Once again, the world is coming to an end!

The world is coming to an end!

Well, that’s the general feeling I get listening to the various pundits, politicians, and preachers…I have to admit that it does look pretty bad. 

But is the world really coming to an end? 

Well, no more than usual.

But after hearing the little apocalypse from the Gospel of Luke this morning, you might think that Jesus was saying the same thing. But his point is not to scare us to death. Instead, he reminds us that, as bad as things might look, God is always with us. 

Martin Luther was once asked “What would you do if you heard that Jesus would return tomorrow?” Luther said that he would plant a tree. For in all likelihood, the rumor would be untrue. Remember, Jesus also said that no one knows the hour or day when he would return except the Father. So by planting a tree and the Lord did return, he would find Luther taking care of the earth.

Luther’s tree reminds us of the tree in Jesus’ parable, “Look at the fig tree and all the trees, as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near.”

Jesus calls us to look at the signs all around us. 

What do look for? Do you, like some candidates, look for signs of doom… or do you look for signs of hope?

Leo Tolstoy, an author whom we tend to associate with The Great Big Novel, once wrote a very short story about a cobbler who prayed for a dramatic revelation of God. The humble shoemaker wanted a voice from heaven; or, better yet, a big show in the sky or something like that. 

Instead he got everyday sightings of God as love in action, in charity, justice, and compassion toward the people the cobbler met each day. 

Yes. We look forward to the time when Jesus will return in glory and wrap up all of history, heal all creation and reconcile all people, the living and the dead, to himself. But remember, we Christians also believe that in Jesus we find the fullness of God and the fullness of humanity in one and the same person, undiluted. That’s the Incarnation that we celebrate on Christmas.

In Christ, the really big has already come down to earth and walked among us. And he has already defeated death and sin on the cross. And he has already opened the way to heaven in his resurrection and made us his children, heirs, and companions in the Holy Spirit and in baptism.

So in that light, a person alert to the signs of the times looks, as in Tolstoy’s story, for God’s saving power all around them.

Like many people, the moment I know that we’ve moved from Advent to Christmas happens when I hear on the radio the King’s College, Cambridge, choir of men and boys sings the service of Nine Lessons and Carols. Maybe you’ve heard it? It is broadcast by the BBC all over the world.

It begins when one of the choir boys sings in a clear treble voice “Once in Royal David’s City.” 

Have you ever thought about what it takes to get to that moment? Certainly, as the old joke goes about how one gets to Carnegie Hall, "Practice, practice, practice!” 

Much preparation musically and technically happens before that broadcast happens. But did you know that the boy who actually sings that unaccompanied solo doesn’t know he’s the one until about ten seconds before airtime?

Many boys have practiced and prepared. But it is at the moment that the college’s director of music looks that one boy in the eye and gestures for him to step forward. 

Can you imagine being that boy? I mean, the poise… the cool… the steady nerve! If it were me, I expect that I’d fall over sideways!

But remember… the one chosen to sing is only one of many. A whole troupe of choristers have prepared for this moment and have the grace (and the sportsmanship!) to continue to sing with the ensemble with all their hearts, even knowing that they weren’t the one picked for that particular solo.

This is for me a wonderful picture of Advent waiting and Advent fulfillment! It tells us that it is in the preparation where we are formed and grow as followers of Jesus. It is the pilgrimage we undertake where our hearts are made ready for God. It is walking with Jesus that we become his friends and apprentices.

So instead of being distracted by all the anxiety about the end of the world-- or in creating a perfect 'holiday season experience' -- enter into Advent and open your heart to God! Make room for the arrival of Jesus, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Advent is our time to prepare ourselves in heart, mind, and soul for the coming of the Savior. 

Even with all the busy-ness of the holiday season, this is our chance to learn to lean into God's promises and to use that energy and work for God's purposes; not in an anxious chasing after the "perfect holiday" but as a chance to learn and do the work of Jesus every day!

Advent waiting reminds us of the pilgrimage that every faithful Christian walks, to find Christ and to communicate Christ to a world aching for wholeness, purpose, and hope. In Advent, we discover that God is more and more doing on earth what God does in heaven. 

Anybody can be a voice of doom. That’s easy! It takes no skill at all!

But what we long for is a voice of hope and healing! We Christians are at once preparing …and in our baptisms and Eucharistic community... and we are picked out by God to be Jesus’ voice of hope to people longing for healing and peace, so let's sing!

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Scripture for The First Sunday in Advent, Year C, December 1, 2024.

Website for The Church of the Good Shepherd, Dunedin, Florida

Here is the livestream of the December 1, 2024 10 a.m. liturgy at Good Shepherd, Dunedin.

Hope is faith that looks forward

A long time ago, I was a hospital chaplain in Appalachia, and I would from time to time find myself working with a patient and family from a country Pentecostal church, which was a very different culture of faith than what I was used to.

Once, I accompanied the family of dying patient who prayed fervently that God would heal the patient. They would pray with certainty that God would reach out and heal this person's illness and pray that the person would walk right out the door. Their preacher led them in laying hands on the dying man, commanding the disease to leave him, invoking God to make the man get up and walk… all while the numbers on the monitors showed a slide towards death.

My training taught me to be quiet, but my brain and my gut would be in turmoil. I said to myself—and sometimes doctors and nurses said to me-- “This preacher is setting them up for a fall! Raising their expectations like this is certain to cause upset when the patient eventually dies!” We worried that they were in fact teaching people, especially the children, to hate God because God was apparently not doing what they wanted.

But when the patient died, something remarkable happened. The group went from fervently praying that God would heal the person to joyfully praising God! 

