Turning around

Once upon a time a drunk man got on a bus and sat down next to a priest. The man's tie was stained, his face was plastered with red lipstick, and a half-empty bottle of gin was sticking out of his torn coat pocket. He opened his newspaper and began reading.

After a few minutes the man turned to the priest and asked, 'Say Father, what causes arthritis?'

The priest sniffs and replies, 'My Son, it's caused by loose living, too much alcohol, contempt for your fellow man, consorting with prostitutes, and lack of a bath.'

The drunk muttered in response, 'Well, I'll be darned,' Then returned to his paper.

The priest, thinking about what he had said, nudged the man and apologized. 'I'm very sorry. I didn't mean to come on so strong. How long have you had arthritis?'

The drunk answered, 'I don't have it, Father. I was just reading here that the Pope does.'

Are you shocked and surprised by sin? I must admit that sometimes I am. But if you think about it, we shouldn’t be. You would think that, really, Christians should the last ones to be shocked or scandalized by sin. I think that we should take in stride the fact that sin happens. After all, the whole fellowship of the Church is made up of people who either said “yes” to God but struggle with going their own way, or who went their own way but came to their senses and come back to God.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus tells a story about two sons who are asked by their father to go out into vineyards to work. The first son says, "I will not!" but later changes his mind and goes. The second son is the one who says he will go but does not. Jesus then turns to his critics and asks which one of the two does the will of the father? They, of course, say that it is the first son, in the end, who does the will of the father. In their answer, the super-religious show that what is really important is what a faithful person does, not just what they say.

A bishop and teacher of the early church named Chrysostom wrote that the Christian is like the son who at any hour turns and chooses to do the will of the father; to go out into the vineyard and work. The Christian is the son who is the missionary.

But I think there is a deeper message that Jesus is offering. While it is certainly true that God wants us to go out into the world—the vineyard—and do God’s work, there is something else going on here.

The Good News is that it is never too late to follow Jesus and to do God’s work in the vineyard. God will embrace the son who turns and chooses in the end, no matter what they have been doing, to become a member of the community of faith.

Today’s Gospel story only appears in Matthew, but it reminds me of another one of Jesus’ stories, the one about the prodigal son that appears only in the Gospel of Luke. In Luke’s Gospel, that son squandered everything and came home expecting to grovel and scrape as a slave but instead is welcomed with open arms. Today, in Matthew’s Gospel we hear of a son who at first says “no” but then turns around choosing to do “yes.” He is a prodigal, too. And he also comes to his senses. He decides to do the work he was asked to do.

In both Gospels, a son turns around. In both cases, repentance—turning around—shows that the life of faith is as much an act of the will as is act of the heart. Living faithfully is depends on the deliberate choice to live in concert with God—especially when we don’t “feel like it.” To live faithfully is not just believing—or saying we believe—the right things, it is choosing to act faithfully.

Faith it turns out is not just an act of the heart, it is an act of the will. And that means that we choose not only to believe but we choose how to act on those beliefs. In fact, we soon learn that our faith is not faith until we choose to act faithfully.

But sometimes we get nervous when someone who said “no” eventually says “yes” to God and tries to walk a new way. We are not sure if we can believe it and we have a hard time forgetting that original “no.”

Have you ever noticed all the buildings we have scattered about St. John’s? There is the Christian Education building where our classrooms and offices are, and which also houses our Thrift Store. Then there is the Parish Hall where we have coffee hour, suppers, and our weekly Bible Studies. Then there is Good Neighbors, where food is gathered from donors and sent out to food pantries and feeding programs. And then there is “Thelma’s Place” where several 12-Step Groups, in our case Narcotics Anonymous, meets almost every day. It's remarkable to me how many people come and go from our church even though they may never set foot in this sanctuary or crack open a Book of Common Prayer.

These are people, especially in the NA groups, who are attempting one step at a time to turn their lives around. Who are attempting after a lifetime of saying “no” are finally say “yes” to God. When we say “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You” this is what we mean!

Sooner or later, we all have to come to terms with the fact that all of us in word or deed have said “no” to God somewhere along the way, and all of us have had to come to our senses and choose to follow him anyway. When you get right down to it, our stories are not so different after all.

