Category Archives: sermons

What wondrous love! A Sermon for Christmas Eve, 2016

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“In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus.”

They would claim that he was divine, a son of God, Savior. His reign ushered in a new age, a new beginning, world peace. Heralds of his rule would travel throughout the known world, proclaiming the good news of the peace and justice that he would bring about.

Caesar Augustus, Emperor.

There is another side to the story. Thirst for power, brutal repression; execution and assassination of his competitors and opponents. Underneath the glittering facades of temples, fora, and other public buildings that he constructed throughout his empire, was brutal tyranny.

It was now, during the reign of this emperor, that the events recorded in Luke’s gospel occurred. It was during the reign of Caesar Augustus, who symbolizes both the glory and the evil of Rome, another story, a different reign, begins to unfold.

It’s as if Luke wants to present us with the two options as clearly and distinctly as possible—on the one hand, all of the Glory that was Rome, Caesar Augustus in all his splendor and power; on the other hand, Bethlehem, the manger, Jesus Christ, in all his poverty and weakness.

It should be easy for us. Rome is reduced to rubble and ruins while Christianity lives on. But let’s be honest. In fact, it’s not that simple. For fifteen hundred years, Christianity has been intertwined with empire and power. For over 200 years, Christianity has been enmeshed with the American Empire. And maybe, that’s the way we want it.

We want the show, the power. We want the bread and circus, the Hollywood entertainment. We want something, anything to numb us from the brutal reality in which we live.

We see a bit of that brutal reality in this story. A ruler’s whim, to count all of those he ruled, so that he could tax them more efficiently, control them easier, meant that in distant lands, people were forced to move from place to place in obedience to his power and might.

We are all too familiar with such movements by people, forced by events outside of their control. The sheer immensity of the refugee crisis throughout the world as people flee their homes because of bloodshed, and terror, and climate change. Human catastrophe on a scale not seen in generations. Just this week ending a 4-year horrific spectacle as the world looked on, forces backing President Assad of Syria seem to have reconquered Aleppo. The rubble, carnage, and human suffering went unabated while we watched, the international community’s efforts to end it ineffective, half-hearted.

Syria. The word evokes for us the immensity and intractability of the problems we face as a world. Suffering humanity, horrifically efficient technologies of war, unspeakable human evil, helplessness, futile diplomacy. Syria—a word, a region that links current events with the events of 2000 years ago.

The suffering has continued for so long. The endless war that began in 2001 shows no sign of coming to an end; the divisions, hatred, and distrust in the region show know sign of ending. We have grown so accustomed to it that we hardly notice, or care anymore. And we can’t imagine a world at peace.

With such enormous, intractable problems, we grasp for solutions and saviors: More and better weapons, more resolute use of power, political strong men, easy answers. If only someone with the political genius and ruthlessness of Caesar Augustus could save us.

Such desires, such hopes are not only on a geopolitical scale. They are also on a personal, intimate scale. Our private concerns and worries, our fears about our own lives, our families, our futures—we pin our hopes on miraculous, magical deliverance; a superhero who will make all things right, fix our problems.

We even treat religion like that. We believe in a God who will intervene and make things right, delivering a miracle when we need it most, or perhaps coming soon, at the end of time, to rescue us and make everything right.

We want easy answers, miracles, fireworks, and spectacles.

Instead of that, we hear this simple, familiar story from Luke, the birth of Jesus Christ in a manger, in a tiny town, on the edges of empire.

Christmas tells a very different story. God came to us, not as a superhero, not as easy answers. God came to us as one of us, in all of our frailness and messiness. God came to us, God came to the world, in the embarrassment of a stable, in the weakness of a newborn baby.

But you know, I don’t think we get that. I don’t think we understand or take to heart what it all really means. Oh, sure, we say the words, we sing the carols, we come to Christmas Eve services, light our candles, say Merry Christmas, but I’m not sure we grasp what it’s all about. Quite frankly, I’m not sure we’re able to grasp what it’s all about.

God came to us became one of us, as a tiny, weak, powerless baby, utterly dependent on others for survival. It was a life that began in poverty, humility, and obscurity. It was a life that ended with an ignominious an excruciatingly painful execution. To all appearances, it was a life lived in futility, without meaning.

Think about lives like that in our day—refugees fleeing the violence of Syria; mothers here in Madison worried whether there will be food to put on the table tomorrow, let alone whether there will be gifts to share with their children; the men sleeping in the homeless shelter across our courtyard this evening. Lives today lived in pain and suffering, loneliness and despair.

This is our world; the world we have made and inhabit, a world in which the glory of God is overshadowed by the lights of commercialism, and the beauty of God’s creation is destroyed by our hubris and greed. This is our world, in which we belittle, despise, destroy other human beings, created like us in the image of God, bearing like us the image of God.

This is our world. The amazing thing is that God loves it still. This is what we have made of our humanity, what we have done with the image of God in us. The amazing thing is that nonetheless, God became one of us.

