Jesus’ Healing Touch: A Sermon for 4 Lent, 2020

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My sermon from 2017 is here

My sermon from 2014 is here

A blind man sitting by the side of a dusty road. It’s likely something that he did every day, sitting there, presumably begging, although we’re not told that in the text. Born blind, he had struggled with that challenge all his life.

Jesus and his disciples were passing by. We may assume that the blind man wasn’t alone, that there were others congregating with him, as beggars, panhandlers do, in places they hope have lots of foot traffic. And like Jesus, when we see them, we very likely pass by as well.

But the disciples took notice. Not of the man’s suffering or need; their theological curiosity was piqued. Who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?

Were the disciples bored? Were they hoping their question would inspire Jesus to offer a lengthy discourse on the nature of sin, suffering, and divine justice?   Or did this question come from a genuine place of concern on their part? If so, why the blind man? What was about him that drew their attention?

Meanwhile, the blind man is just sitting there by the side of the road, undoubtedly hearing the question and the response. It’s pretty belittling, don’t you think? Unknown passers-by, asking whether your blindness was a result of your or your parents’ sin. They’re not interested in you, not interested in your difficult life. They could care less.

And at first, you’re sitting there, overhearing the callous conversation, and the teacher seems no more interested in you than any of his disciples are but at least he puts the blame for your blindness not on your or your parents’ sin.

“He was born blind so that God’s works might be revealed in him.”

Is that any word of reassurance? But then, and again, you don’t know what’s going on because you’re blind and there’s no one to narrate the action, you feel these hands smearing your eyes with mud.

What’s going on? How can someone invade your personal space like that and mess with your face, your eyes? But he hears this unfamiliar voice telling him to go wash in the pool of Siloam, and perhaps only because he wants to get rid of the mud on his face, he obeys. As he does it and as he returns, he is able to see.

Now there’s lots more to this story. It goes on for 41 verses with many characters, plot developments, and debate. If you would like to know my take on this story from previous years, I direct you to my blog, where sermons from past years are posted.

Instead, I want us to focus on the blind man, and on Jesus. We are like that blind man. We are in the middle of a situation none of us could have imagined and for which none of us have prepared. We can’t see into the future; we can’t really even see tomorrow. We are helpless, alone, isolated. We are overwhelmed with fear and anxiety. And we are impotent. We can’t control our environment. I went out for a walk yesterday and while I was vigilant in practicing social distancing, many bikers and joggers on the bike path were not.

And there are those voices, like the disciples, in our heads and in our media, asking questions about the pandemic, seeking to lay blame, on our government, on China, or perhaps even blaming ourselves or God.

In our isolation, in our fear, in our blindness, Jesus comes to us, touches us and gives us sight. He gives us hope, courage, and strength. Jesus is the light of the world. He is our light. Shining in the darkness of these difficult days, Jesus offers us healing and hope. His touch comes to us, breaking the barrier of social distance and isolation to open our eyes and fill our hearts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

God’s love poured into our hearts: A Sermon for the Third Sunday in Lent, 2020

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My beloved friends in Christ, I come before you in these strange circumstances, as we face danger like none we have ever known before, in the midst of overwhelming fear, anxiety, and growing isolation. Even as we struggle to make sense of all of this, struggle to figure out what to do, struggle to survive, we also see signs of God’s grace and mercy. I am so very grateful for your prayers for me, our staff and lay leadership as we work to respond to this situation. I am grateful for the volunteers who offered to help with the phone tree that was implemented yesterday, to provide us with yet another means of communication. I’m grateful for Vikki and the food pantry volunteers who continued that vital ministry in these difficult circumstances. I’m grateful for others who have reached out with words of encouragement and offers of help.

These are trying times, made especially so because our human instinct to come together, to gather in the face of crisis, is made impossible by the need for social distancing. The comfort and strength we gain by meeting together is lost to us. That is one reason I decided to offer online worship this morning; as a way to gather, if only via the internet, to hear familiar words and say familiar prayers, to gain strength and to receive grace from the Eucharist, even if we can experience it only visually and spiritually.

When we gather, our fellowship seems easily to nurture community. We greet each other, share polite conversation, shake hands while passing the peace, talk during coffee hour. But ours is primarily a Sunday congregation; most of us have other relationships with friends, family, and coworkers that sustain us and support us. We don’t often pay close attention, tend, or nurture any of those relationships. Proximity makes such relationships relatively easy to maintain. Now we are in a different situation. Our physical separation means that we must find new ways to build and nurture relationships. We must be more attentive, intentional. It is my hope that our experience in the coming days and weeks will create new and deeper connections that will continue when we are once again able to gather together physically.

