Our Everyday School of Prayer

A long time ago, in a hospital far, far away, I was a student chaplain making my evening rounds on a surgical floor. In those days, people were admitted the afternoon or evening before their scheduled surgery, so we’d make rounds to visit those folks often in the evening during the time between the meal and before sleep, often after the visitors had gone home. And you know what? There was a whole lot of praying going on.

Usually not the formal, spoken prayer, but the stare-at-the-ceiling, not really paying attention to the television, kind of prayer. You know what I mean.

It took a little fortitude to call on these folks cold, because no matter how I dressed (clerical collar or necktie, lab coat, clerical suit, or business casual) patients would size me up and decide who I was and what I was about and act accordingly. And that was okay… because this sizing up was theirs, not mine. Besides, of all the professionals coming to see patients in hospital, I was the one guy  that the person had the right to say “go away” to… and I’d go.

So when I was welcomed, the conversation was up to them and some would guide that conversation for the two of us. Some would dodge talking about their upcoming procedure choosing instead small talk or “what about them (pick your team and sport)…? Or tell me about their spouse, kids or grandkids, or work, or… whatever.  Some would tell me about their illness and procedure in great detail. And rarely, some would talk about whatever anxiety of the moment was on their mind or heart (and it was not always medical!). A few would nod and grunt me out of the room. Once a guy shooed me away before I even entered the room saying, “I don’t need no [blankety-blank] priest!”

Whatever happened, it was all good.

Typically, I would ask if the person would like a prayer… or I’d see if they’d ask. Every now and then, a person would ask me the question that the disciples asked Jesus in today’s Gospel: “Teach me how to pray.”

Now this is a tricky question. Because as a chaplain, I was not there for me, but for the person. And so, I had to learn how to rest in my own tradition and authority while at the same time allowing the person to set the tone and direction. Patients will put up with “Father Know-It-All” for only so long, because it ain’t about me, right? So I’d encourage them to tell me what they wanted to know. Often, the question was serious, along the lines of: “I know this is a big moment and I don’t know how to put this into words.” Or, “I'm in crisis and I need the rituals of my tradition. or upbringing.” Or, “I want to remember a prayer from my childhood but all I am coming up with is table-grace.”

I brought this question to a colleague and fellow student chaplain because I was asked by a patient, who was Jewish, who  was asking me, a Christian priest, how to pray. My friend and classmate, who was a rabbi, said, “It’s okay. You’re the follower of a small-town rabbi, right? Follow his lead!” In other words, pray the prayer that Jesus taught.

In the Gospel of Luke, we hear Jesus say:

“Father, hallowed be your name.
Your kingdom come.
Give us each day our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins,
for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.
And do not bring us to the time of trial.”

The disciples saw that whenever their teacher and Master had exhausted himself doing good, he would withdraw from the crowd in order to pray. And they had seen the results of those prayers in his life-transforming deeds and in the calm he exuded seemingly from every pore.

“Lord, teach us how to pray!” They too wanted that peace and strength, the utter assurance that Jesus had in doing the will of his Father.

And Jesus doesn't just offer Prayer 101, he gives us a Master Class. The simple and profound words that Jesus taught have become known as “The Lord’s Prayer.” Over the centuries countless faithful have uttered them together and in solitude and utter them still. These words rise up and blend into an endless prayer of praise, of supplication, of doxology. Their simplicity is interwoven with many layers of meaning that has influenced many Christians.

My first real exposure to the depth of the prayer came after my Confirmation through a little book that came my way written by Igor Sikorsky, aviator, maker of flying boats, and the inventor of the helicopter. In it, he contemplated the Lord's Prayer in both Matthew and Luke as it impacted his faith and his work. The prayer has inspired many faithful people, lay and ordained over the millennia to go deeper in their prayer. Today, I am indebted to the Rev. Katerina Katsarka Whitley for her commentary on the Lord’s Prayer in Luke, which I share with you here:

Jesus started by showing them that first they must know whom they are addressing. The Greek word for prayer used in the gospels means “a wish, a request toward” someone. Luke’s version that we heard is pared down, simpler than the prayer found in Matthew’s gospel. The one we know best grew out of Matthew’s version, and has some points that were added by ancient authorities over time. Yet, the core is the same.

“Our Father…” There this word can be loaded because they had the terrible misfortune of living with a bad father. And many of us were blessed with loving and caring fathers and we have no difficulty in identifying the Creator with the word Father. God, who is father and mother, understands all of this.

“Hallowed be your name.”  We are addressing the Holy of Holies, the all-sacred one. Jesus reminds us that when we address God we are in the presence of holiness.

“Your kingdom come.” Jesus’ teaching is filled withs image of God’s reign. It’s like a mustard seed, or a little yeast in a big loaf, or a woman looking for a lost coin, or a shepherd looking for a lost sheep. The kingdom of God that Jesus teaches us to pray for is one where justice prevails, and where love conquers. In the kingdom of God everyone is of equal value. And Jesus teaches us to pray that the Kingdom of God may it come to us in our time and in our place.

“Your will be done.” We long for a world where God’s will is done as automatically and ordinarily as happens in heaven. God’s will is not done by putting it up on a marble pedestal, in the public square. Statues or framed copied of the ten commandments in classrooms or courtrooms will not save us. All of that is for show; about telling us to be obedient to the State, the Culture, or “The Way Things Are.” Jesus warned us about this, and to watch out for praying just so we can prove how pious we are. True prayer is between us and God. Even when we pray together in unison, in church, we are connecting to God and to each other as a people of God.

