Category Archives: sermons

Where does my help come from? A homily for the Second Sunday in Lent

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March 20, 2011

Lent is a season when we are encouraged to examine our faith with perhaps more seriousness than at other times of the year. It is an opportunity for us to reflect on where we stand with God, to seek ways of deepening our relationship with Christ. All of our lessons encourage us, in different ways, to do just that. We are given two very different stories, the familiar stories of Abraham and Nicodemus. They challenge us to reflect on how we approach God, and how we respond when God approaches us. Continue reading →

A Homily for the First Sunday in Lent, 2011

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March 13, 2011
Grace Episcopal Church

As if things couldn’t get any worse. On top of everything that we as individuals and as a community were dealing with, tragedy and crisis continue to accumulate. We woke up Friday to learn of the horrific earthquake and tsunami in Japan; yesterday morning brought the news that a nuclear reactor had exploded. Today, things have gotten even scarier, with reports that two reactors may be in partial meltdown, and others in danger. Closer to home, tragedy struck as well with the death of Vince Puglielli, our friend and neighbor, father of Dave and grandfather of Josh. Like Peter Finch in Network, I want to open up my window and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore.” But, there’s not much point in that, because my shouts would be drowned out by all of the other noise on the square.

Lent is supposed to be a time for us to reflect on our faith, to deepen our spiritual lives, to explore new ways of encountering and following Christ. Traditionally, it has been a time of fasting, one of those spiritual disciplines that, like many, has fallen out of favor with contemporary Christians. We may go on diets, even radical ones in order to improve our health, or more often in the quest for achieving a more attractive physique. But to limit our food or drink choices for a spiritual reason seems just a bit odd.

It may be though, that fasting would be inappropriate this Lent, given our context. Oh, I don’t mean a small gesture like giving up chocolate or some other favorite food or beverage. I’m talking about the intense spiritual disciplines that are often associated with Lent. It may be that for many of us, the emotional and spiritual strength needed to sustain us through such a season of fasting is just not there.

What might Lent look like for us this year? In the Ash Wednesday liturgy, I recite what is sometimes called “An Invitation to a Holy Lent.” In that exhortation, a holy Lent is defined by “self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditating on God’s holy Word.” All of those are certainly worthy efforts, but in this time, for many of us, it may be that we have no energy left for such things. What might a holy Lent look like for us?

Our lessons invite us to reflect on who we are, as individuals and as humanity—our very human nature. The reading from Genesis includes excerpts from the creation story, actually, the second creation story, in which Yahweh God plants a garden, and creates a human being, Adam, is the Hebrew word for human, to till it and take care of it. To end the man’s loneliness, Yahweh God fashions all manner of animals, and in the end, crafts the woman out of the man’s rib. Then in chapter 3, one of those animals that Yahweh God had previously made, the serpent, the craftiest of them all poses a question to the woman, asking whether God forbad them to eat of anything. When she realizes that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was beautiful, good to eat, and could make one wise, she ate of it, and gave some to the man, who was with her, and he ate.

We know this story as the Fall. It may explain, at least for those of us in the Western Christian tradition, the origin of sin and evil, but as I used to enjoy telling my students, if it is about original sin, then it’s very interesting that among the words that never appear in the story are apple, Satan, and sin.  Whether or not it describes original sin, and that notion is not present in traditional Jewish interpretation, nor particularly important in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, it is clearly about human nature.

The story reveals something deep and lasting about us. We are innately inquisitive, impulsive, and seek to be independent. All of these things make us who we are. Indeed, one could say that those desires for independence, self-sufficiency, and knowledge are the very yearnings or desires that help us grow and mature. Without them, we would remain as little children, even infants.

There was another temptation that Adam and Eve faced in the garden, something besides the desire for wisdom and self-sufficiency. Eating the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil also promised the possibility that they might become like gods.

As humans, those desires for wisdom, self-sufficiency, and divinity drive us to great lengths. We might say that these desires have created all of human culture, all of the great achievements of civilization. Yet however hard we as individuals and as a race, strive, no matter how much we desire, there remains something beyond our grasp.

I am an Augustinian. That is to say, my theology and my understanding of human nature is profoundly shaped by my encounter with St. Augustine of Hippo. Now that may come as a surprise to some of you and some of you may even find my acknowledgement of that as problematic. If people know anything about Augustine, they tend to think that he is responsible for the West’s hang-ups over sexuality. But that’s a very superficial read. For Augustine, sex is just one way in which we humans seek to fulfill an even deeper yearning, a desire that is in the very core of our being, a desire for God. Because of the fall and because of our sin, we seek to feed our desires in all kinds of ways that ultimately disappoint us, and sometimes damage us deeply. As Augustine puts it in the first paragraph of his Confessions, “my heart was restless until it found its rest in you.”

