Looking Evil in the Eye Again!

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

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

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

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

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

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

And:

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

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

"I will with God's help."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Look again at Jesus’ dialogue with the man possessed:

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

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

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

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

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

Evil hates justice and thrives on division. Seek reconciliation. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And we saw it, too.

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

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

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

Beware the Gospel of Silence

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Revisiting Judas

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here’s my theory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Updated from 2013 and reposted)

"Handle with Care!"

When I was a teenager, after I passed my driver’s test, my Dad finally gave me the keys to his car (an ivory ’66 Corvair with a four-speed!) with the following words “Handle with Care.”

I think that when Jesus handed Peter the keys to the Kingdom, he slapped on the same warning label: “Handle with care.”

In today’s Gospel, we find Jesus is in the closest place in the Holy Land to foreign territory, Caesarea Philippi, on the northern coast of 1^st Century Palestine.

The place was a super-market of foreign religions! It is a place where people who came from all over the Roman Empire, who travelled between Europe, Asia Minor, and Africa, could come and worship, rest, and play in familiar surroundings. Kind of like an American hotel in a faraway city, where you could get a Big American Breakfast just like at home.

The Jewish people in the holy land considered the place to be something like ‘sin city.’ It was a sign of their occupation, filled with foreigners, interlopers, and the base for an invading army. So why did Jesus choose this particular place to quiz his disciples about his Messianic identity? Well, maybe, if you fast forward to the time when Matthew’s Gospel was written, it might make more sense because Caesarea Philippi was also the site of one of the earliest known Christian churches.

It is in this foreign outpost that Jesus asks his disciples “who do people say that the son of man is?” This is more than a straw poll. Yes, knowing what people “out there” think is important. And their answers reveal that people—including his closest disciples-- were still trying to figure out who Jesus is. A prophet? He’s a lot like that John the Baptist fellow... maybe him? Some said that he's Elijah, the forerunner to the Messiah.

But Jesus doesn’t stop there. He asks his friends and apprentices: “who do you say that I am?” Of course, Peter (who still was known as Simon) speaks right up. You can almost see him raising his hand like a student in class “Oh! Oh! I know the answer! Pick me!” And like the smarty pants he is, he gets the answer right. He says, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

Jesus gives him a gold star… and a new name. Simon is now Cephas or Peter or “Rock” and he will be the cornerstone upon which the new church will be built. And he is handed the keys… the keys to the kingdom of heaven. These figurative keys will give the Church the ability to let people into the Kingdom of Heaven or keep people out.

But to paraphrase Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben whose dying words to Peter Parker was… (say it with me now!) “with great power comes great responsibility.”

It takes courage to stand up and confess Jesus as the Messiah and Son of the Living God. To stand up in the most secular of ancient cities in first century Palestine is a taste of what the disciples would be sent to do when the Risen Jesus sends them into all the world, proclaiming, teaching, and baptizing.

The problem with keys is that they are used on locks. We use locks to secure things, to keep them safe. We use locks to keep doors closed. The temptation of holding keys to the Kingdom is that we will tend to focus more on who we want to lock out and than on who we will let in.

It is so easy to put conditions on God’s grace. We have all heard the stories: People who have been refused communion because of their marital status or who they love. People who are excluded from the fellowship of the church, or told to worship in a separate space, because of their race. There are churches who seat men in one place and women in another. There have been people kicked out of churches because their pastor or church leaders didn’t approve of them, they asked pesky questions, or are simply ‘inconvenient.’

There is a big temptation to use this passage as permission to act as God’s chief gatekeeper. Different traditions squabble over who really holds the keys —Rome! Constantinople! Geneva! Canterbury! My Church here but not Yours around the corner! Why? Because we think that the one who holds the keys gets to make the rules.

If you’ve been around our own Episcopal Church even for a short time, you know that we’ve not been immune to the misuse of keys. We have divided up along the lines of worship style, what edition of the Prayer Book we like, whether we think women and LGBT persons or people of color ought to be deacons, priests, bishops or even communicants! Only in the last few years have we come out of a tough period of controversy that some have called “The Anglican Wars” as we sorted these issues out. Some people were kicked out of one parish or diocese or another, some picked up their marbles and simply left, either because we were too strict or not strict enough!

We think of ourselves as very inclusive and welcoming, but getting here was neither easy nor simple. All of this sorting is natural and very human, and every religious tradition will go through it every few generations. This problem is that all too often we close the lock the doors and pocket the key and justify it by saying “hey! It’s not my fault. After all, they are Jesus’ keys!”