This then is the first portion of prayer: where we acknowledge God as Father/Mother, as Creator, as Holy, where God’s rule of love and justice are natural and at home.

The second part of the prayer is a simple request for what sustains life. Bread was the essence of nourishment in the ancient world. Having bread meant one was not hungry. Not having bread meant starvation. Instead of the word ‘bread’ imagine praying “Give us the necessities for living because everything else is superfluous.”

“And forgive us our sins…”  We need to forgive. In every gospel, Jesus shows us our need for forgiveness. The plea to be forgiven is followed by the most surprising element of this prayer:

“. . . as we forgive those who sin against us” reminds us that God’s forgiveness is deeply connected to our ability and willingness to forgive. We need God’s grace to forgive our fellow human beings, and the grace to recognize and accept God’s forgiveness of our own sins. Some translation says “debts” instead of “sin.” “Those who are indebted to us,” may also be taken literally. In the ancient world, being indebted financially was very serious, just as our modern world is built around the management and industry of debt. In Jesus’ day, debt could mean life or death. Jesus knew that in Hebrew scriptures, Mammon was a powerful idol, just as “the Market” is a powerful idol today, and those who cannot forgive debts because they worship money cannot possibly comprehend the free, unmerited, and total grace and forgiveness of God.

“Do not bring us to the time of trial.”  Trials are frequent and no one is spared. We pray to be shielded from trials and temptation, but when they do come, they must be faced. When we are tried, we are tempted to take the easy way out, to avoid the hard choices. Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane, “Let this cup pass from me,” but he was not spared, and he faced his death, convinced of the will of his Father, enduring death and the grave on the way to resurrection.

Jesus’ prayer, the Lord’s Prayer, is the profound and simple prayer that binds us together as we worship. In our parishes, with our ecumenical and interfaith friends, with followers of Jesus all over the globe and throughout time. This is the prayer that forms the basis for all our prayers. In it, Jesus shows us that we are both known and being heard.

In the parable that follows, Jesus reminds us in the Gospel that we are like the persistent child crying out to a parent. A parent responds to the child’s plea, he tells us. And Jesus encourages us to be persistent and not give up, because God’s will for us is good.

Do you want to know how to pray? Do you want to know what to pray? Here is Jesus' school of prayer. We've been chewing on what he taught us ever since. Every time we say it, we are being invited by Jesus to go deeper.

And that's important, because prayer is more important than ever… if you don’t believe me just turn on the car radio, the T.V., or open the newspaper app in your phone. Every day we are bombarded with stories of terror and harm and killing in our world. So it is good to remember that every day, all over the globe, millions of faithful people are praying Jesus’ simple prayer every minute of the day: “Your kingdom come, your will be done.” And every day, we join with them when we pray Jesus’ prayer whether we are alone or together. Listen as we pray together:

Father in heaven.

Your name is holy.

Your kingdom come.

Your will be done on earth as in heaven.

Give us today our daily bread.

And forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us.

And lead not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. 

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Scripture for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, July 27, 2025

Website for Church of the Good Samaritan (Episcopal), Clearwater

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Here is the bulletin for the Seventh Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, July 27, 2025, the Church of the Good Samaritan, Clearwater, Florida.

Here is the livestream of the liturgy. The sermon begins at XX:XX

Faithfully "Doing" and Faithfully "Being"

There is an old vaudeville joke about a man and woman dancing together at a singles resort in the Catskills. The man says, “I’m only here for the weekend.” To which the woman responds, “I’m dancing as fast as I can!”

Martha is just like all of us, women and men, dancing around our houses as fast as we can, trying to get things ready for our honored guest. The Gospel tells us Martha is trying very hard to make the most of her— and her family’s— time with Jesus. 

My hunch is that Mary was not normally in the habit of entertaining visitors by sitting at their feet while her sister did all the work. Martha’s complaint to Jesus suggests that Mary’s behavior was not normal for her, and Martha was saying to Mary (by way of Jesus!) “snap out of it!”

Now here’s the trap: we are tempted to read this passage as a kind of Biblical “Goofus and Gallant” comic…remember those from Highlights for Children, where Goofus was the rude “bad” kid and Gallant was the polite “good” kid? We are tempted to say, “Martha bad, Mary good!”

But it’s not one versus the other. What we are witnessing is a lesson about the movement, the oscillation, between “activity and rest.”

Jesus does not deny the value of who Martha is or of what she is doing. He is saying that what Mary is up to is also valuable. Jesus is about priorities; first things first.

Look, Jesus is not against activity or work or even going out of one’s way to do good—just look at Jesus’ story of the Samaritan who stopped to care for the injured stranger, a story which comes right before this in Luke’s Gospel—what Jesus cares about our focus.

In the 14th-century, the anonymous author of a spiritual discourse called The Cloud of Unknowing, speaks about Martha and Mary as repre­senting the Two Ways of Prayer.

“My friend, do you see that this whole incident concerning Jesus and the two sisters was intended as a lesson for active and contemplative persons of the Church in every age? Mary represents the contemplative life and all contemplative persons ought to model their lives on hers. Martha represents the active life and all active persons should take her as their guide.”

In other words, we all have periods of activity and periods of rest. A healthy Christian life depends on being active some of the time and having times of renewal. If we don’t have both in balance we all go a little cuckoo—either in hyper-busyness or sluggish inaction.

Have you ever noticed how Episcopalians and other Christians divide up time?

Our day has times of prayer for morning, noonday, evenings and before bed. So we are grounded in prayer.

Our week is grounded with Sunday… each week’s ‘little Easter’ and the Sabbath where remember that even God rested after a busy week of creating, well, everything!

