Author Archives: djgrieser

Unknown's avatar

About djgrieser

I have been Rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Madison, WI since 2009. I'm passionate about Jesus Christ and about connecting our faith and tradition with 21st century culture. I'm also very active in advocating for our homeless neighbors.

Rector’s Annual Report, 2025

Posted on by
Reply

November 16, 2025

As I reflect on the past year, I realize the extent to which our lives have been dominated by events in the world and by construction—both our own new roof and plans for the restoration of the gardens. There is also all of the construction that is taking place on North Carroll St.—both the new Wisconsin History Center and the conversion of the Churchill building to a boutique hotel. In fact, I wrote much of this report at home because of the distracting noise outside my office windows.

We should all take great satisfaction in the project that has consumed so much of our time energy and financial resources over the last few years—preparing for and accomplishing the replacement of the slate roof on our nave. As I have often said, our forebears at Grace have bequeathed a great legacy to us in this beautiful and historic building and what we have done this year is ensure that we will be passing that legacy on to future generations, future members of Grace as well as the wider community that appreciates its beauty and its sacred presence on Capitol Square.

There are many people to thank for their contributions to this project, not just the many donors, but those who worked so hard over the years to see it to fruition: above all Roof Committee Chair Deb Anken-Dyer, Project Manager Fred Groth, members of the Roof Committee: Suzy Buenger, John Wood, Amy Robinson, Joe Bartol, Jane Hamblen. Similarly, our Fundraising Committee deserves thanks: Mark Hope, chair, Suzy Buenger, Amy Robinson, James Waldo, and Jane Hamblen.

While the roof is complete, there will be more construction in the coming year. As you have heard, while making masonry repairs related to the roof, we discovered that the wood trim around the stained glass windows has experienced significant deterioration. We will be moving forward in the spring to repair them and once that work is complete, the gardens will be restored. Fortunately, we have received a significant grant toward the garden restorations, and while landscaping cannot be included in the Historic Tax Credits, the window repairs can be.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to the lay leadership of the parish—…

And the staff. We are blessed to be served by amazing people in the office. Kristen and Erin are a joy to work with; good-natured, incredibly competent, going far above and beyond their position descriptions and their normal working hours to make sure things run smoothly and problems solved. And, when necessary, they will transport the rector to the Emergency Room. It is truly an honor to work with both of them and I can’t imagine what life at Grace would be like without them—or what my life would be like. Our financial manager, Andrew also does a great job while working remotely.

I would also like to extend a word of thanks to our music staff. Mark continues to do great work on the organ and piano and his flexibility is an inspiration. Matthew has stepped into the role of Music Director after Berkley’s retirement and has wowed us (or at least me) with his musical selections. I’m still thinking about the Schütz that was sung a few weeks ago. 

Mary Ann and Brad do so much to create opportunities and a welcoming environment for fellowship and Vikki continues to do stellar work in the pantry in these challenging times. We should all extend our thanks to all of them because they are often the face of Grace to the outside world, to visitors and newcomers and they are our partners in ministry, in sharing God’s love in our community.

This year saw the retirement of Deacon Carol, who served among us for around eighteen years, with countless pastoral visits to the hospitals, nursing homes, and homes. She was a constant presence at the altar, and a joyful face. As she stepped away, Deacon Georgeanne stepped up and makes her presence felt in our worship, through pastoral care, and in supporting many other aspects of our ministry. We’ve also been blessed over the last five  months with Jonah as he grows into his priestly ministry. We will be saying Good bye and Godspeed to him and Olivia next week as he enters a new call elsewhere in the diocese.

Friends, we are facing some significant challenges in the coming year. It’s not just about the maintenance and repair of our physical plant and gardens that takes up so much of our time, energy, and resources. Over the last few years, we have lost some significant contributors to our financial well-being and need to come to terms with what that means for our ongoing operations. We are fortunate to be well-endowed, with the Grace Foundation to support capital repairs and improvement and the Development Fund Trust to strengthen our ministry and mission but without increased revenue, we will not be able to sustain operations at their current level.

Fortunately, Junior Warden Mary has organized a Strategic Planning Committee to strategize about Grace’s future. That effort should bear fruit as we look to increase membership and reach out more effectively into the community. But we face headwinds. In spite of the continued growth in Madison and Dane County, the reality is that Christianity in the US is in decline, the Episcopal Church is in decline as well and while our message proclaiming God’s love and inclusion of all is a powerful draw, Christianity in general is losing its appeal as it is being coopted by forces of division and narrowly identified with a particular political perspective.

As we continue to work to make our spaces and grounds welcoming and attractive, we need to translate that to our common life as well. We are uniquely positioned to grow as we are blessed to have many visitors in our pews every Sunday. While many of those visitors are from out of town, we also have many who are looking to connect with God, with a community of the faithful and I don’t think we do a good enough job of inviting them in and incorporating them in our common life. The Welcoming Committee that did such great work in the years leading up to the Pandemic needs to be reinvigorated. But I think we also need to develop more opportunities for newcomers as well as long-time members to grow in their Christian life, through bible study, and learning about the Christian faith.

It’s also true that much of the work that is done by volunteers is done by a relatively small group of people. We need to encourage newcomers, and not so new-comers to become more involved; to not just attend Sunday services, but to participate in them by serving as ushers, lectors, chalice bearers, acolytes, and altar guild. Worship is something the whole people of God engage in, and by participating more actively in worship, people deepen their own experience of God even as they help others encounter the divine.

One area of our common life and ministry that has languished recently is our Christian Formation program. When Erin stepped away last summer, we struggled to come up with a solution and conversations with parents are ongoing. With our limited financial resources and the reality of life for families right now make it difficult to find space, energy, and opportunity to develop a successful program. Still, we have done that in the recent past and it should be possible to rebuild that program. I ask your prayers as we continue to discern a way forward.

We live in uncertain and challenging times. We are watching as old certainties are collapsing and even our assumptions about our nation and society seem to be subverted. With all of the noise, the uncertainties, the anxiety, fear, and anger, it can be difficult to think clearly and to discern faithfully what we should be doing as individuals and as a congregation. But that discernment is crucial, and working together to craft a future should be our faithful response in this moment. May 2026 be a year when our conversations are deep, our prayer life is rich, and we are blessed by the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work in our community.

Visions of the Future: A Sermon for Proper 28C, 2025

Posted on by
Reply

Proper 28C

November 16, 2025

I have to tell you. I find it more than a little ironic that the gospel reading on the Sunday of our annual meeting, in two out of three of the three years of the lectionary cycle concerns Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the Jerusalem temple. Did we spend over $1 million dollars on replacing the slate roof this year? Are we anticipating around $300000 in additional expenditures on the building and grounds over the next year? (You’ll hear more about that later). Does Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple suggest that such expenditures are not in keeping with God’s will? I’ll leave that question for you to ponder.

And to be honest, even as we have talked about ensuring the continued presence of Grace Church on Capitol Square, not least by installing a slate roof with an expected lifespan of 80-100 years, I wonder sometimes whether this building will be standing a century from now. With climate change continuing, and the massive disruption it poses to life on earth, will this planet be habitable in 2125? 

We may not like to think that far in the future, unless we’re watching some Hollywood post-apocalyptic movie but our lessons today force us to confront such questions, if only because they present us with strikingly different visions of the future. In the gospel reading, we’re told that there will be wars, famines, earthquakes, and that followers of Jesus will be persecuted. It’s tempting to plot those events on our own situation, to wonder, as Christians are prone to do, whether all those things that are taking place in our world today, are portents of Jesus’ return. Especially this week, with the images of clergy being manhandled, pepper-sprayed and arrested as they bear witness to the injustice of ICE detentions and deportations at Broadview in Chicago, we may indeed wonder whether we are in the last days.

