Calling us to be made whole

Nothing really winds me up like buzzwords. People throw around jargon like candy attempting to sound smart without saying very much. Then these words end up in popular usage in places like television, in commercials, and in speeches… and it really gets me going… people saying things without really much meaning. It happens in business, in church, in politics. It makes me want to sigh.

One of the most popular buzzwords today is “disruption.” They tell us that their product, widget, or process is “disrupting the widget industry… and you should go out and buy it.” Well, friends, disruption is not all it’s cracked up to be… and usually when people are saying it they don’t really mean it. They say “disruption,” but they mean “more of the same… all shiny and looking new!” Like a brand-new car body resting on a chassis designed in the 1930’s.

The fact is that real disruption, real innovation, real invention is usually pretty upsetting. That’s why people resist it so much. Not long ago, the idea of flight was reserved for birds, bugs, and balloonists. The funny thing is that after many millennia of invention and innovation, with all the great gadgets we take for granted today, very little has changed about how people are. And I get that... after all, here I am talking to you wearing what's essentially second century business casual, leading an ancient liturgy, while reading from even more ancient texts. 

Humans are very inventive in taking all our new gadgets and fitting them into the ways we’ve always done things.

Change, real change, is hard. It requires a shift in perspective, in habit, in our thinking, and attitude. That’s why it requires not just discipline but grace, vision of what we want to be and the humility to start over… and hearts that listens for God.

Jesus’ first century image for “disruption” was what happens when one tries to put new wine into old wineskins. You know what you get? You end up with a thirsty person standing on a messy floor holding a broken, leaky wine sack. No, he said, if you are going to do something new, it needs to be all new!

God is doing something new, Jesus says, and it will neither look nor feel nor operate the same way as how things have operated before. In todays’ Gospel we have three examples: Jesus calls Matthew the tax-collector to follow him; he heals a woman who has experienced a constant hemorrhage her whole life, and then he raises a dead little girl to life. 

The Gospel puts these three stories together to answer a simple question: what will following the call of God be like? What is God doing in Jesus? 

In Christ, God is bringing healing, wholeness, and reconciliation to all God’s people.

But God does it differently that what we expect.

Our old habits, our old ways of seeing, our notions of good order and how things “have to be” are going to turned upside down. This new wine will not fit in the old containers. The containers can’t take it!

Watch what Jesus is doing and see how he is at once making new wine and creating new wine containers in the lives of the people he meets.

When he walks up to Matthew in his tax-collecting booth, he is meeting a man who was probably pretty well-off and prosperous, but neither well-loved nor respected by anyone. As a Jewish functionary of the hated occupiers from Rome, he gathered the taxes from the locals to pay for their oppression by a foreign empire. His Roman bosses probably pushed him around and he was unloved by his Jewish neighbors. At best, he might hang out with others like himself who made their living on the wrong side of the tracks: thieves, extortionists, prostitutes, and Jews in the employ of Rome, not to mention those people who made their living doing often important but unsavory work that respectable people didn’t talk about.

So when Jesus calls Matthew, he calls one of the most unlikely, least respected persons imaginable to be one of his followers. And he doesn’t even tell him to clean up his act first! Why does he do this? Why does Jesus risk his own good name and the reputation of his fledgling ministry on the likes of this reprobate … this quisling… Matthew? He shows us why in the two healings that follow.

While Jesus is eating and drinking with Matthew, and his no doubt equally notorious friends, word comes that a little girl, the daughter of a respectable leader in the local synagogue, has died. He begs Jesus to lay his hand on his little girl so that she may live. Jesus goes to care for the girl, which leads to the first healing encounter after Matthew’s call.

On the way, a woman who has suffered her whole life from some kind of hemorrhage… most likely a disorder that affected her since puberty... which meant that not only was she ill, but she was excluded from ordinary company, including other women, certainly was never going to marry, and was probably also separated from her family. By the custom of the day, anyone she touched would be ritually unclean and therefore she risked not only condemnation but also fear-driven violence on a daily basis. So when she takes the risky act of touching his cloak as he passes, she is healed. Jesus blesses her and commends her faith saying “your faith has made you well.”

He finally arrives at the official’s house but by then it’s too late. The girl has died, and the mourning rites have begun. He assures them that all is well, but instead of saying “Watch me bring her back to life…,” or “hold my bier,” he says that she is only sleeping. They all laugh... except apparently the desperate parents and family and a few followers who are holding their breath. After all the hub-bub has died away, and the scoffers sent out, he takes her by the hand and gently bids her to wake up. And she lives!

If you want to know why we friends, followers, and apprentices of Jesus care about the poor, the sick, and those society would consider strange, weird, or different—if you want to know why we find ourselves hosting recovering addicts in our buildings who may never walk into our worship spaces, or feed or clothe folks in need through our various ministries, or why we speak of love and compassion when the culture trucks in fear and division, then this is why: it is what Jesus did. 

He comes to us in the midst of our complicated lives and sits, chats, and eats with us. He touches us where we experience the most pain. He comes into our lives and homes and our hearts and brings life. He sees faith in us when others might only see fault and invites us to follow him.

In all three instances in today’s Gospel, people who lived on the fringes, separated by custom, choice, or circumstance from their communities, were reconciled and brought back into the lives of their families, communities, and daily lives in the company of Jesus.

What does it mean that Jesus called a hated tax-collector and quisling to follow him? It is so that he can live, and work and walk with dignity, respect, and wholeness as a person of God in community.

What does it mean to be made whole and healed, no longer living at the edges of society subject to the alternating vagaries of human pity and condemnation? It is to discover that one’s faith makes us whole and returns us to the family of God! 

What does it mean to experience new life? It is like Jesus coming into your home, and against all expectation, taking you by the hand, and inviting you to get up and live.

Following Jesus changes us, taking what we have always thought to be true and normal and expected and turning it upside down, inside out, and giving it new life. Grace, faith, baptism, sacramental living, and Christian community together all give us a new container—a new wine skin! — to live as Christ’s own forever. We are all called, welcomed, healed, and given new life because with Christ, our faith heals, reconciles, and makes us well.

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Bulletin for Worship for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, June 11, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the 2nd Sunday after Pentecost, June 11, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on June 11, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on June 11, 2023.