Don’t be shocked by this: everyone sins. We are human. We know we promise that we will strive to live faithfully, and we know that we will fail. In fact, in our baptismal covenant we promise that "when" we sin we will "repent and return to the Lord." Christians know we are not perfect. At the same time, we Christians rejoice when the sons and daughters of God who have led life unconscious of God, or who have led lives saying "no" turn and join the other workers in the vineyard. We, the church, exist for those who do not yet belong. We exist so that the vineyard is there ready for the latecomer and for the newcomer who, at whatever time of day, chooses to join in on God’s gracious harvest.

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Bulletin for Worship for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost, September 24, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the 18th Sunday after Pentecost, October 1, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on October 1, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy (with announcements) at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on October 1, 2023.

Sow, Baby, Sow!

It will surprise absolutely no one that I am neither a farmer nor even a gardener… everything I learned about planting and seeds began and ended in that poor plant I tried to grow in a Dixie cup back in elementary school. And that’s a sad, sad tale. 

Today, my motto is “If I can’t mow it, I don’t grow it!”

Still, the image in today’s Gospel was probably pretty familiar to most if not all of Jesus’ hearers, even if they weren’t themselves farmers.

Jesus gives us an image of a farmer “broadcasting” seed—a person reaching into a big pouch and throwing seeds on the ground as the farmer walks in a field that he’s cleared and prepared. It was probably a common sight to all of Jesus’ hearers when he first used this image in his teaching—even among those who never grew a blade of grass.

Jesus says that different things can happen to the seed being sowed. Some of the seeds will grow a little but then the sun bakes it; some of the seeds are eaten by birds; other seeds falls among weeds and thorns and grows for a while and then the competing plants kills it; and some seed lands on good soil and grows and grows and grows until it’s time for the harvest.

While this kind of farming was once a common practice, it is very different from how farming happens today! Today, modern farmers wouldn’t think of risking the loss such a high percentage of seed to birds, sun, and predators. Modern farming implements carefully plants each seed one at a time, in just the right depth of soil, at just the right time, and is given just the right amount of water and fertilizer to maximize crop yields.

But that’s not that’s all that’s different or strange about this story: of all Jesus’ parables that we have in the Gospels, this is the one parable where Jesus explains the meaning for us. If you can remember back to your high school English class, what we have here is no longer a parable, a one-point illustrative story, but an allegory, where one thing represents another. Jesus generally did not teach in allegories—most of rabbinic tradition still doesn’t teach that way. Somewhere between Jesus’ first saying the parable of the sower and when it written down in the Gospel of Mark and later in Matthew and Luke, the people who remembered Jesus’ parable attached to it an interpretation. And the interpretation was preserved along with the original parable itself.

What Jesus taught his followers is one thing, but what we have now is entirely different: it is a teaching for the church from one of the earliest churches, the one that gave us the Gospel of Matthew. And today Jesus and Matthew’s Church is teaching us. What is the Holy Spirit saying to God’s people today?

The story of the sower answers a couple of nagging questions not only about our mission but also about our lives of faith, questions that the Church rarely asks out loud. For one thing, if our “News” is so “Good,” then how come more people don’t believe it? If the Gospel of Jesus truly is life-changing, culture-challenging, purpose-giving, then how come people just don’t flock to our doors and fill this place up? This is the question Matthew’s version, and the other versions of story of the sower found in Mark and Luke attempts to answer.

The answer is that sometimes things happen. Life’s competing interests can starve and choke off our response to the word; sometimes good things just don’t take—we are caught up in the emotion of the moment and we never do anything with that; sometimes there is direct opposition and our response to the word is eaten up even before we fully hear it. And sometimes—more often than we think—it does take hold, and it grows. And even when it grows, it grows at different rates. In some people it grows a lot, in some a little, and in others even less.

And also, sometimes we don’t broadcast the seed we have, but carefully preserve it as if in jars, stored away in own personal root-cellars, for some future time. Here the seed is safe, I suppose. It’s neither eaten by birds nor trampled underfoot, but it’s never planted nor broadcast. It just sits.

If our News is so Good, then why don’t more people believe? As I said, there are lots of reasons—life happens; things get in the way; and we live in a world where there are choices. But more times than we know, the Good News does take hold and seed does take root and people do grow in faithfulness.

This passage is also an invitation to look again at our own spiritual stories. This, I think, is the point of the parable as Jesus first taught it. What kind of soil do we live in? How do we cultivate a listening ear and open heart to the voice of God? Where has God broadcast seen in our path and where has it grown? Where are our weeds? What in our life has eaten up the Word of God and the Love of Christ?