At least in this country, locking someone out is mostly a matter of inconvenience or shame. But in other places around the globe, it can kill.

Remember, keys not only lock doors they open them, too.

What if what Jesus wanted these figurative keys to be used to open doors instead of locking them? What if these keys are meant to push back the power of death, not simply hold it at bay? What if we have gotten the purpose of these keys backwards?

Which is why we need to remember the warning label: “Handle with Care.”

I believe that the reason this Gospel story happens in a city of outsiders and interlopers, and the reason Jesus cares about how people understand him, is that we who confess Jesus as Lord have a job: to open the barriers and unlock the doors to God’s reign, just as Jesus did throughout his earthly ministry and through the cross and resurrection.

The keys of Jesus open the way of life to all people! We know what it looks like to lock, bolt and chain the door against outsiders—against the threats “out there.” But what if we used Jesus’ figurative keys to open doors that were once locked?

In looking back on forty years of ministry, I recall that many (most?) of the weddings, and a lot of the baptisms, and funerals I’ve been a part of were for people who were refused these in other churches. And, I have to admit that it took me a while to change my own heart about this. I can’t say when it was, but at some point I woke up and realized that I, as a Christian who functions as priest and pastor, can easily erect hurdles and hoops that can lock people out of the kingdom. So I have changed my practice: these days more and more I want to help people honor their desire to be married and let go of controlling the outcome—even if they never set foot in these four walls again, I want us to demonstrate Christian community, to use the keys Jesus gives us to let people in, even if it doesn’t go the way we expect or if it causes us to change our habits, even a little.

Sometimes, I imagine putting out an ad or putting up a billboard on busy intersections that said “if you have ever been turned away, abused, beat up or tossed out of a church” because, well, life happens, we are truly sorry, and now we are opening our doors to you. Or I fantasize about doing a “y’all come as you are” baptism… no classes, no forms, not even an offering plate, just a pool of water and maybe a big feed afterwards. It’s just a thought but I fantasize about how that might look. Why? Because God once unlocked our hearts and brought us into the Kingdom.

It is said that there are only two reasons everyone is not a Christian: (1) They either do not know a Christian or (2) They do. All of us were given our own set of keys to the kingdom of God at baptism and by our words and our actions we show people who Jesus is. But "handle with care!" Because it's on us! We can show people a Jesus who is indifferent or a Jesus who is engaged. We can show people a Jesus who can be a bully or a Jesus who is compassionate. We can show people a Jesus who is defensive and or we can demonstrate a Jesus who invites and embraces.

You see? What we bind or loose everyday really does make a difference!

Jesus took his friends and apprentices to a city of strangers, interlopers and foreigners and got them to say out loud that Jesus is the messiah and the son of the living God. Jesus entrusted us with keys and invites us to do the same…with a warning. With these keys we may lock people out; or with these keys we may, with God’s grace, open up locked places of the heart and let Jesus in.

I believe that we learn and do the work of Jesus, we will invite, embrace, and graciously, humbly open doors.

We all have been handed the keys to the kingdom! ”Handle with care!”

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Bulletin for Worship for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, August 27, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for the 13th Sunday after Pentecost, August 27, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on August 27, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on August 27, 2023.

Our Mysterious, Complex, Relational, Knowable God

I have a question for you. As we contemplate and celebrate the Feast of the Trinity, and as we enter into the “everyday,” “workaday,” and, yes, the “summer vacation” part of the Church’s year, I have a question for you. It’s simple. And not so simple. You ready? Here it is:

What is your way in to God? What opens the door to the divine for you? What introduces you to Jesus and readies your heart for the Holy Spirit?

Is it the vastness and wonder of God’s creation? Is it the sense of meaning and redemption that you have found in your relationship with God in Christ? Maybe you were a person who has suffered addictions, or abuse, or stuck in a cycle of really bad choices and have found healing and wholeness when you came to faith. Perhaps there was a time when you sought meaning, hope, or direction, and it came to you in an encounter with God. Maybe the door opened for you when you came to sobriety, to health.... or just to your senses!

Some people don’t really know… I get that!... but they know… something is drawing them in. I have found a surprisingly useful tool that can help all of us explore and go deeper into our spiritual journey and discover how wonderfully close the fullness, vastness, wonder, and love of the One God is to every single one of us.

It’s music. I love the visual arts, too, especially painting and iconography, but on this Trinity Sunday, I want to invite you to go deeper into this wonderful theological textbook and book of poetry that is our Hymnal. In doing that, I’d like you think about how it is that you meet God… because however that happens, I’ll bet that there is hymn for you!