I’ll come back to that gospel reading in a minute but first, I want to draw your attention to the passage from the book of Isaiah, and the very different image of the future envisioned by the prophet. 

The passage from Isaiah is full of hope—written at a time when great things seemed possible. The Babylonian exile was over, the exiles had been allowed to return to Jerusalem, and they were rebuilding their lives, the city, and most importantly, the temple. It’s a reboot of creation with God promising to create a new heaven and a new earth, for the former ones had passed away. Other biblical texts tell us of the struggles the returnees had, of the devastation they encountered and the hard work they faced. The situation was so dire that in fact many of the exiles chose not to return. They had built comfortable lives in Babylon and preferred that to the uncertainty and struggles they would have faced in Jerusalem.

But still it’s a vision that captivates us as it has captivated Jews and Christians, artists and writers over the millennia: 

The wolf and the lamb shall feed together,
the lion shall eat straw like the ox; 
but the serpent– its food shall be dust!

They shall not hurt or destroy
on all my holy mountain, says the Lord.

To express such hope and faith in God, in these circumstances and after so much had happened—the destruction of the temple, being carried off to Babylon, fifty odd years living in a foreign place, and then to return and to face all of that struggle:

For I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth; 

the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.

The gospel reading puts us back into the last week of Jesus’ life. It’s an incident recorded in all three synoptic gospels, Matthew and Mark as well as Luke, but Luke does something interesting with it. Remember that Jesus and his disciples are coming from Galilee to the big city. They staged what we call the Triumphal Entry and then immediately, Jesus and his disciples go to the temple. He upends the tables of the moneychangers and then over the next days teaches in the temple.

In Mark’s version, the remark about the temple’s grandeur is made by some of Jesus’ disciples, and in that way, it might be something tourists might say when they see a remarkable building. But Luke changes it to “some in the crowd” and so Jesus is addressing his follow-up remarks, not just about the temple’s destruction but about the signs of his coming and persecution to a wider audience than his closest disciples.

Remember, Luke is writing after the cataclysmic events of the Jewish revolt and the brutal Roman repression that culminated in the destruction of the temple. Around the end of the first century, Luke and his readers are still processing those events and wondering what the fallout will be. It’s likely that there is also some concern among the early Christian communities because the Second Coming of Christ that they had expected imminently, perhaps even in conjunction with the temple’s destruction, had not occurred and they were wondering what it all meant.

But in among all of those warnings—not just of catastrophes like wars and earthquakes—but the dangers to come for followers of Jesus: persecutions, imprisonments, trials, and martyrdom are promises as well: “I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to withstand or contradict.” 

And further: “Not a hair of your head will perish. Through your endurance you will gain your souls.”

As I said, following this service we will gather once again in Vilas Guild Hall for the annual meeting of our parish. This congregation has survived some 185 years; our church building around 170.Over those years, there have been enormous changes. Sometimes I wonder whether those who embarked on the construction of our nave in 1855 had any idea that in six years a Civil War would break out in our nation, and whether, had they known, they would have started construction.

We may not want to think about the future. We may, like so many people today, bury our heads in the sand and say to ourselves, and to future generations, that it’s not our problem: climate catastrophe, environmental devastation even if we contributed to them, are things they’ll have to deal with—or perhaps, they can colonize Mars and start the whole cycle over again.

Yet, there is another option. These readings remind us that our God is a God of history, working God’s purposes out in every age. The visions may be radically different—and Edenic paradise of a new heaven and a new earth or a dystopia of wars, rumors of wars, and earthquakes. But in both visions, God is present with God’s people, promising God’s providential care for all. The lucan passage ends with the remarkable promise that “not a hair of your head will perish” and that “through your endurance you will gain your souls.”

We don’t know what the future holds—whether it is climate catastrophe or a dystopian vision worthy of Hollywood or a sci-fi author, or something else. But whatever comes for us and for future generations, we know that God will be there, caring for God’s people, bringing about God’s reign, redeeming, forgiving, and remaking humanity. Thanks be to God!

Resurrection Life: A Sermon for Proper 27, Year C, 2025

Posted on by
Reply

November 9, 2025

On Thursday evening, I had the opportunity to meet with a small group of people who are participating in “100 Days of Dante” a national program that engages readers with Dante’s Divine Comedy. For me, it was an opportunity to return to a text I knew well. When I was teaching, I participated every year in Interdisciplinary Humanities Programs that included at least the Inferno on the reading list for the Medieval semester. It’s an expansive and detailed vision of the afterlife, encompassing Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise and peopled with figures from Italian history and Greek and Roman mythology. It’s also the story of Dante’s pilgrimage from a dark wood of uncertainty to eternal certitude.

While it is a great work of literature, it is also quite funny at times and very human. Wouldn’t you like to imagine where in hell you would put your enemies and how they would most appropriately be punished? That’s exactly what Dante did.

One topic we touched on briefly on Thursday was the way in which Dante’s vision of the afterlife influences our own. For example, how many of us imagine a hell in which unrepentant sinners are punished according to their desserts and the worse the sinner, the worse the punishment, and the closer to Satan. Similarly, do we imagine a heaven in which there is a hierarchy and the greater saints are closer to God, while we are further away?

I pose these questions because today’s gospel reading is all about our perceptions of the afterlife. But first, let me offer some context. There’s the context of Luke’s gospel. For many weeks now, we have been following Jesus on his long journey to Jerusalem. What the lectionary skips over now is his actual entry into the city, which we reenacted way back on Palm Sunday. Immediately after his entry, Jesus goes to the temple. Luke says that he spent every day teaching in the temple.

In fact, Luke recounts a series of encounters between Jesus and religious leaders in which Jesus is asked questions that seem intended to trap him. First, it’s the chief priests, scribes, and elders. Then Luke says they sent spies to trap him—that’s the question about whether it’s lawful to pay taxes to the emperor. And now Sadducees come and ask about the resurrection.

The Sadducees were a movement within first century Judaism. We might regard them as conservative or traditionalist. Unlike the Pharisees, who had an expansive view of scripture that included the prophets and writings, much of what would later become the Old Testament or Hebrew Bible, the Sadducees regarded only the Torah, the Five Books of Moses as authoritative. 

The Sadducees were also closely aligned with the priestly caste and the temple. When the temple was destroyed in 70 CE, the Sadducees faded into history. That they were unfamiliar to Luke’s readers is suggested by his side comment that they didn’t believe in the resurrection (a belief that isn’t attested in the Torah).

One more word of explanation. The question the Sadducees pose has to do with what is called Levirate marriage—the custom, attested in the Torah, that if a man died without a male heir, his brother was obligated to marry the widow in order to ensure his bloodline would continue. Now there’s no evidence that this was practiced in first century Palestinian Judaism, so what we have here is not an honest attempt to seek Jesus’ opinion, but an obvious attempt to point out the absurdity of the resurrection as a doctrine, and to ridicule Jesus, who like the Pharisees believed in it.

But Jesus will have none of it. In fact, the Sadducees made a fundamental error, and it’s one I think we’re prone to as well. In their opposition to the idea of resurrection, they imagined it to be something very like the life we have now. But Jesus tries to explain it to them. There will be no marriage in the resurrection, because resurrection life will be categorically different from the life we have now. That’s what I think he means when he says they will be like angels, children of God, children of the resurrection.