Met at the point of our greatest need

Zacchaeus had an image problem. His name meant “righteous, pure one,” but no one believed it. He stood barely five feet tall with his shoes off, there’s nothing wrong with being short—and that wasn’t his problem anyway! He was head tax-collector for the Roman in the town of Jericho and this made him both the richest man in town and the least popular. Everyone assumed that he was so rich because he was skimming off the top of what he collected.

When Jesus came to town, nobody would make room for him to see, so he shinnied up a sycamore tree so he could see something more than just the backs of other people's heads, and that's where he was when Jesus spotted him.

"Zacchaeus," Jesus said for all to hear, "get down out of there in a hurry. I'm having dinner tonight at your house!" All of Jericho must have been stunned. I suspect that Zacchaeus was too. It’s a wonder that he didn’t just fall out of the tree in shock!

And he was not the only one stunned and surprised, but probably not in a good way.  If Jesus were running for office and they had attack ads in the first century, you can almost hear the ominous music and the deep bass of the voice over artist saying: “Jesus eats with tax-collectors. Jesus. Wrong on taxes. Wrong for Judea.”

But in fact Jesus knew what he was doing. When Jesus called to Zacchaeus and invited himself to dinner, he shows us just who it is that God is seeking, who God welcomes into the reign of God, and what God wants us to be. Most of all Jesus is invites us to see the world through God’s eyes and shows us God’s over-the-top generosity and grace.

That’s the heart of Jesus’ message in the Gospel of Luke. All through this part of the Gospel, we see Jesus seeking out people who live on the fringes of society and the community of faith. We hear Jesus welcome little children (18:15-17). Then Jesus welcomes a rich man who has followed the law his whole life but can’t let go of his wealth and instead walks away sad (18:18-30). Jesus heals a blind beggar (18:35-43). Finally, in today’s Gospel, Jesus welcomes and eats with a rich scoundrel that no one likes, Zacchaeus . Luke’s Gospel is telling us that if Jesus can welcome into God’s reign children, blind beggars, and scoundrels, then surely he has room for the likes of us.

Now notice something here: Zacchaeus did not change jobs. He apparently did not stop being a tax-collector. When Jesus called another tax-collector named Levi, also known as Matthew, to be an apostle, he dropped everything and followed Jesus. Today’s Gospel reminds us that not everyone who followed Jesus put aside their occupation. Instead, some people put their money and their words together in God’s service. In the Gospels, the followers of Jesus don’t just say “hey, Jesus, thanks! That’s nice.” In the Gospels, the followers of Jesus act! They put their words and actions together.

I have a theory, and that is that while most preachers (including me!) have seen this story solely as a conversion story, I now think of it as a "coming out" story. I have come to think that Zacchaeus was, in fact, as righteous as his name implies, but it took his encounter with Jesus demonstrate that he was really serious about it– and for others to put aside their judgements and see him as the faithful follower he was. When he said that he would return many-fold any money that was fraudulently taken, he was not buying his salvation but declaring his honesty before God, before Jesus, and before a skeptical crowd. It turns out that his generosity reflected the faithfulness and change that was already going on inside of him—if there was no yearning for wholeness and reconciliation, then why would have risked climbing that tree? When Jesus entered his home, he discovers salvation—being made whole by God.

I suspect that Zacchaeus’ journey towards God… was well underway when he got up in that sycamore tree. But it took a while for people—not just Zacchaeus but all the people who knew him, or thought they knew him—to catch on.

Zacchaeus sought Jesus. Jesus sought and affirmed Zacchaeus. And his affirmation of faith and repentance and the salvation that Jesus proclaimed in Zacchaeus’ house made him whole… his inner search and struggle for faith and acceptance met the outward expression of repentance and generosity.

The big take away from today’s Gospel is this: When we seek Jesus, we find that Jesus is seeking us. Jesus meets us precisely where we need to be met, at the point of our greatest need. When we seek Jesus we are allowing him to the most vulnerable part of our selves so that his saving love might heal us. In meeting Jesus, we are changed from the inside out. And when we change we act.

For one thing, as Zacchaeus shows us, our relationship towards our possessions and our things changes. We move from people who uses our stuff to protect us against, or at least distract us from, pain or to compensate for whatever feels short or incomplete or unlovely in our lives.

The other take away is that Jesus’ invitation to this person on the fringe revealed a faithfulness that no one could see because it did not occur to them that people on the fringe even deserve salvation.  

So, there are two lessons going on here that we can all use in our Christian living:

First, faithful people show up in unexpected places. When Jesus met people at the fringes of respectable society, he was calling out and raising up people living as faithfully as they could but who, up until then, were marked as “outsiders” because of their status, their nationality, their way of life, or their occupation. He was telling them that their faith, no matter how outside the norm, makes them whole.

Second, Zacchaeus learned (and then taught us) that everything we have comes from God. Our task is to use what God has given us for God’s purpose. So, as our faith grows, as we learn and do the work of Jesus, we can choose to use our time, our talent, our things, and yes, our money, for God’s purposes.

And what is God’s purpose? That we love God with all our heart, soul, and mind. We love our neighbor. And more than that, that we love one another the way Jesus loves us. With everything we have. Jesus’ love for us is sacrificial and meets us where we are with what we need.

So, are you a student? Use what you have for God’s purpose. Do you have a place to live and food to eat? Use it for God’s purpose. Do you have talent and skill? Use them for God’s purpose. Do you have a profession or a responsibility? Be ethical, competent, and generous…use it for God’s purpose. And what is God’s purpose? The Catechism in our Prayer Book says that our purpose is “To restore all humanity and creation to unity with God and each other in Jesus Christ.” As you orient your stuff to God’s purpose, you will discover how to learn and do the work of Jesus in your everyday living!

That’s what was going on for Zacchaeus. He went looking for Jesus and found Jesus looking for him. Jesus invited himself into Zacchaeus’ home, because Zacchaeus made room in his home and heart for God. 

It’s funny, isn’t it? We might not know how much we’ve changed until we find ourselves out on a limb looking for Jesus looking for us. And when we make room for Jesus, we find that Christ is already at home in us.

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Here is a link to the bulletin for the Twenty-first Sunday after Pentecost  at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater

Here is a link to the Scripture readings.

Here is a link to a video of the sermon.

Here is a link to a video of the liturgy.