In this story from Luke, we are presented with alternatives. Here, at Christmas, we see the power and hope of God’s love expressed in a baby, showing in weakness, vulnerability …

When the angels came to the shepherds, they were not coming to the powerful, the connected, the wealthy. When the angels came to the shepherds, they were coming to the marginalized, outsiders.

Jesus was born, God became flesh and dwelt among us, not among the powerful, the wealthy, the connected, but to poor, oppressed peasants in a backwater of empire.

If we only allow ourselves, we can see in this story, in the babe in a manger, the wondrous love of God. What wondrous love it is, that God took our human form, that God emptied Godself, as Paul writes in Philippians, to show us what humanity could be, what we might be.

What wondrous love it is, that angels appeared to shepherds, the Jesus Christ was born among the poor and oppressed.

What wondrous love it is that the Word became flesh and lived among us, to show us the power and possibility of love.

The manger, birth of Christ is a challenge to us. It is a challenge to us to hope and to love in spite of everything. It is a challenge to us to love our neighbor and our enemy. It is a challenge to us to love outsiders and outcasts, the homeless and the hungry, refugees, the marginalized.

The manger, the birth of Christ, is a challenge to us to see the world through new eyes, to see the world with hearts filled with hope and love bursting to share with others.

The manger, the birth of Christ is a challenge to us. It is a challenge to us to receive the love of God in Christ, to be remade fully in God’s image. It is a challenge to us to love like Christ loved, to go to the poor, the homeless, the hungry, the outcast ,to offer them food and shelter, to share with them the love of Christ.

What wondrous love—seen in the birth of Christ, seen in his giving himself on the cross. What wondrous love we’ve received. What wondrous love is ours to share. w

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Genealogies, illegitimate births, and God with us. A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday of Advent 2016.

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“Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way.”

Today, on this fourth Sunday of Advent, we hear the story of the birth of Jesus as Matthew tells the story. And I’ll bet that as you listened, you may have found it a bit strange, perhaps even unfamiliar. For it’s a very different story than the familiar one from Luke that we hear on Christmas Eve, with Bethlehem, the manger, shepherds, swaddling clothes, and all of that.

Matthew’s story seems to focus on Joseph. Mary and her pregnancy seem to be problems that need solving, and the birth itself is recounted in the sparest of terms. The focus on Joseph is odd in a way, if you think about it. It’s even odder when you put the reading we just heard back into the context of Matthew’s gospel, for these verses appear after a lengthy genealogy that relates Joseph’s ancestry back to Abraham. Thereby Matthew links Joseph not just to the ancient patriarchs and matriarchs—Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel, but also to the Kings—David and Solomon.

What’s odd about this is that of course Joseph is not biologically the father of Jesus.

I’ll grant you, genealogies are fascinating, and with the rise of DNA testing, you can find out a bit about your ethnic makeup and determine whether you are in fact related to certain famous people. There’s a popular PBS show, hosted by Henry Louis Gates, the Harvard professor, that explores the genealogical background of A-list, and often not A-list celebrities. There’s also the genealogy road show, that does the same thing for genealogy that the Antiques Roadshow does for the stuff your great-aunt gave or you bought at a garage sale. We want to know where we came from, who we are, and there’s a temptation to see in genealogy, or genetics, a key to understanding ourselves.

So Matthew gives us a genealogy for Jesus, and it’s worth considering why he thought it was appropriate, or important, to do so. There’s even something more interesting in all of this, because the words he uses to introduce the genealogy at the very beginning of his gospel, and the first words we heard in today’s reading, are very similar—both make use of the Greek word genesis—and it’s likely that Matthew intends his reader to think of the first book of the Hebrew Bible, Genesis.

So it’s curious, isn’t it, that Matthew, after providing all of that background to the birth of Jesus, taking the time to carefully construct a genealogy that links Joseph back to Abraham, then tells the story of what basically constitutes an illegitimate birth.

The story that we heard is familiar. Joseph and Mary are engaged, or to use the traditional language, they are betrothed. It’s not just that he’s given her a ring, and they’ve begun to plan for the big day, scheduled the date and the venue, hired the caterer and the like. No, in Jewish law, the betrothal meant they were legally married, even though the marriage had not been consummated and they were not living together.

Because they were legally married, Mary’s pregnancy was not just an inconvenience. It indicated to Joseph that she had been unfaithful to him. Legally, because, as the text says, Joseph was a righteous man (in other words, he kept the law), he was obligated to divorce her publicly—something that might result in her execution for adultery. But Matthew tells us that he wanted to spare her the indignity, and perhaps himself as well, and divorce her privately.

So he’s got a huge problem on his hands, what to do. It’s likely, though Matthew doesn’t tell us, that Mary is feeling considerable anxiety and fear as well. After all, it’s in Luke’s version of the nativity that Mary is told by an angel that her pregnancy is miraculous, that she’s carrying the Son of God.

In Matthew’s story, the angel comes to Joseph to explain things to him. He does as he’s told, and almost as an afterthought, Matthew tells us that the child is born and Joseph names him Jesus. Again, to use contemporary language, Joseph adopts Jesus as his son.

