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Advent 1A

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November 30, 2025

Time is a funny thing. There are times, as when we are in the middle of something exciting, when it seems like it passes in an instant. And then there are those times when we’re sitting in a waiting room and time seems to pass slowly, especially when the doctor is late for our appointment. Years ago, I would schedule my doctor’s appointments for first thing in the morning, so when I had to wait a half-hour for him to finally show up, I could let my outrage boil over, knowing the delay wasn’t due to them dealing with another patient, but rather they were just late getting into the office. Needless to say, I eventually tired of this and found a new primary care physician.

There’s also the way in which time can seem to pass in an instant. One of the realities I’ve had to deal with as I have been rector of Grace for now more than 16 years is the disorienting way in which time passes. I’ll find myself recalling some event, or someone, thinking that it occurred a few years ago, and suddenly realize that it’s been more than a decade. It’s particularly disconcerting to encounter young people who I baptized when they were infants and are now graduating high school.

The season of Advent challenges us to reflect on the meaning of, as well as our experience of, time. In the first place, it is the beginning of the liturgical year; for Christians who follow the liturgical calendar, the first Sunday of Advent is New Year’s Day.

While thinking about today as New Year’s Day would seem to help us place ourselves in time, in fact, we find it does something else entirely. It is profoundly disorienting to our sense of time, and our sense of our place in time. Advent encourages us to look forward—to Christmas and the birth of our Savior, but as it does so, it also prompts us to look backwards, to those events that took place two millennia ago in Bethlehem.

Simultaneously, though, Advent propels us forward not to December 25 and the rituals and stories of Christmas, but to the end of time itself, to the second coming. 

This disorientation and reorientation is fundamental to the season of Advent; and it is fundamental to the Christian faith.

One way in which we are being reoriented is through the changes in the lectionary. Each of the three years of the lectionary cycle, we focus on one of the synoptic gospels. This past year it was Luke. This year, it will be Matthew. This focus allows us to spend some time getting to know the gospel writer and the context and community within which they were writing. In Matthew’s case, as we shall see, there is a particular interest in laying out the similarities and distinctions of the Jesus movement with first-century Palestinian Judaism. At the same time, Matthew, like Luke, draws on the gospel of Mark for much of its chronological structure and many of its stories about Jesus.

Today’s gospel is one of those places where Mark’s influence is particularly evident. We have a section of what scholars call the “little apocalypse—” a sermon of Jesus given in the last week of his life, while he is teaching in and around the temple. We actually heard Luke’s version of some of the same material in recent weeks.

When I was a kid, for some reason, one year one of the local churches was given the opportunity to show Christian-themed movies in the schools. One of those films, I don’t know the title anymore, was about the second coming. I remember one scene especially. A man was in his bathroom shaving, and suddenly he was gone. It was a movie that aimed to depict what is called the rapture, an idea that emerged in nineteenth century Evangelicalism and captured the fascination of many—the idea that at the second coming, the faithful would be transported to heaven while the rest of humanity remained on earth to face the consequences.

One of the proof texts for the rapture is in this passage: “Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.”

It’s a frightening image, and especially as the idea has played out in modern Christianity, it has captured, and traumatized many. But it’s a misreading of scripture, and a profound perversion of the notion of the second coming. Contrast that fear-mongering with Isaiah’s vision from the first lesson:

they shall beat their swords into ploughshares,
and their spears into pruning-hooks;

nation shall not lift up sword against nation,
neither shall they learn war any more.

This vision, cast in the ninth century bce, continues to inspire. The idea of an age of peace, of justice and equity, when God reigns is a powerful image, reminding us that even as we experience all the ways in which our world and our lives fall short of that vision, our faith continues to express itself by hoping that God will make all things right.

But it will happen in God’s time, not ours. One lesson that Advent teaches is that even as we look ahead to Christ’s coming at Christmas, as well as Christ’s second coming, the day and the hour are not ours to set. God’s time spans past, present, and future. Indeed, God is outside of time.

Yet as the reading from St. Paul’s letter to Romans reminds us, our waiting, our experience of time is not flat and meaningless. “Salvation is nearer to us now than when we were first believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.”

Both the gospel and the reading from Romans point to the ways in which early followers of Jesus were disoriented in time. There’s a great deal of evidence that those early Christians expected Jesus’ imminent return. When he seemed to tarry, they began to wonder whether their hopes were real, and if there hopes of an imminent second coming were not going to be realized, what would that mean for their faith in Christ?

