Category Archives: sermons

The Songs of Advent: A Homily for the 2nd Sunday of Advent, 2012

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At the 10:00 service today, we will have our annual service of Advent lessons and carols. If you’ve never attended, it brings together readings from Hebrew Scripture, primarily from the prophets, and the New Testament, to help us focus our attention on some of Advent’s major themes. It is intended to help us prepare for Christmas. The songs of Advent draw on prophetic imagery; they are filled with expectation and hope, they express the promises of Hebrew Scripture that Christians believe are fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. Continue reading →

Be on Guard! Be alert! A sermon for the First Sunday of Advent, Year C

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December 2, 2012

I’m tired of the end of the world. I’m tired of having to think about what might be the fate of our planet and human existence in the decades to come. I’m tired of worrying about Global Warming, and about politicians and our whole society’s unwillingness to face and deal with the reality of climate change. And it’s real.

I’m also tired of apocalyptic—of the worldview that sees the world coming to a cataclysmic end in a fire of God’s judgment and the return of Jesus Christ. I’m tired of Mayan calendars, Harold Campings, Left Behind. I’m tired of Hollywood movies premised on the end of the world.

I’m tired also after more than a decade of Advent sermons, of preaching apocalyptic, judgment and the Second Coming during what for everyone outside Christian Churches (and for many within) is the Christmas or Holiday season, a season that begins with Thanksgiving, and ends on December 26, when we take down all the decorations and beginning planning for the next holiday.

Let’s be honest with ourselves. Advent is no longer a penitential season. It’s not a time when we prepare for the coming of Christ at Christmas by fasting and repentance. The idea that somehow in this month when we are preparing for festivities, going to parties, some of them lame and boring, some of them lots of fun, a season when we are buying gifts for friends and loved ones and splurging with special foods and drink we don’t enjoy the rest of the year, the idea that in the midst of all that we fast, is absurd.

I’m not even sure hearing the gospels being read this season—today’s being about the second coming, the gospels for the next two weeks focusing on John the Baptist, I’m not sure that there’s any point of connection, any way to draw meaning from those gospels for what’s going on in our world or in our personal lives. I’m not sure there’s any connection at all. And I’m not going to try. I’m not going to chide you for preparing for Christmas in the season of Advent, for saying Merry Christmas to me, although Christmas is still 22 days away. I’m not going to chide you for ignoring the church’s calendar as we all look forward, plan, prepare, and enjoy what the season of Christmas has become in 21st-century America. Do it! Have fun! Deck the Halls! Have a holly, jolly Christmas!

But what’s it all for? Why do we do it? There are lots of reasons. We enjoy it; our culture embraces it; we don’t want to get a reputation for being Scrooge. And somewhere in all of it, in all of the preparation, the parties, the buzz, the songs and the decorations, somewhere in it is our deep yearning for meaning and connection, our desire for relationship, and for God. And if there’s any meaning at all in Jesus’ instructions to be on guard, to be alert, that meaning comes from the promise that God’s reign is drawing near; the promise that God is near.

This morning’s gospel comes from Luke’s version of Jesus’ apocalyptic warnings to his followers. Present in all three synoptic gospels, though with significant differences among them, this speech is located in the last week of Jesus’ life, when he is preaching and teaching in the temple, and confronted by his opponents. In fact, it comes from Luke’s version of the story we heard from Mark just two weeks ago. To set the context a little more clearly, the chapter began with Jesus’ prediction of the destruction of the temple, followed by the disciples asking him when all this would take place. Then Jesus gives lists of things to look for, warnings of what will happen to those who are his followers—arrest and persecution.

Now, here, Jesus gives his followers advice. Be on guard! Be alert! Stand up and raise your heads! But there’s another piece of advice that seems to contradict what else he says. Jesus refers to the fig tree. He points out something every gardener knows, that when a plant begins to show signs of growth in the spring, the summer is on its way. On one level, that’s obvious and might be interpreted as another sign of what is to come. But as every gardener knows, a tree that leafs out and blossoms in the spring, may not bear fruit until the late summer or fall. In other words, the new growth may be a sign of things to come. But there is also a lot of time to pass and probably some hard work to do.