I think what Jesus is saying about the qualitative difference between our lives now and resurrection life is something that St. Paul was grasping at in I Corinthians 15 as well: 

What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable.  It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power.  It is sown a physical body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a physical body, there is also a spiritual body.

One commentator points out that the doctrine of the resurrection emerged from a fundamental realization that earthly life is unfair and unjust. To believe in the resurrection is to believe that God will make things right in the end. One reason the Sadducees rejected the resurrection was because they had it pretty good in this life. They were wealthy and powerful and had no need to imagine a better life. 

There’s something else. The question posed by the Sadducees reveals a profoundly unjust reality. Think of a poor woman placed in that situation. Her only value is her ability to produce male offspring for her husband. She is locked into that system, lacking agency of her own. Her desires, her hopes, her feelings are ignored. Can you imagine what resurrection might mean for her? To be freed from that unjust, patriarchal system, free to live a life seeking meaning and fulfillment!

But, and this may be the most important thing, it is not a life lived for oneself. The passage with an intriguing statement: “Now he is God not of the dead, but of the living; for to him all of them are alive.” Alternatively, the Authorized Version (KJV) reads “all live to him.” Resurrection life is not about self-realization but is life for God. Just as life comes from God, in the end, we will live in and for God.

As we consider all the ways our society exploits and demeans people; as we watch while our neighbors struggle with the ending of SNAP benefits, or fear that they will be seized from their homes and families and unjustly deported, as we struggle with the rise in neo-Nazi rhetoric, antisemitism, and the attacks on vulnerable communities, we realize how fragile was the pluralistic society we were attempting to build. The same people who claimed Christianity was oppressed now seek to prevent prayer, witness, and pastoral care at ICE facilities.

To proclaim the resurrection is to proclaim that the reality we see and experience is not the reality desired by God, that God’s reign is a reign of truth and justice, promising wholeness and healing to all people. To believe in the resurrection is to believe that the chains that bind us to this unjust and and oppressive world will one day be broken and that we will all live freely—live in and for God. May that belief fill us with hope and courage for the coming days. May we all live in God!

All Saints’ Sunday, 2025

Posted on by
Reply

All Saints’ Sunday

November 2, 2025

You may have seen the article in the State Journal earlier this week which described the mood at local food pantries in the days leading up to the cessation of SNAP benefits yesterday. Our own Pantry Director, Vikki Enright, was quoted among other pantry employees and volunteers across the county. As we have watched the dismantling of nearly 100 years of federal support for our nation’s residents, and witnessed the effects of those changes on ourselves and our neighbors, we are filled with trepidation as we await the impact of the end of support for millions of food-insecure Americans.

Another recent article strikes an ominous note for our community. As local governments and service providers scramble to secure funding for operations of the new men’s shelter on the east side, there are growing concerns that the shelter will be overwhelmed by the demand. The answer seems to be: “let’s reach out to the churches.” I’ve heard that remark second-hand from several people reporting on conversations they’ve overheard, but perhaps surprisingly, no one has reached out to us. And frankly, I’m not sure what I would say. After nearly 40 years hosting the men’s shelter, and struggling as we sought to provide adequate space and services while also advocating for the need for a new shelter, I’m not sure we at Grace have the capacity or energy to take on the responsibility of providing space to help unhoused people.

All this is taking place against a backdrop of ICE raids targeting vulnerable immigrant communities; the rampant growth of White Supremacy and Christian Nationalism, collapsing institutions, a society and culture in disarray—perhaps best symbolized by the images we’ve seen of the destruction of the East Wing of the White House to make way for a ballroom. The rubble shown there is a mirror of the rubble that engulfs us all.

Our exhaustion, fear, anger, despair bubble over, overwhelm, render us impotent, keep us awake at night and on edge during the day. As the chaos swirls around and in us, the Church, in all its magnificence, history, and foibles, directs our attention to our fellowship with all those who have come before us and served as models and inspirations, on this All Saints’ Sunday.

All Saints’ is an occasion for us to reflect on that larger communion of which we are a part, not just Grace Church, or the diocese of Wisconsin, or the Episcopal Church, or even the worldwide Anglican Communion, fractured though it may be. All Saints’ draws our attention to the communion of saints, our fellowship with all those who have gone before us in the faith, all those who still surround us as a great cloud of witnesses.

So what, who are the saints? And why All Saints? Today’s commemoration has its origins in the earliest centuries of Christianity. During the Great Persecution, many Christians were martyred for their faith. Of those, some were remembered. On the anniversaries of their martyrdoms, surviving family members and members of the local Christian communities would go out to the graves of the martyrs and have feasts, including Eucharist to commemorate their witness and faith. But the Church realized that there were many martyrs whose stories and names were unknown, so a commemoration of all of those unremembered but faithful saints was created and eventually was observed on November 1—All Saints’ Day. 

Over time, faithful Christians wanted to honor ordinary people as well as the saints, the heroes of the faith. They wanted to remember their loved ones who had passed on, to commemorate them, and beginning in the Middle Ages, to pray for their souls who were believed to be in Purgatory. And so, alongside All Saints’ developed the Feast of All Souls, traditionally observed on November 2, the commemoration of all the faithful departed. With the Protestant Reformation, and its attacks on many traditional forms of piety, The Feast of All Souls was removed when the Book of Common Prayer was published.

So on this day, we do both things. We rejoice in the communion of the saints and we remember the faithful departed. It is a powerful reminder that, whatever our particular concerns and worries at this moment, as individuals and as a congregation, we are part of a much larger whole, one that encompasses all Christians who are worshipping today throughout the world, and just as important, all those Christians who have come before us, and are worshipping before the heavenly throne, as well all those Christians who are yet to come.

In the gospel reading, we hear Luke’s version of the beatitudes. It’s rather different from Matthew’s much more direct and connected with the realities of daily life: blessed are you who are poor now; blessed are you who are hungry now, blessed are you who weep now. And he adds a corresponding set of woes—Woe to you who are rich now, woe to you who are full now, woe to you who are laughing.

This set of blessings and woes, not blessings and curses—It’s hard for us to understand just what Blessed and Woe mean in this context. One commentator suggest we think rather in terms of “satisfied” and “yikes, or watch out” It’s not that one group is “saved” and the other “damned” but that the hungry and the poor receive God’s favor, and the wealthy and well-fed need guard against losing God’s favor.

These are stark binaries; and it’s easy in our world and divided nation to think in terms of such stark binaries as well. But we in the church are a communion of saints, part of a new community, a new social reality called together by Jesus, a new community that crosses every boundary of socio-economic, racial, gender, and ethnic status. It is a community that even breaks down the boundary between the living and the dead. There are no binaries in the kingdom of God.

At a time when people on the margins are being vilified and attacked—just in the last few days we’ve seen numerous politicians scorning food-insecure people who are reliant on SNAP. At such a time, it is part of our witness to the communion of saints to embrace and support all people, no matter their immigration status, their socio-economic position, their race, ethnicity, or gender. The kingdom of God, the communion of saints bears witness to and embodies all of human diversity.

We come together to worship, to be community, to be in solidarity with those whose lives are very much unlike our own. Together, we gather around the Lord’s table; together, we eat and are Christ’s body. Together, we are the communion of saints. 

May we experience that community of all the saints, and may we walk together in mutual support and love, inviting others to join us as we experience Christ’s love.