Healed, whole, and reconciled

Leprosy in Jesus’ day was no joke. Being a leper was a kind of walking death, considered evil and unclean. Because the condition was not well understood… and all kind of maladies could cause one to be called a leper from psoriasis to skin cancer to various kinds of skin infections, it was impossible to know who was contagious and who was not. They were excluded from every part of community life. They could not live, worship, eat, walk, or talk among “normal” people. They were required to stay away, keeping a safe distance from life’s normal activities and gatherings. 

So, to survive, they scrounged, depending as best they could, on the charity and more typically the trash of others. Lepers of that day not only lost their skin to continuous infection and inflammation and to the lack of basic care but they were also separated from the community. They had nothing, and no hope, yet they could – from forty paces – watch the real world, and real life, happen just outside of their reach.

Once, a band of ten of these lepers met Jesus. Nine were apparently Jews from who knows where, and one was a foreigner. Together they kept on the move, scrounging food, water and makeshift shelter, as best they could. Perhaps they helped one another dress wounds as they limped along from place to place.  The status and situation as lepers made them a kind of community of the sick and the outcast. What they had most in common was their disease, so their other differences did not matter so much.

When the saw Jesus they stood at a distance – as was required by the law – and shouted for mercy.

I’ll bet they made the same cry to every passing rabbi, holy man, and probably to every hustler and snake oil salesman with a reputation for healing whomever came within earshot. If they were lucky, they’d get some food or clean clothes or perhaps money laid down on the road from a distance. Their prayer was simple: “Jesus, master, have mercy on us.” And Jesus granted them mercy, and without conditions or expectation he gave them their lives back. He told them to present themselves to the priests because the priests were the ones who would certify that the lepers were cured and allow them to rejoin the world.

So off they went toward the city and toward the priests. And as they went, their leprosy went away; they were cured! As they walked their old dead, rotting flesh dropped away and they were clean, bright, like new-born babies. Jesus stood there and watched. He put no conditions on his gift, but he just watched and waited.

Imagine their feelings at this moment. They were grateful. They were no doubt thrilled. I imagine them, laughing, relieved, feeling just wonderful! And most of them had someplace to go… assuming the other nine were Jews, they were off to the temple or wherever they could find a priest to pronounce them fit and clean.

Call me an optimist, but I am also sure that they were thanking God that this holy man Jesus had cured them. To them, Jesus was the most wonderful person in the whole world! They could leave the exiled life and re-join the land of the living!

But even if they were thanking God as they ran to rejoin their old lives, they forgot something….

You see of the ten, there was one who had no place to go. The priests who would pronounce the nine clean, would still consider the tenth man unclean, even without his leprosy. This was a time when people kept to their own communities, lived, worked, and functioned with their own kind. And cured or not, he was a Samaritan… the old prejudices and customs would still keep him outside his friend’s community… unclean, unreconciled, now a stranger. He was no longer apart of the same community as his nine equally cured companions.

We tend to look on this story as one about gratitude… and Jesus certainly names that issue, but this is a story about community, and the grace of being apart of a community of people. The tragedy was that the nine, in their gratitude, forgot about the one who was different than them.

No one could imagine advocating to the priest at the temple for the tenth leper and saying, “for all these years, this Samaritan was one of us, but now that he—like us—was healed by Jesus of Nazareth, you cannot welcome him back in?” No one could imagine that God’s grace and healing power, mediated through Jesus, would do more than cure a physical disease… his healing would also knock down the barriers that were in fact much bigger than the disease they were cured from.

That is, no one could imagine it until after Jesus’ cross, death, and resurrection; it would not be until the Holy Spirit filled and baptized a new community, that we could imagine—and experience—that the  nine could have also been reconciled—and equally healed—with the tenth person.

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.”

The one who came back in the Gospel story, came back to the only place, to the only person, he could possibly go. And in that return, we see that this healing was much bigger that anyone could previously have imagined.

All ten lepers were cured. And all ten stayed cured, as Jesus said, “were not all ten healed?” But there was more going on. Jesus saw past the imposed exile of the tenth man. And when that man went to only place he could go, he received something more. To him Jesus said, “Rise up and go your way, your faith has made you well.” The Greek for “made you well” is a different word, a theological word; it means “being made whole,” or “being made complete.” It also means being saved. Go your way, Jesus told him, your faith has made you not just cured, but whole, and saved.

All ten were healed, all ten were given their lives, but one had an epiphany, where his gratitude turned into awe. For the tenth man, the light bulb went off and he came back…and was made whole! All ten were given their lives back; but only one was given the fullness of life.

For the one who was made whole, the one who came back to Jesus, his gratitude was the gateway to a something bigger: an epiphany that what God is brings to us is wholeness.

We all have had troubles in our lives, and we all have had blessings. It is easy to imagine crying out to God when we are in trouble. It is very easy to imagine that when everything is going well that we don’t. To just get caught up in the blessings and the busyness, we can forget to return to God. The one who returned received all that Jesus had to give—not just blessing, not even just healing, but wholeness and return to life.

Christ touches us, heals us, blesses us. And he waits for us to move from acceptance to gratitude and to awe. And that’s when we are made whole.

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Here is a link to the bulletin for the Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost  at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater

Here is a link to the Scripture readings.

Here is a link to a video of the sermon.

Here is a link to a video of the liturgy.

A Martyr's Song in an Age of Rage

I am looking ahead a few weeks to commemorate a little-known martyr who (as I write this) doesn’t appear on the Episcopal calendar, and he hasn’t even appeared on Lent Madness (yet!).

It all started a few years ago, when Peg and I went to worship at Grace Episcopal Cathedral in Charleston, South Carolina, and to our surprise we were privileged to witness the commemoration of an Episcopal saint, a bishop, a witness for racial equality and a martyr: Bishop William Alexander Guerry (July 7, 1861 – June 9, 1928).

Guerry was a South Carolinian and was consecrated bishop coadjutor on September 15, 1907 and later became the eighth diocesan bishop of the Diocese of South Carolina on April 22, 1908. Before that, he served as a parish priest and then as Chaplain and Professor of Homiletics and Pastoral Theology at the University of the South in Sewanee, Tennessee.

Despite the fact that he spent his whole ministry, other than his training at the General Theological Seminary in New York, in the South in an age of segregation, Bishop Guerry came to believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ was Good News for all people, and this led him to believe that the Church must reflect the visible unity of all God’s people in how we ordered our common life. So, in 1914, he proposed that his Diocese should elect a black bishop suffragan for South Carolina to be responsible for the ministry to African American Episcopalians. He wanted to ensure that all people, regardless of race, were full participants in the community of Christ’s people in the diocese.

