sign that our faith in God continues to challenge us to reach out to the vulnerable and marginalized and to try to build a community that in its embrace of diversity is a model to others of God’s all-inclusive love. 

Like the timing of our series, today’s gospel reading couldn’t be more fitting for the moment in which we find ourselves. During this year C of the three year lectionary cycle, our focus is on the Gospel of Luke. Although we have been reading from that gospel since the beginning of Advent in December, it may be helpful to have a reminder of some of its unique features and themes. First, it’s important to keep in mind that the gospel of Luke is the first half of a coherent narrative that includes the Book of Acts. They are connected thematically above all by the importance of geography. The gospel tells the story of the spread of the gospel from Galilee to Jerusalem to the world, ending the book of Acts in the center of the ancient Mediterranean world: Rome. 

There’s a second important thematic connection. Luke stresses the activity of the Holy Spirit. It came upon Jesus in his baptism; we see mention of it here in our gospel reading: “Jesus, filled with the power of the Spirit…” When he dies on the cross, Jesus’s last words in Luke are “Into your hands I commend my spirit.” Then, the Holy Spirit comes upon the disciples at Pentecost and they are carried by the power of the Spirit into all the world.

Among other unifying themes, there is one in today’s reading that bears mention. Luke is careful to show the continuity of the Jesus movement, and of John the Baptist with the Prophetic tradition of Israelite religion. He describes John in ways consistent with the great prophets of Elijah and Elisha, and here we see Jesus appealing to the authority of Isaiah as he begins his public ministry. It’s also important to note that Luke depicts Jesus as a faithful observant Jew: “he went to the synagogue on the sabbath, as was his custom.” 

So Jesus, the hometown boy made good, is invited to read from scripture. He combines two passages from Isaiah into a coherent message beginning “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release for the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Remarkable enough these words, what comes next is even more so. Jesus sits down and says, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” The reading breaks off here but the text goes on to describe the changing response of Jesus’ listeners. At first, we’re told that they were amazed at his gracious words. Then they asked, “Is not this Joseph’s son?” In response, Jesus seems to goad them, citing the adage, “no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown” and they turn on him. By the end of the story, they’re trying to kill him. 

It’s astonishing really that the mood changed so quickly. Was it because Jesus was making authority claims for himself and his powers that the crowd didn’t seem were warranted? Was that he was dissing his hometown, as many of us are wont to do?

In any case, Jesus’ rather free quotation from Isaiah is meant by Luke to convey what Jesus is about, what his ministry and preaching will entail. To put it into contemporary language—this is Jesus’ mission statement according to Luke. He makes this clear later in the gospel when the John the Baptizer, now in prison, has gotten word of Jesus’ activity. He sends two of his disciples to Jesus to ask him if he is the Messiah or if they are to wait for another. Jesus response to them, and to John is “Go tell John what you have seen, the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the poor have good news preached to them.” 

I had reached this point in my sermon prep on Friday and was discerning where I might take it when I was interrupted by someone who had come to Grace seeking help. No, he wasn’t looking for rent money or gas. He wanted to arrange a funeral and spot in our columbarium for a friend for whom he was power of attorney. As we chatted, he explained that this friend wanted Grace to be his final resting place because of our reputation for welcome and because a dear friend of his was interred here.

As I’ve reflected on that conversation, I’ve been pondering the gossamer threads that connect us and create community, among the living, and among the living and the dead. Those bonds are fragile and easily severed as we are seeing in our nation today but it may be that our most urgent task right now is to nurture and strengthen them. As our immigrant neighbors cower in fear and transgender and nonbinary siblings face erasure it is incumbent upon us to show by our words and our deeds that our community embraces and welcomes all people.

We might take inspiration from Paul’s words in today’s epistle reading. They are often reduced to requests for volunteers: some are called to be ushers, some to be lectors, some to serve on the altar guild. But it’s much more than that. Paul was trying to create a community across religious and social distance, across the barriers of slave and free, Jew and Gentile. It’s worth pointing out that when he uses this formula here, he does not include gender as he does in the earlier letter to the Galatians; perhaps, as many scholars posit, that division was too deep for him to close.

In a way, the absence of the male/female binary in Paul’s formula here points to the difficulty of creating and maintaining community across difference. We all know that, of course. We find ourselves connecting with people very like ourselves, from our ethnic or racial identity, from our socio-economic class, from our neighborhoods, even from our age cohort. But Paul challenges to do more and to do better, to build those bonds of community and relationship with people unlike ourselves, to reach across the differences of class, gender, race, ethnicity, and more, even religion.

When we think about the community Paul envisions for the body of Christ, we must remember that it is not only focused on building those relationships internally. It should also be a witness to the wider community, a witness of God’s loving embrace of all humankind, whatever their race, gender, religion, or immigration status. 

And that witness should also be one of proclamation of the Good News of the year of the Lord’s favor—the coming of God’s reign. We should boldly preach that good news to the poor release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and freedom for the oppressed. May we have the courage to proclaim it, and the courage to embody that good news!