A Steward of Injustice? A Sermon for Proper20C, 2025

Posted on by
2

September 21, 2025

I’ve struggled over the parable we heard today for. more than forty years, ever since I encountered it in an assignment for a course entitled “Exegesis and Preaching” back when I was in Divinity School. It vexed me then; it has vexed me every time it comes up in the three-year lectionary cycle. No doubt it will continue to vex me after I retire and no longer have to preach on it. But I’m not alone. I think it has vexed everyone who has tried to make sense of it over the millennia, and I hope it vexed you as you listened to it this morning.But I do think it can speak to us today, in our situation, even if its meaning remains elusive.

To me, one of the most frightening things about our current environment is the way in which many of our most powerful and storied institutions, not to mention our wealthiest billionaires, have folded under pressure from the current administration. We’ve seen universities like Columbia cede their independence and their commitment to academic freedom; tech billionaires pony up millions for the inaugural festivities; the Republican party, and many democratic senators have rolled over. We’ve seen news organizations and media companies acquiesce as well—the Washington Post has fired most of its oped writers; the cancellation of Steven Colbert and the silencing of Jimmy Kimmel.

None of these seem to provide examples of how to respond to the attacks on science, civil liberties, the humanities, common decency that have become commonplace. Many of us feel impotent, uncertain how to behave, what to do. How can we act ethically in a morally corrupt society and situation? It all seems hopeless; what little we could do seems futile in the face of all the evil forces that surround us.

My thoughts were spurred by a conversation I had with a parishioner this week about how to maintain hope in this situation; whether hope is even warranted. My response came easily off my lips—the Resurrection of Christ, his conquering death and the grave, is the source of our hope. Such words may cling hollow in the face of all that we are experiencing, but our faith in God, our assurance that God will reign, must carry us on. But even that may seem little more than a pipedream, wishful thinking.

You may be wondering how any of this connects with our scripture readings, and especially with our gospel reading, and the strange parable we just heard.  

Today’s parable offers insight into the economy of the first-century Mediterranean world, which was corrupt and rigged in its own way and brutally oppressive of the vast majority of ordinary men and women.

As I’ve repeatedly said before, when reading or listening to Jesus’ parables, it’s important to look for surprising, unordinary behavior, and to avoid trying to force the parable into a comfortable meaning. While that is difficult for many parables, in the case of this one, often called the Parable of the Unjust Steward, everything in it is strange, irrational, defying interpretation.

In fact, Luke appends to the parable a couple of verses that attempt explanation but let’s be honest, they don’t even approach making sense of the story; they’re like non sequiturs.

The difficulty of this parable is that no explanation is ultimately satisfactory, no explanation—not the ones Luke puts in Jesus’ mouth at the end of the story, not the ones commentators have come up with over the centuries. After all of our struggles with it, we are left with a story in which charges are brought against a steward, he reacts in his own self-interest, and when found out, his boss or master commends him for it.

In order to access the world of this parable, we need to access the economy of the ancient Greco-Roman world. The story is not necessarily set in the countryside, on an estate, but clearly the master is a man of great wealth whose business has to do with the chief commodities of the time—olive oil and wheat. It’s likely he was an absentee landowner. The steward, either a slave, or perhaps a freedman, was responsible for extracting the maximum wealth possible from the estate and passing it on to the landowner. But before passing it on, he would take his cut. Typically, as long as he didn’t abuse the system, the steward could benefit richly from the system, skimming off some of the profits for himself. This is the way the economy worked. 

Now charges were brought against him that he was dishonest. At this point, there’s nothing in the story to suggest whether the charges were valid or not, and that may be a significant point. In such an economy, in such a society, the only power the people at the bottom of the heap have is to bring such charges. Doing so makes the person above them vulnerable. The master demanded an accounting, but before having a chance to look at the books, the steward took action. 

While it may look like the steward is trying to ingratiate himself as he reduces the debts that are owed his master, I think there is another way of looking at it. Here is a place where we are very much in a comparable place economically. The master and steward occupied an economy in which worth was calculated solely in financial terms. The relationships between landowner, steward, and debtors were strictly economic. The master and steward had similar goals—to extract as much wealth as possible from the land and from those who owed him. Sound familiar? 

But suddenly, the steward is expelled from that economy. He has no place and no prospects. He doesn’t have the skills or strength to dig, and he is ashamed to beg. So he sets out to transform himself and his value. With a goal of being welcomed in people’s homes after he loses his job, he builds social capital by subverting the wealth economy. His actions create new relationships. No longer is he a steward and they debtors. Now they are united by mutual relationship. And there’s this. His actions have also probably created good will between the debtors and the master. Who doesn’t like to see the principal of their loans reduced?

There’s something else I find intriguing. In his weekly lectionary newsletter, Andrew McGowan, New Testament scholar and until very recently Dean of the Episcopal Seminary—Berkley Divinity School at Yale, pointed out that the phrase translated as dishonest manager could be translated differently. The word for dishonest here is the same word that’s usually translated unrighteousness or injustice. McGowan suggests “steward of injustice”—by which is implied not that the steward himself is unjust, but that the system as a whole is unjust. The steward has been complicit in that system. He has profited from the system. And, now, he’s looking for a way out.

Here’s the thing. We all struggle with money. We worry whether we have enough to pay the bills. We worry whether we’ll have enough for our retirement. We worry whether we’ll have enough to make it to the next paycheck. But that’s not all. So much of our personal value and worth is tied up with how much we make. Our self-worth seems to be often dependent on the fact that we are consumers, and that we can display for all to see the wealth we have. We know all too well how the system is gamed by the wealthy and powerful and how ordinary people are left out. We see evidence all around us of the myriad ways the system has oppressed and exploited people. Even as we feel the effects of that exploitation and oppression on ourselves, we also reap benefits from the exploitation and oppression of others.

How do we make our way in such a system? How do we live ethically, responsibly in it? How do we seek to follow Christ?

And here’s where the actions of the steward may give us guidance. As he sought to extract himself from the situation in which he found himself, he sought to make connection, to build community with others. 

By building community and connections that are founded not on monetary value but on good will, we are challenging the status quo and creating new relationships like those in the coming reign of God, where worth is not calculated by how much we have or make, not by our social media presence, but by our relationship to God—by our humanity, by the fact that we are created in God’s image and full of worth and dignity.

 We are very much like that steward, enmeshed in systems over which we have very little control, beaten down and yes, beating down. It may be impossible for us to extract ourselves from those systems, after all, they pay our salaries and ensure our standard of living. But we can look for ways to ease the burdens of others, to make those human connections, to nurture life-giving and meaningful relationships and to bear witness to the intrinsic dignity and worth of God’s beloved children.  

Searching for, and finding, Joy: A sermon for Proper 19C, 2025

Posted on by
Reply

September 14, 2025

It’s been a rough week, hasn’t it? For that matter, 2025 has been a rough year; another challenging year on top of the other years we’ve been having—Wars in Gaza and Ukraine, Global warming, political and cultural conflict, gun violence, all the rest; COVID; threats to our health. We’re beaten down, worried like we’ve never been worried before—the familiar words of Yeats’ poem sounding truer than they did when he wrote them over a century ago: “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.”

Our Christian faith seems less a bulwark against the coming onslaught than a fading wisp—not just the growing irrelevance to our culture, but all the ways it has been weaponized to create division and rationalize violent hatreds. Our beloved cultural institutions and products of human creativity: higher education, the arts and humanities eviscerated and exploited, mined for profits; scientific excellence and research demonized and destroyed.