It was like flipping a light switch. No anger at God, no earth-shattering disappointment (that I could see) but praise and singing that Jesus had taken the person home. 

I was perplexed, so I asked a fellow chaplain on our staff, who was himself Pentecostal, what was going on. 

First, he gently chided me for ignoring the teaching of my own tradition’s Book of Common Prayer, which have prayers for both healing and those for preparing for death printed side by side. These are prayers filled with hope! 

He also suggested that perhaps I was both rationalizing and being a bit judgmental, hearing their prayers as a kind of magical thinking, and their praises after the death as a kind of denial of death.

Okay, I'll admit to that. 

“So, what is really going on then?” I asked him. He said that their theology is grounded in hope. A faith that believes “Everything will be all right.” 

In their view, God is in charge of everything. And God, through the cross and resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit, will make everything all right. They embodied what we call “The Christian Hope.”

The doctrine of the Christian Hope is essentially this: God will make everything all right. 

Don’t believe me? Just look at our Prayer Book tradition, our Catechism, today’s Scripture lessons and, if that’s not enough, look at our own experience.

When a child falls down and skins her knee and comes to us in tears, what do we say? “Everything will be all right.”

I have heard it said in hospital settings: we say it to the anxious and the sick and even the dying. But most remarkably, it’s often said to us by the patients we care for and worry about. 

Time and again I’ve seen it. Just we can’t find the words to comfort them, time and again they comfort us! “Don't worry about me,” they will sometimes tell us. “Everything will be all right.”

And that what the scripture lessons we hear today, and over the next five weeks, remind us: God will make everything all right.

Today’s lesson from the Book of Daniel, which was written to persecuted Jews experiencing a war against yet another invader. The last book of the Old Testament, the Book of Daniel assures us that God is going to save God’s people and vindicate their suffering. The message is: “hang in there. God will make everything all right.”

The 13th chapter of Mark that we just heard, is often called ‘The Little Apocalypse’ because like Daniel and Revelation, it uses strange images and dire predictions to encourage us to remain faithful during rough and dangerous times. Mark remembers and brings forward Jesus' words to Christians, who thirty to forty years after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus, were living through the Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire in 66 to 70 AD. That revolt would end badly with the sacking of Jerusalem, the destruction of the Temple, the scattering of the Jews as a dispersed people. It would also move Christianity from a sect of Judaism into something bigger as more and more Gentile Christians would join up. 

Mark reminds us of Jesus' words to not to put our trust in big buildings made with big stones by human beings—not in places, institutions, or even cherished traditions—but in God.

Jesus reminds us in Mark that God will make everything all right— but perhaps not in the way we expect. 

This is how the Bible speaks to people who are uncertain, who are suffering right now, and who are looking for hope right now.

We don’t have to listen too hard to hear that people today asking the same questions as they did in the time of Daniel, Jesus, and the early church. People still ask “what is God doing?” and “will I/we be okay?”

Here is how the Gospel we hear today answers that question: God will make everything all right. 

It is important because it is true. 

But remember, the truth that God will make everything all right should not make us complacent. We are not called to be helpless victims, but through our faith and in our baptisms and our sacramental living we are called—given power!—to work and pray to care for God's people especially in their suffering!

Saying “everything will be all right” does not mean that we do nothing! When children have fallen down and skinned their knees or hands and blood is all over the place, parents don't just say, "Everything will be all right." There may be bandages and antibiotics applied from the medicine cabinet. There may even be a fast trip to the emergency room. Why? Because parents do all in their power to make sure will be all right for their suffering children.

"How can I make ends meet, when more bills are coming in than income?" We do everything we can… change how we shop, economize, sign on for an extra shift. And God's promise is still the same: “Everything will be all right." 

"I'm having surgery tomorrow and I'm scared." Our presence and prayers—and the skill of those caring for us—say "Everything will be all right."

"The tests for cancer came back positive."

"Everything will be all right."

“My home was damaged or flooded during the hurricane.” 

“Everything will be all right.”

"My brother was just deployed to a war zone."

"Everything will be all right."

"My parent just died."

"Everything will be all right.

It’s not magic. It’s not pie in the sky nor is it wishful thinking. This is the day in and day out life of faith, and it requires time and effort and cultivation within our hearts and minds. 

And trust. Trust in God that everything will be all right.

Hey! God knows truth is that we might experience turmoil and pain and confusion along the way. The life of faith means that we steer into the wave of our hurt and fear and not steer around it. Jesus shows us in everything from his temptation to his healing to his walking with his disciples daily, God’s faithfulness and God’s power and love is healing with us in all we do. Jesus knows all this and remember he carried all of it to the cross. It’s on the cross, where everything that separates us from God, each other, and creation is taken up by Jesus, and dies with him and is left behind in that empty tomb.

We are in a season of hope. As we come to the end of the church’s year and move into the new year in Advent, we are reminded of the power of Christian hope. All of the Scripture lessons for the next six to eight weeks are about hope. 

What is hope? Hope is faith that looks forward!

As Jesus’ disciples, his followers, we learn and do the work of Jesus everyday.

Which is why hope is not passive. It is active! The Christian Hope is the confidence that God in Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit will fill all things, heal all things, complete God’s purpose for us and all creation. 

The Christian Hope is that God never, ever, leaves us alone.

The Christian Hope is the knowledge that God gives us everything we need to live abundantly right now as the people God made us to be.

We are a hope-filled people who participate with God in the church’s mission which is to restore humanity and creation to unity with God and each other in Christ Jesus.