In the gospel, Jesus is presented with temptations that confront us, as well, at every turn—temptations to be self-sufficient, to have great power and wealth. But the temptations were much more than that. The story of the temptations in the wilderness follows immediately after Jesus’ baptism, when a voice from heaven announced, “This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased.” Satan came to him in the wilderness and said, “If you are the Son of God….” By rejecting the temptations and that identity with God, Jesus’ relationship with God was confirmed. To put it another way, Jesus dependence on God was reaffirmed.

In Paul’s letter to the Philippians, in a passage where he is commending the love and fellowship that community shares, he urges his readers to have the same mind that was in Christ Jesus:

“who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be grasped,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

This mystery of our faith, the mystery of the cross, may be quite beyond our comprehension, or even our understanding. It is certainly far beyond our imitation. Still, the actions of Jesus Christ beckon to us across the centuries. His ability to reject the temptation to power, wealth, and equality with God helped shape him and confirm him as God’s Son.

Perhaps it is enough, this Lent, in the middle of everything that troubles and worries us, that we take as our Lenten discipline nothing more than reflection on that gift, on that miracle. We know what comes when we grasp for security, power, and wealth. We know our deepest desires can be met not by any of those things.

To desire God. Perhaps this Lent, that is enough. To seek God where God may be found, in the example of Jesus Christ, but, yes, also deep in our own hearts, where, with Augustine, we might say, our hearts were restless until they found their rest in you.

 

Sanctify a Fast: A Homily for Ash Wednesday, 2011

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March 9, 2011
Grace Episcopal Church

When I was a grad student at Harvard, one of my work-study jobs was helping to catalog a vast collection of what librarians and archivists call ephemera. In this case, it was material related to the history of religion in America in the first half of 19th century. Almost all of it was from New England, and in keeping with the historical roots of Harvard Divinity School, almost all of it was related to Unitarianism or Universalism. Continue reading →

Do not be afraid: A Sermon for the Last Sunday after Epiphany

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March 6, 2011

Today is the Last Sunday of Epiphany. It’s been a long season of Epiphany, almost two months. Christmas is nothing more than a faint memory and if we were in a different part of the country, spring would be well on its way. The season of Epiphany always begins with the story of Jesus’ baptism by John. It always ends here, with the story of the Transfiguration. In between those two, we hear stories of Jesus Christ’s appearances to his disciples and to us. This Sunday provides us with another opportunity to experience and try to understand the glory of Christ, even as we look forward to Lent with its very different emphasis.

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What, me worry? A sermon for the Eighth Sunday after Epiphany

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What? Me Worry?
Eighth Sunday after Epiphany
February 27, 2011

I took a call this week from someone who was totally frantic. He was facing homelessness for the first time, due to circumstances outside of his control, and he didn’t know what to do. The fear and anxiety came through as he spoke. I spent some time trying to calm him down, and then I walked him through the steps he could take to address the situation in which he now found himself. I was also able to help him with one of his immediate needs, as well provide a little orientation to the Men’s Drop-In Shelter here at Grace.

I’ve had several such conversations this winter with men who are in a completely new situation, often in a place that they know nothing about. They are completely disoriented, both geographically, and with regard to their lives. They don’t know what to do; they don’t know where to turn for help. By the time they come to me, they are often at wit’s end. All I can do is help get them oriented to the homeless shelter and hope that they can survive in a cold winter with no personal resources and few social services available to help them.

I’m increasingly aware of the anxiety that seems to be pervasive in our world these days. You can sense it when you walk around Capitol Square—police officers from out of town who aren’t sure what’s going on and why they’re here; protesters who are deeply frightened about what might happen; state workers who are concerned about what’s going to happen to them. Workers in the restaurants and other businesses that line the square are frazzled too. For many of them, every day brings another crowd of customers. They’re happy for the money and the tips, of course, but they also need a rest.

We may be feeling it more dramatically here than elsewhere in America, but there’s no question that we are an anxious people right now. We are worried about our own livelihoods, our personal family futures, and the future of our country. Many of us are also deeply concerned about the future of our planet. Worry seems to be a constant in our lives. We do all sorts of things to reduce our anxieties. We take medications, some of us self-medicate. We search for distractions. We may try to wall ourselves off from our neighbors and the world by turning off the tv.  We may seek to insulate ourselves with wealth, and luxury. In the end, nothing can secure us from our angst.