The Reign of God is near. There’s a sense in which all that we do in this season of Advent, all that we do in the run-up to Christmas, is about the nearness of God’s reign. The promise we hear in the words of the prophet Jeremiah, that God will keep God’s promise and restore justice and righteousness,–that promise beckons still. We hear its fulfillment in the words Mary sings, words we will sing on the 4th Sunday of Advent:

My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord,
my spirit rejoices in God my Savior; *
for he has looked with favor on his lowly servant.

But the reality is rather different. God’s reign draws near but the world knows it not. God’s reign draws near but the shoots of new life are only that, faint signs in the midst of a turbulent and difficult world. God’s reign draws near but it is easy to miss those signs and to fall into despair and disappointment.

We shouldn’t interpret Jesus’ instructions to be alert, stay awake, as warnings. We shouldn’t lapse into fear and foreboding. Instead, we should look for the signs that God’s reign draws near, signs of promise and hope, signs of new life in the midst of our troubled world. Advent is a time when we should look for such signs, cultivate and nurture the signs we discover, and be signs of the coming of God’s reign to the world around us.

Where might we see such signs? In the joy and pleasure of friends and family gathered together? In the joy and pleasure of a delightful meal prepared and served to homeless people, with fun music, and the small tokens of warm socks shared with them? In Advent candles lit by families, symbolizing the hope and love of the season?

Where might we see such signs of the nearness of God’s reign? How might we be such signs for others? What might we do? How might we be in such a way that the light of the season shines forth from us and is a beacon of God’s reign to others?

And how might we nurture the signs of the nearness of God’s reign in ourselves? Be on guard! Be alert! In all of our preparations, our shopping, cooking, decorating, the hustle and bustle of the season, how are we paying attention to the nearness of God’s reign in ourselves, in our souls? It’s easy to allow the season and our day-to-day responsibilities of work and family to fill up our lives so the deep yearnings of our hearts, the desires of our souls to welcome Christ’s coming are left unmet, unnoticed. Be alert, stay awake! Nurture those shoots, that new growth so that God’s reign may blossom forth in your hearts and this season of Advent might be a season of transformation for you and for all of us.

Here is your king: A sermon for Christ the King, Year B

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We are at one of those places in the year where our liturgical and secular calendars diverge significantly. That divergence is particularly striking this year because Advent begins a week later than usual. Instead of the first Sunday in Advent occurring Thanksgiving weekend, we have another full week of ordinary time ahead of us. Meanwhile, it’s Christmas in the stores and on the commercials on TV; it has been since what, Halloween? And our national frenzy of the holidays with our rituals of overeating, Black Friday, conspicuous consumption, and football, is well underway.

For some reason completely inexplicable to me, the last Sunday of the liturgical year is Christ the King Sunday. It encourages us to reflect on Christ’s kingship in the middle, or usually the very beginning of the holiday season. Christ the King is a difficult theme for us to reflect on because the very idea of kingship is alien or archaic. We have trouble imagining what kingship might mean in our context, even if we sing the hymns with gusto. So the incongruities abound—the very image of kingship in a representative democracy, the out-of-synch calendar. And to top it all off, our lectionary returns us to the story we heard months ago, on Good Friday, the story of Jesus’ passion according to John.

Our gospel allows us to focus for a day on an episode of the story that probably typically gets short shrift. On Good Friday and in the season of Lent, our attention is directed at the overerall arc of the story, the inexorable move towards Golgotha and the crucifixion. Often details get ignored by our single-minded focus on the drama of cross and resurrection. So the opportunity to pause and reflect on a particular incident like this may help us look at the story in a slightly different perspective, to see it with new eyes.

Even so, the choice of this particular episode for our reflection on Christ the King Sunday may seem somewhat odd. Pilate asks Jesus, “Are you the king of the Jews?” Typically, Jesus’ response is another question: “Do you ask this on your own or did others tell you about me?” It’s a question about Jesus’ identity and as such it calls to mind another question about Jesus’ identity asked in the gospels. In Mark, as  Jesus and his disciples walk near Caesarea Philippi, in a region dominated by Roman imperial power and imagery, Jesus asked his disciples “Who do people say that I am?” Then he asked, “But who do you say that I am?” These questions were the occasion for Peter’s brash confession, “You are the Christ.”