The Trinity, the Christian doctrine that we contemplate and celebrate today, says that the oneness of God is expressed in a trinity of persons and a unity of being. The One God is manifested in a Trinity of persons. This is much more than metaphor, and we must avoid the temptation to reducing our language of God to mere "base three" thinking.

The Trinity tells us several things about the very nature of God. Not only do we know the One God as a unity of persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, but the Trinity also tells us that: 

1. God is complex to the point unknowing;
2. God is relational; and,
3. Because of that, through God's grace and action, God is knowable.

So, among other things, the Trinity also tells us that God offers us a variety of ways “in” to our relationship with God:

•        We can contemplate the majesty and wonder of the God of All Creation in God the Father.
•        We can enter in to intimate, healing relationship in Jesus, God the Son.
•        We can enter in to the mystic power and mysterious movement of God in God the Holy Spirit.

These "ways in" should not be confused with the "roles" or "functions" of each person of the Trinity. While God want us to know Him, and know we have to take small spiritual bites on the way to knowing God, we have to be careful not to slice and dice the One God!

Of course, God is bigger than the universe, and our brains can only fit into a baseball cap; so yeah, the best we can do is use analogies to describe the fullness of God. This is a start, but it can get us into trouble.

Remember that each person of the Trinity all contain the entire fullness of the One God! And before you reach for the aspirin, remember that the Trinity shows us that God is complex, mysterious, and knowable all at the same time! What we need is holy imagination, grounded in prayer, scripture, the creeds, tradition, and in the worship of the church.

Think of the ways that God has led you into a deeper knowledge of God, I think that you will find that it depends on your learning style and way of looking at the world.

One of my favorite films is the 1997 movie “Cosmos,” where Jodie Foster plays a scientist…and religious skeptic…who is sent on a mission into an artificial wormhole built on the basis of instructions received via a radio transmission from the star Vega. As she travels she witnesses a magnificent celestial event, the birth of a star or and on seeing the light show she sobs and exclaims that she “... no words, no words... to describe it. Poetry! They should've sent a poet. So beautiful! I had no idea.”

Back in 2012, famed atheist Richard Dawkins debated the Rt. Honorable Rowan Williams, who had just wrapped his term at Archbishop of Canterbury, and described in nearly poetic terms the vastness and complexity of the cosmos asking why one would want to “clutter” up the beauty of science with religion. But as he spoke, Archbishop Williams just nodded, closing his eyes as if he was imagining the scene for himself. In response, Williams pointed Williams did not see God as mental clutter. “Let’s call him a combination of love and mathematics,” he said.

“The writers of the Bible,” Williams noted, “were not inspired to do 21st century physics. They were inspired to pass on to their readers what God wanted them to know.”

And that’s why we find ourselves expressing our encounter with God in poetry, art, and music, and why we often turn to the language of mystics and spiritual directors like St. Julian of Norwich, and even writers like Tolkien, Charles Williams, or Dorothy Sayers or Jan Karon, who in various ways explore their encounters with God in poetry and fiction.

And that brings us to the job that we’ve been given. Go and tell. Make disciples. Baptize and teach.

God speaks to us in the way that meets us exactly at the point of our greatest need. In Matthew’s last chapter we see people who go and tell about the risen Christ. Some people see the Risen Christ and don’t know what they’ve seen, like the soldiers who observed the risen Christ from afar, but since they have not met him, there is no relationship. It is at best only an interesting phenomenon, or a story but nothing more. Without that connection, there is no belief and there is no change.

But for those who enter into a relationship with God in Christ, who dare to go deeper, everything changes. The two Marys who met the risen Jesus in the garden. The eleven and the rest of the imperfect church who met the Risen Christ on the mountain. We meet him here in Christian community and in the sacramental life. The fullness of God being made known in Jesus tells us that Godself is best known in relationship. And from there, we meet God in the people God gives us.

So here is both Good News and a challenge: We who worship, and we who are still trying to understand are also all sent! The challenge is not to be distracted by what we don’t know but to dare to enter into relationship with God in the everyday. The fullness of God is made known in the Holy Spirit in the person of Jesus, who give us the power to change so that every day we can become more and more God’s people.

And every day, we go and tell. We can choose to be intentional about our message or we can just leave it up to the first impression. What will we say? How will we live. There is a saying out there, sometimes attributed (without evidence) to St. Francis of Assisi, “Preach the Gospel. When necessary use words.”

We have seen the fullness of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit made known to us where we live and work and play. In Christ we know our savior and friend, our companion and teacher, our sovereign and our rest. We will tell that we have met the risen Jesus in our daily living and that God is changing us.