I was moved by the power and relevance of Paul’s words in today’s reading from Romans: “hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” May we gain strength for the days to come from these words and may we all experience the hope that comes from the love that God pours into our hearts.”

 

Today’s gospel reading offers insight into our situation. The story of the Samaritan woman is a familiar and beloved story. It’s a story full of symbolism and like so many stories in John’s gospel, it gains deeper significance and meaning when we read it in light of the rest of the Gospel. So for example, we could contrast Nicodemus, last week’s gospel reading, with this story. Nicodemus was a Jew, a Pharisee, the consummate insider. He came to Jesus by night. The Samaritan woman was the consummate outsider, both in her own community and in relation to the Jewish community. Yet her encounter with Jesus took place in the blazing midday sun. Is this an allusion to chapter 1: “And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome (grasp) it”?

Or perhaps another allusion to chapter 1. After John the Baptist identifies Jesus to his own disciples, pointing to him and saying, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” Andrew and another one follow Jesus. When Jesus notices them, he asks, “What are you looking for?

They respond, “Where are you staying?”

To which Jesus responds, “Come and see.”

In this story, after her encounter with Jesus, the woman runs back to town and tells the people, “Come and see.” She is the first to identify Jesus as the Messiah, the first to share the good news of Jesus with others, the first evangelist.

But there’s more to the story than that. And it’s hard not to read our own situation into the Samaritan woman’s experience.

Social distancing, a concept that was unknown to us two weeks ago is now on our minds constantly. But even if we didn’t call it that, social isolation and ostracism has been common throughout human history. Indeed, the Samaritan woman herself experienced social isolation. She came to the well in the middle of the day, at the hottest time of the day, alone, because she was marginalized by her community. Tasks like these were most often communal ones in premodern, rural cultures. Women who had to do the same thing did it together, so women would come together to the well, chatting, gossiping as they did. It was a time of fellowship. But this woman, because of her status came to the well by herself.

But when she arrived, she discovered someone else was there. And when he asked her for water, she practiced social distancing on him, reminding him of religious and cultural convention that prohibited their conversation, and prohibited him from drinking water from a jug that she had touched. Contamination, you see.

As their conversation deepened, they broached the cause of the division between Samaritan and Jew. Samaritans had built a temple to worship God on Mt. Gerizim, while Jews believed the only temple where valid worship could occur was Jerusalem. As they continued to chat, Jesus said:

But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.

I am saying this in an empty nave, a place where people have worshiped for more than 160 years each Sunday. It is a place that we cherish; a place we gather to hear the Word of God proclaimed, and where bread and wine are transformed into the body and blood of Christ. It is a place we love; it is a place where we encounter God, where we are the body of Christ. But today and for the foreseeable future, we will not be able to gather here for worship and fellowship. Our relationships with God and each other will be nourished not by hugs, or by bread and wine, but by all of the ways we connect thanks to modern technology—the telephone, social media. Even as we often criticize such technology for distracting us or for loosening the ties that bind us to our faith or our communities, now, we are going to have to rely on that technology and learn new ways of connecting.

Worship in spirit and in truth. It’s almost as if we are given a way forward. Jesus is reminding us that the building doesn’t matter all that much. He’s reminding us that in spite of the fact that Christianity is an embodied religion, that we worship a God made flesh, who lived among us, a God whose body suffered like ours do, a God who died like we do, but was raised again, worship and relationship happen in other ways, too.

May we find ways to nurture and deepen our relationships with each other and with God, and may we find ways to share God’s love in these difficult days.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Resources for online worship, March 15, 2020

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A link to our facebook page: You may also search for it on Facebook: @gracemadisonwi

A link to First United Methodist Church’s livestream (I’ll be joining their clergy for informal worship at 9:00 am).

our service bulletin for this Sunday.

A link to the online Book of Common Prayer.