Now, in a direct confrontation with the agent of imperial power, the question of Jesus’ identity is raised again. “Are you the king of the Jews?” Jesus, and we, suspect that Pilate is not asking the question honestly. He does not know, or care who Jesus is. In fact, he seems most interested in finding some way to avoid responsibility for what is taking place. And Jesus seems willing to help Pilate avoid what is to come. As the gospel of John tells the story, Pilate will make every effort to avoid condemning Jesus to death. He moves back and forth between Jesus and the other players in the drama—the crowd that according to John seeks Jesus’ death. He offers to free Jesus, but the crowd will have none of it. Then he stages a mock ritual of coronation with the purple robe and the crown of thorns.

He asks Jesus again about his identity, “Where do you come from?” When Jesus doesn’t answer, Pilate tells him that he has power to release him and power to crucify him. Jesus points out that whatever power Pilate has derives not from Rome, but ultimately from God. Finally, Pilate presents Jesus to the crowd and declares, “Here is your King!” Jesus is then crucified under the inscription, King of the Jews, and Pilate leaves the inscription on the cross after Jesus’ body is removed.

So in the space of a few hours Pilate moves from asking “Are you the King of the Jews?” to declaring to the crowd, “Here is your king!”

Here is our King! Before considering what all this might mean, I would like to draw on one other episode from John’s gospel. Back in chapter 6, which we read this summer, Jesus feeds the 5000 and then offers a lengthy discourse on the meaning of that sign. Immediately after the feeding, John says, “When Jesus realized they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

Here is your king! These are the words Pilate used when presenting Jesus to the crowd. The crowd responded, “Crucify him!” And then, “we have no king but Caesar! Pilate’s declaration, the exchange between Pilate and Jesus, the purple robe, the crown of thorns, the crowd’s response, all of it presents us with the imagery and symbolic power of kingship. And as we read and reflect, we are invited to wonder about what Christ’s kingship for us in the twenty-first century. And what is our response when we see the image of Jesus in purple robe and crown of thorns, about to be crushed by Roman imperial power? What is our response when Pilate says to us, “Here is your King?”

The exchange between Pilate and Jesus is about kingship. Jesus responds to Pilate, “my kingdom is not from this world.” It’s easy for us to side with Jesus, to confess him as King and to realize that his kingship was something quite different than either the Roman or the Jewish leadership understood by the term. We get that. We may not have any trouble proclaiming our allegiance to Jesus’ kingship, even if we do not fully understand what that might mean and even as we may not really want to live as if our primary, our only allegiance is to Christ’s kingship.

The problem for us is not proclaiming Christ’s kingship. Rather the problem is living as if we believed that Christ is King, that our allegiance to him transcends every other allegiance or commitment or connection. The problem for us is that although we pray the words, “Thy Kingdom come” we don’t really mean it.

The problem is that we suffer from the same malady that plagued Pilate. Throughout his dealings with Jesus in this gospel, Pilate reveals himself as deeply cynical. One can’t read any of his statements as coming from his heart, being sincere. He is always looking for ways to negotiate through the situation in order to preserve his power and avoid difficult decisions. He mocks Jesus and the crowd when he presents Jesus to them and says, “Here is your King!”

It is that temptation that confronts us today, every day. The temptation to confess with our lips, but deny with our lives that Christ is King. We are surrounded by such cynicism—the manipulation of images, our feelings, our values for financial or political gain. It is hard for us not to succumb. But in that image of a scorned and mocked Christ clad in Rome’s imperial purple with a crown of thorns, in that image Pilate was using for his own purposes, to rile the crowd, to deflect his responsibility, in that image there was one who was pure, one who was sincere. It was Jesus Christ, who went from there to the cross, died and was raised, Jesus Christ our King who demands our allegiance, our truth, our all.