In remembering Jesus’ words, this is what Matthew is saying to his Church and to ours. Here is what we can do about it:

Sow, baby, sow. This Gospel lesson is not a lesson of fatalism—you know, where we shrug and say to ourselves “what can we do? Seed happens.” No Jesus’ lesson is a lesson of hope! We keep putting the Good News out front and growth happens in surprising ways!

Be smart about where you sow. Even the broadcaster who threw seed out on the ground to grow wheat knew enough not to do it on the seashore or on the mountain tops. We should be going to where the soil is—where there are people able to see us, hear us, get to know us. When we go out to sow the Good News, do the best we can possibly do.

Let go of the need to control the outcome. Today’s disinterest might be tomorrow’s “a-ha!” And today’s enthusiasm may be tomorrows ho-hum. We can’t know where our work today will lead someone tomorrow. Just ask any teacher who gets a thank you note from a former student who seemed, at the time, to be asleep in the corner of the classroom but somehow was touched by that teacher just the same. You never know.

In God’s world, it’s always the season to plant. Broadcasting the love of Christ, proclaiming God’s word, living under the grace of the Holy Spirit happens every single day, and we are all the ones doing the planting, when all of us go to where we live and work and play and by our words, our actions and our character show people the Good News of God’s love and power in Jesus Christ. That’s where we proclaim the Gospel with all our being and our doing—and every now and then we even use words! We are like the sowers who go into the world to sow. We are responsible for the effort. God is responsible for the harvest. Sometimes we see the results of other people’s sowing and that is exciting, too. But most of all, we plant, and we cultivate in joy… giving to thanks God for whatever these seeds might bring!

As baptized people, we communicate the Gospel. You may be the only Gospel that some people see. And as followers of Jesus, we are also that place, that garden, that ground, where the love and power of God is planted and grows. Jesus’ parable was, at first, an invitation for all of us to prepare the ground for God, to look out for what encourages and stifles growth, and focus our energies on nurturing and growing those practices that help us flourish, grow in our faithful living.

Today’s Gospel teaching is both…it’s a parable about mission… and it’s a parable about faithful living. Jesus invites us to walk our paths, take some risks, broadcast widely, nurture ourselves, and sow God’s love extravagantly wherever we go!

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Bulletin for Worship for the 6th Sunday after Pentecost, July 16, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the 7th Sunday after Pentecost, July 16, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on July 16, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on July 16, 2023.

Hang in There

"Hang in there."

Today’s Gospel has a strange way of saying it—it sounds kind of threatening doesn’t it? -- but that is the bottom line: It is a hard time and place to be faithful, and remaining a faithful follower of Jesus will be hard, even costly, because following Jesus changes everything but in the Gospel today, Jesus also encourages us to “hang in there.”

Jesus is telling his disciples that life as one of his faithful followers will be at times complicated, even difficult. And the ethical choices one might face—must face— as a follower of Jesus, will at times put us at odds with other people, even the people closest to us.

Today’s Gospel lesson is a strange one, and not only for its tone.  Most of these sayings of Jesus that we hear today, appear in only two of the Synoptic Gospels… here and in Luke … but they show up in different places and in different contexts, which is very unusual because most of the time the outlines of the first three Gospels track each other pretty consistently. Yeah, Matthew, like Luke, builds out on the outline that Mark gave them, and sometimes each Gospel has material that is unique to each book… but to have the same sayings and similar teachings show up in different places and in different contexts makes my ears perk up.

Besides, the Gospels show us all the time that following Jesus can upend life as we know it, even in households. New Testament Scholar Deirdre Goode points out that “household divisions can be as a result of following Jesus and … this [might one of the] the cost(s) of discipleship…. (for example), Zebedee is left in the boat when his sons follow Jesus. Why this happens is left to us to figure out. It might be a decision to advance the kingdom through a network of fishing people, and (older?) tax collectors, given the short length of Jesus’ ministry in the Decapolis.”

We know that Peter has a wife, and that Jesus healed his mother-in-law. Sometimes brothers and sisters joined Jesus together, while others stayed at home.

Technicalities aside, both Gospels give us the same two messages: “Following Jesus changes everything” and “hang in there. Even when it’s hard, hang in there.”