Christmas, which the songs tells is the “most wonderful time of the year,” can also be a time of great sadness and struggle. We are presented with images of the perfect family or the perfect holiday celebration but so often, our own experiences of Christmas are very different. We live in a messy world, we lead messy lives. Our families can be complicated; there can be ruptures or conflicts with family members; there are all the complications of modern family life, divorce and remarriage, blended families. We want everything to be perfect, just so, and so often the reality is very different.

I think there’s something reassuring for us in the twenty-first century in the way Matthew tells this story. He wants everything to be perfect, too. He fashions a genealogy that links Joseph to Abraham, carefully constructing 14 generations from Abraham to David and 14 generations from David to the exile, 14 generations from the exile to Joseph. To put it language from American history, it would be as if Joseph were descended from the Daughters of the Revolution and the descendants of the Mayflower. But it’s not just that the link from Joseph to Jesus is tenuous—it’s that in the midst of that genealogy are prostitutes, victims of rape and incest, and foreigners like Ruth.

And in the embarrassment of Mary’s unwed pregnancy, in the embarrassment of that genealogy, is an important lesson for us today. Just as we want our celebrations to be perfect, we assume that there’s something wrong with us if things don’t live up to those expectations and we wonder whether in the midst of our struggles, we can hope for God to come to us, for God to be with us.

The story of the birth of Jesus as told by Matthew is a reminder to us that God didn’t choose the wealthy, or powerful, or the Norman Rockwell family in the Norman Rockwell New England town. God came to Mary and Joseph, to a peasant woman and her fiancé, in the outmost corner of the Roman Empire. God came to people in the midst of enormous struggle and great heartache.

The message of this story is that God is with us—here and now—no matter what our situation is, no matter what our lives are like, no matter what struggles we have, or worries, no matter what shame or guilt we might be experiencing. God comes to us. God is with us. That’s the point of this story. That’s the point of Christmas. God is with us. Here. Now. Emmanuel. God with us. Thanks be to God.

 

 

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The imprisonment of John the Baptist, the carceral state and Advent hope: A sermon for Advent 3, Year A, 2016

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Today’s readings are here

Most of you know that over the last year, Grace Church has begun to develop a relationship with the Dane County Jail. It began with a visit to Grace last January from Christa Fisher, chaplain to the jail, who preached and talked about her work in an adult forum. The relationship has deepened, as Grace offered to host the ongoing tutoring project and participating in the jail ministry’s winter clothing drive.

The jail ministry has touched me on a personal level. It may have begun, not with my first encounter and conversation with Christa, but even earlier. I don’t know exactly when it was, but I found myself reflecting on the familiar and powerful parable of the sheep and goats in Matthew 25:31-46, you know the one in which the King says:

“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

It struck me at the time, for whatever reason, that in all of my life, I had never set foot in a prison, let alone visited or talked with a prisoner. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not like I think I’m going to burn in hell for eternity because I never engaged in prison ministry. Rather, I began to realize that prison ministry, especially in this age of mass incarceration, had simply never been of much interest or concern to me. In fact, I probably didn’t even know where the Dane County Jail for the first 3 or 4 years I lived in Madison; that’s shocking to admit, given it’s only two blocks away.

As part of Grace’s involvement with the work of the Madison Jail Ministry, I have challenged myself to take an active role in supporting the work of the chaplains. Last May, I participated in a tour of the jail that is intended for new employees and volunteers. It was an eye-opening, unforgettable experience. It wasn’t just that parts of the jail, the two top floors of the City County Building that could serve as a movie set for a 1930s era prison. That’s the part of the jail where they repeatedly have difficulties opening cell doors and evacuating inmates during fire drills. It was the demeanor of those who were incarcerated. Their body language and demeanor were those of people without hope, living in despair. They were lonely, abandoned by society, living at the arbitrary whims and actions of their jailors.

By now, we should all be familiar with the statistics, so I won’t belabor them. As Michelle Alexander argued with great passion and eloquence in her book The New Jim Crow, mass incarceration targets African-Americans, especially African-American males disproportionately. It’s not just that an unconscionable number of African-Americans are incarcerated in the US, it’s that they are incarcerated for longer sentences and for crimes for which White Americans walk free.

The racial disparities and hopelessness of mass incarceration are on full display in the Dane County Jail. Many of those in the jail are there for parole violations that can be as minor as having used a computer. What struck me during my tour of the jail was that I hadn’t been anywhere that looked quite like the Dane County jail, or encountered such despair and hopelessness in the eyes and body language of the incarcerated, since my visit to East Germany back in 1980. The Dane County jail, like the former East Germany, is the carceral and surveillance state on full display.

All of this came to mind this week as I read and reflected on our gospel. It’s another episode concerning John the Baptist and the contrast between his demeanor here, in Matthew 11, and in the reading from last week, from Matthew 3, couldn’t be more stark. Last week we saw him railing against the religious and political elites for their corruption, and prophesying that the wrath of God would soon come down upon them. He was courageous, resolute, unworried about the response his preaching might arouse in his opponents.