The Widow’s Mite: A Homily for Proper 27, Year B

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November 11, 2012

Today is our Annual Meeting. I wouldn’t say it’s the highlight of the year but it is an opportunity for us to gather in fellowship, to reflect on the past year, and to begin planning for the next year. Today may be more anticipated than in other years because we will be joined today by architects who will share with all of us what they’ve learned about Grace Church, our ministries and our building over the last months as they work toward the development of a master plan for the future.

We are at the end of a week that has seen great excitement here in Madison and around the country. The election is finally over but there are serious issues facing our country and, more ominously, Republicans are already beginning to jockey for position in the 2016 race. Whatever we discuss today at our Annual Meeting, whatever our mood, our excitement and worry about the future of Grace Church, are overshadowed by these larger concerns and issues. A few of us will also have noticed that today is Veteran’s Day, for an earlier generation, Armistice Day. Some of us will be thinking of loved ones who served and perhaps died in the military; others may be thinking of their own service and those with whom they served.

The election laid bare some of the deep divisions in our society; divisions between rich and poor, progressive and conservative, divisions of race and ethnicity. Perhaps most tragically, the deep religious divide in our country seems to have widened and become more bitter. Although President Obama did have a small Catholic majority who voted for him, Roman Catholic Bishops and many prominent conservative Protestants threw their support behind Governor Romney. At the same time, Obama won a huge majority among the religiously unaffiliated.

We may want to think such trends have no affect on our congregation at Grace. Unfortunately, that’s not true. To the extent that our culture increasingly views Christianity as beholden to one political point of view and that the number of those who claim no religious affiliation is growing, our attempts to proclaim a gospel of God’s love and inclusion will fall on deaf ears. Our work will be more difficult.

Our lessons today confront us with the reality that God’s Word stands in judgment of our culture and society, our national conversations about the role of Christianity, our values concerning the poor and needy. I know that sounds presumptuous but to take these words seriously is to call into question all of what we value. The gospel first. We are in the last week of Jesus’ life. Mark gives a clear chronology and progression of what happens in these days. On the first day, Jesus enters Jerusalem to hosannas and palm branches. He goes to the temple, looks around, then leaves Jerusalem to spend the night in Bethany. The next days he spends in the temple, teaching, but also with a series of confrontations with the religious and political leadership of Jerusalem and the Temple.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus makes a comment about the scribes. They were the official interpreters of the law: consummate insiders “who like to walk around in long robes, and to be greeted with respect in the marketplaces, and to have the best seats in the synagogues and places of honor at banquets! They devour widows’ houses and for the sake of appearance say long prayers.” The contrast with the widow is obvious. While the scribes paraded around, she brought in two copper coins, all that she had. We could hold up these two brief stories as diametrically opposed opposites, the widow’s exemplary behavior over against the hypocritical scribes.

There’s another way of thinking about these two stories that derives from the context in which they appear. Jesus has been teaching in the temple; he has been confronting, and has been confronted by, representatives of the religious and political elite. He has just pointed out the hypocrisy of much of that religious leadership. He has castigated their pride and arrogance, alluded to their wealth. Immediately after the story of the widow’s offering, Jesus and his disciples leave the temple. As they go, the disciples remark on massive size and Jesus predicts its destruction. The widow’s offering, though praised by Jesus, could also be seen as an example of the temple’s oppression of the people. Impoverished, she still gave what she had as an offering.

The mosaic law, the Torah, insist that society take care of its weakest members—the widow and the orphan. The scribes, Jesus said, “devour” literally, “gobble up” widows’ houses. Whatever the scribes’ commitment to Torah, they were disobeying one of its central values.

In the story of the Book of Ruth, we see another example of the plight of widows in Hebrew society. We hear only a small part of that wonderful book in today’s reading; the celebration after a bountiful harvest and the marriage of the widowed Ruth with the wealthy Boaz.

It is a story about love and loss, about friendship and commitment, and about our responsibility to provide for the weak and defenseless.

A man and his wife move from Bethlehem to the neighboring country of Moab during a time of famine. They have two sons, and the sons marry Moabite women—one is named Ruth, the other Orpah. The man dies, leaving his wife, Naomi, a widow. Ten years later, the two sons die, leaving their wives childless. Naomi decides to return to Bethlehem since the famine is over, in hopes of finding refuge with relatives. She tells her daughters-in-law to remain behind, but one of them, Ruth refuses. The words she says are among the most familiar in all of biblical literature: “Wherever you go, I will go, wherever you lodge, I will lodge, your people shall be my people, and your God my God.”