Jesus warns his listeners, “But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father.”

In a way, Jesus’ words are doing to his listeners just what Advent is doing to us. He is trying to reorient them toward a new understanding of time, to change their expectations and experiences of it. So too does Advent do this to us. We are betwixt and between. Even as the circles of time continue through the years, Advent breaks in upon us and presents us with a different sense, or senses of time. As we look ahead for four weeks to Christmas, we are looking even further beyond to Christ’s second advent and those two markers remind us that ultimately, we are not in our time, or time of our making, but in God’s time. And in God’s time, God will make all things new, and we will beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. And we will study war no more.

Thanks be to God.

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

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September 14, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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4 Easter

May 11, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Men’s Drop-In Shelter at Grace, 1985-2020

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I was asked to share a bit of the history of the shelter at Grace for Porchlight’s annual gala last evening. Here’s what I said:

                     The History of the Homeless Shelter at Grace

I would like to thank Karla Thennes for inviting me this evening to share a bit about the history of the Men’s Drop-In Shelter at Grace Episcopal Church. I became Rector (Senior Pastor) of Grace in 2009 and for much of my tenure the homeless shelter was an integral part of our identity and mission. Even now, when I introduce myself to long-time Madisonians, they are likely to mention the shelter and reminisce about volunteering there over the years. Though I’ve been at Grace and lived in Madison for more than fifteen years, I’m still considered by many to be a newcomer, and my presentation this evening will necessarily be heavily weighted toward my own memories and the events of the last decade and a half. I will also offer a warning before I begin. I am a trained historian so my account this evening will try to be objective, to paint the full picture, warts and all.

Still, it’s worth recalling how it all began. Those of us of a certain age may be able to remember back to the early 80s, to the era of Reagonomics. There had been a strong push toward deinstitutionalization of mentally ill people beginning in the Carter administration but the planned development of community-based mental health facilities never came to fruition. With the shrinking safety net under President Reagan, urban redevelopment that demolished rooming houses like the YMCA here in Madison, deinstitutionalization, cities across the country were seeing a dramatic rise in unhoused people, especially single men.

In Madison, Madison Area Urban Ministry (the forerunner of Just Dane) organized a temporary shelter ion University Ave in 1984. In 1985, the shelter relocated to Grace Church, where it remained until 2020. In the early years, it provided accommodation for both men and women. While there were paid staff, meals were provided by volunteers and volunteers also staffed the facility overnight. 

As demand for services grew, overflow shelter was provided at St. John’s Lutheran Church on East Washington Ave. and in the winter at First Methodist. In later years, intake took place at Grace, where evening meals and breakfast were provided for all guests. After dinner, groups would be accompanied to St. John’s and First Methodist where they would spend the night. By the 2010s, the shelter would open its doors at 5:00 pm in the winter, and later in the summer, closing after breakfast at 7:00 am. The line of guests waiting for entry on cold evenings was an uncomfortable reminder to passersby of the inadequate facilities and services on offer.

From time to time, there were efforts to move the shelter or to force its closure. City officials cited it for code violations in the 1990s which led to a renovation spearheaded by then Governor Tommy Thompson. An article in Isthmus in 2010 by Joe Tarr exposed a new generation to the challenges presented by the shelter. Entitled “Bleak House: Grace Episcopal’s Homeless Shelter is a Dispiriting Space” caught the eye of Epic employees and led to another major renovation of the facilities funded by Epic.

But there were things that no amount of renovation could fix. The space was in a church basement, inaccessible to mobility-challenged guests. It was much too small for the need. 48 beds with room on the floor for an additional twelve. In the winter, the total number of  guests often exceeded 150. There was limited space and funding to offer essential services like case management while the shelter was open. Medical care was provided by volunteer medical students two evenings a week. 

Another enormous challenge was the fact that the shelter was only open at night. Hospitals regularly discharged homeless patients directly to the shelter. Often they would be dropped off by taxis in the middle of the day when there was no one to receive them, in wheelchairs, on oxygen or with catheters. The same was true of the Dane County Jail and the state prison system.