We will begin with the Penitential Order Rite II, followed by the Eucharist

Prayers for Spiritual Communion (from Forward Movement Publications and St. Augustine’s Prayerbook), intended for use when it’s impossible to receive the sacrament. You may pray them while I’m consecrating the elements today:

National Cathedral’s streamed worship (Presiding Bishop Michael Curry is preaching

A little background about our efforts toward a new shelter

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I didn’t sleep well last night. I rarely do on Saturday nights because I’m always a bit worried about Sunday. I worry whether my sermon will proclaim the Gospel and feed the souls of the people who gather at Grace. I fret about the logistics of worship. I wonder whether there will be people missing from the pews or whether I will learn of serious illness or the death of a member.

Last night, I was worried about something else. I knew Dean Mosiman’s article on our nascent efforts toward a new men’s shelter was going to be published today and I was worried about what would appear in it and what the public’s, and Grace members’ reaction would be. He had spent an hour interviewing me for the piece a couple of weeks ago; and we spent around a half hour on the phone on Thursday as he talked through the article, checked facts, and whether I was comfortable with the quotes from me he was using.

We’ve been working toward this for over five years. Back when we first began conversations at Grace about long-overdue renovations, we included some tweaks to the shelter facilities in our early plans. We ended not including that work in our capital campaign and renovations for a complicated set of reasons, including the prospects of a major redevelopment of much of the block. At the same time, we continued internal conversations and had some exploratory conversions about the possibility of a new shelter with some stakeholders in the community.

We started those conversations because our concerns about conditions and adequacy of the facility. The basement that is used as shelter is severely overcrowded at intake and at meals. It is not ADA-compliant. Guests are forced to wait outside in inclement weather.  There are permanent “overflow” shelters and inadequate space to provide ancillary services including counseling and case management. On top of all that, the facilities are likely nearing the end of their lifespan.

Over the last years, we’ve talked to business leaders, downtown developers, elected officials, city and county staff, and other service providers. While there is almost universal agreement that the facility at Grace is inadequate, we have been told repeatedly over the years that unless and until we set a deadline for the shelter’s departure from Grace, there will be no movement towards a new shelter.

Our response to that has always been and will continue to be that we will not, nor can we, set a deadline. The men’s shelter came to Grace in 1984-1985 on a one-year temporary basis. It will remain at Grace until a new shelter that is adequate to the needs and designed for the purpose opens. The shelter is central to our identity as a church and it is central to our mission and purpose in proclaiming the Good News of Jesus Christ in word and deed.

With no one else in the community willing to take the lead, beginning work toward a new shelter fell on us. We knew that it was well beyond our capacity as a congregation both financially and in terms of expertise. We knew that we would have to bring together a coalition of people who were committed to the effort and could move it forward.

When we first began thinking of who might help us move this project along, we immediately thought of Susan Schmitz, former President of Downtown Madison, Inc. She is committed to working on the issue of homelessness, is widely respected in the community, and has relationships across the city, with elected officials, city and county staff, and downtown stakeholders. As she worked, it became clear to us that moving forward was definitely a possibility, and so we took the next steps of putting together a steering committee that would work on the project.

Meanwhile, a group of shelter providers from the Homeless Services Consortium had begun discussing what a new shelter might look like: what best practices were in place across the country, what Madison’s needs might be, and the like. Members of that group and representatives of Grace Church, as well some additional city and county staff went up to St. Paul to tour Higher Ground, a new shelter operated by Catholic Charities.

That tour was transformative, at least for me. I saw the possibility of what a shelter might, no should look like. It has a roomy reception area large enough to accommodate all guests at intake. There are bunks with space for personal storage and charging outlets. There are areas for “pay-to-stay” where people who have jobs but lack the financial resources to rent can stay and at the same time save money for a security deposit or first month’s rent. Not only did our tour offer a vision of what might be; it also provided a stark and embarrassing contrast to what we have now.

The way ahead is enormously challenging and full of potential landmines. Given my experience with early efforts at locating a day resource center and the neighborhood outcry over the Salvation Army’s redevelopment plans, I know that much could go wrong.

I don’t think we have a choice. As Mosiman points out in the article, conditions in the shelter at Grace are deteriorating and no amount of renovation can overcome its lack of space and inadequacy. The “overflow” shelters are equally problematic and the host congregations are discussing their future plans. The model we have used in Madison for the last 35 years is no longer viable. The urgent need for a new shelter Is a result of the growing population of homeless people, the unsustainability of our current facilities, and the desperate need to provide guests with the services they need to find permanent housing and become flourishing members of our community.