So the two widows return to Naomi’s home of Bethlehem and try to scrape together enough food to help them survive. Naomi schemes to find Ruth a husband. We see that scheming in today’s reading. In fact, it’s almost an attempt at entrapment. Boaz doesn’t fall for it. This brief summary does little justice either to today’s reading or to the whole book of Ruth but it’s enough to underscore both the vulnerability of widows in the ancient world, and the biblical insistence on their protection.

We have heard a great deal in this election season and before about the 1% and the 99%; or the 47% who are takers, not makers. After the results became clear Tuesday night, outraged conservative pundits complained that we are now an America, a society, where the majority demands handouts.

I don’t care how you voted, if you voted on Tuesday. I don’t care if you celebrated or mourned the results of the election. What I care about, what the gospel cares about are the weak, widows and orphans, those left behind and ignored by our society and our economy. The God we encounter in Jesus Christ, the God who came to us in poverty and walked the dusty roads of Palestine, bringing hope and healing to those he encountered, calls us to minister to those who are in need, broken-hearted. Jesus Christ calls us to embrace those whose bodies and lives are broken by the unjust systems and economy in which we live. He calls us to see in those people, in the widow, orphan, homeless, and hungry; God calls us to see in their faces the face of Christ and to extend to them our love, a loaf of bread, and the hope of the world.

A confusion of saints and souls: A Homily for All Saints’ Sunday, 2012

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There’s something of a confusion in our commemoration of All Saints. We’re not quite sure what we should be doing today in our worship. Our lessons, all of them, are among the lessons chosen for the burial service. We are worshiping as the choir sings Faure’s Requiem, and later in our service, we will remember the faithful departed, those of our congregation who have died in the past years, and others, our loved ones, who have died in the past year or before. So, what we really seem to be doing is celebrating what used to be called All Souls’ Day, or what in our calendar appears on November 2, the commemoration of all the faithful departed. Continue reading →

Blessing Relationships: A Sermon for Proper 22, Year B (and the Blessing of the Animals)

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October 7, 2012

There are those who look forward to this Sunday each year with great excitement. We are blessing the animals today, on this closest Sunday to October 4, which is the Feast Day of St. Francis. We bless the animals in conjunction with the commemoration of St. Francis because among so many other things, Francis was known for his love of the animals—among the stories his followers and devotees told about him were his preaching to the birds, taming the wolf of Gubbio, and more. Francis’ love of the animals was part of his delight in all of creation, as we sang in our processional hymn words attributed to him in praise of creation. Continue reading →

Be Salt! A Sermon for Proper 21, Year B

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September 16, 2012

As many of you know, Grace Church has embarked on a master planning process. Beginning today over the next several months various groups and constituencies will have the opportunity to weigh in about our spaces—what works, what doesn’t work, what needs renovation and enhancement, what should remain pretty much like it is today—All of you will have an opportunity in a few minutes to offer your wisdom and perspective. We hope that everyone here will fill out a survey, whether this is your first visit to Grace or whether you’ve been a member for sixty years. Continue reading →

Wanna save your life? Lose it! A sermon for Proper 19, Year B

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September 16, 2012

  Last week I mentioned the importance of geography in Mark’s gospel. We saw Jesus travel to Tyre, west of his customary stomping grounds in the Galilee. After his visit to Tyre, he traveled in a roundabout fashion, via Sidon, to the Decapolis (the ten cities) which lay east of the sea of Galilee. Again, it was Gentile territory. In today’s gospel, he is on the road again. Now he has moved north of Galilee to the region of Caesarea Philippi. It too was gentile territory, but more importantly perhaps, its name proclaims its significance. Continue reading →

Table Crumbs: A Sermon for Proper 18, Year B

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September 9, 2012

I’m going to read part of today’s Gospel again. I want you to listen carefully and reflect on the following two questions:

  1. What does this story tell us about Jesus?
  2. How is the woman a model of discipleship?

Then, I want you to turn to your neighbor and talk for a few minutes about what you’ve heard and how you might respond to these questions.