You show off that Mission in many ways: just open your bulletin. Laundry Love. Build a Bed. Backpacks and your ministry to Sandy Lane Elementary. Your Eucharistic Visitors and the ways you care for one another. Your music, Bible Study and even your Sunday Breakfasts all show off the many ways that you as a community learn and do the work of Jesus.

So you see…we participate every day in God’s hope-filled future! Hope is faith that looks forward. 

We are not sitting on our hands and waiting for God to vindicate us someday. We are already vindicated! Jesus’ life and ministry show us that God is with us. Jesus’ death and resurrection show us that death is conquered. Our baptism and Eucharist show us that we are God's own people. Our community shows us that we are not alone. And our care for each other and for those people God sends to us reveal to us and the community that God is here and is at work. 

We are a people of hope… hope is faith that looks forward, and everything will be all right!

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Scripture for Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 28), Year B, November 17, 2024.

Website for The Church of the Holy Trinity, Clearwater, Florida

Here (8 a.m.) and Here (10 a.m.) are the livestreams of the November 17, 2024 Liturgies at Holy Trinity, Clearwater.

Work. Rest. Pray.

I just came back from an iconography workshop. Every year, for almost the last thirty years, about two dozen people gather at a retreat house near Scranton, Pennsylvania, to learn a little more about this ancient form of religious art whose roots are in the eastern Orthodox churches. An icon expresses a religious truth artistically. The idea of an icon is that it is a window to heaven not because it is realistic but because it points beyond itself to God’s reality behind it. Many aspects of the icon are highly stylized from how Jesus and the saints are portrayed to how color, light and line are used. In some circles, the iconographer is said to “write” an icon—not paint or create one—because they are communicating something about the logos, Jesus.

So when an iconographer writes an icon, she or he is to be steeped in prayer. Every line, every stroke of the brush is to be a prayer—at least that’s the ideal. Certainly God can communicate through an icon reproduced by a printing press, but either way, if the person viewing an icon can allow it to be a window to the divine, a first step in their praying, then it certainly helps that the artist is also steeped in prayer.

This creates a tension: a tension between spirit and action. Between “doing” and “being.” There is a tension between doing it “right” and focusing on the prayer. Last week, I shared the room with people who have wonderful ‘hands’ and well-tuned ‘eyes.’ They work with a precision and clarity that I only dream about.  I really want to be like these people when I grow up! We all strive to be technically better iconographers. But when the conversation in the room begins to get too technical, when people are beginning to spend too much time “futzing” over getting one little line just so, when then tension rises because we aren’t “good enough”, I find that Father Peter, our teacher these last three decades, has this way of turning up the music—maybe a Taize chant or one by Orthodox monks or something that brings us back to the center.

The process I’ve learned over the years goes something like this:  Paint (or “Work”). Rest. Pray.

And since the workshop is also a retreat at set intervals, we’d stop painting and gather to pray. The music we listened to as we worked was also prayer. We were working hard, our goal was to master some skills around color and line and to come home with an icon…and our goal was also to pray and be open to the presence of God.

Work. Rest. Pray.

Jesus was doing that for his disciples. One definition of the Church that I like is that “we learn and do the work of Jesus.” In today’s Gospel, we hear how Jesus’ friends and apprentices did just that. They were sent out in pairs to heal the sick, proclaim Good News. They were learning from Jesus. Now they were doing the work of Jesus for the first time.

And… wow! They came back chattering about their experience: audiences hung on their every word; demons jumped out of possessed people at their command; sick people were made well. They were pumped, excited, and they wanted more! So what does Jesus do?

Does he give them a workshop on how to hone their skills?

Does he raise the quota of how many sick people are to be healed and how many people are to hear them preach?

Nope. Instead, he calls them to take some time alone to pray.

Now the work did not go away. People followed them wherever they went, because the need was that great! But Jesus insisted: Work. Rest. Pray.

It turns out that a healthy spiritual life – and an effective ministry and a vital congregation—consists of periods of activity and periods of rest. We need both in order to be healthy, whole, and—yes—happy Christians.

God calls us to do certain things: care for the sick, serve the poor, feed the hungry, speak truth to power and good news to the oppressed.

God also calls us to rest: to learn from God’s word, spend time in prayer, love God with our whole heart, mind, and strength. To be fed sacramentally.

A healthy, maturing Christian life is found in an oscillation, the balance between activity and rest.

And the fulcrum between that movement between activity and rest is faithfulness. God doesn’t want us to be busy just to be busy. God wants us to be faithful!

The reason Jesus calls us to pray is that God wants us to be faithful! And that means lining up everything we do, our sleeping and our waking, our work and our play, and all our relationships, around our attentiveness to God.

Have you ever seen or ridden on a see-saw? A see-saw is nothing more than a lever, with two weights on either end, in most cases two kids. And they go up and down, up and down. How high and how fast depends on how the two kids work together and how well balanced they are. But a see-saw, as with any lever, won’t work without a fulcrum. Otherwise, it’s just a board with two bored kids aboard.

In the Christian life, we leverage God’s grace, multiply God’s blessings, see how God’s love can really work in the world by our application of our effort (on the one hand) and the depth of our prayer (on the other). But the fulcrum, the thing that really makes the see-saw or any lever work, is our faithfulness.

The apostles were sent out in pairs not only to extend Jesus’ work, but to increase their faithfulness. What drew people to Jesus and his apostles was not the power of their miracles but the depth of their faithfulness; the hunger that the disciples met in the folks they encountered was a hunger for faithfulness.

The fulcrum, the balancing point, between our activity and our rest is our faithfulness.