So, fellow friends and apprentices of Jesus, we are blessed, truly blessed, when we live Good News, and we tell what we have seen and heard. And remember, we are never, ever alone. 

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Bulletin for Worship for Trinity Sunday, June 4, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for Trinity Sunday, June 4, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on June 4, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on June 4, 2023.

Which way is "up?"

There is an old story that comes from the heady days of the space race between the USA and the former Soviet Union sixty years ago. The story goes that when Yuri Gagarin, the first person to fly in space and orbit the earth, made his voyage in 1961, that he looked out the window and observed that he did not see God.

It gets weirder. 

It turns out that Gagarin never said anything one way or the other about seeing God out the window of Vostok-1! But we do know this: in the days before his rocket lifted off from Star City on the Wednesday after Orthodox Easter, Gagarin took his daughter, Yelena, to be baptized.

The only record of the infamous comment in fact comes from a speech by Nikita Khrushchev in the month or two after the flight. And he didn’t quote Gagarin but rather, in an attempt to mock religion, said what Gagarin didn’t see. The Western press, perhaps spotting an opportunity for propaganda (or else not being able to understand Russian) immediately attributed the words to Gagarin. 

I wonder if this comment, and the minor media and geo-political flap that arose from it, didn’t inspire a 1963 film Heavens Above!, where Peter Sellers plays a naïve but well-meaning vicar accidently appointed to a snobbish parish but who did exactly what Jesus taught: he gave away food, sold all his (and his parish’s) possessions, and welcomed the poor into his church, becoming such an annoyance that he is shot into space as the new Bishop of Outer Space, orbiting the earth reading the psalms over the radio from his space capsule. 

The misquote attributed to Gagarin was definitively answered by three American astronauts, Bill Anders, Jim Lovell, and Frank Borman as they orbited the moon in Apollo 8 seven years later on Christmas Eve, 1968. The three astronauts took turns reading Genesis 1:1-10, the creation story, on the same flight that gave us the iconic image of the earth rising over the horizon of the moon.

The geography of holiness is a tricky and dangerous thing!

The Feast of the Ascension, which comes forty days after Easter, describes and celebrates the return of the living, crucified, and resurrected Jesus to heaven. Many people, especially today when we can peer into deep space at other galaxies, get hung up on what is meant by “up.”

What is described in both the Book of Acts and in the Gospel of Luke is not a mere disapparation. Jesus doesn’t just disappear into the ether, but instead physically rises up into the sky, leaving the disciples staring into the heavens, mouths agape, until an angel comes and tells them to “snap out of it!” and come back to earth.

As sophisticated as we are, no matter how many airline flights we take, and no matter how many space shots we’ve witnessed, we still tend to think of heaven as “up” and hell as “down”, with us living somewhere in the middle. But as interesting as this cosmological hot-hero sandwich might be, the real significance of the Ascension is not geography but relationship!

If you turn to the catechism in the Book of Common Prayer, you will discover that “the mission of the Church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.” (p. 854)

In both the Gospel of Luke and in the Book of Acts, before he returns to heaven, Jesus tells his friends and apprentices to say put, and await the gift that God will send them.

He also teaches them one last time how everything they have seen and heard fits together as God intended. We discover that the disciples were not powerless nor afraid but spent their time together in what must have seemed like a transformed community: they prayed and sang and worshipped. They were not hiding but lived out in the open going between their home(s) and the Temple through the streets of Jerusalem!

What changed was the geography of holiness. Their place, their city, once a place of foreboding and death, is now a place of wonder and worship. They saw the world and their place in it with new eyes, and this even before the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, would arrive in another ten days!

You see, the Ascension didn’t just take Jesus back into heaven, into God’s realm in the cosmos, the Ascension revealed how the friends and apprentices of Jesus were now themselves drawn living in a new relationship with God and each other through Christ. They were changed. Their relationships with each other and even, in their eagerness, with the world was transformed.

The Ascension shows us the sneakiness of God. Its importance is exactly backwards from what we expect. We think it is about going “up,” when in fact it is God coming “down,” tuning our hearts and our senses towards Christ! The Ascension is daily living the prayer we pray every day: that God’s work is being done on earth—all around us! —just as it is in heaven!

So which way is “up?”

The Ascension shows us that as we are drawn to Christ, to each other, and to the world, we are being drawn to God. That way is “up!”