Now, a few weeks or months later, he is in prison, having crossed Herod one too many times. But Herod isn’t quite sure what to do with him; the gospel of Luke suggests even that Herod kind of liked having John around,, he brought him in for conversations. According to Matthew, Herod wanted to have John executed, but feared how the people might respond.

In any case, now John is in prison. It’s puzzling given what we know about John, that he wonders about Jesus’ identity, that he sends his disciples to Jesus to ask him, “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?”

I mean, how could he not know? They are cousins, for crying out loud (at least that’s what Luke tells us). John baptized Jesus. John told everyone that Jesus was the one sent by God, that he, John, was only his messenger. John may even have heard the voice from heaven saying, “This is my Son, my Beloved.” How could he have doubts?

Well, there are a couple of answers to this question. First, there’s the issue of the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist, and what from the gospels seems to be something of a competition between them, perhaps even a struggle between followers of John and Jesus later, after their deaths, over who was the greater. There’s all sorts of evidence, even in the Book of Acts, that John continued to have a following, and that his followers competed with the followers of Jesus for popularity.

There’s also the fundamental problem for the early Jesus movement that Jesus was baptized by John…

Finally, there’s the little detail that the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, agree that Jesus began his public ministry only after John was arrested; that he waited until then to begin preaching publicly and healing people.

So there’s something very interesting going on in the gospels’ depiction of the relationship between Jesus and John the Baptist.

But I don’t think that’s the only reason that John asks this question about Jesus identity from prison. Prison, in the first or the twenty-first century is a place of hopelessness and despair. Too often, it’s a waiting room for death. Think of all of the people on death row across our nation, and think about the decades many of them have been languishing there.

I think John’s question may come out of his hopelessness and despair and I’m not sure Jesus’ response to him, reassured him. Jesus tells John’s disciples, “‘Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them.”

Jesus omits something in that response. When that list of things appears in Isaiah, and when in Luke’s telling, Jesus proclaims those words in his first public sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth, there’s another group mentioned:

 

‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

The blind may see, the lame walk, the poor here the good news, but Jesus makes no mention of prisoners in his response to John’s disciples, no promise of freedom, no freedom for John himself.

John’s doubts and uncertainties were well-founded and it’s an open question whether Jesus’ reply to him did anything to reassure him as he lay in prison and waited for his death.

That should be unsettling for us. It may even raise our doubts and uncertainties. If John couldn’t or didn’t know, and if Jesus’ words offered him no consolation or hope in his particular situation, may our doubts and uncertainties are warranted. Maybe hopelessness, despair, cynicism are appropriate responses in our situation, too. After all, it’s not just John. There is still suffering in the world—the blind, deaf, disabled; and millions upon millions of people who languish in poverty and are food insecure.

So there is cause for despair, cause for doubt, cause for uncertainty. In the midst of all of that, there are also signs of hope—signs of the inbreaking of God’s reign in this dark world. Signs of hope in the work, faith, and spirit of the chaplains at the Dane County jail, signs of hope in the work and witness of our food pantry; signs of hope, signs of God’s inbreaking reign in the coming of Christ in a tiny and distant village in the furthest reaches of the Roman Empire. This Advent, may we look for signs of Christ’s coming and signs of God’s coming reign, in our hearts and in the world around us, and when we see those signs, may we know that Christ is coming, that he is the one for whom we are waiting.

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Advent Wilderness: A sermon for the second Sunday of Advent, 2016

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Well, it’s certainly good to be back at Grace and in Madison after being away from here for six Sundays. I’ll be sharing some of what I saw and experienced later at our annual meeting which I hope many of you will attend. As is so often the case, the things we set out to do, the goals we make for ourselves, don’t always materialize in quite the way we anticipated or hoped, but such opportunities often lead to quite unexpected things—discoveries about oneself and the world that are powerful and transformative.

That certainly happened to me. The time I spent at the monastery of the Society of St. John the Evangelist in Cambridge was one of the most powerful spiritual experiences I’ve ever had. Arriving there on Election Day, spending four days mostly in silence, the days punctuated by the rhythms of the Daily Office offered a wonderful respite from the noise, anger, and anxiety of the world beyond the monastery’s walls, and an opportunity for me to encounter God more deeply and be a part of a praying community.

At the monastery and as I traveled up the East Coast and in the Pacific Northwest, I re-discovered another important truth. I mentioned before leaving that this time away would be the longest period I would be away from Grace and Madison since coming here in 2009, that it would be the longest period I would be away from an altar since my ordination more than ten years ago. Time away is important. It can be refreshing. It can also help to provide perspective; to give us the opportunity to reflect on where we’ve been, what we’ve been doing, and to plan for the next season of our lives.

But it’s not just the time away. It’s also the distance. I’ve not traveled much since coming to Madison. Indeed, although I was blessed to be able to live abroad for two years, apart from weekends in Chicago, visits to my mother, or a few days spent up north, I’ve not traveled much at all recently.