Remember that old joke? The one that goes “Jesus is coming! Look busy!” It reminds us that we Christian leaders are tempted to think that the only happy Church is a busy Church, and that the only really valuable Christian is a busy Christian. It is not God who tempts us to think that God only really loves us when we are busy.

God loves us. That’s a given. And what God desires for us is not busy-ness but faithfulness.

Do you want to know the first sign that your spiritual life is out of balance? When just the thought of coming to church makes you feel tired. Or when the only reason you can justify setting aside a few hours on a Sunday morning is because you have a job.

When we cannot carve out a block of time to just be, to listen, to read scripture, to think, to pray, then we are too busy. When we cannot come into this space without taking time to pray or at least sit in silence but instead get caught up in whatever “to-do” list we carry around, then we are too busy, too distracted. In short, we are out of balance.

Now that doesn’t mean that we don’t have work to do. Why just last week, at that Iconography retreat, the cook got sick and couldn’t be there, so we all had to step up and pitch in. None of us starved and we all learned something from practical acts of service like washing the tables or cooking up main dishes on short notice. This is a lesson the monastic tradition teaches us: ora et labora which means “prayer and work.” Our work is prayer. And prayer is our work.

The Christian Life is filled with moments of activity and moments of rest. We need both. Ora et labora.

That means learning how to be present to be here now. It will means learning how not to get so focused on our “to do” lists that we lose touch with the part that needs to pray, to sit, to listen.

Make no mistake: I love a busy church! I love a congregation that’s involved! I love a congregation that makes a tangible difference in the community! I love a church that gives its very best—and not second best—to God!

And give our very best means choosing to be a faithful church not just a busy church!

The point of all the committees, all the giving, all the sign ups and all the activity, is so that we—and anyone in the community-- can come here and find the space to pray. And if “all” a person does is come into the community and “just” pray… “just” give themselves to God even for a few minutes… then you have done your work well!

What makes the Church different from a social club, a charitable organization, a non-profit, or even a business is not how busy we are, how slick or how entertaining, or how relevant we are. We can’t beat the culture on those terms anyway. And that’s okay because they cannot offer what people really hunger for.

What makes the Church the Church is how faithful we are. Our world is deeply hungry and the Church is uniquely positioned—divinely positioned—to meet spiritual hunger. People long for hope, meaning, companionship, direction, purpose and love—people are hungry for faithfulness.

And the fulcrum between activity and rest is faithfulness.

What I learn every year when I go to the iconography retreat is that we work hard, learn a skill, stretch ourselves—and we also stop and pray, and we listen for God, in order to cultivate what God really wants from us: faithfulness. And over the years I’ve discovered that when every paint stroke, every line drawn, is a prayer. And this is the beginning of learning how to be present to God in the here and now, in the fulcrum between activity and rest.

So remember: Work. Rest. Pray. Ora et labora.

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Scripture for Ninth Sunday after Pentecost, Year B, July 21, 2024.

Website for Grace Church, Tampa Palms, Florida

Feeding Jesus and Being Fed

You’ve got to love it! The Crucified, Dead, Buried, and now Risen-from-the-Dead Jesus shows up in front of his friends and followers and what does he do? 

Some great miracle? Nope!

Some great act of power? Nah!

He asks for something to eat. 

It’s as if he came in the door after a long day, plops himself in the recliner and says, “Whew! That crucifixion and resurrection is hard work! What’s for dinner?”

Today’s passage from the Gospel of Luke highlights the physicality of Jesus’ risen self. Jesus shows up in person. He shows the disciples the wounds in his hands, feet, and side. And—I love this—he asks them for something to eat. The Risen Jesus chides the disciples' disbelief. I am not a ghost, he tells them. This is Jesus…not a vision, nor a hallucination, but a real person with a real body. 

Today’s story parallels another story in this same chapter of Luke’s Gospel… Jesus’ encounter with Cleopas and his friend on the road to Emmaus. In both instances, the disciples recognize Jesus as the risen Lord when he ate with them. 

To some of us, maybe, the risen Jesus may be an idea, a story, a symbol, or a memory. But to Jesus’ friends and followers, it was a reunion, a face-to-face encounter, with the same Jesus whom they saw arrested, beaten, executed on the cross… and was demonstrably deader than a doornail! 

But no more!

In these two encounters, Jesus shows that what they are seeing is true by eating with them. Which makes sense, because before his arrest, torture, and execution, this is what Jesus did with them all the time as they went around Palestine teaching and healing. He ate with them. 

And even today, we see him in this most ordinary, tangible way. At the Last Supper and in the Holy Eucharist, Jesus gave us a way of recalling him to our presence and, by eating from his body, to become his body. 

Every day the Risen Jesus shows us that God redeems and makes holy every sphere of our existence: the physical, the rational, and the social elements of our existence are all addressed in Jesus’ resurrection.

The first thing that God redeems and makes holy is the physical world. Our baptism into the church and the promise of resurrection means that we are to value the physical world that God has placed us in and made us part of.

We are to care for the creation and care for our bodies and care for each other, even strangers and people we’ll never meet in person. We are to have environmental concerns and health concerns; the biological and physical sciences are part and parcel of our participation in God’s redemption. We are not to abandon the world we live in, but we are to improve it in whatever small ways we can. 

Another thing that God redeems in the resurrection is the way we know and see the world. Because we encounter the risen Jesus in sacramental living, in prayer, and in the changed lives we both encounter in others and experience ourselves, we discover that God works on every part of our knowing. Rational thinking and faithful being are not polar opposites, always at war, but different ways of knowing the fullness of the creation we live in and care for.