While the idea of a separate jurisdiction would sound regressive and divisive to our ears; for its day, this was a radical proposition and was met with considerable opposition! His proposal failed big time in the Diocesan Convention that year. Instead, the majority white (and, of course, all male) convention chose instead to separate the African American community of the Diocese into a “Missionary District for Negroes,” which practically and effectively separated Black Episcopalians from the rest of the diocesan community until the arrangement was abolished in the mid-20th century.

But that is not the end of the story.

On June 2, 1928, an Episcopal priest of that diocese, the Rev.  J. H. Woodward, entered Bishop Guerry’s office at St. Philip’s Church in Charleston, enraged at the Bishop’s message of racial equality and reconciliation. He made an appointment with the Bishop and during the conversation he pulled out a pistol and shot Guerry in the chest, before killing himself. 

Most of the news reports of the day and the little bits of history written since then have described the Rev. Woodward as “mentally deranged.” While that might have been the case, it is equally clear that this priest had organized his “derangement” around the idea of violently preserving white supremacy. Before the meeting, he had openly and publicly attacked the bishop’s position on advancing racial equality in South Carolina, and especially on his proposal to install a black suffragan bishop in the diocese. Woodward wrote that the bishop, given his way, “would root out the principle of white supremacy in the South” and clearly planned his attack accordingly. Guerry is reported to have forgiven Woodward before he died.

It's odd to me that the martyrdom of Bishop Guerry is rarely talked about in the Episcopal Church.  June 7^th is not an official feast or commemoration in this church except in his own diocese, even as Guerry has been listed by the Archbishop of Canterbury as one of the church’s modern martyrs.

At the Cathedral that day in 2018, the diocese dedicated a portrait and Chapel to Bishop Guerry and the congregation sang this hymn:

(1)   The martyr’s song still sings every day, every day.

The martyr’s song still sings every day.

The martyr’s song still sings as heaven’s echo rings

So none will miss the sound of that song every day

So none will miss the sound of that song.

(2)   Hate’s raging ways live on, every night. Every night.

Hate’s raging ways live on, every night.

Hate’s raging way live on and kill the prophet’s song.

Will we not right the wrong with our song, with our song?

Will we not right the wrong with our song?

(3)   The Shepherd’s witness lives every night. Every day.

The Shepherd’s witness lives every day.

The Shepherd’s witness lives in all who dare forgive.

Like One who long ago sent from heaven did come down.

Now wears the martyr’s crown every day.

As a person who has dedicated his life to doing public theology in the public square, as well as pastoring and teaching faithful people in everyday living, I found Bishop Guerry’s example and witness profoundly moving and humbling. And even years later, I marvel at the holy coincidence of how I wandered into the Cathedral “just” for Sunday worship and instead heard about his story for the first time!

As I work through the realities of the concurrent sins of racism, sexism, homophobia, and classism, and confront my own tendencies towards these within myself, I am guided by Guerry’s example.

And ever since, I’ve also been struck by the continued ugliness in much of our present public discourse. The unrepentant coarseness emanating from the highest levels of leadership dismays me. I expect our civic and religious leaders to call out the best in us, instead many wish to cultivate the worst. It is awful enough when people cheer on the bad behavior of a tv character, but when people—in my experience, good ethical people of good character—line up behind these antics perpetrated by an elected official, it makes me tired, sad, and worried, and as we run up to elections on both the state and national level, I am seeing this kind of rhetoric only ramp up, especially as we witness legislation enacted that bans one kind of speech and encourages other kinds of speech designed to stir up people’s anger and emotions.

I know I am not alone. As I talk to people around the parish, around the City, and even (on-line) from around the country, there is a growing anxiety about the growing level of vitriol out there, and not only on the airwaves and internet, but in everyday interactions. What’s an everyday Christian to do?

I am not against debate or divergence about complex issues among people of good faith. When deciding big things, disagreement, even passionate debate, ought to be expected! But when the goal becomes “my side must win at all costs” and even worse, when we believe that the only victory is to utterly “own” or destroy the opposition and to leave them humiliated, then not a whole lot is going to get done. And if we can’t disagree with civility, then we cannot compromise, and if we can’t compromise then we are frozen, nothing gets done and then all we have left is our frustration and our anger.

Christian witness in this atmosphere does not arise from mimicking or blindly aligning with the culture’s values. Mindless chants and only rooting for “our side” doesn’t accomplish anything, except for maybe raising our blood pressure. Oddly, rage can be addictive as it excites our endorphins and makes us want more to rage about.

What’s the answer?

Well, we can start with the Apostle Paul’s reminder to the Christians in Rome to not be conformed to the world and instead letting God’s Holy Spirit to transform our minds (Romans 12:2).

The next thing we can do in response to this tense and crazy season is to remain calm even when the air is filled with cruel and fear-fueled words. And to do that, we must pause. When you’re angry, pause. When you’re scared, pause. When you’re tempted to join the angry mobs of people, even if it’s “only” on-line, pause.

And as you pause, pray. Give yourself a little bit of space to invite the Holy Spirit into these very valid concerns that an election like this one will bring up in our hearts and see what God would have us do. After we’ve prayed, then we can begin to listen and embrace those around, especially those who disagree or differ from us.

I found a prayer by Pope Francis based on the famous prayer of St. Francis of Assisi to be especially helpful. It was written for World Communications Day, which this year is Sunday, May 29, 2022, just a few days before the anniversary of Bishop Guerry’s death:

Lord, make us instruments of your peace. 
Help us to recognize the evil latent in a communication that does not build communion. 
Help us to remove the venom from our judgements. 
Help us to speak about others as our brothers and sisters. 
You are faithful and trustworthy; may our words be seeds of goodness for the world: 
where there is shouting, let us practice listening; 
where there is confusion, let us inspire harmony; 
where there is ambiguity, let us bring clarity; 
where there is exclusion, let us offer solidarity; 
where there is sensationalism, let us use sobriety; 
where there is superficiality, let us raise real questions; 
where there is prejudice, let us awaken trust; 
where there is hostility, let us bring respect; 
where there is falsehood, let us bring truth. 
Amen.