To hear today’s gospel with such a background is startling. The incongruities are piling on. In the last weeks, we have heard Jesus make radical statements like if you call your brother or sister a fool, you are liable for hellfire, someone who lusts in their heart has already committed adultery, and if someone hits you on your right cheek, turn your left and allow them to hit you on your left. These statements, commandments really, are so far away from our personal experience and perspectives that most of us cannot imagine living according them. When do see someone who lives in that way, people like Gandhi or MLK, we quickly are inclined to revere them as saints or something more than human.

Today’s gospel seems to be in the same vein. How can we not worry? How can we not plan for tomorrow? To do otherwise would seem to be irresponsible. All of the worries that swirl around in our minds, compounded by the events that occurring around us in Capitol Square, all of those worries are certainly legitimate. They are very human responses to the lives we are living and the situations in which we find ourselves.

But is there good news in these words from the gospel? Are there words that can help us get necessary perspectives on our lives and on our world and experience the grace of God? We might be tempted to say that “God will take care of everything” or just pray, or trust in God, and it will all work out. But many of us no all too well that such statements ring hollow and false in the face of the real challenges we face—whether it’s our economic well-being, our health, whatever.

To answer these questions, it might be helpful to look back to other texts we heard today, in particular, the reading from Isaiah and the Psalm. The reading from Isaiah clearly dates from the period of the exile, when the elites of Jerusalem and Judah had been forced into exile by a victorious Babylonian empire. It begins with the prophet promising deliverance to a disheartened people, assuring them that they will return to Jerusalem, and that God will take care of them on that difficult journey. Yahweh speech ends with a statement that God has comforted God’s people and had compassion on those who suffered.

These words rang hollow to the exiles as well, who replied to these promises by saying that God had forsaken them. To this, the prophet replied, using a surprising metaphor: “Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child of her womb?” Comparing God to a nursing mother, the prophet reminds God’s people that a mother’s love is a powerful bond that unites her with her child.

That same image is picked up in the Psalm, which some scholars think was written by a woman who is describing her own experience. It begins with a stunning reversal of the sursum corda, the words we sing or say at the beginning of our celebration of the Eucharist. In the Instead of “We lift our hearts unto the Lord” the NRSV translation of the Psalm reads, “My heart is not lifted up.” For whatever reason, the Psalmist cannot praise God. But the psalm continues, saying that in spite of all the trouble that may be taking place:

I still my soul and make it quiet

Like a child upon its mother’s breast

My soul is quieted within me

We might think, from our translation, that the Psalmist is using precisely the same imagery here as the prophet did in Isaiah. That’s not the case. Where Isaiah likened God to a mother nursing her child, the force of the Hebrew in the Psalm implies the child has been weaned. No longer dependent on her mother for all nourishment and protection, we can imagine a toddler, eager to explore the world, yet often in need of comfort.

Two slightly different, yet equally comforting images of a God, who like a mother, loves and cares for her child. To remember those images, the notion that God is like a mother who loves, nourishes, and comforts her child, helps us put Jesus’ words about not worrying in proper perspective. Instead of hearing them as instructions on how to live our life, plan for tomorrow, or even plan for the rest of our lives, Jesus is reminding us that our lives are ultimately held within God’s loving embrace.

To hear those words, and to experience that embrace can give us the assurance that in the midst of a difficult and uncertain world, with all sorts of concerns and worries swirling around in our heads, our lives are in God’s hands. We may continue to struggle to find security in our lives by accumulating status and wealth, by grasping for security. Some of us may respond to our uncertainty, and our fears, by protesting. In the midst of all that, in the midst of the chaos, confusion, and conflict that surrounds us, let us remember God’s loving embrace, taking comfort in that love, and drawing strength for the journey that lies ahead.

Holy God, Holy People–A Sermon for the Seventh Sunday after the Epiphany

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Holy God, Holy People
Seventh Sunday after Epiphany
February 20, 2011

Well, it certainly has been an interesting week here in Madison, and events continue to unfold. Emotions are high—there’s the exhilaration of participating in protests and sitting-in at the capitol as some of our members could attest; there’s concern among many who are state workers about what the future holds; and there is the anger that can flare up when the exchange of ideas turn into shouted arguments, when ill-considered protest signs offend, and when people who want to go about their daily routine are thwarted. Continue reading →

Salt and Light: A Sermon for the Fifth Sunday after Epiphany

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February 6, 2011

Let me repeat the last words of today’s gospel, in case your mind was wandering as they were being read: “Unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” There are some very hard statements in the gospels, things Jesus says that seem, if taken for face value, to offend us, challenge us, perhaps make us rethink everything we do. This is one of those statements. Spoken directly to the disciples, Jesus seems to be telling them that the Pharisees, who seek to keep the law as faithfully as possible, are exemplars of moral behavior for the disciples, that indeed, the disciples must do better than the Pharisees, or risk damnation.