We don’t live in a society or a culture that actively arrests and persecutes Christians, but more and more we live in a society that mis-understands and mis-characterizes the nature of faith. And it is not only secular people who do the misunderstanding. Faithful people can mangle things up, too.

Which, if you think about it, is not terribly surprising since many in the culture lump all Christians (and all faithful people for that matter) into one big, bin of generalities and prejudices. Don’t believe me? Remember how, after 9/11, many in society lumped all Muslims together as if they were all like the nine who hijacked and crashed those aircraft? Some prominent Christian evangelists still do that. And if you have ever had to preface your faith in Christ by saying something like “I am a Christian, but I am not like those Christians…” then you know what I mean.

The fact of the matter is that being a faithful follower of Jesus sometimes cuts across the grain of how our culture works.  That happens when following Jesus touches every part of our living and changes everything. And that can be hard.

But hard as it is, it is the way of blessing not only for his followers, but for the people they will encounter, who will be healed, who will be affirmed and blessed, who will be reconciled to God, each other, and find new community.

In the Gospel Jesus is about to send his twelve very naïve and inexperienced disciples out to do what Jesus does. And as he does, gives tells them to “hang in there,” which means persevering in the face of resistance. And he doesn’t sugarcoat the dangers of the mission; he gives it to them straight: “Some folks will welcome the Good News, others won’t. Some will resist the message and the change that comes with it. And you’ll be the target of their resistance.” Then, like a good pastor, he reminds them that God is with them and is at once powerful –pronouncing judgments that yield life or death – and faithful. In resting on the faithfulness of God, the disciples have what they need in order to endure whatever fear, rejection or violence they may encounter.

Jesus is also forming their character. He is showing them who they truly are – children of God-- and what they are capable of when their lives are aligned with God’s grace. They will become agents of healing and reconciliation; they will learn to hold on to truth even when the going gets tough – by remembering God’s character, God’s faithfulness, God’s goodness. As God will hang in with them, they will learn to hang in with each other, and even with themselves.

Hanging in there, as Jesus says, did not come easily for Jesus’ followers. It took years of walking, listening, and learning with Jesus, eating with him, watching him heal others, speaking truth to power, listening to his teachings, and overhearing his prayers for them to become the kind of men and women who were willing to lose their lives as martyrs, testifying to God’s shalom, God’s peace, in a world still enraptured by powers and principalities. Christian identity and character formation are lifelong processes.

To be a disciple is to be a friend and apprentice of Jesus Christ. To be a Christian is to learn and do the work of Jesus. It is often not easy, and is frequently misunderstood. Sometimes even the people nearest and dearest to us will scratch their heads and shrug their shoulders at our life of prayer, our devotion to scripture, our sacramental living, and wonder why we ground our identity in a baptism that many of us don’t even remember. But as hard as it is, Jesus has two things to say: “hang in there” and “I am with you always.”

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Bulletin for Worship for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, June 25, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, June 25, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on June 25, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on June 25, 2023.

Old dogs. New Tricks.

There’s an old 'Far Side' cartoon that shows a dog on a unicycle, riding on a high wire, and he is juggling while holding a cat in his mouth, balancing a fishbowl on his head, with a hula hoop around his waist.  The caption reads, “High above the hushed crowd, Rex tried to remain focused. Still, he couldn't shake one nagging thought: that he was an old dog and this was a new trick.” 

So, here’s the question: is the old saying correct? Are old dog always unable to learn new tricks?

Now, I don’t know about you, but I am inclined to think not. I mean, my spouse has periodically reported to me her sense that I can be rather particular and habitual in my preferences. Every now and then I find myself muttering something like “who’s been messing with my stuff?” And I must admit that I firmly believe that God intended for a certain order in the universe…after all, if God wanted us to change he would not have put pre-sets on the car radio! But appearances can be deceiving. So can assumptions. And a close, if grudging, reading of today’s Gospel, leads me to think that Jesus does, in fact, believe that “Yes! You can teach old dogs new tricks!”