Finally, the physical, risen Jesus redeems our relationships. Christians do not abandon the social world we live in, but we are called to improve it whenever we can, working against evil and promoting justice. The fact that our bodies will be redeemed and raised emphasizes our need to be involved in the world in a positive way. We are not escapists, merely biding time until time ends, but we are involved, letting Christ live in us and grow in us until we are raised with him in glory and we see him as he is and we share in his eternal joy.

In today’s Gospel we find Jesus eating another meal with his disciples. He made eating and drinking together the primary way of experiencing the Resurrection. He uses eating and drinking to teach us and draw us to him. He uses this most universal way people affirm and experience relationships in community. We eat with Jesus. We eat of Jesus. We eat his body, and we become his body. 

Maybe you remember my definition of what a disciple is? A disciple is “a friend and apprentice of Jesus, who learns and does the work of Jesus every day.” So you are all friends and apprentices of Jesus. And you are all learning and doing the work of Jesus.

But lots of people call themselves followers of Jesus... how do you know an actual disciple when you see one?

Well, as the old proverb (that most people get wrong, by the way!) reminds us: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating!"

Clergy and Eucharistic Ministers are the ones who distribute communion, giving bread and saying, “The Body of Christ.” And, if you think about it, we all distribute the Body of Christ in all kinds of ways. 

Imagine when you give a check to the church or a worthwhile charity, placing it in the treasurer’s hand and saying, “The Body of Christ, given for you.” 

Imagine delivering Meals on Wheels or giving a meal to a needy stranger in downtown Clearwater, saying “The Body of Christ, the bread of heaven” when you place the meal in the hands of that homebound senior. 

Imagine visiting a person in prison, extending an encouraging word of love and adding, “The Body of Christ.” 

Imagine teaching the truths of God to a Church school class or in a Bible Study, or prayer group, and concluding by saying, “This is the Body of Christ, given for you.”

Imagine sharing the Word of God in Bible Study, in prayer, daily devotions, or as part of the Daughters of the King, as an act of sharing the Body of Christ.  

Imagine spreading the Good News to those who do not know the Lord, telling others about the joy you find in your faith, and declaring, “Share with me the Body of Christ.”

Imagine being the quiet listening presence to someone who is lonely or in pain, and as you pray with them, recall that we are, as the Apostle Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, “Now we are the body of Christ, and individually members of it.”

Jesus rose from the dead, not a ghost, but flesh and blood, in person– his personality, memory, relationships, compassion, and humor intact. Everything he knew is risen and made whole and new and holy. Saint Paul reminds us that when we were baptized, we were all baptized into Jesus’ death and resurrection. So as baptized people, we all share in his resurrection, and every day we show off the risen Jesus to everyone we meet. And God uses everything we are, and everything we have, and all our skills and talents and memory–all of us!-- for God’s purpose: to restore all people to unity with God, creation, and each other. 

So, people of St. John’s, Clearwater, my companion friends and apprentices of Jesus, as we gather around this Eucharistic table, as we dash over to the parish hall for delicious nums-nums, and before I turn in my keys and as you get ready for your next era of ministry in service, remember this: in everything you do as a community and as individuals, feed others in Jesus’ name. 

In so many great and simple ways, we reflect the words of St. Augustine, who wrote: 

You are the Body of Christ. In you and through you the work of the incarnation must go forward. You are to be taken. You are to be blessed, broken, and distributed, that you may be the means of grace and the vehicles of eternal love.

And may God go with you in all you do!

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Bulletin for Worship for the Third Sunday of Easter Sunday, April 14, 2024 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for Easter 3-B, April 14, 2024

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida for April 14, 2024

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on April 14, 2024

Six little words

I love word games. I also love clever haiku, and a good joke. So it won’t surprise you that like many of you, every day I go to the New York Times games app on my phone to play Wordle, Connections, and Spelling Bee. I do the Daily Mini-Crossword, and at least on Mondays and Saturdays, I tackle the NYT Crossword (although, even after all these years, I am still not tough enough for Sundays!).

Another thing I love is something I learned in a religious writer’s workshop a few years ago. It is the practice of writing little six-word stories or memoirs. There is a wonderful website put together by an online magazine called SMITH that collects these six-word memoirs. People both famous and ordinary have sent in these little six-word distillations of their lives, highlighting what is important or interesting about them. The best of the stories has been collected in books. The first was called “Not Quite What I Was Planning,” and another “It All Changed in an Instant.”

Some six-word stories are poignant: “I still make coffee for two,” wrote someone recovering from a breakup.

Some are clever. Comedian Stephen Colbert wrote “Well, I thought it was funny.”

Screenwriter Nora Ephron wrote: “Secret of life: marry an Italian.”

I bring this up, because for all the joy and fanfare of Easter, for all the complexity and mystery of our whole religious life together, and for all the billions of words we use to try and explain it, Christianity itself has a six-word autobiography, and it goes like this: “Jesus is risen from the dead.”

Think about it. There are 775,000 words, more or less, in the 66 books of the Bible, and not one of them makes sense without these six words. And there are roughly 2 billion Christians around the globe, and not one of us has a single thing to say without these six words.

All four Gospels agree that Mary Magdalene was the first witness to the resurrection, and is the news she and her companions carried from the empty tomb to the upper room where the other disciples were in hiding. And while she reduced it to five when she proclaimed "We have seen the Lord!" The story is still the same: "Jesus is risen from the dead."

These are the words that have been passed from person to person, from community to community, every day since then – sometimes in secret, sometime in awe, in triumph, in darkness, in celebration, in song, liturgy, art, and theater. “Jesus is risen from the dead.”