There’s one more thing. As I said earlier, the shelter is at the heart of Grace’s identity as a congregation and central to our mission. When it is relocated, it will leave a huge hole at the heart of who we are. We have been committed to serving homeless men for 35 years. We have received accolades from the community as well as considerable criticism. Even though we are only technically the landlords of the shelter, it is very much part of us. As this process moves forward, we will also be prayerfully discerning how we might continue to minister to homeless people, perhaps in creative, new ways, and also we will seek to hear where God is calling is in the future.

I provide a little more history about the homeless shelter and my reflections on ministry to the homeless in articles here and here.

 

We beseech Thee to hear us, Good Lord: A Sermon for the First Sunday in Lent, 2020

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“From lightning and tempest; from earthquake, fire, and
flood; from plague, pestilence, and famine,
Good Lord, deliver us.”

English-speaking Christians have prayed or chanted these words for almost 500 years. Often, they have been chanted in public procession, beginning at their first use back in 1543. The Great Litany is the first piece of the liturgy officially published in English and it was first used before Henry VIII embarked on one of his failed attempts to defeat the French. Since then, it has been prayed in times of plague and war. We use it here at Grace on the first Sunday in Lent both to mark the changed liturgical season and to emphasize human sins and shortcomings, and our need to repent, to ask God for forgiveness, and to receive God’s mercy and grace.

In many years, the language and imagery of the Great Litany seems not really to speak from or about our experience and our world. Words like “flesh and the devil” or petitions to “beat down Satan under our feet” remind us of the vast cultural distance that separates us from the people of the sixteenth century.

This year, our experience of the Great Litany may be different. Prayers that our political leaders would do justice, and love mercy, and walk in the ways of truth seem eerily on point and all of us are praying that we be delivered from plague and pestilence.

Ancient words made new and meaningful again. As we worry about immediate threats like the spread of coronavirus, about the health of the economy, about the direction of our country, and about the growing threats of global climate crisis, it’s increasingly clear that human existence is fragile, that the world we have known and in which we many of us have thrived may be in the process of becoming quite different, with threats on all sides, not just to our comfortable lives and living standards, but to human life itself.

Ancient words, ancient stories. We heard two stories that have deep power in our culture. From the gospel of Matthew, the story of Jesus’ encounter with Satan. It occurred immediately after his baptism, immediately after the voice from heaven said, “This is my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” And it’s as if this scene is set up to challenge that statement, that Jesus is the Son of God, and that God is well-pleased with him.

From Genesis, a foundational, perhaps the foundational story of Western Christianity, and with it all of western culture. The story of the man and the woman in the Garden of Eden. It’s a story we think we know. The reading from Romans 5 shapes our interpretative lens: “As sin came into the world through one man, and through sin came death…” The lectionary and our previous assumptions teach us that this is the story of original sin, the fall, an explanation of why there is evil in the world, why humans die, and why we have to work hard to achieve anything.

While that’s the story we know, it’s not the story that appears in Genesis 3. In the first place, the words “sin” nor “Satan” or the devil do not appear in the text. It’s the story of a woman, a man, and a serpent, who we’re told “was more crafty than any other of the wild animals that the Lord God had made.”

The inclusion of the verses from chapter 2 helps us understand the authors’ perspective on human beings and on creation. The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden, the Hebrew literally reads, “to serve it and to guard it.” Human beings were created to be in partnership with the garden, to protect it and preserve it. It’s a very different notion than that which appears in Genesis 1, when God commands the humans to have dominion, lordship, over all the animals and plants. We see here a sense of human beings cooperating with creation, given responsibility to protect it. One more point—there’s no sense here that before the fall, humans were intended to live in idleness, rather, they were placed in the garden for an end and a purpose. Created in the image and likeness of God, God intended them to flourish and to aid in the flourishing of creation.

But something happened. They met a talking serpent who gave them a different way to think about themselves and God. The serpent questioned what God had told them and promised them that by eating from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would become like God.

Everything the serpent tells them is true, if somewhat one-sided. They did not die after eating of the fruit of the tree and they did gain knowledge. And the fruit was desirable. Eve ate because the fruit was beautiful, good to eat, and would make one wise—all of these are appropriate reasons for her decision. And, I would add, of the two humans, at least the woman showed some agency: “she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate.”