And our year is organized by seasons which tells us that God’s time has a rhythm, purpose, and direction for us and all creation.

Taken together we see a movement… and oscillation… between activity and renewal with God and the center and prayer as the fulcrum.

All of us will have Martha-times and Mary-times. We need both for a balanced and healthy life. I call this the do-be cycle. We need to do. And we need to be. Doing without being is empty. Being without doing is wasteful. We need to both do and be. Sing it with me. Do-be. Do-be. Do-be.

Society has forgotten the tune. When everything is open 24/7, every day is the same. Our world is a continuous round of endless media input, so we forget how to reflect, and where we substitute entertainment for rest. We value productivity, but for many people a forty-hour week is the baseline for work not the limit.

Recently, I saw a New Yorker cartoon of two people in a bar. A man is talking to a woman through one of those doggie cones, you know like the one you get at the vet. He says, “I wear it because it keeps me from checking my phone every two seconds.”

Do you know what the busiest shopping day of the week is in all those big box stores? It’s right now! Sunday morning!

And many Christians get caught up in the whirlwind of being “busy” and Sunday is just one more day on the list of things to do. For many of us, Sunday is the “open” day to catch up…catch up on the chores, catch up on the shopping, catch up on some sleep…because in our day and age, we are expected to be efficient and productive, all the time.

Jesus and the author of The Cloud of Unknowing assume something quite different. And that is that everything we do can be (and is) prayer! Everything we do can be an offering to God. Everything we do can reveal God’s love and power and presence and grace to us and those around us. But for this to work, for our work to truly become prayer, we have to hold God at the center of all that we do and we have to keep Christ at the heart of who we are.  We have to have the right balance of “do-be.”

Sing it with me: Do-be. Do-be. Do-be.

If we are to make Christ the center of our work, we must take the time to let Christ be at the center of our renewal.  Martha sets the table for Jesus in order for us to attend to Jesus. Not just make him comfy but to clear the decks so that she and her family and guests can, like Mary, live the moment and sit at Jesus’ feet and listen.

An ancient custom of hospitality in England holds that when a sovereign comes to your house, while in your home, it is no longer yours but his. A sovereign becomes the host under any citizen’s roof.  So remember that, should King Charles pop over to your house for tea, your house literally becomes his house. Think about that. Some of us learned a common table grace as children where we invited Jesus to come and be our guest, but if this ancient royal custom teaches us anything it is that when we let Jesus sit at our table, we invite him to be our host and for us to be his guest!  We invite him to feed us. We invite him to care for us and attend to our needs. We invite him to refresh us, teach us, and treat us as the honored wayfarer, so that we can continue the journey renewed, refreshed and oriented.

Let’s take that image a step further: in our baptisms, we invited Christ into our lives, into us. He who is the guest is now the host.  And in our Eucharist, Christ sits at the head of the table. We allow him to nourish us in our common life, in our worship, in our times of quiet and prayer, in times of retreat, and even in a few minutes reading Forward Day by Day or saying the daily devotions found in the prayer book (or on a prayer app!), and in how we order our common life.

We who emulate our image of busy Martha can sometimes forget the focus and purpose of our work. We can be so busy doing good and necessary things that we sometimes forget the balance required to sing “do-be, do-be, do-be.” The good news is that now the guest has become the host.  And as Jesus enters our living, he feeds us, meets us where we need him the most, and helps us rest in Him.

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Scripture for the Sixth Sunday after Pentecost, Year C, July 20, 2025

Website for The Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan, Clearwater, Florida

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here.

Here is a presentation by the Rev. Liz Tunney, OA, on the "renewal-apostolate cycle," which describes the 'oscillation' between rest and activity in more detail.

And here is more information from Fill All Things: The Dynamics of Ministry in the Parish Church by Robert A. Gallagher

Here is the bulletin for 6 Pentecost C, July 20, 2025, the Episcopal Church of the Good Samaritan, Clearwater, Florida.

Everyday Oneness

Once, I rode the Auto Train between Florida and Virginia. As the overnight ride was drawing to a close, a father was trying to help his very young and still sleepy son gather his things and get ready to disembark the coach as soon as we pulled into the station. I could not see but could overhear the father trying to help the son put on his backpack, which the little boy was clearly struggling with. Apparently, the boy kept putting it on upside-down and the father kept trying to help him. Suddenly the little boy wiggled away from dad, and the backpack swung wide into the air landing in the aisle. It was then that I heard those immortal words: “I can do it all by myself!”

I had to smile. As a little child, I said that to my parents. As a parent, I heard my children say that to me. As a grandparent of littles, I am hearing it anew. And, I must admit, as an adult, I have said it over and over again…maybe not directly…and I hope not with the same whinny voice …but I have said it: “don’t help me! I can do it all by myself!”

The people who study human development tell us that this is to be expected, because a major task of growing up is to be successfully autonomous while at the same learning to build appropriate and healthy attachments that embody trust, respect, and compassion. We need to have healthy boundaries and a good sense of self… to know what’s yours, what’s mine, and what’s ours. So learning when to do things “all by myself” and when to say “help me please” is an important part of growing up… and, as I am learning in retirement, all life long! Which is why, as that little interaction between father and young son shows, growing up is, well, a process.

And then there is that sticky truth that very often our assertions of competence and independence often come exactly at the moment when we are feeling the least competent and the most vulnerable.

Which brings us to today’s Gospel. In it, we hear Jesus praying for his disciples. Now we might be tempted to think that Jesus is only talking about the twelve original apostles, or maybe the band of followers that have gathered around Jesus. But if you remember that a “disciple” is in fact a friend and apprentice of Jesus, all of us folks who believe in Jesus, who have confessed Jesus, and all of us who’ve been baptized are all his disciples.