As he begins his ministry, Jesus will call people from every walk of life to follow him. In fact, Jesus is very careful to deliberately include in his band people who are from opposite walks of life. The Gospel of Matthew tells us that when Jesus goes out to look for disciples…people to serve as not only his followers but his students and apprentices… he does not go to the places you’d expect. Not the synagogues, nor the Temple and certainly not to where religious people study to be religious professionals. Instead, he goes to less obvious, but perhaps more welcoming, places. He goes down the seaside, and he finds fishermen and laborers. He will seek out tax-collectors (like Matthew) and political radicals (like Simon the Zealot). In short, he went after people who went along to get along and people who raged against the machine. His followers will include women who own property and have standing in their community like Mary and Martha of Bethany and there will be women on the “outside” who were prostitutes or who needed healing, like Mary of Magdala who might have been in both situations. He will draw to himself great Rabbis, like Nicodemus, some of whom would only visit Jesus at night, and even Roman soldiers, like the Centurion whose slave needed to be healed.

But for all their diversity they will have one thing in common. They will be, as it were, old dogs learning new tricks. That’s discipleship for you! Jesus shows us that his disciples are not just students, but friends. And being a friend and apprentice of Jesus Christ is like being an old dog who is learning new tricks.

They say it can’t be done! We old dogs are just too stubborn and too set in our ways! They tell us that we have become too used to doing things the way things have always been done them to really, deeply change.  Well, that may be so…but Jesus has this way of meeting us at exactly the point of our greatest need and, if we choose to listen to his call and follow him, he will take us to places we never imagined.

God is in the creation and transformation business. All through the Bible, we encounter stories of God encountering a person and calling them to go to new place and do something new. There’s Abram, called in old age to be the beginning of a new, chosen people and given a new name, Abraham. David was a shepherd boy picked to be the King of Israel. And so many more! Each one is a story of God starting something new and unexpected. God’s call changes them and empowers them so that when they respond to God’s call, other new beginnings can take place.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus walks up to Peter, Andrew, James, and John while they are working and says “follow me! I will make you fish for people!”  These two sets of brothers are doing their jobs, probably doing the same job their fathers did and their father’s fathers did…they were fishermen…going through the rituals and habits of working life that they had always known, living off the rhythms of sea and land. And Jesus is going to teach them something new…he is going to teach them some new tricks.

They will follow Jesus and discover that God is at work in the lives of ordinary people everywhere, drawing people into new, reconciled, healed relationships. They will see that God’s grace is not limited to the special few but available to everyone. They will experience God’s special favor growing beyond the people of the Covenant and extend to everyone, everywhere. They will find that death is not the end of life, because in Jesus’ resurrection, God has conquered it. Over and over again, they will see and meet people who they probably believed were outside of God’s family be welcomed into it.

And along the way, they will learn how to tell their story of faith. They will learn how to heal. They will learn how to pray. They will learn how to understand the scriptures and they will learn how to teach and how to lead. They will learn a whole bag of new tricks.

We are all called to be disciples. We are all called into friendship and apprenticeship with Jesus Christ. We might think that we have learned all there is to know, and that life consists of putting one foot in front of another, bumping from event to event, maybe even from crisis to crisis. But God knows something more about us, that we are capable of so much more both in our hearts and in our actions. And so, he starts with us as we are, where we are, and calls us to do and be more.

Like Peter, Andrew, James, and John, we are like old dogs always being taught new tricks.

Not that all old habits are bad. (This is not just the old dog talking…!) Habits can help us cope and help us function when things are unpredictable. That’s why firefighters, nurses, doctors, and paramedics learn protocols. Spiritual directors teach us how to cultivate holy habits of the heart. This is how God uses how we are already wired for God’s greater purpose.

The temptation is to always do things the way we’ve always done them; or, when we find something that works, to stick with it, and never, ever learn to listen for where the habit is taking us. We are tempted to make something exciting and new into something repetitious and routine. As I said, God knows this about us, and so takes even that built-in tendency and gives it a kind of judo throw. God will take our need for routine and give us the tool of prayerful rhythm, and worshipful time. God will give us the ability to create habits and the ability to reflect. And these, strangely enough, these very habits can become some of the tools of our transformation.

As we develop a habit of prayer, of listening for God, we will change our perspective and develop new vision. As we become used to the idea of serving others, we will begin to see the face of Jesus in faces we would not expect. As we become used to living in community, we will be renewed by finding that we are not alone but accompanied in meaningful ways through all of life’s changes and chances.

God teaches us new tricks all the time. The challenge is for us to listen to when Jesus calls. He will meet us at the point of our greatest need, and find us in our most ingrained habits, our most stubborn opinions, and our most unwavering assumptions and call us to something new. It will feel strange. Like being called away from something we’ve always known into something exciting and real.