When confronted by such texts, we are inclined to respond in one of several ways. We might discount it, giving reasons why it can’t mean what it seems to mean, that it can’t apply to us or our efforts. We might also take it as a challenge, seek to be more righteous than the Pharisees, to live as Jesus taught his disciples to live. A third alternative would be to worry that because we can’t be as good as that, it must mean we will one day burn in Hell. These are the sorts of questions that the Gospel of Matthew confronts us with, and will continue to confront us with, for the coming months. And in these weeks, we are in the heart of that challenge. At the same time, we all also need to confront our own emotional, intellectual, and spiritual responses to Jesus’ challenge. Continue reading →

A Sermon for the Fourth Sunday after the Epiphany, Year A

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The Foolishness of the Cross
Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
January 30, 2011

I love to bless stuff! I’ve made something of a joke of it over the years. I’ll bless anything. In part, that’s because of the priests I’ve worked with, one of whom always seemed to have an aspergillum near to hand. Aspergillum—if that word is unfamiliar to you, think of it as a “holy water pot.” Around here, I’ve blessed the new freezers and coolers in the food pantry, the youth room space, animals of course, on St. Francis’ Day, and most recently the new dishwasher.

For some, such stuff smacks of superstition or silliness, but it’s not, or only sometimes, and on the surface. Blessing is important, even the blessing of inanimate objects reminds us that they are set aside often, for important uses. Blessing is not a ritual cleaning, or a magical act. To bless things, whether it’s a dishwasher, a dog, or the food before we begin eating, underscore the sacred nature of all of creation and that even ordinary things can be set aside for holy use. Continue reading →

“Come, follow me” A Sermon for the Third Sunday after Epiphany

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This past Thursday and Friday, I participated in the Trinity Institute Conference via a webcast at Luther Memorial Church. The topic was “Reading Scripture through other Eyes” and it brought together scholars from North America and Africa to explore the interpretation of scripture in various contexts. The conversations among the scholars were fascinating as were the discussions we had at Luther Memorial. I was struck once again by the centrality and importance of Christians wrestling together to understand scripture, and how Christians in different cultural contexts approach and learn scripture in different ways. Continue reading →

Come and See: A Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year A

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John the Baptizer, John the Baptist, did not baptize Jesus. Not according to the Gospel of John at least. Oh, everything else about the story is pretty much the same. John and Jesus meet. A few verses before today’s gospel, John asserts Jesus’ superiority to him. We heard John say that he saw the Holy Spirit come like a dove and remain on Jesus; he heard a voice from heaven identifying Jesus to him. So, everything is there except what we most expect to see—the baptism.

There are important reasons for this. As I used to ask my students when we talked about the story of Jesus’ baptism in the gospels, “Why is Jesus’ baptism by John such a problem for the gospel writers?” There are at least two reasons for this. First, according to the gospels, John’s baptism was a baptism for the forgiveness of sins and Christian theology asserts that Jesus didn’t commit any. Second, who is more powerful in the ritual of baptism, the baptizer or the baptizee? Well, if the latter is a squirming two-year old, perhaps she is, but otherwise, and ecclesiastically, of course, it’s the one doing the baptizing.

John’s very different version of the encounter of Jesus and John the Baptist is intended to reveal to the reader something quite different and quite new. John, the gospel writer, uses the story of the encounter of Jesus and John the Baptizer to tell us something important about who Jesus is. The season of Epiphany is somewhat like a prism. Each Sunday we see a different facet of Christ revealed to us; each week, the light of Christ is reflected back to us in slightly different ways. In today’s gospel, John sees clearly who Jesus is, identifying him as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” He sees the Holy Spirit like a dove. He seems to know that Jesus is the Son of God, and even seems to point that out to two his disciples.

I would like to draw your attention to this interchange between Jesus and these two disciples of John the Baptist. Again, the gospel writer takes what on the surface is a very simple story of Jesus calling the disciples and reshapes it for his own purposes, to tell us something about who Jesus is, and how we ought to respond to him. Unlike the story of the disciples’ call in the Synoptics where Jesus initiates the relationship, here there is a completely different dynamic. John the Baptist draws his disciples’ attention to Jesus, by pointing him out and saying, “Here is the Lamb of God.” Then they leave John and follow Jesus. Jesus asks them, “What are you looking for?” And they respond oddly, by asking “Where are you staying?” To that question, Jesus answers, “Come and see.”