I discovered in these weeks of travel as I visited cities that were mostly unfamiliar to me, and visited churches I’d never been at, talking with clergy from very different backgrounds and working in very different contexts, that all of this can provide important perspective on my ministry and on our shared mission at Grace Church. We will talk much more about this in the weeks to come—you’ll have an opportunity to hear some of what I learned later at our Annual Meeting. But for now, I want to highlight simply the clarity of vision, the new perspective I’ve gained on our work together here in Madison.

And this may be where what I’ve been about these last two months connects with our gospel reading. As I was beginning to reflect on this text, Matthew’s depiction of John the Baptizer’s ministry, the opening words grabbed my attention.

“In those days John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness of Judea.” John is a wild, crazy figure. He wears camel skins and eats locusts and wild honey. He shouts, “Repent for the kingdom of heaven has come near.” He prophesies doom and destruction, painting images of unfruitful trees being hewn down and useless chaff being burnt in an unquenchable fire. It’s dramatic, powerful, and frankly, somewhat scary.

But all of this takes place in the wilderness, far from the center of power, away from the settled existence of Jerusalem and the towns and villages of Judea. And I wonder whether his message would have had the same impact if he had proclaimed it in the streets, public squares, or the temple mount of Jerusalem. I wonder whether he would even have been able to preach those words if he hadn’t come out into the wilderness.

The wilderness is a place of great symbolic power in the biblical tradition. The Israelites wandered for forty years in the wilderness after their miraculous exodus from Egypt. In the wilderness, they grumbled at their plight; the text repeatedly calls them “a stiff-necked people.” Because of their grumbling and their sins; God condemned that first generation who had come out of Egypt to die in the wilderness, they would not live to possess the land promised to them. Even their leader Moses would only see it from a mountaintop just before his death.

For the Israelites, the wilderness was a place of struggle and disappointment; but nevertheless, God was present there with them. It was in the wilderness, at Sinai, that God appeared to Moses and gave the Israelites the Torah, the commandments by which they were to live and order their common life. Throughout their time in the wilderness, God was present with the Israelites as a cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, and dwelt with them in the tabernacle.

In the gospels, the wilderness is where Jesus encounters John, is baptized by him, and then goes away by himself for forty days, where he’s tempted by Satan. In Matthew’s telling of this story, one could imagine that through this time in the wilderness Jesus comes to understand better who he is and what his ministry will be. Rejecting the temptations Satan offers him, Jesus chooses a different way, a different model of Messiahship, a different sort of Kingdom.

The wilderness is a desolate place but in the biblical tradition it can also be a place of personal and communal transformation, a time of preparation for the next stage of life. Time in the wilderness built the foundation for the Israelites’ conquest and occupation of the promised land. Time in the wilderness helped prepare Jesus for his ministry. Time in the wilderness gave John the Baptist the perspective he needed from which to judge the religious and political life of Jerusalem.

Yes, the wilderness can be a desolate, forbidding place. But it can also be a place that helps prepare us for the work we are called to do. In December each year, we are surrounded by the all of the hustle and bustle of the season; the round of parties, the preparations that we make for family and friends, even the typical year-end and semester-end tasks that confront us. It’s hard to find time for ourselves; it’s even harder to find time for God in our over-scheduled lives. I wonder whether it might be helpful simply to carve out a few minutes here or there, to step away from it all, to enter silence, or to create a wilderness for ourselves where we might open ourselves to encounter with God. This Advent, look for, make way for, a place or time of wilderness.

There’s something else about the wilderness that might be helpful. I’m thinking of John, out there, proclaiming his message of repentance, challenging the political and religious leaders of his day. Many of us might be inclined to feel, at this time in our national life, that we are in a wilderness, that we have lost our way, that our hopes for a better future, a more just society have been deferred indefinitely, perhaps even utterly destroyed.

John did not lose hope. Alongside his prophesies of doom and destruction, he saw the coming of God’s reign, its very nearness. Our hope dare not rest in the political process or in the vagaries of history. Our hope rests in God. Our hope lives in the one whose coming we await even now; the one whose coming promises and proclaims the reign of God; the one whose coming in weakness and humility challenges all of the world’s power; the one whose coming in love shows us the way of love and peace. Thanks be to God.

 

 

 

 

 

 

God, grant us justice: A sermon for Proper 24, Year C, October 16, 2016

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Today is an odd occasion in our common life. At the end of services today, I will embark on a six week sabbatical. It will be the longest period you and I will be apart since I came to Grace in 2009. It will also likely be the longest period during which I will not celebrate the Eucharist since I’ve been ordained a priest, and the longest period I will go without preaching in more than 15 years.

I think of preaching as a conversation you and I are having together over these last years; an ongoing conversation around scripture. Granted, it’s mostly a one-sided conversation with me doing the talking, but many of you share feedback with me and your concerns and questions help to shape my preaching. Over and above that, as you know, my preaching reflects our engagement with our cultural context and as I leave during an especially critical and fraught election season, I will miss the opportunity to reflect with you through the gospel on current events.