In 2011 and 2012, the jerry-rigged system of providing for unhoused people during the day collapsed when the basement of the State Capitol was declared off-limits and the Central Library underwent renovations. After a couple of years of temporary day shelters, Dane County and Catholic Charities opened the Beacon on E. Washington Avenue, which helped to address that crucial lack of services.

Grace Church’s identity and mission had been intertwined with the shelter since the 1980s. When I came to Grace, there was enormous pride in the congregation that we were doing this important work, even if our efforts amounted mostly to serving as landlord for Porchlight which operated the shelter. In fact, as I did research for this presentation, I was surprised to discover that one of my predecessors as Rector at Grace, Bill Wiedrich, wrote in a report to the congregation in the late 80s that our involvement with the shelter amounted to little more than acting as landlord. Nonetheless, we received much of the praise and blame from the community for its presence on our property.

Still, I was moved by the extent to which Grace members embraced the shelter as an institution. They fiercely defended it against detractors and were often hesitant to admit to its shortcomings (as I personally learned in the wake of Joe Tarr’s article). More importantly, they welcomed guests to our services and programs. I was surprised by the compassion showed to guests who wandered into our 8:00 service on cold Sunday mornings and their efforts to connect guests with services.

Like many other congregations and community groups, over the years Grace provided regular meals to shelter guests. Early in my tenure, my wife had a vision for our monthly meal that would treat guests and other community members to a sit-down dinner with musical accompaniment. Out of that developed “First Mondays at Grace” which offered a scrumptious meal and musical entertainment ranging from Bluegrass to Opera. Guests would often linger at their tables long after finishing their meals to enjoy the music and sometimes sing along, and we had a dedicated team of volunteers who loved to help. Each December, members of the church choir would sing holiday songs and Santa would distribute warm winter socks to everyone in attendance.

By the late 2010s, it became clear to me and a number of Grace’s lay leaders that the shelter facilities had reached a point of non-viability. We gathered a small group of people to begin strategizing our options. It quickly became clear to us that while many in the community were aware of the inadequacy of Grace’s facilities, there was little political will to move forward with a new shelter. We were told flatly by city and county elected officials that unless we set a deadline for its departure, nothing would happen. My response was to say, “As long as I am rector of Grace, you will never see a headline in the paper: ‘Grace evicts homeless shelter’.”

As our work progressed, we contracted with Susan Schmitz, former President of Downtown Madison, Inc, to gauge interest in the community for a new men’s shelter. We formed a committee made up of community members, homeless advocates and providers, city and county staff to begin working on this difficult issue. Our first meeting was in November, 2019. 

Then came the pandemic, and on March 30, 2020, the shelter closed its doors at Grace for the last time, relocating first to Warner Park, then to what will become the Madison Public Market, now to Zeier Rd before its new facilities are completed. Not only did it leave empty space in our building; its departure left a hole in our identity and mission.

In spite of that, Grace’s commitment to unhoused members of our community remain. We continue to serve them, through our Food Pantry which has been open since 1979 and serves housed as well as unhoused populations. A year ago, Off the Square Club moved into the space vacated by the shelter. It serves mostly unhoused people with a clinical diagnosis of mental illness, providing all kinds of support including meals, laundry and shower facilities, assistance with job training and housing placement, and with medical issues. Ironically, our records indicate that Off the Square Club used space at Grace back in the 1970s.

         Even as memories of the Drop-In Shelter at Grace begin to fade, the need to provide shelter for our unhoused neighbors does not. With the deepening crisis of affordable housing in our city and growing uncertainty about the federal social safety net, it is likely that there will continue to be many people who live on the streets. And unlike 50 years ago we won’t be able to rely on congregations to address unmet needs as membership in religious organizations plummets and grows older. 

All that’s for another day to discuss. For now, let us remember and celebrate those visionary folk who saw the need and created the shelter, brought it to Grace Church. Let’s also honor the other churches who contributed space, like St. John’s Lutheran and First Methodist, and the countless volunteers from those churches and many others, as well as civic organizations who provided meals every night, 365 days a year, for all of those years. All of them deserve our hearty thanks and gratitude, as does Porchlight and its predecessor agencies who operated the shelter for many years, and will operate the new shelter when it opens in 2025.