In the presence of all that, a small glimmer of joy and hope—light once more streaming through our beautiful stained glass windows as our roof project draws closer to completion and we can once again enjoy the beauty of our space as we lift our voices, our minds, and hearts to worship God.

In our gospel reading, we are once again confronted with grumbling Pharisees, annoyed that Jesus hung out with tax collectors and sinners. We need to pause for a moment and remind ourselves who these groups are. I know I say this repeatedly, but it’s because the negative image of “Pharisee” is so firmly fixed in our consciousness. We think of them as moral prigs policing the behavior of the population and especially of Jesus. We regard them as literalists of legal interpretation. But they weren’t. They were a movement within first-century Judaism that sought to extend the law to daily life, to give ordinary people a way of connecting their faith to their lives. The law, the Torah, was and still is, perceived by Jews to be a wonderful thing. The conflict between Pharisees and Jesus was about how to interpret the law correctly, a debate internal to Judaism.

Tax collectors, again as I’ve said often before were reviled because they collaborated with the occupying Roman power, and because the system was set up so that they exploited the people from whom they were extracting taxes; the more money they got from the people, the more they could keep for themselves.

Sinners were not primarily those who occasionally had moral lapses. They were notorious sinners, who because of their behavior were excluded from polite society. In other words, Jesus hung out with the worst sort of people. You can draw your own analogies about who those groups might be in our context.

So now we come to the parables. The Pharisees and scribes were grumbling about Jesus’ outrageous behavior and in response he tells them two stories. To get what these parables are about you have to shift your focus. We are inclined to put ourselves in the story—as the sheep or the coin that was lost. But that’s exactly the wrong place to begin. Instead, we need to begin with Jesus’ question to the scribes and Pharisees: “Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it?” Which one of you would do that? None of us would. We would do a cost/benefit analysis and cut our losses, leaving the one to die while making sure the 99 were safe.

And the second story—about the coin? We can imagine losing something precious and search diligently for it, high and low, systematically. 

The parable describes in great detail the woman’s actions, she lights a lamp, sweeps the floor. The narrative almost stops for a moment, heightening tension, so that the discovery becomes even more dramatic. But then what happens? She throws a party, invites her friends, spends what, as much or double the worth of the coin she had lost? We can see ourselves searching for something, but throwing a party, and throwing what we found away in rejoicing? Who of us would do that?

 Two people behaving completely unexpectedly, in ways that make utterly no sense by any rational analysis. They were so overjoyed by the finding that it’s almost as if they lost their bearings. Nothing else mattered but that joy, and offering others the opportunity to share in that joy.

It’s clear that Luke wants us to see the point of the story to be God’s extravagant joy in welcoming a repentant sinner. So be it. No doubt it fills us with love and gratitude toward God to imagine ourselves welcomed in such a way. But how do we respond? Do we show forth our gratitude as extravagantly as God shows forth God’s love? Is our joy so great that we show it by sharing it as lavishly as the shepherd or the woman shared their joy?

It may be that those feelings of joy are long-forgotten, submerged under the reality of daily life, all of the struggles we have. It may also be that sometimes we may come to feel the joy we once felt was not real, but induced or the product of youthful exuberance. It may be that the joy we should feel is tempered by the responsibilities we have, the concerns and commitments that are in the forefront of our minds, the obligations that church seems to burden us with. 

It may be that the barrage of events in the world around us have so overwhelmed us that whatever joy we might have felt is buried beneath feelings of anger, despair, anxiety, fear and helplessness. It’s hard to feel joy, it may even seem inappropriate, to feel joy when so many people are suffering, as we watch our institutions and cherished values crumble.

            Maybe, just maybe, we are being called to express and share joy in these dark days. What brings you joy? Do you even remember? That’s one of the things I like about ballroom dance. Sure it’s a slog. We’ve been working on a new bolero routine most of the summer. Friday I almost nailed it, but it still needs work. It can be exhausting and frustrating. But when we’re at a dance, and a foxtrot comes on, there is joy in movement and joy on the faces of the others in the room.

Where’s the joy for you? If you’re here because you’ve experienced God’s love and grace and continue to experience it, there’s nothing that you need to do out of obligation or responsibility in response to God. The sheep and the coin that once were lost had been found. The ones searching for them rejoiced and celebrated at their rediscovery. Our gratitude to God should explode in as much joy and celebration. Our gratitude should express itself in all that we do, in all that we are. We should express our joy, share our gratitude in our worship, as we gather for fellowship; when we give of ourselves and our resources. May we all practice and share the joy of God’s love! 

“Lord, Teach us to pray” A Sermon for Proper 12C, 2025

Posted on by
Reply

July 27, 2025

Yes, I’ll say a few words about the Hosea reading. It wasn’t uncommon in the prophetic tradition for the prophets to receive instructions from God to do certain things that had symbolic meaning for their prophetic calling and for their audience. Thus, Jeremiah was told to buy a field as a symbol of God’s promise that the people would continue to inhabit the promised land. Similarly, Ezekiel was told not to mourn his wife’s death.

In the case of Hosea, however, it is rather extreme, even offensive. He is told to take a prostitute as a wife, and to give his children names that spelled out God’s displeasure with the people. There’s no way around this, and what seems to be a deeply misogynistic text, and problematic marriage, is just that. It should offend our sensibilities and challenge us to think deeply and uncomfortably about all the ways in which scripture and our religious traditions can continue to support and advance deeply oppressive and unjust systems. While there is much more one could say about Hosea and the prophetic tradition, I’ll leave it at that and turn our attention to the gospel reading.

“Lord, teach us to pray.” I wonder if there is any question asked by the disciples that breaks my heart more than this simple request. They have been walking with Jesus for months, learning from him, receiving power to heal just as he healed. They had seen him praying. In the gospel of Luke, one of the key aspects of Jesus’ depiction is the emphasis on prayer, Jesus praying at particularly difficult moments, going off by himself. They had seen all that but they didn’t know how to pray.

I sympathize with them. I don’t know how to pray. And regularly lay people come to me asking about prayer, looking for instruction or guidance. As Anglicans, we’re fortunate because in the Book of Common Prayer, we have a treasury of prayer. There are the psalms, of course, which are the prayers of God’s people going back 2 and a half millennia and more, speaking for us, across all those centuries.

Though the Book of Common Prayer is rather newer, dating from the mid-16th century, it too has roots that go back much further. When Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, created it, he drew on centuries of monastic practice and common liturgical forms. Take the collect I prayed this morning. It is originally from a liturgical book that was sent by the Pope to Charlemagne around the year 800, and provided the basis for much of the Roman liturgy throughout the Middle Ages. Cranmer translated it, lightly edited it, and it has been used ever since.

I know that the Book of Common Prayer is relatively unfamiliar to many of you. Unless you attend our Rite I service at 8:00 regularly when you are directed to page numbers for the liturgy, for the most part we print all or most of our liturgy in the service bulletin. Indeed, in this season after Pentecost, our 10:00 worship diverges considerably from what’s printed in the BCP, as we’re using the expansive language version of Prayer C.

Still, there’s much more in the BCP than the Eucharist services. They start on  page 323 or 355, after all. There’s the psalter, of course, the ancient prayers of God’s people which can continue to speak to and us, and speak to God for us. 

The psalter comes near the end of the BCP. It begins, however, with the Daily Office, Morning and Evening Prayer. As with the Eucharist, there are two versions of each. Rite I, is traditional language, with “Thees and Thous.”  Rite II, is more contemporary language, at least as contemporary as it was 50 years ago. Cranmer adapted the monastic hours for lay people, condensing the 6 or 9 daily prayer services of monasticism into 2 services, intended for use by ordinary people. As printed in the BCP, the service is rather complicated to follow. Fortunately there are apps like Venite, which I refer to in the bulletin, that lay it all out for you. 