There are times when it feels as if it is all we can do to keep juggling what we have always juggled. It can be disturbing to hear God take us in new directions. It might seem like we are adding a fishbowl or a spinning plates to the mix. Following Jesus’ call only starts out feeling like teaching an old dog new tricks, when in fact, it is an invitation to go with God turning our need for habits into a marvelous adventure of possibility, service, and transformation!

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Bulletin for Worship on January 22, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Scripture Lessons for the Third Sunday after Epiphany, January 22, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's Clearwater, Florida on January 22, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on January 22, 2023.

Welcome to the club!

If you were to draw up a list of Saints who would you include? Let’s name a few of our favorites: There is St. Nicholas, who is jolly and cuddly and Christmassy. There is St. Anthony, who specializes in helping us find things (and people) who get lost. There is St. Christopher, who protects us from harm. Have a lost cause? There’s a saint for that: St. Jude. And there is St. Valentine, the bearer of romance. Let's lift a pint to St. Patrick, missionary, Irishman (at least by adoption) and football mascot. And let’s not forget our own patron, St. John the Evangelist.

I hate to burst your bubble, but despite the over 12,700 references on Google, there is no “St. Arbucks,” patron Saint of Coffee (Think about it). Sorry.

Well today, I want to add a new name to your list of Saints: Saint Samuel, our candidate for holy baptism today.

You may laugh, but I am not kidding.

When we talk about saints, we might talk about what makes a saint, well, famous. What gets a college or city named after one? We could talk about their sacrifices, their perfection, their witness, and their selfless deeds. Last Friday, one of my spiritual heroes, Dorothy Day, got the newest Staten Island Ferry named after her. How cool is that?

Today we hold up the “rank and file” saints, the ones who don’t necessarily get a day set a aside for them. But like the more famous capital “S” saints they all communicated Jesus to others, often one relationship at a time. These saints exhibited Christ even when they didn’t feel like it, know it, nor even understand it. Most of these saints don’t have a name or a date, but I think you may know one or two.

Christianity is passed along by word of mouth, by example, and through relationship. No one ever comes to faith entirely by themselves. We are all brought to and sustained in our faith, because someone or some people, brought us and nurtured us. These people were and are God’s ambassadors of reconciliation—showing off Jesus—and inviting those around them to come along.

Which is why Episcopalians, like a lot of other Christians in other traditions, baptize babies like Samuel. We believe that Christian households can and do raise up Christian children into active, productive, friends and apprentices of Jesus Christ.

One of the things that Samuel will learn is that saints are by definition imperfect. They will have live breathing examples of that, and probably in about twelve to fourteen years from now they will let you know. But that’s okay. No one is totally pure and no one is above corruption in thought, word and deed. Not one has ever completely put aside any one or all of the seven deadly sins. If you talk to a person whom you or I might consider saintly, they would probably be startled and think you were making mountains out of molehills.

I’ve never met a firefighter who was a hero. Not one. When you tell them they are heroic, which is especially fashionable these days, they will deny it and tell you that they are only doing their job. Most saints are just the same way.

Remember, in the early Church, “saint” was the term used to describe all followers of Jesus. All of us who live attempting to imitate Christ get the title “saint.” The first step to sainthood is to decide to follow Jesus. The entry point is baptism.

At the same time, saints are made not just born(-again!). Ask Saint Paul about the saints with whom he dealt through his correspondences we call Epistles. The saints in Corinth were willful and quarrelsome and others were sexually irresponsible. There were saints in Philippi who used their position in church for purely selfish ends. Even big-shots like Peter and Barnabas could act like hypocrites. And Paul himself admitted to the saints in Rome that even he did not understand his own actions—he did things he did not want to do, the very things he hated.

Sainthood should not be confused with being “nice.” Even Mother Teresa was known not to be nice all the time. But that’s no surprise because if you’re focused on caring for the poorest of the poor you might end up ruffling a few feathers.

Living into our saintliness is not about niceness but about newness. I remember a lesson from a priest when I was a boy, who pointed to all the pictures of saints around my home parish rendered in brightly colored stained glass. I remember him saying that we are all like those saints because saints are people the Light shines through.