A reading (and watching) list on the First Thanksgiving and the Wampanoag

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From The Guardian

From The Washington Post:

“The Myth of Thanksgiving” (Washington Post podcast): https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/post-reports/the-myth-of-thanksgiving/

Also from the Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2021/11/04/thanksgiving-anniversary-wampanoag-indians-pilgrims/

You’ll need a Hulu subscription but Parma Lakshmi’s show on Thanksgiving the Wampanoag is very good: https://press.hulu.com/shows/taste-the-nation/

Here are my mother and my brothers: A Homily for Proper 5B, 2021Sermons

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June 6, 2021

What an exciting day it is at Grace. After almost exactly fifteen months of live-streamed or recorded worship, some of us are back in person. Others are still joining us online—and as I’ve said before, I assume that we will continue to offer some form of online worship for the foreseeable future. Some of us aren’t able to join us in person; others will choose to join us from home or while traveling because of convenience. It’s a new adventure for us all and we will have to do the hard work of thinking how to incorporate everyone into our congregation. 

What an exciting day, too, for Brandon and Kate. They’ve been waiting almost six months to have their daughter Mia baptized. We originally planned for a private baptism in November, but as COVID cases spiked we decided to delay it until a time when we could all feel more comfortable with it. This way, members of their family can be present

It’s lovely that we have a baptism today, on our first Sunday back for in-person worship. Not only does it bear witness to the newness of life in these difficult times, it is also a reminder to us of what we are about as God’s people, bringing into the body of Christ new members, witnessing to God’s love, and proclaiming our faith in the risen Christ. Our baptismal liturgy includes in it an opportunity for us to renew our own baptismal vows, to commit ourselves to each other as members of Christ’s body, and to renew our promises to grow more deeply as followers of Jesus.

There’s a creative tension at the heart of our understanding of baptism, especially infant baptism. On the one hand, it is a profoundly, intimately family celebration and event, linking families across generations with beloved and familiar traditions. That understanding was especially prominent in earlier generations when most baptisms were private. In the Episcopal Church, they were often conducted with only the immediate family and the priest present, often after Sunday services had taken place.

On the other hand, baptism is the full initiation of individuals into the body of Christ. It is a rite that brings us into fellowship and relationship with Jesus Christ and other members of Christ’s body. That aspect of it is emphasized when we all promise to help the one being baptized grow in the Christian faith. That’s why we now conduct baptisms usually at the principal Sunday service of Holy Eucharist, although we do make provisions as needed and to accommodate individual circumstances.

We see something of that same tension in today’s gospel reading. This is the first time we’re reading from the Gospel of Mark since Easter and after all those weeks in John’s gospel, we jump back into Mark’s very different story with a jolt that may wake us up.

We’re back fairly early in the gospel—chapter 3 to be precise. In the preceding chapters, Jesus has been on a preaching tour through the towns of Galilee, beginning with Capernaum. He has healed many people of their illnesses, cast out evil spirits, and called several of his disciples. His fame has spread far and wide and the crowds are becoming impressive. He has also aroused conflict around his interpretation of the law.

We see the effects of his healing ministry and the conflict he has already elicited here in this story. It’s an enigmatic story, full of drama, and leaving us with many questions as we listen to it. But I want to focus on the internal drama—or perhaps better put, the internal conflict between Jesus and his family members. A bit of that drama is downplayed in our reading because we pick up the story in verse 20. It’s not really clear to us that Jesus has come home, literally, to his house. That’s where the crowd presses in, so urgently that they are not able to eat. But, and this is important for what comes next, he and the disciples are not in the house, because his family comes out and wants to restrain him. They fear he has gone mad. To top it off, the religious experts have come down from Jerusalem to assert that he is not a messenger from God, but a servant of Satan.

That all this takes place around the house is significant. We have already seen that the private home is a place of refuge. Jesus went to his disciple Peter’s house after his initial public preaching and healing in the synagogue in Capernaum. But there too, he was beset by the crowds who wanted him to heal the sick. Later on in the gospel, we will see Jesus gathered with his disciples, but also with tax collectors and sinners, in people’s homes sharing table fellowship. Here, the house is a refuge, but it is occupied by family members who question his sanity.

Coming back to the end of the reading, Jesus is in the house, and his family members are outside. Being made aware of their presence outside, Jesus asks:

“Who are my mother and my brothers?” And looking at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.”

We have been outside of this place these many months, clamoring to enter, wanting to return. For many of us, to be back inside this sacred building is a coming home. It is a sanctuary from the troubles and dangers of the world, a place where we connect with our deepest selves, with God, and with our fellow Christians. Yet many of us are still standing outside—for whatever reasons reluctant to return to services because of anxiety, vaccination status, or medical conditions that limit our freedom.