The next major section, and important for our purposes today are the collects, in traditional and contemporary language versions. There are collects appointed for every Sunday and feast day, and if you leaf through the collection, you will also find collects for various occasions. They are succinct prayers that follow a specific form, and are meant to help us gather our thoughts and focus our attention. They often express profound theological and spiritual insights and are worth paying close attention to and meditating on.

Interspersed throughout the BCP are other collects that can speak to particular situations, and speak for us in times of need: for example, in the Rite for the Ministration to the Sick, there are prayers that may be of comfort during illness and recovery (beginning p. 457). 

Another collection of prayers begins on p. 814. Again, leafing through the section, you’ll find prayers for all sorts of situtations, for various groups of people. As I said at the outset, the Book of Common Prayer is a treasure house of prayer, and it is my hope that you learn to rely on it as you cultivate your own life of prayer.

There’s much more to prayer than reading prayers that were written 50 or 500 or 1500 years ago. Like any spiritual discipline, like any discipline, developing a rich prayer life takes practice, time, and energy. 

Many of you know that my wife and I are ballroom dancers. We take lessons regularly; we work on routines; we pay for coaching with other instructors. Last January, we went to three-day dance camp in Florida; we expect to do so again in 2026. Still, I’m hardly a proficient dancer and my teacher regularly encourages me to practice more. But if I spent as much time and energy on my prayer life as I spend dancing, I wonder what it would be like; what rich depths of relationship I would be experiencing with God in Christ.

And I know it can be frustrating, when we can’t find the words to pray, adequate language to express our needs to God. We may wonder what we should be praying for, whether what we’re asking God is something we deserve. 

Perhaps the key element in the Lord’s Prayer, the words our Lord taught us, are the first two words: “Our Father…” We may even balk at the patriarchy that is expressed there but at its heart is relationship. And ultimately, that’s what prayer is. It’s not that Jesus was the first to address God as Father, Abba, in Aramaic; but his prayer life seems to have been particularly intimate, a deep relationship with God. And with “Our Father…” he is inviting us into that relationship as well. Paul tells us that early Christians, even those whose language was Greek, not Aramaic, addressed God as “Abba” in their prayers, testimony to the importance of that intimate relationship and the desire to cultivate an even deeper relationship with God like Jesus had.

Whatever words you use, however you pray, deepening that relationship with God should be the goal of your prayer life. And remember, that when words can’t come to you, when words don’t come to you, prayer is still possible. Paul also reminds us that the Holy Spirit intervenes on our behalf, “in sighs too deep for words.” 

Lord, teach us to pray!

Eating with Jesus: A Sermon for Easter 3C, 2025

Posted on by
Reply

3 Easter

May 4, 2025

We are well into the Easter season. Today is the 3rd Sunday of Easter, and the continues right through the Feast of Pentecost on June 8. While the celebration of Easter Day may seem to be fading in our memories; there are no brass instruments accompanying our worship, no lingering, faint smell of incense in the nave, in our lectionary readings we are still hearing stories of the appearance of the Risen Christ to the disciples. 

And this one, from the 21st, the last chapter of John, is one of the most interesting and most intriguing of all. There are so many fascinating details; so many elements of the story that take us back to earlier stories in the gospel, and there are so many questions that arise in our minds as we listen to it.

First of all, where it comes in the narrative. At the end of chapter 20, the so-called story of “Doubting Thomas”—we hear these verses: 

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.

That sounds to me like a great way to end a gospel—there’s a lot more I could say, the gospel writer is saying, but I’ve given you enough to get the full picture.

It seems like chapter 21 is tacked on; there’s no evidence of that, but it’s intriguing. Then there’s the location—the Sea of Galilee, here called the Sea of Tiberias. It’s not a location of any great significance in John’s gospel, although it was in the others. Indeed, there’s a very similar story of a miraculous catch of fish in the Gospel of Luke, and it is the prelude to Jesus calling Peter and the other disciples to be his disciples. Interestingly, Luke mentions Peter and the Sons of Zebedee in his story. The same three are present here in John, but they are accompanied by two others who are mentioned only in John—Nathaniel, from chapter 1, and Thomas who played such an important role in last week’s gospel reading. Also, curiously, this is the first mention in the gospel of John that Peter and the others were fishermen.

The beloved disciple is mentioned again, as at the last supper, at the foot of the cross, and the empty tomb; and once again, it appears that he’s quicker to pick up on what’s happening than Peter is. 

There’s Peter, who oddly puts on clothes before jumping in the lake to swim to shore. I mean, who does that?

Then there’s the miraculous catch of fish: precisely 153. It had never occurred to me before until I read a commentary on this this week. The disciples, knowing the Risen Christ is on shore waiting for them, stop to count the number of fish they’ve got. Oh, and the 153—you have no idea how much ink has been spilled speculating on the significance of that number. It was Augustine of Hippo who pointed out that 153 is the sum total if you add all the numbers up from 1-17.

Have to mention as well, the detail that the net was not torn—that’s been used as a symbol of the unity of the church from a very early point.

There’s the brazier—mentioned here and in the story of Peter’s denial of Jesus after his arrest. Need I point out that Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves him, paralleling Peter’s three-time denial of him earlier. And the loaves and fish—Jesus offers the disciples the same menu as he offered the crowd at the feeding of the 5000.

One more thing. Jesus’ questions of Peter. The shift between sheep and lambs; and in the Greek different vocabulary for love. The first two times, Jesus uses a form of “agape”, while Peter responds with a form of phile; the third time, Jesus and Peter both use “phile.” It used to be commonly thought that “Agape” was a deeper kind of love—the love of community, while “phile” is more “brotherly” or “fraternal” love. But it’s pretty clear from both the Gospel of John and other contemporary texts that the two words were used interchangeably.

So, are your heads spinning yet?

But perhaps the most significant parallel has to do with the location—the Sea of Tiberias or Sea of Galilee. It’s mentioned here, and in chapter 6; where it is the site of Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand. And it’s a similar meal on both occasions: bread and fish. The Feeding of the Five Thousand is the jumping off point for Jesus’ great discourse on the bread, an extended reflection on the meaning of the bread of the Eucharist, Jesus as the Bread of Life. Jesus says there: 

Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood have eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day; 55for my flesh is true food and my blood is true drink. 56Those who eat my flesh and drink my blood abide in me, and I in them. 

When we think of Christ’s resurrection or the presence of the risen Christ, we tend to think of those gospel stories: of Mary Magdalene’s encounter with the Risen Christ in the garden or the appearance of the Risen Christ to the disciples in the upper room. We tend to think of those spectacular events.

Or for another spectacular appearance of the Risen Christ, consider Paul’s experience on the Road to Damascus; struck down, struck blind; transformed from a persecutor of the Gospel to an apostle of the Gospel. We may not consider Paul’s experience quite like those gospel stories. But Paul did. When he describes it in I Corinthians 15, at the end of his list of the appearances of the Risen Christ, Paul writes, “And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, … but by the grace of God I am what I am.”

Gathered around that charcoal fire, eating bread and fish; the disciples were in the presence of the Risen Christ. They might have wanted to linger over that meal, to enjoy being in his presence and being with each other, to rest after a long night’s work. 