What were the consequences? They gained knowledge; most immediately, of their nakedness. They were ashamed. So whatever intimacy the two beings, “bone of bone and flesh of flesh” had had was suddenly gone—they needed protection from each other. And they needed protection from God. Their nakedness and exposure broke the pair’s intimacy with each other; it also broke their intimacy with God. Instead of becoming like God, they becoming frightfully aware of their difference from God. They wanted to escape from God but God wasn’t done with them. God sought them out in their hiding place, and when God located them, God showed continuing care for them by sewing clothes for them from animal skins. Any punishment would come later.

It’s a story of disobedience and rebellion against God. God created the humans for a purpose, for relationship with God and to participate with God in the care of God’s creation. Rejecting that purpose, they chose to aspire to be like God and so spurned their true nature, having been created in the image and likeness of God. It’s the story of humanity; it’s our story. Like Eve and Adam, we grasp for the beauty and knowledge we can see; and in grasping for what we want, we turn away from God and deface the image of God in us. The knowledge we gain is knowledge of our own fallen humanity, knowledge of our shame and embarrassment.

The man and the woman in Eden grasped to become something other than who they were and who they were created to be. In the gospel reading, we see Satan testing Jesus to see what sort of “Son of God” he would be. Would he be one who gave people what they wanted—bread for their stomachs? Would he be one who would take all that he could, who would rule the world with power like the Roman emperors? In the end, Jesus chose a different model and would follow a different path, one that would end in a humiliating, tortured execution. In the end, Jesus accepted his identity as God’s beloved son, and loving the whole world, he offered himself for us.

The story of the man and the woman in Eden is a story about humanity, about our nature. We are curious, we desire wisdom and new, exciting experiences. We want our freedom and we want to challenge the limits of our identities and nature. And in so doing, we come up against our own limitations and discover, if we are discerning, our nakedness before God.

The story of Jesus’ testing in the wilderness is in some ways a very similar story. He is presented with everything any human being could want, wealth, power, popularity. But Jesus chooses to follow his call, accept his identity. In so doing, he shows us the possibility of human existence, and in the end, by his death and resurrection, offers us the possibility of being remade, truly in God’s image.

The purpose of Lent is not for us to beat ourselves with our shortcomings, to bewail our sins and weakness. The purpose of Lent is for us to discover and confess who we are—that we are broken human beings, broken by our self-indulgences, our sins, our disobedience, to admit that we are naked before God. When we do that, we make room in our lives for God’s grace and mercy, and we allow ourselves to begin to be recreated more fully in God’s image, more fully human. May this Lent be such a time for us, a time of self-discovery, repentance, and being recreated. Amen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Marked by Ashes: Poetry for Lent by Walter Brueggeman

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Ruler of the Night, Guarantor of the day …
This day — a gift from you.
This day — like none other you have ever given, or we have ever received.
This Wednesday dazzles us with gift and newness and possibility.
This Wednesday burdens us with the tasks of the day, for we are already halfway home
halfway back to committees and memos,
halfway back to calls and appointments,
halfway on to next Sunday,
halfway back, half frazzled, half expectant,
half turned toward you, half rather not.

This Wednesday is a long way from Ash Wednesday,
but all our Wednesdays are marked by ashes —
we begin this day with that taste of ash in our mouth:
of failed hope and broken promises,
of forgotten children and frightened women,
we ourselves are ashes to ashes, dust to dust;
we can taste our mortality as we roll the ash around on our tongues.
We are able to ponder our ashness with
some confidence, only because our every Wednesday of ashes
anticipates your Easter victory over that dry, flaky taste of death.

On this Wednesday, we submit our ashen way to you —
you Easter parade of newness.
Before the sun sets, take our Wednesday and Easter us,
Easter us to joy and energy and courage and freedom;
Easter us that we may be fearless for your truth.
Come here and Easter our Wednesday with
mercy and justice and peace and generosity.
We pray as we wait for the Risen One who comes soon.

Ash Wednesday Crosses, ashy, oily, woody: A homily for Ash Wednesday, 2020

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I have had many memorable Ash Wednesdays. There was the first year I officiated at an Ash Wednesday service as a layperson. There was 2011, the year of the Act 10 protests, when the final vote occurred during our evening liturgy and we could hear the demonstrations as we knelt for the Litany of Penitence.

But perhaps my most memorable Ash Wednesday only became that in retrospect. A few years ago, I put ashes on the forehead of a dying parishioner. It was the first time she was in church after beginning chemotherapy earlier that year, and I recognized her only because she was accompanied by her daughter whose face was familiar to me. A few weeks later, she would die and I would officiate at her funeral and burial.

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.”