It is important that we listen in our hearts and minds to what is going around us and give to God what it stirs up in us. It is equally important to know who has the power to bring peace and in whose name we have been commissioned in Baptism to be peacemakers. Remember, no human being anywhere—no cleric, no politician, no public figure, no celebrity, nor anyone else on the media or in society—is the Messiah. Only Jesus is our Savior and Messiah! No human leader will ever solve all our problems, but God is the source of our hope and calling! And certainly, no human leader can give us inner peace, that can only come through the grace of the Holy Spirit!

As Ambassadors of Reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:11-21), we are not passive by-standers. Jesus calls us to actively love the world, and to actively care for the sick, the wounded, the outcast, the lost, and the least. That neither begins nor ends at the ballot box nor with the talking head on tv. It begins at the foot of the cross, gathers us around the font and the Eucharistic table, and sends us into the world carrying Christ’s endless and never-failing love.

Not one stone

The disciples were like tourists when they finally got to Jerusalem. One can almost imagine them taking selfies, buying postcards, and snacking on food from street vendors as they marveled at the grandeur of Jerusalem and the temple that was that heart of the city.

“Look at all these magnificent stones! Look at these beautiful buildings!” the disciples exclaimed.

But Jesus, ever the party pooper, said, "Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down."

Wait… what? When? How?

Jesus says that there will come a time when the great city will be wracked by violence and terror. At the same time, he also says, don’t fret, don’t give in to fear, and don’t be bamboozled… this is not the end! It is only a birth pang, Braxton-Hicks on the way to birthing the reign of God… but it is not the end!

When Mark’s Gospel was written, in the late 60’s AD/CE…about thirty years after Jesus’ death and resurrection…the Jewish community (or a major part of it) in occupied Palestine was in rebellion against their Roman occupiers. Full scale war had not yet broken out, but it was on the horizon! And when, a few years later, Jewish rebels attacked Romans. Roman soldiers cracked down…hard!

Mark’s Gospel remembers Jesus’ words at a time when Christians were being tempted to pick up arms, join with the radical Jewish rebels and nationalists, and fight against the Romans. Mark’s Gospel reminds this early Christian community that violence will not bring about God’s kingdom; but, at the same time, God’s reign will not be born without pain, pain akin to childbirth.

The challenges facing Mark’s church are not unlike those we know today. We live in angry times. People have retreated to their silos of certainty, and we taunt each other and egg each other on like that lone soldier in the film Monty Python and the Holy Grail, who insults King Arthur from his castle tower. Today, we see people fly flags and offer obscene jokes at the those they disagree with, reinforced by the cackles and yuks of their buddies, egged on by their favorite talking head on their favorite cable news channel, radio show, or podcast. We are coming to terms with the consequences that angry mobs have gathered in our streets and civil shrines protesting, brawling in the name of their cause. As I said, these are angry times. Everyone wants “our side” to “win…!” …. whatever that means.

A few years ago, after terrorist attacks… coordinated acts of war…against civilians took place in Beirut and then in Paris, Bishop Pierre Whalon, the Episcopal Bishop of Europe, asked a question that must have dogged the early Christians of Mark’s Church: “Do we have to love our enemy?” (To which Jesus might say "Well, uhm, yeah!") Here is what Bishop Whalon said:

“Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you.” Doesn’t that just 'enable' them?

Here is where our baptismal promise to “follow and obey Jesus as Lord” cuts into our lives. We should do good to those who hate us, because Jesus has told us to. So how can we?

First, I think we need to see that loving the enemy who can do such things to us is not just vapid idealism. The whole point of the Christian story is summed up thus: “While we were yet his enemies, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5: 6-10) In other words, God shows love for us precisely by putting off the divine power that we crave. The day after this heinous attack, we may wish for God to come down and wipe out our enemies. Instead, Christ on the cross, completely powerless at the last, shows us that it is only love that can overcome hatred, evil and even death.

Jesus asks us to follow his way, as love is the only power in this world that can literally and figuratively save us. He certainly did not “enable” his enemies. In the short term, we need the police and the military, and we should be grateful [for]… the firefighters and emergency medical teams [who] need our prayers and deserve our support. Not to mention the wounded and dead, and their families and friends.

But the question of their assassins concerns not only us here and now, but the whole human race. What word do we have for these people? Our first instincts are to demonize them. . . to label them as “Islamic fundamentalists” or some such, and cheer as the [military] carry out a massive campaign in retaliation. But this is too simple. It is not what Jesus would have us do. What he wants is harder.

When we baptize or confirm people, Episcopalians always repeat the promise to “strive for justice and peace among all people”… We need therefore to chart a way to make peace. Peace, not appeasement or total war. In order to be able to do that, we first need to turn back to Jesus and ask for help.

When the going gets tough, we are tempted to circle the wagons, to build our own little forts or silos; or, as often happens in many churches, start doing what we’ve always done with even greater fervor hoping for a different result! We may be tempted to huddle even closer with the people we are the most comfy with, in whatever little safe rooms we’ve constructed in our hearts and sanctuaries.

But, as Jesus said, not one stone will be left standing.

What Jesus taught, what Mark’s Gospel community learned, perhaps the hard way, was what Christians have learned time and again: that silos, echo chambers, and safe rooms don’t protect us. They never have. And whenever we try to run and hide from the world, the world has a way of finding us! The Church, and all the baptized people and faithful communities where the Church lives, are called to step out from behind the walls, go into the heart of where people live… and just love them. Care for the sick. Comfort the frightened and anxious. Imagine God’s reign, live out God’s love, and act with God’s power… to practically and usefully communicate God’s grace and love to the people God has given to us!

When Jesus points to the massive stones of the Temple, he tells his disciples that a storm is coming but for the Church, while Rule #7 applies, sheltering in place is not an option! That may be fine for hurricanes, but never for Christ’s people in community, the Church!

It may feel as if the world is falling apart…even ending. We are tempted to give into the merchants of terror and treat each other the way they treat and provoke us. But we don’t have to live in those structures. We can tear down the temples of false nostalgia and become people of hope… people whose faith looks forward! As we learn and do the work of Jesus, God shows us over and over again, that the church is built up not with stones or bricks or the powers of the marketplace or world, but through an ever-widening community of love.

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Here is the link to today's Bulletin at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida

Here is the link to today's liturgy.

Here is the link to a video of today's sermon.