But Jesus had other plans. He took Simon Peter aside and asked him three times, “Do you love me?” And three times, he said in response to Peter’s affirmation, “Feed my sheep.” Relationship with Christ, experience of the Risen Christ is not just about, or primarily about, our own spiritual experience, our own personal faith. It is about what we are called to do for others. To feed them, to offer them daily bread and the bread of life. 

But even more. It had never occurred to me before this week as I was preparing this sermon, and I don’t know how many times I have read this chapter; discussed in classes both as student and teacher. It had never occurred to me that in the Gospel of John, Jesus’ last words are to Peter, after he tells him to “Feed my sheep.” He says then, “Follow me.” He will say it again to him a few verses later, “Follow me.”

Think about it. Where was he going? In the synoptic gospels, of course, the story ends not with resurrection or resurrection appearances, but with Jesus’ final departure from his disciples, his ascension, to the right hand of God, as our creeds say. In the gospel of John, that’s not quite the case. Jesus says to Peter, “Follow me.” Follow me, away from here into the future, into the unkown.

Jesus says to us, Feed my sheep. He also says, “Follow me.” He is calling us to follow him, into the future, into the uncertainty of the world in which we live and into the world that is being made. He is telling us to follow him as disciples, making disciples. He is calling us to gather around charcoal fires and tables,, to encounter him in the breaking of the bread and in the community gathered. He is calling us to follow him, into the unknown, into the world. Let us heed his call and follow him.

This Sermon is not about the Good Shepherd: A Sermon for Easter 4C, 2025

Posted on by
Reply

4 Easter

May 11, 2025

There’s a lot going on this weekend. It’s Mother’s Day, of course. Happy Mother’s Day to all who celebrate! It’s also graduation weekend at UW, of course, as well. And as I was coming up the bike path, I noticed that since Friday, the lilacs are in full bloom. It’s also the 4th Sunday of Easter, often called “Good Shepherd Sunday” because each year on this Sunday we hear readings from John 10—the great discourse of Jesus on “I am the Good Shepherd.” While the gospel reading changes from year to year, every year the Psalm is Psalm 23, the most familiar of all of them: “The Lord is my Shepherd.” 

This may be my least favorite Sunday of the liturgical year. After 20 years of preaching, I don’t think I have anything interesting left to say about sheep and shepherds. So I thought we might focus our attention on the reading from the Acts of the Apostles. When I read the story of Tabitha, I’m always reminded of the women I grew up with, my mother, sisters, aunts and grandmothers. That’s probably appropriate for Mother’s Day.

When I was a boy, one Wednesday a month, my mother and my sisters would go to what was called “Sewing.” The women of the church gathered together to work on quilts, comforters, and other sewing projects that would be donated to relief sales or sent to people in need—after natural disasters, for example. I’m not sure when or if the custom ended, if it died out like so many other customs did with our changing culture. But such activities weren’t limited to once a month. My grandmother and aunts crocheted bandages—I remember their hands were always busy if we went to visit on a Friday night. As women, there were few opportunities to express their faith and in addition to preparing meals for potlucks or visiting speakers, sewing quilts or comforters, or crocheting bandages, were one concrete way of sharing Christ’s love with the world. 

Some women, two of my dad’s sisters, for example, became nurses and worked in Mennonite hospitals in the US or overseas. Others became missionaries, some with their husbands but a few went on their own. For most, though, their lives were focused on the traditional roles that had been established and there were limited opportunities to do more. Whether as nurses or as housewives, they followed Jesus in ways permitted by their community and culture. Many of them, whether literally mothers or not, were spiritual mothers to those around them.

Of course, all that was largely true of the Episcopal Church as well. Like many other parishes, much of the volunteer labor at Grace over the decades was done by the women of the church—beginning with the purchase of the lots on which our buildings now stand. Organized into guilds—the altar guild, the rector’s guild, and other groupings; after WWI, a guild was organized that met in the evening to accommodate “working girls”—no, not that kind, but women who were employed outside the home. As the culture changed in the late 20th century, and the Church with more women in the workplace and then the ordination of women after 1976, the church’s reliance on the unpaid work of women slowly waned.

            In this season, the season of Eastertide, our selection of readings changes. Instead of the usual, “Old Testament, Epistle, and Gospel, on these seven Sundays of Easter we here readings from the Acts of the Apostles and the Revelation of St. John the Divine. I want to say a few introductory words about the book of Acts. It’s the second part of a two part work that begins with the gospel of Luke. 

I’ve said this often before but it bears repeating. There’s a geographic and temporal structure to the combined Luke-Acts story. The geographic structure is derived in large part from the Gospel of Mark as the story of Luke goes from Bethlehem to Nazareth and Galilee, where Jesus begins his public ministry, then continues with the long journey to Jerusalem where Jesus is crucified and raised from the dead. Here is where Luke diverges from Matthew and Mark, because in those two gospels the angels or men at the empty tomb tell the disciples to go to Galilee where the risen Christ will meet them. In Luke, the disciples remain in Jerusalem, where the Risen Christ appears to them, and from which he ascends to heaven after 40 days. Acts begins with the disciples stilled gathered in Jerusalem and Acts tells the story of their travels into the world taking the gospel with them. Acts ends with Paul in Rome. 

A second important structural element is the Holy Spirit, which comes down on Jesus at his baptism and departs from him at his death. Jesus’ last words in Luke are “Father, into your hands I commend my spirit.” The Holy Spirit then comes down on the disciples at Pentecost, and it carries them into the world, sometimes quite literally picking them up and moving them. It’s a movement that is full of drama and some conflict as this little band of Jesus followers tries to make sense of growth and change and to welcome Gentiles, non-Jews into their fellowship.

The little story we heard as our reading from Acts is part of that great move of the good news of Jesus Christ to the ends of the earth. We are introduced to Tabitha, or Dorcas. The fact that Luke names her in both the common Aramaic language of the first-century Palestinian community, and in the Greek of the wider Hellenistic roman world, suggests that Tabitha herself straddles those two communities, that she may be at home in both. So this may be a subtle hint of the gospel’s move into the world.

Luke provides another little detail that is easily overlooked and full of significance. He refers to her as a disciple. In fact, Tabitha is the only named woman in all of the New Testament who is called a disciple. Luke tells us what that meant for her: “she was devoted to good works and charity.” She fell ill and died. Her friends had heard that Peter was in a nearby town, where he had healed a paralytic man, so they sent for him. 

Many of us can imagine their grief. Tabitha was clearly someone who was a pillar of her community, someone whose passing left not just an empty space, but whose gifts and commitment would leave a large gap. Perhaps they were wondering how they would get by without her energy and commitment. In a poignant scene, when he arrives, the widows show him all of the clothes Tabitha had made—some of the good works and charity to which she had devoted herself. Peter raises her back to life, and through this miracle, many in the town come to faith.

In restoring her to life, Peter bears witness to the power of Jesus Christ and the power of resurrection. It is a miracle that brings home to that little group of people that Good News of Jesus Christ, the transforming power of his love, knows no bounds. No doubt Tabitha, raised to new life, would return to her good works and charity but the miracle also led to others in that city seeing and knowing the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. 

We often struggle to see that power for ourselves, in our lives and in our world. The problems that we face, as individuals, as a community, a nation, and the world, seem so complex and difficult. The forces of evil that are at work seem overwhelming—gun violence, greed, apathy, white supremacy, that it is easy to grow discouraged, to despair and lose hope.

But the power of resurrection lives on in the world. Our faith that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead is a faith that proclaims God’s justice and love are more powerful than death; a faith that proclaims that there will be no hunger or thirst, that God will wipe away every tear.