These six words that have taken us from being a scattered, broken people who are lost to the largest, most diverse, religion in the world. It is these six words that have found countless individuals whose lives were nearly or already dead -- broken by pain and suffering, by grief and loneliness, by sin and darkness -- and given them new life.

These are the words that are whispered at bedsides and shouted from rooftops and shared at dinner tables and workplaces and in neighborhoods. These are the words that have been forbidden by governments both ancient and modern, and yet somehow they have still been spoken, still been shared.

“Jesus is risen from the dead.”

These are the words that the martyrs sang as they were being burned at the stake, attacked by persecutors, and heckled by cynics. These are the words that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German martyr who opposed the Nazis, taught his students in the secret seminary that he founded.

These are the words that Oscar Romero was speaking as he was gunned down while celebrating the Eucharist in El Salvador. These are the words that Martin Luther King Jr. held fast to as he opposed the violent racism of our culture. These words inspired Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s work in South Africa. These are the words that Mother Teresa hung on to even as she experienced her own crisis in faith while continuing her work with the poor.

“Jesus is risen from the dead.”

Are these words true? If they are not, Paul says to the Corinthians, then “we are of all people most to be pitied.”

Of course, we hear all the time that Jesus’ resurrection cannot be proven, because nobody saw it; that it defies science; that it cannot be true, because people still suffer, they still die; that we cannot believe it, because it seems so utterly unbelievable. And all too often, whether for political gain or to make a quick buck, some have tried to reduce these six words to a mere slogan, chant, or meme.

But the truth and power of these six words knock down such malarkey just as easily as the stone was moved aside, as powerfully as God leading His people through the Red Sea, as wonderfully as the Spirit’s arrival on that first Pentecost.  “Jesus is risen from the dead.”

How many lives have been transformed, starting with Mary Magdalene and her companions, falling to the ground in utter shock, upon hearing these six words? How could we possibly count the ways that billions of hearts have been, in the words of John Wesley, “strangely warmed,” by hearing these six words?

What could we possibly use to measure the impact that these six words have had upon the world -- the ways in which forgiveness, joy, reconciliation, self-giving love and charity have wrought healing, miracles, and abundance on the face of this earth in the time since we have first heard these that Jesus is risen from the dead?

Is it true? Listen to the stories.

C.S. Lewis once said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.”

This is the story of our lives, the story of the life of the world, the story of life itself. It is the story of how life is stronger than death, how God’s love for us is stronger than death. It is, in the end, the only story that there is.

And so, in Easter, we hear these six words again: “Jesus is risen from the dead.”

How will these words change your story?

Where in the essence of who you are do you hear the call to new life -- to come out of the tomb you’ve been sealed in, the tomb of fear or the tomb of hopelessness or the tomb of dreams that have been lost or delayed? Where are you looking for the living among the dead? How will you receive this news that has been handed from life to life, from heart to heart, from age to age, that is now handed again to you?

And how will these words change the world? What does our story still have to say to a world gripped by terror, a culture that is forgetting how to even listen or talk civilly, a culture at odds, a people in pain? How will we be sure that they will hear our story of hope?

Every day we write our story again, and we say that it is no less true today than it was on the first day; it is no less miraculous today than it was on the first day -- no less shocking, no less joyful, no less important, no less life-changing and meaningful. Run and tell the others what you’ve seen and heard: “Jesus is risen from the dead.” Alleluia! Alleluia! Alleluia!

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Bulletin for Worship for Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for Easter Sunday, March 31, 2024

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida for March 31, 2024

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on March 31, 2024

Rescuing us

Holy Saturday, April 3, 2010, 

Revised March 30, 2024

If you have ever experienced your faith as being absent, today is your day. 

If you have ever experienced deep emptiness from your soul to your bones, today is your day. 

If you have ever known loss that cannot be filled, today is your day.

If you've ever looked around at the world and see war, violence, greed and corruption, and wonder if things can't get any worse, then this day is for you.

If you have ever discovered, as C.S. Lewis did, that grief feels very much like fear, then this is your day. 

If you have ever gone through the motions because you don't know what else to do, this is your day.

Holy Saturday is a day very easy to jump over. Today is a gorgeous spring day. People are out planting flowers and going to the store to buy for Easter dinner. Easter dresses are being tried on and egg hunts in the parks are happening as we speak. 

The world is busy and alive, and here we are in a darkened church before a bare cross and it feels empty. 

This is the kind of emptiness that any who has grieved the death of a loved one knows. It is like going through the motions at work, and confronting that first thanksgiving or Christmas or birthday knowing that the one we love is dead. 

I will bet that the followers of Jesus had the most somber, depressing Passover meal on record. But if they are at all like a lot of people I know, they will have done it. They will have read the words, and eaten the bitter herbs and the lamb, because...because what else could they do? Even if it was by rote, it was something. Something to anchor. Something to hold on to when there was nothing else. 

Holy Saturday is a day of absence, emptiness and numbness. If you have ever felt this way, this day is for you. 

The thing about Holy Saturday that is special is that it is the last day of the Old Creation. It's just that we don't know that yet. Just as we won't know that we have passed through the darkest moments of our grief until we suddenly find ourselves feeling again. We won't know until we look backwards. 

And here is the dreadful and true part of Holy Saturday. There is nothing we can do about it. All we can do is what I've said: slog through, go through the motions. We steer into the wave and hope that our boat is not swamped as the wave crashes over our heads. But the feast also tells us that as we wait, as we slog through our fear and emptiness, Easter is coming. 

The disciples hiding and fearing for their lives in the locked upper room did not know that yet. We never know it when we are in it. But Easter is coming. 