A Step Towards Justice: Accountability

Like many Americans, I stopped what I was doing when an alert on my phone told me yesterday that the jury in Minneapolis had returned a verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd. I was in the car, so I pulled into a parking space and listened to the radio as the news came in and the verdict was read.

And like many others, I breathed a sign of relief that the former police officer was found guilty on all three counts. I could not envision a different verdict, but so few police officers are convicted in cases like this. And, in fact, that very day, another black person... this time a teenage girl, Ma’Khia Bryant... was shot to death by Columbus police; so the cycle of violence continues.

What I fervently hope and pray is that this trial will begin a deep conversation on the role of policing, the nature of civic discourse, and the deeply seated patterns of racism in our culture and relationships. But not just conversation, but conversion...! And that means real, practical, lived change!

There is a lot of talk about "justice" being done in this case. But, except in the barest of terms, I do not believe that one trial, one conviction, can bring about justice. Insofar as the verdict was, to me, the right and just one, does not mean that justice was done. If justice was done, George Floyd would not have been murdered over a twenty dollar bill with the tools and authority of the state as the chief weapon used by Derek Chauvin. Instead, what happened here was accountability. 

Before there can be justice, there must be accountability.

Here is what Bishop Robert Wright, Tenth Bishop of Atlanta, posted on his diocesan Facebook page after the verdict yesterday:

This evening we’ve learned that former officer Derek Chauvin is guilty of every charge in the death of George Floyd. If this is a victory, it’s a victory for the role of law in affirming human dignity. If it is a victory, it is a victory for the countless law enforcement officers who embrace accountability and who practice appropriate use of force as they protect and serve without prejudice. Still, justice requires more than sending one man to prison. Justice requires us to acknowledge and change the fact that Black, Brown and poor Americans are treated differently than other Americans particularly in encounters with law enforcement and the criminal justice system. So today’s verdict doesn’t signal the end of our work for equity and justice but rather confirms that to fight for equity and justice is the right fight to be in.

Over and over again, we must relearn this lesson. There was talk in 2009 about America entering a "post-racial era" with the election of Barack Obama as the 44th President. But that was blown to pieces with the tuba-sized white grievance powered dog-whistle of the 45th President. I am convinced that that election exposed a period of reaction against any possible change in the way society is ordered. Fear dominated that election and still dominates the reaction many, especially in the right-wing media, that if the tables were turned we would be treated as we have treated BIPOC persons up until now.

Police departments and personnel have more and more taken on the mentality and persona of warriors instead of guardians, a pattern I saw revving up back when I was a hospital chaplain doing CISM work; aided and abetted by the introduction of free-to-cheap military hardware and the romanticizing of SWAT tactics in even the smallest, most rural departments. This has undone the tiny steps some departments made in community-based policing, and returned American policing to its slave-patrol roots (which is one but not the only root of American policing).

In Great Britain, the modern police were developed in part to separate the work of civil order from the work of the military. The tradition of an unarmed patrol officer came in reaction against the use of soldiers to keep order in 18th and 19th century cities. There is a reason that our constitution forbids the quartering of soldiers in civilian homes, and it has to do with who the military (and the police) work for. A militarized, combat ready police seems to me to be a modernized version of the quartering of soldiers in our homes, our streets, and in our cities.

It also means that other ways of containing crime, resolving and mediating disputes between citizens, maintaining order, and seeing to the smooth movement of persons and commerce have been overlooked in favor of a militarized police trained to shoot first often within three seconds of a perceived threat.

The Rev. Gayle Fisher-Stewart, a former Washington, DC, police officer, points out, America's roots in policing lie in either the slave patrols of the ante-bellum South, or, in the North, in organized strike breaking.

Yesterday's verdict was only a step towards justice, but a necessary step. If we are going to establish justice, we must also establish accountability.

Bishop Jennifer Baskerville-Burrows wrote to the people of her Diocese of Indianapolis:

This trial has been a very personal issue for me, and for many other Black people. I wish it weren’t. I am relieved that Derek Chauvin has been held accountable for the murder of George Floyd. But accountability is not the same thing as justice, and it will not bring George Floyd back to those who loved him.

Tonight, fresh with relief at the verdict, I am aware of my deep longing for true justice, the kind that becomes possible when people like us promise to stand with the vulnerable and marginalized to transform systems of injustice. When we do that, we are committing ourselves to creating a world in which young men can learn to drive without their mothers fearing for their lives. When you dedicate yourselves to this work, you mean that you want your bishop to be able to drive to the BMV without panic, even on expired tags. When we stand together as beacons of Christ, we are saying that we want communities in which the public safety system protects the lives of all of God’s people and in which we no longer need to learn the names of those who have been taken from us by police.

Check out this conversation between The Rev. Fisher-Stewart and Dean Kelly Brown Douglas of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary in New York, as they dive more deeply into the connections between justice, accountability, and reconciliation. 

Finally, Presiding Bishop Michael Curry joined Minnesota Bishop Craig Loya for Compline last night after the verdict was read. Bishop Curry talks about the long road ahead towards justice and reconciliation (starting at about 7:30 into the video).

So, yes, I pray, recite, and contemplate Amos 5:24 but get ready: because before justice rolls down like a river, there will be accountability.

"Call" is trickier than it looks

“Call” is a tricky subject. We take the words for granted in the church, but the whole idea is a mine-field of expectation, vision, and self-image that can bring beautiful vision to life, motivate us to do grand things, send us on journeys of faith… or lead us to do incredible evil. To paraphrase religious writer Frederick Buechner, “[Call] is like nitro-glycerin. It can either heal hearts or blow-up bridges.”

If you don’t believe me, just wait around this week and watch the news.

This week we commemorate The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and there is no doubt that he was called… called to lead his congregation, his people, his nation, to the civil, economic, social, and spiritual liberation of African-Americans from a 400 year history of enforced servitude and oppression… and that this call cost him his life.

And this week, we’ll inaugurate a new president, whom we hope will bring out our better angels instead of encouraging what we saw eleven days ago, when the countervailing forces of fear and evil were at work when thousands of mostly white men and women turned what seemed like a protest into an attempted insurrection so that they could overturn an election they lost at the behest of a president who came to power on the very resentment fear and anger that these people have harbored since well before The Rev. Dr. King first came on the national scene in Montgomery, Alabama in 1955 and 1956.