As we welcome young Samuel into the fellowship of the Church and into the company of saints, I won’t need to tell experienced parents like Kimberly and Garret that there will be days when your little saint will seem like an angel, and days when he will be… well… won't. And that’s okay, because you know that’s already true about yourselves and all the others of Jesus’ people in your life and in this parish community.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus describes what it means to be blessed before God. He is also talking about what it means to be a saint—to be a regular, ordinary, everyday follower, friend, and apprentice of Jesus.

“Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus says, “for yours is the kingdom of God.”
“Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.”
“Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.”
“Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven.”

Being blessed, Jesus says, comes from finding our focus just a bit more, day by day, on what God would have us be. And as we listen to God’s voice, and respond to God’s grace, we find that walking the way of Jesus touches lives in ways we can hardly imagine. The late pastor and writer Frederick Buechner wrote:

As we move around this world and as we act with kindness perhaps, or with indifference or with hostility toward the people we meet, we are setting the great spider web atremble. The life I touch for good or ill will touch and other life, and that in turn another, until who knows where the trembling stops or in what place my touch will be felt.

You are here, and you have brought Samuel and his siblings with you, because some place, somewhere, a saint touched you. Somewhere, sometime, you have touched another human being with grace. Somewhere someone cut you a break, told you the truth in love, or cared for you in a moment of crisis. Somewhere someone showed you what it was like to be touched by God. And, having been touched by the holy, you said “I want to do that, too” and that’s when you took another step towards your own saintliness. And now you want to communicate that ineffable quality and that eternal truth to your children and through them to your children’s children. God’s love touched you. You became a follower of Jesus. And you want that for your kids as well.

Saintliness is about newness--choosing to live this one day in one new way--choosing compassion over selfishness, mercy over revenge, kindness over disregard. Choosing just for this moment to serve God in the people God gives us and to look right now for Christ in the people we are given. 

As Saints go, you may think we have a way to go. When Samuel doesn’t pay attention to his feeding or sleeping schedule or as he touches things, and plays with Olivia’s and Hunter’s things, or he discovers new ways to go his own way, you may wonder about Samuel’s saintliness. But you have brought him here anyway.

Well, welcome to the Club, Samuel… the Communion of Saints, the fellowship of Christ’s body, the People of God. You will discover that we Jesus People are a strange lot. We may at times be quarrelsome, strident, short-sighted and at times ignorant or hypocritical, that’s for sure.

It’s true. We are not perfect, we saints; but we are everyday discovering newness. For all our foibles (and yours yet to be revealed) we are together learning and doing the work of Jesus, and just like all those other saints, we learning to let the light shine through.

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Here is a link to the bulletin for the Sunday after All Saints  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.

Baptized into Christian Community

A few years back, a Christian cartoonist named Cuyler Black came out with a line of funny Christian greeting cards called “Inherit the Mirth.” The cover of each card contained one of his single panel cartoons imagining a silly (sort-of) Biblical scene, with a clever greeting on the inside. One of my favorites was titled “John the Baptist as a Kid” and it showed a boy standing next to a bathtub filled with water. He is holding a very wet cat, and next to him were a dog and a parrot, also dripping wet and looking very confused. An exasperated Elizabeth  says from another room “Honey! For the last time-- stop doing that to the pets!”

I chuckle every-time I think of this cartoon because while John the Baptist appears nowhere in today’s lessons, it summarizes very nicely the challenges of living in a household, raising a child, all the while attempting to raise that child with a cogent, useful, and authentically held Christian faith.

Needless to say, I am still living in the glow of this new things called “grandparent.” And I hope I never lose that sense of awe and wonder. All it takes is a little smile from a certain little baby and I get all mushy inside. But this is not a new feeling… I’ve had it with my own children… as well as awe and pride at the people they are today. Part of the “mushy” is that I am getting to know this brand-new person who doesn’t know how to be anything but her complete, honest, direct, vulnerable self. And we are already watching Josephine grow… already a distinct personality, but how she will be in the future is a mystery still to unfold.

By bringing her to this community to be initiated into the Church, into the Company of Christ’s people, we are saying that not only will Josephine be a full part of the Church, she will be fully a part of us… not just her immediate family and friends, but the family and household of Christ’s people in all time and everywhere. We are also making a commitment that we… all of us, family, friends, congregation, the community of the faithful… will do everything we can to help her come to know God in Christ and herself as a follower of Jesus and to become a disciple… that she will live her life as a friend and apprentice of Jesus Christ.