We are all friends and appentices of Jesus Christ.

Whuch means that Jesus is praying for all of us! He prays that we all may be one. Let’s think about what means for all of us Christians, today and every day.

Jesus prays that we may be one even as Jesus and the Father are one. Notice that even Jesus, the “word”—the logos—that God spoke to make all things come into being, prays to be one with God. You’d think that for him the prayer would be redundant all over again! But Jesus shows us that relationship is at the very core of God’s being.

God did not choose to stand apart in solitary splendor far away from humanity and creation but instead chose to be intimately involved to the point of being born, living a human life, and dying a human death so that we might experience new life one with each other. The Gospel also teaches us that Jesus’ mission is to draw all humanity—that’s us and everyone else—into close relationship with God. Over and over again we find in scripture the truth that Godself is best shown in relationship.

But wait, there’s more! In Jesus’ prayer, we discover that he wants us to be one with each other.

To be One with God means to be One with Christ, and to be One with Christ means that we must be One with each other.  Christians are meant to be One. We are meant to be in community. 

For the Church to be One, there has to be many of us together following Christ. And to be One with God in Christ, means that we must be at unity with other Christians.

There are many things that can trip up our unity with each other and so get in the way with our Oneness with God in Christ. Let’s look at two of them.

The first is that we may mistake agreement for unity. We all hate conflict and are uncomfortable around disagreement, so we look for peace at all costs, which if we are not careful can feel plastic, constricting and fake. But we can never avoid difference and change because we are all different and we all bring unique gifts to the table. Over and over again, in the New Testament shows us that our diversity serves our unity, which is why we call what we are a communion and fellowship.

When I used to teach young people Confirmation class, I would talk about the Oneness of Christ’s people even as we’d visit different churches and experience how other Christians in other traditions (and other believers in other religions) worshipped and gathered in their own way. I often used this illustration: (Are you ready?)

How many flavors will you find in a Baskin-Robbins store? 31, that’s right! And it is all ice cream! How many flavors of church are there… lots! But we are all followers of Jesus!

Which just goes to show that oneness is not sameness. So we pray to resist the temptation of mistaking agreement for unity.

The other temptation is to be too private. Over and over again, we hear Christians talk about their relationship with Christ (if they talk about it at all) as a “personal” relationship. While it is certainly true that our walk with God in Christ is deeply personal, even spiritually intimate, it is not a personal possession to be kept to ourselves. We might be tempted to say that since the path I am on works so well for me, it’s got to be the best and only road to heaven… a kind of spiritual “my way or the highway!”

And many of us Episcopalians, and others in the so-called mainline churches, we have been taught that our religion and spirituality is a private thing, best kept out of polite conversation. To talk about our spiritual lives with any kind of frank honesty can appear intrusive and make us feel uncomfortable. And so we rarely talk about our prayer except in the most general terms, nor do we encourage people to inquire with each other as to what God is doing in our lives or what gives their living purpose, hope and meaning. An overly private faith can mean that we never ask important questions out loud and that robs us of the ability to wrestle with important things. It also means that it’s hard to really let our faith inform our ethics. While we might not want to impose our beliefs on other people rudely, an overly private religion can get in the way of our growth and stop us from learning the language and habits of faith.

People tell me all the time “I am spiritual but not religious.” Okay. Leaving aside the implicit and unhelpful assumption that any outward form of faith—say, Sacramental Living—is “only” religious but not spiritual and therefore somehow invalid… if discussing our faith and talking about what moves us spiritually is taboo…if it is embarrassing or feels “weird”…how can we ever grow in the spirituality that we claim is so important? 

And, I don’t know about you, the truth is that when I am left to my own devices, I am a spiritual klutz, always bumping into things. I need help.

To live out Jesus’ prayer that we be One as He and the Father are One, requires us to be conscious of how God is at work in our lives. And to be conscious of God at work in us, we have to find the language of how to talk about God, our faith, and what gives our lives meaning and ask our questions in a way that feels natural, safe, and comfortable for us. We need the help of people who are on the same journey. Christian community provides the spiritual companionship we need to help us discover that we are indeed One with God in Christ.

Some years ago, I was at a men’s retreat put on by the Brotherhood of St. Andrew (a kind of Daughters of the King but for men), and during the weekend I found myself in a conversation with five other men none of whom I met before but all of whom were engineers or in a technical or scientific profession. They were continuing a conversation that I came in the middle of. It started when one of them asked out loud “How can I believe in Jesus, when I am in a world that demands empirical proof and evidence?” So here I was listening to a group of men talk about faith, science, engineering and meaning.

This was not a debate. No one was trying to change anyone’s mind. And yet it was a very animated discussion. The excitement came from the fact that these men were sharing each other’s story. It was a conversation that rarely happens and yet it was on the minds of these men all the time, just without an outlet.

Which leads me the best part of today’s Gospel. Jesus’ prayer that we may be one as he and the Father are one is already being fulfilled! The incarnation, cross, and resurrection saw to that! We are already through our baptisms re-united with Christ! What we need is practice! We need time and help to rehearse the story of God in our lives. And shows us what it means to be one.

The second-century theologian Tertullian said, “One Christian is no Christian.” But so very often we are just like that little boy on the train… we want to do it all by ourselves! And that can be good, but sooner or later we discover that we also need each other. The Gospel reminds us that we are One only when we are learning and doing the work of Jesus together. In our faith and baptisms, we are one as Jesus and the Father are one, and together we can practice making Jesus’ prayer come true every day.