Now here’s the thing that serious Christians, serious people of faith, must come to terms with: both the civil rights movement and the capital rioters last week used the language of “call”--- of adherence to something higher than themselves—to justify and explain their actions, to motivate their followers, and find energy for their cause. It’s just that one was after a common good and the other perpetrated an evil.

As I said, “call” is a tricky subject.

How do we know if a “call” is from God or is coming from someplace else… someplace contrary to God?

Today we hear a snippet of scripture that sounds wonderful, even whimsical, at first: the call of God to Samuel. Samuel is considered a prophet in Jewish and Christian tradition, but he was the last of the Judges. Before Israel was governed by hereditary kings, they were governed by Judges. These were not people in long robes presiding over courtrooms but were senior religious figures who governed the nation. They not only took on the rabbinical role of settling local disputes, but it was thought that they—being especially attuned to God and particularly holy—could govern the nation.

Samuel was being raised by another Judge, named Eli, but while Eli might have been a person of great faith, and wise in the way of faith, he was a rotten judge of character when it came to his sons, Hophni and Phinehas. Hophni and Phinehas were lazy, drunken, and spoiled. They were sexual predators and thieves. Worse, they thought that because their Dad was a Judge, they could do pretty much as they pleased, and they did not pay Eli any mind when he would mildly rebuke them for their bad behavior. To top it off, these two neer-do-wells assumed that they’d inherit the family business and be the next Judges over Israel. When it came to his sons, Eli was a softy and a push-over

One night, the boy Samuel—who was the only child of Hannah, who had dedicated him to God, and so was being raised by Eli the Judge—was trying to get some sleep when he hears a voice calling his name. Samuel assumes it was Eli, and goes to find out what’s up. Eli, shaken awake by his young student sends him back to bed. Three times this happens! Finally Eli, realizes that it is God who is calling Samuel, so he says to his young padawan, “the next time you hear that voice, say ‘Yes, Lord, your servant listens.’” And that’s what happens. Samuel listens and finds that he is called by God to be a Judge and a Prophet.

Sweet, right?

Well, not so fast. The thing that Samuel learns from God is that God has pretty much had it with Eli not being able to discipline Hophni and Phinehas—and worse, putting up with the evil they did in Eli’s name abusing God’s name and authority in the process! And so, Eli is not only going to lose his job as Judge but will die in the process. When Eli presses Samuel to tell him what God said to the boy, he learns his fate and says “The Lord must do what is right.” Or, as we might say today, “it is what it is.”

So… you see what I mean, right? Call is a tricky thing!

And, that is before we get to what we talked about before… that sometimes we attribute some pretty horrible ideas to “being called by God.” How many tyrants, opportunists, and even everyday insecure people fall back on the language of “call” to justify their actions?

I mean, going back to the Rev. Dr. King, how many segregationists and white supremacists justified their active evil, or their passive acceptance of an obvious evil, by blaming their actions on the “call” or “will” of God. How many could not distinguish between “the way it’s always been” and the will of God?

In today’s Gospel, I can see why Jesus liked and called Nathaniel. Because he was as faithful as the day is long… and he was nobody’s fool. When Andrew and Philip come running to him about having found the Messiah—his response was “yeah, right.” But his friends persisted, and they invited him to come and see. Nathaniel’s call came through his skepticism and Jesus knew not to shower him with sweetness but instead to bust his chops. Nathaniel could take what he dished out and seeing that Jesus knew him in a different way, followed Jesus’ call to discipleship.

But sometimes “call” takes us beyond ourselves and these very human, very ingrained, ways of thinking.

To hear a call is to take one above and beyond oneself. A sense of call is a heady thing but it can go to your head, so one must be careful. And most calls, truth be told, are not specifically religious or to a religious vocation. The other day, I saw on Facebook, how a young woman who grew up in this parish, Keri Appleman, will start her turn as a student teacher, fulfilling what her mother Shae says is a lifelong dream… to become a teacher in a classroom! To undertake this calling in a time of pandemic will be a daunting task, but Keri is up to the task and we both congratulate and pray for her as she lives out her baptismal vows and her calling.

This weekend, Peg and I have been hosted by the Rev Can himself, Father Dale Grandfield and his husband Brad, as we get ready to move to Florida this week. It was this congregation that raised up Dale and sent him off to Seminary to pursue and test his call to ministry. He was our music director, and any parish would have assumed that this was enough, but Dale knew there was something more, and this community nurtured and encouraged that in him. Hearing and pursuing a call may take us in unexpected places.

This parish undertook a call to share in the feeding and sheltering of the poor, the hungry, and the homeless, and we know this ministry today as the Ark Community Meal. But way before Easton had Safe Harbor and before the revival of Easton’s downtown, this parish took turns with other churches in sheltering the homeless from the cold. This parish community’s heart for ministry, led by the vision of Fr. Jim Gill, Janet Charney, Fr. Cliff Carr, and so many others, attuned us to listen for God in creative ways that this led not to only Safe Harbor, but also ProJeCt of Easton, Cops’n’Kids, Turning Point, Third Street Alliance and so many other local agencies and ministries that serve the poor, the outcast, women, and children, and the elderly and those with special needs. Listening to a call can draw out from out amazing, holy, creativity.

This parish chose once and for all to repent of our past ambivalence (and resistance) about whether to welcome LGBTQ persons into our parish, and were so led to embrace the ministry of Sr. Helena Barrett, the first openly gay person to be ordained in the Episcopal Church, and encourage her along with Sr. Alison Joy to form a new Benedictine religious community. After the Pulse night club shooting, we as a parish decided to proudly proclaim that welcome publicly in both word and deed.

This parish hosted a pilot of the Episcopal Church’s “Becoming a Beloved Community,” and worked with Lafayette College and other community agencies to speak out about the sin of racism, held community workshops, and decided through the Vestry, that this parish—as a whole—would be life members of the NAACP through the Easton Branch.

During my time here, we have experimented in many ways responding to the call of God in a variety of ways. Our concerts and artistic endeavors, the founding the Chautauqua of the Two Rivers, our choral scholars—two of whom came to faith and were baptized as young adults in this community—our work with Lafayette. We adopted a school in Kajo-Keji, South Sudan, and made audacious decision to tithe our capital campaign to build that school.