The thing is that she will be attending the toughest, most transparent… and the most awkward… Church School there is. Not the one in this parish… although I know that Miss Mary can’t wait to have Miss Josephine join the crew! No, I mean the one in her home. It will be there that she will learn all the wonder and the love and all the possibility, hope, and security of a family daily learning how to be a family. And she will learn firsthand that Jamie and Johnny, her first teachers in the faith, are imperfect, have bad days, and don’t always have all the answers. In about ten to thirteen years, you parents will be begin getting feedback on all those gaps. (Don’t ask me how I know this!).

But that’s okay because we know that by baptizing babies like Josephine that Christian people are all the time raised up in Christian households. Not perfect, but faithful in an everyday kind of way.

Now, if you parents are smart, you won’t try to do this alone or on your own. Just as you will trust teachers to teach, and coaches to coach, and doctors and nurses to do their thing, you will also take part in a community like St. John’s to accompany you, support you, guide you, and show you the practical nuts and bolts of being a person of Christ.

So Josephine… welcome to the Jesus Movement! To paraphrase our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry, Welcome to St. John’s branch of the Episcopal branch of the Jesus Movement!

Welcome to the Movement that received the gift of the Holy Spirit as it came to Jesus’ first followers on Pentecost. That Spirit took a frightened pack of disciples and empowered them to become a brazen bunch of evangelists and ministers who shared the Good News of Jesus with people who were far off and those who were near to their Jewish faith, including people from all over the known world. People who spoke all kind of languages, had all kinds of customs, and all kinds of traditions.

As I’ve said, this baptism that we are about to do is not simply an event to be recorded in the baby book. It is the beginning of an amazing journey of faith that will require time, attention, and intention. Take the time to pray with your child, from grace at the table to nighttime prayers. Share the stories of faith, not only from the Bible or a book of saints, but from your own faith journey (including the questions you struggle with) and the people you admire. Teach her to hang in there, even when things get rough, confusing, or are not according to plan. As you teach Josephine about respect, reliability, doing her chores, manners, showing up for practice, and all the rest, don’t forget to show her also the rituals of the life of faith, and how to look for God in the everyday.

This may come as a shock to you, but as you do this work as a parent, you won’t have to have all the answers. You just have to model that you too are developing those very same seven-fold gifts of the Spirit that we will soon be praying that Josephine will experience. So, show her your own inquiring and discerning heart, take a deep breath and show what it takes to have the courage to will and to persevere, take the time every day to share the gift of joy and wonder in all God’s works, especially as you see it unfold in this little person whom you present today for baptism. Because you are—all of you—growing on your faith journeys together.

They call Pentecost "the birthday of the Church" (and I understand that there is cake after Church in coffee hour!) So imagine, the Holy Spirit saying to all of us "welcome to the Church!"

Because what we are doing today is also an object lesson for the rest of us on how to be a Christian community. No Christian is a solitary Christian. So here's what we do. We pray together. We dare to have the courage to be vulnerable. We are discovering that it is okay to trust God while not having all the answers. We show up and are together, even when things are confusing, strange, uncertain, or (gasp!) boring. Because how we choose to be a community of believers together demonstrates how to be faithful to each other, our children, our grandchildren, our neighbors, the community, and the members of our households.

Pentecost was not the only time or the only way that the Holy Spirit arrives. God’s spirit is still present in a mighty way. For when we encounter nothing less than the presence of God in the people God gives us in all their variety, we come to know that we cannot limit who God is and how God acts, no matter how we might try. We who follow Jesus and have been baptized into his Church are called to act on our love of God as much as those first disciples were called to share God’s love. We are to share the love of God freely, without trying to limit who God might love.

All of us from Josephine, our newest member, to those who remember when this congregation first gathered more than fifty years ago, and everyone in-between, we all share the same call: we are to take this Good News that God loves us, and share that gospel in our deeds as well as our words with everyone we meet, and as we leave our worship, going in peace to love and serve the Lord (Alleluia times 3!), we are empowered by nothing less than God’s Holy Spirit, who meets us where are and by grace transforms us into Christ’s people, the people God made us to be. 

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Here is a link to the bulletin for the Feast of Pentecost at St. John's Episcopal Church, Clearwater

Here is a link to the Scripture readings for Trinity Sunday

Here is a link to a video of the sermon.

Here is a link to a video of the liturgy.