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Scripture for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year C, June 1, 2025

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

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Here is the bulletin for the Seventh Sunday of Easter, Year C, June 1, 2025, the Church of the Good Shepherd, Dunedin, Florida.

Here is the livestream of the June 1, 2025 9 a.m. liturgy at Good Shepherd, Dunedin, Florida (sermon starts after 37:15).

A Cliffhanger for the Soul

Pop-quiz, sports fans: what is the longest parable in all of the Gospels? Yup, that’s right, it’s the one I just read: the Jesus-story usually called “the parable of the prodigal son.” 

You know what’s really weird about this parable? For all of its colorful details, we don’t know how it ends! Think about it. It’s like those limited series we like to binge-watch, with a cliff-hanger at the end of each episode right before the credits that make you go “Ahhh!”

How does it turn out?

 

Will the faithful son go into the party and greet his brother? 

Does the returning little brother realize that his big brother is not at the party and seek him out? 

Will the father ever witness his two estranged sons embrace? 

And the biggest question of them all: which character do you identify with the most?

Ouch!

In this parable Jesus invites us to walk with both sons and the father, so that we can listen to how God is calling each of us.

The story of the two estranged sons and their father only appears in Luke’s Gospel and none of the other three, but it is probably one of the most famous of all Jesus’ teachings. It comes at the end of a long string of other parables in Luke about how much God values everyone. 

God’s love, Jesus says, is like a shepherd with a hundred sheep who, on losing one, leaves the ninety-nine and searches diligently for the one lost sheep. 

God’s love, Jesus says, is like a woman with ten gold coins who, on losing one, turns the whole house upside down and sweeps every nook and cranny until she finds it. 

In Luke's Gospel, we are hearing a story that explains why it is that God has expanded the Covenant circle to not just include the Jewish nation but all people. The original covenant people--as seen in the oldest son-- are not left out, and the people who joined in or even returned to the Covenant community--as seen in the youngest son--are not only welcomed in! So this is also a story of how God's love works and is available to everyone. 

But it is not only the searching and the finding that is important, but the rejoicing is essential! Jesus says God rejoices when even one lost person is found. The shepherd rejoices to find the one lost sheep. The woman calls all her friends and neighbors and rejoices with them, endlessly telling them the story of the coin she lost and how relieved she was to find it. You can almost hear her say “You’ll never believe where I found it…it was in the last place I looked!”  And Jesus tells us in Luke’s Gospel that the church (that’s us, the gathered people of God!) is to rejoice whenever anyone comes to themselves, comes home and is welcomed by God and God’s people.

I think that this is why so many churches host 12-step meetings, like AA, NA, OA, CODA, and all the other Anonymous’. It’s not the cheap rent that brings these groups into our parish halls. It’s what the Church does! It is why we are here! And it’s what Jesus does for us!

The late Henri Nouwen, who was a Dutch Roman Catholic priest, spiritual director and writer, meditated on this parable as it was portrayed in Rembrandt’s painting “The Return of the Prodigal Son.”  He first saw the painting as a poster in someone’s office and was immediately taken by it. The image spoke to him at once! Years later, he was given the chance to view the real thing at The Hermitage in St. Petersburg, Russia, where it hangs today. Nouwen wrote a book about his encounter with the painting and Jesus’ parable in his book The Return of the Prodigal Son: A Homecoming. He said that for every Christian, for every person, there is a need, a call to come home. There is a need and a longing to come home and be embraced and loved for who we are—all of us, even the parts of us that wander away.

 

We have all, at one time or another, also been like the son who leaves. Nouwen wrote that, when we come back, just like the youngest son, we discover that God is not interested in our prepared, over-rehearsed speeches. All of us have counted up our wrongs and found ourselves wanting, and all of us hope that we might get some small job just to keep us warm, fed and occupied. Not much, we tell ourselves, just enough, because we know we don’t deserve anything else. Just a little kindness will do. We learn from Jesus that God is not interested in reminding us over and over again of our failings. God is not interested in sharing crumbs. God wants us home. 

And, like the father in the story, God celebrates and calls in the whole family and neighborhood when we return.

Nouwen also says that all of us are like the son who stayed home. We count up our rights and our sacrifices and we expect our due. All of us at one time or another have demanded to be recognized and have felt injured or slighted when someone else got what we thought we deserved—especially if they’ve not been as good, or as competent, or as faithful as we have been.

 

We have all been the brother who stayed, and for us the challenge is to accept not only God’s justice, but more than that we must learn to accept God’s extravagant love and generous forgiveness. In his own way, the good son, when he refused to accept the wayward son’s welcome, becomes a prodigal himself.

And there is a third challenge in this parable, one that we often overlook. Nouwen reminds us that we are also called to be like the father in the story, the one who forgives and the one who welcomes; the one who is patient and the one who coaxes and the one who never loses faith. It is the father who not only runs out to greet the wayward son on his return and embraces him; but it is also the father who leaves the party and enters the darkness to stand with the faithful son and embraces him as well. My hunch is that the father allowed the youngest son to go off to the Big City because he understood that this might be how he learns about life and himself. In this story the father shows us that God’s love is not a zero-sum game with only winners and losers. Jesus’ parable reminds that God never says, “I told you so!”

Jesus reminds us in the Gospel lesson that the feast is for everyone. “All that I have is yours” the father says to the faithful but angry son outside the party. “You are always with me.”  For us to take on the role of the father is to find the language and the way to welcome all God’s people into the feast and rejoice that everyone is there.

So … who are you in this story? 