Our creeds and tradition say this is the time when Christ descended into hell and went among the dead. 

So, what Jesus was doing on Holy Saturday? Was he, like John's Brown body, "a-moldering in the grave," as the old civil war song goes? Was he walking around the tomb waiting for the angels to come and roll away the stone, folding up his burial cloth before stepping out?

My favorite answer is visual. There is an old icon known as "The Harrowing of Hell" that answers the question of just what Jesus was up to on that otherwise ignored middle day? it shows Jesus entering into hell, into the place of the dead, and he is standing on the lids of the graves of Adam and Eve, the first humans, literally representing all of humanity, and is lifting them out of their coffins to bring them with him back to heaven. In some versions of the icon you see broken chains, locks, handcuff, and tools lying about with a person (the devil perhaps? Maybe death itself?) lying bound and gagged below. 

When I see this icon, I am reminded again of what Holy Saturday shows us:  that even in the emptiness, Christ is there. If we go down to Sheol, and walk among the dead, Christ is there. There is no place where we can go to escape God's love. 

But we don't know that now. We will know that tomorrow. In the meantime, this day is for you.

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Here are the Lessons for Holy Saturday, March 30, 2024

Strange Normalcy

Doesn’t it seem strange to you how normal everything is today?

I mean, here we are at what it is arguably one of the most holy days of the Christian year… especially when teamed up with Holy Saturday and Easter Sunday for what we traditionally call the “Triduum” or “The Great Three Days”… and yet nothing is different.

If I wanted to, I could have stopped at the bank, the post office, and the grocery store on the way to or home from church. Maybe you will too, buying last-minute groceries or stuff for the (grand-) kids Easter baskets.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I am not here to rail against the unpiety of the culture or some such righteous nonsense. My point is not to shame people who have lives to live and very little time to get stuff done. God forbid! As you’ve heard me mention before, I certainly remember growing up in New England in the last days of the old Blue Laws where the state enforced the closing of business on certain religious holidays. But this is not an exercise in nostalgia, either. It’s just an observation. And one that I think is worth noting.

Because, as much as some might say, this is not new. The world has been going about it’s business while God has been doing God’s work right before our eyes since time immemorial.

When I was a kid, my home parish, the Church of the Good Shepherd in Hartford, CT, would take part in a public stations of the cross with the other churches in the downtown of Connecticut’s capital city. It was the 1960’s, and influenced by the civil rights movement and the peace movement, the churches would do the fourteen stations of the cross around what was then a bustling commercial, business, and governmental downtown, stopping at the Federal Courthouse, the main offices of big banks and the headquarters of insurance companies, the city jail and police department, the juvenile hall, and so on. You get the idea. And even then, as we processed with our cross and led by clergy in vestments, and reading scriptures and saying prayers, people would bustle past us, buses would stop and go, horns would honk… the world was going on about it’s business.

One of my favorite American artists, Allan Rohan Crite, the late 20^th century African-American artist from Boston, who was an Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian, and he not only created the covers for my parish’s weekly bulletins, he drew the passion a lot. And he typically located it, as with all his Biblical scenes, in the middle of the city, in downtowns, neighborhoods, and tenements. One of his renderings of the stations has stayed with him since adolescence. It showed Jesus carrying his cross through a modern busy city of the 1940’s, people rushing past to and fro, hardly aware of the African American man carrying a cross, scarred and barely dressed, wearing a crown of thorns.

And that is not far from the truth. Because in the busy world of downtown Jerusalem, ruled by the Roman Empire, crucifixions were a dime a dozen. They executed their condemned on the roads into the walled city to attract attention, but they were as part of background every bit as much as billboards are today. We see them, sort of… but few stand out, and mostly they just block the view.

No, the crucifixion of Jesus was just the business of the day. Except to his followers, friends, and family… and certainly Jesus…! It was nothing special.

But not for God

It is precisely in the midst of the everyday… the everyday business, the everyday boredom, the everyday cynicism, the everyday cruelty.. of human life that God placed Jesus and in the midst of such sin that we are so used to that we hardly even notice, where God stakes a redemptive claim. Here is where it ends. Here is where love conquers hate. Here is where it ceases to divide us from God, each other, and ourselves. Here is where death ends even on a cross planted on a busy thoroughfare where traffic buzzed past.

This is where God does redeeming work: The Passion happens in a busy city going about it’s business.

The sign of that victory will come on the third day.

But right now… life goes on. God redeeming love happens, but no one notices. Not yet, anyway.

Revisiting Judas

We call today "spy Wednesday" because today is the day we hear about Jesus' betrayal and arrest. 

Well, I don't know about you but to me, Judas poses a problem. I mean, how do you explain the fact that one of Jesus’ most trusted associates betrays him to his enemies? There are several theories.

There’s the Snidely Whiplash theory. John’s Gospel, which we hear today, tells us that he is a thief, embezzler, and an all around rotten guy.

Then there is what you might call the Anakin Skywalker theory of Judas. You know, he went over to the dark side. Today’s Gospel also says that Judas let the devil into him or at least that the devil took over.

If you got your Christian formation from Jesus Christ Superstar, then you’ve heard the Cosmic Dupe theory: that Judas was cruelly used by a manipulative God and thrown aside for some larger purpose.

There was a snippet of a Gnostic gospel that caused some years back that said Judas’ betrayal was all part of God’s Big Plan. Jesus spiritual self needed to break out of the flesh so he would be set free to become his "true spiritual self" and this required death on a cross. Judas, in this scenario, did Jesus a favor!