Others stand outside because of their alienation from God, because of the pain they have suffered at the hands of the Church, because they are not sure they are welcome here. Some may not feel welcome because they are different from us, racially or ethnically, socioeconomically, because of their sexuality or gender. 

Even as Jesus embraces the household, the home, as a place of refuge, for himself and his followers, at the same time, he reinvents or reimagines the nature of the community that occupies the house. No longer is it a fellowship united by ties of blood; anyone “who does the will of my father” is a part of this new community, new family brought together by shared commitment to Jesus.

 In fact, it may be misleading even to call what is being brought together by Jesus a “family.” Especially in our culture where the notion of “family” is contested and full of symbolic meaning, weaponized for political purposes and cultural warfare, when we call the church a “family” we risk setting up the same sort of barriers between “inside” and “outside” that are created by the walls of a church, or a house. When one’s experience of family is full of trauma, scars, and abuse, to be called into a new family of the faithful may be a barrier to hard to cross.

Still, we are a new community, created by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We are a new community that welcomes into its midst through baptism and confession of faith anyone who comes to us. We are a new community that is meant to model what it means to follow Jesus in the world. We are a community called by Christ, calling others to Christ. 

As we reaffirm our baptismal vows today, as we bring into this fellowship a new member, as we gather, for the first time in many months in this place, face to face, and as we after a long fast, once again taste and see that the Lord is good, share in the Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, may the bonds that unite us together be strengthened, that we may go from this place, to love and serve the Lord.

Here are my mother and my brothers: A Homily for Proper 5B, 2021Sermons

Preaching Grace on the Square

Here are my mother and my brothers: A Homily for Proper 5B, 2021Sermons

He is not here, he is risen: A Sermon for Easter, 2021

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Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

The Lord is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

The traditional Easter acclamation rings hollow in empty churches today. Whatever joy we may feel on this Easter is tempered by the reality of our celebration. Instead of a church packed to the rafters, with most of us dressed in Easter finery; instead of brass, choir, and the voices of hundreds singing “Hail thee, festival day” and “Christ the Lord is risen today” we have soloists, recordings, livestreamed worship. Most of us are sitting at home, on our couches or at a kitchen table dressed in comfortable clothes or even, perhaps pajamas, with a cup of coffee instead of a hymnal in our hands. 

Yet all around us are also signs of new life and reasons for hope. As the pace of vaccinations continues to increase, we can glimpse and begin to plan for life after pandemic, and lockdowns, and isolation. Spring seems to be on its way. The bulbs in our garden are beginning to show flowers, and there’s clump of daffodils blooming in the courtyard garden here at the church. We are also beginning to make plans to return to public worship in the near future.

Still, the waiting continues and many of us remain anxious about the present and the future, even as we chafe at the continued restrictions and limits on our activities. It’s a difficult time, an in-between time, a time of waiting. 

The gospel of Mark was written in just such a time of waiting and anxiety; written for a community struggling to find a way forward in uncertain times, in the midst of violence, and as the old faith that had brought them into being as followers of Jesus was running up against new realities and new challenges.

The challenges facing Mark’s community are symbolized by the gospel’s ending, here, at the empty tomb. Mark leaves us hanging with the sentence: “And the women fled from the tomb, for terror and amazement had seized them, and they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid.” 

Now, this is no way to end a gospel, no way to tell the story of Easter and of resurrection. If you go to your bible and look up Mark 16, you will see that in most English bibles the Gospel of Mark doesn’t in fact end with v. 8, but has 8 additional verses, often set off in brackets or with asterisks. For while the earliest and most reliable manuscripts end with verse 8 and the women’s silence and fear, very quickly editors and copyists sought to provide a more suitable ending to the gospel, one that included appearances of the Risen Christ to the disciples.

But imagine those women as they came to the tomb. Mark tells us that they had come with Jesus from Galilee, that they had walked with him and the other, the male disciples, learning from, watching him as he healed the sick and cast out demons. Mark says that they had ministered to him along the way. They had heard him proclaiming the coming of God’s reign. They had been among the small group that had staged what we call “the triumphal entry into Jerusalem” casting their coats and tree branches on the road as Jesus entered the city riding on a donkey, a clear allusion to the Davidic monarchy.