I think Jesus’ parable of the Two Prodigals and their Dad is a kind of a spiritual Rorschach test. You know one of those tests that therapists used to do to get you to speak what you see in a blob of ink. Probably the person in the story with whom we identify the most and the person who irritates us the most, are teaching us something about where we are spiritually and where we need to grow. 

At the heart of the father’s love that Jesus talks about in this story is empathy. Empathy is a much-maligned attribute lately. Some, like a certain gazzilionaire in the news lately, thinks it is a weakness. But without God’s astounding empathy… which we Christians know is made manifest in the incarnation, where God lives and walks amongst us in the person of Jesus… none of us would have a chance at life. Without empathy, the lost son is not welcomed, the faithful son is forgotten, and this family that Jesus presents us-- Jews and Gentile, male and female, slave and free-- falls apart.

As we move closer and closer to the journey to the cross and resurrection, we will become mindful of the fact that God has embraced all of us. We are called to embrace all the people God sends to us. Why? Because all of us at one time or another have been the wayward son who was welcomed beyond all expectation. And all of us have, at one time or another, been the faithful son who, despite doing everything "right," felt slighted or ignored. And since we live in a world filled with people who are seeking and people who are hurting, we need more and more to enter into the role of that loving father who welcomed both siblings into the banquet. 

And now for the cliffhanger: The only way for the faithful son and his wayward brother will embrace is when both of them accept the extravagant forgiveness of the father that neither son expected nor dreamed of. 

How will it turn out? For them? For us? For you and me? 

Let’s come to the banquet and find out!

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Scripture for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C, March 30, 2025

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

Here is the bulletin for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year C, (or this 10 AM liturgy bulletin)  for March 30, 2025, the Church of the Good Shepherd, Dunedin, Florida.

Here is the livestream of the March 30, 2025 10 a.m. liturgy at Good Shepherd, Dunedin, Florida.

If you want to go deeper: Here is Bishop Nick Knisely's (Rhode Island) sermon on this passage, which helped me sort through some of the questions on empathy that I was pondering this week as I studied this week's Gospel.

Looking Evil in the Eye Again!

Updated March 3, 2025 from an earlier post and column published on May 17, 2022

Don’t you wish sometimes that you could just gather up all the evil in the world and just dump it into a rocket-ship and fire it into the sun or something? I don’t know about you, but this has (again!) been one of those weeks for me.

In Luke 8:26-39, we see what Jesus did for a man who was possessed by demons and it sure seems like Jesus bundled up all that evil and sent it away… into a herd of swine that ran headlong into the water to drown! After yet another mass shooting, this time at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, where the gunman chose violence after reading fear-filled screeds on-line and elsewhere filled his writing and conversation with all kinds of hateful language and the bizarre idea that “white culture” is being “replaced” by immigrants and people of color.

I don’t know about you, but I sure would like to send all this evil far, far away!

We Episcopalian Christians take evil seriously! Every time we baptize someone, the candidates, or their parents and sponsors, have to answer two questions:

“Do you renounce Satan and all the spiritual forces of wickedness that rebel against God?” 

And:

“Do you renounce the evil powers of this world which corrupt and destroy the creatures of God?”

And to both questions we respond, both for ourselves and (often) for the person being baptized:

"I will with God's help."

Yes. We Episcopalians do really and truly believe that these evil powers, these demons, are real and that they wreak havoc in our world. Most people scoff at such an idea…or at least whistle as they pass the graveyard… which is fine until a guy who dresses up his anger in political non-sense takes a semi-automatic firearm into a nightclub and shoots over ahundred people, killing forty-nine. Or until a guy who decides to call himself“death to traitors” kills a member of parliament in the UK. Or until a guy stalks and murders a young singer before a concert. Or, as happened last week, an angry, fear-filled coward stakes out a supermarket in a mainly blackneighborhood, dresses himself up in body armor, and then systematically kills ten people. Or when our President and Vice-President decide to trap and humiliate another country's president, Volodymyr Zelenkey, who is seeking help from our nation to deal with the foreign army that invaded his country three years ago... and then laughs it off as "good television." 

When you see all that, then evil becomes very real, doesn’t it?

The spiritual powers that rebel against God and corrupt and destroy the creatures of God show themselves mainly through fear and hatred.  These are not only emotions, but they are a spiritual state. It is very easy to be tempted to confront evil with more evil…to pile on fear in response to fear, to prejudice in response to prejudice, to meet violence with violence.

But if you really want to fight evil and win, Jesus shows us how: we do the things that evil hates!

Jesus does that in Luke's Gospel. When confronted with a madman who screams at and threatens people, who throws himself to the ground and roams among the dead in a cemetery, as if he were a first century version of someone steeped in the dark web. 

But look at what Jesus does: Instead of doing some sort of violence against the man, Jesus confronts the evil… he meets evil, looks it in the eye, names it, and then casts it out!

Look again at Jesus’ dialogue with the man possessed:

Jesus says, “What is your name?” And the man can’t even answer. The demon within him responds, “Legion.” A legion was a Roman military unit, terrifying in its power and the number of heavily armed soldiers who could overrun another army or a country. What possessed this man was not a simple fear, or a hatred of a single thing—the demon that ripped this man’s life apart and separated him from all society was a whole constellation of fears, they manifested in hatred of life itself, and even when the Life of the World invited him to life, he cried out, “DO NOT TORMENT ME!”

People rightly responded in horror and pain to the awful events last week and people had many names for the evil that we witnessed: “terrorist,” “white supremacist,” “self-hater,” “deranged.” The names were Legion, just like the man who dwelt in the tombs in Gerasa way back two thousand years ago confronting Jesus, the incarnate love of God, who stood calmly before the face of evil, looking it in the eye.