Jesus set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go– the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Jesus has travelled way outside his comfort zone. He’s in Tyre, on the Mediterranean coast, for some reason. Mark doesn’t exactly tell us what he’s doing there, but the first verse of our reading suggests that he might have come here to get a break, to take a little vacation. It’s clear from what follows that he is not on a mission trip. He has no plans to minister in the place he now finds himself. We’ve seen already in Mark times when Jesus has sought to escape the crowds, when he wanted to go away by himself and pray or simply rest.

It never works. It never lasts. And even here, when he has traveled a long distance to escape the pressures of the world, entered a house to be alone and rest, the world breaks in the door, the world of pain and hurt. Jesus can’t escape or avoid it. But he tries.

A woman, a Syro-Phoenician woman, breaks in on his solitude and rest. She needs help. Her little daughter has been possessed by a demon. She’s tried everything, and now she’s learned about this miracle worker who has come from a distance, and desperate, she pushes in the house and asks his help. Again, this isn’t so different from earlier occasions in Mark—the woman with the hemorrhage of blood who grasped at Jesus’ garment; the synagogue leader who pleaded with Jesus on behalf of his dying daughter. What’s different this time is Jesus’ response.

insider/outsider: Jesus is the outsider here, the woman may be the insider—she’s at home in this town, as a “Syro-Phoenician” she belongs ethnically while Jesus doesn’t. So, to understand the depth of the offensive statement Jesus makes, imagine making an ethnic slur while visiting Mexico, or China, or Italy.

And put yourself in the place of the woman. She’s desperate, has come to Jesus for help, and is called a dog. What would you do if that happened to you? Would you back away, try to escape without further notice, give up? Would you get into a shouting match, return a slur with a slur of your own? Or would you, like this woman, keep pushing Jesus to help?

She does the latter, and in the end, she gets what she came for.

For those of us who are long time members of Grace, we need to think about what this episode tells us about ourselves. How do we perceive and understand our mission and ministry? How do we go about welcoming the stranger and newcomer. Oh, I know, we all say we are friendly and eager to embrace visitors. But are we really? To welcome the stranger, to practice hospitality, does not mean simply inviting people to come in, to encourage them to join. We need to welcome them completely, to embrace their experiences and perspectives. We need to welcome the change they bring. We need to hear from them where our blind spots are, where we fall short of proclaiming the gospel faithfully and where we fall short of embracing and living God’s reign as Jesus’ disciples.

If you’re a visitor or newcomer, ask yourself how your presence here will change us. We often assume that churches, really, any organization that we join requires us to adapt and change to fit the norms of that group. And so it does. But it works the other way as well. Just as the Syro-Phoenician woman demanded that Jesus rethink his assumptions, rethink the very nature of his mission and ministry, so too does your coming among us challenge us to change and adapt. Whether you are here for one Sunday or thirty years, how can you open us to new horizons and new possibilities?

There’s something else of considerable importance in this text. The exchange between Jesus and the woman is a form of word play. He calls her a dog. She accepts his term but points out that even dogs eat table scraps; they share in the banquet, if only the leftovers. Her words convert Jesus. He changes his mind and tells her, “For saying that you may go, the demon has left your daughter.” In fact, the Greek word used is logos. Jesus is praising her logic, her reasoning.

And that too should surprise us, because elsewhere in Mark Jesus responds to the pleas of those who would be healed, “Go, your faith has made you well.” Now I don’t want to overstate what’s happening here but I do think it’s important that the woman’s daughter is healed because of her persistence and tenacity. Her desperation has brought her to this point. Faith is not always, and certainly not in Mark, faith is not a confession or proposition. Faith is not assent to a doctrine. Faith is following Jesus in the midst of a difficult path, in the face of persecution and trouble. Faith is persistence and tenacity, clinging to Jesus, coming to him for healing, when there seems to be no other possible solution. Faith is demanding that Jesus do what he promises us to do, to bring about God’s reign in the midst of a world that doesn’t know him.