Today’s gospel reading seems especially appropriate for our current moment. At its heart is a brief, simple, yet fascinating parable. A widow repeatedly comes before a judge and cries out to him, “Grant me justice against my opponent!” But the judge refuses. It’s hard to listen to this little parable and not draw connections with our present cultural and political moment. In an age where it seems the justice system is rigged for the wealthy and powerful; where bankers get off easy and African-American are incarcerated for the same offenses that whites receive probation; at a time when Voting Rights are under assault, when victims of sexual violence are blamed and ignored, the plight of the woman in our story seems all too familiar, all too real.

Grant us justice!

We have heard over the last three years about the deep racial injustice and inequities in our state and in our county; about the devastating effects of mass incarceration on the African-American community; the economic inequality, the racial gaps in educational achievement and life expectancy. We have heard the cries for justice from that community, and too often we’ve turned our backs to their suffering, shut our ears to their cries, or joined with those who claim that the statistics lie or are misleading.

Grant us justice!

Our hearts break as we see images of the devastation in Aleppo; the senseless violence and horrific suffering. There seems to be no end in sight, no end too to the lengths to which those perpetrating the violence would go to regain control. Outsiders seem impotent to affect the situation, to bring about a ceasefire or resolution to the conflict.

Grant us justice!

Hurricane Matthew has devastated Haiti. The destruction of that island by natural disaster, coming on top of three centuries of neglect, oppression, and exploitation.

Grant us justice!

Grant us justice! We can put ourselves in the place of the widow. Many of us have struggled for justice for years—protesting in the streets in 2011, or last year after the shooting of Tony Robinson. We have struggled for justice, but it seems further away than ever before. Indeed, at this cultural moment, true justice seems under threat in our country in ways it has never been before. We are fearful, disheartened, in despair.

When we hear this parable, the widow’s pleas reverberate across the millennia, echoed by countless millions over those centuries who have cried out for justice. Her pleas echo today; her voice joined by all those who cry out for justice in an unjust world. We hear her pleas; we know her suffering; we even think, across the millennia that we understand this little parable.

But do we? For that matter, did Luke? If you look closely at the context, Luke’s introduction to the parable raises difficult questions about the parable’s meaning. He says that Jesus told this parable to instruct the disciples about “the need to pray always and not lose heart.” A laudable sentiment indeed but it would seem to force a particular interpretation on to the parable.

Luke wants us to allegorize it; to see the judge as God and the pleading woman as a persistent prayer. But if that’s the case, then God doesn’t come off very well. Jesus describes the judge as unjust and no respecter of persons. The judge uses the same language of himself and indeed, he relents only because he’s tired of the woman’s constant pleading and wants to get rid of her. Is that an image of God with which you are comfortable? Is that an understanding of the efficacy of prayer that makes sense? If you keep at it long enough, you’ll eventually wear God down and get what you want.

Let me add another layer to our effort to make meaning of this. Widows were among the most vulnerable people in the biblical world. There are numerous stories in the Hebrew bible and even the gospels that show them living on the margins of society. If they had no male relatives who could or would take care of them, they were left to struggle on their own. So Naomi and Ruth in the book of Ruth, return to Naomi’s home town of Bethlehem and glean in the fields for their food. During a famine, Elijah encounters the widow of Zarephath who is down to her last bits of oil and flour and is preparing a last meal before she and her little son die of starvation. The Torah, the Law of Moses, is consistent in its commitment to care for widows and orphans and the Hebrew prophets railed against the injustice and maltreatment of these weakest and most vulnerable members of society.

So in this light, the parable becomes a story of a vulnerable, marginalized woman, who has been wronged in some way. Perhaps she’s been robbed of an inheritance or had land taken away from her. She seeks redress in court; some commentators posit that the judge may even be a male relative, whose special responsibility it would have been to help her. But the courts are stacked against her. The rigged system ignores her and it’s only because of her persistence, the inner strength that keeps her coming back, again and again, that eventually wears the judge down.

On this reading, of one wants to allegorize it, God is not the cruel and unjust judge but God is the persistent widow. Like the Hebrew prophets, the widow continues to bear witness against the injustices meted out to the most vulnerable in society. Like Jesus who is about to enter Jerusalem and challenge the imperial of Rome, the widow bears witness to God’s justice against the injustice and oppression that dominate. The widow becomes a model for us, and a beacon of hope. Our cries for justice do not go unheard.

In the midst of all of the injustices and suffering that surround us; when we may be overwhelmed by despair at the tone of our current election season; God hears our cries. When we may be fearful at the violence and hate that is bubbling up around us, we can be sure that God hears our cries for justice.

For in the midst of all of the suffering, violence, and injustice, there are signs and evidence of change. Here in Madison, after years of setbacks and struggle, the county seems to be a few months away from opening a permanent Day Resource Center; and after more than thirty years here at Grace, there is a real possibility of a permanent men’s homeless shelter designed for that purpose with adequate space and facilities to accommodate the need. I couldn’t have imagined either of those things happening three years ago; five years ago. One might say it’s a miracle.

Do not lose heart. It is so easy to fall into despair, to look around in our lives, our community and around the world and see the signs of violence and injustice; to be overwhelmed by it all and lose hope.