“Where are you staying?” What kind of question is that? What might the disciples learn about Jesus by staying with him for the day? To understand what’s going on we need to put this question, and the event itself, in the context of John’s gospel. Staying… to use the traditional language of the Authorized Version, to abide… is one of those themes that is repeated throughout the gospel. In fact, we heard the theme sounded already in John’s testimony about Jesus. When he reports that he saw the Holy Spirit come down like a dove, he says that “it remained on him.” In today’s gospel the words is used at least four times in quick succession. Much later in the gospel, in the lengthy farewell discourse that John puts in Jesus’ mouth at the Last Supper, he says, “Abide in me as I abide in you.”

The call of the disciples in John may be unlike the call of the disciples in the other gospels. It may be strange and puzzling. In the reading from Isaiah, we are presented with another story of a call, one that is much more in keeping with our assumptions about call: “The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me.” ‘

We tend to think of call as something dramatic—something like the story Luke tells about Paul on the road to Damascus. Sometimes it is of course, some times we know like a bolt from the blue what is going on. But sometimes, often, call is something quite different, something subtle that emerges over a long time, something that becomes clear only as we live and grow and mature.

I know from my own call that the process can be long and frustrating. We want clarity in our lives but often, things are “clear as mud” as one of my teachers used to say. But call to ordination is not the only call. All of us, lay people as well as clergy, are called by God. We are called to be the people God means us to be, we are called into deeper relationship with Jesus Christ. We are also called as a community, to be God’s people in this place.

In today’s gospel, we hear a very different understanding of call than the certainty of the bolt of lightning. There is a powerful dynamic that John describes. First, John the Baptist identifies Jesus to the disciples—the Lamb of God. Then, for whatever reason, they leave John and follow Jesus. I’ve always wondered what John the Baptist’s reaction was to that? He points somebody out to two of his followers, and immediately they go off and leave him. Then Jesus notices them, and asks, not “what do you want?” but “what are you looking for?” They address him as Rabbi, teacher, a title of honor and authority, and tell him that they want to hang out with him for the day.

After that, Andrew goes to his brother Simon, and tells him that they’ve found the Messiah. By abiding with him, by staying with Jesus for the day, let’s use our language, by hanging out with him, they find out who he is. What do they learn? How do they learn it? The gospel doesn’t tell us. There’s not a hint of what Jesus might have done or said that day. And to ask those questions is to miss the gospel’s point. What’s most important about Jesus is not what he said or did, it is who he is and was. That we can only learn by hanging out with him.

When’s the last time you did something like that? Nothing more than be with a friend, a relative, a spouse or partner for the day, with no agenda, with nothing planned? Can you remember doing it? It’s something I used to do years ago, when I was in my twenties with college friends or friends from grad school—pretty much just wasting time, perhaps drinking a few beers and listening to music, telling stories, you know what I’m talking about, being with someone. Occasionally Corrie and I do something of the same, sit around the house all afternoon or evening, listening to music, talking about things, but most of the time, she or I or both of us have tasks that we need to be taking care of and that take us away from being fully present to each other.

Now I don’t know what Jesus did with those disciples that day, but my guess is that they pretty much just hung out together, and in doing so, they began to experience and know who Jesus was. They learned so much in fact that at the end of the day, Andrew tells his brother that they had found the Messiah.

Yesterday, we had our vestry retreat. For six or seven hours, we met together, ate, talked about all manner of things related to Grace Church, and we worshiped together. We got some work done. We made some plans for the coming year, discussed weighty matters like finances and stewardship. But we also got to know each other a lot better, developed relationships with one another and as a group.

To build those relationships is one of the primary goals of any such day-long experience. It’s important in the life of a vestry. It’s also of crucial importance in the life of a congregation. Our lives today are fragmentary, filled with random encounters with people we’ve never met before, with people whose names we don’t even know. I was reading something this week by a commentator who observed that as he got to know the names of the people who worked in the stores he shopped, he began to enter into their lives, as they did in his. To be the body of Christ means creating the kind of community in which we abide with one another, we develop deeper relationships across generations and across the divide of class and race.

Jesus bids us, “Come and see.” That is an offer to enter into ever-deepening relationships with one another. It is also an offer to enter into an ever-deepening relationship with Christ,  a relationship that depends not on whether, or how much we believe. It depends, rather, on our being willing to abide with him, to stay a while and learn who he is. It is an offer not of easy answers, but an offer of a journey into the heart of our faith, into the heart of ourselves where we will encounter Christ, already abiding in us.