They had watched as he turned over the moneychangers temples and silenced his opponents with clever debating tactics. And then, had they been there at the last supper? Mark doesn’t tell us, but they were at the crucifixion, watching from afar. 

All their hopes were dashed; their grief at the execution of their beloved teacher and friend overwhelming. And like Jesus, they were probably alone. The male disciples, easily distinguished by their Galileean accents were laying low, probably trying to figure out how to escape the city and Roman troops without notice. 

But the women came to the tomb, as women have done for millennia; to grieve, and to once again, minister to their loved one, to prepare his body for burial. It was probably a mourning ritual they had done before for other loved ones, but likely none was done with the grief and despair that accompanied them this morning.

And then, an empty tomb, a man clothed in white telling them that Jesus had been raised from the dead, that they were tell the others and go meet him in Galilee. 

Why wouldn’t they be afraid? The tomb had been robbed of their loved one’s body; they received a strange, incomprehensible message, they were to take the risky journey out of their hiding place in the city and go back to Galilee. 

Mark leaves us hanging with this grief and fear. He leaves us frustrated, unsatisfied. Why did he tell the story this way, why doesn’t he end it on a high note with all of the blockbuster special effects we’ve come to expect?

I’ll leave you to ponder that question, to go back and read through the gospel again, full of mystery and ambiguity, to wonder and imagine what he might want his readers to know about “The good news of Jesus Christ, son of God”—a gospel that begins with certainty and ends here, in fear, terror, amazement, silence.

We are like those women, peering into an empty tomb. We are looking back, in fear, despair, disappointment, and anger. More than a year of disrupted lives, suffering, isolation. Two Easters now observed, I won’t say “celebrated” with live-streamed worship. More than a year since many of you have tasted the body of Christ in the sacrament; a year away from friends, family, the body of Christ gathered in community.

Our yearnings are clear, we can feel them in the marrow of our bones. If not to go back to the way things were in 2019 but an intense desire to return to this place, to public worship, to singing, and fellowship.

You are peering into an empty church as those women peered into an empty tomb. The same message resounds: “He is not here, he is risen!” 

We are being called not to return to the past, but to make our way into the future, to meet Christ, not at the empty tomb or in the empty church, but out there, in Galilee, in the streets and neighborhoods of our city, in the world. We are called to imagine a new church, a new community, inspired by the risen Christ helping to heal and rebuild our city and the lives of our neighbors. 

We are called to meet the risen Christ who is going before us into the future. There we will see him, for he is risen. There we will encounter the risen Christ in the new life and new world that is emerging through his resurrection.

That Christ is risen gives us hope. That Christ is risen reminds us that the powers of evil, Satan and his forces, do not have the last word, will not vanquish. That Christ is risen shows us the possibility and reality of new life, of new creation, of God’s reign breaking into our lives and into our world, making all things new, remaking us, in God’s image.

That Christ is risen  gives us strength and courage to imagine a new world emerging, new community where God’s justice reigns, where prisoners are released, the hungry fed, the naked clothed, where the barriers that divide us crumble. 

That Christ is risen gives us hope and courage to build a new community, to rebuild our neighborhood justly and equitably. We see signs of that already in the recent announcement that the boys and girls club will be our neighbors on Capitol Square, a symbol that this neighborhood belongs to our whole city, not just the few.

May we have the courage and hope to heed the call to go out and meet the Risen Christ where he is; and in our encounters with him, may our hearts burn with love and hope as we are healed and as we work toward the healing of our city and world.

Alleluia! Christ is Risen!

Healing and Discipleship: A Homily for Epiphany 5B, 2021

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5 Epiphany

February 7, 2021

One of the things I’ve struggled with most over the past ten months is the helplessness I often feel when pastoral concerns arise. I’m unable to visit people in their homes, or hospital beds, or hospice. Phone calls or emails are no substitutes for a face-to-face conversation, for being present with someone who is suffering or struggling, to offer prayers, words of consolation and comfort, or communion. 

I’m not alone in this. It’s something clergy talk about when we gather but it’s a general problem as well. We have been cut off from each other and in spite of all of the ways that technology enables us to worship, to have fellowship, to continue to do our work, we miss the simple pleasures of being together with friends, family, coworkers, other members of the body of Christ. We feel the sense of that loss every day. 