Jesus was not distracted by the evil but sees it for what it is…He even dialogues with it. But he stays focused on healing the man possessed instead of playing evil’s deadly game. The demons can’t take it. They flee from the man and away from Jesus and jump into that herd of swine.

What drove these demons out of the man…what made life unbearable for the evil Jesus faced…was the power of Jesus’ love. It was Jesus’ unflinching, realistic, clear-eyed love that made these demons want to take up residence somewhere else. Jesus was doing the things that evil hates!

Which is what Jesus is teaching us during this terrible week: if you want to cast out demons, do the thing that evil hates.

Evil hates justice and thrives on division. Seek reconciliation. 

Evil loves it when we are silent about injustice and marginalize the poor. Speak up and work on behalf of the oppressed and outcast. 

Evil drives us to be selfish and care only for ourselves. Cast out evil with compassion.

Evil wants us to be alone and cut off. Drive evil crazy with your prayer, your trust in God, and your life in Christian community.

Evil flourishes when we hate in God’s name. If you really want to cast out demons, love.

Evil feeds on our resentment and our list of wrongs. Cast out evil. Forgive.

Evil wants us to focus on scarcity. Fight evil. Be generous.

Evil grows when we get caught up in anxiety. Cast out a demon. Let go of needing to control every outcome.

Evil needs violence—in every form, physical and emotional—so fight evil and live peaceably.

Jesus shows us, in his unflinching encounter with a legion of demons and on his journey to the cross, that he had God’s power and God’s authority which allowed him to confront evil on God’s terms. By simply living and doing what he was called to do; by teaching, healing, forgiving, listening, and by welcoming the stranger and being a companion to the outcast he was doing all the things that evil hates…and drove evil crazy in the process! They wanted to run away! When Jesus was crucified, it looked as if evil won. But, in fact, as we see in the resurrection, evil was defeated. Forever!

And we saw it, too.

We saw it in every candle lit, every prayer offered, every first responder who put themselves on the line to care for wounded, injured, and dead. We saw it in every act of love, every grieving person hugged and cared for, every frightened person embraced. Once again, one man chose to do unspeakable evil. And once again, when the chips were down, thousands upon thousands chose to do the good.

I wish we could sweep up all the evil in all the world and sent it off in a rocket-ship, far, far away. But you know what? God beat us to it! Jesus has already defeated evil and put death to flight on the cross and in his resurrection. And when we do as Jesus told the man he healed to return to where we live and “declare how much God is doing for us,” we are demonstrating that no matter how much hate, how much violence, how much cynicism and fear is out there, we have, through our baptisms, the Eucharist and the power of the Holy Spirit in this community, the power cast out evil in wonderful, surprisingly practical ways of compassion, holiness and calm.

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Check out the response by Bishop Sean Rowe, Bishop of Northwest Pennsylvania and Bishop Provisional of Western New York to the mass shooting on Saturday, May 12, 2022 in Buffalo, New York, which is within the Diocese of Western New York.  (The text may be found here.)

Beware the Gospel of Silence

This is an anxious time to be a preacher in the United States.

Over the past few weeks, I have been cautioned from various quarters from being too "political" in my preaching. This caution has come either directly to me or in a generalized way from colleagues, friends, and faith leaders.

Then came Bishop Marianne Budde's sermon in the Washington National Cathedral, (also here and here) where she directly asked the President, by name, to exercise mercy in the application of his administration's policies towards migrants, LGBTQ+ persons, women, and others who are frightened by the policy drift of the incoming administration. The response to her sermon was outrage. 

Nothing says "anxiety" to me as when a preacher in her own pulpit, a Bishop in her own diocese, gave a sermon that touched on at least five of the seven cardinal virtues (temperance, charity, justice, prudence, and patience) followed by a plea for mercy, in line with Jesus' words on the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:7)-- and is blasted for it! The President and his supporters angrily dismissed her as being "mean," "aggressive" and (worst of all...) "boring." 

Even among those who agreed with her words, there was anxiety. Some have said that if only Bishop Budde had not addressed the President by name or had not spoken to him directly, then the message would have been better received. Or that this service of prayer following an inauguration was the wrong time for this message. (Uhm... have you ever heard an ordination or commissioning sermon that ends with a "charge" from the preacher to the ones being ordained or commissioned? That was what was going on here.) Others have said that she should have been praying for the President and not criticizing him... which raises the question: "praying for what?"

Now, I have never endorsed or advocated for a specific candidate for any office from the pulpit. I have prayed at civic events including city and county council meetings and taken part public civic events in my capacity as a local pastor.  In my preaching, I will focus on the ethics and morals of policy when it is called for, and will talk about justice, peacemaking, health, and poverty as moral and ethical issues and how we as Christians can address them. I also pray for every President and Governor by name when I preside at liturgies and when I say the Daily Offices everyday, regardless of how they or I vote.

The problem is, as the National Catholic Reporter noted after the sermon, the fact of the matter is that everything a preacher says or does these days is being interpreted through a partisan lens. We preachers are in a situation where saying nothing is deemed "safe." And if the preacher addresses basic ethics and morality, then they are seen as being excessively partisan. Unfortunately, the consequence of this silence is that our congregants are left without guidance or hope... which may be the whole point of the backlash.., to intimidate preachers into silence. 

I find that the urge to "tone it down" is especially troublesome when compared to other preachers who can't stop themselves from going full-on partisan when they praise the President for being God's Chosen One, or something very much like that.

But when it's our turn, we are told to "tone it down." But "tone it down" how much? What good is it to our congregations, or anyone else, when all we are preaching is a gospel of silence?