In God’s strange incarnational economy, Christ draws us towards heaven while at the same time showing us the only place we can really find that God is right here-- where we live, work, study, and play. The Ascension shows us that God’s power and healing is not reserved for the someday but is ready for us now. The Ascension demonstrates that in all of our everyday living, the Risen and Ascended Christ continues to be present.

The Ascension reminds us, as Orthodox bishop Metropolitan Anthony Bloom once said, “that the realm of God is dangerous. You must enter into it and not just seek information about it.” Look at what happens in Luke and Acts. Jesus draws to heaven and invites us to work in The City—in the places and in the relationships where God has placed you. And the only place where we can receive “power from on high” is in “the city,” where we his people live, pray, work, and worship.

When we do heavenly worship, with glorious music, we usually think that we are drawing ourselves towards heaven—and we are—but we are also witnessing to the reality that God is all the time bringing heaven to earth. I told you… God is sneaky that way.

This is the geography of the holy. As God’s people, the more we are drawn to heaven the more we live in service to the world; the more we are drawn to that ascended vision, the more we are invited to stay in the city. In the geography of the holy, we don’t need to go elsewhere to find God because the place where we find the power of God is right here all along!

It is said by some who knew him, that Yuri Gagarin carried in his pocket a small icon, right up until he died in a plane crash in 1968. I don’t know. But I do know this: we here in this city, in this place, in our witness, worship, and in our holy work, we baptized people are icons of the holy. What God is doing on earth with us now is what happens in heaven, just as Jesus said when he taught us to pray.

In the Ascension, we are invited to at once look up and see heaven and go out into the city and so inhabit the geography of the holy.

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Bulletin for Worship for the Seventh Sunday of Easter-- Sunday After the Ascension , May 21, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Here are the Scripture Lessons for 7 Easter A- Sunday after the Ascension, May 21, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on May 21, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on May 21, 2023.

Doing what we are supposed to be doing anyway

Sometime ago, on the day after Ash Wednesday, a dear friend from my high school days, 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, who fed the 5000, could do this in a heartbeat, right? And he certainly 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)! 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.

Jesus is tempted 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.

And how ironic is that the incarnate Jesus is also tempted to earthly power, when he is the eternal Logos?

These divine-sized temptations may never come our way, but what does come our way is the temptation to use our gifts, our abilities, and our opportunities frivolously, impulsively, and selfishly. To use what God has given us but instead of cultivating and using our gifts for others to God’s glory, to instead fritter them away in the service of self.

And the temptation to cut short what God cultivates in us will always come in a time and in a form that appears to be most convenient, most accessible, and most attractive to us.

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. But it takes a lifetime and God wastes nothing. There are tried and true processes and tools, but not 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?” A colleague of mine offered this observation:

I was told by my long ago deceased spiritual director, the prior of Holy Cross Monastery, 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]. Since then I've [come to see that Lent is about] spiritual self-correction and challenged [my congregation] to do one exceptional deed each day during the season and tell no one about it.

Using Lent to do what we are supposed to be doing! Now there’s a radical idea! 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 tithe of our year-- to do a little more of what we are supposed to be doing anyway! 

An example of this is the advice was given by Pope Francis back in 2017 about fasting.

Fast from Hurting Words and say Kind words.
Fast from Sadness and be filled with Gratitude.
Fast from Anger and be filled with Patience.
Fast from Pessimism and be filled with Hope.
Fast from Worries and Trust in God.
Fast from Complaints and contemplate Simplicity.
Fast from Pressures and be Prayerful.
Fast from Bitterness and fill your heart with Joy.
Fast from Selfishness and be Compassionate to others.
Fast from Grudges and be Reconciled.
Fast from Words and be Silent so you can listen.

Our Lenten fast, in whatever form it takes, is meant to re-orients ourselves. When we allow ourselves to re-think, to experience Lent anew, what we’ll discover is that all of life, not just this season, is a constant call to re-orient ourselves towards faithfulness. Lent reminds us that all of life, all of the Baptized Life we are getting ready for this season, is constant, everyday process of turning around, and going living new life. So taking on a focus on better health, or a more intentional time of prayer, or a decision to do something useful for the community, or to attend worship a little more often is not really about marking off a spiritual checklist but are human-sized, everyday ways that God gives us to cooperate with Jesus in making us—molding us—into the people God created us to be.

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Bulletin for Worship for the First Sunday in Lent February 26, 2023 at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida.

Scripture Lessons for the First Sunday in Lent, February 26, 2023.

Here is a video of the Sermon at St. John's Clearwater, Florida on February 26, 2023.

Here is a video of the Liturgy at St. John's, Clearwater, Florida on February 26, 2023.