The little gospel story we heard today seems straightforward, perhaps even uninteresting but hearing it in our context brings out new themes that speak to our situation. 

Recall that we are at the very beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. Earlier that day, he had visited the synagogue in Capernaum where he taught (with authority) subdued a man with an unclean spirit. Now he is going home with Peter, where they discover that Peter’s mother-in-law is ill with a fever. 

In moving from the synagogue to a home, Jesus is not only going out for lunch after services. He is moving from the public, male-oriented space of the synagogue to the private space where women could act as agents. But in this case, Peter’s mother-in-law is incapacitated by illness and unable to fulfill her traditional and important role of offering hospitality. Jesus heals her and Mark says that she got up and served them. 

That little detail might be something we overlook, or it might be something we notice and even offend us. Think about, one could interpret this story to mean that Jesus healed Peter’s mother-in-law so that she could get up and fix dinner for him and his disciples. 

There’s more to it than that, of course. First off, the word used here for “served” is the Greek word diakosune—from which we derive our word “deacon.” Significantly, Mark uses it at the very end of the gospel to describe the women who watched from afar as he is crucified. There, Mark is contrasting the behavior of these female disciples with Jesus’ male disciples, all of whom abandoned him at the end and left him to die alone. For Mark these women are models of discipleship. It’s appropriate, then, that at the very beginning of the gospel, Mark shows a woman, Peter’s mother-in-law, modeling discipleship by serving Jesus.

That’s not the end of the story. As evening falls, ushering a new day and the end of the sabbath, the townspeople bring all of their sick and those possessed by demons to Jesus. Mark says that he healed many of them—not all. And then Mark tells us that Jesus went off to a deserted place to pray. When his disciples caught up with him, they told him that “everyone was looking for him” implying that he was wanted back in Capernaum, to continue his ministry of healing. But Jesus demurred. He told them his work was elsewhere, to proclaim the good news, heal the sick, and cast out demons in the towns and villages of Galilee. 

Packed into these few verses are some important lessons for us. We see models of both ministry and discipleship. For Mark, one key theme discipleship and ministry is service—Jesus will later tell his disciples in 10:45 that he came not to be served but to serve (using the exact same Greek word here). While healing is central to Jesus’ ministry, it’s important to keep in mind that healing was not only about a physical illness. In the ancient world, illness affected the whole person, body and soul, and to be healed meant being healed spiritually, and restored to the community. Peter’s mother-in-law was isolated in her bed. When Jesus healed her, she was restored to her place in the community. 

In addition, in Jesus’ actions we see an important reminder to us as well. In the first place, while all the sick and those possessed by demons were brought to him in Capernaum, Mark says he healed many, not all of them and that he left to go to a deserted place to pray. Even Jesus couldn’t solve all of the problems of the people and he needed to take a break, get away from it all, to pray and recharge. 

I’ve been inspired as I’ve watched Grace members come together over the last months. In spite of the challenges facing us all, in spite of the many limitations on what we can do, we are still caring for each other, preparing meals, praying, reaching out to those in need. We are doing ministry in all kinds of ways, sharing God’s love with each other and with the larger community. The phone tree, the healing prayer team, pastoral care committee, the nourishing community group are all working hard to keep us connected and to respond to needs as they emerge.

But we should remember that even as we seek to do ministry, to follow Jesus’ example in serving others, healing and restoring them to community, we should not lose sight of our own needs and limitations, that we can’t do it all, and we can’t do it by ourselves. Our work needs to be centered in prayer and in our relationship with God. The prophet’s words should inspire us:

“but those who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength,
they shall mount up with wings like eagles,

they shall run and not be weary,
they shall walk and not faint.”

Returning from Exile: A Homily for Advent 3B

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Advent 3       

December 13, 2020

Advent Exile

December 7, 2014

We are now observing the Third Sunday of Advent. It is known as Gaudete Sunday, a Sunday of joy. In many churches, the purple or blue vestments that are used throughout Advent give way to rose or pink vestments. And the dominant themes of the season—repentance in preparation for the coming of Christ at Christmas and at the second Coming, give way to rejoicing. We don’t make the change in liturgical colors, but as you can see, our advent wreath includes a rose-colored candle to represent this Third Sunday.