What's particularly strange is that many of the same people who attacked Bishop Budde were also lining up to see a movie about Dieterich Bonhoeffer, cheering as he opposed Hitler even to the point of participating in an assassination plot. Never mind that the film, like the book it was based on, massively distorted Bonhoeffer in order to make him into a model modern Evangelical culture warrior, these audiences cheered all the more for precisely that reason.  

To be fair, some of the folks counseling us preachers to "tone it down" are conscious of the anxiety many parishioners themselves feel in this 24/7 news cycle media barrage. Being forced to drink from a fire hose of bad, divisive, or chronically biased news--and the work of constantly sorting out the good from the bad information--is very tiring. The concern is to not add the pulpit to the list of over-stimulating and partisan media inputs. That's a fair concern... as far as it goes. 

So... what are we to make of this? And what pastoral and theological guidance shall we give?

We are not alone in our anxiety. Looking at the popular news, I wonder if those whose preaching is full-on supportive of the current administration and praising to high-heaven the person of the President, and who brush aside questions about the ethical and moral consequences of the administration's policies, are themselves experiencing their own kind of anxiety: the anxiety of not being welcomed into the halls of secular power-- or worse, the fear of being cast out for not being supportive enough! 

As I said, these are anxious times to be a preacher. Or a listener for that matter!

But this is not new territory. We've been here before. It shows up over and over again in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. The tension is at least as old as the Bible itself. Think Moses and Pharoah, Nathan and King David, Amos and the High Priest Amaziah. 

For guidance, I found myself going to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's Letter from a Birmingham jail. 

To truly understand the context of Dr. King's Letter, one must read the public appeal from the eight clergy (seven Christian-- including two Episcopal bishops-- and one Rabbi) who wrote a letter to King-- who was not addressed by name --and published it in The Birmingham News on April 13, 1963. 

Dr. King's response is a long one, but it is rich with the theological analysis that undergirded this element of the Civil Rights Movement. The most famous portion of the letter was this:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.

The letter is worth meditating on in it's entirety, especially in the discussion of just versus unjust laws, the refutation of the plea from white moderates for "patience" even after a (then) 340 year history of slavery and oppression, and his discussion of the legal means established to maintain that history and the structures that supported and benefited from it. 

That was an anxious time to be preacher of the Gospel, too. And we've had others. It was only five years ago when we endured an on-going controversy over The 1619 Project.  Of course, preachers were anxious throughout the entire period of the Civil Rights Movement, and since then we've had to contend with the ongoing domestication of the Rev. Dr. King by emphasizing one line in one speech ("I Have a Dream") but ignoring the theology and analysis that went before it and undergirded the March on Washington where that speech was given. 

And while nearly every big city has a Martin Luther King Street, Boulevard, or Avenue, we forget that that very same 1963 March on Washington was about both civil and economic rights: the plea for jobs and economic empowerment was central to the event. Recall that at the time of King's assassination in 1968, he was in Memphis to support striking sanitation workers. 

One only has to read the sermons and essays coming from Christian preachers in the period leading up to the Civil War to see that very same anxiety at work. 

Which leads us to the pastoral rub... one that our anxiety prevents us preachers from addressing: our congregants are both spiritually hungry for a Gospel that informs our experience, and also turn to us preachers and pastors for guidance as to how to navigate these times. 

And did I mention that some of us are afraid of the backlash, no matter which way we go? (I know I am!)

Sure, some of our hearers want us to bless what is. And others want us only to keep our spirituality very personal and friendly. But many others are itching to participate in God's work in their lives, in their homes, their workplaces and their schools. Preachers can lead without haranguing and can care for our members without platitudes. 

And if the purveyors of blessing the status quo can speak openly, then why must the preachers of a Gospel honoring our whole baptismal covenant or preachers who call us to act  in Christ's name for justice, equality, and inclusion, "tone it down?" 

But you think we're anxious? Read again the Rev. Dr. King's words in his letter to the Birmingham clergy when he compares their apparent anxiety to the lived experience of African- Americans in their city, and in the nation.

We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. The nations of Asia and Africa are moving with jetlike speed toward gaining political independence, but we still creep at horse and buggy pace toward gaining a cup of coffee at a lunch counter. Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, "Wait." But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers at will and drown your sisters and brothers at whim; when you have seen hate filled policemen curse, kick and even kill your black brothers and sisters; when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society; when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six year old daughter why she can't go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people; when you have to concoct an answer for a five year old son who is asking: "Daddy, why do white people treat colored people so mean?"; when you take a cross county drive and find it necessary to sleep night after night in the uncomfortable corners of your automobile because no motel will accept you; when you are humiliated day in and day out by nagging signs reading "white" and "colored"; when your first name becomes "nigger," your middle name becomes "boy" (however old you are) and your last name becomes "John," and your wife and mother are never given the respected title "Mrs."; when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of "nobodiness"--then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.

No doubt about it. This is another anxious time for preachers! 

But do you want to know where the real anxiety resides? It lives in the hearts of people who must daily decide how to faithfully live the Gospel without shame, code-switching, or fear. Our anxiety pales by comparison and as pastors we must be ready to address that. Our congregants cry out for both pastoral leadership and compassion. Our congregants yearn for our support and practical guidance. They seek sermons and pastoral leadership without slogans or platitudes. We owe it to our communities to present a practical, living, Gospel where we can together learn and do the work of Jesus everyday with hope, courage, and power.

These are anxious times for preachers, and this is no time to preach a gospel of silence.

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Here is a sermon for the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany by the Rev. Kevin Mort, Deacon, of St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater