Confronting the powers that be

He was called the “Tank Man” or the” Unknown Rebel.” Remember him? Way before our own No Kings Day, 37 years ago, in the spring if1989, students, intellectuals and ordinary laborers protested in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, joining others all over China demanding change in what was called "The Pro-Democracy Movement. They wanted greater democratic reforms, and most of all they wanted an end to the corruption that was a daily part of life in China in 1989. By June, the government had had enough. They sent in the army to break up the massive protest. The Unknown Rebel was a young man who was filmed singlehandedly stopping a column of tanks sent to the Square to break up the demonstration.

The Tank Man stood in front of the tanks, and when the lead tank tried to drive around him, he moved and stepped in front of it again, bringing them to a halt.  Eventually, students from the crowd dragged him away because they were afraid that he would either be shot dead by soldiers or run over by the tanks. We don’t know what became of the Unknown Rebel, but his act became known around the world via news reports and television. He became the symbol of liberty: a free man standing alone but firm against oppression. Time magazine included him as one of the 100 most influential people of the 20^th century.

One spring day in the year 30, in the city of Jerusalem, the local governor of the vast Roman Empire, named Pontius Pilate marched into the city, leading a column of imperial cavalry and foot soldiers. He came through the front door of the city, the West gate, backed up by the greatest exhibition of Roman military power he could muster.

That same day, a rabbi from Nazareth, a wandering preacher and teacher with a gift of both public speaking and, it was said, healing, gathered his followers and marched in the city through the east gate riding a young colt. Jesus came in the side door, effectively the service entrance of the city, and was greeted by the peasants and ordinary people of Jerusalem who carried leaves of palm and other trees, and spread their cloaks, garments, and household carpets (if they could afford them) in his path.

The Imperial procession was a demonstration of power. The Roman government came up to Jerusalem from their own city built by the sea, called Caesarea Maritima, and whenever there was a major festival in the religious heart of occupied Israel, he’d head up the mountain to Jerusalem to remind the locals of the might and power of Rome, with trumpets and drums announcing his arrival accompanied by a legion of soldiers to keep order. Just in case.

Jesus’ small procession, on the other hand, was at once a pitiful thing that in its shabbiness and impressive in its spontaneity, mocking the imperial procession across town. So, while there were no soldiers, no banners, no trumpets, and no drums, there was a crowd of people carrying tree branches and leaves, crying out “Hosanna.”

Have you ever wondered what “hosanna” means in English? I think most of us assume it’s a cry of praise, like “Hallelujah!” Actually, it’s a prayer. It’s a cry for deliverance. Hosanna means “free us!” The crowd is crying out to Jesus, Hosanna! Hosanna free us, we pray you! Deliver us! Save us from Pilate, from Herod, and Caesar and all of the misery of Rome! 

Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem was a prophetic act that underscored the conflict to come. The humility of his triumphal entry signaled that God’s power, God’s forgiveness, God’s reign did not rest with big golden idols, powerful armies, and impressive soldiers, and not even the established religion of the Jerusalem establishment could overshadow Jesus’ humble people’s procession. Jesus was showing that God was sovereign over everyone. God is bigger even than Rome, even of emperors who considered themselves sons of the gods, and that God arrives not in power, but in humility and in service.

Jesus’ entrance into Jerusalem was a proclamation that God’s reign is here, present and available to all people, a tangible concrete answer to the grinding oppression of Roman occupiers, and the dulling drudgery of life lived without hope, purpose, or power. Jesus knew that when they saw him riding into the city, everyone would have thought of the prophecy in the Jewish Bible, where a king rides into the city in humility. Jesus arrives as a king of peace.

Pilate’s procession, on the other hand, signified human power and human glory that is established with violence and maintained by force. Jesus proclaims the reign of God, established by a Covenant with God’s people, and maintained by love.

No one really knew what to expect. Some people thought that Jesus would lead a revolt. Others through he’d take over the Temple and call down angelic armies. Of course, none of it will go as planned—or so some thought. Jesus did not rally the people to throw off the chains of oppression. There is no revolution. And while Roman soldiers did not scoop up the people who greeted Jesus... this time!... the authorities exerted their power, just the same. 

Before the week is out, Jesus will be arrested and the might of Rome and the power of the official Temple religion—which was at the heart of the religion and economy of Jerusalem— will fall on the head of Jesus. He dies a public, criminal, traitor’s death on a cross, outside the very gates of the city he rode through, not even a week later.

Normally, that would be the end of the story. We might have remembered Jesus’ entry into the city with the same sorrowful appreciation that we have for the Tank Man. Yes, it was stirring to see one man stand up against the tanks…but the tanks still won. And no one knows whatever became of the brave young man. It might have been stirring to see Jesus’ peasant parade in contrast to the Roman legions. But the legions, it appears, still won.

But the legions did not win, not in a final sense! And what was defeated was not an army or a government or a corrupt merging of power and religion. What was defeated was death. What was defeated is sin. What is defeated on the cross is every human attempt to make things serve in the place of God. What is put down is every complex structure, every kind of manipulation that both make us seem to be in control of our little universes, but which hide the fact that we are God’s creatures and responsible to God and each other.

You and I don’t have armies to show all the wily ways we put ourselves between us and God. We don’t need legions to find ways to hide ourselves from our deep-down fears that we are not who we wish we were. Human beings are adept at denying the ways we forget about our neighbors, ignore those in need and exercise our own self-doubt and try to control our own deep longings. We don’t need armies or governments or even big companies to hide ourselves from God’s purpose of love, compassion, care for one another and creation. It doesn’t take much for us to run away from the fundamental call to follow God’s way, to love God with all our heart, soul and mind, and our neighbors as ourselves. We do it in big and small ways all the time.

Jesus marches in the side door of the city against all of this as well. He is still marching in, showing us all the ways in which power--personal and political-- is used not for good but for ourselves, not for good but for evil. He processes into our lives and addresses the many ways that we put ourselves—our fears and our pettiness and our selfishness--in between us and God. He processes in and reveals the pitiful but deadly ways that people use power not for service but for personal glory. Jesus parades into the service entrance and willingly goes to the cross.

And when he does, he shows us that God’s reign is present right here, right now, and that the cross marks the ultimate end of death’s reign over us, the end of our separation from God and each other and creation, the end of the power of sin.

We don’t know what happened to the Tank Man all those years ago. We don’t know if his quiet protest finally did any good. But during this holy week we will walk with Jesus along the way, we will accompany him to the garden where he pours out his soul and his doubts, we will accompany him to the upper room where he will break bread with his friends and wash the feet of his followers even the ones who will deny and betray him; we will walk with him to the cross and we will greet him as he rises from the darkness of death and walks in to the light of new resurrected life. 

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Here are the Scripture readings for Palm Sunday/Sunday of the Passion, March 29, 2026

Here is a reflection connecting No Kings Day (March 28, 2026) and Palm Sunday.

Here is the website for St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida 

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

"Faithful one! Come out!"

“Faithful one! Come out!” That is what “Lazarus” means, “faithful one,” and so when Jesus calls into the tomb of his dead friend, he is saying, “Faithful one! Come out!”

Lazarus had been dead four days…Jesus got word of his illness but stayed where he was for two days. Before Jesus could get to his house, Lazarus died. When confronted with his grieving, weeping friends, Jesus goes to the grave of his friend, and after a time a grieving himself, he has the stone removed from the tomb and he calls his dead friend back to life. 

“Faithful one! Come out!”

All through Lent, we have been listening to Jesus in the Gospel of John telling the people Jesus’ meets and us what it is like to be a person who believes and follows Jesus Christ. What is like to be a person who meets God in the person of Jesus Christ? What is it like to have our life changed by God?

Well, let’s check the list the Gospel has set out for us:

It is like being born again, Jesus tells Nicodemus.

He also tells Nicodemus that it is like feeling the wind and knowing that it is moving but we don’t know from where it comes from.

Jesus tells the woman at the well that it is like drinking from a well of water that never runs dry. 

John tells us that believing and following Jesus is like coming out of blindness and into both sight and light.

Today, we find out that believing and following Jesus is like being dead and now being alive.

When Jesus calls out to his friend, “Faithful one! Come out!” the Word of God, is calling to the faithful of God to wake from death, as from sleep, and come out. And Jesus shows us what we have to wake up from.

Raising Lazarus from the dead is Jesus’ Ezekiel moment. In our lesson from Hebrew Scripture this morning, Ezekiel dreams that God will knit together “dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones” into a living, restored people of God who hear and live the word of the Lord. Jesus calls us out of darkness and death into life. When Jesus stands outside the grave of his friend, he is giving his last and greatest sign that he is here to animate, breathe life into, humanity.

What Jesus told Nicodemus in the dead of night comes to pass at the grave of Lazarus, who is not only raised from death but also experiences a kind of re-birth.

This is not just theory nor a metaphor to Jesus. It’s personal. Jesus’ friends, Martha, Mary, and Lazarus are all real people from a real family who are experiencing real grief, real anguish, and…real death. So the idea, the concept, of God bringing life to God’s people comes to life when he meets the tears of the two women and the reality of Lazarus’ death.

It’s personal, and the people all around Jesus are handling Lazarus’ illness and death in their own way. They are all over the map. The disciples don’t get it—some think that Lazarus is asleep, and when they learn he is dead, in a fit of fatalism they shrug their shoulders and say “then let’s all die together!” Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, are grief-stricken and maybe just a little angry and perplexed. Listen to how they both confront Jesus when he finally shows up: “If only you were here, our brother would not be dead!” Yeah, they get the theology. Martha knows that they’ll see Lazarus at the final resurrection, but Mary is not there, not really. In this moment, she only knows her loss.

And there were a variety of responses from the crowd of mourners, as well. Some were grieving the death of a friend and hurting for his sisters. Others were disappointed that they didn’t get to see Jesus heal Lazarus. And, in the ‘No Good Deed Goes Unpunished Department,’ some would be angry when Jesus does revive Lazarus from death. There’s a part of the passage in the Gospel of John that we didn’t hear this morning where Jesus’ enemies begin to plot against both Jesus and Lazarus as a result of this miracle.  So, yeah, Lazarus’ resuscitation leads directly to the cross for Jesus.

Looking at all those responses, it strikes me that Lazarus’ resuscitation is a kind of spiritual Rorschach Test for us. We all look at the same splotch, the same story, but what we take away from Jesus and Lazarus may tell us something about our own faith journey.

Jesus has waded into the stew of life, and while he raises Lazarus, it will be Jesus’ own death and his own resurrection that will allow us to come out of our own tombs and know life. Jesus cries to all of us “Faithful one! Come out!”

Notice that when Lazarus comes out of the cave, he is a dead man walking. He is bound up in the bandages and coverings they put around the dead. He was dressed for death. He needed to be unbound and released to rejoin the community, and he could not do that alone.  We need each other to remove the shell, the bandages, the clothing of death. It turns out that to be born anew we need help. We require Christian community.

How we live together, how we pray together, lift each other up, welcome one another, challenge one another, allow others to experiment, and support each other all help us crack the old shell, remove the bandages, so that we can live a little more as the people God made us to be.

Jesus—who has himself experienced life and endured the grave--stands at the foot of our cave; Jesus opens our tomb and says to all of us, together and alone, “Faithful one! Come out!” And when we come out, we find ourselves among people who with prayer, support, sharing their faith stories, and who encourage us when times are hard, who unwrap us and dress us for living.

What started for us in our baptisms continues every day. Sometimes we find that we have re-entered our tombs, our dark places, our hidey-holes and have to be called out. 

Here is a glimpse of what the resurrected life we share in Christ through baptism is like. It is like having dry bones knit together into new life. It is like coming back to life. It is like having bandages removed from one’s body and one’s eyes. It is like being set free. 

All of us have been called out of death. Now, faithful ones, come out!

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Here are the Scripture readings for 5 Lent A, March 22, 2026

Here is the website for St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida 

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Location matters

Location matters.

A long time ago, I was a young priest seeking a new cure, and I dutifully sent my resume and profile to wherever the church’s computer said that I might be a decent match. One of those churches was in Virginia. They called me up for an interview. Now they were polite, but they were not really interested in a newbie priest from Connecticut, no matter how nice I was. 

That is, until I mentioned that I was born in Virginia and was baptized at an old, historic parish there. My, did their tone shift! It did not matter that for all practical purposes I had not set foot in the Old Dominion since I was two, my pedigree had clearly improved.

On the other hand, I only grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut, which never made me a true New Englander. I once asked a parishioner of my first parish in Northeast Connecticut (a woman who could trace her ancestors back to the first Puritans in New England) about this and she said “Well, if a cat has kittens in an oven, does that make them biscuits?”

Now, I’ve lived in Southwest Florida for five years and all I know is that because I live here year round and don't make the annual trek up and down either I-75 or I-95, I am no longer a “snowbird,” but does that make me a Floridian? Who knows? Whatever the case, where we are raised has an effect on us. Location matters.

Jesus was not born in his hometown, either. In today’s Gospel he talks about something far more serious and he talked to Nicodemus about how our spiritual birth is far more important than our physical birth. Nicodemus came to Jesus with a sort of hesitant curiosity. Nicodemus was a leader of the Pharisees and he had questions.

Now, this may come as a surprise to you, but despite what you may have heard, the Pharisees were actually the good guys of Jesus’ day. Think of them as sort of first-century Episcopalians. Today, we think of Pharisees as legalistic, 'my way or the highway' kind of folks, maybe even fundamentalist. But of all the different movements and styles of Judaism in the first and second centuries, Pharisaism was probably the closest to what Jesus taught and what  Christianity became.

One of the great errors that many Christians make today is to assume that to be a good Jew meant (and means) following all these arcane rules and rituals strictly and by the book. It is one of the great slanders that Christians perpetrate on our Jewish sisters and brothers (and by extension our Muslim siblings): that their faith is all about rules and our faith is all about grace! You hear it all the time from pulpits and Christian radio, "They are all about "law," but we are all grace all the time!" And nothing ends an argument among Christians more quickly than when one side evokes a kind of theological Godwin’s Law by accusing their opponent of being “pharisaical.”

Amy-Jill Levine, a Jewish scholar who teaches New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University wrote about the bad rap that Pharisees get from many preachers and New Testament scholars and sums it up this way: "After two millennia, surely the time has come to stop bearing false witness against Pharisees and their Jewish descendants. Christianity does not need to bear false witness against Judaism in order to proclaim its good news." 

Okay, then, so just who were these guys, anyway? The fact is that the Pharisees sought to modernize things—to revise Jewish consciousness about faith and geography--to get Judaism out of the Temple in Jerusalem and into the places were Jews actually lived, all across the ancient world. They represented the working and merchant classes of 1st century Jewish culture, especially in the diaspora. 

Before the Pharisees, many (but not all) Jews whether they lived in Galilee or Alexandria or Rome or Ethiopia, may not have felt complete until they went to the Temple in Jerusalem at least once in their lives. The Pharisees, on the other hand, said that being Jewish is a matter of knowing who you are and about loving God with all our heart, soul, and mind and our neighbors as ourselves. They wanted the Jews of their day to live their faith from their hearts, and their ethics to grow out of that faith. Pharisees taught that the local synagogue—their local community—was the center of Jewish life, not the Temple. 

Jesus was deeply influenced by Pharisaism from a young age. I'll bet that the rabbis who taught him as a youngster were Pharisees (Luke 2:41-52). Pharisees set the stage for Judaism to survive the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD and their exile and dispersion outside of Palestine and into Europe, Africa and Asia Minor. In short, modern Judaism in all its forms (and Christianity, for that matter!) is a direct descendant of Pharisaism!

So Jesus and Nicodemus have a lot in common! Both wanted to relocate the heart of Judaism from a place to a people… not just of ancestry but of faithfulness. Both teachers agreed that our morals and ethics grow out of the heart of our faith… to love God with all our heart, soul, and mind and to love our neighbor as ourselves... that what we do shows who and whose we are. But while both Jesus and Nicodemus understand that the Spirit is not confined to a building, no matter how local, or even a nation, for that matter, Jesus takes it a step further when he says, "Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above."

I am sure that you’ve heard the phrase before. It’s usually translated as being “born again.” It could mean that, or "You must be born anew." But, basically, the word means "from above." When Jesus tells Nicodemus that one must be born from above, he is talking about a kind of spiritual awakening that is initiated and animated by God which enlivens and re-defines us.

Archbishop William Temple, the Archbishop of Canterbury during World War II, was once asked if he was born again. He said, “I’ve been born again, I am being born again, and I hope to be born again tomorrow.” He was not talking about salvation, but about sanctification. He was talking about the life of holiness. All of us have the chance to change, to grow, to deepen our life in Christ, as Jesus reminds us in John 3:8 that "The wind blows where it chooses."

Listening for that wind is one of the great disciplines of the Christian life. Awaiting the chance to be born again and again is one of the great disciplines of the Christian life. And a good place to start is in our Lenten discipline today.

The wind of re-birth is the wind of freedom and love, and it is far stronger than where we typically imagine where we find stability in life. It is stronger than the place where we were born, stronger than our ancestry, stronger than what Jesus calls the flesh. So, even though it may blow us to new places, we are – in the Spirit – more stable than ever!

One of things I’ve discovered since moving to Southwest Florida is that everybody here is from someplace. But, as Christians, we are natives of that place which Jesus calls the kingdom of God, which is a kingdom which we enter by faith and baptism. Life in God’s reign is the life of walking with Jesus and letting our identities be shaped and re-shaped by this marvelous wind, this breath of the living God.

The location that matters the most is our heart. In living our life in Christ, we have a choice: we can think of it as a punch-list of tasks we have to accomplish; or we can see the movement from baptism and Eucharist, of daily prayer and sacraments, as the places where we discover again and again our identity in Christ.

Lent is our time to discover again that no matter where we are or where we are from, God is always present to us and that our identity is found with Christ. As baptized people, we are always at home with Christ.

You have been born. By faith and baptism you have been born from above. And as you grow and mature in Christ, in your prayer, your encounter with Scripture, in your Sacramental living you are being born again and again and again. Every time we allow ourselves to follow the wind of God, the Spirit of God, we find ourselves located in the heart of God and that our identity is located in and consists of grace and power.

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Here are the Scripture readings for 2 Lent A, March 1, 2026

Here is the website for St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida 

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

Learning to Live Lent Everyday

Sometime ago, on the day after Ash Wednesday, a dear friend from high school posted on Facebook the following announcement: “I am giving up caviar for Lent.”

After appropriately droll congratulations, several other friends jumped in with their own pronouncements:

“I am not going to smoke cigars,” said one woman.

“I will not eat liver and onions,” said someone else.

“I will refrain from driving a Ferrari,” I offered.

“My husband will not dust this Lent,” said another woman.

Of course, all this electronic silliness had a point. My friend was underscoring how we can use Lent to avoid something that we’d never do anyway while sounding all righteous at the same time. Or how we can trivialize spiritual discipline into a kind of reverse-new years resolutions (with equally deep and last results).

I was thinking about that as I re-read Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. I mean I can honestly say that I can safely resist the temptation to turn a rock into raisin bread, I wouldn’t even dream of troubling an angel to act as a parachute, and I certainly know that I can easily turn aside the temptation to run the universe my way.

Well… mostly!

Both the silliness on Facebook and the Gospel lesson tells us two things about the Christian life that become very clear if you make even a partial stab at a Lenten discipline.

First, it is tempting to turn Lenten disciplines into a show of piety designed to impress our friends and, maybe lull ourselves into thinking that we really don’t need to change anything substantial about ourselves.

Second, we forget that the real spiritual damage comes not from doing something radically out of character but from when we do the things that come very easy to us—only at a time and a place and in way that distorts us.

Look at the temptations that Jesus faced:

He is tempted to turn stone into bread. Well, Jesus fed a crowd of 5000 and another of 4000… couldn’t he do this in a heartbeat? And certainly Jesus ate all the time… in fact, some of the super-religious in his day chided him for eating too much and with the “wrong” people (in their estimation), to boot! The temptation was not that he was being asked to do something Jesus couldn’t do, but rather to do it at the wrong time and for the wrong reason.

The devil tempts Jesus to throw himself off the temple roof so that angels could rescue him and then bear him up for all to see. But instead, he waits to slowly walk among everyday people in his ministry, healing and teaching, to walk the road to Calvary and die on the cross—where he would finally defeat death. The temptation was to cut that short and avoid the cross altogether.

Jesus is also tempted to take on earthly power, again avoiding the cross, when instead, in God’s time, he will assume his place as King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

Notice that all of these temptations have the effect of eliminating the cross and resurrection. Not taking away the need but bypassing it altogether. So while these temptations might have served Jesus in the short-term, but it also would have stopped God’s redeeming work dead in its tracks.

Something else stands out in the temptations: they are not merely personal. Jesus engages the powers of this world--the underbelly of human existence, that in the Gospel is the devil. Bishop Neil Alexander, former Bishop of Atlanta and Dean Emeritus of the School of Theology of the University of the South, once said that “the powers of this world are the great resistant forces, largely uncontrollable, that hold people hostage, captive to the institutions and systems that carry us along, the forces that drive the spirit of the age promising life but leading to death. The powers of this world seek to render us powerless, before the immensity of the world's problems.”

These are the powers that say, "No one really wants war, but the bodies keep piling up” and "No one really wants homelessness, but we can't seem to do anything about it” and "No child needs to die of hunger anywhere, but especially in the wealthiest nation on earth, and yet they do." In short, these are the powers of fatalism and cynicism that say, "What can you do, you can’t fight city hall!"

At the same time, the powers of this world love domination and violence. The principalities and powers of this world see cruelty as the tool and power as the point and relentlessly seek to have their own way regardless of the costs, even to the point of death. It is these powers that Jesus confronts and resists in the wilderness. The evil one and his servants do everything they can to distract Jesus—and us! —from his, and our, mission and purpose. And the struggle won’t end there! These are the powers that will eventually hunt him down, arrest him, flog him, publicly humiliate and then crucify him.

But before all that, let’s look more closely at the temptations that Jesus faced.

It’s true. These divine-sized temptations may never come our way, but what does come our way are the same temptations that on a smaller scale. Every time we are tempted to use our gifts, our abilities, and our opportunities frivolously, impulsively, and selfishly to instead fritter them away in the service of self rather than for God’s glory, is to distract ourselves from learning and doing the work of Jesus.

The temptation to cut short what God cultivates in us will always come at a time and in a form that appears to be most convenient, and most attractive to us. It might even appear to be the shrewd, powerful thing to do. How many people aspire to power and wealth and fame, even if that circle ends up being rather small, at the cost of true friendship, healthy relationships, and collaborative service?

I wish that holiness of life was something we could just do. You know, I wish we could just snap our fingers, buy a packaged system, or just re-boot ourselves. It would be great if we all came with a big red reset button. But reorienting ourselves takes a lifetime and that’s okay because God wastes nothing. There are tried and true processes and tools, but none of it is magic. The amazing thing is God uses all the temptations we’ve turned aside and the ones we’ve given into, all the prayers we’ve said and the prayers we’ve neglected, all the opportunities to serve we’ve taken and the times we’ve run away, as the raw material to shape us into the people God made us to be.

On another Facebook discussion about Lent, a more serious question came up: “what are you giving up and what are you taking on this Lent?”

I remember hearing a Benedictine monk from the Episcopal Holy Cross Monastery talk about this. He said that he neither gave up nor took on anything during Lent. He used Lent to try to do what he was supposed to be doing all along. He said that he had come to see that Lent is about spiritual self-correction and challenged us to do one exceptional deed each day during the season and tell no one about it.

Now there’s a radical idea: Using Lent as the time to do what we are supposed to be doing all the time! Instead of taking away something we might not miss all that much anyway, how about using the time we’ve set aside in Lent—this 40-day tithe of our year—to do a just little more of what we are supposed to be doing anyway!

So you see, this season is so much more than giving up candy bars or making resolutions. Lent is a time to discover that all of life is a process of re-orienting ourselves towards faithfulness. The season reminds us that the baptismal living that we are renewing come Easter, is an everyday process of honest self-appraisal, of turning around, and living new life in Christ grounded in sacramental community. So taking a month or so to focus on better health, or being a bit more intentional in our prayer, or to decide to do something useful for the community, or to attend worship a little more often are human-sized, everyday ways to cooperate with Jesus in making us into the people God made us to be.

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Here are the Scripture readings for 1 Lent A, February 22, 2026

Here is the website for St. Chad's, Tampa, Florida 

Learn more about the Diocese of Southwest Florida here

A Cliffhanger for the Soul

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

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

How does it turn out?

 

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

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

Will the father ever witness his two estranged sons embrace? 

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

Ouch!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

So … who are you in this story? 

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

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

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

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

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

Let’s come to the banquet and find out!

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

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

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

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

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

Rescuing us

Holy Saturday, April 3, 2010, 

Revised March 30, 2024

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We wish to see Jesus!

If you ever have the chance to go on retreat and don’t mind the travel, I like to go to the Holy Cross Monastery in Hyde Park, NY, which overlooks the Hudson River about an hour and a half north of New York City. In their chapel hangs a huge icon. It’s a crucifix modeled on the icon known as the San Damiano Cross. The San Damiano Cross is the one St. Francis was praying before when he had a vision from God to rebuild the Church. The original cross presently hangs in Santa Chiarra (St. Clare) Church in Assisi, Italy. All Franciscans cherish his cross as the symbol of their mission from God. 

When Francis had his vision, he was praying in a church that was quite literally falling down into a heap of rubble. He started to rebuild the church building brick by brick, but in the middle of the project he realized that what Jesus was calling him to do was not to restore a building but to rebuild all of God’s church…all of us…not just a structure!

When I contemplate that icon, I became aware of what Jesus is talking about in today’s Gospel.  Today’s story from John starts out when some Greeks come looking for Jesus. These were religious and curious Gentiles who were attracted to Judaism but turned aside from conversion by the requirement for circumcision. They’ve heard about Jesus and his message and so come to Philip and then to Andrew, asking about him.

Remember Philip and Andrew? They were the ones who saw Jesus and followed him and took the news to their brothers, Nathaniel and Simon Peter.  Now John’s Gospel tells us that some people from outside Judaism are looking to see Jesus just as Philip and Andrew had once searched for him themselves.

It is only when these two people from outside of Judaism come calling that Jesus says out loud that his time has arrived: the time for him to be glorified. 

Well and good, except that Jesus’ idea of “glory” and ours are radically different! When we think of glory, we think of fame and fortune.  We think of power, influence and our name up in lights. Not Jesus. He is thinking of the cross.

For Jesus, glory means embracing the cross, the epitome of suffering. As the Gospel says:

“Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. … Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say – ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. … And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

Jesus is not for a small group of insiders. Jesus is for everyone. And for that, the Gospel tells us, Jesus is glorified on the cross.

It will be on the cross where God will destroy the division between God and humanity. It will be on the cross where God renews creation.  We tend to think of the cross as a failure and a futility that God miraculously turns into something new with the resurrection. Don’t worry, we are in good company—the apostles thought that, too! It’s all over popular culture! But the cross is not a defeat, it is the  completion of what Jesus came to do, and it is the place where he is glorified.

When Andrew took Peter to see Jesus and when Philip brought Nathaniel to see Jesus, they saw him face to face. The Greeks wanted to see Jesus, but they will see him on and through the cross.  And that is where most of us will see Jesus… on and through the cross.

Today, those coming to seek Jesus have one more place to look. And that is to us.

Phillips Brooks, author of the Christmas carol “O little town of Bethlehem,” was Bishop of Massachusetts and instrumental in building the magnificent Trinity Church in Boston’s Copley Square. One feature of Brooks’ design is visible only to those who preach in Trinity church. Brooks had these words carved on the inside of Trinity’s pulpit: “Sir, we would see Jesus.”

Episcopal priest, the Rev. Dr. Barry Vaughn writes:

Phillips Brooks knew that everyone who steps into a pulpit and presumes to preach the gospel needs to think about those words, because the great temptation of preaching is to give our hearers something other than Jesus….

But it is not only preachers who do this. All around us are people who want to see Jesus. Do they see him in us? Do they see the Servant-Lord who washed the feet of his friends? Do they see the prophet who cleansed the Temple? Do they see the healer who made the blind to see? If we are to let people see Jesus in us, then we must go ourselves and sit at his feet, let him heal us, feed upon his body broken for us, and above all stand at the cross and wonder as the Word that spoke out of the void lapses into silence and death.

As we approach the end of Lent: with Passion Sunday, Holy Week and the Great Three Days coming up, we are at once like those Greeks looking for Jesus who came to Philip and Andrew, and we are like Philip and Andrew who show Jesus to others.

 We want to see Jesus. We are not alone. Many people seek Jesus. They could be at work, or in a faraway place or they could be as close as home.  And we, the baptized, are the ones who show off Jesus. We show in our faithfulness, in our attitude towards others, and in our care for those in need that Jesus reigns, and he reigns from the cross.

When Francis went into that broken-down, dark neglected church and prayed before this icon of Jesus crucified, he had a vision of Jesus looking at him and saying, “rebuild my Church.” Francis started with the building-- with the Chapel of St. Damiano. He used his own money and his own bare hands to repair it.  That was a good place to start. Definitely good practice. But it was not enough.

He realized that the Church that Jesus sent him to rebuild was the people of God: people who needed a space and a method to pray, people who need purpose and hope. People who follow Jesus need a mission. The heart of Francis’ call was to show people the very same thing he had been shown. He showed them Jesus. The savior who walked and lived among us is glorified on the cross, where we see God’s love is so great that not even death can stop it.

All the time people come to us and ask of us “we would see Jesus.”  Maybe not in those words, but in their need, their hope, and their curiosity. And in everything we do, as a parish family and in our daily lives, we are called to show them Jesus. And every time we show them Jesus, we are rebuilding his church.

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Bulletin for Worship for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 17, 2024 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the Fifth Sunday in Lent, March 17, 2024

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on March 17, 2024.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on March 17, 2024

Wrong Savior Syndrome

Do you want to know what my problem is? My problem is that I keep trying to follow the wrong savior. I keep getting my messiahs mixed up. My bad!

You see, I keep wishing that Jesus will come and take away all my troubles as if he were one of those great designer drugs they advertise on TV. You know the ones I mean, right?  The ones where everyone is happily riding bikes or rowing boats or hiking mountain trails while the announcer quickly reads off all the possible side effects in a very low voice. These ads do remind us that prescription drugs are serious things and that talk to our doctors; but my emotions say “hmm… bike!” or "ooh… vacation!”

I like my Savior the same way. Yeah, sure, I hear all about taking up my cross and following him. But what I really want is for God to fix everything, and a savior who will solve all my problems, so life won’t seem so hard.

Oops!  Wrong savior! 

If you have ever suffered from wrong-savior syndrome, you are not alone! Peter had the exact same problem! Even after he confessed that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God, he cannot bear to hear the truth that this same Jesus, this same Messiah, would have to be arrested, handed over to his persecutors, tortured, killed and then on the third day rise from the dead, so he blurts out: “God forbid!”

If ever there was a case of wrong savior syndrome, this is it!

Jesus knew that Peter and the others were just a little mixed up about this. But look at where he decides to clarify this! Mark says all this happens, not in Jerusalem or in a local synagogue but in a Roman garrison city called Caesarea Philippi, a city specially built as the local expression of Roman power in an occupied land. This was where their troops were stationed and supplied. From here they could monitor and even, if necessary, shut down the sliver of land between the sea and the mountains that connected Africa, Asia Minor, and Europe. And here the Roman gods could be worshipped out of sight of the local religionists.

Mark’s Gospel tells us that Jesus chose this center of Roman imperial power to start telling his followers about what it means to follow him. 

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.  (Mark 8:34-35)

Jesus tells his disciples that following him is like carrying your own cross—in the very place where they make, store, and deploy crosses by the truckload!

For those of us prone to wrong-savior syndrome, it feels like a cup of ice water thrown in the face! He is telling us to “snap out of it!” so we don’t get our saviors mixed up.

Peter and the rest know by heart the original covenant promise to Abraham that we heard this morning was for many fruitful descendants, all of whom would be loved and protected by God. It was a covenant promising a future of life.

Now Jesus is renewing and reviving that covenant of life– but it looks a very different from what we’ve grown to expect. Jesus promises life to us if we have the courage to face death.

Looking at it that way, I kind of think that Peter’s urge to take Jesus aside and rebuke him starts to make a lot of sense.

At least to me!

Our lesson from Romans tells us what we need to enter into this covenant when Paul says that “it depends on faith….” Paul reminds us of Abraham and Sarah who, hoping against hope, [Abraham] believed that he would become ‘the father of many nations.’ … He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead. … No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.”

Many of our Christian brothers and sisters around the world, may pay that cost of discipleship with their literal, physical lives, but the truth is that most of us won’t go out in a blaze of martyred glory. Most of us will carry our crosses one small step at a time, one spiritual discipline at a time, one act of generosity, sacrifice, or love at a time.

How ever we end up carrying our crosses, following Jesus will cost us one thing: change!

When Abram and Sarai committed to God’s covenant with them, they were changed at such a fundamental level that they got brand-new names, Abraham and Sarah, that echoed their former selves but with brand new identities.

When we sign on to Jesus’ covenant of life, we start a journey through our own deserts and wildernesses, and we emerge on the other side deeply changed. We can finally let go of our urge to rebuke Jesus, to remake him in our image, because he will remake us to be like him.

Instead of Jesus taking away all our problems, he gives us the strength, the grace, and the courage to take on our problems—to carry our cross.

Following Jesus makes a difference because he makes the life of faithfulness possible.  Jesus blazes the trail for us to follow.  He creates a truly human life possible, lived under the mercy of God.

This is the cure for wrong-savior-syndrome. Jesus’ cross helps us carry our crosses every day. When we choose to be open and honest about our faith in a way that tells the truth without being obnoxious, then we discover what is means to not only carry our cross but also how to follow Jesus.

But I have to tell you, I still get my saviors mixed up. Whenever I am tired or overworked or feeling pressed upon by a world changing faster than I can handle, then I go for the fake savior…the one who will knock heads and take names, or the one who agrees with all my opinions, or the one who judges everyone else but not me. Or at least the one who is comfy and cozy and never challenges me to grow.

The good news is that there are things we can do to help us get back to the Real Jesus, to follow our Real Savior: a good place to start is to go back to our baptisms, and to go back to the broken bread and poured out wine of the Sacrament, to look to our Christian companions. When we go back and confess Jesus as messiah and savior and, without shame or fear, orient our lives towards him, then we discover that God has given us everything we need to follow him.

And the best part of all, even though we are prone to wrong savior syndrome, Jesus, our real savior has never, ever forgotten us. 

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Bulletin for Worship for the Second Sunday in Lent, February 25, 2024 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the Second Sunday in Lent, February 25, 2024

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on February 25, 2024.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on February 25, 2024