Those words, these ashes are a sign of our mortality, a reminder to us that we are created from the dust of the earth, and that our bodies will return to the earth.

Those words weigh heavily on my soul when I say them to myself each year, and their weight accumulates on me as I say them to you. I suspect they weigh heavily on you as well, as they challenge all of us to reflect on our mortality, to admit to ourselves who we are—dust and ashes, and that we will once more be dust and ashes, that all of our efforts to the contrary, all of our attempts to hold death at bay will come to nothing.

But contemplation of our nature, our provenance and end, is not an end in itself. We do this ritual, we make this strange gesture, we wear this smudge on our forehead to remind us of who we are and to remind us also of who God is. For it is God who made us out of the dust of the earth. It is God who has given us life and all that we have. Yet like our fear and desperate attempts to ignore our mortality, to fight the finality of death, so too do we often find ourselves running away from or ignoring God. We construct defenses; we try to hide. We put in place of God all manner of idols that we worship and pursue: financial success or security, fame, power; bright, shiny possessions; or the thrill of new experiences.

Cross-shaped ashes on our foreheads, the admonition “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” lay bare the emptiness of all those pursuits. They break down the barriers, strip our defenses, leave us kneeling before God our maker and redeemer.

Our empty selves, our vain hopes, brought to nothing by those words, leaving us with broken and contrite hearts. It is then that we can encounter God, stripped of our defenses, and open ourselves to deeper relationship with our Creator and Redeemer.

We carry the ashy cross on our foreheads for a few hours, a day if we’re careful. But we’re just as likely to brush it off intentionally as soon as we leave church, or perhaps unintentionally, when it vanishes as we take off our winter hats or caps.

There’s a cross marked on us that is permanent, indelible, that can’t be brushed or washed off. It’s made with the same gestures, my thumb making the sign of the cross on foreheads, but with oil of chrism instead of ashes. And I say something quite different as well.

Instead of, “Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return,” the words I say on Ash Wednesday, after baptizing someone, I dip my thumb in oil of chrism, and make the sign of the cross on the forehead of the newly baptized, saying while I do it, “You are sealed with the Holy Spirit in Baptism and marked as Christ’s own forever.

We bear that cross all of our lives, even if it is invisible. It is the mark of our belonging to Christ, the mark of our faith. And just as the cross of ash reminds us of our mortality, the cross marked in oil is a sign of who we truly are and of our ultimate destiny. We are beloved children of God.

We can forget that identity; as the cross is invisible, it can be forgotten under the weight of our sin and our doubts. But it may be that just as our foreheads are marked with ashes, the ash works as an abrasive, removing all of the accretions, so that our baptismal crosses are visible to ourselves and to the world. We are Christ’s own forever.

Of course, the Season of Lent has us think about another cross, the cross that looms ahead at the end of Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem. It’s a journey on which we are invited to accompany Jesus, to walk with him as his disciples and followers. When Jesus explained to his disciples what it meant to follow him, he said, “If you would be my disciples, take up your cross and follow me.”

We are carrying crosses today; these smudges of ash on our forehead. We carry that other cross on our forehead as well, the sign that we are Christ’s own forever. Lent encourages us to embrace another cross, the cross of discipleship, growing into our identities as followers of Jesus. As we walk this way of Lent, may we find it a time when we confront our mortality, claim our identity as children of God, and grow more deeply Christ-like as we accompany him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I won’t be fasting for the soul of the country

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When I was a student at Harvard Divinity School, my work-study job one year was in the library helping to catalogue early American ephemera, mostly sermons and religious pamphlets published between independence and the Civil War. Among the items were funeral sermons, sermons preached at gatherings of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and sermons preached on the occasions of fast days proclaimed apparently annually. The thought of regular state-wide fast days was particularly amusing given that it was while I was a student that the harsh blue laws that prohibited most stores from opening were finally repealed.

Like the blue laws, fast days were an example of the Protestant hegemony that had held sway in early America and was still slowly receding in the 1980s. While culturally Boston was dominated by Irish and Italian Catholics, the legacy of mainline Protestant remained particularly strong. Its monuments lined the streets of the Back Bay: Trinity Church, Old South Church, First Baptist, Emmanuel Church, Arlington St. Unitarian. Similarly, almost every suburb and town in the state had tall-steeple churches of the major denominations.