Maybe Judas’ aims were political. Judas had to arrange for Jesus the Messiah had confront the Roman occupiers and their corrupt local toadies. Then the people would rise up in revolt or else God would be stirred to action and send angelic armies in some apocalyptic final clash. So he needed Jesus to be arrested to get the ball rolling.

Or maybe Jesus and Judas were really in cahoots and it backfired.

Isn't this fun? We love to psychologize Judas! 

Well, be careful! Because I suspect that your favorite theory of Judas might be one of those clues as to how you see God and a window into how your particular spiritual life works, but that’s for you to take up with your spiritual director.

You see my problem with Snidely Whiplash, Anikan Skywalker, and all those other theories is that it takes the heat off; which, frankly, is a relief. If Judas was merely a dupe, a thief or a conniver then I am free of responsibility and have nothing to learn. And we certainly don’t get close to the real tragedy that is Judas Iscariot, the trusted advisor who betrayed His Lord and Master.

Here’s my theory.

I think Judas betrayed Jesus because he was too religious: that Judas wanted Jesus to be the Messiah that Judas wanted more than he wanted to follow the Messiah that Jesus really was.

What if Judas betrayed Jesus because he loved Jesus too much? Not the kind of the kind of love that allows us to be changed, but the kind of love that wants to control the outcome. What if Judas betrayed Jesus—out of disappointment or a need to control, pick one—because he could not let go of his need to make God into our image?

This is a dangerous thought. I don’t know about you but this thought frightens me down to my socks. Because, if I am honest, I am always tempted to domesticate Jesus into blessing my own biases, prejudices and proclivities, but more than that turning God Incarnate into a house idol that I can control. Which in some ways is more comforting than following a Christ who not only dies to close the chasm of sin, but who, in meeting me at the point of my greatest need, confronts and challenges me to grow and change.

I think the scriptural evidence lines up on the side of Judas being too religious.

Both John’s Gospel and Luke’s agree that Judas was offended when a woman—Mary of Bethany and/or a woman off the street—washed Jesus’ feet either with perfume or tears in full view of a room full of men. He is portrayed in both Gospels as standing apart from the group sneering.

The real clue is his response to the crucifixion. However Judas died, either by hanging or throwing himself off a wall, his response was to choose suicide rather than accept forgiveness. In realizing and regretting his mistake, he went to his spiritual default zone—shame. And instead of turning that shame into reflection and repentance, he took that shame and made into regret and retribution—which, if the bad guy is you, means self-destruction.

Look, Peter also betrayed Jesus. Not for money or some high ideal, but to save his own skin. He went away weeping and hid until it was all over. And yet, he was able to make some different choices with his shame and guilt—with his weakness and pride. He stayed in community…he hung out with the other followers while Judas went off on his own letting his money burn a hole in his heart. Peter was open to possibility, which is why he would later run to an empty tomb when Mary Magdalene appeared with her wild story of rolled away stones and Jesus-who-she-thought-at-first-was-the-gardener. And he was able to both embrace the risen Christ and later hear his forgiving words when Jesus gave him a second chance to confess his love.

Peter had, for all his foibles, reactivity, and his need to please, a fundamentally light hand on his spiritual tiller. Firm enough to stay focused on God, light enough to change when he needed to.

Both Peter and Judas had their OMG moment, when they said “Oh, my God, what have I done?” But it never occurred to Judas to seek forgiveness. And it apparently never dawned on him that repentance might involve something other than suicide. To do that would have required another kind of death: a death to the need to hang on the faux-Messiah that Judas made and turn to the real Christ who was there all along. Judas was so religious that he could not imagine what it was like to be forgiven.

This is yet another example of how being too religious can get in the way of faith.

And at the same time this is another example of how being too self-contained, too wrapped in our own stuff—be they grand ideas, mixing up patriotism with religiosity, inflated ego needs, or whatever emotional baggage we carry—can get in the way of allowing ourselves to grow and be changed by God who is constantly engaging us right where we need God the most.

Dare I mention our tendency to put our hand over hearts and say sincerely, "surely not me Lord!" just as the disciples did in the Upper Room? Or our history of using Judas' behavior as an excuse to blame all Jews for Jesus' execution, which in addition to being racist and stupid (and, over two millennia, tragically destructive!), distracts us from the entire point of the what is actually happening in Holy Week and Easter?

I have a hunch that even Judas’ super-religiosity to the point of death, the faith that blessed all his deeply held biases right up until the rope went twang, was not enough to overpower the cross. I have faith that the glorification that the cross became is bigger than even death. And certainly bigger than the rotten choices, stubborn opinions, and everyday idolatry that you and I commit every single day.

If the empty tomb that we are journeying towards this week tells us anything it is that the Jesus who really died and really rose from death also really welcomes us home even after our stubborn refusal to listen to Jesus the first (or hundredth) time.

Remember that the Gospel also tell us that when Jesus was in the Upper Room that final time, he also washed Judas' feet, and presumably shared the Passover meal with Jesus which included, for Christians, the institution of the Lord's Supper. John's Gospel makes it clear that Jesus knew what Judas was up to, or at least capable of, and ministered to him anyway. This ought to temper our response to the whole story and cause us to repent from our history of interpreting it.

Why did Judas betray Jesus? In the end only God and Judas knows. Whatever the reason, it stirs up in us all the ways that we participate in betraying, denying Jesus and generally being mad at God for not living up to our expectations.

The good news is that none of our everyday betrayals, denials, disappointments, and machinations is bigger than the cross. And when we have our own OMG moment, we will find the Risen Christ right there, ready to forgive us, change us and lead us to be the people God made us to be.

(Updated from 2013 and reposted)