To live in that hope is to practice resurrection. To look for signs of God’s transforming power and love, to devote ourselves to sharing that power and love. When we despair, when we grow faint, when our faith becomes cold embers and lies on a bed, Jesus calls to us and holds out his hand and says, “Get up!” May our faith be renewed and our hope rekindled by the power of Christ’s resurrection.

What must we do to be saved? A Sermon for Easter 7C, 2025

Posted on by
Reply

7 Easter

June 1, 2025

As we have been reading from the Acts of the Apostles this Eastertide, we have encountered the stories of some remarkable women. There was Dorcas or Tabitha in Joppa, who was devoted to good works and charity, and who Peter raised to life after her death. Last week, we met Lydia, a dealer of purple cloth, a God-Fearer who came to believe, with her whole household was baptized, and welcomed Paul and his companions into her home, establishing a house church in the city of Philippi.

In today’s reading, we are still in Philippi, and we encounter Paul and Silas, heading again to the place of prayer where they had first met Lydia. As they make their way, they are followed by a slave girl, who had a spirit of divination, we’re told, and was very profitable for their owners. 

She is a puzzling figure for us, quite out of our ordinary experience. While we know about fortune tellers, astrologers, and the like, they aren’t people most of us encounter regularly; we don’t typically seek them out for help. We’re more accustomed to visit medical or mental health professionals. When we do seek out alternatives, it’s not because we think they are possessed by spirits of divination, we might think they have unique expertise or insight, a product of their innate abilities, or specialized training. That’s not true of other cultures of course in which the shaman plays an important role for individuals and their communities. 

The contrast between these two women couldn’t be more extreme. Lydia, the householder, the independent businesswoman making her way in the world, making decisions, leading a house church. And the slave girl, a commodity, exploited by her owners for their economic gain. But her gift, or possession, gives her unique power.

The contrast between Paul’s response to the two women is equally extreme. He is not annoyed by Lydia—he engages her, answers her questions, preaches to her, baptizes her and her household. The slave girl simply annoys him. I get that. He’s on his way to the “place of prayer” the place he had met Lydia. He’s hoping to meet others with whom he might engage, others with whom he might share the good news. And as he goes, he’s probably thinking about all that, planning his conversation, running over scenarios in his mind, his answers to questions, or responses to critics. But instead, there’s this slave girl, following them shouting: “These men are slaves of the Most High God, who proclaim to you a way of salvation.”

We’re told that this wasn’t a one-time occurrence. We’re told she kept doing this for many days. We’re also told that Paul was very annoyed. I get that. When I’m distracted while trying to get work done, I get really frustrated. That’s been happening a lot lately. There are the unhoused people who stop me while I’m on my way to an appointment or meeting; or who linger around the church during the day. Most annoying and distracting right now is the construction that’s going on outside my office window. It’s loud, and I worry it’s only going to get louder when they begin erecting the steel for the new museum. I wish I could open my window and shout out at them, “Shut up!” A lot of good that would do.

So I get Paul’s response. And let’s be clear. He doesn’t respond to her because of his concern for her well-being, a desire to help or heal her, from compassion or mercy. No, she has annoyed him and he wants to eliminate the annoyance. He could care less about her; he cares about what she is doing to him. And that’s the last we see of her. We might wonder about the consequences for her of Paul’s actions. She’s lost her value for her owners. Do they take that out on her by punishing her, or by selling her? What’s going to happen to her? Whatever power or standing she had because of her unique gift has vanished with the spirit that possessed her.

Well, Acts isn’t interested in any of those questions. Instead the story goes on to explore the consequences of Paul’s actions for him and his companions. And here we see the full power of the slave girl’s owners, and the full weight of the Roman judicial system arrayed against them. They were publicly stripped, flogged, and thrown in prison. 

I’m interested in the various places these stories play out—the place of prayer outside the city walls; the city streets that lead to that place of prayer; Lydia’s household; the marketplace; the prison; and finally, again, Lydia’s household. Public and private spaces; safe and dangerous spaces. 

And I’m interested in the ways in which the gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, as well as Paul and Silas who are proclaiming it, disrupt and occupy those spaces. We might wonder whether Paul’s visits to that place of prayer, whether or not it was a synagogue, proved disruptive to the Jewish community who gathered there. It very likely was, as other stories from the Book of Acts attest. 

We can see how Paul and Silas disrupt the streets of the city, whether it’s because the slave girl is shouting after them as they pass through the city, or because they have cast out that spirit of divination. We see the disruption in the marketplace, with the accusations and the flogging. And finally, we see the disruption in the prison, as the miraculous earthquake brings down the walls and offers liberation to those incarcerated inside.

Such disruption can lead to fear and anxiety as old certainties and structures dissolve, but it can also mean liberation. We see that dynamic at play in the response of the jailor, who worries for his life and livelihood in the wake of the earthquake and the prospect that the incarcerated persons under his care might go free. Instead of personal disaster, the jailor himself and his whole household experience liberation as they respond to the good news of Jesus Christ and are baptized.

And here we begin to see the full power of the new life in Christ. The power of love and reconciliation takes hold as the prisoners’ wounds are tended to, and they take their place at his table, receiving his hospitality. Here we see, in all its simplicity almost in shorthand, the central rituals, the life of the new community of Christ, taking place at night in a home: The Word is preached, wounds are healed, table fellowship, baptism.

Our reading ends here, but the story continues and its final episode is of great significance. In the morning, the magistrates send the police to see what has happened. They want the episode to end; they want the prisoners to leave town quietly, to leave without disrupting things. But Paul refuses to go quietly:

But Paul replied, ‘They have beaten us in public, uncondemned, men who are Roman citizens, and have thrown us into prison; and now are they going to discharge us in secret? Certainly not! Let them come and take us out themselves.’ The police reported these words to the magistrates, and they were afraid when they heard that they were Roman citizens; so they came and apologized to them.”

Confronted by the destruction of the system of power in which he was enmeshed, the jailor feared for his life. What might freedom from those bonds have looked like to him? So he asked, “What must I do to be saved?” There’s a certain irony, a double-ness in his question. For one thing, he has already been saved, saved from the system of domination in which he was enmeshed and implicated. He has been saved, in the language of the New Testament, he has been restored to wholeness; to use our language he has regained his dignity and his humanity.

What must we do to be saved? This question and the conventional contemporary answer—accept Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior have lost the rich dimensions they had in the first century. Salvation was not just personal or spiritual—salvation literally meant wholeness, wellness of body and soul. But it extended far beyond the individual person, to encompass the community, society, all of creation.

What must we do to be saved? Where do we experience brokenness or illness? In our bodies, in our relationships, in society? Where do our systems, our personal addictions or sin, rob us of our humanity and dignity, just as the Roman system robbed the jailer and the slave girls of theirs and tried to rob Paul and Silas of theirs?

What must we do to be saved? In the midst of their suffering, as they dealt with the pain of torture, as they experienced the raw power of the Roman state, Paul and Silas sang hymns and praised God. They refused to submit to that Roman power and God’s power came into that dark prison, freeing them and the jailer from the system that sought to crush them. As they worshiped, as they ate together, they shared the new life of Christ; they experienced the power of God to transform lives and the world. May we do the same. May our worship, our common life, our coming together at the Eucharistic feast, bear witness to the work of God that transforms the world and restores broken hearts and bodies. May our worship and our common life restore our hearts, bodies, and souls, and restore the lives of those we encounter.