But things were changing. Many of those churches were already struggling. First Baptist, where I interned had an average Sunday attendance of roughly 50 in a church that could comfortably seat 500. Harvard Divinity School recognized the importance of world religions both globally and nationally. We were required to take courses in World Religions as part of our M.Div. Curriculum and we had classmates who were Jewish, Buddhist, Muslim, and many who had no personal religious commitments.

I quickly connected the fast days of Federalist Massachusetts with the “Buss- und Bettag” (day of prayer and repentance) that was observed in the Federal Republic of Germany when I studied there in 1979-1980. In Germany, with its state churches, such a day was a reminder of the role played by the church, especially Protestant churches. The notion that Fast Days might be observed in twentieth-century America seemed far-fetched.

So I was surprised to read the news last week that Presiding Bishop Michael Curry of the Episcopal Church was encouraging people to “fast for the soul of the country.” It seemed to me to be very much an appeal to this old version of Protestant hegemony and American Civil Religion, that had reigned in the US from its founding up to the late 20thcentury. As a denomination that has profited from and capitalized on its quasi-establishment as America’s Civil Religion (the National Cathedral and all that), we are struggling to make our way in this new America of religious pluralism and the rapid growth of those who claim no religious affiliation whatsoever. We struggle with the way our rituals are coopted as civic rituals, for example in the funerals of George Bush and his wife Barbara, who were both Episcopalian, and traditional observances like services on Inauguration Day.

How does calling for a “fast for the soul of our country” complicate our already strained relationship with America’s civil religion? At its heart, fasting is a profoundly personal act of spiritual discipline, a way for our bodies to engage in our religious experience, indeed, an expression of our body at prayer. While fasting may have significance on a personal level and for religious communities, the shared experience of fasting may be a crucial part of the experience, as during the season of Lent, as a public, civic ritual in a secular nation, fasting seems deeply problematic.

But the call to fast is only one aspect of my concern with the Presiding Bishop’s appeal. Equally problematic to me is the use of the phrase “the soul of the country.” In the first place, do countries have “souls”? The use of such language, while it may appeal to us on a visceral level as an attempt to describe the core values and ideals of a nation seems to be an attempt to imbue a nation with religious significance. To do so seems inevitably to lead to the idolatry of nationalism.

Moreover, if the US has a soul, how might we best define it? No doubt those who use such language want to appeal to the founding documents and the democratic ideals of the founders. But at the core of the nation’s founding was racism, white supremacy, and the removal and genocide of indigenous peoples. So is not all that part of the country’s soul as well? “The soul of the country” seems to me to be problematic political theology, a term that needs interrogation and critique It is particularly unfortunate that it has recently entered the rhetoric of the presidential campaign, used by Joe Biden in a recent town hall.

It seems to me that religious leaders, rather than encouraging us to deepen our commitments and rituals to the American project, to its soul, ought to be calling us to deeper commitment to Jesus Christ, deeper and more meaningful discipleship, and to work more diligently for justice and peace.

 

Many of us will read these verses during our Ash Wednesday services this week. They seem especially appropriate:

Is not this the fast that I choose:
to loose the bonds of injustice,
to undo the thongs of the yoke,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to break every yoke?
Is it not to share your bread with the hungry,
and bring the homeless poor into your house;
when you see the naked, to cover them,
and not to hide yourself from your own kin? (Isaiah 58:6-7)

 

Sacred Mountains, sacred encounters, listening: A Sermon for the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, 2020

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Corrie and I lived on top of a mountain in the middle of nowhere for five years. Actually, it was in middle Tennessee, and it wasn’t technically a mountain but the Cumberland Plateau but it was usually referred to as the mountain, and it had sacred significance for many as it was the home of Sewanee, the University of the South, a university affiliated with the Episcopal Church with one of the church’s theological seminaries. The Cumberland Plateau rises high above the countryside of middle Tennessee and when you are one of the bluffs on a clear day, there are spectacular views of the valley below. Having grown up on the flat land of Northwestern Ohio, I couldn’t get enough of those vistas. Continue reading →

Leave your gift at the altar: A Sermon for the 6th Sunday after Epiphany, 2019

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In a few minutes, after the prayers of the people, the confession of sin and absolution, we will share the peace of the Lord with each other. For many of us, that is a moment of fellowship time, to greet our friends and neighbors in the pews near us, to introduce ourselves to newcomers, to engage in a moment of conversation. But I wonder how many of you know what is really supposed to be going on in that moment, what in fact is taking place liturgically. Continue reading →