This theme of joy comes out especially in the first reading and the psalm today. Both texts speak to our own situation as well, because as you probably know the first doses of a covid vaccine are being shipped today, signifying that our struggle with the pandemic may be coming to an end. At the same time, experts warn that there are dark, difficult times ahead.

Both of those texts, Psalm 126 and Isaiah 61 reflect the experience of God’s people in exile in Babylon. The Psalm speaks of God restoring the fortunes of Zion, of people who left weeping, return in joy. The prophet speaks of God providing for those in Zion, replacing their mourning with a garland. He speaks also of building up the ancient ruins and repairing the ruined cities.

Exile is an image that may resonate powerfully in this season. Forced from our churches, our downtown nearly abandoned, having to give up many of our cherished activities and familiar routines, we are in exile physically, but also spiritually and psychologically. We feel profoundly dislocated from our community, our friends and family, even perhaps, from ourselves. We are disoriented, longing for return. And now, we may be able to see an end to all of this. Our hope is rekindled even as the number of those suffering and dying continues to rise. 

Advent speaks to that longing, of hope in the midst of difficult times. As the year comes to a close, the days shorten and grow cold, the candles we light each week seem to be an act of defiance, a statement of faith that the light coming into the world, shining in the darkness, will overcome the forces of evil. It is a hope expressed in our faith that the one coming into the world, the Word made flesh is at work making all things new, even when chaos and evil seem to be overwhelming everything. 

Our faith this season, our waiting, our hope, is not passive. It must participate in the work that God in Christ is doing here among us. That’s the message of the prophet, who proclaims those powerful, familiar words, echoed by Jesus himself in his first public sermon in the Gospel of Luke:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me

because the Lord has anointed me; 

he has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted, 

to proclaim liberty to the captives,
and release to the prisoners; 

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor,

This is the work that God in Christ is accomplishing, the work that we ourselves are called to. And in this season of struggle, of waiting and hope, it is work that we may want to defer or ignore because of all that is going on around us and in our personal lives. 

We have, I think, been tempted to focus on ourselves, on our fears and on all that we have lost—and we must, as we say that, recognize that many of us have lost a great deal indeed, loved ones, jobs and livelihoods, our hopes for the future, a sense of security. As we have seen in the runup to the election, and now in the weeks since, the anger and fear, the emotions surrounding all of that loss have driven deep in our individual and national psyches, heightened division, led to violence.

But even as we have tended to focus on ourselves, it is important to pay attention to the words of scripture this week, to the prophet’s call for justice, to bind up the broken-hearted, liberty to the captives, to rebuild the city. He was talking about Jerusalem, of course, the desolate city that the returning exiles would encounter. But our city is not so very different, with its deep inequities and injustice, with its boarded up windows and abandoned restaurants and retail establishments. As we return in the coming months, to the downtown and to our church, we must not lose sight of the work we need to do to advocate and struggle for a more just and equitable downtown, where all are welcome and may flourish.

As we think about our return, we would do well to heed the example set by John the Baptist in today’s gospel reading. When asked if he was the Messiah, he repeatedly denied it, and directed attention away from himself toward the one who was coming into the world, Jesus Christ. John was a witness; his proclamation, his testimony was not about himself but about Christ. His repeated denials, his pointing away from himself to another, is a powerful witness to us in our age.

Among everything else we see in our culture today, in our highly individualistic, perhaps even narcissistic culture, is an emphasis on the individual, on the individual’s rights. We are bombarded with images from politics, from culture, from social media of people who go out of their way to bring attention to themselves, make everything about them. What, after all, is a “social influencer” if not someone who is marketing themselves? In our response the pandemic, in the debates and conflicts over masks, or public gatherings, even worship, the rights of the few are often privileged over the needs of the many. 

But John shows us a different way. His popularity, his notoriety, brought him attention, brought the religious elite to him to question him. And when questioned, he bore witness, not to himself, but to Jesus. 

Even when we want to do the work to which God calls us, advocating for justice, feeding the hungry, binding up the broken-hearted, we may often do it for reasons that are as much about ourselves as they are about the needs of others or following the teachings of Jesus. 

But John shows us a different way. It’s not about us. It’s about Jesus. In our work for justice, in our efforts to help our fellow human beings, our priority must always be to point the way to Jesus. As we look ahead to our return to the city, as we look ahead to Christ’s coming, may our longing, our waiting, our searching point us to Christ, and help us point others to him as well.