Our God is a God of justice and love and even in the midst of the greatest injustice and suffering, our faith proclaims that God is present. Our faith proclaims that we see God most clearly in the midst of violence, injustice, and suffering. In Christ’s death on the cross, we proclaim that God is present. Our faith proclaims that in his suffering, we see Christ’s love. Our faith proclaims that Christ overcame death and the grave; that God is making all things new.

God is here, in the midst of our struggles, our despair, our pain; in the midst of injustice and oppression. In God’s time, God will make all things right.

Do not lose heart!

 

 

 

 

State of Emergency, State of Joy: A Sermon for Proper 19, Year C, 2016

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As you know, today is the fifteenth anniversary of the terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It’s growing increasingly difficult to remember the shock, horror, and fear that we felt as we watched the events unfold that day and in the weeks and months that followed. It’s hard to remember the unity and sense of purpose that was shared across party lines and throughout our nation as we struggled to make sense of and respond to the devastation and grief.

A little news item I came across this week reminded me of all that, not only the events themselves but the way our nation has changed. The White House announced that President Obama was extending the state of emergency that President Bush had declared on September 11, 2001. Think about it. We have been in a state of emergency for fifteen, now going on sixteen years. The surveillance state, the eternal war, the militarization of our society and police, torture, Guantanamo—all of it has become routine. It’s hardly a state of emergency, or perhaps to put it better, the USA has become an “Emergency State.” So much of what we’re seeing in our political processes, the breakdown of our institutions, our deep divisions, I think can be traced back to forces unleashed by 9-11. Until we make an honest reckoning with ourselves, with the violence and injustice that we’ve perpetrated, with the harm we’ve done to our culture’s norms and values, we are doomed to wander in this wilderness. Continue reading →

Loving the Strange: A Sermon for Proper 17, Year C

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Radical Hospitality.

All are welcome here.

Inclusion. Diversity.

The Episcopal Church welcomes you.

These buzz words and slogans are everywhere. In public discourse and especially among progressive Christians. Hospitality comes up in conversations around ethnic diversity and the full inclusion of LGBTQ persons. If you were to read current literature on congregational growth and vitality, hospitality is always one of the key themes. Like many other churches, at Grace we pride ourselves on our hospitality. If you’re visiting today, join us for coffee hour to test whether we put our words into action. Continue reading →

A Bent-Over Woman, a Bent-Over People: A Sermon for Proper 16, Year C

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Have you been watching the Olympics? I didn’t think I would this year; the hype, the scandals, the doping, the over-politicization of them, the hyper-nationalism and flag waving have all gotten to me over the years. So the first few days came and went without me watching any of the events. But then, one night, we were tired and it was too late for us to begin one of the movies or tv shows on our watch list, so we went over to NBC. And then I remembered why the Olympics can be so wonderful, inspiring, and awesome. We watched men and women running, a little pole vault, and caught the tail end of the women’s gymnastic competitions. Continue reading →

Strangers, Foreigners, Immigrants, Refugees: A sermon for Proper 14, year C

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We have watched the Middle Eastern refugee crisis unfold before our eyes, on TV and in the internet as some 13.5 million residents of Syria have been displaced by the 5-year civil war, half of them fleeing the war-torn nation for asylum elsewhere. In 2015, Europe, that is to say the EU, saw more than 1.3 refugees, a number more than double the previous high set in the wake of the fall of the Iron Curtain and the collapse of the Soviet Union. These numbers are staggering and the scope of the human tragedy are incomprehensible to most of us. More familiar to us is the backlash—the calls to halt all immigration Most of the world watches this enormous tragedy unfold with cold hearts and a sense of helplessness in the face of its magnitude.

We are a nation of immigrants, at least that’s the myth we tell ourselves, but the truth of the matter is, that for most of us, those who come from families who have been here for generations and came originally from the British Isles, or Northern or Western Europe, we have settled very comfortably into the places we live. Even if we aren’t originally from Madison, it’s likely you’ve thought, as I did yesterday morning while riding bike along Lake Monona and enjoying a beautiful, seasonable summer day, that Madison is a wonderful place to live, and that I would rather be here than most any other place I’ve lived.

In spite of that, in spite of the beautiful day and the beautiful scenery, as we biked Corrie and I noticed something else. While the overwhelming majority of those biking along Lake Monona were white, African-Americans were there as well, individuals and families, fishing along the shore. No doubt some of them were there simply to have fun. It’s very likely that others, perhaps most, were hoping to make a meal or more of what they caught. Amidst the beauty of a leisurely Saturday, we were reminded again of the deep racial divide in our city, the parallel worlds, the parallel communities in which we live.

The conflict over immigration here and in Europe is connected with another conflict, that over our nation and culture itself. We see evidence of that conflict in the anger and fear that are expressed by so many, by the rancorous arguments over our criminal justice system and policing and our current election season.

That conflict extends to our faith as Christians offer their support for one candidate or another, using theological arguments to support their case and bolstering their political position with scripture citations. We may recoil at the statements of pastors whose political views we don’t share. Some of us might be inclined to try to divorce our faith from the world of politics entirely. In this climate, in this conflict, finding a way through the noise, the anger, and the fear, can be an enormous challenge.