Quiet Moments of Grace and Glory: A Sermon for 2 Epiphany C, 2025

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On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee. I know I often say it about gospel readings, but this story from the Gospel of John truly is one of my favorites. It comes around every three years in the lectionary cycle and I look forward to it each time, even though I suspect that many of you remember at least snippets of what I’ve said about the text in previous sermons. 

One of the things we’ve lost with the switch to the Revised Common Lectionary, is a sense of Epiphany as a season, not just a single Sunday or two, if you include the Feast of the Baptism of Our Lord, which we observed last Sunday. Traditionally, this gospel story was read every year on the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, and indeed in the earliest centuries of Christianity, in addition to drawing on the themes of the Coming of the Magi, and Christ’s baptism, the feast of the Epiphany also included allusions to the Wedding at Cana.

Epiphany as a season, or observance, invites us to explore all of the ways that God reveals God’s glory in the world, and especially in the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ. What better way to reflect on that glory than by exploring this story, which ends with the gospel writer telling us that “he revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.”

Like other stories in the gospel of John, like the gospel as a whole, this story is dense with symbolism and multiple meanings. Take the very first phrase, for example—“On the third day…” What comes to mind for you? I hope that phrase from the Nicene creed we recite each Sunday “On the third day, he rose again from the dead…” 

By the way, this week marks the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea, where what we now know as the Nicene Creed was originally formulated—it underwent some editing during the course of the century so what we say is not identical to what was issued from the Council. Sorry, that was a free historical tidbit for you to munch on.

By using this phrase, the gospel writer is pointing us ahead to the gospel’s end, to Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection. As I’ve said many times before, for John, the crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension are all wrapped together in the term “glorification;” so the miracle of turning water into wine is also a symbol of cross and resurrection.

It’s worth pointing out that there’s another connection between the story of the wedding at Cana and the crucifixion. Those two stories are the only times when Jesus’ mother is mentioned in the gospel, never by name. Each time, Jesus addresses her as “Woman”—much scholarly ink has been spilt debating whether this is a derisive or honorable form of address. I have no opinion on the matter, I invite you to draw your own conclusions.

But there’s another deep resonance in that phrase “on the third day.” This verse is the beginning of the second chapter of John. Do you know how John 1 begins? We heard it a couple of weeks ago: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” The gospel takes us back to the very beginning, to creation.

If you go a little further in chapter 1, though, you might notice something interesting. Three times, in verses 29, 35, 43, they begin, “the next day…” If you add those three next days with the third day, you get the 7th day—and remember, on the seventh day, God rested, blest and hallowed the Sabbath, and said it was all very good. There’s a sense in which this wedding banquet is itself the messianic feast, the eternal sabbath, where food is abundant and wine flows freely where joy and happiness abound.

Now to the wine. How much wine was it? 6 jars, 20-30 gallons each. 120-180 gallons total, let’s say roughly 5 bottles of wine in a gallon—that’s 600 to 900 bottles. Yes, that’s a lot of wine, and remember, they had run out. The party had been going on for a long time already, and thanks to Jesus’ miracle, would continue quite some time to come.

The story, the season, may gladden our hearts and lift our spirits, if only for a few minutes, as we divert our attention from the events taking place in our world; the devastating fires in California, the continued rebuilding after hurricanes in the South; the anxieties so many of us have about what the future holds in store.

As I was looking through past sermons on this gospel reading, I came across the one I preached in 2013. Like today, it was the day before the Second Inauguration of President Obama and the day before the observance of MLK Day; that confluence seemed a fitting reminder of where we were as a nation, how far we had come. Now, twelve years later; Inauguration Day and MLK Day once again coincide but the feeling is quite different, isn’t it? The fear and foreboding, the threats to democracy, to religious and cultural pluralism, to diversity, are profound and dangerous. To take joy in a gospel reading seems hollow, a denial of the stark realities that we face as a nation and as Christians.

 It may be that another minor detail in this story helps us to make sense of it and ourselves in our current context. For all the extravagance of the superfluity of wine, the miracle itself is understated and downplayed. Jesus does nothing demonstrative to change the water into wine; the only ones who notice it are the servants who obey his instructions. There’s a quiet grace here in the midst of the superabundance.

And that makes sense. We may not be wondering whether we have the resources to keep the party going; our concerns may be much more mundane, more urgent. We may be wondering whether we have the energy to keep going; whether we have the stamina for the struggle ahead. We may wonder whether the effects of climate change that have shown themselves so dramatically and tragically in these last six months will affect us as well as so many other millions in the US and across the world. We may be worrying about the threats to our undocumented neighbors, or to transpeople, or the bizarre sabre rattling around Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal. We may be hoping for a miracle—hoping that God will intervene to make things right.

But while we wonder, and worry, and wait, Jesus may be spreading his grace in small, undetectable ways, in our lives, among our community, our friends and family, our world. Just as very ordinary grapes are transformed by the skill of winemakers into majestic wines; just as water was transformed into wine, so too can ordinary things, ordinary people, ordinary moments, be changed into moments of grace, bringing hope to the hopeless, healing to those who are hurting, love to the unloved.

We don’t know what the future holds in store. We don’t know how we, our fellow Americans, the world, will weather the coming storms. But we can be sure that Christ is walking into the future with us; that there will be moments of quiet and unexpected grace, and that with his help, we may be the ones who create those moments of grace for others.