My experience of this community over the past nineteen years that this is a community that strives to listen for the call of God in big and little ways. Even our bike rides, our picnics, and partnerships with other parishes were living responses to the call of God to “discover, share, and live God’s love as friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.”

Now, the time has come to listen again to the call of God. God is taking you to a hope-filled future. It is a heady thing, this business about call, so be careful not to get ahead of yourselves. Time and again, I have learned the hard way that good intentions become pavers on the road to perdition when we let ourselves think that we know better than God what God wants. So stop, pray, listen, discern, pray some more, and—above all—don’t be bamboozled because the evil one wants our good intentions to lead us someplace else. Meet your calling with integrity, inquiry, and, yes, even humor, and God will honor you with great things and trust you to follow him as friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.

Listen for God’s call. Respond to God’s voice. Be discomfited by God’s urging. And may God go with you in all you do.

Sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany, Year B, January 17, 2021, at Trinity Episcopal Church, Easton, Pennsylvania. This was my final sermon as 13th Rector of that parish.

From Blindness to Sight to Vision

A sermon for the Fourth Sunday in Lent, Year A
John 9:1-41

It’s an old question… and one that people ask all the time: who’s fault is it?

And we are especially stirred up right now around the questions of health and healing.

As we experience this strange time of self-imposed and government mandated isolation, when our routines are disrupted, our jobs limited and our ability to do ordinary things from school to going to the movies to weddings and funerals, it’s easy ask “whose fault is this? Who sinned?” and also to ask about how we might find healing in this moment where illness or fear of illness is at the front of our attention.

So, let’s take a look at the Gospel:

One Sabbath, Jesus and his friends encounter a blind man begging by the side of the street.

They ask “Who sinned? This man or his parents, that he was born blind?”

Jesus says that no one sinned, but God can use anything to do God’s work. Watch this.

So, Jesus takes a little dirt, spits in it to make mud, and then smears the mud on the blind man’s eyes and then sends him to the healing place to wash. He goes (or is taken there) and he is healed.

The religious leaders were amazed that the blind man can see, but they are offended that he was led to the healing place on the Sabbath and that someone made mud to do the healing.  So, they interrogated the man.

“Who healed you?”

“I dunno. Someone named Jesus.”

“Uhm.” They said. “Did you say Jesus?”

“Jesus.”

“Okay. You’re not really that blind man. You’re just pretending.”

“Yes, I am. Ask my parents.”

“Whatever. Let’s try this again. So, how did you get healed?”

“What’s the matter with you? Are you deaf? You asked. I answered. Jesus healed me.”

Fingers in ears. “La la la la la. I can’t hear you. You can go away now.”

Jesus shows us that there is more than one kind of blindness…but God only cares about the spiritual kind. The problem with spiritual blindness is that we don’t see what is right before our eyes.

Jesus comes to the man after he was tossed out by stubborn religious leaders. Good thing for Jesus he didn’t ask the man how he received his sight, because he might have hauled off and popped him one.  Instead, Jesus asks the man if he believes in the Son of Man—Jesus.  The man says, “show me, and I will believe.” Of course, he is being shown because Jesus is standing right there. And the man does believe.

Here’s the twist in the story: In the Gospel of John, the most religious people imaginable have their own kind of blindness because they see Jesus and do not believe. Except for this man, he was blind but now believes and sees.

Blindness can come from seeing too much. It can come from thinking we know how the world works and how it ought to work. Blindness can come from thinking we have everything under control. It can come from thinking that we can get God on our side if we are good enough, smart enough, clever enough. Blindness can come from thinking that we have—or ought to have-- in ourselves everything we need, and that we don’t need anyone else—and that we above the need for spiritual help.  Often, when we think we see the most, this is when we are the most blind.

A long time ago, I met a woman priest who once ministered this diocese and who knew my dad. My father was a deacon who came his vocation late in life—that, by itself, is a long story, but for another time—and he was assigned to the chaplaincy at the hospital where this priest did her clinical pastoral education. She told me about how wonderfully supportive he was of her and her journey to priesthood. He was a mentor to her, she said.

"Really?" I said. 

Well, I was very glad to hear that because I can remember when I was in high school and Pop heard the news of the first women to be ordained in the Episcopal Church. Let's just say that he did not take it well. He was, at that time, one very unhappy Episcopalian…he had all his arguments lined up. He was so worked up, he decided to a meeting of people opposed to the ordination of women. And, he told me later, that as he watched and listened, he realized something. All the people at this meeting sounded to him just like the people he grew up with in the segregated south: angry, afraid, and filled that scorn that comes from a kind of self-righteousness. And along with their fear of women priests, they brought all their other causes for anger and it added up to a kind of irrational rage. He had not yet changed his opinion about ordained women, but he knew that he did not want spend any more time with this group.  He told me later that the experience was like having his eyes touched by Jesus.

Just because you’re not blind does not mean that you can see. It took time for Pop to see. Over the years he got to meet and know ordained women until he met my friend the chaplain and began to mentor her as grandfather teaches a granddaughter. When I heard this story, a whole series of lights went off for me—because I got to see that if my father can move from blindness to sight and from sight to vision—then maybe there is hope for me, too? Maybe there is hope for all of us.

There is blindness and then there is blindness. There is the blindness that comes from not being able to see. And there is the blindness that comes from choosing not to see what God has put before us.

And there is sight and then there is sight. There is the sight that comes from resting in our own knowledge, our own power, and our own keen sense of the world as it is. We may think we are being realistic in our skepticism, but we may simply be locking the door on grace. There is another sight, a sight that brings vision. That is beginning to see ourselves and creation as loved, cherished and worthy of being renewed.

There is sight that sees God at work in simple acts of kindness. There is vision to see God at work in the care for the poor, the outcast and the lonely. There is light that comes from encountering the face of Christ in every person that God brings to us. We are seeing the eyes of many opened in this time of disease and self-quarantine as we find creative ways to reach out and care for one another—visiting each other on-line or by phone, doing errands for the homebound, finding new ways to connect and stay in relationship.

We have been touched by Jesus, and washed in the waters of baptism, and who have seen the Christ in faith, in sacrament, in community, in the faces of our neighbors, have a different vision. We have seen a mere glimpse of what God sees: a people capable of love, of faithfulness, and compassion, and a creation full of wonder and possibility. We don’t claim to see everything, but we know that in Christ, God removes our blindness to hope.