The reading from Hebrews may offer us some help in making our way through the coming months. Although called a letter, Hebrews is more likely a sermon. It’s a beautifully written, profound exploration of the meaning of Jesus Christ. Its lofty language, use of symbolism, and reinterpretation of Hebrew Scripture in light of Jesus Christ has fascinated and shaped Christian worship and theology. And in this chapter, chapter 11, the author offers an extensive meditation on the nature of faith, and bolsters his argument with examples from biblical history. Our reading includes only one of the examples, the archetypes of faith, Abraham and Sarah.

“Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. On the face of it, this seems to suggest the old conflict between faith and reason. It seems that we’re being instructed to believe in spite of all evidence to the contrary. In fact, our translation doesn’t really capture what the author is trying to say. First, the word translated as assurance here is elsewhere translated as being. The best translation might be “faith is the reality of things hoped for.”

Likewise, the word translated as conviction in “conviction of things not seen” ought better read “proof.” What the author seems to be saying is not that faith ought to be contrasted with empirical evidence, but rather that it is part of a process that faith moves toward understanding, realizing that which is now beyond demonstration. “Faith seeking understanding” to use a phrase made famous by St. Anselm.

The author gives us then the example of Abraham and Sarah. Here again, the greek isn’t quite clear on whether Abraham or Sarah is meant to be the primary example. By faith Abraham and Sarah obeyed when they were called to set out for a place that God promised them; not knowing where they was going; by faith they stayed in the land promised to them, as in a foreign land, living in tents. By faith they received power of procreation even though he was too old and Sarah was barren.” Then we are left with that majestic vision: All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, … But as it is, they desire a better country, that is a heavenly one.”

To think of ourselves as strangers and foreigners requires an imaginative leap. The author of Hebrews and those in his audience were comfortable with that idea. As followers of Jesus Christ they proclaimed allegiance to someone who had been executed by the Roman Empire, by their rulers. They belonged to a community whose existence was precarious and by belonging, they renounced their ties to family and became members of a new community. For them to understand themselves as strangers and foreigners was not a difficult leap.

For us, for most of us it is. When we hear those words, “strangers and foreigners” what comes to mind? Do we immediately grow fearful? What do we think when we see a Muslim woman in hijab? Can we imagine ourselves in a refugee camp somewhere, or making that perilous journey from a war-torn homeland in search of peace and city somewhere thousands of miles away? Can we put ourselves in the place of our fellow humans fleeing for safety?

We are comfortable here in this city, in this nation. Our nation and culture have been shaped by Christian values and Christian symbolism. We saw all of that on display at the two conventions last month. We are at home here, and those unlike us are the strangers and foreigners.

To uproot us, to move us out of our comfort zone and our complacency. To recognize that what we should be striving for is not what lies behind us, whether in our own past, or in our nation, culture, or church’s past, but that our goal lies beyond us, beyond our imagination, and like Abraham and Sarah, we can only catch glimpses of it. That is what the author of Hebrews is telling us. That is also what Jesus is telling his disciples in today’s gospel.

Remember, they are on the journey to Jerusalem. And Jesus’ words are advice to his followers for that journey, but his words are also advice to us.

Jesus tells his disciples “Do not be afraid little flock, for it is your father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. In the midst of present struggle and uncertainty, in the midst of whatever fears we might harbor for ourselves, our loved ones, the world, Jesus offers comfort and hope. He also confronts us with all the ways we seek to protect ourselves from pain, suffering, uncertainty. “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

What are your priorities? What are your deepest passions, your loftiest goals? What are your hopes? Are you like Abraham and Sarah strangers and foreigners? Are you citizens of that other country? Are you like the disciples, striving for the reign of God? Where is your treasure, where is your heart?

To live by the priorities of the Kingdom of God means to allow the words of Jesus to become our beacon and guide, to let them set our priorities. To live that way is to live like Abraham and Sarah, responding to God’s call, and taking hold of God’s promises. No, we might not see the kingdom of God reign on earth, but like Abraham and Sarah, we might see glimpses of that other country, as we embrace the stranger and foreigner, the widow and orphan, as we work to break down the barriers that divide us, to create a more just community, a more just world.

Lord, teach us to pray: A Sermon for Proper 12, Year C

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Before turning to today’s gospel reading, I’d like to say a few words about the reading from Hosea. I’m sure as you as listened and read, questions arose about this difficult and disturbing text. God commands the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute, or a promiscuous woman; then orders him to give their children awful, offensive names: Jezreel (God sows); Lo-ruhama (not pitied), and Loammi (I am not yours). It doesn’t get any better as the book continues. There’s adultery, separation, and perhaps reconciliation. All of it to symbolize God’s relationship with Israel as that of a husband and an unfaithful wife. Throughout the book, there is very little hope of repentance, although perhaps one gets a sense of it in verse 10: “in the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ it shall be said to them, ‘Children of the living God’.” Continue reading →