AI and the Word: A sermon for the First Sunday after Christmas, 2024

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December 29, 2024

I’ll be honest with you. I haven’t done much thinking about, or exploring of Generative AI. Maybe it’s because at this point in my professional and personal life, the idea of adopting and growing comfortable with yet another technological innovation seems rather pointless. Perhaps it’s because I don’t see its relevance to the kind of work I do. Oh, I remember back when ChatGpt was introduced, seeing a couple of theologian/pastors post about their attempts to use the new technology to write sermons—their efforts, if I recall correctly—were largely failures.

I’m aware of the questions raised by AI—ethical, environmental, moral. I read of faculty who struggle with students who turn in AI generated or assisted essays; of the wild claims made by its advocates for doing away with all sorts of creative work, mostly by plagiarizing work that’s already been made by those creators. I know of the vast environmental toll taken—the energy and water required to run the computers. I’ve seen the stories about the inadequate responses generated by AI to questions posed—and problems presented—in healthcare for example.

But I think the real reason I have no interest in making use of AI in my work is that it goes against what I take to be a fundamental part of my Christian faith, grounded in these first verses from the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

Each year we hear these words twice in succession. It’s the gospel reading for Christmas Day, and in the Episcopal Church, the gospel reading for the first Sunday after Christmas. As I point out every year on Christmas Day, I’ve preached on this text every year that I’ve been ordained, and a couple of years before that. I’ve also preached on it on many first Sundays after Christmas, so I’ve written lots of sermons about it. But that’s ok, because no one single sermon could exhaust the meaning and power of this passage.

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Centuries ago, it was the custom of preachers and theologians to take a phrase or verse from scripture as their motto. They might include it on every title page of works that they published and they used it as a kind of polestar by which to guide their ministry and their work. If I were to adopt such a practice, I would probably choose this sentence from John’s gospel—because it conveys the mystery of the incarnation 

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. It may be that these words, more than any other in scripture reassure me when I am most apt to question my faith. That brief phrase, in fact the whole of these first verses of John’s gospel have provided food for thought for theological speculation across the centuries of the Christian tradition. In the early church, John’s use of the term logos—word to refer to Christ provided an avenue for the introduction of Greek philosophical reflection into Christian theology and inspired deep theological reflection.

Hidden in these words is first of all the notion that Christ was present in creation, indeed, that Christ, the Word was the means by which God created the universe. After all, in Genesis 1, God speaks, and by speaking brings the universe and all that is in it, into existence. But John’s gospel goes further, by proclaiming that not only is the logos, the word the means by which the universe came into existence, the logos also became flesh, became incarnate and lived among us. 

That notion goes much further than any ancient greek philosopher would go. Indeed, it is an idea that would be repugnant to most of ancient greek thought, because it was understood that the material world, the world of matter, of flesh and bone, was corrupt, or if not corrupt, was less good than the spiritual world, the world of ideas. So when John proclaims the Word became flesh, he proclaimed that the spiritual world intermingled with matter.

There is something else that is significant here. The reason I have found these words so reassuring over the years is that they provide a link between our words and God. For John to say that in the beginning is the word, is to suggest that in our language, in our thought, in our attempts to understand God and the nature of the universe, we approach, even touch, the divine word. There is a way in which we, created in the image of God, are created in the image of the word of God. In other words, to think, to reason, is a way of coming closer to God. 

So I find all of that quite reassuring. But John doesn’t stop there, with a message only for intellectuals. He goes on. The word became flesh and dwelt among us. This is what caused problems for sophisticated Greeks, and it is a problem for us as well. Greeks didn’t have any trouble conceiving of God as some sort of divine reason or order brought the universe into existence and sustained.

The notion that this underlying order, this reason might take on human form was nonsense to Greeks, because the material world, the world of flesh and blood was a pale, blemished imitation of the true, real, spiritual world. 

With this verse, John brings us back to Bethlehem, to the reality of the incarnation. Literally the Greek reads, “and the word became flesh and tabernacled among us.” That is to say, the word took on frail human flesh to be like us. But John goes on and in one of his key paradoxes, reminds us that in that temporary dwelling, we catch sight of God’s glory.

So we are back in Bethlehem, back in the confusing paradox that God became incarnate in a very ordinary way, in the poorest of circumstances, in the weakest of all human forms, a baby. And it is in that paradox, that we see God’s glory. For John, it is the same paradox as the cross, which he almost always refers to as the glorification of Christ. What he is telling us is that in these moments of weakness, we see God’s majesty and power.

But we have the reality of that incarnation before us in many ways. We see it, we taste it in the bread and wine of the eucharist, when we receive the body and blood of Christ. We see it in the very imperfect Church, both our local community, and the worldwide communion, bodies filled with flaws and imperfections, but also, mysteriously, the body of Christ. And finally, we may see it in ourselves, imperfect human beings though we are, but by the grace of God filled with the presence of Christ. May this Christmas season rekindle in all of us the knowledge of Christ’s presence, of Christ’s glory, in ourselves, in our church and community, and in all the world.